ATTRIBUTES

	STRENGTH determines how much damage a character can do
	in close combat, and will also determine how much gear a
	character can lift when I finally get around to coding
	encumberance.

	TOUGHNESS determines how many health points a character
	has and how fast those health points regenerate.

	SPEED determines both how quickly a character can act and
	also how difficult it is for enemies to hit the character.

	DEXTERITY determines how likely it is that the character's
	attacks will hit their intended target.

	TECHNICAL determines the character's skill with technological
	items. Its primary uses are disarming traps, hacking computers,
	and identifying unknown items.

	PERCEPTION is a measure of the character's senses. A character
	with a high perception score can see farther, and is more likely
	to notice hidden traps and secret doors.

	WILLPOWER determines both the character's ability to use and
	resistance to psychic powers. It also determines the number
	of Mojo Points the character recieves.

	LUCK contributes to a character's defense against all bad
	things- physical attacks, psychic powers, traps, post-dated
	snack food, etc. Lucky characters also start the game with
	more equipment.


PLAYING THE GAME

	Just a few bits of trivia about the game that aren't
	mentioned anywhere else... At the moment, this section isn't
	particularly organized. If you've played other roguelike
	games (Moria, Angband, ADOM) you can probably figure out
	DeadCold without much help.

	The first time you play, press "?" for the help screen. This will
	let you know what commands are avaliable and how to use them.

	To run, press "." and then a direction. Note that the run command
	might run you right up on top of a monster... One of the top items
	on my to-do list now is to make this command safer & smarter.

	When shooting, using psi powers, or looking around the screen,
	the tab key may be used to cycle through visible enemies.

	The inventory screen displays several values to help you choose
	the best weapons and armor for your character. In the blue box on
	the right hand side of the screen are several numbers. 
	"H2H" represents your characters skill in hand to hand combat;
	the adjacent "DMG" score is the damage step that you will do
	in close combat. Below that, the "GUN" score represents your
	characters skill with missile weapons. The "DMG" score is the
	damage class of your currently chosen weapon, and the "RNG" score
	is the number of tiles in which this weapon is most effective.
	The "ARMOR" score represents how much protective gear your character
	is wearing. The higher the number, the longer you'll live.

	Certain heavy missile weapons hinder a character's ability
	to fight in close combat. On the inventory screen, when equipping
	a new weapon, pay attention to both the GUN and H2H scores.


TROUBLESHOOTING

	If running the game on a DOS emulator in Linux, you'll need to set
	8Mb of DPMI. In fact, you'll probably need 8Mb even on a native DOS or
	Windows machine.

	If a runtime error is generated by the program, please email me with
	the error code and the line number where it happened. See the DeadCold
	web site for more information.

	Pressing "CTRL-C" while running the game will halt the program.


HOW TO USE THE CONFIGURATION FILE

	In the same directory as Deadcold there should be a file called
	"deadcold.cfg". If this file doesn't exist, you can create one with
	any text editor.

	To change the key associated with a certain command, you need to place
	a line in the file with the name of the command followed by the new
	key that you want to use. For example, to change the key for "CloseDoor"
	from 'c' to 'O', you would put the following line in the cfg file:

		CloseDoor O

	Please note that changes to the game keymap are not error checked.
	If more than one command has the same key assigned to it, then only
	one of those commands will work in the game when that key is pressed.

	To change the speed of the game animations, you can use the AnimSpeed
	command. The default speed is 200. To change this speed to 75, you
	would put the following line in the cfg file:

		AnimSpeed 75

	It is possible to set AnimSpeed to 0, in which case the animations will
	run as fast as the computer will permit. In the future, AnimSpeed 0 will
	probably disable animation altogether.

	If you don't like frustration, you can set the game so that it will
	not delete your save file if you die. To do so, add the command
	SafeMode to your cfg file.

		SafeMode

	There are no parameters for this command.

	To limit the maximum amount of damage that can be done by a
	single hit, include the command DamageCap in your cfg file.
	Note that this command affects both the damage done by monsters
	and the damage done by your character.

	It is possible to affect the random monster generator through the
	config file as well. Game balance is something that still has a
	long way to go, so in the interests of science I thought I might
	see what numbers other people prefer.

	The "NumMonsters" command can be used to set the maximum number
	of monsters which can be on the map at once. The default value
	is 1500 monsters. On slower computers & Linux emulation the game
	slows down when there are too many active critters, so you might
	want to play with this number. To set a maximum of 800 critters
	per level, insert the following line in your configuration file:

		NumMonsters 800

	The "SWARMRATE" command controls the number of monster groups which
	are created every time the random monster generator is called. The
	default value used to be 20; the current default value is 10. Use
	the command as follows:

		SwarmRate 15

	Finally, the "MONSTERTIME" command tells how often the random monster
	generator will be called. One tick of game time is meant to represent
	five seconds of character time; the default value for MONSTERTIME is
	60 clicks, so new monsters will be generated once every five minutes.
	Of course, you may feel this is ludicrously fast. Use this command to
	change the value to something more civilized, like so:

		MonsterTime 240

	Play around with these values, and let me know if you come up
	with some numbers that you like.


		- Joseph Hewitt
		  [email protected]
		  http://www.geocities.com/pyrrho12/programming/deadcold.html