README.TXT -- a help file for the game DEPRISONMENT
Copyright (c) 1999- Friikkisoft

File written by Antti Hautaniemi

0. Prefix

You are waiting patiently as the footsteps knock the floor one after another.
At some point, you notice your personal guard's huge nose appear behind the 
mass brick walls, as he calmly steps through the death breath of the hallway.
He comes to your visibility entirely, and suddenly turns to your face only to
see the horrible grimace on it. As he slowly turns the key on your doorlock,
you notice the hurt eye on the left side of his head. You are about to make fun
of it, but find the ways to control your evil side. As he's placing the 
ridiculous meal plate on your cell's table, you decide to go for it. While he
can't see his left, you do your best disabling him. As the fight continues,
your weak forces overwhelm his hurt figure. But at his last breath, he manages
to take his last effort in hitting the corridor alarm button.
Now, that he's dead you stride the ugly corpse and rush on to the hallway. Now 
you've got but another problem: you've never seen how it looks here outside 
your dungeon. You were caught and brought here unconsciousness, and were put 
straight to your cell. Furthermore, as you stagger in the hallway, other guards 
start arriving to catch your headskin. 
But, from now on, it's you to take control ...

1. System requisitions

You need less than a megabyte for game files & additional couples of kilos
for saved games. At the area of graphics, you need a VGA card with 
capabilities for a resolution of 320x200 @8 bits-per-pixel (256 colors). 
An SVGA card with capabilities for 1280x1024 @256 colors is optional, but
strongly recommended. You also need a 102-key-compatible keyboard, but don't
need any mice. Not much memory is also needed: the EXE file is > 100 kilos,
but space for the map is also needed by its size multiplied by 5. And here,
for all you none-knowers, this memory is conventional, and has nothing to do
with those add-on memory pieces on your motherboard.

2. The menus

As you execute DEPRISON.EXE, you are brought either a text-mode- or an SVGA- 
screen, depending on your hardware. This menu consists of 4 options:
New game, Load game, Options and Quit game. These work just preferably.
In new game, you select a campaign or a single level to play. In load game,
you select a save file to load. In options, you select your personal 
prefences. Quit game quits the game. All selections work with up/down arrow
keys, and Enter selects. In options, you scroll the selection with left/right
arrows.

3. The game control keys

As you start a new level or load a game, these keys come handy to know.   
 - The arrow keys turn or move your figure to correspondent directions.
 - Space is the action key. It either
    - Opens and closes doors
    - Causes several deadly wounds on your opponent
    - Pushes boxes onward
    - Lets you communicate with fellow prisoners
    - Brings up your status
 - A,W,D,X scroll the screen view window 
 - B brings up the level briefing
 - S asks you for a file name & saves the current game there
 - Q quits to main menu immediately

4. Communications

It should be clear that mostly the levels are not solveable as solo. So you'll
need to know how to give orders to your freed fellow prisoners to complete your
missions. This is done by invoking the Space key when faced towards a 
prisoner. It gives you following four options to apply:
 1. Follow. The man will follow you and therefore be always ready for further
     advice.
 2. Exit. While in the vicinity of an exit place, tells the prisoner to use the
     exit gate.
 3. Attack. Tells the prisoner to engage in combat against the guard in his
     vicinity.
 4. Normal. The prisoner will just keep wandering around himself.
 
5. Combat

The game is turn-based eg. the other figures move only as your figure is moved.
So is it also in combat. As you hit an enemy with the Space key, you cause
varying damage to him and possibly slay him. If he doesn't die, perhaps he'll
panic, but more likely, he'll hit you back, and cause some damage to you. You
can check your statistics with the Space key, as told. When you die, you just 
die. The campaign is considered lost in that case. Some levels are pretty 
offensive, in which case you'll have to slay every bad guy before leaving.
So take combat as an important part of the game, but not as the whole game.
Strategy is even more important here. At its most, this game is a collection of
all these parts packed together.

6. Maps

The game's maps are collected into campaigns, but can also be played one at a
time. This is done by selecting "Single level" in the New game selection.
You can also save & load single-level games just like campaigns.
The game maps can also be edited with the EDITMAP tool. To seek more 
information about it, read the EDITMAP.TXT file supplied with the tool.

7. Copyright notice

The authors of everything included in the Deprisonment package are
Friikkisoft and the design team.

?. Postfix  

Daggering around the broken hallways of what used to be your prison fortress,
you find there's not much living things keeping alive here. As you stride 
across the smashed corpses of dead guards, you start thinking about your past
experiences here, and find you're covered in blood, your own mixed up with
almost everyone else's in the combats fought everywhere in this fortress. You
also look at what's left of your old friends now turned into stacks of fresh
meat to which you stumble trying to keep standing. This prison riot has not
had the end of your dreams, but you're still alive and free to leave here.
You find you're too weak to keep your life much longer. But now, you start 
seeing some light in the end of the corridor under your feet. As you begin
daggering onwards, you feel your broken veins emptying. You no longer are sure
if the light you're seeing is real or only a vision in your mind. As you pass 
the threshold to reach the outer world, you fall on the ground to never rise 
again. But in your last eyesight, you find the light was real, you actually are
out the jail and lying in sunlight. As your last thought you figure out you did
succeed in life: at last you have your freedom.