kneller@ucsfcgl.UUCP (Don Kneller%Langridge) (01/12/86)
"A mysterious force ... " message happens when HACK cannot create a level file. There can be several causes for it, but for the case of PC HACK there is usually only 1. Many people use a RAMdisk by specifying the RAMdisk=d: [d being some drive letter] line in the HACK103.CNF file. The ':' is not optional!! If you don't put in the ':', PC HACK tries to create level files in the 'd' subdirectory of your current directory. This is because everything after the RAMdisk= is considered a DOS pathname. Pathnames are relative to the current subdirectory unless they have a [drive name]: and/or they start with a '\' (although a '/' will also suffice) which specifies a path relative to the root directory. The only other possible cause is not having enough file descriptors. Besides the 5 (I think that's the number) default file descriptors that DOS uses (stdout, stdin, stderr, aux, prn), PC HACK has at most 2 files open simultaneously. You might have to increase the number of files DOS can have open simultaneously. Try putting a FILES=10 line your config.sys file. I'm sorry about the cryptic "mysterious force" message in PC HACK. It should have been changed to tell you simply that the level file could not be created. -- Don Kneller UUCP: ...ucbvax!ucsfcgl!kneller ARPA: kneller@ucsf-cgl.ARPA BITNET: kneller@ucsfcgl.BITNET