Here’s PART OF the map of Moondrop Isle (as mapped by Jason Love), presented as spoiler-free as possible. The only spoiler you should take away from this image is “wow Moondrop Isle is big”
7 Likes
what mapping/drawing program Jason used ? I find interesting the unusual gridding…
Best regards from Italy,
dott. Piergiorgio.
I’m pretty sure the map was made with Trizbort. As ever, a human-made map will be more accurate in understanding room layouts that don’t conform neatly to a grid (like corners, split-level storeys, combined vertical & cardinal directions, slopes etc.).
2 Likes
Yes, I used Trizbort to make the map. It gives a lot more options than what I’ve used here for rooms of different shapes, different kinds of connectors, etc. I’ve enjoyed using it.
2 Likes
There seems to be an unfortunate bug regarding the yellow golf ball and the dark green golf bag. I’ve found that if I return to the game, the ball is no longer take-able (from the bag, from a tee, from a cup, etc) until I drop the bag and re-take the bag. Otherwise, the game claims the ball isn’t there. Likewise, the description of the bag always seems to claim it’s still where I originally found it, and if I drop and take the bag, I teleport back there to do it. Because of my drop bag take bag trickery, I can pretend the bug isn’t there, but really, this bug should be fixed.
I was surprised by this behaviour also today. I don’t think it’s supposed to re-lock, no, but I think it’s a consequence of the online format and that the game has to save the game state in its own way rather than Inform’s standard way. I strongly suspect that the game authors overlooked saving that door status. It should be an easy fix, though.
Yeah, that’s what I thought initially, and I still think it would make more sense for it to save the door status.
But (if you haven’t found it yet) there is a key for the door (in the cart on the golf course: when you pick up the tablet it tells you about it). And if you have that key then it auto-unlocks when you try to go through. So it seems like it’s intentional that it doesn’t save?
It still makes no in-world sense to me that if you open the door from the tunnel side (where you don’t need a key) it stays unlocked only until you leave the area and come back. If they’d made it a one-way door that narrates itself falling shut and locking behind you as soon as you go through, that’d work too, but the way it is now… yeah.
Yeah, I entered from the golf course side. I have this tendency to not explore dark tunnels without getting a light source first. So I kinda avoided the tunnels until then. I’m just a big scaredy-cat, I guess.
2 Likes
Ah, that makes sense. I sorta went into the tunnels by accident. And with it being night on the island it’s not consistent about which areas are dark and which items are visible when so I didn’t really notice…
I may have found another bug, but I’m not sure. This time it’s with the projector.
I recently acquired the Guinea Pigs Film Reel, but after loading it into the projector, in the theater, I’m told “The projector is running, but there must not be a film loaded because all it’s doing is projecting empty light at the screen.” The Moondrop reel works fine, though, when I use that one. Is the Pigs reel supposed to be blank?
Moondrop Isle has been updated with various bug fixes. Your progress is still autosaved from before!
BUT ALSO, @nilsf has added a VERY COOL SAVE FILE SYSTEM that will let you carry your progress between machines if you like. The command for trying out this system is >SAVE and I recommend you try it at least once; it’s fun. (Although I had to hard refresh Moondrop Isle to make it work, since my browser had cached the old javascript files. So you might have to do a hard refresh.)
It occurs to me that I haven’t said anything about how Nils made this whole game work. The genesis of the project was the realization (here let me explain) that connecting multiple games to each other was theoretically possible. I assembled the team and kicked things off with the idea that I would figure out the implementation at some point as we went along. Eventually.
But Nils took the initiative and:
- Put together an Inform framework for making games link up and talk to each other (including to non-Inform games!)
- Set up a GitHub pipeline so that everybody involved could contribute painlessly at their own pace
- [VARIOUS THINGS I’M FORGETTING]
- Implemented this really cute save function
So if you find yourself impressed that Moondrop Isle lets you WALK OUT OF ONE GAME STRAIGHT INTO ANOTHER GAME WRITTEN IN A DIFFERENT DEVELOPMENT SYSTEM AND YOU’RE STILL CARRYING THE SAME INVENTORY AND WEARING THE SAME WADING PANTS, please understand that basically all the credit for this goes to Nils.
11 Likes
Uh… the cart garage at the northeast end of the Cart Path is completely gone now? Is that intentional? Did you move the important item that was there to a different place?
I sure did!
Personally, my experiences of urban exploration have been ones of limited access. There are areas you cannot reach; doors you cannot open. When I designed my contribution to Moondrop Isle, I wanted to reflect that in the environment. I was too successful at that goal.
The feedback I got from testers before we released was focused more on bugs and errors in the text. After the release, though, I saw several players who became preoccupied with trying to reach areas that could not be accessed. While that can be part of the fun, it’s mostly frustrating to be presented with red herrings, so I decided to eliminate the most egregious area that was contributing to that experience.
(The golf club that could be found in that location will still be in your inventory when you reload your save, but to locate it again, it has been relocated to the eighth hole on the golf course.)
2 Likes
Thanks for pointing this one out David. This is fixed (along with a number of other issues) in the current live game. One of the exciting things about the way we implemented Moondrop Isle is that fixes can be pushed post-launch without breaking existing save games. While this is obviously not a substitute for testing, it does mean that games can continue to be improved, and indeed new descriptions, secrets, and functionality can be seeded in after first launch. This is especially valuable for a game of this scope, intended not as something people will necessarily speed their way through, but as a location to return to which offers up layers of exploration and mystery to steadily peel away to get to the deeper truths of Moondrop Isle.
2 Likes
By the way, I’d like to share the names I’ve given to some of the critters in the game: Snow, Verio, Mite, Parson, Jeta, Krank, Fonz, Pocky, Rudha, Prin, and Pigger. I tried to go for short names, names that suggest something about what the critter looks like, and also names unlikely to be used by the game for anything else. I invite others to share which names they went with.
4 Likes
Thank you for the fix. I can now watch the Guinea Pigs film … as long as I’m standing. If I sit on a seat to watch it, it’s like I’m out of scope.
1 Like
I almost had a Bitey too, but I ended up naming him Mr. White instead. 
Here are some of the others:
(Mondo, Apple, Little Mac, Petra, Sandy, Rowdy, Grayble, Harry Potter, Rogue)
I still can’t believe there are nameable guinea pigs. Truly, it’s the gameplay I always wanted but never dared to dream of.
7 Likes
Random fun fact: in the French version of Harry Potter, Snape is, for some unknowable reason, called Rogue.
3 Likes
I think I found a mistake. I tried examining the chain around the water park and it says
“The chain itself is a different story, as you have clipped right through it with your bolt cutters.”
The chain is still blocking my progress and I haven’t found bolt-cutters.
1 Like