How do you pronounce XYZZY?

I say something a bit like /kzizi/.

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My favourite response to XYZZY was in the Myothian Falcon:

It suddenly struck Vic that he had forgotten his sister Xanthe’s birthday. “Sorry Xyzzy,” he muttered under his breathe, “I’ll do better next year.” He might even have the cash to buy her present, he thought ruefully.

It’s been over 12 years since I played the game and I still remember it.

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I’m sure I put this in the previous XYZZY-pronunciation thread too, but here it is again:

King of Walkthroughs @David_Welbourn’s collection of XYZZY responses

XYZZY Responses (plover.net)

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Since we’re talking about this, might as well say that XYZZY is a special weapon in Welcome to Hellwaters. What it actually does, it’s still a secret for now.

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Might as well spill the beans on my XYZZY in my One King game. Saw only one player try it in the online transcripts I gathered, and no follow up…

At the wrong place:

Across the mists of time, these words come to you: "This is not the place."

At the wrong time:

Across the mists of time, these words come to you: "This is not the time.
That moment has passed."

At the right place and the right time:

You feel your eardrums pop as the pressure in the throne room changes.
Across the mists of time, these words come to you:
"The veil of causality has been torn. Now go and fulfill your destiny!"
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How’s the progress on the Twine version of One King? Are you planning to showcase it at Spring Thing?

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My main objection as to why choice-games are not proper IF is that the player can’t type XYZZY at a whim.

Now if every Twine/Ink/Moiki/… had a permanent link at the bottom for [XYZZY], I might reconsider.

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Nearly done, now making small tweaks like relocating the conspicuous UNDO button at the bottom of every screen. I got the XYZZY thing already covered (or at least the functionality of the XYZZY command in the original parser game.)

I should thank @VictorGijsbers for the original trigger to implement it :sunglasses:

I will enter it in Spring Thing back garden.

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Loose Ends has a single moment in the game where you enter text freely instead of picking from a list of choices: when you select your character’s name at the beginning. If you put in XYZZY, it unlocks “second time mode”, which adds a “bypass” option to any scenes where your choices don’t directly affect the finale. For instance, the crime scene looks the same every time, so if you bypass it, it just puts the evidence in your inventory without needing to search for it. The epilogue tells you about this explicitly.

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I started out saying the latter, but have gradually transitioned to the former.

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A puff of orange smoke appears and a bearded wizard emerges. He waves his wand, but nothing happens. He swears and curses, “How am I supposed to do magic when you can’t even pronounce the magic word properly?” With that, he waves his arms and disappears again, along with the orange smoke.

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Seriously. That’s why you spell it out. It’s the unpronounceable action. Bad things happen.

You’re so right. We don’t do anything sneaky like hidden links to debug menus or have text entry fields that do special things if the player knows what to type. That’d be way too complicated. :face_with_peeking_eye:

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Tried XYZZY in Creative Cooking ? :wink: not exactly teleported back in time, but references past time… :slight_smile:

Best regards from Italy,
dott. Piergiorgio

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Just for you, I’ll make sure that there’s a custom response for typing XYZZY into all the text boxes in the next Lady Thalia game.

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This need not be a complete impossibility.

Ren’Py has a console option that is automatically available unless the developer chooses to deactivate it (Shift+O on a desktop computer, possibly not accessible on mobile/web). It is primarily used by developers to test their IF, although it is also possible for enterprising players to break… er, change their Ren’Py IF experience if they gain access to the console and know or guess the names and states of the variables. (For example, if one needs to visit the lake to complete the quest, one could visit the lake, or you could go into the console at the tutorial screen, guess the variable was visitlake, define it as True and find out whether the IF still makes sense).

To get XYZZY to work simply by typing that word into the console, XYZZY would have to be programmed in as a direct command (at the same level as “define”), which is above my current programming skill level. I’d like to do that with at least one of my games one day, though.

A potentially easier method would be to add in one of those bits of code that allows users to type their character’s name (quite a few choice games have this option), repurpose it for parser-like “bonus actions”, and have XYZZY give a special response. The main downside is that one would have to be careful to cue players in that this is a place where magic words are expected to be understood. Shift+O has the advantage that a certain category of Ren’Py game players already knows the console in that location does very powerful things.

The link-at-the-bottom approach is definitely easier than both. (Hidden text would probably also be easier, but I’ve not really thought about trying that one).

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I also say Izzy. That’s probably wrong, but it’s the only thing that makes sense in my head.

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I’m not sure whether or not it’s an inside joke that no one’s giving the “correct” answer. So I’ll spoil the fun.

XYZZY is pronounced, “cheesy”. There, I said it.

Back in my Electronic Arts days, I developed a scripting language called XYZZY, in honor of the game. The project manager knew Will Crowther personally, and he revealed the pronunciation to me. I had the opportunity to meet Will too, but I never asked him that question directly, so despite this brush with greatness, it’s still second-hand knowledge on my part! :face_with_raised_eyebrow:

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