Is there a tool to extract specifically the grammar rules? That should give us a list of what commands can be used somewhere in the game, though not where or what they do.
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Sverdrup is an awesome enough word to be worth saying a lot even if it doesn’t occur elsewhere in the game. I had not encountered it before.
Another great hydrological word is thalweg.
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ohmygod, @Jenni ! 
So, obviously I don’t know every corner of this game; authors inquired about the intricacies of how we might manage points and Ryan was basically, “Whatever you wanna do.”
I wasn’t personally privy to any inter-room meta gaming discussion, but a lot of us tested the rooms around ours and surely tweaked our own prose if there was a already a near-happy confluence of something too good not to connect.
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Looking at a couple different walkthroughs, all of them just say to wait (or do anything) for six turns in the Gulf of Nehilim. So whatever we have to do there, we have six turns to do it.
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Instead of hanofrobbing a hano-stall
Instead of hanofrobbing a hano-toilet
So I totally remember writing these rules and having very good reasons for doing so, but I don’t remember why I needed to invent a verb. I think it might have been to catch several classes of action to redirect them - ow…f’ghhdkth nik ahk’ta AHK’TA…
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Hmm, an intriguing idea! Will need to think of an appropriate surface.
I don’t think that’s possible, but will defer to the knowledge of wiser heads than mine.
That’s a good one too – I’ve actually come across the concept, but not the name, in the legal context (defining barriers between states and countries is occasionally very important) so nice to have the appropriate technical vocabulary.
Makes sense, and I can innocent explanations for the cleaver (picking it up solves the room) and the peanut-feeding (it’s a fun Easter egg). But the pencil isn’t used elsewhere and picking it up doesn’t do anything interesting, so it feels like the point-scoring there at least must be a signal about something.
Hmm, maybe we need to sverdrup six times running, then?
This is how I feel about pretty much every rule I’ve written when I go back and reread my old source code!
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If sverdrupping six times gets you to the Great Unknown, it’ll at least tell us it’s a verb that’s implemented. By default, parser errors don’t take a turn, but actions interrupted by a check or instead rule do. And the rule for authors at least was that we should implement all custom verbs with conditional understand lines so they wouldn’t be parsed outside our room. So if saying SVERDRUP advances time, then that’s a good sign that it’s a verb that’s usable in that room.
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Oh boy do I tell people if there’s a secret or not or do I leave that a fun mystery? I mean if y’all are already decompiling the code it’s probably better to save everyone’s time & say no, there’s no secret in the Gulf of Nehilim, it’s Ryan doing a Mood. Sorry!
Cragne trivia in no particular order:
Had to play through again to find this, I think it might not’ve been in the original version & testers were like “I wanna ask about gulf streams!!!” Or possibly I just anticipated that?
ask about horace
“So, at first, Horace Cragne spent a ton of money on private detectives to look for his wife,” Bethany tells you. “Then, in June of 1983 – well, no one knows what happened, but he fired his gumshoes and went around being cheerful in public all of a sudden. Complete 180 mood flip. Everyone thought he had a new lover, but I couldn’t find any evidence of that, and you better believe I looked. I even… anyway.”“This next part is sad,” Bethany continues. “In September 1983 the Cragne Manor summerhouse burned down and Horace Cragne burned down with it. According to Backwater P.D. it wasn’t arson, just some bad wiring in the heating unit. That fall was especially cold because… well, I’m not supposed to talk about gulf streams anymore, because apparently they bore people.” She looks from left to right as though checking for spies, then leans forward conspiratorially. “But it was totally the gulf streams,” she whispers.
It’s never stated explicitly but what happened here is Stella figured out a way to cross dimensions & Horace faked his death so he could go live with her somewhere real weird away from his terrible racist family. This wasn’t intended to tie into the multidimensional Naomis & Peters but it sure does play real nicely with that, huh.
“Sverdrup” is just a really good word.
The places where you get a point exist because the authors of those rooms wanted to give you a point for doing said things & we were like “Okay.” I think they might be fake points because we didn’t actually want to use scoring, so it just tells you you got a point?
Is a point a computer tells you you got less real than a point a computer tells you you got & also increments a flag to track that point? There’s one for the psychologists. I wrote “psychologists” but I meant “philosophers.”
I don’t know what the deal is with the pencil.
Side note: multiple people thought it would be fun to include keys that ultimately unlock nothing; Riff thought he was being a real bastard by adding one & Ivan put in a whole jar of disintegrating keys for extra bonus anxiety.
I have zero memory of the EAT LIBRARY bug, what it was, what the workarounds were, writing that text – I mean that is absolutely some text that I would write, but “EAT LIBRARY” doesn’t seem to give that error message in the final version. Maybe I implemented a more complete fix & just left the little rant in there?
Re: the librarian playing well with other rooms, we set a boundary about how far the contents of a room were allowed to bleed into other rooms, & the faint spark/ghost wound up having (I think) the highest amount of bleedover. Originally the imp from the basement was supposed to get loose & run around through Cragne Manor, and we nixed that as being just barely the tiniest bit too disruptive, so now when he gets loose he just goes offstage. (I think you wound up not using that solution to the imp puzzle.)
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I appreciate the tip! I guess the real secret of the Gulf was the friends, and EAT LIBRARY debug code, we made along the way.
Aww, that’s a nice ending for them!
It really really is - I might petition for that to become the Fourth Canonical Magic Word (after XYZZY, plough, and plover - we’ve only had three since the seventies and with this inflation I think it’s time we added one).
I think that’s right - I tried the SCORE command and it still says the game doesn’t track points, though I believe the status bar does update in at least one of the rooms to indicate that your score is now one.
I take your point re the ontological status of made up video-game points, but as someone who tried to award himself an imaginary Achievement back in Chapter the First since I found a bug in Emily Short’s room, I’m not sure I’d trust myself to respond.
Oh, you mean the bat from the basement library annex? That sounds hilarious but maybe a little chaotic, yeah (and yes, I just utilized the grindy option of giving the dude book after book after book rather than distract him with the bat. That’s just how I roll - I always win RPGs with like six billion health potions since I hate using them, and fun fact, I once won Quake 2 using only the default infinite-ammo blaster, albeit back when I was in high school and really did not have anything better to do with my time).
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I’ve read samples of the CM source code (here) and it is amazing
Where else will you find a sentence like
Instead of examining the player in a weiner-room when the weiner clogs are weiner-wiped
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The fun of trying to use namespaces in a language that doesn’t support namespaces!
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Sir, this is a family thread – please don’t bring that sort of filth here.
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I suppose it’s not a surprise that Matt Weiner’s code is the filthiest in the game, given that he designed the Mudroom.
At least it’s not ichor from a divine cyst.
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Ooh, Cragne trivia! Given just how big this game is, and how many monkeys at keyboards contributed to it, there must be a ton of ridiculous stuff hidden away in there. This could probably be a whole thread by itself.
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I’ve attempted to wrangle my cacophonous thoughts about Cragne Manor into something resembling a review; it’s my 300th on IFDB and think it has some good jokes!
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Nice review! I’ve been tackling this game for a few months now, I think I’m in the lategame portion (only need three more books and I’m almost done with the uppermost floor of the manor, but there’s still plenty more I have left to finish), and I’m pretty sure I’m a different person now than when I started.
It has its frustrating bits – the gardening portion bugged out and wouldn’t let me find the spray bottle, I reloaded my save to get it to work while also sequence breaking a room in the process, and then I was stuck with mildew infesting everything and permanently clogging up my inventory – but these moments are mostly short-lived, and I kept going because I wanted to see everything and hopefully run into another engaging set piece, bizarre cultural reference, or well-developed puzzle.
The highlights so far are obviously the big stuff like the Meatpacking Plant Bathroom, Bethany at the real estate office, the Catholic high school drama, and the Carol/Christabell arc, but there’s a bunch of smaller stuff inbetween that was also memorable and fun, such as watching vintage Sesame Street in the rec room and looking at all the pictures in the gallery.
I’ve never had an experience like playing through Cragne Manor blind, and I don’t think I ever will again. I’m treasuring this while it lasts.
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Phew!.. I was eagerly keeping an eye on Cragne Manor's IFDB page to see in what state you would crawl out the other side (if ever…)
Congratulations on completing this mammoth game. I bookmarked this so I can read it on the side when I’m flailing around in the manor myself.
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I’ve enjoyed the play through! And welcome to the very select club of people who have managed to finish this game.
Oops.
This is basically what I was going for. I knew my room was the penultimate one, so it was one last chance to inject a bit of cohesion.
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Hilarious. That was a common subject of discussion on the Slack: At the time we were like "Is there anyone in the IF scene who’s not writing on this thing and will be available to play it?
The truth about the reviews is most people resist reviewing a game they’ve not finished, and as we know this game is a cosmic black hole and likely very few manage to emerge from the other end in enough pieces to write something; major kudos to @DeusIrae.
We were also curious about XYZZY awards, since 80+ people were technically disqualified from nominating it or potentially voting on it(?). The “Best Implementation” award was certainly well deserved for Ryan and Jenni and everyone who made it work.
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Thanks, and congrats for getting so far in your playthrough! Seems like we’ve had some slightly different experiences (I didn’t have any spray bottle issues, with the Family Plot being my buggy widowmaker) and some that were the same (that @#$#@ mildew). And I definitely had the same feeling that the smaller, quieter moments are in some ways just as important to Cragne Manor as the setpieces. Anyway, in service of pumping the review count, I’d be interested to hear your overall thoughts once you make it across the finish line!
Thanks so much! And I very much hope this thread can be helpful for motivation, or just comparing notes, for other folks’ playthroughs.
Ha, sorry! I’ve tried not to be a jerk about pointing out small bugs when I’ve found them since there but for the grace of God go I, but that one was kinda fun, and I thought also maybe linked to an Easter Egg.
I thought it worked really well for that – especially coming as a one-two punch after the Shack.
Thank you sir! Though I think I was more the tortoise than a Greek hero this time – slow but steady wins the race…
Oh my gosh, that’s a hilarious idea!
This though occurred to me too – like, if I’d come back to IF two years earlier than I did, I suspect I also would have wanted to have signed up to contribute. Perhaps as time goes by and creates community churn, there’ll wind up being more and more potential players.
Very much so – there are obviously lots of individual pieces worth highlighting, but it’s the work they put into making the whole thing work together so, so much better than you think it possibly could that’s Cragne Manor’s greatest achievement IMO.
Ha! I appreciate the vote of confidence, and you know, with the saves in this thread, it wouldn’t be too hard to set reviewers up with their own file taking them right to their room with all the stuff they’d need… I’m going to be trying to shift more of my IF time at least for the next year or so back to writing, but if anyone wants to take something like this on for the 5th anniversary (or 10th, or 15th…) I’m down to help out however I can.
Quick thread update: I was expecting to be hammered with last minute IF Comp testing, but my schedule’s actually cleared a bit, so I’m hoping to get Bonus Update #1 (XYZZY and commentary) done before the end of the month, maybe even in the next couple of days.
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