From reading the judges’ comments, I’m realizing there’s a lot of content in Out of Luck that I missed—I played a single run straight through, with the only RESTORE being when I deliberately WAITed in the final gunfight to see what would happen. But I don’t see how I could have made it unwinnable—what needs to be done before sleeping, beyond just getting the key?
(I never actually entered the Temple before the confrontation, but I didn’t think I was missing anything important. I figured the protagonist would keep his distance so the Prophet wouldn’t get his guard up.)
When talking to either Amë or Tomas (depending on the branch?), you have to set the number of prior assassinations attempts to 6 (which seems to retroactively change the past), or else the Prophet will later reveal that he is fated to dodge 6 bullets aimed at him (including yours). I think the game does give you a vague warning if you try to sleep before doing that!
It’s not strictly necessary to talk to the Prophet during the day to complete the game, but that conversation does do a lot to deepen the worldbuilding and set up the protagonist’s motivations in the final scene. I’d say it’s worth replaying the opening of the game to see it.
I’m glad I was able to participate in some ways (if not on the forum) and I appreciate the shout out. Dee’s games are fun, as apparently I wasn’t the only one who enjoyed the deliberately bad the typo game by Dee Cooke! And it’s fun to get that sneak preview.
Some thoughts on adventuron, as I hope this motivates others to give it a shot, too.
I think you (or anyone who’s written something cool in Adventuron) would figure it pretty easily. My main learning curve was “can Adventuron do that?” And it could. It’s so useful to have an on_command or on_describe or on_tick at the top level and for each room. For those of us still struggling with object oriented programming (which includes me) it can help another light go on as to the whys and hows.
The lack of complexity (or ability to create our own complex user-defined objects) may provide a ceiling but it can prevent us from trying anything weird as sometimes we can talk ourself out of learning something new because we say “Oh I’ll only learn the stupid basics.”
I remember reading a comment about how early versions of Quest help you do simple things easily, and Quest still does though it’s more mature now. Adventuron’s gotten to start from the ground up and add new simple things worth doing and push them to the foreground. (e.g. URLs are very easy.)
I’m glad FlacRabbit had motivation to write in Adventuron. When I saw the matchup I thought “Wait, hasn’t FlacRabbit done an Adventuron game yet?” Well, it’s happened now and I’m glad of it!
The voting and results are that with a vote of 7 to 5, Dee’s “A Bonded Harvester” eked out a win over FLACRabbit’s “Out of Luck”! But the judges preferred Out of Luck over Harvester 3:2. So, a very close match either way!
To add on, for those who don’t know (and for so long I didn’t,) Weird Al Yankovic did write a parody, replete with video imitating the original song.
When he called Kurt Cobain for permission, Cobain asked what the song was about. Yankovic said “Uh … it’s about how we can’t understand the lyrics.” Cobain said “Great! I was worried it might be about food. You’ve written about food a lot.” (probably not exact quotes etc.)
coughs and looks around for whose game(s) or builds might possess such distractions
I think there are themes/styles you can change to lessen that. It took me a while to figure things out. They’re there, and they’re simple, but they were far from the first thing I looked for. But with the default, yeah, I had some problems with that. I needed to update the graphics after you solved a puzzle, but there was a risk the graphics would appear after the text.
theme_settings {
parser_delay = 0
layout = SB G D X LOCK
}
One thing about Adventuron for me was, I said “Cool! This can do dynamic graphics!” and I was just so glad it could do graphics I didn’t pay attention to more than the basic dynamic graphics, which I got lots of mileage out of. It felt greedy to ask for more, as it’s the sort of things I’d have been thrilled to do as a 10-year-old.
Other Adventuron programmers understand styles/themes much better than I do. It’s the sort of thing I avoid, even though it’s pretty clear it can give a lot of power and aesthetic boost for relatively little study time.
Here are the Magic 8-Ball recommendations based on this episode’s dishes:
Out of Luck
+------------------+-------------+------------------+-------------------------------------------+
| FROM_ID | FROM_GAME | TO_ID | TO_GAME |
+------------------+-------------+------------------+-------------------------------------------+
| n1y41pmdrk8ikk26 | Out of Luck | 5oh10zbaxq8lwt8 | For a Place by the Putrid Sea |
| n1y41pmdrk8ikk26 | Out of Luck | mbsybax9swkzp81o | A Bonded Harvester |
| n1y41pmdrk8ikk26 | Out of Luck | ez2mcyx4zi98qlkh | Blue Lacuna |
| n1y41pmdrk8ikk26 | Out of Luck | ddlf93z4rlhahkjf | Jay Schilling's Edge of Chaos |
| n1y41pmdrk8ikk26 | Out of Luck | l7a7ezs96gwulugd | 1958: Dancing With Fear |
| n1y41pmdrk8ikk26 | Out of Luck | 2jbt24dmy2ayszvz | The Little Match Girl 5: The Hunter's Vow |
| n1y41pmdrk8ikk26 | Out of Luck | 1atg357adv0hfvu | Custard & Mustard's Big Adventure |
| n1y41pmdrk8ikk26 | Out of Luck | 1m758pr356x313hw | The Song of the Mockingbird |
| n1y41pmdrk8ikk26 | Out of Luck | p2bxy33newzb930t | Hoosegow |
| n1y41pmdrk8ikk26 | Out of Luck | t593d66s20bblqt0 | Trading Punches |
+------------------+-------------+------------------+-------------------------------------------+
A Bonded Harvester
+------------------+--------------------+------------------+---------------------------------------------------+
| FROM_ID | FROM_GAME | TO_ID | TO_GAME |
+------------------+--------------------+------------------+---------------------------------------------------+
| mbsybax9swkzp81o | A Bonded Harvester | n1y41pmdrk8ikk26 | Out of Luck |
| mbsybax9swkzp81o | A Bonded Harvester | uq18rw9gt8j58da | The Wizard Sniffer |
| mbsybax9swkzp81o | A Bonded Harvester | 2fl14wjyoar8n1p4 | Cut the Sky |
| mbsybax9swkzp81o | A Bonded Harvester | wfms4lves15ao642 | How Prince Quisborne the Feckless Shook His Title |
| mbsybax9swkzp81o | A Bonded Harvester | g4uj2rf4a66ko1t8 | Illuminismo Iniziato |
| mbsybax9swkzp81o | A Bonded Harvester | svjqd97dx1otn6o1 | NEST |
| mbsybax9swkzp81o | A Bonded Harvester | 6czlo7m6yl74d4l4 | Eat the Eldritch |
| mbsybax9swkzp81o | A Bonded Harvester | 51km0aox1m5jtsdq | Excuse Me, Do You Have The Time? |
| mbsybax9swkzp81o | A Bonded Harvester | kbd990q5fp7pythi | Six |
| mbsybax9swkzp81o | A Bonded Harvester | qxummxabvljj9mm | Day of the Sleigh |
+------------------+--------------------+------------------+---------------------------------------------------+