

	Magnetic: An interpreter for Magnetic Scrolls adventures
		Written by Niclas Karlsson
			Version 1.0


    Magnetic is an interpreter for the games written between 1985 and
    1990 by Magnetic Scrolls, a text adventure producer based in London,
    England. Although they only produced seven games they have acquired
    legendary status for text adventures of as good quality as Infocom
    accompanied by exceptional graphics.


- WHAT YOU NEED FOR PLAYING -----------------------------------------------

    It is formally illegal to play Magnetic Scrolls games if you do not
    own the original packages. Their games, sadly enough, have been
    unavailable for years, and your only choice may be downloading them
    from the Internet. Having said this, you should get hold of the
    following ingredients:

	(1) the story files;
	(2) the graphics files (optional);
	(3) the title pictures (optional);
	(4) documentation from the original packages;
	(5) the Magnetic interpreter.

    The best source for this material is Stefan Meier's MS memorial at

	http://datura.jump.org/msmemorial

- THE STORY FILES ---------------------------------------------------------

    The Magnetic Scrolls games as originally distributed were in a
    somewhat complex data format, different for most platforms. The
    interpreter uses its own story file format, to be identified by the
    file name extension ".mag". You can download all story files from
    the MS memorial site (see above).

    An alternative way to obtain the story files is to extract them
    from C64 disk images (i.e. files representing the contents of the
    games released for the Commodore 64). These files are identified by
    having a file name ending with ".d64". Disk images for "The Pawn",
    "The Guild of Thieves", "Corruption", "Jinxter" and "Fish" can be
    found at

	ftp://ftp.arnold.hiof.no

    To convert these files to the interpreter's own format, the Xtract64
    program must be used. Run the program without any arguments to read
    a help screen describing its syntax. You'll find that Xtract64 is
    easy to use; for example, for "The Pawn", the command line might be

	Xtract64 pawn-1.d64 pawn-2.d64 pawn.mag

- THE GRAPHICS FILES ------------------------------------------------------

    The Magnetic Scrolls adventures were as well known for the quality
    of their graphics as of their text. The interpreter supports a
    single graphics file format (".gfx"), which is based on the graphics
    files released with the original Amiga version of the games. You'll
    probably want to download the graphics files from the MS memorial
    site.

    The Amiga release of Magnetic also contains a tool to build graphics
    files from the Amiga releases of the Magnetic Scrolls games.

- THE TITLE SCREENS -------------------------------------------------------

    The Amiga versions of the games featured colourful title screens
    which are now supported by DOS Magnetic. The title screens have been
    converted to ".png" format and should soon be available at the MS
    memorial site.

- DOCUMENTATION FROM THE ORIGINAL PACKAGES --------------------------------

    To prevent software pirates from spreading their programs, Magnetic
    Scrolls added a password protection to most of their games. Although
    the Xtract64 tool offers you to remove this type of protection while
    extracting the story file, most games still cannot be won without the
    original documentation which often contained vital clues. There are
    currently two web sites that offer a growing amount of scanned
    material from the original packages. The first one is the MS memorial
    site, the second is the Magnetic Scrolls Gallery by Rochus Boerner

	http://www.igd.fhg.de/~boerner/commodore/ms/mscrolls.html

    which also features numerous screen shots.

- THE MAGNETIC INTERPRETER (DOS VERSION) ----------------------------------

    As you are reading this text file you probably have the Magnetic
    interpreter already. Its most recent release can always be found at

	ftp://ftp.gmd.de/if-archive

    which is a vast archive dedicated to text adventures ("interactive
    fiction").

    Installation is easy. Beside the executable there are only a few
    font files that can either be stored in the current directory or in
    the same directory as the executable. Run the program without any
    arguments to view its help screen. As an example, to play "The Pawn"
    you would have to type

	magnetic pawn

    The interpreter would display the title screen "pawn.png", open both
    the story file "pawn.mag" and the graphics file "pawn.gfx" and, if
    successful, run the game.

    Magnetic supports command line editing and history to make typing
    more convenient. All the common editing keys work as you would
    expect. Other features can be activated via hot keys. Type Alt-H
    to get a list of all hot keys available. These include Alt-U to take
    back your last move and F1 to change the picture size. Finally, if
    the interpreter ever "hangs", try ctrl-break to exit.

- CREDITS -----------------------------------------------------------------

    Magnetic interpreter:	Niclas Karlsson
				nkarlsso@ra.abo.fi

    DOS front end:		Stefan Jokisch
				s.jokisch@avu.de

    Amiga & Win32 front ends:	David Kinder
				davidk@monis.co.uk

    Help and testing:		Paul David Doherty
				h0142kdd@rz.hu-berlin.de

    For comments and bug reports, our thanks go to Toine de Greef, Jacob
    Gunness, Kai Hesse, Stefan Meier and Miron Schmidt. Thanks to Rochus
    Boerner for the title screens.
