Sword Dream 3D was a shareware role playing game for classic Mac computers. The following lines are the original readme file from 1997, minus the shareware notice as the game of now open source, and the obsolete contact information.

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Welcome, adventurer, to a dream! We hope you’ll pass many enjoyable hours with the Dream gaming system. Inside, you’ll explore dark ruins and deep forests, save beautiful princesses and endangered realms, amass vast amounts of gold and jewellery, and kill hideous monsters.

What is Sword Dream 3D?

Sword Dream 3D is a three-dimensional adventure gaming system. Your surroundings are in three-D (just like in Marathon™, Doom™ or Descent™). Still, this isn't a shoot-em-up videogame: it's a think-first, act-later game. And it's fun for days, not minutes...

You’ll impersonate a powerful character, and decide how he or she will move and react in the fantasy world of the Dream. (You can choose to move more than one character, up to a maximum of eight. More that one character may be required to solve difficult situations which call for a group effort).

Dream is an open-ended game: there’s no fixed end to the game (well, you can get killed if you try hard, but we discourage you from doing so). Your objective isn’t fixed: your goal may be to get rich, powerful, or famous. (Just a suggestion: try all of them!)

A unique characteristic of the Dream gaming system is its openness. You aren’t limited to a single adventure, as is common with similar games: the character(s) you’ll create can grow in power and wealth playing different adventures, created by different people around the world. Anybody with a minimum of imagination and technical experience can create gaming adventures for use with the Dream gaming system. No programming experience is required, and there are no fees whatsoever to be paid. Lots of scenarios are being developed right now. Download them from the Internet, if you are connected. The address is http://www.comenius.com/dream/scenarios.html This document was not saved as read-only: thus, you can copy the above address and paste it into your Web browser.

Fact sheet and hardware requirements

• You can't play the game from a CD-ROM. You must copy it to your local hard disk. • Pure Macintosh interface: to see a character's stats you double click on his icon, and a window appears. To exchange an object between characters, you drag and drop the item's icon. To learn spells, you drag them to the character. • Available in English, French and Italian. • Auto-mapping • Full-featured soundtrack (requires QuickTime v2.0 - QuickTime 2.5 with QuickTime Musical Instruments is strongly suggested). • Limited support of Speech Synthesis software; AppleScript; and Speech recognition. • Sound and speech are asynchronous, and the game continues while they are played. • Adventures (game scenarios) are totally independent from the application code and can be interlocked. • Up to 8 characters per group. There are six character classes (fighter, ranger, paladin, rogue, wizard and cleric), each with special abilities and/or spells. • Runs on multiple screen systems; supports and takes advantage of such configurations and big screens; • 32-bit compatible, accelerated for Power Macintosh; • 256 color screen is required. If you can, play with your main monitor set to thousands of colors (16 bit color). • System requirements: Apple Macintosh with 68040 or better; 14" screen (Dream 3D takes advantage of larger monitors); System 7.0 or later with QuickTime installed; 8 MB of RAM. • You can play Sword Dream scenarios on a 68020 Mac with 4 MB of RAM, if you stick to 2D scenarios; the 3D engine requires more memory and more processor speed. If you own an older Mac, click on the Dream 3D icon, select "Get Info" from the File menu, and type 2048 into the "Minimum size" box.

Note for players of old versions

Sword Dream 3D is backwards compatible with the old version. It should be able to load any scenario and any saved game from any version 1.x. If you import a saved game in Dream 3D, play for awhile, and save the new situation, you won't be able to keep playing it with the old version (Dream 3D saves in a new format).

Trash your old copy of the Dream application, then rebuild your desktop, to see the new icon for Dream 3D.

If you registered Sword Dream version 1.x, contact me and I'll send you the registration number for Dream 3D, gratis.

There are almost no changes in the rules. I did (drastically) change the XP amount needed to reach higher experience levels — almost everyone told me the old values were too high. Now reaching the second level should be very easy for a member of the four base classes. Players will stay at the first level only for a very short while. Lower levels are easier to reach, but there is little change for middle levels and no change for high levels. If you have a group which contains low-level characters, they will earn a new experience level as soon as they exit victoriously from a fight.

Want to write a new scenario?

With our new scenario-making tools, creating a 3D scenario is easy and rewarding.