Hack

Hack for Atari ST                                                        README

This README is not intended to introduce you into the game. If you wish
to learn more about the game, play it or read net.games.hack. If you are
a beginner you should read the help file first.

To play Hack on your Atari you should use a doublesided diskette, since
while descending into the dungeon Hack creates levelfiles for each
level you visit. Problems might occur when you are very deep in the
dungeon and running out of disk space. You can always save the state of
your game but restoring a saved game requires twice as much space on
disk since the savefile will be broken into levelfiles and it will be
deleted not until the last levelfile has been extracted. Saving the
game is not that problematic since each levelfile will be deleted after
it has been saved into the savefile.  Normaly a game will be saved
under your name in the folder "save". You should create it in the hack
directory.  You can give an environment variable SAVEDIR to tell hack
were to save and restore from. (See environments below). So if you have
trouble restoring a saved game, you can move the savefile to another
diskette (on another drive) and restore it from there.

There exists a problem with saved games and different TOS-versions. You
should restore a game always under the same TOS. If you restore under
a different TOS-version, save the game again and boot the old TOS.

Be sure that there is no ram disk installed because Hack needs a lot
of memory.


Environments:

Since Hack uses getenv(), this routine is now emulated. The file "hack.env"
contains the environment strings in the form  = .

Here is an example for it:

HACKOPTIONS = name:Stan,rest_on_space,nomouse
SAVEDIR     = b:

For more information about the options see the help file or type
"help" after the option command.

You can set the environment variable HACKDIR to let Hack change to
another playground. This is useful when you have two drives and
you are running out of diskspace. Then you can start Hack from another
diskette and need not keep the binary on the diskette were you are
playing. Be sure that the environment file "hack.env" is on the same
diskette together with the binary.


Mouse and joystick; keys:

The Atari version allows you to play hack with the mouse or joystick.
Normally the left mouse button will send '.' which is now associated with
the search command. (Not just resting). The right mouse button sends
^P to let you see messages which have missed because of fast playing.

To acknowledge --more-- you can press a mouse button or the trigger of
the joystick. Normally the trigger sends ^P.

If you don't want to play with the mouse or joystick, you can give
the option nomouse to disable mouse and joystick.

If you are unfamiliar with hack or vi (vi cursor keys), you can use
the keypad to play. All keys around '5' give the appropriate direction
commands. '5' itself is equivalent to 's' (searching).


The following keys are assigned to special functions:

	key      char   function

	F1       \      discoveries
	F2       i      inventory
	F3       )      weapons
	F4       [      armor
	F5       =      rings
	Help     ?      help
	Undo     Esc    undo
	Insert   ^P     redisplay message
	Clr/Home ^R     redraw screen
	Tab      z      zap


If you have a german keyboard layout and use a german TOS-version,
the 'z' (zap) command cannot be accessed via the 'z' key, because
on a german keyboard 'y' and 'z' are swapped. To zap press the Tab-key.

And remember: NEVER press ^C since I have not found a way to mask it out
or to emulate the UNIX signal call.

Send complaints, bug reports, suggestions for improvements to

	Andreas Bormann
	University of Dortmund  [UniDo]
	West Germany

Uucp:   ab@unido.uucp
Path:   {USA}!seismo!{mcvax}!unido!ab
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