

LARN version 14.1.4
-------------------

Table of contents
-----------------

1.  Introduction
2.  System requirements
3.  Files Supplied
4.  Installation
5.  Command line options
6.  WIZARD mode
7.  History and other Information

1. Introduction
---------------

LARN is a dungeon type adventure game similar in concept to HACK, ROGUE
or MORIA, but with a different feel and winning criteria.  LARN was
released for the UNIX environment in 1986 by Noah Morgan.  It was
subsequently ported to the MS-DOS environment by Don Kneller.  Kevin
Routley has been working on enhancements to LARN on and off for the
past two years. This version is for OSX, BSD, GNU/LINUX and WINDOWS environments.

2. System requirements
----------------------

Any GNU/Linux, OSX, BSD or Windows Machine with ncurses or pdcurses.

Note for Windows.  Larn now uses the SDL2 build of pdcurses.  Use this on Windows.

3. Files supplied
-----------------

MANUAL.txt		This documentation.
docs/CHANGELOG.txt    	Changes made since LARN V12.2
docs/HISTORY.txt    	History of this version.
docs/LICENSE.txt    	License of Larn (Noah's License)

Binaries and 'data' folder included in this directory (same as README.txt)

4. Installation
---------------

Decompress LARN into a directory of your chosing. LARN is self contained
and does not write any crap to your registry or system.

5. Running the Game
-------------------

Open the install directory in a command window and type "larn", or double
click .exe file inside the directory. If you are using Windows Explorer.

If you're using *nix systems then cd into the directory and ./larn
configuration, savefiles, logfiles etc..  are saved into your unix ~ in .larn/

6. Command line options
-----------------------

There are several command line options that can modify the behavior of
LARN. You can run these through larn.bat as well. The options are:

-s             Show scores.
-i             Show all scores including the inventories of dead
                      players.
-#             Where # is a number from 0 to 9.  This sets the
               	difficulty of LARN to this level.  Normally, LARN
               	starts out with difficulty 0 and increases in
               	difficulty by 1 when you win at the current level.
               	Thus the game automatically gets more difficult.
-h             A help screen that shows the command line arguments.

7. WIZARD mode
--------------

There is a WIZARD mode for testing features of the game.  To get into
WIZARD mode, type in an underscore "_".
Wizards are non-scoring characters that get enlightenment, everlasting expanded
awareness and one of every object in the game.

8. History and Other Information
--------------------------------

Noah Morgan originally created LARN 12.0 and released the UNIX
version to the USENET in 1986.  Don Kneller ported the UNIX
version to MSDOS (both IBM PCs and DEC Rainbows).

Kevin Routley contributed various LARN enhancements. Version 12.1 had
a limited distribution. Version 12.2 was distributed to the Usenet
community. Version 12.3 was the last version released by Kevin.

Someone made 12.4 through 12.4.2, possibly copx according to
roguebasin. Edwin Denicholas took 12.4 alpha 2 and caressed it into
12.4.3 for Win32.

Gibbon has implemented many fixes and enhancements and taken it to 14.0.0. Which is
multi-platform.

hymie! took it to 14.1.1 with many fixes and improvements.

Gibbon took it back and caressed it into 14.1.4 with again many enhancements, improvements and a launcher!

I hope you enjoy this version of LARN.


The official maintainer
~Gibbon
