Renga in Blue   Interactive fiction and the All the Adventures project

I’ve finished, but my “win” had hacking involved; it became a meta-solve where I was prodding at the source code trying to figure out what was wrong, essentially creating a new puzzle in the process.

The true 1982 experience!

(Also, my previous post is needed for context.)

Via World of Dragon.

My first step after last time you might think was a major one; after all, I had trouble lighting some driftwood to scare some wolves.

DIG BEACH yields matches, so I cheerfully took them over to the wolves with driftwood also in hand and tried LIGHT MATCHES and … still nothing. Nope. The game does not understand.

The game does understand LIGHT MATCH but in a different spot: near the dragon there’s a dark room right before the pit.

This means, technically speaking, you can be forewarned about the pit, but it’s faster to die than figure the secret out.

With the crossbow in hand, FIGHT DRAGON goes down a little better than last time (“YOU CAN’T GET TOO CLOSE”, the game said).

Unfortunately the treasure chest is locked, so this still doesn’t win the game. The wolves needed resolving, and I ended up just dumping the source code, which I have here (start Xroar with -lp-file nameoffile.txt to assign a printer target, then type LLIST to send the source code to the printer). The offending portion:

470 IF NO=16 AND OB(5)=1 AND (OB(4)=1 OR OB(7)=1) AND CP=6 THEN PRINT”THE WOLVES HAVE FLED!”:M(6,1)=7:OB(4)=0:R$(6)=”AT THE EDGE OF A PINE FOREST”:GOTO280
480 IF NO=5 AND OB(5)=1 AND CP=28 THEN PRINT “THERE’S A CROSSBOW ON A LEDGE AND A DEEP PIT TO THE EAST”:OL(1)=28:GOTO 280
490 IF NO=16 AND OB(5)=1 AND (OB(4)=1 OR OB(7)=1) AND CP=28 THEN PRINT”THERE’S A CROSSBOW ON A LEDGE AND A DEEP PIT TO THE EAST!”:OL(1)=28:OB(7)=0:GOTO 280
500 IF NO=16 AND OB(7)=0 AND OB(4)=0 THENPRINT”THERE’S NOTHING TO BURN”:GOTO 280
510 IF NO=16 AND OB(5)=1 AND (OB(7)=1 OR OB(4)=1) THEN PRINT”NOTHING HAPPENED”:GOTO 280

To goal is to get line 470 to trigger. Let’s isolate the conditions:

470 IF NO=16 AND OB(5)=1 AND (OB(4)=1 OR OB(7)=1) AND CP=6

The objects are numbered in order starting from 1: the crossbow is OB(1), sword is OB(2), a key you’ll see in a moment is OB(3), the driftwood is OB(4), and the box of matches is OB(5). OB(5)=1 means the box of matches is in the player’s inventory. The line only triggers if you’re holding the matches.

470 IF NO=16 AND OB(5)=1 AND (OB(4)=1 OR OB(7)=1) AND CP=6

OB(4) is the driftwood or OB(7) are some pinecones you only find after scaring the wolves (strange logic there), so the driftwood also needs to be held for the line to trigger.

470 IF NO=16 AND OB(5)=1 AND (OB(4)=1 OR OB(7)=1) AND CP=6

CP is the character’s location (“character place”); CP = 1 is the room EMPTY, CP = 2 is the beach, 3 is a cove, 4 is the first pirate, 5 is the cave they’re guarding, and 6 is the forest. The source after also shows the effects of going north, south, east, and west; 88 means the player is stopped by an obstacle. From the pine forest, the player can normally go north, but they are stopped by the wolves.

1120 DATA EMPTY,0,0,0,0
1130 DATA ON A BEACH,9,0,3,6
1140 DATA IN A SMALL COVE,0,0,4,2
1150 DATA AT THE ENTRANCE TO A CAVE GUARDED BY AN EVIL LOOKING PIRATE!,0,0,88,3
1160 DATA IN A CAVE WITH WRITINGON THE WALL,0,0,0,4
1170 DATA AT THE EDGE OF A PINE FOREST.A PACK OF WOLVES GUARDS THE ENTRANCE,88,0,2,0

On to the last condition:

470 IF NO=16 AND OB(5)=1 AND (OB(4)=1 OR OB(7)=1) AND CP=6

NO is the noun object. This baffled me for a bit; lines 480 and 490 both are “you found the crossbow” triggers, where the noun can be number 5 or number 16 and get the same effect. 5 is the matches, and 16 is…

…the word FIRE. Argh!

So to summarize, you need, upon typing LIGHT as a verb: to be holding the matches, to be holding the driftwood, to be in the pine forest, and to use the noun FIRE. LIGHT MATCH works in the other place because the author anticipated this is a much (much) more normal thing to type than LIGHT FIRE, which requires arbitrarily realizing the noun that previously didn’t exist in the game should be the target.

The wolves are still shown in the room, but they’ve also fled.

After THE WOLVES HAVE FLED! the north exit allows the player in:

The sign indicates you should try going NORTH repeatedly and eventually you’ll get somewhere new: a hut with a key.

This is the very key needed to unlock the treasure.

With most of these games there’s typically some sort of hints and/or a map up at CASA or elsewhere; here I was on my own (it got added to CASA by Strident but with no walkthrough or map). Of course, most people in 1982 were on their own! This is why there were letters to send in to companies, or help columns, or hint phone lines, or authors begging people not to call their phone. Without that, players had to pry at the source code like I did so it was more of an essential part of the 1982-experience than I sometimes get across with these write-ups.

Via the Internet Archive.

Coming next: Roll up! Roll up!

Not to be confused with the other Island Adventure game published in 1982.

With Vince Apps having many books to his name (admittedly very similar books) it feels strange that his company Apex Trading is still somewhat mysterious.

Via the Internet Archive.

The games have been

Devil’s Island

Forbidden City

Pharoah’s Curse

Haunted House (the oddball of the set, more of a strategy game)

where the main games all feature a lot of “deadly exits” where there isn’t necessarily a way to find out about them until hitting the end screen. Island Adventure is no different and follows the same structure as the other games so I’m fairly certain Vince Apps is the author (~99.5%)…

It has the exact same variable definition as his other games, for instance.

…but I also think this might be an early game of his, if for nothing else the fact the game requires the whole text TAKE INVENTORY in order to show what the player is holding (as oppose to just typing INV or INVENTORY).

From the World of Dragon

A January 1983 ad for the company mentions the games Haunted House, Treasure Quest, Forbidden City, and Pharoah’s Curse in order. I have never found an ad that mentions Island Adventure; perhaps it only showed up in the Apex Trading catalog because the author was sheepish about it (again, I think it’s an early game).

You’ll notice I haven’t linked to a playthrough of Treasure Quest. We don’t have this game. We do have a game called Treasure Quest that’s on TI-99…

…but it doesn’t mention Apex Trading and is undated, attributed to a Jim Beck of Canada where he asks players to please send $5 to his address if they like the game.

Not Brighton, England.

It’s an easy name clash to have and I suspect there’s likely just a lost Apex Trading game out there.

With that out of the way, let’s hit the island, where we are hunting for a “FABULOUS TREASURE”.

Things kick off on a beach with a driftwood, which isn’t quite as common as being in a forest with trees, but it feels up there. When you EXAMINE it is described as “very dry”. (This suggests you can light it on fire, but I haven’t been able to do, which is the main catch to why I haven’t beaten the game yet.)

Don’t worry, the forest is nearby, just to the west.

Incidentally, EXAMINE WOLVES says there are too many to fight, and FIGHT WOLVES doesn’t go well.

Laying out the rest of the map as I have it so far:

To the east of the start is a pirate guarding a cave (hanging near a dead rat and an old boot, for some reason)…

…to the north there’s a cave with too many pirates (probably not meant to be entered)…

…and a pirate who needs a password (which I’ll get a little later).

I was hard stuck for a bit and had to make my verb list early.

I was somewhat suspicious of one room which had a “FLAT BLANK FACE OF A CLIFF” but only a bush. A bush is not a normal “secret mechanism” but I ran through my verb list anyway and got a secret opening.

This leads to a orthogonally-arranged set of caves with one pitfall, and two rooms with a item you can use PULL on. One is safe, the other is death. Death first:

The graffiti reads — keeping in mind the word wrap — LLPU ROF TTSNIAN ETCIUNORTDS. This anagrams to PULL FOR INSTANT DESTRUCTION although it’s faster to just test things out.

The other pull-moment has a slight cryptogram, although again it is easier to yank first and solve later.

Move the letters backwards by one to get PULL FOR WEAPON.

The sword has a serial number of 2119562112 61518 16918120519 where the numbers go with the pattern 1 = A, 2 = B, etc. to translate to USEFUL FOR PIRATES. Given the pirate alone at the cave with the dead rat for some reason is described as needing a weapon to be defeated, this seems redundant.

The “NUT CRUNCHIES” mentioned in the cave are the password to get by the other pirate. This leads to a small area with an empty bucket, another deadly fall, and a dragon.

Here I’d like to try lighting the driftwood, but nothing I’ve tried has worked. I especially am interested because at the WOLVES the command HELP gives the information YOU’LL HAVE TO BE BRIGHT TO GET RID OF THESE! Just to summarize, I have:

some sand, a bucket, some driftwood, a rock, a stone, a dead rat, an old boot, a sword, a flask of water (poison)

The stone and rock are not given any description (I might suspect flint and steel, but they’ve been highly resistant to any verbs working on them at all). The source code is BASIC so checking for a solve should be easy but there’s enough to play around with (despite the murderously limited parser) I’m hanging on for a bit longer. In this kind of circumstance it doesn’t feel like an adventure game as much as a puzzle game where I’m in a battle with the machine to find the next command it will understand.