$Id: README,v 1.5 2006/11/02 00:46:02 mike Exp $

Games::ScottAdams - utilities for manipulating Scott Adams adventures


INTRODUCTION
------------

Games::ScottAdams is a Perl module for manipulating adventure games in
the very obsolete but strangely compelling Scott Adams format.  In
particular, it includes "sac", the Scott Adams Compiler, which
compiles a human-readable description of an adventure into a format
that can be interpreted by common run-time systems such as scottfree.
This provides a nice, low-overhead way in for people who want to start
building their own adventures.

Aside from the obvious Perl-module stuff (MANIFEST, Makefile.PL,
ScottAdams.pm and the ScottAdams subdirectory for sub-modules and
test.pl), what's what in this distribution?

README		This file.
GPL-2		The licence under which this software is distributed.
Changes		History of the distribution, and things still to do.
sac		The "wrapper" program that invokes the module.
dubbin/		Uninteresting files used in regression-testing.
crystal/	_Crystal of Chaos_, a sample adventure built with sac.
tutorial/	The bits and pieces from which Tutorial.pm is built.
		Change into this directory, run "make", and view the
		generated HTML file "Tutorial.html"

You may wish to avoid reading the _Crystal of Chaos_ source code
(crystal/crystal.sac) until you've solved the game.


SYNOPSIS
--------

	$ perl Makefile.PL
	$ make
	$ make test
	$ sudo make install
	$ cd crystal
	$ sac crystal.sac > crystal.sao
	$ scottfree crystal.sao


AUTHOR
------

All code and documentation by Mike Taylor <mike@miketaylor.org.uk>
	http://www.miketaylor.org.uk/
Please email me with bug-reports, wishlist items, patches, deployment
stories and, of course, large cash donations.


LICENCE
-------

The Games::ScottAdams module is Free Software, which is pretty much
legally equivalent -- though not morally equivalent -- to Open Source.
See
	http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-software-for-freedom.html
for a detailed if somewhat one-sided discussion of the differences,
and particularly of why Free Software is an important idea.

Games::ScottAdams is distributed under version 2 of the GPL (GNU
GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE) of June 1991.  A copy of the licence is
included in this distribution, as the file GPL-2.  This licence does
not allow you to restrict the freedom of others to use derived
versions of Games::ScottAdams (i.e. you must share your enhancements),
nor to deploy Games::ScottAdams as a part of a non-free larger work.


SEE ALSO
--------

The Games::ScottAdams tutorial:
	lib/Games/ScottAdams/Tuturial.pod

The Games::ScottAdams reference manual:
	lib/Games/ScottAdams/Manual.pod

The "Changes" file, including the "Still to do" section.

The web-page for this software,
	http://www.miketaylor.org.uk/tech/advent/sac/

ScottCom and other tools that act as compilers and decompilers for
various Scott-Adams adventure languages:
	http://ifarchive.flavorplex.com/if-archive/scott-adams/tools/?S=A

ScottFree, a nice interpreter that uses sac's compiled files.  This is
included as a standard package in many Linux distributions, including
Debian and Ubuntu.
