Small description
-----------------

Frotz is a Z-Machine interpreter like ZIP to play standard 
Infocom adventures and all newer interactive stories. It
uses proportional fonts and offers preferences. Three games 
are included.

Frotz 2.0 for BeOS Release 2
------------------------------

Ya know those Infocom games which appeared in the early 80tes?
They had no graphics and no sound, just pure text. The gameplay
and the stories were very good, I think more actual game programmers
should have a look at these games, since modern adventures lacks
of the atmosphere these game had...

With Frotz you can play all Infocom adventures on your BeBox. Since
these games are still copyrighted you must own orginal copies of
these games. On the IF-Archive mentioned below there are tools for 
converting your old gameformats (f.ex. C64 Disks) to the standard
Infocom story file...

Additionally all the newer "interactive stories" which were released
as Free- and Shareware can be played. I have included "JigSaw", one
of the best and biggest interactive stories which were ever released.
For more adventures look out at: ftp.gmd.de in the directory: 
if-archive/games/infocom. They are mostly FreeWare there.

Some notes for playing the newer games: Most of them are in the V8 
format which was developed by Graham Nelson. Try typing "help" for 
more notes and how to play these games.

This release
------------

This is a very early release of Frotz 2.0 which was orginally 
developed by Stefan Jokisch (jokisch@ls7.informatik.uni-dortmund.de)
for PCs in textmode. The BeBox port supports proportional fonts and
has the same functionality as the Windows version, even better...

How to play
-----------

Just doubeclick the Frotz icon and drop story files on into the
window. For playing instructions just type "help" and a menu will 
appear. I have added three very good stories.

ToDo
----

- implementing support for V6 games with graphics (I think only two
  games supported this)
- implementing sound support for games like Lurking Horror
- implementing preferences.
- much more stuff, and naturally fixes...

Changes to Release 1
----------------------

- sometimes the last character in a line would be cut.
- enhanced os_set_textstyle. fixedwidth display is now much
  better.
- fixed problem that the first line would not be scrolled.
- removed some fragile code and made some thing much saver.
- rechanged zword to type short. Some stories had problems.
- savename is resused
- added support for european characters. Note that you should
  select a font which supports ISO 8859 Latin 1. "Kate", "Emily" 
  and "Erich" wont work!
- added default view. No story needed anymore when starting.
- added menu
- stories can be dropped on the main window. 
- added color support. I dont know if this works, since I
  had no game to test it.
- fixed bugs in os_read. DELETE wouldnt work when cursor was
  at the first position f.ex.
- added B_ESCAPE,B_HOME,B_END as editing features.
- added a new colorsheme.
- added fonts menus.
- added font size menus.
- implement support for changing the settings while a game
  is loaded. Really fragile stuff!
- terminalsize can be selected.
- settings are saved
- stories get a icon.