
Colossal Cue Adventure: a Zork-style text-based programming adventure game - rwalker
http://adventure.cueup.com/
======
zx2c4
Return to Zork, the first graphical non-text based Zork, is the most memorable
computer game I've ever played. It was the first time I saw computer graphics
so beautiful in such a haunting mysterious world. Sometimes I still have
dreams about it, and occasionally during world travels I'll see something that
reminds me, "oh I was at a place that looked just like this before... in
Zork!"

RTZ was even better than Myst, its cultural successor.

I realized, a few months ago, that Rebecca Snoot from RTZ is Rayanne Graff
from My So-Called Life. WHAT? Yes, it's true.

You are in front of a white house...

Pick up rock, throw it at vulture...

Remember to dig up the bonding plant -- if you cut it, you won't be able to
get into the comedy club by the cliffs of desperation later on.

Want some rye? Course ya do!

It's now been 20 years since that game came out. Woah. Two decades. 1993. It's
still vividly seared into my mind.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Return_to_Zork>

If you can find an ISO of it, it'll run in DOSBox, I believe. Beware, though,
that you need the encyclopedia that comes with the box -- awesome primitive
copy protection.

Great game, good times. Any other RTZ nostalgites here?

~~~
olgeni
"Here's to us!"

~~~
zx2c4
Who's like us? Damnnnn few! And we're allll dead.

------
rwalker
We figured this would be good for some Friday fun! Admittedly, a few of the
problems are solvable by hand, and we wish there were more jokes about gnus,
but overall we just hope you enjoy playing as much as we enjoyed building it.

~~~
vq
I haven't gotten far into the game yet, but so far I really wished that you
had followed the text-adventure idioms better, the interface feels really
clunky for someone who is used to playing text-adventures.

Feel free to call me a youngster that is spoiled by modern games if you want.

~~~
rwalker
If you have any specific idioms you think we should add, let me know here or
at robbyw@cueup.com

~~~
vq
x for "look at" and i for "inventory". (I see that you have already fixed
these).

"look around" used to be "look" even in the old days iirc and in these days
"l" is the common alias. It seems like you have given to many functions to a
"use" verb, in the case of the switch the verb is usually "pull".

The navigational verb seems a bit odd, go is usually used with a direction,
like "go north" (which is expected to have the alias "n" btw). What you seem
to be aiming for is the enter and exit verbs, for example "enter door" or
"exit cage".

"take" is usually "get", having "take" as an alias is probably good though.

"look at me" and consequently "x me" is almost always implemented in text-
adventure games and here I expect something fitting and hilarious. ;)

For this game most of my points doesn't matter, but I recommend having
implementations of the "x", "l" and "i" aliases.

A minor glitch, you don't seem to be able to look at the "chips".

Btw, I'm really loving the concept so far. :)

~~~
rwalker
Fixed most of these. "use switch" and "flip switch" both work, and now "pull
switch" does too. "enter door" works now.

changing get will take a little more work, so for now I just aliased it to
take.

"go north" is already in the game, just later...

really appreciate the feedback!

------
JoshTriplett
Very nice! I like the RNG puzzle you started off with. This reminds me of the
Python Challenge, but inspired more by HAKMEM than by exercising random Python
library code.

A couple of minor issues I tripped over due to experience with other text
adventures:

\- Consider adding the standard text adventure shortcut commands: "x" or
"examine" for "look at", and "i" for "inventory".

\- I found it surprising that "look at inventory_item" didn't work. "look at
boat" or "look at vest", for instance.

\- How about "help command" for each command listed in the "help" output?

~~~
rwalker
Deploying these fixes now - thanks for the feedback!

~~~
JoshTriplett
Thanks for the rapid response! All of those changes work perfectly here, and
the interface feels much more comfortable now.

I kinda expected "x chips" and "x radionuclides" to do something, at least as
a joke. (Out of curiosity, did you get some inspiration from "no tea" there?)

Also, how about "x me", "talk to me", and "help help"?

Any way you could provide scrollback?

~~~
rwalker
Added those now as well! (and, yes, that and as a complement to the fission
verb)

Do you mean scrollback across refreshes or something else? (you can email me
at robbyw@cueup.com since HN will start time-limiting our conversation at this
depth)

~~~
JoshTriplett
> Added those now as well! (and, yes, that and as a complement to the fission
> verb)

Thanks! Most of them seem to work, except for "talk to me" and "help help".

> Do you mean scrollback across refreshes or something else?

No, I meant scrollback within a single session. I'd like to scroll back
through the log of my interaction with the game, all the way back to the logo
and preamble.

------
Pitarou
__HINTS __

 __First puzzle: __You might think you have to do an exhaustive search of all
possible seeds for the random number generator, but it turns out they've made
it easy for you. The initial seed is at one extreme end of the possible
range....

 __Second puzzle: __Just create a stack, and walk through the string pushing
and popping as you go.

By the way, I'm sure there's a mistake in there. I got the answer x (and I
checked it by hand) but it only accepts the answer x - 1.

 __Third puzzle: __My approach used dynamic programming algorithms. If you're
unfamiliar with this technique, you'll probably want to find a different way
to solve it.

First, I used dynamic programming to find all routes of the form (north|east)+
(i.e. all routes in which the rabbit only goes north and east). That didn't
work, but it was clear that the rabbit could only double back on itself a
limited number of times, so I extended my code to find all routes of the form
(north|east)+((south|west)+(north|east)+) _

~~~
dsr_
vim and emacs both know all about matching arbitrarily nested
parentheticals...

------
kordless
> They fail to reach consensus on what it means to `pwd` a pig, then as one,
> they fall silent.

Clearly this version doesn't have pig paths.

------
drudru11
I definitely bookmarked this. This is going to be a fun diversion in my spare
time.

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drusenko
hah, love this! pretty clear you guys spent a ton of time on it, was loads of
fun. definitely one-upping ours ;)

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pc
This is really cool.

------
gnosis
Is there a standalone, open-source version of this available?

~~~
rwalker
Not at the moment, but with enough interest, it's something we could do at
some point.

~~~
vq
A Z-machine file would be nice. :)

------
strags
That was a nice diversion for a Friday afternoon - thanks. I finished the
bonus round, but didn't find any pig jokes or easter eggs.

------
GauntletWizard
Good game! I enjoyed the first puzzle most, mainly because the second was a
pain to write and I didn't think to allow backtracking in the second. I'm
stuck, though, on the bonus puzzle; Is there a hint I'm missing? Brute-force
doesn't seem a sensible answer.

------
roryokane
Here is the puzzle-solving code that I wrote as I played:
<https://gist.github.com/4571643>. It’s written in Ruby 1.9. You can check it
out if you’re stuck or just curious.

------
nitinrao
It is a pretty neat game. I have no idea what MTH$RANDOM is.Can you suggest
some links where could i look it up?

~~~
sswezey
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linear_congruential_generator>

Unfortunately, I can't get the numbers to fit, even with accounting for 00,
and using an actual roulette board order.

~~~
dsr_
Roulette board order doesn't matter. It's calling the RNG sequence.

My mistake was feeding the mod 36 output back in as the next seed; it's the
output from the RNG itself, and a good thing too...

------
ctangney
That was fun - thanks Robby and team!

------
lake99
Can I take a ^ from the ^ shack?

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curiousdannii
A popup preventing me from closing the page? Seriously? In 2013?

