CASK
My first stab in Interactive Adventure.

by Harry M. Hardjono
9-16-1007


This game has not been beta tested. Nor has it been debugged. Well, some anyway. The idea for this story was first hatched when I was developing an adventure gaming system on Amiga 1000. It was to comprised of two rooms and some artifacts to manipulate. And since I know there's a 64K memory limitation, I decided to use virtual memory system.

Although I didn't know it at the time, I was using virtual machine technique. For two fun weeks, I wrote and debugged my first adventure game. Well, the good news is that it works. The bad news is that it's so-o-o-o slow. I guess Amiga BASIC just doesn't cut it. It took 2 minutes between turns using floppy as virtual memory. 15 seconds with RAM disk. For something with 50 words vocabulary and two rooms, it's very slow. I thrashed the project soon after.

Fast forward to 1997. I found Inform on the Internet. It's easy, object-oriented, and free. Plenty of examples and support. So, I decided to write my old text adventure in order to learn Inform. I did it while recovering from surgery, BTW, or else I wouldn't have the time.

So far so good. There's a couple bugs in it, but they're minor. Of course, it hasn't been tested beyond "get off the chair" routine, so I wouldn't be surprised if people starts complaining. At least I managed to achieve my goal: learning Inform. Now that I've learnt it, though, I wouldn't feature things to climb onto on my next projects. Heh, I had to learn the hard way, I guess. 

I expanded the two rooms onto four to accomodate Inform's idiosyncracy. No problem. Oh, this one also has more text than the original since the original has pictures. Unfortunately, English is a difficult language. I'm sure grammar errors abound. Please bear with it.

All right, enough chatter. Here's the walkthrough for the game. May you never need it. :)

Commands are in all caps:


LOOK AT SWITCH 
if it's on turn it off. 
TURN SWITCH OFF
GET ON CHAIR
TAKE WIRE
GET OFF CHAIR
somebody asked me once, "How do you GET OFF THE CHAIR?"
just type "GET OFF CHAIR", gee, what's the problem?
If you type down and get to kiss the ground, it's a bug.
TURN SWITCH ON
PUSH CHAIR EAST
you can also take it and carry it with you.
TAKE SAW
LOOK AT MACHINERY
for fun try READing the WRITING
OPEN PANEL
PUT WIRE IN PANEL
if you get electrocuted, did you turn the switch on? It works flip-flop.
WEST
TURN SWITCH OFF
EAST
LOOK AT BUTTON
It should be glowing, now.
PUSH BUTTON
ZZZ
wait until the cover opens
PUSH BUTTON
GET ON CHAIR
UP
up and climb are two different words. I didn't have time to accomodate both.
Now you're inside the drum. Aren't you glad you turn the machinery off?
TAKE BUNDLE
OPEN IT
TAKE RAT
WRAP BUNDLE ON SAW
CUT HOLE WITH SAW
WEST
now in wine room
PUT RAT ON CHAIR
LOOK
if you see a key inside the rat, it's a bug. 
It shouldn't say "in which is a golden key". 
I don't know how to stop the library, though.
TAKE RAT
TAKE KEY
WEST
UNLOCK DOOR WITH KEY
OPEN IT
WEST
Freeeeedooooom!!!!!
GIVE RAT TO ELEPHANT
End of story.

Note:
1. If you didn't turn off the machine while getting into the drum, you die an interesting death.
2. If you shred (cut) the rat into pieces, you can't win.
3. If you crush the chair inside the big drum, you lose the chair, and won't be able to continue the adventure (if there's any, that is, but there isn't any more).
4. Did you try NOT give the rat to the elephant? Indescribable :)
