Testing Request for "Harry Potter and the Alchemist's Secret"

Playing Beta Testing Requests and Discussion
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I finished a new parser IF game titled “Harry Potter and the Alchemist’s Secret”, which closely follows the story from Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone by J.K. Rowling. The game works, and I have done some initial testing, but I want feedback from testers other than myself. I will not submit this to any competition, partially for copyright reasons.

I do not have a good estimate for how long it will take to play the game, but it took me about 1600 turns to finish with a perfect score. There are over 100 locations (not including Quidditch). Quidditch can have a variable length.

I hope the game is possible to finish without detailed knowledge of Harry Potter, although there are a few optional puzzles that require knowing about the later books in the series, which are only needed if you want a perfect outcome. A score of 350/350 is still possible without solving those puzzles.

I do not think any of the puzzles are that hard, but that could be because I created them. I know of a few unwinnable states, but I think they are only possible if you intentionally try to lose your wand. However, it is very easy to lock yourself out of a perfect score or the best outcomes.

I wrote the game in Java and compiled it to JavaScript using TeaVM, with no external libraries other than TeaVM for compilation and LZString for save compression. I then used a Python script to combine everything into a single HTML file to easily run in the browser.

I am not a writer, so a lot of the descriptions and dialog in the game were written by LLMs. I reviewed all AI output before using it, and I wrote all of the code myself.

A few things I want feedback on are:

  • Finding edge case errors or other bugs
  • Parser improvements, such as missing verbs or synonyms
  • Finding puzzles that are illogical or that feel unintuitive and arbitrary
  • Quidditch mechanics or AI
  • Any other feedback or anything else I should improve

Send any feedback as a private message. If needed, you can send a copy and pasted transcript or your Base64 save string (using the EXPORT command), especially if a bug might be hard to replicate.

Link to the game: Harry Potter and the Alchemist's Secret by Kyle

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Yikes. Things I’d flag as no bueno:

  • HP material given JKRs anti-trans efforts
  • HP material pulled through GenAI
  • Game content created with GenAI
  • Java

The IF community is already leaning heavily against AI and especially content, but throwing HP into the mix is a massive red flag.

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I was not aware of this context when creating this game. I have read the books and watched the movies, and thought that would be a good topic for a game. I do not endorse these views.

I did not directly upload passages from the book into an LLM, but the models I used were likely trained on the books, as well as other sources based on the books, and some of the output is probably based on that. I understand this concern.

Like I said in my original post, I am not a writer. My main focus for this project was the code and game mechanics. The text is necessary for a complete game, but I wanted to focus more on things like object simulation, input parsing, the magic system, and puzzle design. I did not use AI for those parts. I understand why the community would lean against AI-generated content, especially for games where the content is the focus.

I chose Java for several reasons. I wanted to write a game from scratch instead of using something like Inform. I wanted the object-oriented design and structure that is easier in Java without dealing with some of the more annoying parts of C/C++, like memory management. I wrote a previous smaller project in JS, but the code quickly became messy. I prefer Java.

All of these are valid concerns, and I completely understand if some people choose not to play this game because of them. However, I would still appreciate help testing it.

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There are other red flags that OP may have not considered; especially given JK Rowling’s past litigations. This appears to be a derivative work and a direct adaptation based on HP and the SS. I think you need permission to make this kind of fan fiction. The characters, locations, and plot are also copyrighted and require permission to use for fan fiction. JKR has granted this before but games are a different affair. Because this is freely available online, and as a download, that is an extremely muddy legal area. Itch may have their own “ToS” to consider. That is not a “it’s easier to ask forgiveness than permission” sort of thing. The title and branding are confusing and can cause brand dilution as it prominently uses the trademarks. And because there is a claim that the LLM wrote the thing there is a strong chance that unauthorized text has been redistributed. I would say that the effort is a muddy affair.

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I would be tempted to set a fan story in the HP world without actually referring to any official names or characters.

I think also, “Harry Potter” is trademarked.

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If this is done with permission, it’s radioactive, because anything that enriches JKR contributes directly to efforts to promote anti-trans discrimination.

If this is done without permission, you’re very brave to pick a fight with JKR’s well-funded expensive lawyers.

Doing a pastiche of “teen wizard at magical school,” rather than HP directly, might be a wiser course.

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Honestly, while Rowling is a piece of work and exhibit A for celebrities thinking they’re above reproach for being openly bigoted, it seems unfair to hold that against a fan work… And yeah, this probably falls into the same gray area as all fanfiction of being technically illegal but as long as you aren’t selling it or passing it off as an official product, you’re probably not going to be ceased and desisted, much less sued unless someone like Disney or Nintendo is involved… whether fair use applies is probably irrelevant because if it gets far enough for a court to decide that, it’s gotten far enough for corporate lawyers to bankrupt you before you can prove your innocence, but that’s winning the anti-lottery… And honestly, fanfics with titles like Harry Potter and the something something are like a penny a thousand and this isn’t even the first Harry Potter IF fangame(Granted, Muggle Studies isn’t on the scale of a direct adaptation or a canon rehash fanfic).

Anyway, I’m only a few minutes in but a few things I’d note:

I tried typing verbs as my first command since it’s included in the opening tutorial, but it just throws an error until after entering 1 to start the game… didn’t think to try the other commands, but feels off that the game tells the player about help related commands before the parser will accept them.

I’ve already encountered a few short passages where like aparagraph is broken up into pieces requiring an any key input to continue. Might be useful for an exposition dump that fills the screen several times, but feels choppy to be fed a single paragraph one sentence at a time.

Also, this is just personal preference, but if it’s written in Java, I wouldn’t mind a downloadable bytecode file I could run in the Linux console.

I’ve wanted something like this for a while, so I intend to keep playing if I don’t get stuck at some point.

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FYI the itch page has a CSS breakpoint at 1000px, below which it displays the game in a 600px wide container, which crops 200px off the right edge of the game. It’s this CSS causing the issue:

@media (max-width: 1000px) {
  .responsive .inner_column {
    padding-bottom: 0;
    max-width: 600px;
  }
}
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The IFTF (at least for IFComp purposes) follows the Organization for Transformative Works stance on fair use, which says transformative noncommercial fan works are okay. If JK Rowling decides to come after fan fiction, presumably the over 600,000 fanfics on Archive Of Our Own are a bigger target than a random personal project being discussed on a Discourse forum.

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That may be but this one is not really transformative; it follows the story of another

That does not seem transformative or adding something new or a fan fiction. Something like the Agatha Christie inspired game even that borrows the title is transformative. It’s just my two cents.

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Yeah, I think this is a bad idea given Rowling’s aggressive transphobia (like, she doesn’t just have bad opinions, she has bent her fortune to taking rights away from people and silencing advocacy on behalf of the community) and the LLM usage, but the legal risks here are virtually nil; in fact there have been multiple Potter fanfiction games entered into previous IF community events, including in the Comp with nary a peep or consequence.

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I’ve never personally read any HP books or seen any of the movies. Someone tried to get me to watch one once and I didn’t like it or understand what the big todo was about. I’ve only heard that JKR is not a nice person but it’s only what someone else has said. It fascinates me that such a clear use of trademarks, the prominent title that sounds like something JKR would call it, the use of the characters, locations, even the “sport”, and that it closely follows the authors work itself only gets a “meh”.

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I changed it to allow HELP, VERBS, ABOUT, RESTORE, VERSION, and DELETE SAVE in the initial prompt.

I actually got the opposite feedback from someone in my family testing it, who preferred not getting half a page of important text all at once, so I avoided giving more than about 3 lines at a time. If you found specific areas where combining it would be better or where I broke it up too much, I am open to changing them.

I added a JAR file to the itch.io page. This version was made mostly for debugging, and the game is intended to be played in the browser, so a few things are not as good in the console version. You will not have the status bar, so you will need to use the SCORE command to see your score. Saving and restoring just save to runtime memory, so to keep your saves when the program closes you will need to use EXPORT and IMPORT. You will also need to press enter instead of any key when the text is broken up.

I also updated the disclaimer on itch.io and in the ABOUT output to be completely clear that I do not support Rowling’s views.

I appreciate the feedback! However, to avoid putting solutions or spoilers in this public thread, sending feedback as a private message would be preferable.

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It gets a meh because sites like Fanfiction.net, Archive of Our own and countless smaller archives dedicated to specific fandoms have been hosting entire libraries worth of fanfiction for at least a quarter of a century, many of them quoting huge chunks of source material, rehashing the source’s plot or at least hitting most of the iconic scenes(TVTropes even has a term for it, The Stations of Canon) and even the most litigious of authors and publishers have mostly shrugged their shoulders and gone it isn’t worth pissing the fans off to sue a bunch of amateur writers, many of whom are probably broke high school or college students(Disney owning Marvel hasn’t stopped AO3 from having over 650k Marvel Cinematic Universe fics and Disney is pretty much the poster child for IP Law abuse and has arguably done more damage to the public domain than any other corporation… Similar goes for for all the fan art, fan comics and other fan works that are basically ubiquitous on the internet and have been since at least the late 90s. Many fanfic writers and fan artists would claim fair use, but the reality is that fair use is so poorly defined that it kind of has to be arbitrated in court on a case-by-case basis but no one’s ever bothered to test it… Nintendo shuts down a lot of rom hacks and fan games, but even there, it’s almost always a cease and desist letter and I’m not aware of any cases actually going to court, and again, Nintendo is probably the biggest enemy of fan games(As an aside, I understand Sega actually hired rom hackers for some projects).

Anyways, I got to right before the sorting playing last night. Juggling the school books in the Diagon Alley section felt a bit clunky and it feels odd that the game doesn’t accept mail slot when typing commands in the living room. There is a lot of text quoted/paraphrased from the books and a way that somehow feels both excessive and like they are too brief, almost like reading a plot summary of each seen comprised entirely of book quotes, though maybe that’s the AI at play or maybe I’m used to fanfics where if they include a scene that mostly goes as it did in the books but trimmed down, they’re better about maintaining the right amount of connective tissue or maybe I’m just use to how better fanfic writers write and adaptation to IF is giving me uncanny levels of familiar but not quite right. Granted, I’ve probably read thousands of variants on the scenes adapted thus far and the only other IF adaptation from a novel or something similar to a novel I’ve played is Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, and I’m pretty sure the furthest I’ve ever gotten in that game is dying to a stray brick as the player’s house is demolished or maybe dying in the demolition of Earth.

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There are definitely a lot of books, but how would you recommend improving that section? I won’t give too much away, but they become important later and are not just there to take up inventory space. Combining them into a single item also wouldn’t work.

The mail slot isn’t in the living room. Would a message recognizing that the item exists but is not visible be better? How do most games handle this?

I agree that some of the writing is probably not the best, especially in that first section, but I probably won’t completely rewrite it at this point. I did use a lot of quotes or paraphrased quotes. I had to compress that part of the book a lot while still telling players unfamiliar with the book the important details.

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Ah, my bad, forgot the living room and entry way are two separate rooms in #4 Privet Drive when I was writing that… not in the habit of taking notes when I play IF, but I should probably take notes for bug testing purposes instead of trying to remember stuff the next day.

As for the books, my first thought in the book store was to take books, which the game apparently interprets as trying to take all the books on the store bookcases, and trying to take the books one at a time, I wasn’t going to type out full titles without reason… take book of spells worked for The Standard book of Spells: Grade 1, but take Fantastic Beasts gave a you can’t see any fantastic beasts… Thankfully I remembered take all eventually(clearly, it’s been too long since I’ve played some parser IF).

Haven’t gotten much further since my last post(currently in the middle of the Sorting Hat’s song).

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I will fix that when I next update the page, but that will only work in the bookstore. Put books and drop books still won’t work.

This command works for me. Maybe you spelled something wrong?