Meterman 2 Manual

User Interface

The main window of the UI is divided into various parts:

Room Name Label	Shows the full name of the current room.
Main Text Area	Where the room description is shown, along with any text spoken by characters, output by custom game components, etc. It corresponds to the text console of normal IF interpreters.
Room Contents	Shows a list of the objects/characters/etc. in the current room. Click on an item to select it, right click an item to display a popup of available actions, double click an item to invoke the first action (usually Examine).
Inventory Objects	Shows a list of the items in the player's inventory. Click on an item to select it, right click an item to display a popup of available actions, double click an item to invoke the first action (usually Examine).
Image Area	On the far left of the window is an image area. There are two types of images: a "frame image", that represents the background of the game or area you're exploring; and an "object image" that will be shown when you select certain objects. Both of these are entirely up to the game itself.
Look and Wait Buttons	These invoke the "Look" and "Wait" commands, standard in IF parlance.
Exits	Each room can have up to 12 exits. The directions "N", "SE", etc. are just shown for convenience, though rooms may map an exit to whatever button location they want. The "X1-X3" and "MID" buttons are exits that may not have a compass direction, like In/Out or Up/Down. Directions that have no exit are not shown.
Actions	This area shows a button for each action that is possible on the currently selected object. Other than "Look" and "Wait", you must select a room or inventory object to perform an action. If there are more than eight actions available, the remainder will be shown in a "More..." dropdown combo box. You can hover the cursor over an action button to show a tooltip of the keyboard shortcut, if any.
Status Labels	Each game can show various information in up to three positions on the status bar.

Menus

Game Menu

New Game	Shows a dialog with the installed games; pick one to begin anew.
Save Game	Save the current game state to a file.
Save Game As	Prompt for a new filename to save the current game state.
Load Saved Game	Load a saved game—note that if a game was saved with a different version of the Meterman engine, or a different revision of the game itself, it may not load properly.
Save Transcript	The game records all the text that appears in the main text area—this command lets you save it into a file. (The file is encoded in UTF-8 and uses '\n' to separate lines, so regular Notepad on Windows may not open it correctly; try Notepad++, or just drag the file to your web browser).
Quit	Quit the program.

Settings Menu

Always Look when Entering Room	Automatically perform a "Look" command when moving into a room, whether or not you've visited it before.
Music	Enable/disable music.
Sound Effects	Enable/disable sound effects.
Prompt to Quit	If selected, you will be asked to confirm when you quit the game.
Scrollback Buffer Size...	Set the size, in characters, of the scrollback buffer for the main text area.
Choose UI Fonts	Choose the fonts used for various UI components. If you want to use a TrueType font for Meterman that is not installed on your system, you can put the .ttf file in the fonts directory in the Meterman program folder, and it will become available for use the next time the program is started.

Help Menu

Meterman Web Site	Opens a browser window to show the Meterman web site.
Online Manual	Opens a browser window to show the Meterman manual (which you're reading now).
About Game...	Shows some information related to the game you're currently playing.

Keyboard Shortcuts

Other than the shortcuts used to invoke menu items, which are displayed next to the menu item text, there are keyboard commands that can be used to play the game without using the mouse, if you so desire. All of these shortcuts are configurable by editing keybindings.xml in the assets/meterman2 directory.

Exit Button Shortcuts

For each exit button in the table below, the key used to activate it (if it's visible) is shown in parentheses.

NW (Q)	N (W)	NE (E)	X1 (R)
W (A)	MID (S)	E (D)	X2 (F)
SW (Z)	S (X)	SE (C)	X3 (V)

Note that these are just the

Q W E R

A S D F

Z X C V

keys mapped to the respective direction button.

If you have a numeric keypad you can also use the number keys to move through the compass directions and MID (5).

Select Room Object

Press Ctrl+R to bring up a control allowing you to select an object in the room.

Select Inventory Object

Press Ctrl+I to bring up a control allowing you to select an object in inventory.

Select Action

Press Ctrl+A to bring up a control allowing you to select an action to perform on the currently selected object.

Again

Shift+G will invoke the previous action again, if it is still available (this does not include Look and Wait, which are a special sort of global action).

System Action Bindings

Action	Shortcut
Look	Shift+L
Wait	Shift+Z
Examine	Shift+X
Read	Shift+R
Take	Shift+T
Drop	Shift+D
Equip	Shift+Q
Unequip	Shift+P
Open	Shift+O
Close	Shift+C
Lock	Shift+K
Unlock	Shift+U
Interact ("Read", "Talk", etc.)	Shift+I
Use	Shift+S
Switch On	Shift+N
Switch Off	Shift+F
Move	Shift+V
Put In (Container)	Ctrl+Shift+I
Take Out (Container)	Ctrl+Shift+O
Look In (Container)	Ctrl+Shift+X
Look Through/Out/In (windows, glass, etc.)	Ctrl+Alt+L

Individual games may define additional actions with their own shortcuts. Remember that you can hover the mouse cursor over an action button to show its shortcut.