Renga in Blue   Interactive fiction and the All the Adventures project

I have finished the game, and my previous posts are needed for context.

The general theme was room exits being ornery to find. That, and treasure. A lot of treasure.

From Retroarchive.

I did not need to bop open the North Star version of the game after all, although I did hit a

I/O ERROR
BREAK IN 0

for no apparent reason once. My biggest breakthrough sounds kind of silly written out, so let me just give a map first. Yellow rooms are new.

Yes, I was foiled by diagonal directions. I had been testing them tediously nearly everywhere (YOU CANNOT MOVE IN THAT DIRECTION, YOU CANNOT MOVE IN THAT DIRECTION, YOU CANNOT MOVE IN THAT DIRECTION, etc.) but had apparently forgot to check in the West Upstairs Hall, one of the only rooms that has any! They’re technically in the room description, but given the presence of zero diagonals briefly, I hope you understand my issue.

THIS IS THE WEST ENO OF THE UPSTAIRS HALL. THERE ARE EXITS LEADING IN ALL DIRECTIONS.

After finding this I also noticed there’s exits up and down, again technically included in “all directions” more often not counted with that sort of statement.

The diagonal rooms technically speaking don’t yield much other than SILKS (just a treasure) and an IVORY CARVING (which we’ll need later). There’s an amusing music room scene which I think does nothing but might be a Cranston Manor reference.

Mr. Strong had almost certainly played Cranston Manor: it was the most famous of the North Star games, having the Apple II version published by Sierra. (This fact was later advertised, trying for piggyback marketing.)

Leading down goes to inside a (non-working) furnace in the basement with a GOLD EGG. I previously did not know the furnace was enterable; the EGG is just like the vase in Adventure where it breaks upon dropping (and you can’t LEAVE it to somehow indicate “set down more gently” like with the UK game Zodiac). I found the proper item essentially by luck, as I had all my stuff (including treasures, warehouse trips came later) in one room including the sawdust box so setting down the egg became safe by default.

Before going up, I should point to the other yellow spot on the upper floor: at the master bedroom, with the suspicious PORTRAIT, it turned out I was supposed to refer to it as a PICTURE, and TURN PICTURE. Just wonderful, game.

The skeleton now unlocks (with INSERT SKELETON) the door back at the well. It does not lead to a new area at all, but rather directly to the warehouse holding treasures.

Since going up the well takes the player almost directly to the warehouse already, having this extra path was puzzling. There’s a reason but we won’t get to it until nearly the end.

Warping back to that UPSTAIRS HALL and going up leads to a rooftop with an observation tower holding KEYS. The keys unlock the trunk back at the garage I was having trouble with (getting STAMPS, just a treasure; the keys aren’t useful for anything else).

You might notice the weathervane being described as to the west. This baffled me for a long time, and for compactness I’ll give the resolution now: the weathervane is to the east rather than the west. (I did say “exits being ornery to find” was the theme!) I will also confess I did not “solve” this issue but rather found this on the CASA walkthrough; I suspected high bug shenanigans.

Turning the weathervane is strongly clued…

…and that drops you in a secret corner of the hedge maze with a dagger.

With the dagger it’s possible to deal with the mysterious STAB RATS message. The problem is the rats aren’t in the same room as the plaque.

One of the items I had been frustrated by was a SACK which stubbornly refused to be opened or have anything else done with it. The sack turns out to be a passive item; if you’re holding it, you can pick up the rats, will end up inside the sack. This lets the player safely cart the rats over to the plaque and finally STAB RATS.

Typo aficionados may appreciate “SQUEEL FROM THE PAIN”.

I’ll show off the destination in a moment, because there’s another way in, involving something I already tried: swimming at the lake.

(The marked-corner spots are dark, which will be important.)

Note that swimming in the lake ends up hitting one of the few bits of world-model awareness in the game’s coding: getting the flashlight wet will fry it. You need to leave the flashlight behind, and you can then nab the DUBLOONS, a SPYGLASS (a treasure, but also useful for something) and a SWORD (not useful at all, even for stabbing rats).

From the map layout, the dubloons/spyglass area can only be reached via swimming. However, to see in the dark rooms, you need to bring the light, which requires taking the rat passage. (It’s possible to walk in the dark without dying for at least a few steps, so it’s fine to swim in first; this also gives a hint that there is, in fact, a secret passage at the STAR BATS room.)

The important dark room is a self-described “RIDDLE ROOM”. You are requested to drop “SOMETHING THAT IS PURE (OR ALMOST).”

This seemed to me like it had to be a treasure, but which one is “pure”? I got the right item first try but I’m not sure if I got lucky or not: I was thinking about the common advertisements (up to at least the 80s) for Ivory Soap.

Source.

The “OR ALMOST” in particular made me think of the weirdly exact “99 44/100” tagline for the soap.

You can normally just leave through the south, but the EMERALD can’t be taken that way; however, putting it in the opening sends it through an “ELEVATOR” which is clearly the dumbwaiter…

YOU PLACE THE EMERALD IN THE OPENING. THE MECHANISM WHIRRS AND THE STONE IS LIFTED AS IF IT WERE ON AN ELEVATOR.

…so all my struggle with that got resolved by simply using the dumbwaiter from the other side. (That is, the emerald can now be picked up at the Servant’s Quarters.)

That’s all of that section. The next section I was missing is almost entirely on me.

THE GARAGE HAS LONG SINCE BEEN EMPTY BUT THERE IS LAOOER LEADING UP

Almost entirely: there’s an undescribed exit to the west.

sigh The Nemesis returns.

YOU ARE ON A NARROW PATH

>NW

THIS IS WHERE THE WATER FOR THE ESTATE COMES FROM. THE PUMP NO LONGER WORKS BUT THE FLOOR IS WET FROM A SMALL TRICKLE OF WATER SEEPING FROM THE SEAL. NEXT TO THE PIPE IS A HOLE WHICH LEADS INTO DARKNESS. IT LOOKS LARGE ENOUGH TO SQUEEZE THROUGH BUT…

This area is relatively straightforward, except for:

a.) There’s some RUBIES that you need to be holding the SACK again to get.

b.) There’s a “doorless room” with a LAMP; you need to RUB LAMP to get out, which is almost reflex now for me and early 80s games.

c.) There’s a cufflink in a LOST CAVERN where leaving the room gets the message that something seems to be missing (the cufflink). This puzzle is meant to essentially waste your time since there’s nothing you can do (no elevator chutes or whatnot) and it turns out the cufflink teleported back to the WAREHOUSE where it belongs.

I will say there was a sense of atmosphere built up here; even though it wasn’t really a secret area, the fact it came up late in my gameplay gave the section an extra dose of mysticism.

Oh, and d.) I finally get to use the shovel where DIG??? was the response everywhere. At least the description telegraphs the puzzle.

From here I was really stuck and did a bunch of treasure-transfers back to the warehouse. It started getting fairly stuffed.

It doesn’t even all fit on the screen.

One item that seemed like it might be helpful is the GOLD SPYGLASS from the island. I tried GAZE SPYGLASS, LOOK THROUGH SPYGLASS (not a three-word parser but the game might have decided to be cruel here), USE SPYGLASS, etc., always getting the response

GAZE SPYGLASS???

This is a case which shows why bespoke actions at locations are a super-bad idea. The messages imply that all the syntaxes are wrong; even if you have awareness this might not be the case (as I did by this point) you essentially need to try every plausible syntax in every plausible room. The right room makes sense but it’s very easy given the circumstances to mess up.

I can easily see why from the perspective of Dennis Strong there wouldn’t be a problem here: the text does signal the observation tower is a helpful place for the spyglass. However, this is certainly an abductive reasoning moment and there are far too many circumstances where a player won’t find this because of the extra parser hurdle. (Quick definition recap: with deduction, we have fully known rules and circumstances that when together force some kind of conclusion. With abduction, we have circumstances where we have to infer the chain of events, but it’s a probabilistic guess.)

With the sighting from the spyglass, you can now go north from the “BREEZEWAY” which isn’t described as anything other than being a breezeway.

For the start of this final section, I hit a horrid moment where I thought I needed to restart the game.

Going down the hole causes you to break your neck, in a message reminiscent of trying to jump into the well at the start of the game. At the well, I had used a rope to go down (TIE ROPE) and it formed an odd second shortcut to the warehouse (since the bottom of the well had the skeleton-door leading straight to the warehouse). You’re supposed to use the rope here. I went back to the well to get the rope back:

UNTIE ROPE

UNTIE ROPE???

GET ROPE

THERE ISN’T ANY ROPE YOU CAN GET

??? Really? Fortunately, knowing how bad the parser is, I made a few more attempts, and hit upon TAKE ROPE.

Just to be clear, even though get and take are normally treated as synonyms, for the one specific case of getting the rope back, TAKE works and GET does not. Parsers keep finding new ways to disappoint me.

With the rope and hand we can get into the cave:

Just a bit farther is an unsteady subterranean lake.

The choice above (with the dam about to burst) is once again puzzling. I tried the most obvious thing of directions first (outrunning the event, maybe) but the game told me east and west weren’t exits. I kept going and found that NORTH brings you back to the lake but also floods the tunnel, while SOUTH somehow stops the flood.

YOU MANAGE TO SUCCESSFULLY STOP THE WATER FLOW BEFORE IT FILLED THE CAVERN.

Your guess is as good as mine. All these leads to a dead end and a PLATINUM PLATYPUS.

Just to be clear, I’m emphasizing the parts of the game I had trouble, but this isn’t generally intended as difficult (I think the RATS/BAG thing is the hardest, especially with the poison fake-out). When this was simply a game about exploring new areas and scooping up treasures it felt satisfying, and it is even possible some of the friction I suffered helped make the simple moments come across better.

That is, I enjoyed scooping up the platypus even though I still don’t know what was going on with the dam puzzle.

That’s everything, I think? (There are so many treasures I might have missed mentioning one. I’ve covered all the puzzles, at least.) Once you drop the last treasure in the overfilling warehouse the endgame immediately starts.

This is a two-room endgame, just like Crowther/Woods Adventure.

It also has nearly the exact same solution as Adventure, albeit much more fairly clued. Not only do the room descriptions suggest the keg goes to the rubble, but there was a book long back that made the comment to BLAST those pirates.

I do not care about exploration percentage maximum, although it was good to signal how many chunks of map I was missing.

This could have been a fun straightforward exploration game, but it was undercut by technical issues. Here is another case where I wish the author had a modern copy of Inform (or hell, even AGT) because so many of wobbly parts would be resolved.

There was some imagination and attempt and building a world full of shortcuts and niches. One room I skipped mentioning gives an idea:

FROM HERE YOU CAN SEE THE WESTERN PART OF THE ESTATE. YOU ARE SURROUNDED BY A THICK FOREST OF WALNUT AND OAK TREES. TO THE NORTH YOU CAN SEE A SMALL STREAM WINDING THROUGH THE FOREST. TO THE WEST ATOP A SMALL KNOLL IS SHALL BUILDING FROM WHICH A PIPE EXTENDS TO THE HOUSE. YOU CAN BARELY SEE SOMETHING TO THE NORTH BUT YOUR VIEW IS MOSTLY BLOCKED BY SOME LARGE TREES.

Sure, this isn’t artistic at a prose level, but — this indicates the garage-exit I had missed, and also the author really was thinking about the big-picture view of how everything is laid out. The extra area to the north is hinted at here (and can only be seen by the spyglass on the roof — it really would be a good puzzle if the parser didn’t keep screaming at the player). We’ve had authors that haven’t taken nearly that much care and seem to be just laying down one room after another. I hope even if Zodiac Castle turns out to be a worse game somehow the author keeps up his sense of architecture.

Coming up: a game for a computer with only a six-character display.

(Continued from my previous post.)

I have more of the map, but I feel like I’m getting trapped by parser nonsense.

Via the magazine Portable Companion, as Dynacomp sold Osborne software.

Let’s start in the area we’ve already seen, at the room just east of the beginning:

This is the Main Entrance to the estate, although the gate is rusted shut. Through the gate is visible a large low building. South is the Gate House, north, a path runs along the wall, and east is a gravel path.

I was puzzled by this room description at first as it seemed to imply (via it being a Main Entrance) that we entered through that route, so why would it be rusted shut? Maybe we parachuted in, like Avventura nel castello.

A bit across the estate there’s a crowbar, and if you tote the crowbar back, you can PRY GATE to bust it open and reveal a WAREHOUSE. This is where the treasures go.

Let me give my meta-map before going any farther (this gives how things are connected in a general way):

I’m likely missing a fair chunk; the most likely candidate for missing geography is the strange door at the bottom of the well I gave a screenshot of last time. Just as an encore:

The DIARY found early unlocks with a KEY laying around the estate, and it contains the hint that THE SKELETON IS YOUR KEY TO SUCCESS. I don’t know if that means I’m supposed to make some horrid pun to open the door or if I just use something unusual like a bone; since I haven’t found any bones I can’t test that yet.

On to the main house proper:

It’s essentially one long central hall with some side rooms. To the north there’s a study with a map (“25L 40R 88L”) that we’ll use in a moment, and a book which I haven’t puzzled out yet (other than it does count as a treasure).

THIS BOOK APPEARS TO HAVE BEEN THE JOURNAL OF ONE OF THE ANCESTORS OF THE FAMILY. IT DESCRIBES BEING ROBBED BY PIRATES WHILE ON A SHIP FROM ENGLAND. THE MAN WAS OBVIOUSLY UNHAPPY SINCE THE LAST WORDS ARE ‘BLAST THE PIRATES’.

To the south are a candlestick (treasure) and a truly confusing room with a plaque I shared last time.

The plaque says “STAR BATS”.

Thinking in terms of a mirror, this could be written as STAB RATS. Two rooms to the east there are, in fact, bats, and STAB does nothing as far as the parser goes, although KILL works as long as you are holding the poison from the groundskeeper’s house.

In some games this would mean simple victory, but seems to be absolutely no positive effect to killing the rats. I suspect I’m chasing down a blind alley somehow.

Oh, and speaking of parser issues, there’s a Servant’s Quarters with a DUMBWAITER that is resistant to any of my efforts of having it do anything at all. If there’s another giant set of rooms it probably is related to that.

On to the upstairs (map above)! There’s a gold watch, lighter, and pair of earrings just lying about. The earrings are in a MASTER BEDROOM with a truly suspicious portrait which is again resistant to my parser-shenanigans.

Notice how the last parser message is different. I wonder if this is a “chink in the armor” so to speak; occasionally in what is mostly a bespoke parser I can still work out things like “which nouns are useful to try mucking about with” via odd phenomena like this.

The upstairs also contains a room with a roll-top desk (no idea if it can be referred to) and a VAULT. The vault clearly was intended to have the code from the MAP downstairs applied, but I was truly baffled trying a set of commands like TURN DIAL, OPEN VAULT, ENTER CODE, etc. Rob and Roger in the comments let me know that 25L 40R 88L needed to be typed flat out, exactly like that.

Inside is some CURRENCY, and that’s that. (You’re forced to leave behind the MAP, but it seems to have no value.)

Finally, let’s visit the garage and docks:

Not much to speak of yet. There’s that crowbar used on the main gate, a box of sawdust, and a locked trunk I have been unable to open; there’s oars lying around and a boat you can ROW. Typing ROW BOAT, weirdly, leads you over to behind the caretaker’s house where there’s a treasure (a STATUETTE). I’m unclear the geography here, but given you’re supposed to be moving along a stream, I don’t think it’s meant to be a literal wrap-around map like The Hermit’s Secret.

Instead of jumping in the boat you can go west over to a pier, where there’s a lake and an island visible to the southwest. However, jumping the lake and typing SWIM just takes you back to the docks. The boat won’t move and I haven’t been able to steer it towards the island. I suspect this represents a third set of rooms I haven’t seen yet.

That weird “MOVE” response again.

Maybe I’ll switch back to North Star for a while; even if it is buggier than the Apple II version, it might be buggy in different ways that will reveal potential puzzle solutions. Maybe just seeing the text without ALL CAPS will trigger my brain to move in new ways.

This is a continuation of the historical story from Uncle Harry’s Will and Whembly Castle, as today’s game was again sold by Dynacomp for North Star computers, but this time with a different author: Dennis N. Strong. Mr. Strong had two games (this one and Zodiac Castle) show up in the Dynacomp Winter Catalog as “late additions”.

Via WorthPoint.

As the disk above implies, there is an important difference between the Strong games and the Turner games: Strong’s were ported to Apple II.

Through the investigations of Roger Durrant, we know the Apple II version of Windmere Estate is preferred (the North Star is glitchier, and the Apple II has some extra ASCII graphics). The reverse is true of Zodiac Castle as the Apple II version of Zodiac Castle has a fatal bug.

This is a straightforward explore-the-place-and-nab-the-treasures adventure; here, they’re going to a WAREHOUSE.

The most notable early difference is that the Apple II port notes

THERE ARE OCCASIONALLY ‘HINTS’ AVAILABLE AT THE COMPLEX SPOTS.

which is not mentioned in the North Star version! HINT is a recognized command on North Star but it crashes the game.

Oddly, the Dynacomp catalog’s “ad” has instructions with more detail than either version. Specifically:

• Lights turn on with LIGHT ON or ON; given the light device is a FLASHLIGHT, this is rather difficult to discover (otherwise why not FLASHLIGHT ON?).
• There is a strong emphasis on hidden rooms.
• The inventory limit is seven unless you can place an item inside another item.
• There are deadly vampire bats although there’s “one sure repellant available somewhere out there.”

For the very first part of the game I’m going to give some clips from the North Star version before switching over entirely to Apple II.

You are in the Rose Garden.

You are standing in the middle of a Rose Garden. To the north a path leads to a small Building. To the south you can see a tall hedge row. A path leads east toward the Main Gate, and west is an old Well.

E

You are At the Main Gate

This is the Main Entrance to the estate, although the gate is rusted shut. Through the gate is visible a large low building South is the Gate House, north, a path runs along the wall, and east is a gravel path.

S

You are in the Gate House.

This is the Gate House for the old Estate. It has not been used for quite some time, and there is dust everywhere. The only remaining furniture is a small cabinet on the floor.

There is a locked leather DIARY here!

Opening the cabinet reveals the FLASHLIGHT where I tortured myself for a while trying to activate it before discovering the information from the catalog (again, despite it be referred to as a FLASHLIGHT in text, the parser wants it used by typing LIGHT ON; light is being used as a verb, there’s no way to light the flashlight by using flashlight as a noun).

Heading back to the start and going north:

You are standing in front of what appears to be the groundskeepers house. There are paths west, south, and east. There is a door and one window visible on the ground floor.

N
It is dark – You cannot see anything!

ON
That’s much better!

A devilish looking Vampire BAT swoops down and blocks the way

You are inside Groundskeeper’s House.

This building obviously has not been used recently, judging by the dust. There is a cupboard standing open in the corner.

There is a box of rat POISON here!
There is an old SHOVEL here!
There is a coil of ROPE here!
There is a Vampire BAT here!

Unfortunately, at trying to get something the bat swoops down and kills you. You need to get the “repellent” first before the items.

Well, most of them. The ROPE is not placed here in the Apple II version of the game, but rather past a hedge maze leading to the main house!

Finding this difference (and knowing the Apple II version has working hints) I decided to swap over entirely.

The vampire “repellent” was rather quick to find: you can go up past the bat room.

YOU ARE IN THE LIVING QUARTERS.
THIS IS WHERE THE GROUNDSKEEPER USE TO LIVE. IN THE ROOM ARE A BED, A DRESSER AND A CLOSET.

>OPEN DRESSER

YOU SEE A SMALL JEWELED ‘CROSS’

Entering a dark room without the cross results in the back coming back, so I expect the cross will be carried the entire game, meaning two of the seven allocated inventory slots have already been eaten up. Not great for a treasure collection game!

Fortunately, just in the closet (OPEN CLOSET) there is some relief, as in addition to a gold key it contains a sack; this presumably is what the catalog-instructions was referring to. Unfortunately, I have no idea what command makes the sack work!

I referenced a hedge maze already, so let me give the initial part of the game:

I used Dungeon Scrawl for the hedge maze.

Getting down to the bottom of the well requires simply TIE ROPE (not ATTACH ROPE as the Dynacomp catalog implies)

YOU DEFTLY TIE THE ROPE TO THE CRANK SPINDLE ANO TOSS THE OTHER ENO DOWN THE WELL.

This leads to a waterless “well bottom” which also turns out to be underneath the house. It connects with a “wine cellar” and “furnace” and some stairs leading up to the main building.

I have yet to get in the door with the strangely shaped keyhole.

Everything past this is very open so this is a good place to pause. I suspect the “hidden rooms” are going to cause the biggest pain. This is especially true because the parser is quite non-cooperative. Nearly every command that is not understood repeats the command back with question marks. So if you want to MOVE BED to check for something underneath, it responds with MOVE BED??? and no information is conveyed about if the verb is understood, or if the noun is something even meant to be referred to.

There easily could be a secret here, but nothing I’ve tried has worked. The plaque says “STAR BATS”.

I’ll give the full tour next time.