This is a wild one – doing a lot of interesting stuff, but I admit between the intentional-glitchiness and the somewhat stochastic events, I’m having a bit of a hard time telling whether I’m on track, and the in-game hints aren’t especially helpful right now:
So I get the basic dynamic of the game – we’re helping stage-manage the machinery of this unstable AI-generated piece of IF, while various bits of ghost-in-the-machine weirdness leak through. I’ve had one game “reset” already, which led to a good metafictional interlude and the password to one of the files, and after that I’ve managed to get the player outside, into the hole, and then back out of the hole, with one more big fourth-wall-breaking freakout occasioned by the player trying to UNDO their death by drowning. And now – nothing is happening? Advance and Chase automatically started running once the water rising sequence triggered, but they’ve now run their course and the player doesn’t seem to be responding to them. Attempting to manually invoke them has the “AI” saying that’s a bad idea and proooobably unnecessary, with RUN ADVANCE now telling me that’s an empty routine.
My current goals are just listed as ??? and get-hint just says “run” (I guess assuming we’re in a chase?), but moving around Rudolfs old and new doesn’t seem to do anything, and all the player wants to do is climb back into the hole (no. bad player. bad.) Last time I was kinda stymied, after I waited for a bit I got a game reset per the above, so I’m guessing that’s what’s meant to happen now, and next cycle I’ll be able to get into the chase proper? My other thought is maybe there was a file password somewhere in the “garbage” text that came on-screen during the freakout, but if so I missed it.
So yeah, would appreciate a nudge, if anyone’s got one – I’m very interested to see where this goes!
I’m stuck at the same place I think. I’ve tried dequeueing the ADVANCE/CHASE routines against advice, and GIVE-HINTS still says “Run.” when they’re off. So I wasn’t sure if that’s meant to be an instruction to the player or a machine message that the command has run?
Yeah, I tried dequeueing and likewise didn’t see any results. On the hints, I’m pretty sure they’re meant to be in-character, since I think the idea is that the routine is selecting an appropriate hint to provide to the player when they type HINT. So that does suggest they’re meant to run away in the chase scene (I think one of the Rudolfs is meant to be the monster doing the chasing). But mine never seemed to, though I tried spooking them with the various haunt and horror routines.
I don’t want to “jump to the rescue” yet, given that you seem to be vaguely on the right track, but if any of you would like a hint I could DM or post under spoilers in this thread…
Question first: has Rudolf been moved around during the routines? Because depending on how the game ran its course before, he may or may not have been moved. Much of this game is designed to be randomised every round.
If the previous answer was no, look at the name of the Rudolf you have interacted with.
As was hypothesized above, getting the game to quit itself was the key to progressing. I was able to brute force it by saving right before killing the player with the HORROR routine in certain rooms (by queuing it for a couple turns in the future) and then restoring. The player dies instantly upon restoring, but tries to UNDO with no success since UNDO can’t go past a restore. So the player undoes over and over until the game boots you out).
The key to the passwords is that (full description of solution) It’s the first three letters of the filename in rot13 with only the first one capitalized, followed by the date it was last updated.
For the endgame, the command you need is ZILF and you’re intended to experiment with the different postfixes or whatever like -A, -B, with the final one being (for me) zilf MFog.zip -c.
OK, I think I’ll ask for a more direct hint – I’ve gone back and tried a bunch of stuff and am still not able to progress, and a couple of inconsistencies in how a couple of sequences have played out after resetting (like, it was only on I think the fourth go-round that the player got renamed from “AP”, and I got more structured notifications prompting as well) make me wonder if I’m not getting something, or if some events aren’t firing the way they should? I see Brian’s notes about killing the player so they can’t undo, and deducing the principle behind the file passwords but those seem like they’d be sequence-breaks given what’s currently before me, even if I think I could give them a try right now. Here’s a transcript of my most recent play session if that’s helpful:
I’m going to post an update in about an second lowering significantly the chance of UNDO for the AP, as it looks like there have been some issues with it. Sorry about that!
(If you really want to skip, enter the main game and type $LVL -1, wait 1 turn, then quit and wait for the review to load. Once you return to the loading screen, it should be at the final stage of the game. However wait for me to post the update first!)
No, I really want not to skip, I’m enjoying the game! Will take a look at the update – I think re-doing the early stages shouldn’t take too long so should be able to just hop over to that.
How did you figure this out—is there something in the game that indicates this? I ran “ZILF update.wit -a” when the game prompted me to, but I definitely would never have thought to try a different postfix on different files.
The way to figure this out is through the FILES - that’s how you learn to update the game in the first place. If you were to enter ZILF [filename], it would prompt you wth all the names of different postfixes. Also, are you sure you entered it in right? It works perfectly fine on all the interpreters I’m trying…
I haven’t yet been able to access the files “MaxFogLogs.txt” or EditorNotes.docx"—the first says it’s corrupted, and the password format for the other files doesn’t work on the second. Hints for those (if there is a way to access them) welcome!
It only works when you’ve reached the endgame (when there is an imminent threat).
I reached the endgame by using the RUN HORROR command after the pit was filled with water and after moving the character to a bedroom. This ended the game. The player then uses UNDO or QUIT. QUIT is what advances the story. You have to have this happen once or twice after reading all file names. When I played, they only used UNDO, but I was able to use SAVE/RESTORE to glitch the game into making UNDO not work, forcing it to the next section. Max said he updated it.
If you post your save file, I can see if I can get to the ending from there! (if it’s for the newest version of the game)