Part 237: Chapter 237
Thanks for all the kind words.
So, let's go through some things we missed. You guys actually saw most of the good stuff, but there are a few little tidbits (and of course the missing points).
The first is another final-room death. If you put the dynamite at the wrong end of the room, this happens:
quote:
>blast
There is a loud explosion, and a twenty-foot hole appears in the far wall, burying the snakes in the rubble. A river of molten lava pours in through the hole, destroying everything in its path, including you!
It looks as though you're dead. Well, seeing as how it's so close to closing time anyway, I think we'll just call it a day.
You can rub your lamp:
quote:
>rub lamp
Rubbing the electric lamp is not particularly rewarding. Anyway, nothing exciting happens.
If you try to take the huge fierce green snake:
quote:
It takes you instead. Glrp!
Zork references this with a sea serpent that gives you an almost identical message if you try to pick it up.
There's also bug in most Inform versions that prevent this from working; the snake is defined as animate, which usually prevents you from picking things up, and no exception is made to allow it (and let you get killed).
You can do this at the rusty iron door north of the giant's room:
quote:
>pour water on door
The hinges are quite thoroughly rusted now and won't budge.
If a dwarf spawns while you're in the mirror canyon or follows you in there:
quote:
>z
Time passes.
The dwarf admires himself in the mirror.
We ran across a stalactite that people threatened to make me go down but never did. Here's where it leads:
quote:
Atop Stalactite
A large stalactite extends from the roof and almost reaches the floor below. You could climb down it, and jump from it to the floor, but having done so you would be unable to reach it to climb back up.
>d
Maze
>l
Maze
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
Even better: there are two different rooms it can put you in, with a 50% chance of each.
You can't get the gold nugget up the stairs. But what happens if you teleport out and try to climb down the stairs?
quote:
At Top of Small Pit
>d
You are at the bottom of the pit with a broken neck.
Once the caves start closing, a few things change.
quote:
>i
You are carrying:
a set of keys
a dwarvish axe
a black rod with a rusty star on the end
a small bottle
some bottled water
a brass lantern (providing light)
>get pyramid
Taken!
A sepulchral voice reverberating through the cave says, "Cave closing soon. All adventurers exit immediately through main office."
[Your score has just gone up by thirty-two points.]
>i
You are carrying:
a platinum pyramid
a dwarvish axe
a black rod with a rusty star on the end
a small bottle
some bottled water
a brass lantern (providing light)
Did you catch that? The keys disappeared. Why might that be?
quote:
>l
Below the Grate
You are in a small chamber beneath a 3x3 steel grate to the surface. A low crawl over cobbles leads inward to the west.
>u
You are unable to climb the steel grate.
>open grate
It seems to be locked.
The grate locks itself. No way out that way!
If you use xyzzy or plugh, you can escape, but that's a bug. What is supposed to happen (and what I would have put into the LP if you'd tried it) is this:
quote:
A mysterious recorded voice groans into life and announces: "This exit is closed. Please leave via main office."
Okay, now the really fun stuff.
Remember that rod with a star on the end that we carried around through the entire game and periodically waved and/or tried to hit people with?
Here's what it really does.
quote:
On East Bank of Fissure
You are on the east bank of a fissure slicing clear across the hall. The mist is quite thick here, and the fissure is too wide to jump.
>wave rod
A crystal bridge now spans the fissure.
>x bridge
It spans the fissure, thereby providing you a way across.
>drop rod
Dropped.
>w
West Side of Fissure
You are on the west side of the fissure in the hall of mists.
A crystal bridge now spans the fissure.
There are diamonds here!
That's it. You can leave the rod behind and it's never useful again for the rest of the game. Zork contained an homage to this, uh, "puzzle" - a treasure you could wave to turn a rainbow into a bridge. They also referenced the extreme difficulty of guessing that you were supposed to this by providing almost no clues at all. They were very, very slightly fairer - the scepter had all the colors of the rainbow on it.
In practice, you don't need to wave the rod to beat the game and most people just end up hauling it around forever without figuring out what it does. When the cave is closing, the crystal bridge disappears and the rod won't summon it anymore.
Now, the missing points. We really only missed two sources of them. The first was a treasure. Remember how I kept emphasizing how the game described treasures using exclamation points? That's actually how the game tells you that something is a treasure in the first place. Now, think back...
quote:
In West Side Chamber
You are in the west side chamber of the hall of the mountain king. A passage continues west and up here.
There are many coins here!
>x coins
They're a numismatist's dream!
Those coins we spent on the new batteries? They're a treasure.
quote:
>get coins
Taken!
[Your score has just gone up by seven points.]
>e
Hall of the Mountain King
You are in the hall of the mountain king, with passages off in all directions.
>n
Low N/S Passage
You are in a low N/S passage at a hole in the floor. The hole goes down to an E/W passage.
>n
At "Y2"
You are in a large room, with a passage to the south, a passage to the west, and a wall of broken rock to the east. There is a large "Y2" on a rock in the room's center.
>plugh
Inside Building
You are inside a building, a well house for a large spring.
You can see some bars of silver and a set of keys here.
>drop coins
Safely deposited.
[Your score has just gone up by five points.]
Your only option for a 100% run on this game is to finish everything there is to do before your lantern's batteries run out the first time. Remember when I said the game would kindly give you hints about those batteries when they were running out? It was actually screwing you.
Adventure lets you get through with a lot of missing points. The game-ending "cave closing" sequence is generated once you've found all the treasures, even if you no longer have some of them. (So, for instance, you can break the vase and pay the troll twice if you haven't found the eggs and lose the points for those treasures too.)
Getting the coins would give us 13 more points, leaving us with 349. How do you get the last point? Well. If you thought the puzzles we solved were unfair, brace yourselves, because this is the worst puzzle in the history of text adventures.
quote:
In Anteroom
You are in an anteroom leading to a large passage to the east. Small passages go west and up. The remnants of recent digging are evident.
A sign in midair here says "Cave under construction beyond this point. Proceed at own risk. [Witt Construction Company]"
You can also see a few recent issues of "Spelunker Today" here.
>get magazine
Taken.
>e
At Witt's End
You are at Witt's End. Passages lead off in *all* directions.
>drop magazine
You really are at wit's end.
[Your score has just gone up by one point.]
Ta-daaaaa. This is what they called the Last Lousy Point. People used to resort to all kinds of extreme methods to find this, like reading the machine code directly. Some later IF games include a similar point as an homage.
Tomorrow: differences between the original and the port.
AutistTree posted:
Any ideas what you'll LPing next?
I was thinking of Police Quest. Probably with less audience participation (the game doesn't lend itself to it as well) and a less frenetic update schedule.