itch.io

Thanks for the kind words. It is, indeed, a very retro-inspired game. It's a sort of blend of a treasure hunt and an escape game woven around a mystery in the not too distant future.

Thanks. Not a high priority, but I'll take a look at it in due course.

I'm glad you found this. It would have been great to swap notes.

For those that don't know, 'UMD' is University of Michigan-Dearborn. Did you find the projects page? I was looking for it a little while back and couldn't find it, so guess that it's been taken offline. Fortunately, I captured all the games when they were still available. Let me know if I can help you with those. The old UMD games were a lot of fun. Horribly buggy, but still a lot of fun. I admire what the students were able to achieve in just a week or two.

'Cargo Breach' is a complete redesign based on your idea for 'Dead in the Water'. A story was developed, the time period was changed to WWI and the layout of the ship was based on research into steamers used during this period. Room descriptions were rewritten and scenery was added. All the existing puzzles were changed and a number of new puzzles added. I tried to get everything to make sense within the context of the story. Despite all the changes, there are some elements that you may recognise: the captain and his coffee mug, the frozen ice on the steps, the magnet (that was really tricky to implement), the cargo container aft of cargo hold 2 (albeit with different contents) and the ultimate goal.

I hope you enjoy the rest of the game.

Thanks.

No problem. After asking this question, I realised that the context implied that the single character was a clef and I noticed that the other unknown characters actually changed each turn, so I assume they are musical notes (crotchets, quavers etc.).

Thanks.

Firstly, thanks for making the web-playable version.

I've just made my way through to the end, being careful to keep track of the score. I worked out that you receive 10 points for delivering a package and 1 point for each dollar earned. You also lose a point for each dollar spent. I finished with 159 points and Glenda gave me a certificate that said NOT BAD. I suspect there is a last lousy point to get 160 points, otherwise Glenda would have been more generous in her praise. Have I missed something? (I went for the fancy haircut, rather than the buzz cut. That would have saved another 5 points, but I didn't think the buzz cut would be fancy enough for Sir Godfrey.)

I browsed through the Easter eggs file when I was finished, but don't think I would have guessed any of those strange commands. Perhaps there are points to be earned amongst those.

I'm playing on  a Windows 7 laptop with Firefox browser. Go E, E, S from the start and you find yourself in 'The ? in the Air', where the question mark is a tiny box that I presume to be a Unicode character that doesn't have a glyph in the game's font. The tiny numbers in the box appear to be 01D 11E. Can you tell me what that character is supposed to be?

If you then go E, you find yourself 'In the ?', where the question mark is the same as above. That room's title is followed by three unknown characters that appear to be 01D 15F, 01D 12B and 01D 195. I don't know if these are important, but can you also tell me what these are supposed to be?

There may be other unknown characters that I haven't come across yet.

It was the memory expansion. I had it set to full by default, as this seems to work for just about everything. If I change it to no memory expansion, it works. I'm not a VIC expert, so I thought it would just ignore the extra memory in the memory expansion, but apparently not. Anyway, it works now. Thanks for the help.

I am interested in Pursuing Tom Ram for the VIC-20. The C16 and C64 versions work, but the VIC-20 version does not work. I'm using WinVICE. I've tried drag and drop to the emulator, autostart from within the emulator, copying the prg to a disk image and autostarting that, and loading the disk image and LOAD"PURSUING TOM RAM",8 all without success. Is this a buggy prg file or is there an extra undocumented SYSxxxx step?

I'm not the organiser, but I'd say it depends on the rules of the other comp/jam. For ParserComp, games must not have previously been published and that is the same for most comps within the IF community. Other jams may not have this rule, so it would be okay to enter those jams, providing you enter those AFTER entering ParserComp.

Thanks for the (very spoilery) feedback. I'm glad you enjoyed the game.

The game is fairly linear until you've finished the tutorial. Once you leave the town, the game opens up and you can do lots of things in any order. This part of the game is essentially an information gathering exercise and you can gather that information in any order. You may have found some information earlier than expected, but that doesn't matter. You still need to find all the information and work out what to do with it, which you apparently did in the long run.

I'd really like to play this game, because I like the pixel graphics. I have a Windows 11 laptop somewhere, so I'll try and play it on that, maybe after playing the other games in the comp.

You might also like to know that the first review has popped up at https://intfiction.org/t/mathbrushs-parsercomp-2024-reviews/69454/3

I am not familiar with Python, but it looks like you have a large chunk of the Python files bundled with the game. This explains the huge download. These files are for Python 3.12. I have been advised that this is not compatible with Windows 7 (which is what I'm using). You should give the minimum system requirements on the game page so that people like me don't waste hours trying to find and download missing components only to find that it doesn't work and was never going to work.

Can you compile this to run on Windows 7 or any other platform, such as Mac or Linux? Alternatively, can you get it to run in a browser?

Any chance of a downloadable version?

That's better. Thanks.

Under Embed options in your game's project page, can you please select Click to launch in full screen so that it opens in the full browser window, rather than an iframe. The latter is unusable. This is unrelated to Adventuron's default opening in full screen.

Can you also fill out the game_information{} section in your source code so that you don't get the error message at the start of the game. As a minimum, you need copyright_message, game_name, game_version, uuid, written_by and year_of_release.

After much searching, I found that the missing file is part of the Microsoft Visual C++ redistributable from 2019. After finding and installing that file, I got:

Failed to load Python DLL 'path_to_game\_internal\python312.dll'.
LoadLibrary: <FormatMessageW failed.>

However, the python312.dll file is included in that folder. At this point, I give up.

For those not familiar with Python (like me), you'll have to download and install Python first. To install PyGame, open a command prompt and enter:

python3 -m pip install -U pygame==2.6.0

To run the game, enter:

python3 main.py

Good luck.

The download is pretty much empty. It contains the Inform 7 Alphabet City Parser.materials folder, two (very large) identical cover images and an empty Alphabet City file.

It won't run:

According to this note, you can make them public now: https://intfiction.org/t/parsercomp-2024-now-open-for-submissions/68373/17

Glad you enjoyed it. I just did a quick run through and it doesn't yell at you for examining any dead bodies. However, it does ask you to show a little more respect if you try attacking them, kissing them, waking them or anything like that. I guess that's what you're referring to.

JUMP and JUMP OFF <something> are two different actions. When you're on the platform JUMP OFF PLATFORM is ambiguous, as there is a choice of directions, so it will tell you to go aft or climb down the ladder. When on the platform, I'll consider making JUMP and JUMP OFF PLATFORM synonymous with going aft.

Thanks for the feedback.

That's true, but I didn't want to reveal too much about the characters until people have played the game. Let's just say that the game is inspired by the Mother Goose nursery rhymes, but expect some surprises along the way.

I'm glad you liked it. The other games in the series also have many improvements that I think you'll like.

Thank you. I'm glad you enjoyed it. I have a few others that have a tutorial and are targetted at beginners, so give them a try: Kenny Koala's Bushfire Survival Plan is set in the Australian bush, Carpathian Vampire has a vampire theme based on a true story and Who Kidnapped Mother Goose? is my latest, inspired by the better-known Mother Goose nursery rhymes.

It's really quite easy. Just take all the materials required for the toy to the workshop and MAKE <toy>, e.g. MAKE DOLL. Synonyms for MAKE are ASSEMBLE, BUILD, CONSTRUCT and CREATE.

Hmmm, that's probably not the best response. I should fix that.

That's great. I hope you enjoyed it. It was a fun little game to write and the multi-element banana puzzle is one of my favourites.

He always comes down the stairs to get you a banana when you press the button, so...

There's a lot to do there. Firstly, make sure you examine everything for subtle clues. For example, note that the orangutan's feet almost reach the top of the west wall at the pinnacle of his swing. That should give you an idea of your next objective, but you need to get the orangutan off the swing. What do primates like to eat?

Examine the hay, the crate, the hole, the button, the slot and everything else. Experiment with these until you know how to get a banana. You will need at least two bananas in due course.

Tie vine to branch.

Just for the benefit of anyone else reading this, examine the intercom and you'll see that it has something below the grill. Press that.

If you examine the fire, you'll see that there's nothing left but ashes. So, DIG ASHES. From memory, I think you can also SEARCH ASHES.

Thank you. That is much better. I can now read the text without it being truncated and I can read more of the text without needing to scroll so much.

That's much better. Thank you.

That's much better. Thank you.

Under the Embed options on your project page, can you select Click to launch in full screen? This is different to Adventuron's default opening in full screen and allows the game to occupy the whole browser window, rather than use an iframe.

Under the Embed options on your project page, can you select Click to launch in full screen? This is different to Adventuron's default opening in full screen and allows the game to occupy the whole browser window, rather than use an iframe.

In your Adventuron source code, can you add the game_information {} section and recompile? This will avoid the error message at the start of the game. As a minimum, you'll need to add:

• copyright_message
• game_name
• game_version
• uuid
• written_by
• year_of_release

These are important for bibliographic reasons.

Under the Embed options on your project page, can you select Click to launch in full screen? This is different to Adventuron's default opening in full screen and allows the game to occupy the whole browser window, rather than use an iframe.