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			      omega

...is a complex rogue-style game of dungeon exploration.  Unlike other
such games, there are a number of ways to win, depending on various
actions taken during play. The ways you can get your name on the
hiscore board include becoming the highest ranked head of a guild,
sect, college, etc., as well as gaining the most points figured from
possessions and experience. The game (via the oracle) may impose
some structure on your exploration, but you need not follow all of
the oracle's advice.

omega offers a richness of playing detail that goes beyond a simple
game like rogue. However, the majority of gameplay is very similar to
rogue, hack, ultrarogue, larn, and other such games. The player is
represented by the highlighted "@" symbol, objects and terrain
features are represented by non-alphabetic symbols, monsters are
represented by the various upper and lower case letters, and other
humans are represented by a non-highlighted "@". It is recommended
that the novice read the man pages for rogue or some other such game
and perhaps play a few games before playing omega. The remainder of
this document assumes a basic familiarity with rogue-style games.

This is a *large* help file. You will probably wish to print it out,
as well as the command lists. 
|
OMEGA STRUCTURE
===============
Omega currently consists of a countryside in which are sited a city,
various villages, several dungeons, and some "special" sites, such as
the temple HQ's of the various priesthoods. The game starts in the
city of Rampart, where all the guilds have headquarters. As a dungeon
is explored, all generated levels are saved in memory. However, once a
dungeon is left, it is forgotten, though the fact of "completing" a
dungeon (usually killing a unique character at the bottom) is
remembered.  In addition, saving the game in a dungeon only saves the
current level, so the other levels will be recreated on entry.
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STARTING THE GAME
=================
You will first want to explore the city of Rampart. Although the
architecture and important sites remain the same from game to game,
details such as the precise position of certain shops, etc. will
change. Rampart is relatively safe if you don't wander into places
that are obviously dangerous or do things like breaking and entering.
If you are reckless, it is quite possible to get killed before ever
finding the dungeons. The 'M' command now allows you to return
immediately to any establishment you have already visited that game;
no more wandering around trying to remember where the gymnasium
was....

Many Rampart establishments are only open in the daytime, but some are
only active at night. Due to the stringent anti-crime measures taken
by the Duke, it is usually safe to sleep in the streets. You will find
it far more rewarding, however, to rent or purchase your own lodgings,
if you can afford them.

The point of omega, though, is dungeon exploration. There are a number
of dungeons hidden about the countryside. These dungeons are at
different levels of difficulty and have various idiosyncratic
differences. The easiest are the Caves of the Goblin King, which is
due south of Rampart, in the nearby mountains. The caves must be
searched for with 's' command unless you are lucky enough to
move directly onto them.
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CHARACTER CREATION AND DEVELOPMENT
==================================
You will have the opportunity to create a new character each time you
start up omega. A random selection of statistics will be generated.
To discourage sitting around trying to get an "optimal" character,
you can only "reroll" 9 times before having to reload the game. Since
your statistics tend to go up as you play, it isn't fatal to
have low statistics when you start out. On the other hand, high stats
don't hurt, either....

Each statistic is very important, but depending what sort of character
you wish to play, different statistics will stand out. Combat is
helped by Strength and Dexterity, Magic-use is aided by Intelligence
and Power. Agility helps you avoid getting hit and avoid traps, while
Constitution determines how many hits you can take before dying.

A new option for omega is to "play yourself". By answering a sequence
of personal questions, omega arrives at what your personal statistics
should be. It is in seriously bad taste to lie.... Only the character
you create in this mode can be saved to the omegarc. The questions are
set up so that a "renaissance man" type of person will probably have
stats generally around 14-15. The rest of us will stay around 9-12 on
average. If you are really impressively good at something you can
start out with a stat of up to 18, but this is pretty unlikely for
most of us.

As you continue to play, you will hopefully accumulate experience and
treasure. You can gain skills and abilities through various means,
the most important being training in one of the Rampart establishments
devoted to self-improvement. Thus, you can choose to work out at the
gym, study at the Collegium Magii, meditate at a Temple, and
so on. Certain skills and abilities may only be gained through
adventuring, and others are mutually exclusive. For example, you can
only be a priest of one particular deity. One of the appeals of
omega is the variety of different types of characters you can play,
each with its own set of goals and benefits.

Another aspect of your character is alignment. Characters are aligned
towards the primal forces of Chaos and Law, or they can be neutral.
Various actions affect this factor; killing peaceful monsters, or
committing burgalry, for example, are chaotic acts.  Alignment
determines which guilds will let you in, the behavior of some
artifacts and monsters, as well as much else.

Your character will gain various statuses, abilities, immunities,
etc., both harmful and beneficial. Most of the time these are kept
hidden from you, but there are various ways of discovering the truth
-- self-knowledge is very useful in omega. Remember, the oracle
knows all, sees all....
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EXPERIENCE
==========
Experience is accrued for skillful actions in the game. As in rogue,
one of the main methods of acquiring experience is defeating monsters.
You need not kill an opponent to defeat it (you can use the 'threaten'
option of the 't' command, sometimes).  There are many other ways of
gaining experience, though, including learning spells, deactivating
traps, using artifacts correctly, etc.  As experience is gained, the
character will increase in hit points, combat ability, and
spellcasting potential, and will eventually be able to increase his
rank in the various guilds. Gaining an experience level increases
maximum hit points but not current hit points so you cannot suddenly
save yourself in a large battle by going up in rank.
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GAMEPLAY
======== 
The mechanics are much like rogue, hack, etc. A variety of options are
available to customize the interface. The command list is always
useful to have around, but is also accessible from the '?' command.

There are a number of windows used in the game. The main (central)
window shows the current map of the dungeon, city or wilderness. A
single level is typically one screen in width and two to five in
length, for a 64 x 64 level. Some non-dungeon screens may be only
64x16 or 64x25 or so.  The top lines are a message window describing
what is now going on. The bottom two lines form a window showing
various player statistics. The right-hand column is a status window
showing current conditions, and another line below the map describes
the current environment. A menu window will sometimes overlap the rest
of the screen for various reasons.

There is a different command list for the countryside as opposed to
all other screens.
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INVENTORY
=========
omega inventories are now much different from other rogue-like games.

Unlike rogue, et al., you cannot directly employ every object you
carry. Every object may either go into your "pack" or into some
specific inventory slot such as "belt" or "ready hand" or "left
shoulder" etc. Some slots are dedicated to certain types of items (eg,
only armor can go in the armor slot), but other slots are general
purpose, like your belt or your shoulder.

It takes game time to transfer an object from your pack, (which can
hold any number of items) to specific slots from which the item may be
useable. The pack is implemented as a stack, so the deeper you burrow
into your pack looking for some item, the more game time you are
wasting. Therefore, carrying a whole lot of (semi)useless items may be
a strategically bad move.  Of course, as always, you can't carry more
weight (either in your pack or in your inventory slots) than is
dictated by your current STRENGTH and AGILITY.

Since you can only activate (read, quaff, zap, etc.) objects which
are not in your pack, and since it requires a move to take something
out of a bag, you now have to consider strategy in apportioning
the items you pick up.

You can select one of two modes for inventories via the TOPINV option
(if you are a beginner and/or are playing at high baud rates, you
should probably leave TOPINV to be false). More details on the precise
mechanics of inventory manipulation can be had by typing '?' to the
prompt while in inventory control mode, which is entered by either the
'i' or 'I' commands.

Another inventory mode option is PACKADD. For convenience, if this
option is set items picked up will automatically go into your pack
without entering inventory mode. On the other hand, this means you
will have to waste a little time if you want to employ something you
immediately pick up.

The implementation of this form of inventory involved considerations
of ease of play, "realism" (ha), and aesthetic judgement. While
you may find the new style of inventory control to be somewhat
annoying at first, hopefully you will soon become accustomed to it.
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MOVEMENT
========
The mechanics of movement are much like rogue. You can use either the
vi keys (hjklbnyu) or the numeric keypad to move; the capitalized vi
keys or a keypad direction preceded by a 5 "run" in that direction
until either an object is run into, or an "interesting" location is
hit. More locations are "interesting" if the "RUNSTOP" option is set.
In most environments, a single move takes but a few seconds of game
time, depending on the player's "Spd" score, but some places movement
takes longer. In the countryside environment, the scale is much larger
than usual (say 5KM/move), so a single move can take hours. In the
city or village environments, the scale is such that a move takes
about 30 seconds or so of gametime.
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COMBAT
======
New from version 0.70.5.5 onward: unless BELLICOSE is set, players
will not attack friendly monsters by default. Instead, regardless
of the setting of the CONFIRM option, players will be queried
regarding their intentions. BELLICOSE no longer affects attacks
at the end of fastmoves.

At this time, your current real statistics on to-hit, damage,
defense, and armor protection are always displayed. It is felt
that the character would know (or quickly discover) how
well any weapon, armor, etc. actually work. 

By comparing different weapons, armor, and shield combinations, you
can decide what martial configuration is best for your character.
Keep in mind that cost of equipment does not necessarily indicate
how good it is (though it is a good rule of thumb).

The 'F' command allows you to select precisely which actions you will
choose in a combat round -- parry high, thrust low, etc.  You have
several maneuver points for use in each TCM round, depending on level,
status as a gladiator, etc. At the beginning of the game, your combat
options are already set for you, but as you progress, and possibly
gain more maneuvers, the preset options will not be automatically
updated, so remember to do it yourself periodically, as you may
be losing the chance at more maneuvers if you do not.
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The following are your combat options:

ATTACK: Punch, Cut, Strike, Shoot, or Thrust (depending on weapon) -- 1 pt.
BLOCK: Prepare to block or parry enemy attack                      -- 1 pt.
RIPOSTE: BLOCK/ATTACK (thrusting weapons only)                     -- 2 pts.
LUNGE: More chance to hit than usual, does more damage             -- 2 pts.

If you select VERBOSE mode, you will be able to see just where your
opponent attacks. Some monsters may show a particular sequence or
location which they attack in; you can use this information to your
advantage by setting your own attacks and blocks accordingly.

You can try multiple identical maneuvers if you like. If you don't try
any BLOCKS at all, it will be easier than usual for your opponent to
hit.  Even if you don't get the location correct, a BLOCK still does
some good. A RIPOSTE attacks in the same line as its block, if you got
the line right. I.e., if you are attacked high, a high riposte will
get a free attack back. If you are attacked high three times, a high
riposte will get three free attacks back. Each block or riposte is
good for your entire move; no matter how many monsters attack you you
will be able to block or riposte each one. Naturally, each attack can
only be used against one monster.

Heavy edged weapons and smashing weapons do CUTTING or STRIKING
damage. Your strength affects this, so if it is high you will do
much more damage, and if low, much less.

Light edged weapons, missile weapons, and pointed weapons do THRUSTING
or SHOOTING attacks, whose chance to hit is greatly affected by your
dexterity. Note that you can't use a missile weapon very well in
ordinary combat (i.e. when you move adjacent to a monster) -- you
would be using a crossbow as a club, for instance. Instead,
use the 'f' command to fire missiles when at long range, and change
to a melee weapon for close combat.

A note on weapons use: A weapon is not prepared for combat unless
it is in the "weapon hand" slot in your inventory. Anywhere else
means you are just carrying it around.... Two-handed weapons will
automatically take both hand slots, so remember to have both
hands free if you want to wield such a weapon.

Shields, of course, will only have effect in the "shield" slot,
while armor is only considered to be worn if it is in the "armor"
slot.
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MAGIC
=====
Your character may be taught spells by his or her guild or priesthood,
at the collegium magii, or pick them up from a scroll of spells. Every
spell costs some amount of mana to cast. Mana is not normally
regenerated except when the player goes up an experience level, but
various magic items augment mana, and the sorceror's guild will
recharge you for a fee. If you learn the same spell multiple times,
the effective power drain to cast the spell is lowered. Some spells
have a constant effect, while others vary according to your level.
The spell of ritual magic has a variety of different effects depending
on the circumstances under which it is cast. The spell of high magic
is the most powerful, by the way.
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GETTING INFORMATION
===================
To be successful at omega, you must uncover secrets and solve
mysteries.  You can get information in a number of ways (reading the
source code is strictly discouraged :-), but one of the most important
ways is "talking" to monsters and NPC's.  Even if you don't get any
useful info, you may still find out something about the creature
you're talking to. The usual of action is to "greet" strangers who
don't immediately attack you.  Threatening them is often
counterproductive (may cause them to become hostile), but may induce
weaker or injured opponents to give up.  Threatening may be a lawful
action if you would otherwise wind up killing your opponent
(especially if you let a surrendered opponent go). On the other hand
you may be able to "yield" to stronger opponents who, if they are
merciful, will let you go after relieving you of some treasure.
Warning: Monsters who defeat you will grow stronger as they too gain
experience....

It is highly recommended that the player visit the oracle in Rampart
periodically. Not only will the oracle recommend what your next
adventure should be, but you can also find out some vital information
about your current status. Where is the oracle? In the immortal words
of number 2: "That would be telling...."
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THE COUNTRYSIDE
===============
Rampart is set in a strange landscape of different terrain types. The
land is surrounded in part by a mystic sea of chaos which it is
probably a good idea to avoid. Screen characters have a different
meaning in the countryside than they do elsewhere, by the way, and
there is a different command set (accessible by '?' when out of the
city). Time passes much more quickly in countryside movement; you will
have to bring a lot of food with you, though you may wish to
hunt ('H' command) to supplement your food reserves; many of the
animals that you may encounter, for example, are edible.

Since each countryside site is quite a large area, you may have
to search ('s' command) to learn of interesting sites nearby.
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WHAT YOU SEE ON THE SCREEN 
==========================
Dungeon/City/Other Map Example:

##########    
#........#    This bit of a screen represents a room. The walls are "#",
#..@...g.-    the floor is ".", there is a staircase in the lower lefthand
#....)...#    corner, and a closed door in the right wall. A goblin is menacing
#>......~#    the player, and a weapon lies on the floor not far away. There
##########    is a pool in the lower righthand corner.

Countryside Map Example:

++----.--- The @ as usual is the player; the +'s are an arm of the Sea of
+++++O--^^ Chaos; the O is the city of Rampart; the ^'s are mountains;
----@----^ the .'s are a road; the -'s are plains and meadows; the o is
---.-^^^^^ a small village; and the * is a dungeon entrance.
o..-^*^^^^
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Since the same character can represent different things or entities
(even in the same environment), a good command to remember is 'x'
(examine), which will tell you precisely what you are dealing with in
any situation. This is especially helpful before you have terrain
types like deep pools and lava pits (!) memorized.... You can use the
CONFIRM option to avoid walking absent-mindedly into a trap, pool,
etc.  The '/' command will give you more general help, for example
telling you that the ')' character represents a weapon. The '?'
command can give you either a command list or this file. The command
lists will differ depending whether you are in the countryside, or a
dungeon or city.
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Flags:

In the upper right corner of the omega display, below the date and
time, and phase of the moon, you will see four flags: The top
describes your food status, the second describes your status with
respect to poison, the third your health (diseased or healthy), and
the fourth, your mode of transportation.  While you are diseased you
will not regain hit points naturally. While you are poisoned you will
take damage periodically until cured or killed (or the poison's effect
can naturally fade).  When your food runs out, and you start starving,
you will take more and more damage as time passes until finally you
die of starvation. It's always a good idea to stock up at the
Commandant's.... If you manage to acquire a horse, your SPEED will
probably improve (unless you were very fast already). Regardless of
SPEED, having a horse will save some time in countryside movement.
However, horses tend not to enjoy going into dungeons....
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Combat Abilities:

In the lower right of the display, your current combat abilities
are displayed.

Hit: is your current chance to hit with the weapon currently wielded,
     the higher the better. This factor varies with your DEXTERITY,
     experience level, and the weapon wielded.
Dmg: is the maximum amount of damage you can do with a hit. This factor
     varies with your STRENGTH and the weapon wielded.
Def: is your defensive rating, how hard it is for monsters to hit you. This
     factor varies with your AGILITY and experience level, and with
     the shield being used.
Arm: is your armor rating, how much damage is absorbed when a monster
     hits you before you take damage. Armor only absorbs normal damage;
     various effects and forms of magic may penetrate armor. This factor
     varies with the armor worn.
Spd: is a speed factor, how quickly or how slowly you move. This factor is
     calculated about a base of 1.00; 2.00 means you move twice as fast;
     0.50 means you move twice as slowly as normal. This factor varies
     with your AGILITY and the amount of weight you are carrying.
     Every monster has its own speed factor. The maximum speed is 5.0;
     the minimum is ?

Magic spells, special items, and monster effects can affect all these factors,
positively and negatively.
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SAVING AND RESTORING
==================== 

Since omega's dungeon is quite large, only the current dungeon level
and the city level will be saved; others will be regenerated as you
re-enter them. You might simply consider that the "actual" levels are
far larger than is apparent, and you are just traversing a different
part on each restore.... If you know the spell of Return, however,
(learnable at the Explorers' Club) you will be able to warp to your
deepest excursion in the most recently entered dungeon without having
to retraverse the old levels in between. Some other shortcuts exist
for "warping" from one locale or level to another.

Games can be restored by giving the save file as a command line argument
as in:

% omega quasar.sav

To at least simulate the continuity of character in the game, saved
files will be unlinked on restoration. Of course, you *can* copy them.

New for version 0.70.5.6, save files are automatically compressed
unless the flag COMPRESS_SAVE_FILES is undefined in odefs.h. This
doubles the amount of time taken to save, but reduces the typical
save file from 150K to 15K.
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OPTION SETTINGS
===============
Options may be set with the 'O' command. The options are:

(F) BELLICOSE: Attack friendly monsters without confirmation.
(F) JUMPMOVE: Don't display things until the end of a run.
(T) PICKUP: Automatically pick things up when you move over them.
(T) RUNSTOP: Stop a run when something like a door is passed.
(T) CONFIRM: Ask confirmation before you do some dangerous things.
(F) TOPINV: Display inventory to message line, not to full screen.
(F) PACKADD: Add new items to pack, instead of going into inventory mode
(V) VERBOSITY: TERSE, MEDIUM, or VERBOSE, the level of detail in combat.
(1) SEARCHNUM: the number of turns spent searching when you hit the 's' key.


The default values are parenthesized. These options will be recovered from
your .omegarc if you use one.


BUGS AND FEATURES
=================
"It's not a bug, it's an undocumented feature." 

omega is not just a large program, it is a large, complicated, and not
particularly well written program. There are so many features that not
all can be well tested, particularly in combination with one another.
Therefore, it is likely that your version, whatever it is, has some
bugs. The author always strives to correct bugs and remedy
misfeatures, so if you send mail to brothers@paul.rutgers.edu, he will
attempt to remedy the problem. Suggestions for further features,
monsters, traps, items, dungeons, etc. are also welcome.
DataMuseum.dk

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