I saw reviews on IFDB saying that the Inform 6 port of 350 point Adventure is buggy. I want to update the PunyInform port to fix such issues and, if I get Graham’s blessing, update the Inform 6 version as well. The major issues I know of are:
The player can bypass puzzles where they shouldn’t be able to carry a certain item while performing a certain action, by putting the item in the wicker cage and carrying the cage.
The player gets an incorrect point deduction if they take a treasure from the wicker cage while inside the building, since the game thinks they have already deposited the treasure in the building and received deposit points for it.
Do you know of other issues?
Would you be interested in playtesting the updated game?
The “latest” version is dated 060321, and the last couple of changes were by Roger Firth, not Graham. (I think. “RF” in the log anyhow.)
There’s the issue I mention here. Going west from Witt’s End is supposed to be blocked “by a recent cave-in”, but the before:Go clause is written so that going west always sends you to the Anteroom.
(Other directions than west have a 5% chance of letting you out. That part works correctly, but west is supposed to be 100% blocked.)
The crystal bridge is supposed to disappear when you get the “cave closed” message. The I6 version fails to set the absent flag, so it reappears immediately.
The timing logic on the “cave is closing” announcement is also suspect. The original Fortran Advent and the TADS port behave differently, and the I6 port does something different from both of them.
Roughly, in the original, the cave closes some time after discovering the last treasure. So you have to rush to the well-house. In TADS, it closes some time after you deposit the last treasure; it’s set up so that after the announcement fires, you are stuck underground. (Grate locked, magic words deactivated.) In I6, the announcement pops after you pick up the last treasure, and you have to rush to the well-house – which is possible, because the magic words still work, even though the cave is notionally closed.
(As I note in my post, I think the TADS version plays best, dramatically speaking.)
If you really want to get into the guts, update the dwarf logic to match the original. Five dwarves, moving independently, and it’s possible for multiple dwarves to be in the same room with you. (All attacking you, of course.)
I assume Graham avoided that because the original Advent.inf was v3-compatible and meant to run on original Infocom interpreters. We have way more headroom now.
I have updated PunyInform Adventure to Release 5, Serial 251113. The changes consist of a healthy mix of fixes for inherited bugs, bringing the game closer to its roots, and making things work in a more reasonable manner (according to me). In short:
The player can no longer use the cage or teleportation to bypass puzzles. I.e. consider teleportation (e.g. “go end of road”) as a faster and more convenient way of walking - if there’s an obstacle stopping the PC from walking to the destination, teleportation is blocked as well.
The cage can now hold three small objects, rather than having unlimited
capacity.
The five dwarves of the original game are back, and they move around the cave system at random (Inform 6 version has a single dwarf that appears at random, and has five lives).
Removing a treasure from the cage while in the building doesn’t ruin the
score anymore.
Using a magic word to travel to Plover Room while holding the emerald will now leave the emerald where the journey starts, instead of placing it in Plover Room.
When crystal bridge disappears at cave closing, it stays gone.
Going W from Witt’s End will now always fail, instead of leading to Ante Room.
End game timing has been changed to work like the TADS2 version, for more dramatic effect.
The game is 76.5 KB in z3 format, or 78 KB in z5 format. It plays considerably faster than the last release, due to code optimization and various tricks. E.g. playing it on a Commodore 64 shouldn’t be a problem. I recommend using the z5 version when possible, as its use of z5-only opcodes makes it faster.
Many thanks to Zarf and Johan Berntsson, for valuable feedback during the process.
Further feedback and bug reports are welcome!
The game (in binary and source form) is currently available at Games - Google Drive . It should appear in the right place on if-archive soon.
I have made a new release of PunyInform Adventure, currently available at Index: if-archive/unprocessed . The files should move into the correct folders soon.
This is release 6, serial 251126.
News:
Teleporting across the troll bridge is now blocked, unless the player can just freely stroll over the bridge.
If the player dies on the far side of the troll bridge, their belongings end up at SW Side of Chasm, so they won’t be inaccessible.
The troll bridge could break again and kill the player again, any number of times. Fixed.