itch.io

Thanks so much! It's cool to get a note on something I wrote a while back, just for its own sake and for motivation to get (back) to work on my next project.

Great to see you updating things! Hope your other projects are going well--the BDB project looks formidable and worthwhile!

Haha. Ouch. I intended it to be bad, but I didn't expect anyone outside the immediate community to look into it.

I don't know if you're on intfiction.org or aware of ParserComp? But if you're not aware of ParserComp, they can use all the votes they can get. I didn't enter this year, but I'm voting in it. I've already played a few legitimately good games, and maybe you'll find one you enjoy, too. I hope so -- you've earned it after YTDND!

https://itch.io/jam/parsercomp-2025/entries

Thanks ... hope you didn't spend too long on it.

BTW, reading your comments, I was led to a recreation of Jon Bois's Myst/Barry Bonds mockup. I didn't know it existed so I was glad to play through it.

It might be better that way. I meant this game to be really, really bad for the bad game jam. Then I felt guilty publishing it. TEST ALL with the ulx file is probably a better option, to see how and why it is bad without wasting too much time.

I guess one of the points of it being so hard was, you needed mind-reading to do it, so it's in the walkthrough.

The idea is that you need to examine the bed, the fridge and the couch 6 times, but you need to do them in A-B-C, A-C-B, B-C-A, B-A-C and C-A-B and C-B-A order.

Now it's out of my system I'd like to go back to writing stuff that might actually be good.

This was really fun as a meta-exercise. I had a feeling it was going to be about something I didn't know, and I was right, so after having fun barreling around fruitlessly a bit, I found the reasoning in the solution was fun to read.

The exits are also much more interesting than the standard S/E/N/W/NW of a parser game!

There's a high likelihood I won't be entering this year (never say never! I joined just in case) but still wanted to offer testing services.

Sorry for letting this slip!

PRUNE PRIDE should work. If it doesn't, let me know, and if you have a transcript, even better.

Sorry for the inconvenience here. I think I rushed production on BBGG. But I appreciate the motivation to get that post comp release out.

There's a phrase that rhymes with SPOON SPIED and GOON GUIDE.

Perhaps "clear mind" isn't the right phrase here. "right mindset" is more like it. I can spoil if you want.

Thanks for looking back to play BBGG, and for the reminder that I want to push out another release--there are still things floating around to fix in it!

I may do another run through later. I found stuff here and there that did not affect my enjoyment. I didn't take detailed notes, but there was one line with "her" where it should have been "here." So maybe search your source for the full word her. (Or her. or space/her/space.) But that was it -- likely not worth an update.

If you open up the source after the comp, I'd be glad to help and poke some more.

Yeah, I think I may've had a bit of a brain fade since I'd already used the slot to get the machine started and then open up Syria. I wound up playing during several different sessions and I thought "Okay, the game is being nice and having you use everything once." Or maybe I was thinking more on the lines of "put USB port A in slot B." I guess I never considered the slot could be like a mail slot.

So after I took a break, came back and got the Damascus Steel, I went through the process of elimination of what still needed use, and I crossed the slot off. Leaving me with ... nothing! Oops.

Thanks! I'm always flattered when people whose first language is not English give my stuff a try.

I figured people had enough words to guess without having to figure verbs for the objects too. Though I have enjoyed the entries in this jam (yours included) that have you use a variety of (well clued) verbs to get through.

Very belated thanks for the clarification here!

And thanks for extending the deadline. However, I'm not sure if I should use the extra time to test what I have. I mean, that might make it less bad in the wrong sort of way.

Thanks, got through the game and enjoyed it! For whatever reason I didn't think I could put more than 1 item in the slot.

I have the Damascus Steel but am a bit lost as to what to do next. I have the timer too, and I've tried to turn it in every room in every time period. I've enjoyed what I've seen, but playing off and on, I lose track of things and maybe haven't paid as much attention as I should have, to what items I haven't used, etc.

Any suggestions?

I enjoyed this a lot.

I seem to remember finding some trivial stuff, but I lost my notes. If you're interested, I can play through again, because I think I'd have fun.

The main one was that the tutorial fired off a one-off "careful, this is a timed puzzle" when there didn't seem to be a timed puzzle (the trash bag.) Thus when I ran into an actual timed puzzle, it didn't fire.

The only thing I would add is an in-game note that the map runs east-west-ish, if the player wants to make a map with pen(cil) and paper. I ran out of space at first drawing mine up.

Thanks! It's, well, a text adventure in a programming language that allows for graphics in the header. It was my first try at it.

This isn't spelling and grammar, but I didn't want to fill up the main help topic with it.

The four tutorial rooms are very welcoming. Adventuron's defaults for RESTART (after you've finished the tutorial) and QUIT, though, are a bit harsh.

If you want to fix that,

themes {
   system_messages {
      ask_new_game = Custom message 1
      ask_quit = Custom message 2
      post_quit = Custom message 3
   }
}

(Note: if you want to see other system messages to tweak, Christopher Merriner's Custard and Mustard source code lists them all. https://ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/source/adventuron/Custard_and_Mustard.txt)

Sorry to read of your struggles. Hopefully tutorial mode worked better.

The time travel theme was only a suggestion. I had this idea for a while and am grateful the organizer was okay with letting me run with it.

I can fix that. I have some other minor bugs to fix and will upload the new version soon. How would you like to be credited (if at all?) Thanks!

Just to be clear, this means either

My Bad Game (Really Boogaloo Bad IF Jam) as the title

or

My Bad Game was written for the RBBIFJam that ran from 5/30 to 6/30, etc.

(or both if we want?)

In any case I definitely want to acknowledge the inspiration to write my, uh, work.

What the topic says. Even if you're only able to test a specific area, that's a big help, so the next tester won't have to.

I'd be glad to help testing in return, especially if you yourself need a specific area looked at.

I have a walkthrough and cheat commands available, and I prefer to use a walkthrough (a bit short of time) as I think I'm pretty good at finding technical stuff & I know what sort of things get overlooked in the production process.

It's good to see you writing these.

I always wanted to join ShuffleComp, sort of, but I didn't want to fit a work to two songs. I wound up testing a lot of games for the first ShuffleComp, which was really rewarding. I look back on them fondly, even the ones that didn't get a commendation.

Sometimes we need a comp we enter and things didn't go great so that we can say, hey, I know a bit better what I want.

Thanks so much, Garry! This was relatively high on my list of looking up ... The first room sort-of warps to the second room. 

Also this will be useful for my test scripts.

I want to write my entry in Adventuron. Well, I've already started, actually.

But I'd like to keep a devlog for aspiring Adventuron authors. What did I learn, when, and why?

Of course, I will want to redact game-sensitive parts. So I might have

The first thing to do? Write in locations. I've redacted them during the development period.
But they are initialed, so you know which they are post-comp.
locations {
   n_l      : location "Description." ;
   b_h  : location "Description." ;
}

Now since the player warps from n to b, I disabled the connections at first. I will figure how to do that later.
The uncommented code would give an error--Adventuron's editor explains you can't loop to yourself.
connections {
   from, direction, to = [
      ## b_h,     north, b_h
   ]
}

I did basic stuff with on_startup: press_any_key and clear_screen.
I didn't bother with the Tutorial Y/N text that needs to go in ... that's later.
I also didn't bother to make the intro robust. I just wanted it there.
on_startup {
   : print "(redacted title text)" ;
   : press_any_key ;
   : clear_screen;
   : print "Submitted for the 2025 TALP competition." ;
   : press_any_key ;
}

So I wanted to check before starting this. If necessary/wanted I could hold off posting this until after the comp.

No problem on the late response--I've definitely let things drop myself!

I haven't even gotten to a couple of your transcripts that I meant to, for stuff I wrote and need to make a post comp version for. But the ones I do have helped immensely. So count this as a blanket thanks for all your support this year!

I enjoyed this. Hope you find the time to update what you want!

I remember someone who went to college in Troy and had rather mean things to say about it. "The armpit of New York," I think the comment was.

I've read about gentrification etc. and always wondered "what is the downside" and it is interesting to find more -- certainly there have been failures in Chicago too where it took a while to admit they had failed so badly they needed to start over. (Some housing projects.)

Thanks for this explanation! It's good to know it's not Twine-specific. I should probably allow downloading this locally, just in case.

Thanks! I'll look into it. I didn't try to do anything too complex, but all the same, there are a lot of unknowns with web programming in general.

Thanks for giving a look! If you can reproduce the error I'd like to know. It works OK on my Firefox, but then again I write more parser games than Twine so there's a possibility I'm missing something.

By the way, did you click Enable Scrollbars? The final screen got cut off. Which isn't a big deal -- I could click ctrl-A to cut and paste it. But it's something I've forgotten too.

It was awesome to see a "real" paradox in the Educational Jam after my own fake-paradox!

I was worried I was alone and out there in left field.

Well done! I especially liked how story mode worked, filling in the next commands to keep the sotry going but letting you edit them.

I played without story mode, then with. I think I found the slight majority of commands my first time through.

I enjoyed this a lot!
I think people who solve the final puzzle will feel very smart indeed. I saw it in an alternate form, which I don't want to spoil in the comments.

Sorry about that! I had a lot of bugs to fix and one of them was VERBS giving blank output. Unfortunately I had to rush a few things at the end.

It was one of those things where I thought "oh of course I couldn't have missed that, right?"

This is fixed in version 1.10.

Thanks, I didn't get to do all the testing I wanted with Zarf's regex script. So it's good to know I can make small updates to code misfires when needed.

However, the two bonus points I thought of last night will wait until after the comp :) ... an excuse to make a quick post-comp release!

What are the rules on in-comp updates? Is it just for bug fixes and not new content? E.g. I'd assume typos are okay to fix but adding a few new rooms should wait for post-comp.

Wow, thanks, that's very generous!

Still got a lot of cutting text down to do. Maybe I'll split it into two separate stories.

I had an idea, but I wanted to make sure it didn't run afoul of the word count.

It's something like this. You have equations on a chalkboard.

How many words would this count as?

There's a case for an equals sign being a word, or a minus/plus sign or a number e.g. x^2 is 2 words and not one.

Here are the examples.

Would line 2 and 3 be 5, or 3? (a^2 and b^2 could be 1 word or 2.)

x=2ab

y=a^2-b^2

z=a^2+b^2

I may be chiseling here but I'd like to know how much extra fun stuff I could fit in. Of course if there is any doubt I will assume these take the maximum number of words. One image or line doesn't mean much of course but there may be multiple so they could really add up.

Thanks!

Well, if there's any jam to have such an oversight, this one is it.