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  • Infocom "Guides" sans spoilers

    From [email protected]@21:1/5 to All on Thu Aug 22 08:30:05 2019
    Does anyone know of guides for the harder Infocom games that tell you what you have to accomplish before moving on to the next part of the game?

    For example, I'm playing "Trinity" and I'm pretty sure I'm at an unwinnable point in the game. I know I could restart and proceed more thoroughly, use a walkthrough, or play around with InvisiClue hints. What I'd really like is something that just says, "
    Don't leave Kensington Park until you have . . ." I don't want to be told how to solve a puzzle, but I do want to know if there's something I have to do before getting to a point in the game that's irreversible.

    Has anyone created such a guide for this or other "nasty/cruel" Infocom games?

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  • From John W Kennedy@21:1/5 to [email protected] on Thu Aug 22 13:03:23 2019
    On 8/22/19 11:30 AM, [email protected] wrote:
    Does anyone know of guides for the harder Infocom games that tell you what you have to accomplish before moving on to the next part of the game?

    For example, I'm playing "Trinity" and I'm pretty sure I'm at an unwinnable point in the game. I know I could restart and proceed more thoroughly, use a walkthrough, or play around with InvisiClue hints. What I'd really like is something that just says,
    "Don't leave Kensington Park until you have . . ." I don't want to be told how to solve a puzzle, but I do want to know if there's something I have to do before getting to a point in the game that's irreversible.

    Has anyone created such a guide for this or other "nasty/cruel" Infocom games?

    Not that I can recall, except for a handful in the post-Infocom age
    (“Return to Zork”, “Zork Nemesis”, ...). But the classic Invisiclues material comes pretty close to what you’re asking for.

    --
    John W. Kennedy
    "The blind rulers of Logres
    Nourished the land on a fallacy of rational virtue."
    -- Charles Williams. "Taliessin through Logres: Prelude"

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  • From Doug McIntyre@21:1/5 to John W Kennedy on Fri Aug 23 11:37:36 2019
    John W Kennedy <[email protected]> writes:
    On 8/22/19 11:30 AM, [email protected] wrote:
    Does anyone know of guides for the harder Infocom games that tell you what you have to accomplish before moving on to the next part of the game?

    For example, I'm playing "Trinity" and I'm pretty sure I'm at an unwinnable point in the game. I know I could restart and proceed more thoroughly, use a walkthrough, or play around with InvisiClue hints. What I'd really like is something that just
    says, "Don't leave Kensington Park until you have . . ." I don't want to be told how to solve a puzzle, but I do want to know if there's something I have to do before getting to a point in the game that's irreversible.

    Has anyone created such a guide for this or other "nasty/cruel" Infocom games?

    Not that I can recall, except for a handful in the post-Infocom age >(“Return to Zork”, “Zork Nemesis”, ...). But the classic Invisiclues >material comes pretty close to what you’re asking for.


    In their original format, or something that tried to emulate that,
    where you get a general hint, and then a middle specific hint, then an
    outright here's what to do.

    Most of what I've seen now-a-days just lists them all together in a
    text file, and you can see everything all at once.

    --
    Doug McIntyre
    [email protected]

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  • From [email protected]@21:1/5 to Doug McIntyre on Fri Aug 23 20:46:03 2019
    Doug McIntyre <[email protected]> wrote:

    In their original format, or something that tried to emulate that,
    where you get a general hint, and then a middle specific hint, then an outright here's what to do.

    Most of what I've seen now-a-days just lists them all together in a
    text file, and you can see everything all at once.


    I don't like just listing them all together in a text file you can now see everything all at once, either. I think InvisiClues is good.

    UHS is like InvisiClues but is on the computer. If you have a printer with invisible ink, then maybe you can even print out a UHS file with invisible
    ink so that it is like InvisiClues. (Although, as far as I know, no such implementation currently exists.)

    That is why I recommend to use a UHS file. I wrote a program FreeUHS which
    can display and can create UHS files. In this way, it can be arranged so
    that it does not display all at once. (You can also use OpenUHS to view
    the completed file, but OpenUHS cannot be used to create new hint files.)

    --
    Note: I am not always able to read/post messages during Monday-Friday.

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