On Reflection
A FREEWARE text-adventure for the 128k Spectrum
By Lee Tonks
(C)2007, Cheese Freak Software


"On Reflection" has been my pet project for the last two years or so. My 
initial idea was to try to create a Spectrum adventure which was a bit more 
like modern 'interactive fiction', and also something which didn't fit into 
the usual adventure stereotype of 'slightly comedy dungeons and dragons'. As a 
result, I decided to aim for a more real-world setting (with a science-fiction 
bent to spice things up), and to go for a smallish map and a seriously 
text-heavy approach to get around the age-old "You are in a room, the door is 
North" padded-out rubbish that blights so many of our old favourites. And it 
took AGES. And ages. Finally it has reached a stage where I figure I'd better 
release it or it'll never actually make it out. I apologise in advance for any 
bits I forgot to finish. 

So.... it's a 128-only, text-only, PAWed mild sci-fi thing (with naught a 
goblin or a wizard in sight) pitched at the average/bi/curious adventure 
player who likes to enjoy his adventures rather than fight them. That means it 
understands a small(ish) vocabulary (which you can browse if you're not sure 
which word to use), has a map which makes sense, doesn't feature "mazes", has 
very few 'death' situations (and no unavoidable ones), and is populated with 
logical puzzles which are perfectly possible to figure out with the 
information given (i.e. at no point will you be required to fashion a door key 
out of a fish). Type HELP once you get the game started for an overview. 

It should work fine on any flavour 128 or emulator, and it also appears to 
work on the various Russian Speccy clones like the Pentagon. I've not tried it 
on a real Spectrum, but I've no reason to believe it won't work on that too. 

The game is being released as FREEWARE. Feel free to do as you wish with it, 
providing that 'as you wish' doesn't make you any money. If you want to upload 
it to your web site or write a review or something then that's fine, although 
I would appreciate it if you could send me a private message via the World of 
Spectrum forums (my user name is "Lee Tonks", if you hadn't guessed already) 
so that I can go and have a look. 

Like I said before, this is my first adventure in years, my first ever PAWed 
adventure, and hopefully the first adventure I've produced which doesn't suck. 
Hopefully. Look, go gentle on me, alright? Please! Oh yeah - and have fun. A 
full solution has been submitted to the Tipshop in case you get stuck. :-) 


CREDITS
-------
* Gilsoft for PAW
* Leszek Chmielewski for BMP2Scr, which I used for the loading screen
* The ZX Spin guys whose emulator I used throughout development
* The various developers of UNPAWS, which helped me to spell/grammar-check the 
  whole script


LINKS
-----
HOME: http://uk.geocities.com/leetonks/Speccy/onreflection.html
World of Spectrum: http://www.worldofspectrum.org
World of Spectrum forums: http://www.worldofspectrum.org/forums/  
											(my user name is Lee Tonks)
The Tipshop: http://www.the-tipshop.co.uk/


REVISION HISTORY
----------------
1.0 (06/12/07) - First (and hopefully final) release! Whoo!

KNOWN ISSUES
------------
Occasionally, the PAW text formatter will dump a punctuation mark on a new 
line when it follows a colour change. It looks a bit ugly but doesn't break 
the game. I couldn't manage to figure out a way to stop it from doing that, 
and didn't want to remove my colours. I do so like my colours. If anyone knows 
a way around this then I'd be happy to hear from you. 
