Letters

Dear XYZZYnews,

Two more references to "a maze of twisty little passages, all alike," only one of which I can quote:

From Taltos, by Steven Brust (pp.158-159):

"We made out way through the corridors of the Halls of Judgment and well as we could, which wasn't very. What had been a single straight, wide corridor had somehow turned into a twisty maze of little passages, all the same. We must have wandered those little halls for two or three hours, getting more and more lost, with none of us willing to admit it. We tried marking the walls with the points of our swords, keeping to the left-hand paths, but nothing worked. And the really odd thing was that none of the passages led anywhere except to other passages. That is, there were no rooms, stairways, doors, or anything else."

There is a reference to the Maze somewhere in Terry Pratchett's "Witches Abroad," but I lost the slip of paper that I wrote it down on, and I've returned the book to the library. Oops.

Howard Liu
ifnews@gamestats.com

Dear XYZZYnews,

There's a reference to Adventure in Larry Niven's novel Destiny's Road.

One of the characters describes the ecological system of the planet Destiny by saying "We seem to be in a bunch of twisty little ecologies, all different." Verrry hard to miss: made me almost fall out of my chair laughing. :)

Allen Short
ashort@iname.com

Infocom bugs, continued

Dear XYZZYnews:

Here's an interesting one from Infidel (off Masterpieces):

>put all in pack
knapsack: You take the knapsack off and place it in 
the cigarette pack. As
it settles in the cigarette pack, the cover flaps 
open. 
farewell note: There's no room.
cigarette pack: How can you do that?

>i
You are carrying:
  A farewell note
  A cigarette pack
  The cigarette pack contains:
    A knapsack
    The knapsack contains:
      A rope
      A canteen

>version
INFIDEL
Copyright 1983 by Infocom, Inc. All rights reserved.
INFIDEL is a trademark of Infocom, Inc.
Release 22 / Serial number 830916

The Infocom Bugs List mentions the "container bug' in Infidel -- putting the knapsack and the chalice in each other at the same time makes them disappear. It works with the knapsack and the cigarette pack too. You can trigger it with the amusing sequence:

>put sack in pack. put pack in sack.

Shades of Dr. Seuss!

Joe
jcmason@uwaterloo.ca

Dear XYZZYnews:

Suspended bug: Iris (the one who can see) can be used to describe all rooms.

There was something that you plug in so that can see the room that you are in. Anyway, have one robot (e.g., Poet) plug in the device, then direct that robot to follow another robot (e.g., Sensa), then move Sensa. Poet will forget to unplug the device, and you can then view the descriptions of all rooms, including the ones that are in the section that requires the wedge for access.

Perhaps stranger that such descriptions exist... or have I missed something?

Peter Ferrie

Dear XYZZYnews:

I have found a bug in Spellbreaker which is not listed on the bugs list:

If you have water in the bottle then casting tinsot on any body of water except for the one in the Oubliette will give the message "The water and bottle freeze and shatter into a million pieces!" and destroy the bottle even if the bottle is not in the same room or if it is inside the closed zipper.

If that's not clear, here's a concrete example. At the Enchanters' Retreat I dropped the bottle which contained water. I then blorpled the earth cube and went west then south to get to the Ruins Room. I then cast tinsot on the water there and received the message about the bottle shattering. Going back to the Enchanters' Retreat I found that the bottle was gone. I found this in version 87/860904 of Spellbreaker.

Paul
rizzo@best.com

Second that emotion

Dear XYZZYnews:

I read both Neil de Mause's critique and Laura Mixon's response.

I feel the difference in the emotion of her game (which I have tried a bit) and "regular" IF is in the way it is presented. The Erasmatron forces the emotion on you like it was trying to say "Look here! Emotion! We have determined emotion is important so we're going to stick it in your face and base the entire game on it."

Emotion works best when it's subtle and finds its way into the readers' hearts through unexpected paths. The emotion in Shattertown is predictable and completely superfluous. If you want emotion in IF play Babel.

Shattertown is a noble attempt at best and a waste of time at worst.

Lawrence Noc-Woon Kwong
lnkwong@midway.uchicago.edu

Inquiring minds

Dear XYZZYnews,

It was a huge surprise to me that there are people out there who still cherish the ol' text adventures, as I thought everyone migrated to DOOM/QUAKE land...

A long while ago, I was putting the finishing touches on a horror text adventure game (a real horror game, not the cheezy "you see a ghost here" games). I was writing for the PC DOS platform, but then Wolfenstein 3-D came out and killed the text adventures off.

What venues are out there for me should I decide to dust off the game and finish it? Should I even bother?

Thanx loads!

Dave
dadametz@uhc.com

As you might guess, I'll take issue with your blanket statement that the Wolfensteins of the world have killed off text adventures. I think you'll find a willing crowd of play-testers for the asking on the Usenet newsgroup rec.games.int-fiction. From there, it's up to you how much you'll take their feedback into account in creating a final version for general distribution to the IF community. -- EM

Hi Eileen,

I've been reading XYZZYnews since number one, and I'm a big fan of it, lots of nice interviews. Anyway, I'm writing this because I was recently rummaging through some old papers (old indeed, as I threw away some copies of TRS-80 Magazine ;)) and discovered my collection of NZT/Status Line. I think it is complete (I have 22 issues), and I'm willing to scan them into PDFs, and the if-archive seems an obvious spot where they should go. Question is, you know if there are any legal constraints ?

Thanks a lot. Keep the good work !

Rafael Oliveira
rafaelg@pobox.com

I would assume that Activision currently holds the copyright on these materials. You would need to ask permission from the company before you could legitimately reprint their material. -- EM

Hey Eileen,

I had worked with the Adventure Game Toolkit a while back, and while digging through archives on the Net to find it, I came across a link to your XYZZYnews site. It is very nice, but I'm a bit confused.

What exactly is interactive fiction? Just any "game" that employs only text, or is there more? I'm trying to work on a browser-based game where many people can all interact in a fictitious, self-running environment -- and it's all text (and if I finish, it'll be free for public access). Does this fit the definition?

Rod Jackson
rodjackson@bigfoot.com

Sure, your Web-based IF games still sounds like IF to me -- and I've no doubt you'll find an eager audience if you promote your game to rec.games.int-fiction when you're done. -- EM

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