Renga in Blue   Interactive fiction and the All the Adventures project

(My previous posts on Marooned are needed for context.)

I have finished the game, using the time-old technique known as “reading the source code”. I am fairly sure I would have made zero progress otherwise. This just gets absurd, and not due to bugs.

I’m not going to sequence in order of how I “solved” things or in narrative order, but rather from most to least reasonable.

Money from under the big W.

Let’s start with the treasure under the trees I couldn’t get to. As I suspected, it was a straight parser issue.

Things that don’t work: DIG, DIG TREES, DIG UNDER, DIG BETWEEN, GO TREES, DIG W, FIND SPOT, FOLLOW MAP, DIG SPOT, DIG TREASURE, FIND TREASURE, LOCATE TREASURE.

The game was fishing for GO W, and then DIG.

This was the treasure with no name originally, hence the fix calling it MYSTERY TREASURE. Now I know the context, there’s a fair chance this was intended as SUITCASE OF CASH.

Not terrible for a work in progress, but it still stuck me entirely. To grab from the source code, I used software called Scottdec:

141) 1 56 [GO W] /* MISSING STRING */
     ? PLAYER_IN (13 = *I’m on the west shore of a deserted island)
      ? CLEARED_BIT (22)
      -> 1 = PRINT(OK)
      -> 58 = SET_BIT (22)

This is much cleaner than trying to read off the database file directly, which has “1 56” on its own without the verb and noun linked to it. The “missing string” comment is supposed to go somewhere else, but it looks like something in the sequence of comments is out of sync.

Next up is the cave, with the tiny hole and the chisel.

I had additionally tried LOOK HOLE, FEEL HOLE, RUB HOLE, and pretty much anything on my standard verb list that seemed reasonable, but unfortunately, the game uses a brand-new verb I have never seen before in a text adventure: REACH HOLE.

This isn’t done yet! Despite the diamond being a treasure with asterisks, the treasure can be made into two treasures, via CUT DIAMOND / WITH CHISEL.

If you get greedy and try to get yet more treasures by repeating the process, the diamond gets ground into dust.

The really wacky thing here is that one is not necessarily more valuable than the other (except in a black-market sense, except we aren’t going to make it that far). No, it’s simply taking the fact that the game wants, abstractly, 7 treasures, and can only get all the way there by turning one distinct treasure into two.

There is incidentally a “clue” earlier about the diamond, but it is a complete red herring clue (in the Ferret sense of being actively misleading).

There is no boat. BOAT is listed as a noun so I wonder if the author considered this, changed his mind, and never got around to cleaning up the clue (work in progress!) as opposed to creating an intentional red herring.

Nearly to the end now, to the most absurd jump of all. I knew from the start of the Scottdec file what the goal was:

TGoal: store 7 treasures in room 24

Room 24 is a HUT, but we haven’t seen one, because you’re supposed to make it. With the leaves from the trees and the string from the dead body, you can (on the west side of the island, at the W) use the command MAKE HUT.

Now, you can GO HUT and deposit treasures. We’re one short, but after a little time here is a “quick flash of red light”; LOOK LIGHT reveals a RUBY. Amusingly, it doesn’t even need to be picked up, just revealed.

Oh, on the darkness: from the source code I found there is an overall light timer, so it wasn’t the flashlight turning off the sun, just the game being mean. It gets so dark at night you literally can’t see anything at all.

Like Strange Adventure, we are king of an island at the finale with no visible way off. Enjoy your two diamonds!

129) 52 35 [MAKE HUT] /* 2 DIAMONDS TO DUST */
     ? IS_AVAIL (65 = String)
     ? IS_AVAIL (45 = Leaves)
     ? PLAYER_IN (13 = *I’m on the west shore of a deserted island)
     ? IS_AVAIL (47 = Leaves)
     -> 1 = PRINT(OK)
     -> 73 = CONTINUE:
130) [Cont’d] /* NOTHING ELSE WORKS */
     -> 53 = MOVE_INTO_AR (63 = Hut)
     -> 59 = REMOVE (45 = Leaves)
     -> 59 = REMOVE (47 = Leaves)

If this was a published game, the hut puzzle would enter the all-time most absurd list; it gets an asterisk due to the work-in-progress nature of the game, since the author may have had some plan in mind before running out of space.

I do think, now, regarding “why this was unfinished”: it was a matter of running out of memory space. In order to fix the TAKE commands, the code went up to 19k, and that’s excluding items like the screwdriver and leaving in numerous other erroneous parts that the author clearly intended to get back to later. The game doesn’t seem large/impressive but Watt did try to write a list of features that started to extend past the game’s reach. SCREW is intended as a verb (unused); the BOAT is listed but doesn’t show; there’s ICE and a BOOK for some reason. I tried to cross-correlate with other Scott Adams games (in case one served as a template and these are “vestigial words” left in) but no dice: I’m pretty sure everything listed is something the author intended eventually. Hitting a wall like this from an original plan is bound to be frustrating for development and it is a miracle at all the game was left close to a state that could be played all the way through.

Coming up: Three Britgames, followed by games from Japan, New Zealand, and Denmark. This will be our first 1983 game in Japanese, and neither New Zealand nor Denmark have appeared on this blog before.

(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.

Anyway, here’s this skinny blonde kid, around 6 feet tall, wearing silver Ray-Ban sunglasses, driving a royal blue Formula Firebird that says he’s Kim Watt! Can you believe it? Oh well, he sounds like he does on the phone, so I guess it’s him.

— From Inside Super Utility Plus

This is written seven years after my previous post on Marooned.

I got a surprise in my comments when El Explorador de RPG mentioned he got the game — previously completely non-functional — into a fully playable form. It works all the way to the end, and I have a download here. (Run ADVENTUR, then pick 2 when prompted for which adventure to play.)

Via Ira Goldklang.

Kim Watt was a pre-med student in 1978 when he got his first computer, a TRS-80, and started to build a consulting service around it. He eventually dropped out of college altogether to focus on computers. He became well-known as a “genius” and never did outlines, simply writing directly from his brain to assembly language.

While he started in Michigan (and lived there in 1980, when today’s game was likely written), he later moved to Texas and took on a look to match:

To underscore his reputation as a renegade guide through the wilderness of home computing, Watt has wholeheartedly adopted the role of Software Cowboy. It is not unusual to find him at computer shows throughout the country, dressed in a ten-gallon hat and boots, signing autographs and counseling his followers. Though he is originally from Michigan, he looks the part. He has steel-blue eyes, disheveled hair, and a serpentine tattoo on each bicep. His demeanor is also on target; the strong, silent type, he is wary about discussing his work. His comments and answers are clipped and guarded, expressed in a quiet monotone.

Kim Watt is mostly remembered in the TRS-80 community for his utility software like Super Utility, used for salvaging data off broken diskettes or even copying protected disks (Super Utility itself was protected, and refused to copy itself; it was eventually pirated anyway). Watt later wrote a book disclosing the secrets of Super Utility for an eye-popping price tag of $500; those who would buy it (including MIT, the Navy, and Radio Shack employees) would discover the secrets of Watt’s methods. Although:

Watt points to a stack of computer printouts, almost two feet high, on a bookshelf on the other side of his office. “Couldn’t fit all of it into the book,” he says.

In his early days he worked on multiple games, mostly arcade action, and even had one published by Adventure International (Scott Adams’s company) in 1980.

The curious thing about this is that the same year, Watt also wrote his “Intercept” program which essentially broke the copy protection that Scott Adams started applying to his adventure games. This seems to be before his generalized copy-program, meaning Scott Adams games were essentially a testbed for the ideas that went into Super Utility. He gave a similar treatment to Microsoft Adventure (that is, the Microsoft port of Crowther/Woods for TRS-80).

From the Super Utility 4 manual.

As part of all this, Watt wrote a game in the Scott Adams database format, Marooned. Similarly: Pyramid of Doom was written by Alvin Files who simply figured out the format himself and sent the game over to Scott Adams. Allan Moluf described the file format in 1980 and used that as a basis for an editor program; this was expanded upon by Bruce Hanson and published commercially as The Adventure System the next year.

The game starts by asking for which adventure you want to play, 1-9 (this is standard for Scott Adams interpreters 7.8 through 8.5) but by typing in 10 we can start Marooned, which describes itself as adventure 10. Less glamorously, you can type 1, because it only is taking the first character. (Also, as I already mentioned, if you’re playing the fixed version, pick adventure 2.)

This is not a game damaged from a bad tape read, like Mystery House II; rather, this is a game that had development abandoned midstream, and one of the treasures you’re required to collect didn’t even get a name (the fixed version calls it a MYSTERY TREASURE, although I haven’t gotten to it yet). It is buggy far out of proportion to other games we’ve played, and El Explorador had to manually add the commands to pick particular objects up; in an effort to make minimal changes, only items that are needed to be taken are takeable.

Before getting to any treasures, our hero(ine) needs to get past their immediate dilemma, which is a crashing airplane.

Action starts in a very restrictive 3-room area, the place I was stuck at 7 years ago.

To the south is the “tail end” of the plane with a broken cable, knapsack and toolbox. The knapsack turns out to be a parachute, but you can’t pick it up, you can only WEAR it (and while taking inventory, it has no name, you just get “being worn” message by itself). The toolbox has a wrench, screwdriver, and cutters, but you can only take the cutters.

If he had finished debugging the game, I would guess the other two items would be takeable but remain as red herrings.

For some reason, you can PULL the cable, but only while holding the cutters (?) and this reveals a knob. TURN KNOB then reveals a secret door, and you can OPEN DOOR to find some *TOP SECRET PLANS*, the first treasure of the game.

To escape, the sequence is truly bizarre. Back in the center of the plane, you can LOOK AROUND to find a RING on the ceiling. (Not LOOK UP, which we have at least had a few times. LOOK AROUND is brand-new for this game.) Then — I assume some descriptions never got done — you can CONNECT CORD/TO RING resulting in “ripcord attached to ring”. OPEN DOOR will then jerk you out of the plane; if you want to, you can DROP PARACHUTE before leaving and somehow survive anyway as long as you’ve done the ripcord action.

Neither the geese nor plane have a description, because what is supposed to happen (assuming you still have the parachute) is that this is a “timed view” room which doesn’t allow any commands, but just sends the player down to the ocean.

I was stuck for a while until El Explorador mentioned I needed another item for swimming, and I realized that for some reason TAKE SEATS back on the plane in the starting room yields the player a floatation device. (No description when looking at the seats — again, I assume the author bailed before even getting to that part. Remember, taking items doesn’t even work at all, this had to be fixed.)

With the floatation device, you can bail on the parachute and then SWIM multiple times to reach a shore.

This leads to a progression through a Forest, where every directions loops; you can climb up a tree, then LOOK AROUND (that new command again) to see a VINE, and SWING VINE reaching another forest, with one more SWING VINE reaching a new beach (I assume on the other side of the same island).

From the new beach you can dive into the ocean again and SWIM until reaching a slightly more elaborate island, and this is where I am stuck. My map so far:

The west shore has a coconut tree (top: coconuts + leaves) and palm tree (top: dates + leaves) and in both cases only the leaves are takeable, and you can take both of them, meaning Leaves. and Leaves. are both in inventory.

This doesn’t mean the coconuts and dates are useless, but whatever happens to them has to happen on the spot.

To the south is are branches to a Jungle and Cave. The Cave is dark and I have no light source, while the jungle has overgrown brush (which suggests it can be whacked away) and quicksand (which is a one way trip and quite possibly another red herring).

To the east is a lake and going in there is some floating jelly which is described as “awfully slimy” and trying to get it is fatal.

Finally, to the north is a dead man. Trained by other painful games, I used FRISK to find a STRING and used MOVE to reveal a BAG. While the bag cannot be taken, EMPTY BAG reveals some *PEARLS*.

Given the number of other issues with the code (it isn’t even a “private game” as I usually have defined it but a “work in progress”) I would normally follow this with code diving or even assuming the game can’t be finished, be El Explorador has now played all the way to the end, so I’m going to treat it as a “real game” for a bit longer and try to solve puzzles as if most of the item descriptions weren’t missing.

If anyone else wants to join in, perhaps they can have the glory of being the first person (outside El Explorador who had to modify the code) to finish the game, ever. This includes the original author! When I finish I’ll dive down into the technical layer and try to diagnose why this happened.