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- 4/17/89
-
- This message was about an older version of Omega for the IBM-PC, 0.75.
-
- Read the comment near the start of COMPILE.DOS with respect to the current
- version, 0.80. Note that the 'X' command and the '^o' command, outlined
- below, are available on the current version, too.
-
- ----- begin original message -----
-
- This is the first new version since July '88, corresponding to the
- first general Omega release since then.
-
- You need a full 640K of memory and (almost certainly) a hard disk to play.
- The executable itself is too large to fit on one floppy, and during
- the course of the game large level files are created. If you don't have
- much space on the hard disk, you may also have problems.
-
- I have added the 'X' command which will tell you the state of the
- heap (-2 is ok) and how much memory is left. For me this usually
- starts out around 75K-80K.
-
- As the game progresses, more and more memory is allocated which
- isn't freed, though it is no longer needed. Consequently, you
- should probably do the X command once in a while, and save the
- game when it starts to get really low.
-
- The screen display may act differently in some places than it does
- when running under Unix, but I haven't found any places where
- it does something blatently wrong that the unix version doesn't also
- do.
-
- The '^P' command (reprint last message) has been moved to '^O'. The
- reason has to do with using the printer, and the fact that Omega was
- meant to run in cbreak mode and not raw mode, and because Dos isn't
- as flexible as Unix.
-
- If you've only got the executable and associated files needed to run
- the game, you obviously can't configure Omega as to where to look for
- these files. Consequently you've got to have all the files in one
- directory and play the game from there. (If you've got the sources,
- you can change this.)
-
- Most general bug reports should probably be sent to the maintainer of
- Omega - see COMPILE.ALL for information about that. Bugs which seem to
- be PC specific should probably be reported to me.
-
- - Nathan Glasser
- nathan@brokaw.lcs.mit.edu (internet)
- nathan@mit-eddie.uucp (usenet)
-
-
- Recent bug fixes specific to PC users include:
- - The house bug - Entering houses no longer screws up the game.
- - The return bug - You can now use the "return" spell as documented.
- - Level creation time - The time to create levels is reasonable again.
-
- Other comments:
-
- For those of you who feel lost without them, arrow keys and home and
- end may be used in some menus: inventory, options, and selecting the
- number of multiple items to drop.
-
- As long as you exit the game normally, all level files will be removed.
-
- The general version of the game performs saving/restoring in a strange way.
- Only the town level and the current level of the dungeon you're in (if any)
- are saved. I personally don't think this is the right thing to do, but
- have not changed this for the PC. Thus it is not a bug when previously
- visited levels disappear after saving the game.
-
- Also, there is still no way to set up the options to use every time
- you play without "playing yourself." This is obviously another area
- in which the game could be slightly improved, but it's not a bug
- that it doesn't do this.
-
- The game as a whole has always been fairly buggy, and there are even
- still some known bugs in the game which haven't been fixed, though
- it's much better than when the game was first introduced. Because of
- the overall bugginess, there are still (unknown?) bugs which manfest
- themselves on the PC by causing the machine to crash after quitting
- the game, forcing you to reboot. I've not seen anything worse than
- this in quite a while, but you never know what might still be lurking
- in there.
-
- - Nathan Glasser
- nathan@brokaw.lcs.mit.edu (internet)
- nathan@mit-eddie.uucp (usenet)
-