Renga in Blue   Interactive fiction and the All the Adventures project

(Continued directly from my previous post.)

I was, as I guessed, rather close to the ending. What I did not guess is that grammar played a major part in my downfall.

Not orthography like with Circus. This was something worse.

From the Museum of Computer Adventure Games.

As I suspected from last time, my initial issue was simply a missing exit. At least the author was trying to be actively deceptive and it wasn’t just me overlooking a simple chunk of text. At the far east of the maze, you can go UP.

Given the giant is peaceful and I had a limited number of verbs to work from, I quickly narrowed down to GIVE probably being the most useful thing. Except: the game did not seem to understand my commands like GIVE WAND. After fussing for long enough I eventually realized I needed the syntax GIVE WAND TO GIANT. (This is not the death-by-grammar moment but it gives a clue of the issue.)

As I was using a save that hadn’t tangled with the goblin yet, I had the lunch in inventory, and it turned out to be the correct use.

Hmm, so my fortification with calories was not the right way to defeat the goblin. Let’s put a pin in that, and nab the rope, as it clearly went to the hook.

Note that TIE isn’t even recognized as a word by itself — this is grabbing the whole phrase TIE ROPE TO HOOK here and the command isn’t otherwise comprehended by the parser. Clearly the author’s Zork influence is coming into play, but with a negative effect (since TIE ROPE ought to be understood, and even the Infocom parser would have taken it! but the author wants to include the feeling of full-parser commands).

The section after straightforwardly allows you to scoop up two treasures; the trip is one way since you have to drop down from the rope, but the other side of the grating is available. You just need to make sure to bring the iron key, otherwise you’re softlocked.

Now, the iron key is past the goblin, so that second screenshot means I got by the goblin somehow without eating the lunch first.

I did, and this is the spot of the game that is horrifying. In fact, we may have a new grand champion for most deceptive parser message ever, and honestly, I don’t think anyone is ever going to beat it.

You see, despite the response indicating you are trying to “stab” the goblin, KILL GOBLIN is interpreted an entirely different way than KILL GOBLIN WITH SWORD. If you just KILL GOBLIN, you’re trying to stab it with … your hands, somehow? KILL GOBLIN WITH SWORD is the way to specify you’re using the sword, and if you do that then the battle runs along cleanly and you can win.

Primal screaming isn’t enough to represent how infuriating this is. I can see how it happened: the author, enamored with a multi-word parser, wanted to have the two commands be different, but forgot to convey to the player that the two commands might be, in any sense, different.

Just like Catacombs, there’s no game-cut-off victory message if you win.

To be clear, this isn’t somehow conveying the superiority of two-word parsers: it just means that as layers get added, the author needs to start being more and more careful about the potential for deceptive responses.

The Classic Quests cover, via Plus/4 World.

I did promise a look at the Classic Quests version of the game, and strangely enough, it matches this one almost exactly! You start in the cottage rather than inside it, and the description is written differently. There’s also a loft, and I have no idea why the author added it.

Screenshot of the Amstrad version.

There’s a little more text added, like instead of just stating you’re lost in a forest, the game says:

You are lost in a forest of pine trees, the ground is covered in thick undergrowth making movement difficult.

There’s not nearly as many textual changes as you might think, given the improved DOS capacity. It’s quite possible that Classic Quest Catacombs is closer to the original than I first suspected.

Note that structurally, everything is the same! There is one other very, very important difference.

You are in a small side passage leading north-south. The walls are very pitted here as if somebody had been hacking at them with an axe or something. There is an extremely fierce Goblin here, he is brandishing an evil looking axe.
The goblin sees an opening in your defence and strikes you in the chest. You have fully recovered from your wounds.
>KILL GOBLIN
(with sword) You nick the goblin’s arm with your sword. The goblin lands a blow leaving a gash in your sword arm.
>KILL GOBLIN
(with sword) You nick the goblin’s arm with your sword. The goblin launches a fierce attack and you stagger back under a hail of blows.

Yes, the game automatically applies the sword if you type KILL GOBLIN, and even lets you know if you are doing so. At least Brian Cotton was learning!