Renga in Blue   Interactive fiction and the All the Adventures project

(This continues from my previous post, which is needed to understand this one.)

With help from ItsMe in my last post who found a hint guide, I was able to get to the end of the game. Before I get to that, I want to drop by another document found by commenter Rob, in the August 19, 1981 version of the newsletter Buss, for Heathkit computers (which Software Toolkit Adventure runs on).

Via Parry Game Preserve.

Specifically, Walt Bilofsky wrote an essay about Adventure; one of his points being that it teachers players how to use their computer (the control of a parser being close to the metal, akin to the command prompt on the CP/M operating system). Relevantly for us, he goes on to write a small manifesto explaining what good adventure game interactions look like.

Adventure has been extended and imitated, sometimes well, sometimes poorly. It has been done best when the following rules were followed:

Be consistent. Similar commands should produce similar responses unless there’s a good reason. Similar phrases in messages and descriptions should mean similar things.

Be informative. Especially, make sure that when the user types a meaningless or incorrect command, he gets a message that makes sense, and perhaps gives some hint as to the proper command.

Be rewarding. When the user figures out how to do something, make sure he is rewarded with smooth, reasonable, productive behavior on the part of the program.

I always appreciate when authors this early try to reach for some sort of guiding principles, even if they don’t quite hit their ambitions (see Clardy with Probe One: The Transmitter for another example). I will first play through the rest of Adventure 375 and then compare after to see how close Bilofsky got to his ideal.

Let’s get to the sword first, because that’s quicker to explain:

You are in a large room with medieval furnishings. Two bleached skeletons are hanging on the wall in iron cuffs. The room is dominated by a huge white boulder near the west wall. A tunnel in the east wall turns quickly out of sight. A dark hole in the floor was apparently once covered by a grating or trap door.

A very rusty sword with a ruby-studded hilt is embedded in the boulder!

This puzzle is also, I’ll admit, mostly fair. The idea behind the mechanism is that the sword goes into the boulder, and holds open some kind of latch that holds open the door and allows escape. The sword is described as a treasure, but the rusty blade does not seem to be contributing to the treasure-aspect, so if you could just take along the ruby hilt you’d still have a treasure. It is as simple as BREAK SWORD:

Weakened by rust, the blade gives way and the hilt breaks off in your hand.

When on the ground:

There is a ruby-studded sword hilt here!

There’s still some meta-concern here with the puzzle. While the rusty part does not seem to be contributing to the item being a treasure, as anyone who has watched the horrified look of a Antiques Roadshow host knows, sometimes “cleaning up” a historical item causes it to lose rather than gain value. There’s also the uncertain aspect of transforming a (!) marked treasure into another (!) marked treasure; while we’ve seen non-treasures turn into treasures, this is the first time a state change has happened between two treasures. This is at the very least a puzzle using abductive reasoning rather than iron-clan logic, but it is a good example of the form since it doesn’t take that long to experiment with BREAK SWORD.

The other secret portion I missed is much fussier. It was implied by the magazine that there was something under the troll bridge, but I could not get the game to acknowledge my commands.

You’re on SW side of chasm.

A rickety wooden bridge extends across the chasm, vanishing into the mist. There is a large rusty hook on the bridge’s handrail. Lying on the bridge is a sign which reads “Stop! Pay Troll!”

Step one is taking the sign. Mind you, in all other cases, items that can be taken are separated from the main paragraph, so knowing to do this violates one of the game’s established norms.

You take hold of the sign, but the wood is old and full of splinters. You drop it in the middle of the bridge and spend a moment picking wood out of your fingertips.

Now we’ve got an empty hook: what to do? Normally a kind of rope would be in order, but there is no rope in Original Adventure nor this game. Something that I have long-visualized in one way should be (according to the authors of this game) visualized another way. (See, analogously, my experiences with a bean bag in Asylum II.) The chain that is a treasure and is used to lead the bear is meant to be long, long enough to substitute in for a rope:

HANG CHAIN

The chain is now dangling from the hook down into the chasm.

That’s also not the easiest parser command to find! Hang on to your hats, everyone, it gets worse.

At the bottom of the chasm, there’s no apparent exit, but you can now JUMP to the other side even though a jump was impossible from the top.

You are on a narrow ledge near the bottom of a chasm running SE/NW. Above you the chasm is filled with mist. A rushing stream completely fills the bottom of the chasm. Across the stream is a dark opening in the chasm wall.

I can see why the chasm would be shaped differently farther down making a jump now possible, but the description doesn’t reflect that!

Moving in further is a room with a desk, which can be opened with the keys.

You are in a squarish, dusty room with a good passage SE as its only exit.

There is an ancient roll-top desk in the room.

OPEN DESK

The desk opens, revealing an old, dusty glass inkwell, and a bundle of old yellow papers, tied with a faded velvet ribbon. The inkwell is half full of dust and old dried-up ink. The papers teeter and fall out of the desk, raising a fearful cloud of dust. Sneezing, you read through tearing eyes that these are early certificates of Colossal Gold Mines, 333 Ltd., now one of the giants in the field! The spaces on each share marked “Shareholder’s Name” are all blank.

Again, the norms are no longer being followed here: the inkwell is particularly important. You’re supposed to get the inkwell going again (POUR WATER toted in via the bottle), then use it to sign the documents (although SIGN isn’t understood, you need to use WRITE). But sign with what?

The cheerful bird that chased away the snake has a second purpose.

The bird flutters to a higher perch, letting out an outraged squawk in buzzard dialect (I didn’t know he spoke buzzard)! Translation: “You’ll have to catch me first, pinion plucker!”

Feathers are not described as an object that can be referred to separately on the bird, you just have to take the leap they’d be there. The bird needs to be caught (or re-caught) in the cage before feather extraction happens, and then the feather can be used as a quill. Additionally, there’s some steps omitted going from feather to quill.

POUR WATER

The water splashes into the inkwell, turning the dried-up residue in the bottom into ink.

DIP FEATHER

The tip of the feather is full of ink.

SIGN CERTIFICATES

I see no sign here.

WRITE

Your name is now written as the owner on each stock certificate.

This sequence hit a whole bunch of design issues in a row:

a.) having an object picked up mentioned in the main text rather than a separate line, breaking norms

b.) using the chain in a way that can easily run counter to previous visualizations

c.) being able to jump what seems like it ought to be the same distance, and the description doesn’t make clear the distance is shorter

d.) needing to refer again to an item in the main text, rather than one mentioned separately

e.) needing to extract a non-described feather back at the bird, and somehow immediately it is usable as a quill

f.) tough parser commands along the way like DIP and WRITE

I think, arguably, you could say it meets the “rewarding” and “informative” conditions, but fails on “consistent” with points a and d — it might be consistent in the “author’s bubble” of puzzles, but it isn’t consistent with the game as a whole.

The larger issue is that the points don’t really encompass all the advice needed: parser commands should have reasonable synonyms, the text should not leave anything ambiguous in term of visualization, and there certainly shouldn’t be a brand new noun (feathers on the bird) that the player needs to guess at. In a big-picture sense, the authors were trying for a puzzle more ambitious than the parser was able to handle.

With the two treasures the ending is more or less identical, except you get prompted for the desired name on the certificate and get a password to go with it. I imagine this is to prevent sharing, but someone could have a save very close to the end and just generate another name.

As you release the hat, a cloud of sandalwood-scented smoke appears, out of which steps the Grandmaster of the Colossal Cave Lodge 437 of the Wizard’s Guild. He is wearing a long blue velvet robe, a long, pointed bejewelled hat made of solid platinum, and love beads. He carries a three foot long rod with a star on the end, all of solid gold. His eyes twinkle behind thick gold-rimmed spectacles, and he smiles benevolently as he says,

“Congratulations, young Adventurer. By your ordeals in the Cave you have proven yourself worthy of admission to the rank of Journeyman Wizard in the Wizard’s Guild.” He places the gold Wizard’s Hat on your head and, bending, asks,

“How do you want your name spelled on your Certificate of Wizardness?”
….

Jason Dyer

“All right, young Wizard, your personal Wizard Password is ‘Wyktut’!”

The Wizard waves his wand, and the cave bear and little bird appear in a puff of orange smoke, grunting and twittering their congratulations. You leap onto the bear’s back, and, with the bird fluttering in a circle overhead, you ride out of the building, through a crowd of cheering elves, and into the sunset.

You scored 375 out of a possible 375 using 442 turns.

All of Adventuredom gives tribute to you, Journeyman Wizard and Adventurer Grandmaster!

There is no higher rating! Congratulations!!

Software Toolworks went on to make this “Golden Oldies” collection which has normal 350-point Adventure. My own picture. This was the first commercial adventure game I ever owned.