		ScottFree J2ME Mobile Phone Edition
			   1.18 Beta 1

			   "The Count"


Requirements
------------

Mobile phone with CLDC >= 1.0 and MIDP >= 1.0 (most phones supporting Java). 
You will also need about 96K of heap which may be a problem on some early
phones. 

Installation
------------

Put the .jad and .jar files somewhere, load on your phone and enjoy. If you
need to recompile it you'll need a java compiler, MIDP development kit and
preverifier, all of which can be downloaded from Sun although its evil
non-free stuff.

If you want to install over the air point your phone at
	http://www.linux.org.uk/~alan/ScottFree.jad

This will get you the latest snapshot I've deployed. That may be good or
bad depending on the beta state. Please also let me <alan@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk>
know what phones it works on and how well it works. MIDP UI leaves a lot of
things up in the air so some incompatibilities or unpleasant behaviour would
not suprise me.

Features
--------

Adaptive GUI:	
	The dislay model changes according to the display size available. 

	On a tiny display such as a Nokia 6320 the game switches to "dual 
	screen" mode. This displays the top window of the traditional Scott
	Adams display whenever it updated, and then prompts the user. How well
	it works varies by game.

	On better phone sized displays the game engine switches to a single 
	scrolling display containing all the data. The current implementation
	doesn't support scrollback however.

	On largish displays such as PDA devices the game uses the original
	"split screen" display format.

Quick Commands:
	The game engine recognizes 'N', 'E', 'S', 'W', 'U', and 'D' for
	moving in directions. In addition if your phone has a game
	controller/joystick type unit that also allows movement.

Wide Support:
	Uses no MIDP2.0 features that would exclude older phones.

Strict UI/Engine Seperation:
	Should allow future support of other Java device types (television
	anyone ;) like applets without changes to the game engine.

Limitations
-----------

Currently the game engine has several limitations. The first is the lack of
save and load game. This will be implemented later on.

The user interface also has limitations. While Scott wrote for machines with
relatively limited displays, they are an order of magnitude superior to most
phones, and with real keyboards. The "type" button is a result of this 
limitation. In future I will look at better support of native QWERTY keyboard
devices.

Compile Options
---------------

The binaries included were built with the Sun J2ME environment configured
for CLDC 1.0, MIDP 1.0 and no extensions.

Licenses
--------

ScottFree J2ME Mobile Edition Beta is licensed under the GNU Public License.
As a specific exemption due to the way the game engine works you are
permitted to link the game engine and game database into the executable as
if this combining of the two seperate works was 'mere aggregation'.

This exception is neccessary to make clear that the linking we do in this
case is a quirk of the constrained J2ME environment rather than linking in
the normal sense of the GPL.

The Count is (C) Copyright Scott Adams. 

	The Scott Adams original text Adventure games
	    are still copyrighted by Scott Adams
	        and are not Public Domain.
	  They may be downloaded and enjoyed though.

For more information on Scott Adams visit http://www.msadams.com, and if
you enjoyed his game please bug Scott to add a paypal donations button to
his website.

Future
------

Save/Restore.

Add "Are you sure" to the Exit button.

Preferences.

Splash Screen.

Providing the .jar file will fit graphics are very easy to do on MIDP
mobile phone platforms although it is unclear how much use they would be
on the smaller "postage stamp" displays.

There is a tool for converting games into .java files (I didn't do the
database merging by hand). Thus it should be possible to generate the
complete set of games once the beta bugs are knocked out.

I'd still like to get Colossal Cave into a Nokia 6230...

