I want to play this one because I’m very intrigued by the idea of a game written in QBasic, but of course my computer is giving me a warning when I try to run it. I assume the Comp checks .exes before accepting them as entries, just want to be sure though before pushing through all the warnings and running the program. Thanks!
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I haven’t played it yet, but I have run two games by the same author which use the same engine, and never had any problems, so I’d be shocked if there are issues with this one.
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I played it! No virus yet. If you like old-school aesthetic it’s an excellent example of it: fantasy and science mishmash, sprawling map with sparse room descriptions; consistent internal logic; machines and code-based puzzles; relatively thin story. It has a weird feature (present in all this author’s games) where objects in containers aren’t ‘in scope’, so you have to type GET ALL FROM ____ first (which the author has short-cutted as F1).
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I’m not sure this is true, and I would not assume this. I found viruses back in 2008. The comp might be checking for them now, but I don’t know.
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Played it for 5 hours a few days ago. A rainbow-coloured bolt of pure energy buzzed from the back of my computer up the stairs once I solved the final puzzle. I can’t get into my bedroom without cracking a magical combination lock ever since.
Otherwise no problems at all.
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Oh! Now I’m really excited to play it!
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Thanks all! Just fired it up and everything seems to be working well. Gonna give it a go soon.
On a related note, anyone have any map making tools that they’ve used before when playing or writing IF?
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I can absolutely guarantee that this file is virus-free. It’s a standard response by Windows for anything downloaded as a .zip file.
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My last game, MY LAST GAME I hit what appears to be an extremely early bug in Alchemist. Did anyone figure a way around this? I don’t want to end on a terse “Unplayable” review, particularly since it appears to be a large one! (emailed author also)
Also particularly since I went to the trouble to power up a Windows box to do it! The bug is this:
In the library, on the ladder I examine a shelf.
'>LOOK AT SHELF
On the shelf you see a small box.
'>GET BOX
You don’t see any small box here.
No other verbs (like X, OPEN, SMASH, etc) find it either. I checked the hints and it appears I should be able to. Any advice/guidance? How did you guys get around this?
It’s a quirk of the author’s custom-parser games (which are really good and well implemented), that you always have to GET <object> FROM <supporter/container>.
The author thankfully streamlined that with the F1 key being a shortcut for GET ALL FROM IT. So the easy way is to always EXAMINE SHELF (etc.), which sets the “IT” pronoun, and then just do F1.
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You first need to GET BOX FROM SHELF, per the help text - it’s an idiosyncrasy of this custom parser. Fortunately it’s quite robust otherwise and there’s no carrying limit!
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Thanks for the help guys. I am totally the “yeah yeah yeah I got it” guy of reading directions. That table run is SO CLOSE.
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