Renga in Blue   Interactive fiction and the All the Adventures project

notes from the author Mary Winter on the Lemon64 forum, saved here for posterity https://www.lemon64.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=28909 For those wondering whatever happened…

I mean, in a reasonable sense you still need a little more than that, even “dig somewhere within a half-meter…

Another way to indicate a precise digging spot without a shadow is to reference street/road signs, mileage signs, or interstate…

And “The Misty Mountains” is a Tolkien reference.

yes, after it did huge in Japan they took it back for a second try and it worked

Did the movie get another go round in the US? I definitely saw it in a theater.

yeah! forgot about that https://www.paulinebaynes.com/_gallery_images/9065143521.jpg

The street lamp in the forest is also from Narnia, isn’t it?

Indeed, who knows.Fun aside: One of Macsen’s other licences, Countdown, has been running continuously on British TV for even longer…

I wish I knew more about what happened on their downfall, but I think that would require talking to the…

I never played any of those Macsen games, but I remember them all, and all the programmes they were based…

[…] to the heavy randomization, this game also enters the rare pantheon of “early text adventures that reflected later careers”;…

[…] enough to toss this into adventure-roguelike territory. The closest comparison I can think of is Dungeon from Andrew Colin’s…

[…] while he was creating his games he “only lived a few miles away” from the factory (in Wales) and…

[…] from thinking about nouns to thinking about verbs. This is something that I’ve written about long ago with mainframe…

Hi Jason, I’ve fixed the hand in the first room. The updated version is now live on itch.io. Thanks for…

managed to finish! it was a physical clue but the way I needed to retrieve it was pretty odd (it…

alas no, it just wants that directed at the enemy in question

[…] (Continued from my last post.) […]

I will! Thanks for the feedback. I’ve added a ? “help” Type ART to switch from Apple II to new…

I will! Thanks for the feedback. I’ve added a ? “help” Type ART to switch from Apple II to new…

You might want to do another art pass. Very first room the person who’s dead has 7 fingers on a…

Hi Jason, sorry about that! I couldn’t see any confirmation, so I thought it was a problem on my side…

Somehow you had a bunch of duplicate posts (I’m guessing you thought it was getting stuck but wasn’t) so this…

Hi Jason, I played Masquerade on an Apple II when I was young, but I never finished it. Its atmosphere…

ATTACK WAND?

I only got admin privileges a few years ago. Up until then one of the previous group of admins handled…

https://archive.org/download/mame251 get mbee.zip for the bios roms to be able to run the machine on MAME https://archive.org/download/mame-sl/mame-sl/ You can find…

eek, he posted but didn’t write them! I thought you posted all of yours? Anyway, fixed that, sorry about that…

INFORMATION just repeats the start screens (including verbs)

That mini-map makes me wonder if this is ancestor of those sorts of adventure games you’d see in shareware CDs…

Regarding the references to Will, I think you’ll find that someone else was the one who covered this one over…

Where can I download the game?

yeah, it’s on my list, it’s one of two Star Trek games I’ll eventually have coming for 1983 the other…

I regret to inform you there is a sequel to this game i found while poking around the CoCo archive…

[…] map, and is actually quite lovely for an automap from this era. We’ve seen a few like with Time…

oooooh ok that’s why it seemed arbitrary I guess you could kill all the NPCs and do it that way,…

Apparently looking at the secret of life with full points is quite literally the ending in the sense that it…

Maybe the gold staff only applies in the C64 or Spectrum versions? Or maybe the witch normally doesn’t have a…

There isn’t an ending? I believe you can examine the secret of life to reveal sort of a silly message…

Did I miss something, or did you quit before the actual ending?

finished, might be a few days before my post though taking care of the dragon ended up being satisfying

dunno on the other systems, BBC Micro mostly getting “seems ordinary” can look at the picture in the cabin and…

LOOK AT should work, at least with the C64 and Speccy ports. You can also look at some static objects,…

LOOK noun should work. At least in the versions I’ve played (Spectrum and C64) it works on the picture in…

“your request is refused” I do think the dwarf is picking it up but since there’s no way to avoid…

Link to “Plus 4 World” is broken. I don’t thnk the game starts with the diamond ring in the dwarf’s…

how do you get that? LOOK or EXAMINE on the noun doesn’t work, nor does the command PICTURE, and I’ve…

Items also have pictures, not sure if you already noted this. Sometimes they provide clues.

[…] sense; knowing that a gold key should be taken to a gold door is closer to what I’ve termed…

He doesn’t run if you don’t hit him (weapons held or not). He’s just fleeing if you attack. Feels exactly…

“He doesn’t fight back, he just keeps running away” Have you tried dropping your weapons before entering his room?

I was already thinking of maybe letting the troll chase me but then locking him in the area with the…

maybe the game can be won entirely by “diplomatic victory” rather than getting in standard RPG fights. My thought process…

[…] from my previous post, read that post first before this […]

This, along with The Hobbit, was the first adventure game I got for my ZX Spectrum. My dad bought both…

I was an active reader of the UK gaming mags starting in the mid 80s (several stores in my area…

Wow, don’t know how this is going to play, but it seems amazingly innovative in several ways, and I’d never…

[…] enough to be a regular contract worker for Bug-Byte. The company has featured here enough times (including the Manic…

hello the future, I’m dad Found the clip https://youtu.be/ssvgMHCa45s?si=75ykcoIoXAR8Fdkw&t=124

I’m guessing the author must have been watching the 1958 Hammer Horror version of Dracula, in which Van Helsing finally…

No, I think he just never finished it. I’m guessing it would have just been like: Drive the car out…

It’s just “lian” in Swedish and Norwegian, and is as common/uncommon (and spelled basically the same way) in these languages…

is there a specific place where it seems like the escape-by-car would happen?

I should also note that this game weirdly reminded me of another from the same era that I played not…

re the bugs: I’m ok with playing by the condition “use direction abbreviations otherwise the game will crash” but I’m…

Liane is German for vine, at least. Burning the pillow could never work since the code checks for I<>19 OR…

I’m pretty sure that you’re just supposed to be your typical adventure game treasure hunter/thief, and you bust out of…

[…] (Continued from my previous post about what is likely the first adventure game written in Sweden on a home…

I was able to get a little farther and see the dragons because the death-by-darkness is random and you can…

I’m not sure where you are in the game now, but you’ll see later on that there are other problems,…

the Big Crash later – which might be the one that’s stopping everyone – is north of a room with…

fortunately the game isn’t quite as broken once you get out of the starting area, I do think it’s just…

The Swedish kernal actually makes it worse, replacing the |s around The Temple with Ås and fixing none of the…

The VIC-20 kernal and chargen ROMs are easily obtained and used with xvic. I’ll have a look later.

erf, I tested that one specifically! grumble grumble WordPress anyway thanks!

Incredible thread on the Swedish computers. Came for the all the adventures, stayed for the computing history :).

“The Temple, which you can download off a forum thread” Not really, because that link is broken. Which seems appropriate,…

Thank you for mentioning my Substack! The detail you pointed out in the game does indeed suggest that Hans-Dieter Ihlenfeldt…

Best guess on the pongs: https://20thcenturyvideogames.com/index.php?action=vermodelos&submenu=&tipo=2&sistema=Tristar&verletra=T#Tristar Luxor imported one earlier, but that would have been old news by late 1978.…

one bonus question for anyone who knows their Euro-Pong home clones – what would the Pong games be that the…

[…] entered the market directly until later in the 80s (this is in contrast to Denmark, where they did battle…

thanks I moved the link over to his name (it’s German Wikipedia which has a picture of what he looked…

The link to “a German botanist” is broken.

Just a slight heads up, Hummingbird Soft’s “Knight of Wonderland” also casually refers to 油菜 as “RAPE” in-game, as though…

4711 is a very well known number also in Sweden (though not among younger generations), connected to the perfume. It…

A few thoughts: The “rifts” in the barn are just the gaps between planks. “glooming blue” is probably from glimmern/glosen,…

[…] (Continued from my previous post.) […]

it’s mixed. British is bonnet and boot, so the author used the US trunk and the British bonnet.

“Bonnet” is British, right? But then the trunk would be a “boot” I think. Maybe another effect of a non-native…

sorry this is taking a while most cryptic part has been you have to open the totally unmentioned “trunk” and…

Oh, the joy of PETSCII and all the issues it brought to humanity. Some gory details can be found here:…

Oh, cool, looking forward to the next post!

Nice catch! I’m fairly sure it’s the same person because of another thing in the game (halfway through my post,…

You’re welcome! I have a very small clue about the author, though I’m not sure how accurate it is: in…

Thanks! I’m not done with the game yet so I’m switching over to PET for the screenshots after.

That worked immediately, my .d64 and .tap did not. Thanks!

If the problem isn’t with the emulator, then it must be with the PRG file you intend to use. You…

That’s what I tried, but I still get the same result: https://i.imgur.com/2rBPnMj.png

On the recent versions of VICE, you have to force it by selecting in PREFERENCES > MACHINE > MODEL a…