(Continued from my previous post.)
No source code diving yet. I managed get at least part of the “vibe” of the parser, although some authorial decisions still mystify me.
Sharpsoft User Notes, via AbeBooks. Books 3 through 6 cover 1982.
“GO” (as in “GO NORTH”, “GO UP”) seems to be purely for directions, and furthermore, the way the parser works is to simply strike the verb out and just look at what was typed for the noun. This means GO EAST works the same as EAST. However, this also means other perfectly natural GO statements won’t work; for example, typing GO UNDERGROWTH gets parsed as UNDERGROWTH and hence:
I DON’T UNDERSTAND WHAT YOU MEAN BY THE COMMAND ‘UNDERGROWTH’
Earlier when I was trying to GO POND and it wasn’t understood, the game is simply wanting ENTER there instead.
YOU FIND A DEEP HOLE IN THE POND AND HAVE DROWNED!!
(Für Elise plays, mourning our player avatar’s loss.)
The purpose of the hollow log is simply as a floatation device, so as long as a player is holding the log, they won’t die going in the pond, and will be able to find a key instead.
Using the key you can then unlock the (otherwise not-visible) door at the front of the house, and go inside. Despite the threat from the rock, we are not trapped in.
The Sharp speaker is used here to add a “catcall whistle” sound to this moment.
I don’t yet have a full map of the inside, but at least I’ve got more to explore than last time.
Just to the north is a COMPUTER in a drawing room, and we are told it is a SHARP MZ-80K. I tried to insert my tape a few ways and was having trouble, so just went straight to HELP which told me to LOAD CASSETTE.
It’s unique for the desire to acquire treasure to be a secret objective that requires revealing a little ways in. I’m still not sure where we are supposed to drop the treasure; not outside, which suggests perhaps we aren’t taking the treasure with us, like how The Great Pyramid had us simply sort the treasures in a particular room. (On the other hand, Katakombs initially asked us to take the treasure to a Dark Crypt, but in the end a golem broke open the way so we could take the loot away for ourselves. I guess we “passed the test” so the denizens acquiesced.)
Heading up the stairs next, I found a library with a book that has gold leaf. This book does not let you open, read it, or interact with it anyway, so it’s just a treasure. (This is one of the vibes I mentioned — the game is cheerful about simply not letting you mess with a thing outside the context it is intended for.) Also upstairs is a study containing a desk with matches.
With the matches in hand you allowed to try to BURN things, but a ghostly voice stops you and says it is dangerous to play with fire.
Present in the hall upstairs is a LAMP, which foiled my attempt at taking it with “A STRANGE FORCE”. Again, interpreting the vibe can help: this means you shouldn’t be thinking of taking the lamp at all, but doing something else with it. Indeed, if you look at the lamp, it is described as “oriental”, implying the right action is RUB LAMP.
Upstairs there’s a bedroom with a window you can enter, taking you to a ledge with a bracelet (a treasure) in addition to a bathroom with a BATH that is described as having GOLD TAPS, imply treasure-ness, but I haven’t been able to scavenge anything.
Down at a “Parlour” there’s a cupboard that is enterable, and a green knob. Typing PULL KNOB reveals a basement area.
Inside the basement there’s a bottle described as valuable (still don’t know where the treasures go) and the room that is currently mystifying me:
I haven’t found a way to refer to the supports (and burning doesn’t work). Typing HELP indicates there is a “draught” but I’m not sure what to do with this information. Whatever is supposed to be done here seems to be entirely bespoke (that is, I need the exact two-word phrase in order to move further).
I realize for you just reading along, it may not be apparent how badly the parser is doing. It absolutely is awful. Even ENTER (which I thought before was honestly coded) gets befuddled here; when I tried to ENTER BATH the game says I DO NOT UNDERSTAND WHAT YOU MEAN BY THE COMMAND ‘ENTER BATH’. With essentially no reassurance than any verb in particular might work, the game has a much stronger aura than normal of “guess what the author wants”. In this case I’m not even sure if the magic phrase will involve DOORWAY, DOOR, SUPPORT, SUPPORTS, or BRICKS as the noun. So it might be possible I run across a solution but don’t pair it with the noun the game is hankering for. To find something worse I have to go the very bottom with games like Deathship which didn’t even bother to describe what happened if you did an action successfully.
Again there is the lure of the source code. I don’t think there’s any going back if I check (given what I’m likely to see is a list of complete phrases that lead to completing the game) so I really still want to hold off if I can.
Renga in Blue 
TIL that the interjections “England’s Glory!” and “A striking beauty” in XTC’s Senses Working Overtime refer to a particular brand of match. A non-safety match, for what it’s worth. Hmmm, does “Strike match” do anything?
Yes, that’s the verb the game wants for the matches. The problem is that the game always returns something like “The match lights up… And then goes out!” without anything else happening. At first I thought this was directly related to the draught in the bricked-up doorway room, but it seems to happen everywhere. If you actually try to “BURN” something, it just tells you not to play with fire, so this all remains a bit of a mystery. It’s definitely possible there’s a fire-related puzzle somewhere in the game, but it’s not making itself very clear so far…
Definitely seems like the kind of game where if you have a certain set of inventory items in a certain place when a certain number of things have been done, “STRIKE MATCH” will automatically perform a bunch of actions, and when you don’t, it won’t give you any feedback at all.
I finally got some free time to play this today, and it looks like we’ve covered about the same territory so far, but I did manage to break through to another little area of the house. If you’re still stuck, ponder this:
Rknzvar gur ongugho pnershyyl. Vf gurer nalguvat ryfr lbh pna qb jvgu vg?
I’m in the same concentric circle of parser hell as you are in the bricked-up doorway room, but there’s still a few things I want to try tomorrow, if I can squeeze in a little more play time…
Made a breakthrough and found the treasure room. The only problem is that the four treasures I have only score 69 out of 100 points, so I must be missing 2. I seem to have maxed out the map, unless I’m really missing something, so I’m thinking it’s two items that we’ve already seen, but that aren’t obviously movable… I’ll have to sleep on it and try again later.
does this involve getting through the doorway?
the shiver when you wear treasure is interesting, I’m wondering if you get something from having a “set”
this parser is super weird
when you’re on the roof, if you try JUMP, instead of the normal friendly spirits stopping you, the game just says THAT COMMAND DOES NOT WORK HERE!
just mentioning here I did test out the MZ-700 version of the game (since Secret Kingdom we only had mz-700, I wanted to check if the parser was modified between computer ports rather than based on the order the games were written)
game is almost exactly the same, except weirdly you start at the pond then at the rock
parser is just as bad
also found out (from Mexican Adventure, which gets referenced here if you LOOK TOWN from the roof) that the G. in G. Clark stands for Geoff.
Yeah, I thought the in-game advertising was well-executed there! There are a few little joke responses in this game that help give it some extra charm. Try these two out, for instance:
On the roof: Try going WEst
In the entrance hall: ENTER the mirror
Haven’t had time to try to figure out the final treasure(s) issue yet, but here are a few thoughts:
You obviously made it up to the roof, so you’ve seen the rest of the map now (as far as I know), except the last bit. I’ll just say here that it does indeed involve the bricked-up wall…
I noticed that JUMP issue too, which made me think that it could be used somewhere, but who knows with this parser.
I thought the “shiver up your spine” thing might be significant at first, and maybe there’s something to your idea of having a set, but it could also just be random responses. Here’s what I’ve worked out so far:
Ring: usually “shiver”, but sometimes “a friendly spirit prevents you”
Braclet: usually “everything goes fuzzy and something appears to steal one of your treasures”, but sometimes “shiver”
Wine: DRINKing always produces the “fuzzy” response
The stuff with the cat, bats, shrieks and clanking chains just seem to be randomly generated when you move between rooms, to provide added Haunted House atmosphere.
Anyway, I’m basically torn now between the idea that the 2 (?) remaining treasures are out in plain sight, but don’t want to be moved very easily, or that there’s some (probably ridiculous) way to access one more part of the map that’s currently eluding me. Regarding moving things, I’ve noticed a few odd responses:
The mirror is “TOO HEAVY TO CARRY UP THE STAIRS”, but who says that’s where you want to take it?
I thought the “strange force” preventing you from taking the lamp was a unique message, but it says the same thing if you try to take the computer.
If you try to take the gargoyle, it says “DON’T BE SILLY, YOU CAN’T REACH IT!”.
One other thing to note: I’ve had to start over a few times, because eventually things get weird with your inventory and moving around in certain places, and the game will frequently crash out with GOSUB errors. I wonder if the MZ 700 version does the same thing?
Oh yeah, one other thing I forgot:
PULLing or PUSHing on the knob on either side of the cupboard will either send you to the other side, or dump you back out in front of the house, but it all seems totally set to these locations based on the verb use, so no chance this might lead to another area of the map.
How did you get in the bricked door?
Having something get stolen is a prerequisite to finding the pirate in adventure, so maybe you need to let it happen?
ha! just finally figured it out (….by trying to do wild things on the roof…I’ll take it)
Yeah, at least they give you the clue there! But then why can’t you use a certain other item to do the same thing? Not very logical…
Anyway, once you’re through that bit, I’m all ears as to how to finish off the treasures. I have a couple of random weird things I want to try, but otherwise I’m pretty much stumped at the moment.
Note that once you deposit the treasures, you can take them back and they’ll still count towards your score, so they could still be used to solve some final puzzle, but I kind of doubt this game is that sophisticated.
The pirate/theft idea is a good one, but I’ve never really tried looking around after having a treasure stolen.
Okay, I took one final whack at it and came up empty. Here’s what I “discovered”:
There only seem to be certain places where you can trigger a treasure theft, but wearing the bracelet there will get the bottle stolen. The funny thing is if you then try to wear the bracelet again right there, it will say “WHAT WINE?”, so probably some goofy coding poking through here. In any case, I searched every single location in the game once the bottle had been stolen, and it never reappeared.
I remain suspicious of the mirror. Another odd response you get is if you try to break it, it says “THAT’S NOT EFFECTIVE!”.
One more weird thing: If you try going UP on the roof, it says “YOU’RE NOT A BIRD! YOU CAN’T DO THAT!”.
I even tried starting over and lugging the cassette to the treasure room, and uh, yeah… it’s not a treasure. Neither is any other item aside from the obvious 4, which still has me stuck on 69 points. Is it possible the scoring is broken and that’s actually it…?
Oh yeah, I forgot… Regarding the possibility of broken scoring: I noticed that the whole thing with you being able to take the treasures back and still having them count towards the score actually seems to be weird and semi-random. Once I started picking them up and putting them down a few times, it began changing the number deposited and total score in a not always logical way.
I won the game, there’s only one more treasure. It’s in the dungeon.
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