1.4 Environment
This file is intended mainly for those who are not familiar with
Aetolia's format.
Imagine a world, complete with continents, mountains, rivers, cities,
deserts, forests, and so on. Then, imagine that world divided up into
sections of varying size. These sections, called ROOMS, can be of any
size, from a nook in a hall to a large section of a desert. Generally,
indoor rooms will represent much less space than outdoor rooms but this
rule, like most rules, has exceptions.
Imagine yourself standing in a room that is a box canyon. To your west,
you can walk back out of this dead-end of a canyon. Or, you spy a small
animal trail heading up the side of a precarious, but barely
traversable, mountainside. You could then go either UP or WEST, simply
by typing one of these commands. By typing LOOK you will see a
description of the room you are in including exits. You will learn more
about this sort of thing in later help files.
So then, rooms have exits leading to other rooms. Possible directions
are north, northeast, east, southeast, south, southwest, west,
northwest, up, down, in, and out. Now, there are also many items and
MOBILES (creatures or people controlled by the game) that you can
interact with. To see if there are any in the room with you, type LOOK
and read what is there. If you can use ansi colour, you can type ANSI ON
(if colour is not presently visible). Then, items in a room will be a
different colour from the description of the room.
One important thing to understand about items and mobile is that they
all have a unique identifying number. You may see this number by typing
INFO HERE for things in a room with you, or INFO INV to see things in
your INVENTORY (see below). This number may be substituted for the name
of the item or mobile if you wish to specify a particular vial, or a
particular sword, for instance.
Finally, you should understand the concept of your inventory. This is
basically what you are carrying on your person. Likely as not, you will
end up with quite a collection if you play for any length of time.
Typing INVENTORY (or just INV or I) will show you what you are holding.
