User:Samiam: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 18:22, 7 September 2007

OK, going through some of the old Spring Thing games, I found some games that are absolute turkeys in terms of playability. In particular, the ADRIFT games, as often as not, don't run in Linux.

As just one example, lets look at Robert Street's otherwise excellent "The Potter and the Mould". This games includes the following message which, quite bluntly, is a slap in the face for people who use Macintoshes or Linux:

"This game is designed to be played through the standard ADRIFT runner. Any other program is only an approximation of ADRIFT and will not provide the best experience."

Keep in mind, ADRIFT writers, that ADRIFT runner is a Windows-only program. In addition, the ADRIFT runner does not run in Wine (A Windows emulator) in Linux. This would not be too bad if games actually ran in Scare, the cross-platform ADRIFT runner. But, often times they don't.

In the case of "The Potter and the Mould", there is a Scare bug where a certain important object in front of the lab is not visible, making the puzzle impossible to solve.

Please, if you are going to use ADRIFT as your programming platform, **test the game in the Windows port of Scare** to make sure it is solvable, and that no key messages mysteriously disappear. Here is a link to the Windows port of Scare to help you out:

http://ifarchive.flavorplex.com/if-archive/programming/adrift/scare-1...

Thank you for your understanding, and happy adventuring.

- Sam

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-OK, real quickly: I have just ported the [http://www.firthworks.com/roger/cloak/ Cloak of Darkness] program to the format Scott Adams used for his adventures games in the late 1970s.  This file can be downloaded [http://www.samiam.org/moof/cloak-scott-0.1.zip here].
+OK, going through some of the old Spring Thing games, I found some games that are absolute turkeys in terms of playability.  In particular, the ADRIFT games, as often as not, don't run in Linux.
-I had to do some hacks to pull it off; namely, I have the adventure teleport the player from one room to another instantly under certain circumstances:
+As just one example, lets look at Robert Street's otherwise excellent "The Potter and the Mould".  This games includes the following message which, quite bluntly, is a slap in the face for people who use Macintoshes or Linux:
-* If the player tries to go out in to the street from the foyer, they enter the street. They are then instantly teleported from the street back to the foyer with the "You've only just arrived, and besides, the weather outside seems to be getting worse." message.
+"This game is designed to be played through the standard ADRIFT runner. Any other program is only an approximation of ADRIFT and will not provide the best experience."
-* If the player has hung up the cloak, and enters the bar, they are instantly teleported from a dark room to the actual bar.
+Keep in mind, ADRIFT writers, that ADRIFT runner is a Windows-only program.  In addition, the ADRIFT runner does not run in Wine (A Windows emulator) in Linux.  This would not be too bad if games actually ran in Scare, the cross-platform ADRIFT runner.  But, often times they don't.
-Basically, since Scott Adams' format kills the player if they hit a wall in the dark, I made the bar a dark room with exits in all directions. If they take any of the exits, they go to another dark room and have a 50% chance of messing up the message for every turn they are in the second dark room. Both the first and second dark room's "North" exit takes them back to the foyer.
+In the case of "The Potter and the Mould", there is a Scare bug where a certain important object in front of the lab is not visible, making the puzzle impossible to solve.
-Another hack is that the Cloak is not a normal pickable (carryable) item. Instead, "drop cloak" is explicitly given two actions:
+Please, if you are going to use ADRIFT as your programming platform, **test the game in the Windows port of Scare** to make sure it is solvable, and that no key messages mysteriously disappear.  Here is a link to the Windows port of Scare to help you out:
-* Give the player the "This isn't the best place to leave a smart cloak like that lying around!" message in any room besides the cloakroom
+http://ifarchive.flavorplex.com/if-archive/programming/adrift/scare-1...
-* Put the cloak on the hook in the cloakroom, and set the flag so the person, when in the dark room, is instantly teleported to the bar.
+Thank you for your understanding, and happy adventuring.
-Also, get cloak when the cloak is in the cloakroom picks up the cloak, and clears the "telport from dark room to bar" flag.
+- Sam
-The game makes assumptions that Scott Adams' adventures never had, but it works pretty well. In ScottFree, I never see the teleport. It is possible, were this file used in an actual 1970s computer, that the player might see a brief flash of the room they were teleported from before being teleported.