Renga in Blue   Interactive fiction and the All the Adventures project

(Continued from my previous post.)

First, a resolution of the technical mystery with the caps-swap, courtesy of Andrea Pachetti in the comments (who has a blog dedicated to the history of Italian videogames, I liked this post on patents).

By Louis Mittelman, Jr. Via the Smithsonian, Usage Conditions Apply.

As I theorized, this was ported from a Commodore PET; Andrea found it was specifically a PET 2001 (the first model) with a 32K memory extension added. (The main smoking gun was a “POKE 59468,14” command in the source code which causes the PET to switch to a mode which “looks better for typing, but has fewer graphics characters”.) In the VICE emulator you need to choose that particular machine, then pick “32k” for memory which will make the model list as “unknown”, then load this file Andrea prepared; this allows for the original BASIC source to run with normal capitalization. For the remaining screenshots I’ll be giving them on PET. (For the most part. The save states were having issues due to the strange character set handling so I played on C64 first before making a run on PET.)

Using the PET clue, Andrea went on to find a classified ad with an address, then cross-checked that to find the likely author: Hans-Dieter Ihlenfeldt. He’s a German botanist born in 1932; Wikispecies lists him as authoring 15 taxon names and he has an incomplete set of papers up at ResearchGate. This ends up explaining something in the game you’ll see later.

From a 2005 article about the decline of the quiver tree Aloe pillansii.

Past that: a resolution to the 4711 mystery, which I got from multiple people both on and off my comments (thanks to everyone)! There’s a particular German perfume with that name. It’s famous enough that searching “4711” alone gets a bunch of perfume hits; I admit I was in the mental space of assuming a self-contained puzzle (without outside references). Normally I’d still consider the puzzle unreasonable since we’re solving from the word PERFUME and getting a number too short to be a phone number (also, there’s lots of different numbers perfumes could be) but I am reliably informed that in Germany 4711 being associated with perfume is strong enough for meme-status.

“4711 – ECHT KÖLNISCH WASSER – KÖLN HBF” by Metro Centric, CC BY 2.0.

The same is true for the number 0815 in the text…

Commander Columbus speaking.
We’ve got a special mission for you. We just received informations about a theft of global dimensions. For the sake of all of us we won’t tell you exactly what it is, we know you’ll find it out yourself. Phone us again when mission completed. We want both objects.10.6.9.5
Hard luck, agent 0815.
Click.

…which is named after a machine gun which was “run of the mill”, “ordinary”, or “uninspired”, like our main character apparently is. All this, plus some translation-dictionary-accidents you’ll see later, lead me to think that this was originally written in German and translated to English, as opposed to being written in English by someone struggling; we just happen to have the English version only (this happened with Caves of Olympus, although I was eventually able to find the German version).

The 10.6.9.5 part I guessed had to refer to the codebook, giving the message poison-bomb-lead-microfilm. I have finished the game and I have no idea what this means.

Back to the action! After the 4711 info I was simply unable to move a car. Before I get to how that works, I should mention that while the car appears empty, it has stuff in it if you OPEN TRUNK and OPEN BONNET, neither which are mentioned anywhere. (I had to look up the word “bonnet”. I use “hood”.) Also, the items you get from both you then find by going inside the car.

The fuel, torchlight, rope, and battery are all useful. I guess the idea is that it’s an open-top sportscar, but this still doesn’t make sense to me why you’d be outside the car to drive it.

So to be clear, you drive the car by standing outside the car, and then you get things from the trunk and hood bonnet by going inside the car. Also you need the battery in because it will be dark when you drive otherwise (so when you take it out, and you’ll need to take it out, make sure you put it back in!)

To drive the car without crashing, rather than typing DRIVE CAR, type DRIVE (DIRECTION), like DRIVE WEST to start. Then you can DRIVE NORTH safely to an intersection, then DRIVE EAST to a field with an unfortunate name, or rather a normal name with an unfortunate namespace clash.

It’s rapeseed. Language translation issues aside, I could easily see a botany professor not even thinking about this reading awkwardly.

The tool shed contains a turn of phrase which suggests translation dictionary trouble (“The wind is blowing through the rifts”) as well as a shovel which is a complete red herring.

At least the initial result of using it suggests it might be a joke item. This is making fun of the Scott Adams style *treasure* hunt games.

The saw and bucket are absolutely required. Hopping back in the SPORTSCAR and driving east incidentally kills the player in a swampy bog; the only thing to do is drive west and north and arrive at a gate, the Citadel of the title.

The deadliness continues if you try to GO GATE, as it is electrified and will zap you dead. I found I could DRIVE GATE and get through just fine. I later found out from the walkthrough you can PUT RUG which will interpret the act as covering the gate (as opposed to just dropping, like PUT does everywhere else) and the rug serves as protection against electrocution. You can then climb over.

This represents what I think is a true alternate solution on the author’s part. Maybe the car entering was a bug? The car gets trapped on the other side of the yard.

I’m in a yard of an citadel. Main building ahead.

Obvious exits: door

Visible items: SPORTSCAR. TREE. BLOWPIPE. CHAPEL. WELL. SWIMMING POOL. GATE.

Yet: when the way to escape is made, it applies to both if you entered via climbing or car, and the car can’t escape until you’ve done it. As long as you are holding the fuelcan from the car you are able to operate the powersaw from the shed and CUT TREE:

This was the variant reality where I tested the rug-climbing entrance. The sportscar is parked to the south.

This crushes the gate and lets you escape south either by foot or car. Note though this is premature if you do it right away, as you need to climb the tree first before cutting it. Let’s get the map out and start explaining the layout:

There are five exits from the yard: chapel, well, tree, pool, door. The door is locked; you can nab a key easily from the chapel…

…but when trying UNLOCK DOOR from the yard the game informs you the key only works from the inside. Hence you need to climb the tree:

This gives you a route through the window and downstairs, where you can unlock the door from the inside and pass safely in and out of the building normally. After you’re done with this it is now safe to cut down the tree.

You might notice another passage linking out of the chapel, but I didn’t discover it until much later in my gameplay, so let’s visit the two other places connected to the yard, and then explore the building. You can find yourself a quick death by typing GO WELL.

I’m in a deep well.

Obvious exits: UP

Visible items: IRON GRATING

Yaahhh… Falling.

SCORE: 0%

You can PUT ROPE (from the car) in order to get in safely, but you’re then just stuck by the iron grating. There will be an item to take care of this later.

Then there’s the pool, which I had trouble even parsing with the dictionary-accident troubles:

I’m in a astonishingly deep pool. Down there something is glooming blue. Warm!

Obvious exits: UP

Visible items: WATER. CORK.

Just to recap, from the car we have a saw (used with a fuel can on a tree), a torchlamp (used with a battery), a rope (used on the well), and a bucket. The bucket, the only unused one, can scoop up some water here. Going inside the door and to the west, you can find a fireplace and put it out (PUT WATER)…

…then go downstairs to find a cellar with a MASSIVE WALL which is really the main obstacle of the game. (I don’t know what “concrete drops” are referring to.)

I’m in a musty cellar. Concrete drops on the floor.

Obvious exits: UP

Visible items: HACKSAW. MASSIVE WALL. BLUE GAS BOMB.

Other than the saw and the blue gas bomb added to our stash, and the TAPE RECORDER, WHISKEY BOTTLE, and POCKET LIGHTER next to the fireplace, you can find around the house you can find PLASTICINE in a refrigerator in the kitchen (tasty!)…

…a DIVING SUIT and RED GAS BOMB next to the upstairs window (entered via tree), and some RUSTY ARMOUR in the entrance hall (which we’ll get to last). Here I was incredibly stuck until I realized that while I entered the house’s attic through a window, if you go back through the window you land in an entirely different location.

I’m in a dusty attic. There’s a window with lots of webs in front of the pane.

Obvious exits: DOWN

Visible items: DIVING SUIT. RED GAS BOMB. WINDOW

Command? GO WINDOW

I’m in a shingle roof. There’s a window to the left.

Obvious exits: UP

Visible items: WINDOW

Going up higher there’s a roof with a RING.

GET RING responds with “it’s fixed” but I was able to PULL RING and yank out a whole trap-door leading to a study room.

I’m in a study room.

Obvious exits: UP

Visible items: CBM COMPUTER. MAGNET.

I had a lot of trouble working the computer, You can START COMPUTER and then PLAY RECORDER (that separate tape recorder, playing it somehow translates into playing it for the Commodore).

Keep in mind the “voice recognition”, that will come back later (in a baffling way). You can leave by heading back to the tower and going DOWN; if you peek back at the room description you’ll see the pool is below and you’ll land in safely. (The walkthrough puts in the dive suit before doing this; as far as I can tell you can do this entirely safely with no problem.)

Looking back at the obstacles left, there’s the wall still in the cellar, the grating in the well, and the item “glooming blue” in the pool. The hacksaw from the cellar takes care of the well issue.

This leads to a tunnel where you can find a TIME FUSE, followed by a chapel containing a COFFIN and some SKULLS. The coffin is one of the treasures you need, bizarrely enough! (It also is heavy, so you pretty much need to dump everything and work in the dark. Fortunately there’s no tripping around in this game, and once you have your pathing worked out having a light is optional.)

There’s an alternate route here where you PULL LAMP while in the chapel, exposing a hole you can go down, but then you’re trapped at the grating if you haven’t sawed it open yet. This is still good in a seeing-what’s-ahead sense.

The TIME FUSE and the PLASTICINE are sufficient to handle the wall: DROP PLASTICINE, START FUSE (ugh), PUT FUSE, get out of there. I need to test some more but I don’t think the fuse even needs to be with the plasticine.

Slipping in with a C64 screenshot indicating this can go terribly wrong. I think it’s based on real-time and I had the system going too fast?

The explosion happening properly, although there’s a secondary explosion as well later.

With that taken care of there’s a vault with a safe inside further. I admit I had to check the walkthrough for this part, as you’re supposed to put the magnet on it, then play the tape recorder. This will let you nab a microfilm inside. (I tried to match the poison-bomb message to it but I couldn’t see a connection.)

The microfilm is of course one of the items you need, but there’s one more, and this one’s very cryptic to get: the mysterious pool item. Take the blue gas bomb, dive suit, and rusty armour from the house. Hop in for a swim.

Now, follow this series of instructions: OPEN BLUE (the gas bomb), GET CORK, PUT BLUE. (I am copying direct from the walkthrough. No clue what’s going on.) This will somehow manifest a PLUTONIUM-NUGGET.

That’s everything, and it’d be nice to just go home, but there’s one last wrinkle.

This isn’t nearly as bad as the previous shenanigans except for a verb issue. It turns out the telephone is lurking back in the shed (where we found the useless shovel and the useless diamonds). Take it back here and FIX TELEPHONE (!!!) and then you can DIAL 4711 and finish the mission.

I feel no guilt whatsoever at exposing the game’s secrets. I still don’t know what’s going on with the book’s message or the nugget, or why we were supposed to figure the magnet would work on the safe combined with the tape recording, and why the tape recording had data in one circumstance but when used a second time gave a voice command.

(It is fun, though, that once again Valley of Cesis is echoed. At the end of that game it says “don’t tell anyone else how to do it”.)

Some of this might be German-English confusion but some of it definitely isn’t. The strange thing is, looking back, I do see mounds of creativity: there’s some clever attempts at difficulty and trying to make a complicated world be as compact as possible. A careful editor and a saved-game feature might turn this from unfair into … well, maybe not fair, but playable.

Coming up: A game from Sweden the same year as Citadel Adventure, written in English.