
  ***********************************
  *              FANWOR             *
  *       The legend of GEMDA       *
  *          Version 1.01           *
  * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
  *       Written and (c) by        *
  *           Thomas Huth           *
  *               1999              *
  * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
  * WWW:                            *
  *  www.atari-computer.de/thothy/  *
  * E-Mail:                         *
  *  thothy@atari-computer.de       *
  ***********************************


  1) What's this?
 -----------------

"Fanwor - The legend of Gemda" is a
game running on Atari ST/STE/TT/Falcon
(and compatibles). It was written for
the "Magic Game Contest 99" promoted
by:
 "Magic Online"
  (http://bengy.atari.org)
 and
 "Place-2-be"
  (http://www.place2be.de)

Aim of this contest was to write the
best remake of a classical game that
runs under GEM/Magic. I decided to
write a remake of "The Legend of Zelda"
- a great action adventure on the NES
((c) by Nintendo).
I hope you enjoy the game and that you
vote for me ;-)

Fanwor is Freeware - copy it to every-
body who wants to have it, put it on
your BBS, your web site or your free-
ware CD-ROM sampler, but don't sell it
and don't remove the copyright infor-
mation!
If there is enough interest (write me
an e-mail!), I will release the source
and the editor as opensource so that
everybody can make his own action
adventure!


  2) The story
 --------------

Once there was peace on the world Fan-
wor. Princess Gemda ruled wisely, she
used the eight Gems of Power to protect
the kingdom. But one day while Gemda
was away on holiday, the monsters came
and stole the Gems! Without these Gems
anarchy broke out and the monsters
ruled over the country. They hid the
stones in eight different dungeons be-
cause they were unable to destroy the
Gems.
Gemda now sent out the best heros of
the world to get the stones back so
that everybody can live in peace again.
You are now one of these heros! Try
your best to collect the stones and
if you succeed, honor and wealth will
be yours!

...well, this is not the best story
I've ever heard of, but it should be
enough ;-)


  3) Playing the game
 ---------------------

Playing the game should be quite easy:
Just use either the cursor keys or the
joystick or a Jaguar joypad (STE and
Falcon only) to move the hero around
the screen. Press a fire button (or a
shift key on the keyboard) to use the
sword. Most enemies will be quite easy
to beat but if you advance to places
that are far away from the start, you
will also find some monsters that are
very fast or that have many hit points.

Note that you will have to enable
joystick or joypad control before you
can use it - just use the controls
dialog that can be found in the options
menu. When you are running other appli-
cations at the same time you are
playing Fanwor and you want to interact
via keyboard with them, you should
disable the keyboard control in that
dialog because Fanwor maximizes the
key repetition rate to get a good
keyboard control.

If you own a Milan or Hades or a tuned
Falcon/TT, you will probalby notice
that Fanwor runs too fast for you. Then
you should enter the speed dialog and
enlarge the game cycle. Switching off
the clipping flag will probably fasten
up the game, but you should use it with
caution when you want to move the win-
dow outside the screen.

Note that I can't guarantee that the
joystick and joypad control will work
on your system. Enabling the joystick
and the mouse at the same time in GEM
is quite tricky and also a little bit
"dirty". Concerning the joypad: I don't
have one, so I was hardly able to test
it, but thanks to Sage it should work
now.

As mentioned above, your task is to
collect the eight Gems of Power. You
will start somewhere on the surface of
Fanwor and you will have to search
for the eight dungeons where the
monsters hid the Gems. At the beginning
you have 20 hitpoints, each time you
touch a monster you will loose some.
If you lost all - you lost that game!
But you can also regain your hitpoints
by either finding a fairy lake or by
collecting one of the Gems - if you
do the latter, you will also get 10 HP
in addition.


  4) Technical stuff
 --------------------

Fanwor will run happily in any resolu-
tion up to 256 colors - but it will
need corresponding bitmap grafics to
the color depth you are using. Grafics
for 16 colors and 256 colors are alrea-
dy included in this distribution, if
you want to use Fanwor in monochrome
or a 4 color mode, you will have to
create your own grafics (just convert
them with a good graphic program).
I am sorry that Fanwor won't run in
high or true color modes, but the IMGs
only support maximal 256 colors and
the bitplanes are arrange in a totally
different way in these modes.
Note that the title bar of the window
will not be shown when you play the
game in the ST low resolution mode -
if it was enabled, there would not be
enough space on the screen for the
whole rest of the window.

Concerning the sound, Fanwor is able
to either play Yamaha-PSG chip music
sounds or digital sample sounds.
Just use the sound dialog in the option
menu to switch between them.
Both PSG sounds and sample sounds are
played via the XBIOS so that the sys-
tem should never crash when you enable
one of them although you don't have the
right hardware in your computer.
If you have either a new version of
TeTra or Paula or Ultimate Tracker
installed as an accessory, you can also
automatically listen to a MOD file
while you are playing - but note that
Fanwor will automatically switch back
to Yamaha-PSG sound if you enable the
MOD playing!
On a Falcon030, TT or a accelerated STE
there is also the possibility to listen
to the MOD and to use the sample sounds
at the same time! Fanwor will try to
use some special sound drivers (the
*.SPI files in the music\ directory).
But note that these are experimental
things... if you have problems with
them, you should either rename them so
that Fanwor can't find them or you
shouldn't enable the MOD playing.
Don't use the DMA.SPI on a 8MHz STE
and if you have an accelerated Falcon
you should be prepared for crashes when
you use the DSP.SPI!

Fanwor will also runs happily from a
floppy disk, but you should really
install it on your hard disk because
the levels are loaded "on the fly" and
using a floppy, this will be very
slow.


  5) Thanks to...
 -----------------

... Sage/Escape for helping me with the
    joypad control.

... Ektus and Sokrates for beta
    testing.

... MSG, Toodeloo/DHS and 3LE/Coma for
    the great ZELDA.MOD!

... The guy of Paranoia (I can't re-
    member who it was, but I think
    it was The Paranoid) who lent me
    his Jaguar Pad at the Paracon 2
    for testing.

... Reservoir Gods for the GodleNES-
    Zelda, it was a great help!

... Alexander Kirchner for releasing
    the source code of a IMG loader.

... bITmASTER for the DSP player, Griff
    for the DMA player and NoCrew and
    DHS for patching bITmASTER's
    player.

... Nintendo for the original Zelda.

... and of course Milhouse and Bengy
    for holding the Magic Game Contest!


  6) Greetinx
 -------------

                  Sokrates
  Ektus
           Spion                   No
      505
              xcom
   Candyman
                        MrPink
             atari.org
   dhs
       escape             checkpoint
     fn
               Vassilis Papathanassiou
           evl
 The Mint-Mailing-List folks
                             Paranoia
                     FUN industries
       Armin Diedering

 ... and all others that are keeping
     the Atari alive! ...


  7) The end
 ------------

So that is all, Atarians. If you like
GEM games, why don't you try STune,
another great game that Sokrates and I
are just writing for your Atari! See:

http://stune.atari.org

...or just browse on my homepage,
perhaps you'll find something usefull:

http://www.atari-computer.de/thothy/

And please excuse my poor English, it
is really not the best. But I hope you
understand what I want to say ;-)

 STay STuned,
         Thothy
