Eamon CD Ships!
Eamon is the classic Text adventuring
series begun in the early 1980's when
Dan Brown invented the gaming system.
Since then, numerous authors have
created well over 200 adventures
with settings and scenarios ranging from D&D
through science fiction.
.
This CD offers 242 public-domain
Eamon adventures, including native Apple II
Eamons, DSK Eamons, three emulators,
and MS-DOS Eamons. Plus, you get
16 years of Eamon Adventurer's Guild
Journal back issues (with a FULL set of
Eamon reviews, indexes, lists, walk-throughs,
designer tips, and lots more).
And, the CD has some really nice
maps for some Eamons plus other
miscellaneous goodies.
The $3.00 price includes shipping
in the USA and Canada. If you live in some other
country, please email me for price
at eamoncd@bellsouth.net.
To order, make out your check
to
Tom Zuchowski and send to ...
Tom Zuchowski
7625 Hawkhaven Dr.
Clemmons, NC 27012-9408
eamoncd@bellsouth.net
A Quick Guide to Eamon CD Files
for the Apple II computer
by Tom Zuchowski
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 242 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.
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, not just one guy playing a game through once or twice.
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.
The ProDOS Eamons all use the naming convention EAMON000.SHK; they are ShrinkIt 'file' archives that can be unpacked to any size drive. The archive includes a folder for each adventure, necessary because all Eamons use the same filenames. Most will fit on a 5.25 floppy, and those that are too large include instructions for unpacking to multiple 5.25 floppies.
The DOS 3.3 Eamons use the naming convention EDOS3000.SDK;
these are ShrinkIt 'disk' archives that can only be unpacked to BLANK 5.25
floppies. Note that GS-ShrinkIt does not have this capability; you must
use ShrinkIt 3.4 or IIPLUS.UNSHRINK 2.1 (a self-extracting copy of ShrinkIt
can be found in the UTILS folder.) Some of the DOS 3.3 Eamons use multiple
disks; you will find these are SHK archives that include more than one
SDK archive and will have to be unpacked twice to get the final disks.
Besides the Eamon adventures, you will also find the Eamon Master/Main Halls. There is a text version that includes a players' manual and a very simple Beginners Cave (Eamon #001), and 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 tutorial 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.
The EAMONRV1 thru EAMONRV4 files are collections of Eamon adventure reviews from the Eamon Adventurer's Guild newsletter. Again, you will find more reviews in later issues of the newsletter.
Apart from the reviews, the most useful tool you will find for selecting which Eamons to play are the Eamon Lists (EAMONLST.SHK). These are text lists of the Eamon adventures that are arranged in different ways to help you see which Eamon might best interest you.
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 Genie Online service. 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.
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.