[Announce] Book and Volume
nm
Book and Volume
Interactive Fiction by Nick Montfort
Your pager tickles you awake.
Upstairs in the house of your childhood, in your room, and it must be
time for school because -- no, it's the weekend, you remember, but your
alarm is going off anyway. You should have been awake already. You're
going to miss the bus. Your mother climbs in the window. You're
dreaming.
You're a grown-up: It opens to you again, a sluggish window summoned by
a mouse click. Waking up now in your own apartment, your new apartment.
Your pager is buzzing and vibrating both, serious. It is in fact the
weekend, but you're not in elementary school. No one is crawling in
through the window. You're a system administrator for nWare. Waking up
urgently, here in nTopia.
Available now:
http://nickm.com/if/book_and_volume.html
Current IF Archive location:
http://www.ifarchive.org/if-archive/unprocessed/bookvol.z5
Should move soon to:
http://www.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/zcode/bookvol.z5
-nm (contact me at nickm at the domain nickm.com)
Dan Shiovitz
niz <n...@infidel.freeserve.co.uk> wrote:
>
>nm wrote:
>> Announcing:
>>
>> Book and Volume
>> Interactive Fiction by Nick Montfort
>>
>> http://nickm.com/if/book_and_volume.html
>>
>
>how to turn off sophie? is it related to the brass key on the diorama?
Have you looked at the computer? It's only got one control.
A button, just like your pager.
So presumably it can be interacted with in the same way.
--
Dan Shiovitz :: d...@cs.wisc.edu :: http://www.drizzle.com/~dans
"He settled down to dictate a letter to the Consolidated Nailfile and
Eyebrow Tweezer Corporation of Scranton, Pa., which would make them
realize that life is stern and earnest and Nailfile and Eyebrow Tweezer
Corporations are not put in this world for pleasure alone." -PGW
rgrassi
I'm going to play it asap.
Rob
Dan Shiovitz
niz <n...@infidel.freeserve.co.uk> wrote:
>
>Dan Shiovitz wrote:
>> In article <1132225719.9...@f14g2000cwb.googlegroups.com>,
>> niz <n...@infidel.freeserve.co.uk> wrote:
>> >how to turn off sophie? is it related to the brass key on the diorama?
>>
>> Have you looked at the computer? It's only got one control.
>>
>> A button, just like your pager.
>>
>> So presumably it can be interacted with in the same way.
>>
>
>permanenetly after its been compromised (i'm trying to offline it).
Take another look at your pager -- despite only having the single
button, you still have multiple ways of interacting with it.
>also... is there any way to recharge the laptop or it that simply a
>timed puzzle?
As far as I know it's just a timed puzzle. Note that there is an
obvious way to reduce the power drain of the laptop some of the time.
Richard Bos
> Announcing:
>
> Book and Volume
> Interactive Fiction by Nick Montfort
So if the Comp was a 36-course banquet, is this our Grand Dessert? It
is, in any case, very tasty. I particularly like the way the environment
changes with time.
Richard
Richard Bos
> ok thanks, i made progress... and got stuck again! where can i find the
> incinerator? i checked the whole map, couldnt find it anywhere...
It's not marked as such, and it only seems to open when you need it, so
you won't have entered it before. It's on Back.
Ok, my turn. Where do I find a new disk (or how do I buy one in the
nWare store)? And what do I do with the Allen wrench or the panel
lifter?
Richard
ben...@yahoo.com
Richard Bos wrote:
> "niz" <n...@infidel.freeserve.co.uk> wrote:
>
>
> Ok, my turn. Where do I find a new disk (or how do I buy one in the
> nWare store)? And what do I do with the Allen wrench or the panel
> lifter?
>
> Richard
s
p
o
i
l
e
r
s
p
a
c
e
You can buy a new disk if you are holding the old damaged one.
Use the panel lifter (the command is 'use') in the server rooms. You'll
then find a place to use the wrench.
A question in return...
Where do you find the wrench?
Ben
José Manuel García-Patos
> Ok, my turn. Where do I find a new disk (or how do I buy one in the
> nWare store)? And what do I do with the Allen wrench or the panel
> lifter?
You have to take the old defective disk with you to the nWare store. As
for the panel lifter, you might try opening panels near the servers you
already rebooted.
And now my turn. What do I have to do to avoid the overload at 7.55 pm on
Monday?
All the best.
José Manuel García-Patos
Madrid
Richard Bos
> Richard Bos wrote:
> > "niz" <n...@infidel.freeserve.co.uk> wrote:
> >
> > Ok, my turn. Where do I find a new disk (or how do I buy one in the
> > nWare store)? And what do I do with the Allen wrench or the panel
> > lifter?
>
> s
> p
> o
> i
> l
> e
> r
>
> s
> p
> a
> c
> e
>
> You can buy a new disk if you are holding the old damaged one.
> Use the panel lifter (the command is 'use') in the server rooms. You'll
> then find a place to use the wrench.
> A question in return...
> Where do you find the wrench?
You can find a coin in a bank. Using that coin, you can get the wrench,
in a roundabout way, in the games arcade.
Richard
Richard Bos
wrote:
> > Ok, my turn. Where do I find a new disk (or how do I buy one in the
> > nWare store)? And what do I do with the Allen wrench or the panel
> > lifter?
>
> You have to take the old defective disk with you to the nWare store. As
> for the panel lifter, you might try opening panels near the servers you
> already rebooted.
Right. Found it.
> And now my turn. What do I have to do to avoid the overload at 7.55 pm on
> Monday?
You need to undo something you needed to do to proceed just before. That
will provide some more insight. Before you go, you'll need to eat one
more time, or you'll faint with hunger before 7:55.
Once that's done, and you find the new place, and then do the obvious,
you get what I suspect is the optimum ending. At least, I can't find any
tools to actually stop the process rather than evading it.
Very nice game. I like the environment, and the way you interact with it
- or rather, the way you seem to be part of it.
Richard
Richard Bos
> Richard Bos wrote:
>
> > > s
> > > p
> > > o
> > > i
> > > l
> > > e
> > > r
> > >
> > > s
> > > p
> > > a
> > > c
> > > e
> > >
>
> >
> > You can find a coin in a bank. Using that coin, you can get the wrench,
> > in a roundabout way, in the games arcade.
>
> do you know how to change the dollar coin to something smaller for the
> arcade game? the bank is closed.
The means for that is available in the arcade itself. Examine
everything.
Richard
ben...@yahoo.com
Richard Bos wrote:
> =?iso-8859-1?q?Jos=E9_Manuel_Garc=EDa-Patos?= <jo...@cervantes.org>
> wrote:
>
> Once that's done, and you find the new place, and then do the obvious,
> you get what I suspect is the optimum ending. At least, I can't find any
> tools to actually stop the process rather than evading it.
>
> Very nice game. I like the environment, and the way you interact with it
> - or rather, the way you seem to be part of it.
>
> Richard
Thanks. I've got that ending but I'm not sure it's the best.
The Mysterious Figure you meet when you eat charges you with stopping
it; there's a custom message if you try to turn off the F9 server;
there's the memory stick which you can retrieve from the diorama in
City Hall which I haven't found a use for, and the final message for
that ending is still ***So It Goes***. I take these as hints that there
is something better.
Any ideas anyone?
Ben
Richard Bos
> Richard Bos wrote:
> > =?iso-8859-1?q?Jos=E9_Manuel_Garc=EDa-Patos?= <jo...@cervantes.org>
> > wrote:
> >
> > Once that's done, and you find the new place, and then do the obvious,
> > you get what I suspect is the optimum ending. At least, I can't find any
> > tools to actually stop the process rather than evading it.
> >
> > Very nice game. I like the environment, and the way you interact with it
> > - or rather, the way you seem to be part of it.
(I also like the way the environment changes as the game progresses, and
with ordinary time; and the way hints to the backstory are dropped in at
seemingly random points in the game, whenever you enter a building for
the first time.)
> Thanks. I've got that ending but I'm not sure it's the best.
>
> The Mysterious Figure you meet when you eat charges you with stopping
> it; there's a custom message if you try to turn off the F9 server;
> there's the memory stick which you can retrieve from the diorama in
> City Hall which I haven't found a use for,
You can put it in a weird creature found in a restaurant. Doesn't seem
to do anything except produce odd messages, though.
> and the final message for that ending is still ***So It Goes***.
> I take these as hints that there is something better.
I now believe that there isn't, but I haven't found everything yet. For
example, does anyone know how, or when, to get into either the Chapel
(A&4) or the Bastion Theatre (E&2)? They both indicate (when you try yo
enter) that they _might_ be open some time, just like the incinerator;
so, like it, I presume they do at some point. But when?
Richard
N B Horvath
http://nbhorvath.blogspot.com/2005/11/book-and-volume-by-nick-montfort.html
.
Andrew Plotkin
didn't work for me." I shall completely skip over the questions of
story, character, setting, and implementation -- because those *did*
work for me; I'm perfectly happy with them. (Ok, some implementation
quibbles, but I have sent those to the author under separate cover.)
So.
I figured on writing an inquiry into why the author could *possibly*
have wanted to use so many time limits in this game. (You can starve,
run out of laptop power, *or* run into the overarching time limit of
the story. I think you can pass out from lack of sleep, too.)
Then I decided this was the wrong question. The question is, why did I
give up playing the third time I died (or "died"). I've played plenty
of games in which you can run out of stuff. In this case, the problem
was that when I died (the third time, laptop battery), I was already
wandering around wondering what I was supposed to do next.
The game starts with a clear plot direction -- a to-do list, one might
compare it to -- which pulls you straight into the story. This, I
thought, was good. It turned out to actually be not so good, because
the to-do list doesn't actually give you everything you need to win
the game. You find yourself out of tasks. This might indicate that you
should look for a new set of goals, but none has been provided at that
point, so you're just lost.
(In fact, the original list is still operative, but it has switched
from being event-triggered -- finish a task, get another -- to being
triggered by specific times on the game clock. I think that's what
happened, anyway.)
Yes, there's a sort of inverse motivation -- "What would my character
do if he were bored?" -- but this sort of damning-with-faint-praise
game goal didn't work at all for me.
Similarly: you start out being giving specific locations for the
things you're supposed to do. You don't get directions to them, but if
you walk past the place you'll recognize it. This, I thought, was
good. Until I discovered that the game wanted me to have
systematically explored all around the city, mapping it *and* poking
my head into every single building, including the apparently
uninteresting ones. (In fact, nearly all the buildings are
interestingly *written*, but nearly none of them seem to have any game
function. I did look into a few at random, but I rapidly drew the
conclusion that there was no reason to do so. And with a 5-by-7 street
grid, believe me, I was predisposed to believe that random searching
was a waste of time.)
In both cases, the failures were in how the game signals to the player
what sort of playing experience is going on. Or, if you like,
inconsistency. Chain of event triggers or times on the clock? Directed
goals or random exploration? (Whether it's bad signalling or
inconsistency depends on whether you want to change the first half of
the game or the last half. :)
Eventually I read through hints (in the discussion thread here), went
back to the game, and finished it. Let me note, apropos the original
inquiry, that replaying the game (as you have to do several times to
win without hints) is not especially lengthy or tedious, but is not
especially fun either.
Were I giving advice -- imagine me giving advice here -- I would
repackage the game with a big feelie map, which showed *everything* in
the city. Including the one you can't recognize from the outside. With
annotations like "food served late here" (hint hint).
The motivation problem is trickier. (Well, aside from motivating the
player to wander absolutely everywhere, which you'll note becomes
entirely unnecessary if you take my first advice.) I guess I wanted
one more task to bridge the time-gap -- *or* one new thing to do. That
perception-altering game element (avoiding spoilers here) would be a
good item to promote. Make it work in a lot more places -- preferably
turning up stuff you can do further the plot.
Or even stuff you can do that doesn't further the plot. Anything to
keep my attention until it's time for the endgame. Again,
game-functional stuff-to-do trumps room descriptions, no matter how
cool the room descriptions are.
So.
Oh, one implementation note: I kept looking at the status line to see
where I was. Having the compass up there was mildly helpful, but not
an excuse for the missing location name.
--Z
"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the borogoves..."
*
I'm still thinking about what to put in this space.
Richard Bos
> I figured on writing an inquiry into why the author could *possibly*
> have wanted to use so many time limits in this game. (You can starve,
> run out of laptop power, *or* run into the overarching time limit of
> the story. I think you can pass out from lack of sleep, too.)
Yes, you can. And if you wish, you can scream your head off and be put
into a padded cell.
> The game starts with a clear plot direction -- a to-do list, one might
> compare it to -- which pulls you straight into the story. This, I
> thought, was good. It turned out to actually be not so good, because
> the to-do list doesn't actually give you everything you need to win
> the game. You find yourself out of tasks. This might indicate that you
> should look for a new set of goals, but none has been provided at that
> point, so you're just lost.
> Yes, there's a sort of inverse motivation -- "What would my character
> do if he were bored?" -- but this sort of damning-with-faint-praise
> game goal didn't work at all for me.
OTOH, I found it reasonable, since it is precisely what is likely to
happen in the real world (I spend hours doing nothing but planning,
preparing, cleaning up, and so forth - and then three emergencies arrive
at once, by preference on monday morning or half an hour before closing
time). Also, I found the city interesting enough to walk around and look
at everything. (And if it all gets too much, there _is_ a "wait for N
minutes" or "wait until HH:MM" command. I didn't need it except when
waiting for the compile to finish, but it could be useful.)
> (In fact, nearly all the buildings are interestingly *written*, but
> nearly none of them seem to have any game function.
Yes, if I would make one request about the game, it would be this: make
more of the buildings have an interesting function. Maybe not something
necessary to the game; but something to do, with clues or interesting
objects as a reward.
> I did look into a few at random, but I rapidly drew the
> conclusion that there was no reason to do so.
Most, except the Gaps and Starbuckses and so on, give a clue to the
backstory when you enter for the first time.
> Were I giving advice -- imagine me giving advice here -- I would
> repackage the game with a big feelie map, which showed *everything* in
> the city. Including the one you can't recognize from the outside. With
> annotations like "food served late here" (hint hint).
At your service: <http://www.xs4all.nl/~rlbos/bookvol%20map.pdf>. Not
the final version (there are some improvements I want to make, but I
don't have InDesign at home so they'll have to wait until my next lunch
break), but good enough for the time being. Have mercy on the iffy
construction - I'm only a sysadmin, not a layout specialist.
Richard
Andrew Plotkin
>
> > Were I giving advice -- imagine me giving advice here -- I would
> > repackage the game with a big feelie map, which showed *everything* in
> > the city. Including the one you can't recognize from the outside. With
> > annotations like "food served late here" (hint hint).
>
> At your service: <http://www.xs4all.nl/~rlbos/bookvol%20map.pdf>. Not
> the final version (there are some improvements I want to make, but I
> don't have InDesign at home so they'll have to wait until my next lunch
> break), but good enough for the time being. Have mercy on the iffy
> construction - I'm only a sysadmin, not a layout specialist.
That is an excellent map, but it's a spoiler map, not a feelie map.
I'd want *not* to see any of the rooms you discover in the course of
the game, or even server locations.
(Also, there should be a specific notation for places open 24 hours a
day.)
Richard Bos
> Here, Richard Bos <ral...@xs4all.nl> wrote:
> >
> > > Were I giving advice -- imagine me giving advice here -- I would
> > > repackage the game with a big feelie map, which showed *everything* in
> > > the city. Including the one you can't recognize from the outside. With
> > > annotations like "food served late here" (hint hint).
> >
> > At your service: <http://www.xs4all.nl/~rlbos/bookvol%20map.pdf>. Not
> > the final version (there are some improvements I want to make, but I
> > don't have InDesign at home so they'll have to wait until my next lunch
> > break), but good enough for the time being. Have mercy on the iffy
> > construction - I'm only a sysadmin, not a layout specialist.
>
> That is an excellent map, but it's a spoiler map, not a feelie map.
> I'd want *not* to see any of the rooms you discover in the course of
> the game, or even server locations.
Ok... so that means no server rooms, either, because that would be a bit
of a giveaway... and none of the campus buildings (F2 and F9 you
discover later; and F7 basically _is_ a server room). The incinerator is
indicated before you can enter it, though vaguely, so it can stay.
Leaving a gap there would be a hint in itself, anyway.
> (Also, there should be a specific notation for places open 24 hours a
> day.)
Rooms with no time are open all hours. A room legend will explain this,
and that was one of the improvements I had planned.
Right. What about these?
<http://www.xs4all.nl/~rlbos/bookvol%20map.pdf> and
<http://www.xs4all.nl/~rlbos/bookvol%20feelie%20map.pdf>.
(I notice now that I've forgotten to add the room legend to the spoiler
map. Ah well.)
Richard
Andrew Plotkin
>
> > That is an excellent map, but it's a spoiler map, not a feelie map.
> > I'd want *not* to see any of the rooms you discover in the course of
> > the game, or even server locations.
>
> Ok... so that means no server rooms, either, because that would be a bit
> of a giveaway... and none of the campus buildings (F2 and F9 you
> discover later; and F7 basically _is_ a server room). The incinerator is
> indicated before you can enter it, though vaguely, so it can stay.
> Leaving a gap there would be a hint in itself, anyway.
You can reasonably include F7, since it's the building you work in --
you're familiar with it at the start of the game.
The East Berm, I'm waffling about.
Oh, I guess the feelie map wouldn't include object locations.
> > (Also, there should be a specific notation for places open 24 hours a
> > day.)
>
> Rooms with no time are open all hours. A room legend will explain this,
> and that was one of the improvements I had planned.
Aha.
Cool work.
Richard Bos
> Here, Richard Bos <ral...@xs4all.nl> wrote:
> > Andrew Plotkin <erky...@eblong.com> wrote:
> >
> > > That is an excellent map, but it's a spoiler map, not a feelie map.
> > > I'd want *not* to see any of the rooms you discover in the course of
> > > the game, or even server locations.
> >
> > Ok... so that means no server rooms, either, because that would be a bit
> > of a giveaway... and none of the campus buildings (F2 and F9 you
> > discover later; and F7 basically _is_ a server room). The incinerator is
> > indicated before you can enter it, though vaguely, so it can stay.
> > Leaving a gap there would be a hint in itself, anyway.
>
> You can reasonably include F7, since it's the building you work in --
> you're familiar with it at the start of the game.
True, but it's too clearly the server room for Cindy, and nothing else.
It would be too much of a hint. At least RelOfCoTn (whose description is
probably my favourite line in the game, btw) is a regular part of the
city matrix. And if you want to see the feelie map as a more-or-less
realistic gift map, the campus would include either all major buildings,
or none; certainly not a mere service building as the only one. Also, it
breaks up my nice, empty campus. No, F7 shouldn't be there.
> The East Berm, I'm waffling about.
It's called the East Berm Server Room. It's also the only room east of
the map. Too spoily, I think.
> Oh, I guess the feelie map wouldn't include object locations.
I included only those objects that are lying about in plain sight, so
they're not spoily. I guess if you look at it as a map that you get,
say, when you actually visit nTopia, you're right.
> > > (Also, there should be a specific notation for places open 24 hours a
> > > day.)
> >
> > Rooms with no time are open all hours. A room legend will explain this,
> > and that was one of the improvements I had planned.
>
> Aha.
>
> Cool work.
Thanks.
Hey, I have to practice my InDesign skills somehow - this is better than
a brochure for some dreary fictional company.
Richard
malcol...@gmail.com
> You can buy a new disk if you are holding the old damaged one.
> Use the panel lifter (the command is 'use') in the server rooms.
Ah. I was trying "lift floor with lifter" and getting an unhelpful
response:
>lift floor with lifter
The double-cup panel lifter can open only appropriate sorts of floor
panels.
>open floor
Using the double-cup panel lifter somewhat more strenuously than you
really should have to, you wiggle part of the floor open.
I've also found that sometimes I can't enter the Incinerator building
even when I have the defective disk. I need to wander around a bit
longer until I get the "it must be around here" message. And when I'm
in the building, it would make sense for "burn disk" to be a synonym
for "put disk in incinerator".
Thanks to Richard, by the way, for the map. I wouldn't have bothered
trying to complete the game without it.
Malcolm
malcol...@gmail.com
Malcolm