Legal Stuff

Hephaestus is provided 'as-is', without any express or implied warranty. In no event will the author be held liable for any damages arising from the use of this software.

Hephaestus is freeware, for personal use only. You are permitted to download and use it at no charge. You may not redistribute it without the author's express written permission.

Adventures you have written belong to you - you may distribute them under any terms you like. You may not bundle Hephaestus with them, instead you should provide a link to the Hephaestus home page <http://markdamonhughes.com/Hephaestus/>.

If you would like to have your adventures, images, or sounds become part of the standard Hephaestus distribution, contact the author.

Download & Installation

1. You must have a 1024x768 display with 16-bit color depth or better, and the Java Runtime Environment (JRE), version 1.3 or later.

   Linux: You can find the most current JRE at java.sun.com or a more Linux-specific version at Blackdown.org.

   Windows: You can find it at java.sun.com.

   MacOS X: You have JRE 1.3 already installed, but can find updated versions and support at developer.apple.com/java/.

   There is no JRE 1.3 port for MacOS 9 or earlier, sorry. There's nothing I can do about Apple's abandonment of OS 9: "Apple has no plans to provide Java 2 on the Classic Mac OS" is their official statement; you'll have to upgrade to MacOS X.

2. Download hephaestus203.zip (2.9MB).
3. Unzip hephaestus.zip anywhere on your HD. It will create a directory named "Hephaestus2".
   If you don't have a zip utility, try Info-Zip or WinZip or StuffIt.
4. Now start the game:

   Unix:

   Run ./heph.sh

   Windows:

   Run heph.bat

   MacOS X:

   Double-click on hephaestus.jar, or open a terminal window and run ./heph.sh

   Other:

   If you run Hephaestus on any other platform (BeOS, OS/2, etc.), let me know how you did it and how well it worked, and I'll add instructions for your platform.

5. Select "Open" from the "Game" menu, and pick "sample/sample.adv", or any other adventure (.adv file) you've downloaded or created. You should see something like the screenshot at the top of this page.
6. That's it! You're ready to play!