Post by Garry Francis in Ask For Playtesters Here

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Garry Francis4 years ago

Boy, this is one mean game. I think I need some hints. I have:

Stowaway's manual
Zurk
Shamus
Softpron Adventure
Zill
Copious Caverns
Rook

How do I get rid of the queue in the post office?

Where do I use the loaded crossbow?

How do I get the Textventure Toolkit?

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In the meantime, here are some test comments on what I've found so far. I was using version 0.0.6:

You can pretty up your itch.io game page to make it more appealing to potential players. Perhaps see mine as an example of what you can do. As a minimum, I'd suggest adding some background story, game playing instructions and an embed image behind the 'Run game' button. The embed image needs to be 640 x 360 pixels.

Make sure all sentences in responses end with a full stop.

USE SINK: Water summoned. (Huh? What happened here? No water appeared.)
X SINK: Fully functional
WASH SINK: Doesn't work. (So does it work or not?)

You don't seem to be able to do anything with the bed: GO/ENTER/SIT/LIE/MAKE/PUSH/PULL/MOVE BED or SLEEP.

EXAMINE LANTERN gives different response when carried and when in room.

At north road, trees is synonym for woods (fair enough), but it doesn't understand CLIMB TREES.

UNDO CHAIN: "REWIND" is expected as a single word. (This is clearly a system response of more than 6 words, so might be better to override it when provided with a noun.)

Should override system HELP command, as this is more than 6 words.

Consider overriding system CREDITS command to provide something prettier. You can still get the system one with *CREDITS.

If you move from a dark area to another dark area with the lantern off, it says, "Can't. Dark.", then repeats it.

"Mumbles, distractedly" should be "Mumbles distractedly" (no comma).

You can't wear the bath robe.

When I was carrying 5 items and tried DROP ALL at the hot tub, three items were dropped, two responded "Can't do." and screen wasn't refreshed. This should have worked. I could then drop the non-dropped items independently. Similar thing happened with GET ALL.

Couldn't ENTER/GO/PUSH/PULL/MOVE/EMPTY/SWIM/DIVE/USE/TIP/TURN TUB or BATHE/WASH/CLEAN/CLEANSE/WIPE ME or GET WATER or LOOK/SEARCH/FEEL/TOUCH UNDERWATER. So how do I see what's underwater? I did solve this later, but these were the sort of things I was trying at the time.

When in wizard's hut, there's an extra object the same as the room description. That's not necessary.

Can't UNLOCK, LOCK or CLOSE the door in the wizard's hut. Rather than "Not understood." or "Doesn't work.", CLOSE DOOR should say "Already closed.", LOCK DOOR should say "Already locked." and UNLOCK DOOR should say "Need key." (or similar).

When you give hintbook to the appropriate person, response says he takes off, but he's still there.

CLIMB LADDER doesn't work. This should be equivalent to UP or DOWN, as appropriate.

COVER, PAINT and COLOUR should be synonyms for the COLOR verb, especially the first one (considering that the response says "... Orb covered...") and the last one to cater for non-Americans.

Is it really necessary to have a sign in orb storage that tells you what you already know from the room description? Perhaps if the room description was "Deep cave" or something like that, it would be okay.

Shouldn't the cave entrance, cave interior and orb storage be dark, as they would be darker than the dark forest where the lantern is needed?

LIFT, RAISE, PRISE, PRIZE and LEVER should be synonyms for PRY.

You can't DRINK WATER in locations where there's water.

"Bolt cutters" is two words as an object, but "boltcutters" (one word) when you use them.

Landed spacecraft in room desription, but crashed spaceship as object. Which is it? Room description doesn't change when spaceship/spacecraft is gone, so this would be better as "open field" or something similar.

Examining mail slot in fish room says "junkmail" (one word), but related object is "junk mail" (two words).

There are some puzzles where doing something in one location causes a change in another location without any hint that something has changed. I spent endless hours wandering backwards and forwards to see if anything had changed, using trial and error and repeating the same commands over and over again. This becomes very boring very quickly and will put players off. It certainly put me off. I've come to a dead end and can't progress until I get some hints. The hints you supplied somewhere weren't very useful.

I hope these comments help you to improve the game, as it has potential and most of the puzzles are actually quite good.

Rex Mundane4 years ago

Thank you for the feedback. Quite close to the end, here. I'll put the remaining solutions at the end of this, general hints and comments first.

First, you don't get rid of the queue. There is always a queue. It's the post office. Just accept that, and do what must be done.

Second, You're hunting Wompus. Clues are in the Adventurer's Guild.

Third, I mentioned in the hints I put on the GameJam page that one of the treasures is required as a solution to get another, and the Toolkit is the prize in question.

I'll expand the vocabulary with your suggestions as there were some responses created that were missed given the inputs. "Sleep Bed" and "Use Bed" would have triggered a response, for instance, where Lay and Lie and Enter, etc., did not.

Thanks for catching the "Can't. Dark." duplication, I've spotted my mistake and will address that in the final update, among other fixes.

I'm very new to Adventuron, and unaware of how to override system HELP and CREDITS commands. Is there a guide to doing so?

Step-by-step puzzle solutions, to decode with rot13.

Va gur cbfg bssvpr, RAGRE DHRHR, gura whfg jnvg n srj gheaf. Bapr vg'f lbhe ghea, TVIR FYVC gb gur pyrex gb trg n cnpxntr. Bcravat vg jvyy tvir lbh Gernfher 8, "JvfuTrggre."

Tbvat onpx gb gur Tnzr Fubc, jvgu JvfuTrggre va vairagbel, naq nf gur pyrex'f pbzzragf unq vzcyvrq, JVFU GBBYXVG.

Svanyyl, Jbzchf Uhagvat. Nf gur cyndhr orfvqr gur gebcul urnq va gur Nqiraghere'f Thvyq fubhyq gryy lbh, gur Jbzchf yvirf va gur sberfg, srnef yvtug, naq fgvaxf. Fb, lbh ragre gur Qnex Sberfg (nal ebbz bs vg jvyy qb), RKGVATHVFU YNAGREA fb vg trgf qnex, naq FZRYY NERN hagvy lbh qrgrpg Jbzchf Zhfx. Ng juvpu cbvag, SVER PEBFFOBJ.

Adventuron4 years ago

It's very easy to override system commands. Anything that executes (that is not masked - I won't go into masking now) will REPLACE the system action.

Here it is in practise

: match "help _" {
   // Your help code
}
: match "credits _" {
   // Your credits code
}

As simple as that.

Garry Francis4 years ago

Many thanks for the response.

SLEEP/USE BED mentions "Thirst un-quenched!" How is that relevant to sleeping? You can't quench your thirst anywhere anyway, as you can't DRINK anything anywhere.

Your plain English clues were no help whatsover, as they only told me what I already knew. So I used the coded hints.

Oh my god! ENTER QUEUE? I wouldn't have guessed that in a million years. ENTER is a standard verb that Adventuron uses to enter another location, as you've done when entering the hole in the fence and the wizard's hut. I tried entering things in a few other locations (like the bed and the tub) and only got a standard Adventuron error response. I would never think to enter a queue. I tried JOIN/STAND/FOLLOW QUEUE, PUSH IN and various other things that I've since forgotten. Anyway, once I knew that I had to enter the queue, getting the parcel and the treasure in the game shoppe was really obvious and didn't need your clues.

Regarding the wompus, I knew that I had to hunt it (as in the old computer game 'Hunt the Wumpus'), but had no idea where to find it. I had read the plaque and the fancy words. As you use fancy words to describe numerous things in the game, I never stopped to think that it was actually important or meaningful in this particular instance. I didn't even know what photophobic meant, until I just looked it up. I had sort of assumed the opposite of photogenic, i.e. doesn't like it's photo being taken. :-) I had turned the lantern off in the forest to test which rooms were dark, but didn't get any messages at the time. I had tried SMELL and SMELL <OBJECT> on a few occasions and always got a "Doesn't work." response, so just assumed SMELL wasn't supported. But SMELL AREA? 'AREA' isn't even used anywhere in the game. Why would I think to smell that, especially when it's dark and I can't see anything and most commands are greeted by "Can't. Dark."? I had previously worked out how to FIRE CROSSBOW, but it took awhile because I was running around trying to SHOOT <OBJECT>, always to no avail. And why would I be able to shoot something in the dark? That's an extraordinary skill!

Regarding WOMPUS HUNT, HUNT is not understood (as a noun). You have to use WOMPUS, which is an adjective. These should be synonymous.

Anyway, after this guess-the-verb nightmare, I have now collected all 10 treasures and finished the game. Thanks for the hints. I would never have finished it otherwise.

Rex Mundane4 years ago (1 edit)

Apologies for the late reply, but I wanted to thank you for the frank and comprehensive commentary, and let you know I've tried to make the vocabulary more generally versatile to avoid the, as you say, guess-the-verb nightmare, and make explanations/descriptions/hints/etc. more clear to the player, as well as other ease-of-use and aesthetic updates. Version 0.1.0 is now live. Thanks again.

Garry Francis4 years ago

No problems. I want to see everyone produce the best game they possibly can to improve their chances when being judged and for the benefit of the adventure-playing community.