                                                         Monday 19.April 1993
                         
                         
                         Hobbit - The True Story

                by Fredrik Ramsberg and Johan Berntsson


This is a small interactive adventure game for PC's using MS-DOS 5.0. The
game is in fact, in its entirety, written in MS-DOS. After unpacking the 
game in a directory of its own, this is what you have to do to be able to
play it:

               * Include the name of the directory in the PATH variable
                 declaration in your AUTOEXEC.BAT.

               * Type RESTART at a DOS prompt, or better yet, put it on the 
                 last line in your AUTOEXEC.BAT.

After having done this, reboot the machine and the game will be available at
all times. Please note: You can interrupt gameplay at any time, to do
something else in DOS. As long as you don't turn off or reset the computer,
the game will always be ready for continuation. If you have trouble running
the game, make sure that you have DOS version 5.0 and that you have enough
memory space reserved for environment variables. The space reserved can be
extended using the MS-DOS command "command /e:nnnnn".



                                Story

This game is about what really happened to Bilbo Baggins on his famous
adventure. The story, in somewhat corrupt versions, has been told in a book -
The Hobbit by JRR Tolkien, and several computer games, among them Hobbit.
You play the part of Bilbo, and your goal is to journey to Smaug, the great
red dragon in the land beyond the river, and return with treasures. For an
assistant you have Thorin the dwarf and Gandalf the powerful wizard. They
will do everything within their power to guide you and to help you. Well,
almost everything, as long as they don't have to get into any trouble
themselves. Or get wet, for that matter. Or cold.

Sample sentences that the parser will recognize:
(Note that everything must be typed in lower case.)

>take chest
>show gandalf chest
>show the chest to gandalf
>drop the chest
>inventory
>i  (Short for inventory)
>get the chest
>ask gandalf about the spell
>talk to thorin about chest
>examine chest
>x chest (Short for examine chest)
>hint
>clue
>look
>l (Short for look)
>go east
>e (Short for go east)
>enter the chest
>wait
>restart
>quit


                                General info

This game is a shareware product. You are absolutely free to distribute it
to anyone, as long as you don't take a profit from it. However, anyone who
enjoys it and decides to keep it should pay a small fee to the authors. This
fee will encourage them to write more shareware programs in the future.
Also, paying the fee is helping to establish this form of distribution, as
other programmers may start using it if it works properly.

The shareware fee for this program is set to US $10. This may be sent in any
way you like to the address below. Thank you!

                           Mr. Fredrik Ramsberg
                               Ryds Alle 17:214
                             S-582 51  LINKOPING
                               SWEDEN

If you have any questions or comments, feel free to contact me using the
above address, or the e-mail address below:

                               d91frera@und.ida.liu.se

Thank you for playing this game!
