This version of dungeon has the unique history of having been ported from the vax to the pc, and then from the pc to linux. Along the way, several things that had been lost to the vax version were replaced, making this version more faithful to the original code distributed over the arpanet during the late 70s. This version still contains the Infocom copyright notices in the source files -- notices which allow non-commercial use of the resulting program. This version also contains data structures which are initialized with radix-50 text strings -- an indication of its DEC heritage. It is in fact highly obfuscated throughout, and is difficult to understand at first inspection. The executable files have been collected separately from the source code for those who simply want to play the game and are not interested in the source code. If you are among the 'players-only' group, you can skip the next section. SOURCE CODE: Dungeon is written in fortran, and any updates to it have been implemented in the original fortran sources. The fortran sources are subsequently converted to C with the f2c utility, and then turned into an executable with the gcc compiler. There are some twists to this, in that a successful collection by the loader can only be achieved if object files containing initialized common blocks (block data programs) are collected first. The script file called "collect" illustrates one way to successfully create dungeon; obviously, a suitable Makefile would be another. The steps for creating dungeon and its data base are as follows: (1) run the script file called collect, and (2) run the executable called textcnv. The latter program will read the ascii data base file called TEXTDATA.DAT and will create the binary data base file used by the game called DTEXT.DAT. Unless TEXTDATA.DAT is edited for some reason, step (2) will never have to be repeated, and the game can be run by simply typing 'dungeon'. EXECUTABLE CODE: Because linux has a habit of changing dynamic libraries from time to time, the executable is provided in two flavors: dungeon.s -- static version which needs no external libraries dungeon -- standard version which loads its library routines at runtime If the second (small) version works for you, then your libraries are compatible with it, and you can get rid of the large version. If dungeon fails to execute properly, then dungeon.s should be used in its place. Dungeon requires two other files which contain its data base. These are named DINDX.DAT and DTEXT.DAT, and should be named exactly as shown (in upper case). Otherwise, dungeon will complain about their absence and will refuse to execute. Dungeon only searches the current directory for these two files, so you'll need to make whatever adjustments are necessary if you want to locate the data base files elsewhere (usually, a symbolic link in the current directory is used to point to them). Alternatively, you can use the script file called dungeon.sh which was kindly provided by its author, A.M. Kuchling. This file can be used to run dungeon from anywhere on a unix system. Some editing may be necessary. You will also find two files named hints.txt and endhints.txt in the executable-only distribution. These files contain the solution to the game for those who find themselves unable or unwilling to solve the puzzles by themselves. In summary: To run the game, install dungeon or dungeon.s some- where in your path. Place the files named DINDX.DAT and DTEXT.DAT in your default directory, or else create two symbolic links of the same name which point to the actual file locations. When you save the game, a third file named DSAVE.DAT will be created in the default directory.