Renga in Blue   Interactive fiction and the All the Adventures project

(Continued from my previous post.)

I’m in the curious position of figuring out how to fuel the starfighter and visit other planets, but still with the Dark Star self-destruct timer ticking down. I don’t even know if stopping the self-destruct is the end of the game or you get missions after. There’s three structural possibilities for what’s going on:

a.) I’m “looking ahead”, like how Burglar’s Adventure lets you keep playing after setting off an alarm to see what’s coming, even though the game is already lost. This can help understand what some earlier objects in the game might be for and/or help get a notion of what kind of patterns the game follows (for example, how many items are red herrings?). This idea really could use a name. “Virtual plot branching” maybe?

b.) The timer is incredibly tight and you’re genuinely supposed to fly off to get resources before coming back and stopping the self-destruct sequence.

c.) This is a Ferret-style game, where you clearly and intentionally have to go murder your virtual selves finding out some information which will then get applied back in the “main plot”. There’s no realistic way your main character could learn that information other than referring to things learned from their doomed-to-death clones. This is like if in the game Outer Worlds, instead of there being a time loop, your character just dies over and over and you somehow happen to know the information from your dead selves; that is, it is functionally identical to a time loop, but the game-world ramifications are grislier.

I’ve been keeping an eye out for any references to the movie Dark Star (1974) but other than the name of the game I haven’t spotted any. It’s a title that easily could be made independently. The Dark Star in this game is a space station, not a ship, and I wouldn’t call the exploding a movie reference unless we start talking to a bomb. Image via a video about the Dark Star miniature work.

Continuing from last time, I was able to grab: ID CARD, CHART (mentioning “DILUS DC”), TEA STRAINER, SPACESUIT, METAL SUIT (radiation protection), GREEN SUIT, COMPASS, DETECTOR (of radiation), BOX (polystyrene, trying to open it says “it’s not that easy”), PHASER, COIN (for a pinball table).

For open problems, other than the mysterious box (the one thing I’ll resolve later), there’s an ORAC computer that might be a red herring, there’s an alien in the vent (you’d think the phaser works, but it is rigged to not be able to fire while in the space station), two suspicious “blank walls” (again the phaser would be nice to use, but alas), a crystal cube “without two blocks” in the engine room, and three buttons (yellow, red, green) that supposedly disable the self-destruct sequence. Trying to press any of the three buttons is rebuffed by the game.

PRESS YELLOW: I DON’T SEE THE POINT IN THAT!
PRESS RED: IT WON’T WORK!
PRESS GREEN: I DON’T SEE THE POINT IN THAT!

I gather, given the differing error messages, that red is the first button in the combination, but something is stopping the PRESS. Since the crystal cube is in the same room, I suspect fixing the crystal cube is the hang-up.

Returning back to the room with the starfighter, there’s a “TAP” and a “HOSEPIPE”, and turning the tap causes fuel to flow out of the hose.

The right command here is tricky to find; if you try to take off with starfighter the game says it needs REFUELING, and that word specifically needs to be used here: REFUEL STARFIGHTER. Unfortunately if you try to then take off it doesn’t work:

(I’m starting to imagine, plot-wise, that we did an “emergency long distance teleport” over to the bridge of the Dark Star when contact was lost, and it’s such a difficult/dangerous procedure only one person could be sent. That explains why we aren’t familiar with what the buttons on the bridge do, and also suggests some lore questions: What happened to the crew? Why was the fuel sabotaged? Why is the crystal cube broken? Why did the self-destruct sequence start? Where did the alien come from?)

Going back out and checking the fuel, you see it is LUMPY. The TEA STRAINER works to fix this (!!) by typing STRAIN FUEL. Doing REFUEL STARFIGHTER with the fix now allows you to take off.

The procedure (given on a note earlier, combined with information from a chart) is to set COURSE DILUS and then type DRIVE.

This changes the starfighter’s location, closes the exit “down” (to the Dark Star) and opens an exit south, to a “hold”.

The belt is a GRAVITY COMPENSATOR BELT and the bracelet allows for teleportation. You can then hop in the alcove and find five buttons corresponding to the three planets in the viewscreen. And yes, those numbers don’t match, so PRESS FOUR and PRESS FIVE result in an unfortunate demise:

As an aside, this is where Rob was getting stuck and thought the code needed changing in order to introduce the digits 1 through 5, as the buttons are described that way. PRESS 1, PRESS 2, etc. previously didn’t work at all because the game doesn’t even let you push the actual buttons. Quoting Rob:

When I originally got to that area, I naturally assumed that, since the game says “the buttons are numbered 1-5” that you had to use the numerals. When it became obvious that you couldn’t, I tried typing them out but the game kept responding “nothing happened!”. Since not being able to enter numerals was clearly a bug, I immediately reported it.

This is not the first and certainly will not be the last bit of early-80s text adventure jank that gets mistaken for a bug. (Certainly by modern standards it is a bug — why would you mismatch display and input like that?)

With fairly high efficiency (I’m off by 1 or 2) I was able to get to the alcove safely with everything worn (space suit, bracelet, belt) in 27 moves.

Given the space station explodes at 50, this does not seem like enough time to do everything and come back. For example, here’s the map upon pressing THREE:

It’s just a straightforward grid, exploring a crater.

In addition to the KEY from the center there’s a HOOK (“fishing hook”), ORB (“made out of an unknown element”), and STONE (“heavy”) lying out in the open.

Picking up all three items and returning to the start (at the “monolith” that allows teleportation) takes 17 turns. Given the 27 moves at start (let’s say 25 with perfection and no typos, and yes making a typo counts as a move) that’s 42 moves used up already on only one teleport destination. Even if it turns out one or more of the items are red herrings, I think option b (explore planets, then rush back to stop the self-destruct) it starting to seem unlikely.

Jumping over to planet ONE, it is just two rooms (so far):

The stalactite might make a tempting phaser target, but shooting it is a bad idea:

Nabbing the phaser from the Dark Star takes even more extra moves, but given it doesn’t work on the space station, it seems necessary. However, we have had plenty of games before where weapons are a red herring.

You can try to take it but the game says you need an “INSULATED CONTAINER”. This turns out to be the BOX from the Dark Star, but taking it results in yet more moves being wasted.

TWO leads to a “green planet”, which is again small.

The LONG STICK at the opening room is described as “bamboo”. The pool to the west has FISH, and if you try to CATCH FISH the game says you need a hook. If you bring the hook over from the crater it turns out you’re still missing something.

If it turns out you then also need a pole after finding tackle, the bamboo one probably qualifies.

To the north there are three “cliff” rooms with ROCKFACE objects (“crystalline”). Trying to CLIMB (even while holding the rope, or dropping it in the room) is rebuffed.

Trying to SHOOT ROCKFACE (with the phaser) gives the response

YOU DO NOT HAVE THE STALACTITE!

and bringing the stalactite along gives this screen:

As efficient as possible getting to this screen. Right after this the Dark Star explodes.

It’s hard to experiment with the planets because the background timer keeps going off quickly; while it is still very faintly possible the player is just supposed to move very fast, I can’t imagine doing all the steps to make a fishing pole and do whatever it is the stalactite needs and grabbing at least the hook from the crater and still be under fifty.

I suppose playing this game is a little like talking Bomb 20 out of exploding, but only by coincidence.

Next time I’m going to take another stab at the Dark Star itself, as I get the nagging feeling it’s the bespoke-command parser that’s really tripping me up here (am I even pressing the buttons on the self-destruct control in the right way?)

What happens if you try to skip getting the space suit before visiting planet ONE.