[ANN] "Shelter from the Storm" Released
Eric Eve
present tense (e.g. "You are carrying the Sword of Dubious Destiny,
the Amulet of Dodgy Desire and an old copy of Wizards' Weekly").
From time to time this convention is questioned on RAIF and
elsewhere. "Shelter from the Storm" allows you to experiment with
this for yourself, since you can choose to play the game in either
the first, second or third person, and either the present or the
past tense; you can also change your choices mid-game.
"But what's the game actually about?" I hear you ask.
It is set in October 1940. Jack is a newly-commissioned sapper
officer on his way to his first posting somewhere on Salisbury Plain
(in southern England) when his car breaks down. The weather is
starting to turn nasty, and his first task is to find shelter from
the brewing storm. When he finds it, he'll encounter a whole lot
more than he bargained for, as it becomes gradually apparent that
things are not as they are meant to seem.
"Shelter from the Storm" has just been uploaded to the IF-Archive
and should eventually migrate to the games/tads directory. In the
meantime, for the next couple of weeks or so, it can also be
downloaded from
http://users.ox.ac.uk/~manc0049/files/storm.zip.
In due course it would be interesting to hear what difference (if
any) players found their choice of person and tense made to their
experience of the game.
-- Eric
Emily Short
> "Shelter from the Storm" has just been uploaded to the IF-Archive
> and should eventually migrate to the games/tads directory. In the
> meantime, for the next couple of weeks or so, it can also be
> downloaded fromhttp://users.ox.ac.uk/~manc0049/files/storm.zip.
Yay!
Embarrassingly, I'm already a bit stuck...
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I've gotten to the house, had something to eat, and chatted a bit with
the Croxleys; and now they've gone off to talk to a visitor, leaving
me to explore the upstairs. So far I've found the pole to open the
attic door and the torch to light it, and have found a suspicious box.
There is also the maid's brown suitcase and two locked doors upstairs
that I am interested in opening.
Unfortunately, I suspect that the key to one or more of these is in
the pocket of Hilda's coat, and she seems to be guarding that
zealously. I haven't come up with a way to distract her from her
duties, despite attempts (I hoped, for instance, that by telling her
about the sheets in the airing cupboard I might make her think there
was something wrong with them).
I have also discovered Croxley's revolver (which I can't take), what
appears to be a German code belonging to Angela, evidence that Angela
is (was?) really the fiancee rather than the sister of one of the
younger Croxleys, and a German language-lesson gramophone record in
the square bedroom.
THINK HARDER is just telling me to explore the upstairs more, but I
think I've opened and looked under most of the obvious places.
Jacek Pudlo
You see no german here.
> KILL NAZI
You see no nazi here.
> KILL GIRAFFE
The word "giraffe" is not necessary in this story.
> KILL JEW
The word "jew" is not necessary in this story.
One of the many annoying things about TADS is its irrational insistence on
making a distinction between things not present in the room ("You see no X
here") and things not present in the game ("The word X is not necessary in
this story"). This allows the player to epistemologically preempt the story.
We know there will be Germans but no giraffes or Jews, and we know it after
the first four moves. TADS's stubborn refusal to capitalise ethnonyms is
another source of annoyance.
The game itself looks interesting.
Eric Eve
"Emily Short" <ems...@mindspring.com> wrote in message
news:55ba31dd-124f-448e...@n21g2000vba.googlegroups.com...
Yay!
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What you need to find next is up in the attic. Try examining a few
things up there more carefully.
-- Eric
Emily Short
>
> What you need to find next is up in the attic. Try examining a few
> things up there more carefully.
>
> -- Eric
Got it now -- thanks!
Eric Eve
>>
>> What you need to find next is up in the attic. Try examining a
>> few
>> things up there more carefully.
>>
> Got it now -- thanks!
Great! I've now tweaked the THINK/THINK HARDER mechanism so it that
nudges people in that direction more effectively.
-- Eric
s.bot...@xtra.co.nz
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a murder has been commited.and I am being prompted to find evidence
against the maid. I have exhausted all conversation topics with
angela.
hildA must have a code book some where........but where?
Eric Eve
"guin...@gmail.com" <s.bot...@xtra.co.nz> wrote in message
news:abd3d35a-7c04-4f7f...@x3g2000yqa.googlegroups.com...
Have you searched Hilda's coat pocket? What did you find there?
What did Angela tell you about what you found there?
Where does that tell you Hilda must (almost certainly) have been?
How thoroughly have you searched that place?
--Eric
s.bot...@xtra.co.nz
game.A fun and immersinng diversion .Played with tenses and sauch too.
Eric Eve
http://users.ox.ac.uk/~manc0049/files/storm.zip. This fixes a number
of minor issues based on player feedback. Please note that this
update is currently only available from this URL. The version in the
IF-Archive is currently version 1.0; some time in the future I shall
probably send an update to the IF-Archive, but probably not until
I've gone through several more minor versions (assuming that
continuing player feedback necessitates them).
If you've already played Shelter from the Storm you won't find much
different in version 1.1, but if you haven'y you may prefer to
download this version from the above URL rather than version 1.0
from the IF-Archive.
-- Eric