Renga in Blue   Interactive fiction and the All the Adventures project

(Continued from my previous post.)

I’m not done with the game yet. It is a unique experience in that I normally would be wildly upset at the number of bugs if this was a published product — it has more than even our worst offenders — but as-is, I consider something of a window in time. In terms of history of game design: what limits did authors have they were running into? What was the fault of bad design and what was the fault of authors just working with what they had? What concepts did they have that ended up undercooked just because of technical issues? My most comparable other playthrough was Irvin Kaputz which was a game abandoned because of running out of memory space, where adding even one more character to the text causes a crash; the author there had some ambitions of object-modeling that were rare for the time, but the fact this extra detail caused failure is a good lesson in why bare-bones was more the norm.

Scott Adams stated with Adventureland the reason the game has the span it does he kept writing until he ran out of space (versions vary of the data file, but they all are around ~16000 bytes).

I’m not sure if the memory issue applies here. Mr. Watt certainly had access to 32k (see: his Microsoft Adventure copy program) but he may have still had 16k as a target goal. There are actually two versions of the data file for the game, one at 12576 bytes and one at 15588 bytes, the former having spaces taken out for compression purposes. This suggests he realized he was reaching his limit and did a pass, but was still running short accounting for everything else to make this feel like a polished product. I’ll study the issue more once I’m done with the game.

After Kim Watt went to Texas, Super Utility was published in partnership with Powersoft. Cover of catalog via Ira Goldklang.

My progress essentially involved combing over everything seen and finding extra items along the way. To start with, when grabbing the seat as a floatation device from the plane, it turns out LOOK PRESERVER reveals some batteries. Of course, the batteries don’t let you TAKE them (of course) so you can be in the middle of the ocean and have it happen and they’re just floating there. Don’t worry, they’re ok!

A flashlight turns out to be nearby as well. On the first beach I had done DIG to get the response

With what?
I don’t have a shovel.

Quite often this means a shovel is coming later, but Rob in the comments suggested trying HANDS anyway.

——-^ Tell me what to do? WITH HANDS
OK

So “With what?” is meant to be a parser prompt! Also noteworthy: unlike some games that include the WITH syntax, you have to get the DIG-prompt first for the WITH HANDS to work. So there’s also a diggable item on the next beach you come across (a rusty knife) but I originally just tested WITH HANDS and only discovered later DIG was required first.

Back to the first beach, digging gets a hole and the hole has a flashlight. I took the flashlight back to the ocean and was fortunately about to LOAD FLASHLIGHT / WITH BATTERIES and it worked. The unfortunate thing is that this starts the light timer (…sometimes?…) and when the timer goes off, everything goes dark, including if you are outside in sunlight. The better thing to do is to wait for until you are next to the cave later to LOOK PRESERVER so the batteries get dropped close to where they are used. (Having said all that, one of my test-playthroughs the flashlight timer just didn’t seem to cut off at all even after many turns. The timer is just busted generally.)

That’s still not everything in the first area; in the ocean where you land you can DIVE.

OPEN CHEST results in

I can’t
it’s locked.

Getting stumped here, I got around to making my verb list. Notice neither LOCK nor UNLOCK are understood verbs.

Having noting in the way of HIT verbs, I kept trying around things until I realized the game lets you refer to LOCK as a noun (…just assuming a visible lock on the locked chest…) and CUT LOCK / WITH CUTTER works to pop it open, yielding *GOLD COINS*.

All this being done while floating in the middle of the ocean since you can’t take the chest, of course.

Just to recap, I had newly-found: FLASHLIGHT (from beach), RUSTY KNIFE (from other beach), and GOLD COINS (from chest). The progression is to land at the first beach, swing through the jungle to the second beach, then go into the ocean again, where yet again DIVE works to find something.

The smeared map, if you wait enough turns, will clear up enough that it dries out and you can read it. (I think the smearing would not undo itself? It felt clever anyway.)

Unfortunately, DIG doesn’t work like it did before. I have no idea what parser command to use here.

It’s pretty clear what movie is being referenced, though. From It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World, near the ending under the “big W” where the treasure is buried.

As implied earlier, the flashlight/batteries now allow entrance into the cave on the south side of the island.

There’s a large cavern with hole (that you can enter), a small cavern with a hole (that you can enter), and a tiny cavern with a hole (that is too tiny to enter). In the third room LOOK AROUND reveals a CHISEL (not takeable). I haven’t been able to use the chisel on anything. It is possible there is a HAMMER that goes with it but I haven’t found it.

I still have had no luck getting by the quicksand or overgrown bush in the jungle, or the floating jelly in the lake. I suspect I am not far from wrapping things up but the game is not even close to playing fair.