A Quick Guide to the Eamon Files for the Apple II computer:


OVERVIEW:

You will find five kinds of files in this folder: public-domain Eamons, Softdisk Eamons, SwordThrust Eamons, the KnightQuest Eamon enhancement, a "zoo" of obsolete and incompatible stuff, and a collection of useful Apple II utilities.

There are two kinds of Eamon files to be found here: 80-col. lower-case ProDOS Eamons, and 40-col. upper-case DOS 3.3 Eamons.

At the time of this writing, there are 246 DOS 3.3 Eamons and 63 80-col. ProDOS Eamons.  The ProDOS Eamons constitute the best 1/4 of the entire DOS 3.3 Eamon set.


BUGS:

EVERY Eamon here has been personally played and debugged by me, and has no known serious bugs. That is not to say that you won't ever see a bug. Thorough debugging requires a staff of debuggers instead of just one guy playing a game through once or twice.

It is also very possible that some of these DSK conversions were made before later bug fixes were made. If you find a significant bug, compare the revision date in that Eamon's catalog to the revision date printed in the EAG newsletter (see September 2000 for DOS 3.3 and June 2000 for ProDOS) If the list shows a newer date, then there was a bug fix since that DSK was made. You will find a bug fix in the newsletter that corresponds to the date in the list.

You will find a complete listing of all bug fixes in the December 2000 newsletter.

Some of these Eamons use an older revision of the Eamon version 7 MAIN.PGM. This older revision has a bug that may appear when interacting with other creatures (people, animals, monsters.) The program will crash if the object of your command is "S" (example: "ATTACK S".) This bug was fixed on the Dungeon Designer in 1990.

The work-around solution is this: never use a solitary "S" as your object, but use at least two letters of the name. For example, when attacking a serpent, the command "AT SE" will work fine.


NAMING CONVENTIONS:

The single-floppy ProDOS Eamons all use the naming convention EAMON000.DSK, while the multiple-floppy ProDOS Eamons use EAM000_x.DSK. All of the DOS 3.3 Eamons use the naming convention D3_000.DSK.


STARTING EAMON:

None of these Eamons are bootable. This is the set that I made up for upload to the old commercial online services, which forbade inclusion of the operating system. To get you going there is a bootable DSK file in the DSK Eamon folders with the name "Bootxx.DSK". You will also find DOS 3.3 and ProDOS Masters in the NonEamon folder.

Besides the Eamon adventures, you will also find the Eamon Master/Main Halls.  The original all-text version includes a players' manual and a very simple Beginners Cave (Eamon #001). There is also a hi-res graphics version called the Graphics Main Hall (the GMH files).  There are designer utilities to write your own Eamons, Utilities, a mapmaker, an Appleworks 3.0 ADB of known bugs, and other stuff.

The EAMONTU1 and EAMONTU2 files are collections of design tips and tutorials collected from the Eamon Adventurer's Guild newsletter. You will find more, in the Eamon newsletters on this disk that were published after these two collections were made.


EAMON REVIEWS:

Every Eamon adventure was reviewed in the newsletter. To find the review for any given Eamon, consult the Eamon list in any September issue of the EAG newsletter, or List2.rtf in the EAGlists folder. Also, the EAMONRV1 thru EAMONRV4 files are collections of Eamon adventure reviews from the Eamon Adventurer's Guild newsletter. These RV files are not complete. You will find more reviews in later issues of the newsletter that were published after RV4 was compiled.

Also the "DE" text files in this folder contain collections of descriptions that were used when the DOS 3.3 versions of these Eamons were uploaded to the old commercial online services. They might serve you as a quick and dirty way to find Eamons that interest you. Of course, the DOS 3.3 warnings do not apply to the ProDOS versions.


SOFTDISK EAMON:

Softdisk has graciously granted permission to include their Softdisk Eamons on this CD. You will find them in the "SOFTDISK" folder. These Eamons are intended to be run by themselves without use of the Main Hall. To start them, run the LEADIN program.

Please note that Softdisk has NOT released these games into the public domain. Permission was specifically granted for this release of this CD-R only.


MISC EAMON FILES:

The MISC folder contains various Main Hall and Eamon versions that have crossed my desk over the years. Some of this stuff is not compatible with regular Eamon; specifically, the "II" files and the "Super" files are compatible only with the other similarly-titled files. These programs are included here for historical interest and for your amusement.


SWORDTHRUST

The SWORDTH folder contains a complete set of Donald Brown's "SwordThrust" commercial Eamon adventures. These are copy-protected .nib files that are not compatible with regular Eamon.


EAMONFK3

This folder contains Eamon stuff that Frank Kunze has converted to his "Eamon 8.0" system. There isn't really anything new here Eamon-wise, but these are very slick and worth a look. Frank had developed his version 8 system very late in the Eamon game, too late for it to achieve wide distribution and use. It would surely have been well accepted had it come some years sooner. This stuff is all ProDOS.


DBROWN

This folder contains some recently-discovered, VERY early work by Donald Brown. The Eamons were done before the present standard configuration was set in place and are of interest to Eamon historians. There are also a couple of non-Eamon titles.
