tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7274560874062585311.post9182648163333930814..comments2024-03-24T16:26:37.755-07:00Comments on Gaming After 40: Adventure of the Week: Darkpit (2013)StillGaminghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18366215127642090500noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7274560874062585311.post-12789017052004915882013-11-12T17:52:34.383-08:002013-11-12T17:52:34.383-08:00I can still remember from way way back when my dad...I can still remember from way way back when my dad was first implementing this on the TRS-80. The game opened with just the ominous word "FALLING...", which lingered on the screen while the variables initialized. I remember my dad saying how he imagined playing this with all the lights turned out, and with the screen brightness turned down enough to make the background really BLACK. Then, when the player lit a match, the screen would flare into dazzling bright solid white, temporarily blinding the player just like in the game.<br /><br />I wanted to preserve the *ambience* my dad had been going after when I ported it to a modern .NET platform. I made the background black, unlike the white background I'd used in all my own text adventures. When launching, I made the game show the word "FALLING" in giant letters and shrink into the center, as though the word itself were falling away from you. I had lighting a match cause the entire window to rapidly blink black-and-white for a second or two. (Perhaps it was this blinking that froze the app on your PC. All I can offer is that tired old excuse of every lazy software developer: "It works fine when I run it on MY system!")<br /><br />I also took the opportunity to do something that I'd never gotten to do when porting my own adventures. Since the original was never finished -- my dad didn't even remember how he'd intended the game to end! -- I had carte blanche to make the text interpreter a lot more forgiving than in the original. I added "SMELL" as a verb, and gave each item its own scent. (Two of these were clues: the paper-wrapped stick, as you discovered, and the length of cord, which smelled of pentaerythriol tetranitrate. And, yes, I had to look up that chemical on Wikipedia. :-P ) I made sure every angle on the falling-in-the-well problem worked as intended, which was why I added that hypothermia timer that froze you. (I didn't want you stuck thrashing around in there with no rope forever.) I made falling into the well *necessary* for winning the game, as well as picking up the broken glass, opening the chest, and lighting a match. (My dad's original intent for these items had been "Ooh, this sounds like something that would be neat and/or scary to have in a dark pit!")<br /><br />I do regret the fact that I accidentally tweaked the game, probably a couple of months ago, in such a way that the bear would never show up. I found and fixed this bug just yesterday, too late to make it in for this review. If you HAD encountered the bear, (s)he wouldn't've killed you, but (s)he WOULD hurl you into another room -- and randomly change your facing, which would be frustrating without Debug Mode. (Incidentally, Debug Mode was also in my dad's TRS-80 original of this game; it's what gave me the idea.)<br /><br />All in all, though, it was FUN. It reminded me of the fun I'd had coming up with my old TRS-80 adventures in the first place. Now that I'm out of old TRS-80 games to revive, though, I'm kind of at a loss for what to do for an encore. Perhaps I'll transcribe some of the science fiction stories I wrote on a typewriter as a teen-ager.<br />Roger M. Wilcoxhttp://www.rogermwilcox.comnoreply@blogger.com