New Game Released: Gumshoe
Mike Oliphant
with pain, and you quickly shut it again.
The whiskey gods were not kind to you last night.
You search your memory for the reason behind this latest drinking
binge. This proves difficult, because there have been many such nights
since you were removed from your job as detective on the force. Now it
comes back to you. The rent being past due on your new office. Marge
badgering you about her paycheck. Your empty bank account. Your
complete lack of clients. The money you owe Jimmy Voigt. You wince,
not even wanting to think about Jimmy Voigt.
Last night, you took your troubles to 'ole Johnny Walker and he
listened good. One drink led to another, and that naturally led to the
next. Now you find yourself awakening on a cold, tiled floor. You
bravely reopen your eyes and see that you are curled up at the foot
of some private investigator's office door.
Hey! It's your office!!
The one you owe rent on... You wince again. Ignoring the warning bells
going off in your head, you slowly get to your feet and manage to
stand shakily. You're beginning to understand what it means to be a...
Gumshoe
An Interactive Investigation
Copyright (c) 1996 by Mike Oliphant
Release 1 / Serial number 960331 / Inform v1502 Library 5/12
-=-=-=-
Gumshoe is a game written using Graham Nelson's Inform, and hence needs
an interpreter to run it. Interpreters for most platforms can be found
on ftp.gmd.de in the if-archive/infocom/interpreters.
I have uploaded the datafile to the incoming/if-archive directory as
Gumshoe.z5. Presumably it will eventually show up in the
if-archive/games/infocom directory.
The game can also be obtained via the WWWeb at:
http://cogsci.ucsd.edu/~oliphant/gumshoe.html
Happy investigating!
mike
Matthew Russotto
}next. Now you find yourself awakening on a cold, tiled floor. You
}bravely reopen your eyes and see that you are curled up at the foot
}of some private investigator's office door.
}
}Hey! It's your office!!
I KNOW I've read that text before.
ct
Mike Oliphant <olip...@cogsci.ucsd.edu> wrote:
>Reluctantly, you crack a gluey eyelid to the world. Your head surges
>with pain, and you quickly shut it again.
>
>The whiskey gods were not kind to you last night.
Well, one (largish) shot of whisky (not that terrible american whiskey
rubbish either), and it was all over. Finishing games the day the came
out is not usually my forte, having spent about 6 months of Jigsaw on
and off, and Curses much longer, but this was just whizzed by...
A brief review
--------------
A nice, easy game. Wonderfully interactive scenery in places. Very
linear, with a simple, but happily straightforward plot. The author,
poor boy, is clearly american, as evidenced by his misspellings
throughout, so we have to forgive his occasional lapses when it comes
to describing the voyeuristic antics of his detective (and for those
without the benefit of a good bottle of malt, have one these :^)
instead!) Apart from the spellings, the prose is generally very good,
with some notable scene descriptions.
The characters were, well, distant. We never met the main baddy, and
it was all too easy to run up against the others' stock answer when
asking questions. The three thugs we meet at the start of the game
gave every impression of being cut from cardboard and painted with
black lines around the edges, so unreal did they seem. I had to love
the bartender though; a man with a great knowledge of important
(alcoholic) things.
The puzzles were few and (fairly) trivial to get through; the game is
small enough that brute-force antics could get you all the information
you need in very short order. Its certainly nothing like as hard as
every other inform game on gmd (excepting possible Tube and Library)
As in every new release, there are some small bugs, none of which impede
your progression (obviously!), so we won't mention them here.
Overall, it was a sweet little game which I enjoyed briefly, particularly
playing with the little toys left lying around. I'm just surprised it wasn't
a competition entry, as it seems a perfect length.
>Happy investigating!
Indeed!
regards, ct "hoping the whisky gods are kind to me tonight"
Dsurfr
snobby of me. Seriously, in some games, that could be a clue. I'm an ex
proofreader and it is just too irritating to have misspellings in a game
that is so dependent on words. Don't you think? Maybe it's just me, myself
and my petty idiosyncrasies.
Thanks for the review. If you finished it in one day, I may take a look
anyway. Still in the middle of Curses, after about 5 weeks.
ct
>I steadfastly refuse to play a game with typos. I guess that is a little
>snobby of me. Seriously, in some games, that could be a clue. I'm an ex
>proofreader and it is just too irritating to have misspellings in a game
>that is so dependent on words. Don't you think? Maybe it's just me, myself
>and my petty idiosyncrasies.
I was moaning about his americanisms, rather than 'real' mis-spellings;
there's probably a dictionary somewhere which gives his spellings, it
just won't be the OED!
Do check out the game, its not a great loss of time if you hate it!
regards, ct
Jason C Penney
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
: I steadfastly refuse to play a game with typos. I guess that is a little
: snobby of me. Seriously, in some games, that could be a clue. I'm an ex
: proofreader and it is just too irritating to have misspellings in a game
: that is so dependent on words. Don't you think? Maybe it's just me, myself
: and my petty idiosyncrasies.
: Thanks for the review. If you finished it in one day, I may take a look
: anyway. Still in the middle of Curses, after about 5 weeks.
hi,
Not to be picky about typos (which i am not) but there is no b
in Gumshoe. It is the first release of the game. Maybe you should
wait for a second release before you play games. Anyhow, I recommend
Gumshoe as a very amusing game. Sure it was short, but there were
lots of little things in it that gave it atmosphere. If you do win be
sure to check out the AMUSING option...
jay
p.s. A friend of mine is working on a program that reads source code
and generates two files: all strings from the code in one file, and
all the code w/ tags for the strings in another. He wrote it to run
the strings through a English to German translator. When he is
finished writing the code to recombine these two files, I think it
could be of great use in spell-checking IF...
/*--------------------------------------*--------------------------------*\
| Jason C. Penney (jpe...@cs.uml.edu) | http://www.cs.uml.edu/~jpenney/ |
| Xarton Dragon --==<UDIC>==-- | (Gilgamesh, The Mathoms, Wipers)|
*---------------------------------------*---------------------------------*
| New Dr Who on FOX in MAY! Watch it! | Something |
\*--------------------------------------*--------------------------------*/
Dsurfr
of humor.
Jay Tilton
>I steadfastly refuse to play a game with typos. I guess that is a little
>snobby of me. Seriously, in some games, that could be a clue. I'm an ex
>proofreader and it is just too irritating to have misspellings in a game
>that is so dependent on words. Don't you think? Maybe it's just me, myself
>and my petty idiosyncrasies.
I can pretty much overlook typos when embedded in the descriptive text,
though I do notice them. Misspelling something you have to refer to
is quite different. The brazier in Spiritwrak is the worst offender.
That one's so infuriating, I'm either going to give up on it until
it's fixed, or create a keyboard macro that types "oops braizer" for me.
--
Jay Tilton | jti...@vt.edu | Virginia Tech
http://fbox.vt.edu:10021/J/jtilton/index.html
Christopher E. Forman
: I steadfastly refuse to play a game with typos. I guess that is a little
: snobby of me. Seriously, in some games, that could be a clue. I'm an ex
: proofreader and it is just too irritating to have misspellings in a game
: that is so dependent on words. Don't you think? Maybe it's just me, myself
: and my petty idiosyncrasies.
Let's compare typos in I-F to graphic glitches in point-n-click games. Sure,
they're irritating, they detract a bit, but they're no reason to knock the
entire game unless they're all over the place or truly horrendous, such as
the ones in, say, "Space Aliens Laughed at My Cardigan." Just because an
author hit a wrong key and didn't catch it is no reason to judge the entire
game as worthless.
BTW, isn't "ex-proofreader" hyphenated? B-)
--
C.E. Forman cef...@rs6000.cmp.ilstu.edu
Read the I-F e-zine XYZZYnews, at ftp.gmd.de:/if-archive/magazines/xyzzynews,
or on the Web at http://www.interport.net/~eileen/design/xyzzynews.html
Robert A. DeLisle
the person just can't spell. A spelling checker will only work for
words that deviate from a common spelling. THEIR and THERE will pass.
Foreign spellings--I try to overlook the UK and CA spelling. They can't
help it any more than I can avoid American spelling. Other foreigners
are applauded for their attempts to use English of either kind.
The worst in-game spelling was 'guage' instead of 'gauge'. This was
annoying.
A.De Lisle
Eric Numan
: Foreign spellings--I try to overlook the UK and CA spelling. They can't
: help it any more than I can avoid American spelling. Other foreigners
: are applauded for their attempts to use English of either kind.
It helps, though, if such an author has someone check the grammar/spelling
beforehand. The proofreader may still make a mistake or overlook something,
but it would help avoid the same kind of problems the first release of
"Broken String" faced.
Julian Arnold
<mailto:cef...@rs6000.cmp.ilstu.edu> wrote:
>
> It helps, though, if such an author has someone check the grammar/spelling
> beforehand. The proofreader may still make a mistake or overlook something,
> but it would help avoid the same kind of problems the first release of
> "Broken String" faced.
Why is Gumshoe being used as an example for this thread? I won't say there
are no typos, but I haven't seen any in the release version, and there were
very few in the betas. There are US spellings, but the author is American,
the genre is American, and the setting is American.
Jools
Dsurfr
over the issue of misspellings. Adventure Race is a much better example as
there are quite a few typos. In general, the issue of typos struck me as
relevant in regards to IF. English versus American spellings don't bother
me as I've noticed that one may respond with American spellings and still
receive the correct response (i.e center for centre). Sorry about losing
it specifically over Gumshoe.