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Igor's Quest is ready for testing

A topic by Garry Francis created Feb 22, 2020 Views: 453 Replies: 33
Viewing posts 1 to 9
Submitted

For anyone that's interested, my game 'Igor's Quest' is ready for testing at https://warrigal.itch.io/igors-quest. The password is 'Fritz'.


Igor is Doctor Frankenstein's assistant. You must help Igor search Frankenstein's castle and the surrounding area for the parts that Frankenstein needs to create his monster. When you find all the parts, you must return them to Frankenstein's laboratory. The parts are the treasures and the lab is the treasure room. Further details are on the game's itch.io page. I'll enhance this later.

This game is quite different to anything I've written before. Apart from the two-word restriction, it relies heavily on word play. I think players will either love it or hate it. Foreign language players may have a bit of trouble, as it requires a very good grasp of the English language. If players "get it", they will have a lot of fun, but if they don't get it, I'm in deep trouble.

There are some very clever puzzles. I think some of them might be quite hard and some are downright devious, but they're all fair and they all make sense once you've worked them out. You can get killed once if you do something silly, but it does have undo and you can't get into an unwinnable state.

Please play the game and pass on any bugs or suggestions for improvement. You can be ruthless. I won't be offended. I'm particularly interested in anything you tried that wasn't understood when you think it should have been understood. Use this thread for bug reports. If you're stuck, I'm happy to pass on cryptic hints. I'd like to know where people get stuck, as I'll probably write some coded hints to put on the game page.

Enjoy!

Submitted (1 edit)

Hey, how did you implement the custom header color? Is it available in the Adventuron already?

UPD. 90 treasures. It seems to be a LONG quest :D

Submitted

Don't panic! There's only 9 treasures. You get 5 points for finding a treasure (a body part) and 5 points for returning it to the treasure room (the laboratory), i.e. 10 points per treasure.

To update the status bar colours, change status_bar_paper (for the background) and status_bar_pen (for the text) in the colors{} block in your custom theme. Just as an example, this is what I used in Igor's Quest:

      colors {
         exit_list_header_pen = #99f
         inventory_header_pen = #99f
         status_bar_paper = #336
         status_bar_pen = 15
         yousee_header_pen = #99f
         prompt_pen = #99f
         textbox_pen = 15
      }
There are lots of other colours that can be changed. To see the full range, temporarily comment out "extends = two" (assuming you're using that) and use Ctrl+Space inside the colors{} block.
Submitted (2 edits)

Yeah, thanks, I know about color changing. The question was about not predefined colors. I thought that rgb-coloring was not implemented yet. It's cool news, should change colors to custom in my themes.

(+1)

Hi,

I was looking forward to playing your game and you discourage me: "Foreign language players may have a bit of trouble, as it requires a very good grasp of the English language."

It's weird when you play the piano if you haven't turned on the sound at the beginning of the game: "Sound? 2. No."
Isn't there any way to know if the player turned the sound on or off at the beginning of the game?

Submitted

Please try it anyway. I'd be interested in your feedback. I'm not sure if there's a setting where I can test if sound is enabled. If there is, maybe I could play sound if enabled or print a message otherwise.

(1 edit)

The verb 'sew' does not seem to be recognized. Yet we have needles, cloth, cotton. But especially when you look at the cotton, it answers: For sewing. (I've been trying to sew up a bag, to pick up peas!)
This is quite disturbing:
> x mat: Got hole
> insert needles: No hole
(Of course, I tried to sew up the hole in the mat.)
A detail: you can enter the shop and the haberdashery by typing 'Enter shop/haberdashery', but you can't exit with 'Exit'. (Same thing for the stable, the chapel, and so on.)

Time passes...
Now I've got the bag, two treasured items and 10 score points.
Which I tried and was turned down:
> sleep hay
> empty bag
> sow peas

Submitted

You are very inventive. Thank you. I'll add a few extra verbs to account for those situations.

Submitted

P.S. Make sure you examine the hole.

(+1)

You have a bug with the needles. If you take the eyes without taking the needles, it works. But if you take the eyes while the needles are in your inventory, you hear the jingle but you don't see them.

If one shows the apple in the stable, the answer is: "Nobody interested"; yet the mare finds it to her taste.

I don't know if it's up to you, but there should be an automatic Look() after restoring the game by Load().

Host

I'd reported the eyes issue to Garry earlier, I think he's making an update for that condition.

I think there is a semi bug in Adventuron 27b that can mean that not all objects are listed after a reload (or rollback). I have fixed that in 27c (which is now available).

I finished the game! Play it; it's not as hard as Garry seemed to say.
The game ends a little too abruptly, once you've put down all the items ...

Submitted

That's a relief. When you write a game with a somewhat different concept, you're never sure whether players will get it or not. I have fixed the needles bug and the sound on/off issue and am doing a number of other changes based on the feedback I received from you and Adventuron. Thank you both! It's getting late here, so I probably won't get it finished and tested tonight, but certainly tomorrow night.

Unfortunately, I had no choice with the abrupt ending, as it's part of the rules. As soon as you drop the last treasure, the game ends. No further actions or puzzles are allowed. I hope the end-game message made sense, though. (A little bit of a twist!)

I was a little hasty on the end message. I'll redo the game and read it again. But I would have liked so much to ring the bells to proclaim, to the city and to the world, that I had defeated the game!

There's a problem with the wetsuit. It's not possible to wear it. And if we haven't done with, what we were supposed to do, it looks like we're stuck.

Submitted

I have updated 'Igor's Quest' to version 0.0.3. There are lots of new features based on feedback received from Adventuron and aureas. This includes different colour for text input (white was a bit boring), enhanced end game, bug fixes, some new verbs, some improved messages and so on. The game play is essentially the same as before, but it plays a bit smoother now. This will be the last update before making it public, so if anyone has any further comments, please send them as soon as possible.

I've also updated the itch.io game page. It looks much nicer now.

There's something wrong with Load, and there's still no automatic Redescribe().

Submitted

Really? Worked for me. I'll try it again. Don't forget that you have to type LOOK after LOAD to see where you are. I've discussed the redescribe after LOAD with Adventuron and it can't be done. Processing stops after load and you can't do anything else, not even in on_tick because there isn't any update of tick. Believe me, I've tried.

(2 edits)

Maybe better messages:
>Show meat (vicious dog) => "Nobody interested"
>Kiss dog (vicious dog)) => "Sloppy kiss"
>smell apple (and other foods) => "Smells normal"
>Enter burrow => "Can't go"

> Ring bell => "Use rope"
> use rope "Not understood"

>x door (closed door) "To north./To south"
Maybe when the doors are closed, they shouldn't indicate directions (no problem for the gates).

You can "saw" but not "cut".
You can try to "sit" bench but not "lie" bench.
You have messages adapted for plurals of ear(s), leg(s) etc. but not for key(s).

>Play piano => "That's enought"
That's enough, but we can keep playing. (I played without the E note!!!)
It might be enough until we get out of the room. If we go back in, we could start playing again.

Igor carry: (N)othing
I don't know the rule in English, but do you need a capital letter after colon?

Surely there are some messages to add for the crucifix to the pins, the clothe and the saw!?

Did you change anything with the receipt? I thought he was telling me it wasn't mine?
It's a good idea that it's not the player's until he talks to the attendant.

And other things.

Submitted

This is the price I pay for adding extra verbs that I didn't really expect anyone to use. Seriously, you are a great tester and I value your feedback. Comments below:

Regarding X DOOR and being told it's to the north or south, that was a conscious design decision to work around the two-word limitation. I tried a few other approaches before deciding on this one. As a keen adventure mapper, I like to know where exits go before I go there so that I can draw connections on the map. I would normally describe doors and their location in the description, but the two-word format does not allow a description. When you examine a door, I would normally give a description of the door and say whether it's open or closed. For example:

>X DOOR
It's a large wooden door with scuff marks around the handle. It's currently open/closed.

I think my compromise is a nice one, as it's player friendly and mapper friendly. The door description dynamically changes to tell you whether it's open or closed. The exit is dynamically hidden/shown depending on whether the door is open or closed. And you can still see what direction the door is in before opening it.

Regarding 'You can "saw", but not "cut", you actually can cut, but you need a knife. You can also chop, but you need an axe. The game tells you this. But you cannot cut or chop the object you're thinking of because they're the wrong tools.

Regarding messages adapted for plurals of ear(s), leg(s) etc. but not for key(s), the game originally had singular arms, legs etc. and you had to get two of each to get a pair. However, this was a bit tedious (for the player) and difficult to implement (for me), although I did have a very clever routine that magically combined two single objects into one plural object when they were together, but you couldn't separate them again. There are a few cases where you can still refer to the singular object and this sometimes provides a clue. For example, have you tried EXAMINE RULER or TAKE PEA? In other cases, if the player uses singular, I suggest using the plural and that avoids having to duplicate a lot of objects and a lot of messages just to account for singular and plural. Of course, an easy way out is to make the singular and plural synonyms, but then the responses may not make sense, particularly in a game that revolves around word play. Have you noticed that Igor usually refers to things in the singular? This is significant for things like the pea/peas, as you will know having completed the game.

The big difference with the key and the keys is that both can exist simultaneously, so it is not appropriate to suggest using KEYS when you use KEY because they are two different things.

Regarding the messages when playing the piano, this was another conscious design decision. There are three tunes and it cycles through the tunes in sequence. The first two responses are teasers to encourage you to try again so that you hear all three tunes. The player does not know how many tunes there are or whether they're played in sequence or at random, so the "That's enough." message is to indicate that Igor's repertoire has run out, but that doesn't stop him playing again if he wants to. In fact, we want him to play again after getting 'you know what' so that he can see what it is that he got, as that is significant further on in the game. Incidentally, when Igor plays the broken piano, the cycle restarts so that he can hear the tunes that he's already played (assuming he's played them) to see what the differences are. It's subtle, but clever within the constraints of the two-word rules. At least, I think it is.

Regarding "Igor carry: Nothing.",  that's an Adventuron bug. My custom system message for this is actually "nothing" (lower case). I told Adventuron about it, but he's probably forgotten to fix it.

Regarding some extra messages for the crucifix, pins, cloth, saw etc., a couple of these are red herrings that are there for atmosphere or realism and the others have served their purpose and have no further use. I have to draw the line somewhere. Otherwise you could get an inventive player that wants to break the saw and wrap the cloth around the broken piece of saw to create a screwdriver to unscrew the crucifix so that they can scratch their name on the back of the crucifix with the pin. :-)

Regarding the receipt, there was no change recently, but I think I changed the wording on it and added the sign in the dry cleaner after version 0.0.0 to make the association clearer, not that it really needed it. The receipt is not yours, but the attendant doesn't really care. He only cares that you've got a receipt to collect something.

Regarding all the other things, I'll add them and do another build during the weekend. Once again, thanks for the feedback and the interesting discussion. I'm hoping that you submit a game yourself, because if you do and you're as careful with yours as you are with mine, you could be on a winner!

(1 edit)

No, I don't offer a game for this CaveJam; it's a lot of work and I decided to improve my CaveJam game a little bit. It's also an opportunity for me to play other people's games (less sentences in English, so it's a bit easier for me).

For the keys and the key, I was simply suggesting that there should not be a default message as there is for other words in the singular and plural (>GET KEYS => "Can't take."). But these are details.

You are a professional and we have a lot to learn from you. Too bad your advice is scattered all over the various Adventuron jam forums.

For Garry and others: if your font allows it, use the typographic apostrophe " ’ " instead of the computer apostrophe " ' ". It is often prettier but not always, depending on the font used. As well as the character "…" rather what three successive end points.

Submitted

In something like a Word document, I would agree. But in a computer game with chunky bit-mapped fonts?

This is unsafe in Adventuron, as it is possible to change the font dynamically within the game using an undocumented feature. This is generally used during development when you're experimenting with fonts, but can be used by a user if your font is not legible on their screen. If someone knows about this and changes the font when you're using funny characters, then they won't see those characters if they're not supported by the font. It's safer to stick with the standard ASCII character set. My font didn't support curly quotes and ellipsis anyway. There was another font that I was considering that did support this (and thousands of other characters that I'm not using), but the base64 file size was HUGE!

What seems unusual is being able to look at the name of the place you're in. In this case, Inform 6 games say: "This is not something you should mention in this game". This is useful in the garden where there is nothing.  And I've got to spoil that:
Living Room:
>x living
"Not dead."
It's all in the details!

Submitted

Ha, ha, ha. That's a bonus for anyone (like yourself) who is very thorough when playing this adventure. This game has lots of hidden little gems like that. They generally aren't important. They're just there for an extra giggle.

Submitted

Igor's Quest version 1.0.0 has been made public and submitted for your adventuring pleasure. I've done a lot of re-engineering since version 0.0.3, so I hope I didn't break anything along the way. Enjoy!

Now to test the other games.

Submitted

It took me a few moments to figure out why solving the puzzle at the mayor's house got me some meat, even having read Auraes' comment above which gave the clue! I thought that the puzzle was going to be another single-level pun like the rest, but it turned out to be a very crafty, stealth double-pun! I really enjoyed this game.

Submitted

There are lots of hints related to this. Play the piano 3 times before taking you-know-what and you'll see that there is a common theme: sheep, lamb, farm. Play the piano again after taking you-know-what and it gives you an important clue. Examine you-know-what and the mat and they have something in common. And, of course, you know what you need to get past the dog. Also, if you missed all these clues, you should know what you need to unlock a locked door - only that doesn't work. Try moving the mat in various ways.

Submitted

Yes, you're quite right; the clue of the locked door, and then examining the mat, were what helped me connect the dots to solving the puzzle at the mayor's house. And once I had the meat, it was obvious where it needed to be used. The only thing that puzzled me (not important for solving the game, just my personal satisfaction) was WHY solving that puzzle resulted in meat appearing, although I did figure it out when I remembered that earlier comment. I even went back later and examined the piano again after you-know-what, to verify my idea, but I just didn't think to try playing it again.

Submitted

Another hint was at the stable. This is the location adjacent to the dog. If you examined the stable, you got told it was the mare's house. 'Mare's house' sounds like 'mayor's house'. Get it? That's why I added the horse. The stable was originally empty. If you examine the horse, you'll see that she's a mare and the stable is her house.

The mat puzzle was inspired by one of my most memorable puzzles of all time - the tea remover in 'The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy'. I laughed out loud when I first used the tea remover and the rabbit turned into a rabbi. (Get it? Tea-remover = T-remover. It removed the T from rabbiT.) As my game is oriented around word play, I thought of having a similar puzzle, then came up with the idea of adding a letter, rather than subtracting a letter. But how do I add a letter? That's where the piano came into the picture. Pianos have keys and each key has a letter on a musical scale from A to G. I drew up a long list of words where I could add a letter from A to G to create a new word. One particular word jumped out at me. That lead to the dog.

The mat was originally going to be at the castle, but that didn't feel right, as there was no reason to have it there. When I was populating the village, I thought of adding the mayor's house. Now I had somewhere to put the mat. I have played a few adventures in the past where a piano key turned out to be a door key. I did a few things to suck the player into thinking that was the case here. But it was a bum steer. The key actually had a different purpose, as you now know.

Got all that? As you can see, my design process is sometimes quite convoluted. Lots of really good ideas got discarded along the way as I didn't want the player to be completely bamboozled. I originally had anagrams, palindromes and lots of other verbal trickery, but this would have been too hard to implement with the two-word restriction.