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│ ALL ABOUT SPECTRUM GAMES │
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(C) Dr.Laser
(R) Adventurer #8
RUSSIAN GLITCHES
or showdowns in the dark.
I ask the author of the program described below not to be offended by me.
If he reads this article as if it were someone else's
program, he will learn a lot about how NOT to write ad-
venture programs.
I, Dr. Laser, I welcome you to the program "RUSSIAN GLITCHES".
Today we have a game by Paul Moskow - "Island of darkness". Well then
can you say something about this game? It starts with telling you
They say that your ship was caught in a storm and crashed at a mysterious island
grass, and you were washed ashore. What kind of ship was it - military
commercial, commercial or passenger (or maybe even pirate) -
unknown. They also don’t say who you were on this ship - official
cer, sailor or passenger (or maybe even a pirate). Who vi-
The fact that the ship crashed is also unknown.
And so, in such an environment, you start the game, standing on the shore
seas. By the way, it’s not clear why standing? It's hard to imagine
imagine that a man washed ashore by a sea wave could
maintain a standing position. If you give the command "inventory", then
you will be told: "regular clothes(dressed)". It seems that for the execution of this
The team responds with “a person of Caucasian nationality.” And in general, no-
Is it clear what “regular clothes” means? Ordinary for whom? Or av-
tor expected that each user would represent a
roya in his usual clothes?
But let's move on. You can go north or south. If
go north, you can stumble upon tracks leading to the east
current After following them, you will come to a tree where you can
climb. Find out who left these footprints either under a tree or
I didn’t succeed on the tree (but there I found a fruit similar to
midor). It turns out that these traces were left by the tree itself, and that on
tomatoes grow there, makes it even weirder.
Even further north are the remains of your ship. But you-
understand the name of the ship and what it is,
you are unlikely to succeed, because of all the fragments, only
one box in which (according to the message) your personal
new things. One of them is a spyglass, which you will
given by the captain. True, you should use it for its intended purpose
will not succeed, but when you break it in anger, you will become
telelens, which (if you are luckier than me) you can
apply it somewhere. Also in the box is a thin and durable
twine, which also failed to be used. And the last thing in
in the drawer a box with your initials (yourselfthe game does not display initials
dit and, in my opinion, does the right thing: who knows, maybe you’re Norwegian
and your name is Henrik Ulrich Jorgensen)! It contains wedding bands
ring and cross on a chain. It can be assumed that you...
nata, but then it’s unclear why you don’t wear it on your finger, like
are all normal people? Maybe you are divorced? I still haven’t got an answer
walked.
Having walked even further along the shore, you come across a cave and you
they report that there used to be treasures in it, but now only mu-
rubbish It is unknown who stole the treasures, and who littered it too. Voz-
maybe, the goal of the game is precisely to find out.
Then it turns out that this is not a fairy-tale adventure, but a detective story. But
Then what does a walking tomato tree have to do with it? Most likely this is
detective with elements of mysticism, something like Twin Peaks. But the story
It will be difficult to dig up this crime, because the cat has cried for evidence.
There are no fingerprints, cigarette butts, fibers, hair,
skin particles. There are also no signs of forced entry, paint, blood,
saliva or sperm.
ADV: Well, let's say there is a trace of a break-in - a whole ship.
The only evidence is a seed of an unknown plant, dropped
new by a criminal. An attempt to inspect it yielded no results.
gave, a message appears: “Nothing special.” However, this
the message appears so often that it can be considered standard
reaction to the command “inspect”. Further along the shoreis located
there is a cliff and you, volens nolens, will have to turn back.
If you go south, you can come across a bunch of rotten things.
current It's not hard to guess that it was collected by a treasure thief,
to signal his accomplices, but for some reason he
It didn’t work, and the branches rotted. A curved stick lies nearby.
It was not possible to find out why it was needed. It is also possible to detect
destroy the hut in which the criminal lived, but there is nothing in it that
could lead to a trace of him, except for the dry wood chips that he used
used it as kindling. Next is a stream with a poisonous (!)
water, and this is discovered only after it
you'll get drunk. What is this: a natural anomaly or someone’s malicious intent -
unknown.
ADV: Or maybe there’s a toxic waste disposal site somewhere nearby?
moves?
Even further along the shore you see a giant cave wolf,
in front of which lies a pile of bones. "Here he is, the treasure thief-
wow! What an inglorious death!" - you exclaim, but, having looked -
Once you get there, you will understand that the bones are not human. Of course, if you
were able to get into the cave, at the entrance to which there is a wolf, then there
Surely there would be something that could advance the matter,
but it’s impossible to get there, precisely because of this very wolf. Try-
How to set fire to wood chips using a lens to drive away a wolf with fire, do not
was successful, as was the attempt to kill him. And to hell with it, go-
let's move on.Even further along the shore there is a dark and dense forest. Wandering
along it, you discover a slender tree. If you break it,
an excellent aspen stake shines, but to detect even the most strewn
There is no common vampire who could be impaled on this stake.
succeeded. You also find several berries, but your intuition tells you...
tells you that they are poisoned. It is unknown who poisoned them; why
intuition, which worked so well this time, did not help in the case
tea with poisoned water is also unclear. Trying to toss these
berries to the wolf, in the hope that he will eat them and get poisoned,
did not give any result. There is also a place in the forest with loose soil, suitable
noah for landing. Naturally, you decide to plant your seed,
but you have nothing to fertilize the soil with. A bunch of rotten branches are used for this
it was not possible to call, an attempt to anger the wolf so that, running away from the un-
I failed to get the necessary fertilizer.
Moving further east, we reach the eastern shore of the sea and
we see a broken submarine. But examine it in more detail or
I can't go inside. If we go north, we go to
a large rock, at the foot of which lies a skeleton with a crushed
skull and arrow in the back. The identity of the murdered man could not be established.
elk, one can only assume that he was an accomplice of the kidnapper
and he removed it. Climbing up the slope of the rock, we come across
one-eyed cyclops. However, there is nothing in thisamazing,
because all cyclops are one-eyed in life. Most likely, with kidnap-
The same thing happened with the treasure that almost happened to Odis-
we sow, that is, the Cyclops ate it. Of course, if you could get into
the lair of the one-eyed man, this would help in solving the case, but it’s not there
get in: Cyclops doesn’t let you in. Deal with it the way of Odysseus
(i.e., knocking out his eye) failed. How to overcome an adversary
clear.
By this point, you'll probably decide you've had enough.
but you also want to leave the game. But another bummer awaits you, because...
a message will appear on the screen: “Do you want to try again?”, and
no matter what you answer: "yes" or "no", the game
will start first. Those who worked with QUILL or read my
article in ADV #7 about working with QUILL, they will guess what to do, and
Let everyone else use the "RESET" button.
And now that I've killed so much time telling you what
this game has, I’ll say a few words about what it doesn’t have, but
could and should have been so that she could fully
That's why it's called adventure.
1. Original descriptions for all objects participating in the game
there.
Since the advent of adventure games, the EXAMINE team (renamed
water into Russian "VIEW") was used for thorough inspection
examination of the discovered object in order to obtain more information about it
no information. Does this task do the job?message "nothing special"
Benny"? For items such as shipwrecks or shrapnel
telescope, which clearly did not take any part in the game
may work, perhaps it does, but when this message describes
seed or wedding ring, the user has only
give, either these items are not involved in the game, or the author
I just didn’t have enough imagination to describe them. If the game has
original descriptions, then it becomes more interesting and different
friendly to the user.
2. Hints for passing the game.
When an author writes a script for a future game, everything in it suits him.
seems absolutely logical and self-evident. And the difference
between a good and a bad scenario is that in a good
scenarios, all moves are logical for the user as well.
Of course, it is difficult to imagine a person who is not able to
guess that before using an item, you need to take it.
But, on the other hand, if Henry Ford had not thought that his cars
mobiles will be assembled by idiots, he would never have invented an assembly line.
Therefore, there must be tips. It doesn't matter whether they are included in
the game script will either be displayed on the “help” command, or
are collected in a separate description, but their presence in the game is obligatory
interesting.
3. Assistance in program management.
An experienced user knows very well the basic commands used
used in adventure games, andalso their abbreviations. However, in games you will meet
There are also non-standard abbreviations (for example, in the program dictionary
The QUILL command "look" has a reduction not only to four,
but also up to two letters). In addition, one must take into account the interests and inexperience
new users. Therefore, the game must have at least a small
instructions that list the main commands and their
abbreviations.
And in conclusion, summarizing all of the above, I would like to
to everyone who, after reading this article, might think that I
I constrain creative thought, driving it into a kind of Procrustean bed.
Do you really think that if your game can be
not just one or two people, but the whole country, then this means that
Is she boring and uninteresting?
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