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LAYOUT OF THESE FILES
As I mentioned, each story is wrapped up in a single PKzip file, available for downloading. Each zip file generally contains the following files in ASCII (text) format:
INTRO.TXT: a file containing a brief introduction to the story and a cast list. Usually best to read this file first.
SCRIPT?.TXT: a separate file for each of the script outlines passed out before the episode in question, named script1.txt, script2.txt, and so on.
EPISODE?.TXT: a separate file for the chat log of each episode, named episode1.txt, episode2.txt, and so on. Logs are relatively unedited. Generally I just take out unnecessary carriage returns that AOL has put in, and sometimes link broken up lines together. There are exceptions. For the Scooby story, and a couple of other episodes here and there I prepared highly polished logs, with nice formatting and typos corrected. If there should be any doubts and anyone (for some reason) needed a completely unedited log to make sure they were seeing exactly what transpired, they can ask me for a "director's cut." I have these for all episodes of all stories from "Scooby Shadows" onward, but very few before that.
DIARIES.TXT: frequently during a storyline, players may write a diary entry for their character in order to fill in gaps that could not be addressed during the actual sim. All of these are collected in this file, organized by character, and explaining at what point in the story they were written. This varies. Some stories may have numerous diary entries, others might have few or none.
PROFILES.TXT: In early stories, players frequently submitted profiles of their characters before the story began. When these exist, they are collected in this file.
As mentioned, the files for each story are stored in PKzip files. These files may be opened using PKunzip, available for free download at http://www.pkware.com (and probably a zillion other places)
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