Q: What is a treasure hunt?

A: A "treasure hunt" is the term used by adventurers where the objective of the game is to search for a number of valuable objects in the game world and return them to a specific location. The valuable objects are your "treasures" and the specific location is the "treasure room".

The very first text adventures were all treasure hunts. In 'ADVENT' (Willie Crowther & Don Woods), the objective was to find 15 treasures that were scattered about in an underground cave and return them to the well-house (treasure room).

In 'Dungeon' (Timothy A. Anderson, Marc S. Blank, Bruce K. Daniels and P. David Lebling), the precursor to the 'Zork' series, the objective was much the same, except that the well-house was replaced by a white building (treasure room).

In 'Adventureland' (Scott Adams), the objective was to find 13 treasures, but you didn't know where the treasure room was until you got a little way into the game. Adams introduced a convention in this game that is still quite common to this day. Treasures were denoted by asterisks like so: *Gold ring*. The game jam requires a similar convention, except using colour. You might like to use both conventions, as sight-impaired players might not be able to distinguish colours.

All these games had two things in common: the treasures were valuable items like gold, silver and jewels, and they were scattered about like a mad woman's breakfast. There was no rationale for how they got there. There is nothing particularly wrong with that, but in the modern era, things tend to have a back story or a logical explanation.

Treasures don't have to be gold and diamonds. They only have to be something that is valuable or useful within the context of the game. Similarly, the treasure room doesn't have to be a bank vault. Here are a few ideas for treasure hunts that aren't obviously treasure hunts. Feel free to use or modify any of these ideas yourself. In fact, some of the ideas are from other obscure games anyway.

- A gang of robbers have escaped from gaol (or jail, if you're American) in an old west town. As the sheriff, it's your job to round up the robbers (treasures) and return them to gaol (treasure room).

- Your mum has just cooked a pavlova, but she needs some fruit to decorate it. She gives you a list of the fruit she needs (passionfruit, kiwi fruit, banana, strawberries) and it's your job to find the fruits (treasures) and return them to the kitchen (treasure room).

- Your Scout or Guide leader has set you a scavenger hunt. You have to find all the items on the list (treasures) and return them to the Scout or Guide hall (treasure room).

- An evil ogre has stolen several religious artifacts from your village. It is up to you to find the artifacts (treasures) and return them to the village's temple (treasure room).

- You have been on holidays in a tropical paradise and spent all your money. You suddenly realise that you don't have enough money to pay for your fare home. However, there is a pawnbroker on the island. You must scrounge up enough valuable items (treasures) to take to the pawnbroker (treasure room) to get enough money to pay for your fare home.

- You are an alien who is visiting Earth. Your mission is to find a number of Earth artifacts (treasures) and return them to your spaceship (treasure room).

- On a routine trip to a mining settlement on a distant planet, your spaceship has a bad landing and is badly damaged. You must search the mines and the settlement for the replacement parts you need (treasures) and return them to the engine room of your spaceship (treasure room) to make repairs.

- You are a thief! You know that the owners of the Adventuron Mansion have gone to a dinner party, so this is your chance to break in, find all their gold and jewels (treasures) and return them to your car (treasure room).

Get the idea?

Q: How do I define a treasure?

A: According to the jam rules, "All treasures must be flagged as treasures and coloured differently to normal objects." This means there are two things you need to do. Firstly, you need to tell Adventuron which objects are treasures. Secondly, you need to use colour to tell the player which objects are treasures.

1. Telling Adventuron about treasures

All your objects are defined in the objects{} block. For example, for a simple game with only one moveable object, the objects{} block may look like this:

objects {
   gold_nugget : object "a gold nugget" start_at="start_room";
}

objects {
   gold_nugget : object "a gold nugget" start_at="start_room" treasure="true";
}

That's all there is to it. Adventuron does the rest.

2. Telling the player about treasures

In order to colour the treasures, you have two options:

• Use a theme.
• Do it manually.

2.1 Using a theme

Using a theme is the easiest way to define the treasure colour and most people will use this for the jam. If you use this method, then all treasures are coloured the same way, including the article (a, an, some or the), and treasures are only coloured when included in lists, not in messages. This is not a problem for the jam, as the rules state that articles are not to be included in lists and the auto redescribe option is to be used so that you don't get messages like "You get the gold nugget" and "You drop the gold nugget".

When using a theme, you have three options:

• Use the inbuilt theme that is used by TWO and use its rainbow treasure colour.
• Extend the inbuilt theme that is used by TWO and override the treasure colour.
• Use your own theme with your own treasure colour.

2.1.1 Using the TWO theme

To use the TWO theme, declare the start_theme as follows:

start_theme = two

2.1.2 Extending the TWO theme

To extend the TWO theme, create your theme and declare it as the start_theme as follows:

start_theme = my_theme
themes {
   my_theme : theme {
      extends = two
      colors {
         treasure_pen = colour
      }
   }
}

In order to avoid syntax errors, you should define your theme, before declaring it as the start_theme.

"colour" is a placeholder. We'll come back to it in a moment.

2.1.3 Using your own theme

To use your own theme, create your theme and declare it as the start_theme as follows:

start_theme = my_theme
themes {
   my_theme : theme {
      colors {
         treasure_pen = colour
      }
   }
}

Once again, in order to avoid syntax errors, you should define your theme, before declaring it as the start_theme.

2.2 Defining colours

There are a lot of things that can be changed using themes, but at the moment, we're only interested in the treasure colour. There are three ways to define the colour.

• Use a colour index.
• Use a hexadecimal red-green-blue (RGB) value.
• Use a pre-defined rainbow palette.

2.2.1 Using a colour index

Use a colour index in your theme as follows:

treasure_pen = n

where n is a number from 0 to 15 corresponding to the following colours:

0 = black
1 = dark blue
2 = dark red
3 = dark magenta
4 = dark green
5 = dark cyan
6 = dark yellow
7 = grey
8 = orange
9 = bright blue
10 = bright red
11 = bright magenta
12 = bright green
13 = bright cyan
14 = bright yellow
15 = bright white

2.2.2 Using an RGB value

Use a hexadecimal RGB value in your theme as follows:

treasure_pen = #RGB

where R, G and B and the hexadecimal values (0-9, A-F) of the red, green and blue colour components. In case you're not familiar with hexadecimal, all you need to know is that the values of A to F are equivalent to decimal values of 10 to 15.

2.2.3 Using a rainbow palette

Use a rainbow palette in your theme as follows:

treasure_pen = #r

where 'r' is a character (meaning rainbow), not a value.

When using a rainbow palette, each character of each word is coloured in the order red, orange, yellow, green, light blue, dark blue, purple, then starts again.

2.3 Doing it manually

If you want to be even more creative (such as not colouring the article, using different colours for each treasure or alternating colours for each character), then you can colour the object description directly as follows:

objects {
   gold_nugget : object "a <gold nugget<colour>>" start_at="start_room" treasure="true";
}

The colour is defined in the same way as described above. Here's a simple example where the object description is coloured yellow, but the article isn't:

objects {
   gold_nugget : object "a <gold nugget<14>>" start_at="start_room" treasure="true";
}

The advantage of doing it manually is that the treasure is always coloured in the way that you want it coloured wherever it's used, including in messages.

Silly question, perhaps, but are the treasures supposed to be useless MacGuffins, or can they be used as items in puzzles as well?