I second otisdog !
Best regards from Italy,
dott. Piergiorgio.
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Start of a transcript of
No Time To Lose
A text adventure by J. Robinson Wheeler
Version Alpha 8.00 Release 1 / Serial number 051110 / Inform v6.21(G0.36) Library 6/10 SD
Interpreter version 0.5.4 / VM 3.1.2 / Library serial number 000710(bp)
>07072025 Monday script started.
That's not a verb I recognize.
>smell coffee
You can't see any such thing.
>smell
The distinctive smell of ozone lingers in the air, coming from the secret passage.
>x coffee
You can't see any such thing.
>Oh I want coffee. Ok. Let's go to the Kitchen.
That's not a verb I recognize.
>d
Staying sprawled out on the bed is about as down as you can get at the moment.
>up
You put your feet on the floor, kicking something heavy. It's the manual for the time machine. You were going to look through it again when you got up today, in case it made any more sense.
The time machine, you think again, as the smell of ozone makes one last pass through your nostrils before dispersing. Either the machine that you left sitting in your basement -- a basement which you didn't even know you had, until recently -- which you didn't have, until you --
Someone's activated it. Is it gone? What about the one in the clearing?
>e
Master bathroom
This bathroom looks like it has been used as a place to party, in the vernacular. Various paraphernalia having to do with drug abuse is in evidence, such as little plastic baggies, discarded needles, and the like. It is a shocking and somewhat depressing sight, to say the least.
No, wait -- what? That was the future, and that's gone now. You squeeze your eyes shut and open them again, and the bathroom looks like it always has, with clean fixtures, a luxurious shower, and a spotless tile floor draped with a fluffy bath mat.
The shower stall stands invitingly to the east. There's a rack for towels on the shower door. A fluffy pink towel hangs from it.
>w
Master bedroom
The shades are drawn, making it hard to guess what time of day it is. Your bedroom is normally not quite as dishevelled as this, but then again, neither are you. The sheets of your bed are tangled and rumpled. A large dresser that used to sit against the wall in the corner of the room has been scraped aside, and it now juts at an awkward angle. The master bathroom is east, and the doorway leading to the rest of the house is to the north.
The secret door in the southeast corner of the room is ajar.
You can also see the time machine manual here.
>w
You can't go that way.
>s
You can't go that way.
>n
Downstairs hallway
The hallway is just a few paces long, connecting the foyer to the north to the master bedroom to the south. An open doorway leads west to your living room.
Along the walls hangs a collection of your favorite family photographs.
>d
You can't go that way.
>w
Living room
This is sort of your watching-tv-and-eating-pizza area, as evidenced by the sofa, the tv set, and the stacks and stacks of pizza boxes that you rationalize as being earmarked for a future trip to a recycling bin. The computer room is to the north, and the hallway is to the east.
>n
Dining room
This is supposed to be the dining room, but you've been using it for the last six months or so as your new computer room. Perched on an old drafting table is your old Mac SE and its big chunky hard drive. A number of floppy disks are stacked around like poker chips. The kitchen is through a saloon-style door to the northeast, and you can see the foyer to the east.
On the south wall of the room are a fireplace and a small bookcase.
>n
You can't go that way.
>go kitchen
You can't see any such thing.
>enter kitchen
You can't see any such thing.
>go saloon door
Kitchen
You admit you're not much of a cook, but at least you keep a clean kitchen by not using it very much. A saloon-style swinging door connects to the dining room to the southwest, and you can see the foyer to the south. The back door leads north into the garage.
The small kitchen table sits facing the back yard windows. The door to the kitchen pantry is closed.
Memories of your kitchen being utterly trashed by vagrants and drug abusers haunt you momentarily, but you reassure yourself that that's all behind you. It's not even in front of you any more.
Your coffee percolator sits on the countertop.
You can also see a chair here.
>BOO!!!!!
That's not a verb I recognize.
>-That's from the Author. Boo! Fix that
That's not a verb I recognize.
>SAVE AS: intfictionorg VERSION
I only understood you as far as wanting to save.
>x memories
You can't see any such thing.
>remember
That's not a verb I recognize.
>out
But you aren't in anything at the moment.
>ne
You can't go that way.
>nw
You can't go that way.
>sw
Dining room
This is supposed to be the dining room, but you've been using it for the last six months or so as your new computer room. Perched on an old drafting table is your old Mac SE and its big chunky hard drive. A number of floppy disks are stacked around like poker chips. The kitchen is through a saloon-style door to the northeast, and you can see the foyer to the east.
On the south wall of the room are a fireplace and a small bookcase.
>x computer
It's a few years old, but all you do is play Tetris on it anyway.
The Macintosh SE is currently switched off.
>turn it on
You try to switch it on, and a little frowny Mac icon appears. You switch it off again.
>Bffththt.
That's not a verb I recognize.
>[OK, *YOU* enter ALL THE POSSIBLE REPLIES]
You seem to want to talk to someone, but I can't see whom.
>[AN AI COULD DO THAT] [I AM NOT AN AI, I AM AN IF AUTHOR]
You seem to want to talk to someone, but I can't see whom.
>Slowly flooding in the wind, the waves will be
You seem to want to talk to someone, but I can't see whom.
>OK that's the Gunther Schmidl and J Robinson Wheeler game that involved MIDI audio
That's not a verb I recognize.
>And the Waves Choked the Wind, a raft on the seas, start location.
You seem to want to talk to someone, but I can't see whom.
>Z
Time passes.
>end script
That's not a verb I recognize.
>SCRIPT OFF
End of transcript.
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Invent a yellowed train map that maps out the game.
What I mean by that, if I may elaborate, is that it’s an item that must be teased out of the scene description by a player. Even in text games, the player is always rewarded by finding a Map on the archetypal Wall.
R
And exploring, solving are quickly rewarded with slightly- more Map.
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I recommend after getting started with a Speed-IF, don’t share what your idea is. Adam Cadre was really annoyed about this back in the day, 20+ years ago. And he was right.
What Adam was annoyed about was that he was flush with creativity, and had lots of ideas for IF games. And back then, it was an idea or two about challenging the tropes, the basics. And he had a whole handful and then he’d see someone post, “I wonder if maybe a guy could be not actually amensiac, the point is that [spoiler]…” and post it. And so then, Adam had to cross it off his list, as being out there already. No, actually make a game that demonstrates the idea you think is the point of the game.
He was testy. But I made a graphic novel with the guy. I drew what he wanted. The result was good, a couple of years it took.
Rob
Rob tells all about working with Adam Cadre.
>BOO!!! That’s not a verb I recognize. >-That’s from the Author. Boo! Fix that
Yep, I want to fix that. I’ve sent the same message to me, two different times.
Rob
Everyone yell out why I yelled BOO! and what that means I need to fix. Glurgh.
Yeah, you’ve got to be quick. I have a couple of abandoned WIPs on my hard drive that got shelved because someone else had the same idea and got there before me. Years ago I realised that parser games would allow movement in more than three spatial dimensions, and was writing a game, a sort of Doctor Strange parody, that used the directions ATA and KANA as well as N, E, S, W, U, D. Then Phil Riley released Bureau of Strange Happenings and I thought, right, that’s one I can shelve. Similarly I had written some notes about using pataphors in a parser game, and almost right away Simon Christiansen’s PataNoir came out, and it was much better than the idea I’d had.
There’s a theory that, once an idea is our there in the collective unconscious, ripe for picking, as it were, it can occur to lots of people at the same time. But, if I get your meaning, I’m not sure I’d have wanted to waste these ideas on a Speed IF, just in order to be first. I’m happy that someone else got there first and made something polished and brilliant.
I’ve never been one for game jams because my mind is a bit like an eighteen-wheeler juggernaut. If I’m focused on a long term project, I find it difficult to divert my attention to a themed competition for a set amount of time. I can jump onto on a film or something unrelated to IF, but the IF part of my mind is already going at full tilt - dropping a project to make something unrelated causes a kind of mental jackknife. It’s a pity because I’m forced to watch these competitions flash by in the rear view mirror and they always look fun.
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I’m sure there was some prior art for four-dimensional movement in parser games which predates BOSH. I say this because (spoilers for a game which literally no-one cares about) I wrote a speed-IF in (checks IFDB) 2003 in which you have to box in an NPC who is moving on a three-dimensional grid, and the twist at the end is that once you think you have them caught, it turns out that they can move ana and kata as well as the obvious six directions. I say this not to claim credit for myself but because when I wrote this I’m sure I was riffing off something else which had recently entered the IF sphere (otherwise the twist would have made no sense to anyone), but I can no longer remember what that “something else” was.
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@jwalrus I remember that. Was it Cheating Death? If so, I don’t remember the ATA and KANA at the end. Maybe I missed something.
Spoilers for the ending text of an inconsequential speed-IF that I'm amazed Garry remembers
This is it! Al can’t get away now; he’s hemmed in! You turn triumphantly and look Death in the hollow eye, and he merely smiles and says, “WHY DID YOU THINK THE GAME WAS CALLED ‘CHEATING DEATH’?”
Al flees kata.
*** You thought you could win? ***
You are dead.
Would you like to RESTART, RESTORE a saved game or QUIT?
Like I say, this ending would only have made sense if I expected at least some of the audience to be familiar with “kata” as a direction in a fourth spatial dimension, otherwise it just comes out of nowhere.
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Thanks. Now I understand the reference to kata.
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