You’ll have to argue it, I’m afraid. :) Without the tragedy-of-the-protagonist ending, the game is just another treasure hunt with a rather nice, original-for-the-time language puzzle. Wouldn’t call that Infidel.
You’re about forty years late asking that, you know.
Ha! If I don’t know that it’s art, then I’ve put on a pretty elaborate and time-consuming ruse. I wondered if perhaps I had assumed too much in my initial post and felt recentering my thoughts around art would be productive.
It would be interesting to someday discuss the concept of canonicity in IF. Not a top 50 best (some canonical works in other genres are awful to read) but works that shape audiences and creators alike. Because you’re right, Infidel has a cool gimmick and that Infocom quality and polish, but it’s singular because of the “bad ending.” Whether it’s good or not is a matter of taste (I think it is), but I would say it’s important.
If the capitalists and CEOs are bad guys, what are the Communists ?
Just wondering…
For Drew: QoL enchancement as implementing abbreviations can be implemented in the interpreter, and Frotz implements these abbreviations.
an interesting QoL question: z3 undo can be implemented at the 'terp level ? on paper, is basically keeping the prior machine state, and intercepting the undo command and acting accordingly, working similarily to the save emulated machine state/snapshot of an emulator.
Best regards from Italy,
dott. Piergiorgio.
At least in the version of Frotz I’m using, you can press Alt-U to undo, even in version 3 games.
LOL, really I don’t know (or I actually overlooked it…) Perhaps I’m a too serious adventurer !!
(In coding, I use my beloved debug item: the Ring of Impdom (that is, an item loaded with debug routines… This allow keeping only the debug routines needed, albeit the bigger .z3 WIP around is still in 64K aerea, but allow access to custom routines (like, tracing the location of NPC…)
oh, side note… reading now more carefully man frotz, there’s a slew of overlooked things on debugging… -o -O and -h and -w, the latter pair allow checking how the text will be shown on 8-bit machines’s screen…
> EXAMINE CAREFULLY FROTZ
You found some little hidden details !
Best regards from Italy,
dott. Piergiorgio.
And then we have the proper nature of IF history, where changing and expanding upon previous works define our art. cof cof Colossal Cave Adventure cof cof