New Game: Teleporter Test

Tdarcos · Post by **Tdarcos** » Wed Jan 04, 2012 4:48 pm

I tried to announce this yesterday but my Internet connection has been spotty and more-or-less on the fritz most of last night and today.

This notice updated to today, January 5, 2012

Download file: http://in-the-matter-of.com/teleport.zip (about 1.1 mb) The game is now version 0.51 as of January 5, 2012. If you have this, you can download just the replacement game at http://in-the-matter-of.com/teleport.hex (about 99K).

The IFID for version 0.5 was this program is HUGO-31-32-35-01-04-12
The IFID for this version, which is version 0.51, is HUGO-31-4D-76-01-05-12
The direct public commentary page for this game (including this thread) is
http://in-the-matter-of.com/index.php?t ... eport_Test
(which is basically a copy of this message.)

Teleporter test is a full game in which you have an objective and some problems to get past. Your objective is to get out of the game, by smashing the gas meter in the start room so it will blow up the game and set you free. So how do you do that? Well, you need something to strike it with. And you have to get that.

In the opening, there are four demonstration teleporter pads. One goes to any room in the game, one only goes to teleporters (incoming), one only goes to teleporter pads, and the other goes to rooms that are teleporters or teleporter pads. (A room can be either or both.)

But you don't have to use the teleporters to enter the game, you can go in, out or down to enter the game board. But the problem is, there is no return entrance to the start room.

Once you take a teleporter to another place or exit the start room, you have to find the return teleporter.

When you activate a teleporter, It shows you a list of rooms and asks you to type in the number of the room.

There are a few tricks, like the electric meter is running the whole time the game is on (unless you shut it off, but then the Teleport Center goes dark.) And I wouldn't recommend hitting the gas meter in the basement of the Teleport Center.

I'd like comments about it. Also, see if you notice the difference between the water meter and the gas or electric meter.

pinback · Post by **pinback** » Wed Jan 04, 2012 4:52 pm

URL is broke

Tdarcos · Post by **Tdarcos** » Wed Jan 04, 2012 8:20 pm

pinback wrote:URL is broke

This is fixed, it was saved on my Windows machine as "Teleport.zip" and was copied as it was. I'm used to specifying everything in lower case for Linux and didn't realize the first letter was capitalized. Then my Internet connection went down. It just came back up so I was able to correct the file name and it is corrected now.

pinback · Post by **pinback** » Wed Jan 04, 2012 8:53 pm

URL still broke

Tdarcos · Post by **Tdarcos** » Wed Jan 04, 2012 9:23 pm

pinback wrote:URL still broke

I'm stupid sometimes, plus my Internet connection kept going down more often than a $2 whore [Added comment: "on payday"]. Every time I tried to fix something, well, it knew I desperately needed to connect, and, of course, the Internet became inaccessible.

The link definitely works now as I just used it and the file downloaded.

I'm not sure why, but the sound stopped working, there are supposed to be sounds but they don't play.

Ice Cream Jonsey · Post by **Ice Cream Jonsey** » Wed Jan 04, 2012 10:42 pm

Tdarcos wrote:I'm not sure why, but the sound stopped working, there are supposed to be sounds but they don't play.

It looks like the .wav files are there, but they'll need to be packed up in a resource file for Hugo to handle them. (I think there's code kicking around to do this - if there isn't, lemme know and I'll post some here. I may post some code to do that anyway for future lurkers. I think there's an example in The Hugo Book, however.)

Ice Cream Jonsey · Post by **Ice Cream Jonsey** » Wed Jan 04, 2012 10:50 pm

Roody reminded me that you don't HAVE to use a resource file.

Is there a hard-coded directory name for the .wav files in your source, Paul?

Tdarcos · Post by **Tdarcos** » Thu Jan 05, 2012 12:53 pm

Ice Cream Jonsey wrote:Roody reminded me that you don't HAVE to use a resource file.

Is there a hard-coded directory name for the .wav files in your source, Paul?

No. The funny thing is it worked for a while, then stopped. I had the .wav files in the same directory as the program, and then it just played them when the game indicated (they were mostly for ambience, e.g. when you shut off the power, you heard the sound - and if you've ever had a running house shut down because the power goes out, you know that sickening sound - of a shutdown. (Furnace/AC stopping suddenly, mostly.) Then when you turned the power back on, the startup sound of fans and a furnace or AC (depending on the time of year) starting back up. And one other sound.

Flack · Post by **Flack** » Thu Jan 05, 2012 1:10 pm

SW corner entrance to Teleport.
You are at the southwest corner of a large teleport center. It is the typical nondescript industrial building built in the days of architectural brutalism: made of
sealed concrete, with no windows and the only access being at the entrances. However, it looks like this building might have been abandoned, as the doors are missing.
You can enter the Teleport Center to the northeast or walk along the outside of the Teleport to the north or east.

>e
You can't go that way.

Flack · Post by **Flack** » Thu Jan 05, 2012 1:14 pm

Basement Control Center
You are in the central utility control area for the Teleport Center. Electric conduit, gas and water pipes run from the corridors into their respective shutoff
devices. Exits are to the North, South, East and West, with a closet in the SW corner. The gas control is off, the water valve is open, the electric breaker is on, the
drain is closed.

>turn breaker off
It's already turned off.

Flack · Post by **Flack** » Thu Jan 05, 2012 1:20 pm

SW corner entrance to Teleport.
You are at the southwest corner of a large teleport center. It is the typical nondescript industrial building built in the days of architectural brutalism: made of
sealed concrete, with no windows and the only access being at the entrances. However, it looks like this building might have been abandoned, as the doors are missing.
You can enter the Teleport Center to the northeast or walk along the outside of the Teleport to the north or east.

>ne

Teleport space M1.

>s

SW corner entrance to Teleport.

>n

>look

>

Tdarcos · Post by **Tdarcos** » Thu Jan 05, 2012 2:29 pm

Flack wrote:You can enter the Teleport Center to the northeast or walk along the outside of the Teleport to the north or east.

>e
You can't go that way.

Yeah, I have it misdirected as W instead of E. Being fixed. Thank you.

Tdarcos · Post by **Tdarcos** » Thu Jan 05, 2012 2:34 pm

Flack wrote:the electric breaker is on, the
drain is closed.

>turn breaker off
It's already turned off.

It should be treating it as "switch breaker off" and I'll find out where it's doing this. It's also requiring the gas/water wrench to turn the power off, which is also wrong. I will fix this. Thank you.

Tdarcos · Post by **Tdarcos** » Thu Jan 05, 2012 3:50 pm

Flack wrote:SW corner entrance to Teleport.
You are at the southwest corner of a large teleport center. It is the typical nondescript industrial building built in the days of architectural brutalism: made of
sealed concrete, with no windows and the only access being at the entrances. However, it looks like this building might have been abandoned, as the doors are missing.
You can enter the Teleport Center to the northeast or walk along the outside of the Teleport to the north or east.

>ne

Teleport space M1.

>s

SW corner entrance to Teleport.

>n

>look

>

Bugs due to an error in long_desc. Fixed.

Tdarcos · Post by **Tdarcos** » Thu Jan 05, 2012 3:59 pm

New Release issued.

The IFID for this version, which is version 0.51,
is HUGO-31-4D-76-01-05-12

If you have the original zip, you can download just the replacement game at http://in-the-matter-of.com/teleport.hex (about 99K). The Zip file contains the ifid.txt file and the new teleport.hex, so you can do it either way.

Updated 01/05/2012

Updates
* Errors in certain directions corrected
* "Turn Breaker off" is now the same as "switch breaker off"
* Turning off the power does not require the gas/water wrench
* Some rooms had incorrect description specifications, causing them to
show nothing when entered or the Look command issued

I want to thank all of you for helping make this small game better.

Bainespal · Post by **Bainespal** » Sat Jan 07, 2012 5:50 pm

I just played Teleporter Test. It definitely is an interesting experiment. Even as a game, it was satisfying to finally solve the puzzle/scenario.

Now I can write a railroaded SF game with beaming in it, if I want to! ;) Seriously, this opens up a lot of possibilities for Hugo games.

Tdarcos, I made a transcript. It's too long to send in a PM (I tried, and it was cut off, so I deleted the PM). So, tell me how to send it to you if you want it.

Tdarcos · Post by **Tdarcos** » Sun Jan 08, 2012 8:30 pm

Bainespal wrote:I just played Teleporter Test. It definitely is an interesting experiment. Even as a game, it was satisfying to finally solve the puzzle/scenario.

Now I can write a railroaded SF game with beaming in it, if I want to! ;) Seriously, this opens up a lot of possibilities for Hugo games.

Tdarcos, I made a transcript. It's too long to send in a PM (I tried, and it was cut off, so I deleted the PM). So, tell me how to send it to you if you want it.

email: paul@paul-robinson.us and put "Teleporter" in the subject, so I'll notice it. I'm considering making the source available once I know the bugs are out of it.

I only did it because of a message here from Jonsey, about how he was trying to do a teleporter and couldn't make it work, basically because you couldn't have it recognize the names in the teleport verb.

I'm working on a second teleporter game to solve this problem and allows the user to select the room (by name) to go to. This one allows the user to choose by number, and I'm sorry about the messy way the display shows, I wasn't familiar with the minimal formatting that is available from Hugo and didn't know about it, and I could have used a different method to display rooms. I might either edit this program to add the new way I'm doing this or readjust how the display is being done.

Did you notice the difference between the water meter and the gas or electric meter?

Bainespal · Post by **Bainespal** » Mon Jan 09, 2012 3:25 pm

Tdarcos wrote:Did you notice the difference between the water meter and the gas or electric meter?

No, I don't think I did. The water meter is owned by the City of Zenith, while the gas meter is owned by the Zenith Natural Gas Company.

Tdarcos · Post by **Tdarcos** » Tue Jan 10, 2012 10:57 am

Bainespal wrote:
Tdarcos wrote:Did you notice the difference between the water meter and the gas or electric meter?
No, I don't think I did. The water meter is owned by the City of Zenith, while the gas meter is owned by the Zenith Natural Gas Company.

On the gas and electric meters it says "Tampering, damaging, moving or otherwise interfering with this meter is a crime. Winnemac State Public Utilities Code, Sec. 187.' On the water meter it says ' Tampering, damaging, moving or otherwise interfering with this meter is a crime. City of Zenith Municipal Code Sec. 6034; Winnemac State Public Utilities Code, Sec. 187.'

It was sort of a private joke. In Virginia, for example, there can be a city or county ordinance that duplicates a state law and provides a criminal penalty as long as the law either has the same or an increased penalty from the state law. A city or county can't have a local law that sets a lower penalty than the state law. The idea being the city can set a stiffer penalty for stealing water by bypassing its meter than the standard penalty for stealing (private) utilities.

So, for example, if murder at the state level in Virginia didn't carry the death penalty but only prescribed, say, life without parole, a city ordinance could impose the death penalty for capital murder (committed within the city limits), but it could not, for example, impose life with the possibility of parole or imprisonment for less than life.