ATTACK OF THE SAUCERMAN!

Before they were absorbed by Sony, Psygnosis were responsible for publishing some interesting games. Attack of the Saucerman, the sole release from Fube Industries Ltd, was an attempt at morphing the sci-fi stylings of a 1950s B-movie with an action-heavy mascot platformer.  With Mars Attacks and Men in Black hitting cinemas, the late 90s had something of a renaissance of flying saucer schlock, the latter of which appears to be a heavy inspiration here. With its 2000 release (a year after the PlayStation original), did it miss the B-movie boat?

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Tech Book Face Off: Game Engine Black Book [Wolfenstein 3D Vs. Doom]

After all of the heavier reading I've been doing lately—machine learning, CUDA programming, fundamental Lisp programming, etc.—I wanted to kick back and read something a bit more relaxing and entertaining. Luckily, at just the right time a friend lent me a couple of books that promised to fit the bill perfectly: the Game Engine Black Books for Wolfenstein 3D and Doom, both by Fabien Sanglard. I grew up with these games, with them being my first and second PC FPS games. I played countless hours of these and other id Software games and other games that used id Software engines like Rise of the Triad, Heretic, and Hexen. I couldn't wait to dig into these books and see what was underneath the games that pleasantly wasted away the night hours of my youth.

VS.

Game Engine Black Book: Wolfenstein 3D

I quickly realized what a beautiful book this was going to be with nearly full-page, glossy color pictures of the game and die photos of the Intel 80386-DX processor that ran the game when it first came out on May 5th, 1992. It was incredibly fun to just page through the book and look at the different pictures, and peruse the various explanations surrounding the pictures about the game engine's design.  It took a little while to settle down and actually start reading through the book.

This Black Book starts out with forwards by John Carmack, Tom Hall, and John Romero, and then there's a short introduction that gives an overview of the game market, the PC market, and the state of video games in that era. This was the time of Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis, and the i386 processors had been out for a few years by the time Wolfenstein 3D was released. The i386DX-33 was over four times more powerful than the Super Nintendo processor, and even more powerful i486 processors were coming to the market from mid-1989 to 1992. The video game consoles were primarily sprite-based hardware designs, so they weren't set up for running a 3-D game like Wolfenstein well at all. The PC was definitely the hardware of choice for this game, power-wise, but as Sanglard goes on to explain, it had its own downsides for game development.

The next chapter went into the state of the hardware that was targeted for Wolfenstein 3D in detail. The game was designed to run okay even on an i286 CPU, but even on the i386 processors, the compromises that were made in the design were astonishing. I had forgotten how bad things were back then with no hardware floating point units, only a handful of registers, and an utter mess of a memory hierarchy with real mode and segmented addressing. The state of video cards was not much better with no direct double-buffering in hardware, an essential feature for running smooth animation in a 3-D game. These VGA video cards were not set up to run games in the least, so double-buffering needed to be hacked and kludged together. Thankfully, that was possible to do. Sound was just reaching a tolerable level of performance at the time with AdLib and Sound Blaster cards, if you sprang for the add-in card and were able to get it working. Sound cards were rarely included in PC builds at the time, and I remember many a night fiddling with vaguely understandable IRQ and DMA settings before plug-n-play. Funny, now I actually know what those things mean, and what they're used for, but it's all handled automatically by the chipset and the OS.

That chapter was definitely a fun trip down memory lane. The next chapter switched gears and was all about the decidedly small team that made the game, especially by today's standards, and they completed the game in four months! There were four full-time people that founded id Software a year before starting Wolfenstein 3D. John Carmack and John Romero were the programmers, Adrian Carmack was the artist, and Tom Hall was the creative director. Another four people contributed, but did not work on the game full-time from start to finish. These were Jay Wilbur in business, Kevin Cloud as a computer artist, Robert Prince as the composer, and Jason Blochowiak as another programmer. The development studio was none other than the first floor of John Carmack's two floor apartment. Wild. The rest of the chapter went through the development tools they used and built to make the code, level maps, artwork, and sound assets of the game.

Chapter 4 gets into the real meat of the game architecture, and it's the longest chapter of the book. It was fascinating to learn about the ingenious performance hacks and algorithms they (mostly John Carmack) implemented to achieve playable frame rates with the hardware they had to work with. The game is restricted in numerous ways so that the code doesn't have to spend much time calculating things like clipping or player perspective. The floor and ceiling were solid colors, and all walls were orthogonal. The player couldn't look up or down, jump, or crouch, so walls were always perfectly vertical and the (obscured) horizon was always dead-center on the screen. The only polygons in the game were the walls, which were rectangles. Everything else was a sprite. The maximum view port was smaller than full-screen at 304x152 pixels, and it could be adjusted down from there if needed for a faster frame rate on slower hardware. These along with plenty of other restrictions made the game playable on the i286, although the best experience was still on an i386DX or better CPU.

The other common optimization was to code critical loops and code sequences in x86 assembly. Quite a few code listings in the book are just lines of assembly code, mostly of moving values around in various registers. Dropping down to assembly was necessary because compilers at the time weren't the best at outputting even remotely optimized code, and a smart developer could arrange assembly code much better than any compiler could. This deficiency in the compiler shouldn't all be blamed on it, for x86 assembly was truly horrendous. I am at the same time in awe of John Carmack for doing what he did with the code and eternally thankful that I never had to do x86 assembly programming like that myself. Even today it's something to be avoided because the complexity is now nearly unmanageable and compilers have made huge strides besides, but oh my gawd, that assembly programming must have been the most awful, tedious exercise in memorizing and recalling useless instruction set trivia.

This whole chapter was pure gold, covering everything from the renderer in detail to the enemy AI to the audio programming and sound effects. The writing wasn't always the greatest, but explanations were at least insightful, and I could always parse out what Sanglard meant, even with numerous typos and grammatical errors. Normally these kinds of mistakes would be obnoxious, but the book was so full of great pictures, diagrams, and information that was completely engrossing to me that I was willing to overlook that shortcoming.

The last few short chapters were also quite interesting, and a nice way to wrap up the book. Chapter 5 described the sequel to Wolfenstein 3D, Spear of Destiny. Chapter 6 covered a number of ports to other systems, including Super Nintendo (heavily compromised), Jaguar, iPhone, and VR ports. Chapter 7 concluded with a little information about the successors to Wolfenstein 3D and where each of the designers and developers are now. The whole book was an excellent tour of a classic game that changed the video game industry forever, and if you're at all interested in the details of one of the games that started the FPS genre, you have to read this book.

Game Engine Black Book: Doom

This Black Book followed a very similar format to the Wolfenstein 3D book with the same result of an incredible experience digging through the game engine of one of the most influential PC games ever made. I went through waves of nostalgia as I paged through pictures of the Doom game world and explanations of how it calculated and rendered the intense game that consumed hours upon hours of my free time growing up. It was fascinating to see how all of it was implemented, and on such meager hardware, too! id Software achieved an incredible amount of performance and features with their idTech 1 engine that they created for Doom.

The book starts off with forwards by John Carmack and Dave Taylor and a short introduction just to wet your appetite. Then it jumps into the hardware that Doom was designed for in chapter 2. Doom was able to run on an i386, but by 1993 when Doom was being developed, the i486 was becoming affordable and was over 2x faster than the equivalent frequency i386, so that was the new target system. Everything else was improving rapidly as well. Video cards took a big step up in performance with the VESA VL-Bus and tighter component integration on the cards. Sound cards became even more fragmented, unfortunately, but sound quality was improving by leaps and bounds. Networking was also becoming possible by this time with multiple ways to connect PCs for multiplayer co-op and deathmatch play. Finally, compilers had improved to the point where it wasn't necessary to do nearly everything in assembly. The Watcom compiler allowed id Software to code Doom almost entirely in C, freeing the developers to think at a higher level and implement more features more rapidly.

Chapter 3 is entirely new because id Software used an entirely different development environment for Doom. Instead of developing everything on unstable DOS PCs, they took the chance on using expensive NeXT workstations. Even a fairly basic NeXTstation cost $4,995 in 1991, and a NeXTcube ran $12,395! It turned out to be worth it, though, because these workstations were rock-solid and allowed John Carmack and the other developers to make incredible progress instead of constantly fighting with crashing machines and a poor development environment. This chapter did a great job going through the architecture and benefits of the NeXT systems, and how id Software used them to full effect.

The next chapter was about the team and tools, like chapter 3 in the Wolfenstein 3D book. Things had changed dramatically, with the team moving to Dallas, TX and growing to fourteen people by the end of development. The tools were evolving, too, with some of the character sprites and animation done using stop motion capture, and the map editor (DoomED) taking on new features to support the multitude of new capabilities in the game engine. Walls in the game no longer needed to be orthogonal, although they still had to be vertical for rendering to be fast enough. Floors and ceilings could change height to create steps, platforms, and other environmental features. Various kinds of traps and ambushes were also possible now. It's quite amazing how many features were added to idTech 1 when compared to the Wolf3D engine. These new features, especially the non-orthogonal walls and varying heights, required a more efficient data structure for the maps, and the BSP (Binary Space Partitioning) node tree was commandeered for the job.

Nearly half of the book is taken up by chapter 5 on the idTech 1 game engine. This chapter is just a monster of awesome information about the engine. It goes through every detail from the game tic design and use of fixed-point arithmetic to sound propagation and enemy AI. The section on the 3D renderer was especially interesting and detailed. There are great explanations on how the environment was drawn with its additional complexity, texture mapping with perspective correction, sprite clipping and animation, and diminished lighting to give the game its intense horror movie feel. This renderer section in particular was so interesting that it made me want to go implement a bunch of the algorithms myself just to be able to recreate them and see them in action. It looks like it would be immensely satisfying.

The last chapter described in fairly good detail how a number of ports of Doom were done on other game consoles. The console ports included the Atari Jaguar, Sega 32X, Super Nintendo, Sony PlayStation, 3DO, and Sega Saturn, and both the system architectures and Doom engine implementations are described. I was in high school during this era of the great console wars, although I never played Doom on any of them, just the excellent experience of the PC. I had forgotten how different these console architectures were, and some of the design decisions that went into those systems were truly remarkable...and strange. The sections on the Super Nintendo and PlayStation ports were my favorites. The Super Nintendo would have never been able to run Doom on its own, but with the extra power of the SuperFX chip that was used in Star Fox and a few other games, it was able to pull it off reasonably well. The PlayStation port was the most faithful of the ports, and even added some cool new features like colored ambient lighting. Of all of these systems, the PlayStation was exceptionally powerful for making great games. Even though other systems might have looked more powerful on paper, they all had disadvantages and unfortunate design decisions that handicapped them while the PlayStation was so easy to develop for that its potential could consistently be achieved in practice.

I enjoyed this book as much, if not more than the Wolf3D Black Book. From the beautiful full-color pictures to the detailed explanations of technical feature implementations to the well-chosen code listings sprinkled throughout the book, this was an incredibly fun guided tour of a legendary game engine. I devoured this book, and through it all, I wanted to do two things: go back and play through Doom again and re-implement some of those rendering algorithms for myself. I can't think of higher praise for a book, so if you've ever played Doom and want to know how it works, you need to go treat yourself to this book and the Wolfenstein 3D Black Book, too.

Convergence Of Cyriss - A Side Project

This post is going to start a hobby documentary on how to rehabilitate poorly treated used models and salvage an army using hobby skills. It'll also document my dabbling with Convergence of Cyriss from a gameplay perspective. I'm still mainlining Trolls, but I figure I'll play with my new CoC every once and a while. 

Why start Convergence?

I've had bits and pieces of CoC sitting in my closet for years. Maybe a year after release I picked up an original Prime Axiom and Transfinite Emergence Projector basically new in box for like $60 for the two of them, figuring it was a deal too good to pass up.  I also picked up a friends Aurora and Clockwork Angels when he was selling out of the faction (my wife said they were pretty).

In terms of design, they've certainly appealed to me from a gameplay perspective. With the latest release of Orion for the faction they really seem like they have the tools to be able to deal with pretty much anything, which is something PP has been setting as their goal for their limited release factions. I also kind of like the idea that once I've bought into it, I'm basically done with major purchases. It's all about experimenting with the limited toolset as the meta changes.

Also the focus induction mechanics seem really cool. I appreciate the puzzle in each game of trying to mastermind how to make the clockwork like system of getting the focus around to maximize efficiency.  I'm an engineer by trade and the way PP made that clockwork system into a game mechanic really intrigues me.

What made me actually jump into the faction was that I found two separate retail for retail trade opportunities.  Someone was looking to trade CoC for 40k Orks, and was interested in the entire lot I've been looking to offload for years.  I also found someone who wanted nearly all of the Circle I was trying to offload and we worked out equitable trades.  It's always a great value when you can do retail-for-retail trades on models you own to get models you want.  The downside is that the very large lot I got in exchange for my old Orks was largely piles of crap that I had to salvage. Luckily the trade I got for Circle was excellent.

What to do when you get badly treated used models

One mistake I made on my first trade with the Orks for CoC was not asking for pictures of the models I was trading for. Note to readers: Always Ask For Pictures When Trading On The Internet.

This ended up being pretty bad overall, since the models I got were nearly all broken, some of which looked like they were given to a young child to try and paint, and some were clearly nicely done conversions that were then traded to this person who then mistreated them.  My trade was to include an Axis and Lucant, but since the models weren't complete the person included a second version of the models, all of which still required bits orders from PP or just wholesale replacement of the model to get something functional.

Nearly every walking Vector chassis had all their legs broken off at weird angles, and two of the Inverters I got are missing the chain+flail bit altogether.  What's worse is that I found the unit of Reciprocators I received weren't actually glued to their bases. The person used blue sticky tac and then spray painted metallic spray over all of it.

I didn't take pictures before I started fixing everything, but you can see exactly how awkward the pinning/leg reattachment went on some of the jacks, as well as how bad the paint job was:

 

Nothing like sticky tac for getting models on bases!

 

It was actually piled all the way up in huge amounts. Lots of scraping to clean it up.

Talk about a mess.

You can see what lengths I went through to get the legs back on. This was the only way it'd fit.

It looks like a 5 year old was told to pain this guy. The leg in the air was the only leg actually still glued to the model when I received it.

The solution in nearly all cases was simply pinning, lots and lots of pinning legs back after dry fitting to see which pieces went with which broken jacks.  Fortunately I was able to get all my vectors up and stable on their bases.

My unit of Reciprocators were missing the tips of their halberds. These are near impossible to find bits for online, but I ended up going with the Steelsoul Protector spear from PP and luckily I was able to use the tip of the spear as a replacement for the halberds and have it work out nicely.  All in all it was $30 in bits from PP to replace parts either too broken to salvage or bits that were straight up missing. Not terrible, but not great either.

What was worse is that the Clockwork Angels and Auora model I had effectively fell apart over the years they sat in my closet.  My friend had used some really thin pins and apparently a not very good superglue.  I basically re-pinned everything with the Angels, though making sure to use a much thicker paperclip as my pinning.

Thicker pinning = Better Pinning

Between pinning up Aurora, 3 units of Clockwork Angels, and building a fresh Father Lucant, lets just say I never want to build anything like that again. My fingers still hurt from all the pinning I had to do to get those things securely built!

 

Next Steps

Once everything has been built up (I still have a few servitors to do), I'm going to apply basing material and then test out using a metallic spray paint as a base coat. I'll have to paint the base and the basing material black again, but it theoretically allows me a lot of speed up in terms of getting the army painted up quickly.  I definitely like the metal look, and I'm really keen on the idea of an easy to paint faction. 

Gaming Results

I've been wanting to play a Synergy caster since forever and now I have my first opportunity with Syntherion.  He's also got a really nice toolkit and is pretty well rounded. Apparently he's fallen out of favor with the larger meta as very few people seem to be talking about him, but I wanted to give him a shot.

Since I was playing a friend of mine who is just hopping back into the game with a brand new faction (Circle), I decided to avoid some of the more blatant power pieces like the TEP or Axiom, just giving things a go with heavies in Destruction Initiative:

Syntherion
-Corrolary
-Cipher

-Cipher

-Assimilator

-Assimilator
-Inverter

-Diffuser

Optifex Directive

Algorithmic Dispersion Optifex

Algorithmic Dispersion Optifex

Elimination Servitors

Elimination Servitors

Attunement Servitors

Attunement Servitors

I squared off against Tanith running

Feral

Stalker

Loki

Reeves of Orboros + UA

Skinwalkers + UA

Wolves of Orboros + UA

Gallows Grove x2

Unfortunately for me the first time I put CoC on the table I had…performance issues.

I initially thought that being a WM veteran of over 15 years I'd be able to master the Focus Induction mechanic in my first game. I was wrong. We weren't playing on clock since my friend isn't really used to the game yet, but if I was on clock I'd have surely clocked out given the amount of time it took me to figure out how to allocate and induct in the right order to accomplish everything I wanted to in each turn.

I was actually holding my own fairly well in the game, but a missed Magnetic Hold screwed up my plans and then after charging in on the Feral+Loki on my feat turn, I didn't realize a mistake: I charged in where I'd trigger admonition, but this charge was the last activation for me in the turn – meaning the Stalker with Admonition could move to threaten Syntherion and not worry about anything else coming in.

I also was bad at contesting when I easily could have multiple times, so rather than having to take the assassination victory, my opponent just had to kill an objective and survive a free strike to move Loki into another zone to win on scenario.

After the game I realized that taking a single TEP in the list would dramatically improve my ability to handle the 20+ infantry on the table, allowing me to better focus on getting up in the trading game.

So basically Destruction Initiative = 1 TEP minimum, at least to start.  Given how excited I am to play with that piece, let alone the possibility of a few lists running two of them, this seems like a good general principle to start with.

What Daphne Saw, Short Film, Review And Interview.

What Daphne Saw is a poignant look at the criminal justice system. The is a well stated and slightly unnerving view of what has been spoken about in recent events in a way that, so many times, science fiction can only present.

Well done.

What Daphne Saw was screened at the 2019 FilmQuest film festival (website). It was nominated for Best Sci-Fi Short.

Synopsis

In the future, capital punishment has been abolished. Violent criminals are reprogrammed into unquestioning servants, their free will and ability to speak taken away. A young woman endures her punishment of silent servitude in a seemingly normal man's home, where she discovers dark secrets.

Tagline

Set in a dystopian future where criminals are reprogrammed to be voiceless, unquestioning servants to the wealthy, What Daphne Saw sheds light on the silencing of victims and asks the question, what does justice really mean?

Lizz Marshall directed What Daphne Saw and also shared some thoughts about her movie, inspirations, future and likes.

What was the inspiration for What Daphne Saw?

The concept for What Daphne Saw came from a few different things. It started with a feeling of voiclessness and powerlessness I saw in the character of Daphne in Greek mythology; there is a story where the God Apollo tries to rape a woman on Earth (Daphne) and when she begs the Gods for help, they turn her into a tree, so she is silenced for speaking out and forced to forever internalize her pain. I connected with Daphne in that story and wanted to explore that dynamic and those particular feelings. I had also done a short documentary my freshman year of college about recidivism, so my views on the justice system organically bled into the story.

What project(s) do you have coming up you're excited about?

As far as upcoming projects go: I will be working with anti-human trafficking non-profit organization NotInOurCity, who served as executive producers on What Daphne Saw, to create a genre-based VR short film that educates on human trafficking in a way that is engaging and narrative driven. They are currently raising funds for the project!

What was your early inspiration for pursuing a career in film?

Like many sci-fi filmmakers, Star Wars. I remember watching the original trilogy as a kid and feeling like it was just totally magical. It was really cool to be immersed in a different world and I really wanted to do that—build other worlds.

What would be your dream project?

I am hoping that this isn't the end for Daphne. I have a feature length version of What Daphne Saw that I am shopping around at the moment. I really want to direct the feature film for What Daphne Saw and share more of her world and complexities that there isn't enough time for in a short. There's also a project that's much more of a stretch that I'm hoping will one day see the light of day—it's a horror-comedy musical that's pretty out there. Totally in the opposite direction of What Daphne Saw tonally and a very different side of me as a writer. Those are my goals for the future right now!

What are some of your favorite pastimes when not working on a movie?

I also write music! I have made two music videos for songs called Parasiteand Lifeline I have co-written with Alex Winkler, who is the composer for What Daphne Saw. We actually co-wrote the song in the credits for the film—I wrote the lyrics and sang and Alex wrote the music. It was originally a song that we did loosely based on a video game called Life is Strange, and then made a music video for, but the emotional core of it really fit with the ending of What Daphne Saw so we decided to use it. I'm hoping we'll be able to release an EP at some point.

What is one of your favorite movies and why?

Empire Strikes Back! It's one of the few movies I can watch over and over and not get tired of.

You can watch the trailer on YouTube (link).

You can follow the movie on

Twitter and Instagram @whatdaphnesaw

Facebook (link)

Find out more about What Daphne Saw on IMDb (link).

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If you have a comment, suggestion, or critique please leave a comment here or send an email to guildmastergaming@gmail.com.

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Castle Of Illusion Starring Mickey Mouse (PC)

Developer:

Sega Studios Australia

|

Release Date:

2013

|

Systems:

Win, PS3, Xbox 360, iOS, Windows Phone, Android, OS X

---

This week on Super Adventures, I'm playing Castle of Illusion! Again!

I didn't mean to, not originally. I just wanted to grab a couple of screenshots for my article about the Mega Drive game, to show what the remake looked like by comparison. But it turns out that they've remade a lot more than just the graphics, so I decided to give it its own article instead.

I've had this one lying around my in my Steam library unplayed for three years now, ever since they cunningly manipulated me into buying it by announcing it was going to be taken off the store. Sure it was almost certainly going to be put back on eventually, but what if it wasn't? I could've missed my chance to ever play the game! (It came back seven months later).

This Castle of Illusion first came out in 2013, 23 years after the original (and 6 years before now) and it was the last game to be made by Sega Studios Australia. They'd been around for about 10 years by that point and had been known as Creative Assembly Australia for most of it, developing games like Medieval II: Total War and London 2012 - the officially licensed game of the 2012 Olympic Games. Not a whole lot of platformers though, unless you count a port of the 2D Sonic games to the DS, so that's not massively encouraging. But hey the other Creative Assembly came out with Alien: Isolation out of nowhere and everyone loves that except me, so maybe this is actually really good!

Read on »

Suzy Cube Update: June 8, 2018

#SuzyCube #gamedev #indiedev #madewithunity @NoodlecakeGames 

There's no point beating around the bush. June 19, 2018. Less than two weeks from now is when the world finally gets to meet Suzy Cube!

Read more »

Louard's game design sounding board and home of the Pro's and Con's reviews.

Procedurally Generated Annotations

Imagine exploring this dungeon:

Procedurally generated dungeon map

But that's not what watabou's One Page Dungeon generator produced. It produced that dungeon with a title, Underground Lair of the Cursed Lich: For several centuries the lair of the Cursed Lich was considered lost, until recently was rediscovered by a gang of gnolls, and also with text annotations on some of the rooms:

Procedurally annotated dungeon map

Big difference! The text sparks curiosity and imagination in a way that the map by itself does not. Is that bard good or evil? Did the bard and cleric know each other? How did seals kill the gnoll?! What does the magic gem do? This type of text is missing from many procedural generation projects, including mine. I love what watabou did here.

Let's look a map from Azgaar's Fantasy Map Generator:

Procedurally generated continent map

But that's not all Azgaar generates. He also generates country names, borders, icons, and other annotations:

Procedurally generated everything

Look at how much more interesting that is!

Zoomed in, the map looks nice, with regions, rivers, and bays:

Procedurally generated region map

But look how much more interesting it is with town names, roads, and trade routes:

Procedurally generated everything

It doesn't take much annotation to make the magic! Just a small amount triggers our curiosity and imagination. Our minds see patterns easily, even when they aren't really there ("apophenia"). This is something I'd like to explore the next time I'm making a procedural map generator.

(Note: this is an expanded version of what I posted on twitter)

[Hackaday] Debugging Electronics: To Know Why It Didn’t Work, First Find What It Is Actually Doing

Debugging Electronics: To Know Why It Didn’t Work, First Find What It Is Actually Doing

Missed Classic: Trinity - Won! (And Final Rating)

Written by Joe Pranevich

We finally made it to the end of Trinity, but the ending was a lot longer than I expected. The trip through New Mexico is the longest sequence in the game and it's a lot of fun, even if I bit off more than I could chew for one week. As such, this post is more-than-double-length but even that seems insufficient: this game rewards exploration and introspection in a way that few games have. A few years ago, I stumbled on the term "first-person thinker (in contrast with "third-person shooter") to describe adventure games. That label doesn't fit many games as well as it fits Trinity; I have spent many sleepless nights recently thinking about this game and what it means. That is high praise!

I am getting ahead of myself. Where we left off last time, I explored six of the seven mushroom realms spread across our sundial "wabe". This included an amazing magnet-assisted trip through space in a soap bubble, as well as a less-than-spectacular bout of trial and error where I killed a lizard in a number of incorrect ways. Last week ended with my discovery that the two gems (the ruby from the beginning of the game and an emerald from the end) could be used to create a pair of magical speed boots. With those, I am finally able to explore the Trinity site in the desert, the last of the seven realms at the dawn of the nuclear age. Something has caused the "primitive" first atom bomb to vaporize New Mexico. I need to find out what it is.

The base of the tower at Trinity, with the "gadget" (bomb) being loaded into place. 

Woosh! It's just text, but there is something visceral about careening around the desert at superhuman speed. Previous times that I had come here, the game would end in just a few turns as simply walking from place to place took more time than we had left. I did not write much about my failed attempts to explore, but it feels good that we're able to do it for real now. Super boots make all the difference!

Traveling with the boots is fun, but there are some drawbacks that I discover quickly. The desert acts a bit like a maze. As long as you follow the roads, you can explore pretty well. Once we step off the roads however, the monotony of the desert means that we can speed right past a road that we were looking for without seeing it. This means that going northeast into the desert and then west doesn't actually have you always notice a north road in the middle. Mapping becomes a pain, but fortunately it's not that hard to work out a path and keep to it. The other thing to bring up immediately is that this exploration involved a lot of reloading. Even with speed boots, there isn't enough time to explore well and I had to reload frequently just to take stock of the place. Everything is more difficult than my narration will suggest, but in the interests of brevity we'll just take that as a given and move on.

The included map is helpful, but not so helpful that I didn't have to draw my own. 

The Lay of the Land

Looking at the map of the Trinity site, we immediately identify a few areas to explore. Obviously, the McDonald Ranch will be key given that we even have a breakout map, but there are many other potentially important areas in the vicinity. Near the tower is a spot just to the west labeled "Jumbo" and an impact crater to the southeast. Going further afield, we have a northwest road leading to "Able", a southwest road leading to "Pittsburgh", and a south road leading to "Baker". I'm curious as to why we have "Pittsburgh" instead of "Charlie", but as a native son of the Steel City, I will not complain much! To the southeast, not on a road, is the ranch. A final arrow to "Scorro" is off from a secondary road to the west, running parallel to the one leading to Able. I plan to explore the labeled locations first, before scouring the desert for more hidden gems.

Since it is nearby, I head to "Jumbo" first. That contains a suspended barrel that looks like a cold capsule:

Why would anyone hang a giant barrel in the middle of nowhere like this? There doesn't seem to be any openings, windows, or markings of any kind; as far as you can tell, the thing is utterly useless.

This is obviously our character's voice; Moriarty would have known that this useless thing was an abandoned plutonium reclamation system that would allow the fuel to be recovered in the event that the bomb was a dud. I have no idea how it would have worked and I cannot see anything that I can do with it.

The bomb crater to the southeast is similarly boring, at least for now. That was created when with traditional explosives during a "rehearsal" of the nuclear blast. There's nothing in the crater, but perhaps I can hide in it or something down the road.

A real map of the Trinity site. Moriarty may have based his map on one like this.

Able and Baker

I explore south first to discover "Baker", an open shelter with a number of guards. When I arrive, I immediately (and automatically) hide behind a shed so that the guards do not see me. A general steps out of the shelter and asks one of the jeep drivers to take him back to Base Camp, far to the south. The guard/driver is relieved to not be anywhere near the coming fireball and takes him immediately. Another guard, half asleep on his feet, arrives to take his place. Can I sneak past the guard by helping him sleep? Even with my super speed, I cannot get into the shelter or do much of anything here. Any attempt to leave my hiding place gets me captured and killed. Is this area included because it was there in real life or because there's a puzzle to solve. I do not see any way to get to Base Camp, so I restore back to the tower.

I discover an abandoned jeep on the northern road to "Able" . Someone left in such a hurry that they dropped their wallet on the floor. I peek in to find a black-and-white snapshot of a smiling kid. I would have expected an ID card or something that I could use, but the wallet is otherwise empty. I check out the jeep's radio, but it is bolted to the floor. I must be on the right track because I gain three points just for noticing that it was set to channel 39. Do walkie-talkies from the 1950s work on the same wavelengths as jeep radios from the 1940s? Apparently, yes! When I tune my walkie-talkie to that channel and extend the antenna, I get even more points and can hear the chatter of the various bases talking to each other as they get ready for the countdown. Most of it is Greek to me, but maybe something there is useful.

Even in the 1940s, Pittsburgh wasn't all steel mills and pollution. The Cathedral of Learning towered over the University of Pittsburgh, although it was used as a military barracks during the war.

Pittsburgh

Southwest of the tower is "Pittsburgh", a military blockhouse and the source of the searchlights that scour the landscape looking for spies and saboteurs. I might be a bit of both. I have been killed more than once by trying to climb back up the tower while the searchlights were on; this may be where I deal with that problem. Although I am told that there are no doors or windows on "this side", there does not seem to be any way to circle around the building to get in. Instead, the only thing that we can interact with here is a giant sleeping German Shepherd. If he's supposed to be a guard dog, he's not doing a tremendously good job.

As I explore, the road runner arrives. Up to this point, he has been following me around the desert at high speed, but every now and then he disappears for a bit and then catches up later. As soon as the bird arrives, it gives me a mischievous look and then jumps on the dog's head! It feels very "cartoonish". The roadrunner nibbles on the fleas behind his ears until he wakes up and flips out. The dog then sees me and tries to attack, but its chain prevents him from ripping me limb from limb. The sound alerts the guards who capture me and I die in the usual way. I feel like this might be a reference to a Looney Tunes cartoon, but if it is I do not get it.

The final place on the map is Scorro, but it too is too far for me to get to. The map not only fails to mention that it is 30 miles away, it also has San Antonio in front of it. Up to this point, the maximum distance that I have been running is around 6 miles, the distance from the tower to each of the sites according to the "real" map that I found. Just for giggles, I calculate that I cover that distance in 2 minutes and 15 seconds of game time for an approximate speed of 150 miles per hour! Math is fun!

That fence is surprisingly unpassable in the game.

A Swim in the Reservoir

Finding the ranch house is easy: although there is no road to it on the Trinity site map, there is a southeast road at the impact crater. I'm not sure if the house is occupied so I explore the outside first. A reservoir and an old windmill are to the east. I climb up the windmill to discover that someone left a pair of binoculars at the top. I do not get a lot of time to think about who might have left them there, because the tower collapses when I attempt to pick them up. Instead of dying, we are plunged into the cold water of the reservoir. All of my stuff sinks to the bottom and that's that. I restore.

Next time around, I drop all of my stuff first. Even though I am lighter, the tower still collapses but at least I didn't lose anything. I swim down to find the lost binoculars, but it is too dark to see. Oh, damn. I left the lantern back in the "wabe" before I started New Mexico so I have to restore all the way back and play this all again. (I have to leave my axe behind this time.) I repeat the process and retrieve the binoculars from the reservoir bottom. Hooray!

I feel good about this for about five seconds because when I get back to my stuff, I discover that the roadrunner ate my bag of crumbs. I've played enough adventure games at this point to suspect that I will need them, but it turns out to be impossible to get the binoculars without losing something. If the bag is left on the ground, the roadrunner eats them. If I take the bag with me, the crumbs dissolve in the water. If I lock the roadrunner up in the birdcage, the lemming runs away. As nice as getting the binoculars is, I restore. I'llI return later.

Someone once loved this house.

Hall of the Mountain King

I explore the house, starting from the screen door at the northwest corner. Inside the spare room is the "map that is included in your Trinity package", which is great but I had not realized that I was not supposed to look at it until now. Oops?

Exploring the house feels like a horror film. The place is abandoned and empty, but signs of a former human life remain. As we walk from room to ruined room, we expect a jump scare at any moment. The bathroom contains only a filthy sink with no tap, let alone running water. The attached bedroom is empty except for a less dirty rectangle on the floor where the mattress had once been. There's a dining room and a kitchen with a discarded knife in a cabinet. Just outside is an "ice house" which I suppose is what passed for a refrigerator in the rural 1900s. Unless I have to keep an ice cream from melting, I don't immediately see anything I can do there.

The final room in the house is the "Assembly Room" with that long awaited jump scare. I'll let Moriarty set the scene for you:

Assembly Room

Whomever used this room was paranoid about dirt. The floor is swept spotless, and the edges of both windows are carefully sealed with tape. A closed front door leads east, and there's an open closet door in the north wall. Other exits lead south and west.

A workbench covered with loose sheets of brown paper runs along the north wall. You see bits of wire and other debris scattered across the paper.

You turn to face an urgent noise behind you. Your heart skips a beat. Two tiny eyes, bright with hunger, black with menace, are glaring at you from only a few feet away.

You hear the noise again. It's like a pebble in an empty can.

The rattlesnake rears its wedge-shaped head. It looks as if it's about to strike!

The roadrunner trots into the room and freezes. Tension mounts as snake and bird study one another, their eyes bright with familiar hatred.

Suddenly, the roadrunner explodes into action! It dances around the snake, fluttering off the walls as it tries to grab the hissing reptile in its beak. But the room isn't big enough to support this style of attack; and after a few very close calls, the roadrunner abandons the fray and retreats with a squall of frustration.

The lemming sees the rattlesnake and begins to tremble.  

Yeah, Mr. Lemming. I don't like snakes either.

Maybe I am thinking too deep about this, but the "bird vs. snake" moment here feels like an homage to the "Hall of the Mountain King" puzzle in the original Colossal Cave. At the end of the introductory area of that game, you hit the first real "magical realism" puzzle where you have to get by a poisonous snake. If you read the help, you know that the bird (which you discovered a handful of rooms prior) didn't like the snake. Dropping it causes an epic combat where the bird is victorious and the snake is driven away. This feels like Moriarty took that idea, wrote it better, and then still had the bird lose. It's a nice touch. I'll need to find another way.

I attack the snake with the knife but fail utterly. It bites me and slithers away. I have only a few minutes to live, which actually may be fine considering that New Mexico will be nuked in a few minutes anyway. Unfortunately, I collapse a turn or two later as the poison floods my system and lay in agony until nuclear armageddon strikes. I restore and try again, but I am not sure which approach I should take:

• Am I supposed to let the snake bite me and then heal or prevent the poison from killing me in some way?
• Or, am I supposed to find a different way to drive off or kill it?

The first seems unlikely, but not impossible. I recall that I left a bandage near the beginning of this section so restore back to grab it and play forward. Unfortunately, we cannot make a tourniquet or similar to keep us alive any longer. Let's focus on killing it.

Maybe the knife wasn't the correct approach? I restore back and play it all again to bring the axe with me, but I have no better luck with it or the spade. I try going around the house first and opening the eastern door to give the snake an easy escape route, but that doesn't work either. I get exactly one turn after seeing the snake to do something before he bites me; I need to make it count.

Dasvidania, old friend.

My next approach is to try to get the lemming to do something, but all he does is cower in the cage if the snake is present. If I let him out anywhere else in the house, he will flee out any open door. If I am careful and close every door, he still escapes because he can nose open the screen door in the back. And yet, I am positive that I am on to something precisely because Moriarty has gone to great lengths to script all the different ways that the lemming can flee. It's clever. The break comes when I realize that not only can I use my one turn to flee the rattlesnake by running out of the room, but that I can also use it to quickly hide in the closet and shut the door. Doing so traps me in pitch black, but it buys me time. I use my lantern and see nothing of interest. As soon as I open the door again, the snake strikes.

The solution is slightly evil, but I hit on it quickly. If I release the lemming in the closet, it runs around trapped. If I then open the door, the snake sees him first and strikes, killing my little friend then slithering off to enjoy his meal. As usual, Moriarty makes you feel the death-- I'm not going to forget his description of the little body twitching as the poison takes effect-- but it's done and I can explore the final room in the house. Hidden among the debris and papers on the table is a single screwdriver. As it was one of the ones used to assemble the bomb, it almost certainly is the one that I will need to open it up again. Score! Unfortunately, there is no way back up the tower to experiment as the searchlights now cover it completely and any attempt to climb up is met with an immediate reaction from the guards. I'll have to solve that puzzle before long.

Since I no longer have the lemming in the cage, I can grab the roadrunner and put it inside. That lets me re-do the reservoir segment as well without the bird eating all of my crumbs. I therefore end this sequence with a screwdriver and a pair of binoculars. At this stage, inventory weight is a huge problem as I can only carry exactly what I need and no more. I'm also down to seven minutes left and that isn't enough time. I can barely even get to the dog again, let alone solve whatever puzzles are left. I end up playing it all over again and optimizing my moves every step of the way. With a few tries, I am able to get back to where I am by 5:16 AM (14 minutes left) and I hope that will be enough.

Not the kind of dog that I want to cross.

Stupid Roadrunner Tricks

I return to "Pittsburgh" and take another pass at the moving the search lights. I still do not find any way into the building and while that is a terrible thing for realism, it does focus my problem-solving just on the sleeping canine. I cannot kill it. I discover that if I let the roadrunner taunt the dog as before, but he away before the guards come out, it causes a panic and the search lights are moved momentarily away from the tower. That's progress! Unfortunately, the timing just doesn't work. If I start running immediately back to the tower the moment the roadrunner starts to do his thing, I only get halfway up before the crisis is managed and the lights return, catching me in the act. I'm on the right track, but I don't have the solution yet.

At this point, I am at a loss. I don't believe there is anything left to do at the ranch house or the jeep. I will need to distract the dog or otherwise affect the searchlights at "Pittsburgh". I am uncertain what, if anything, there is to do at "Baker". I already missed the General leaving and may have to restore to follow him somehow or something, but there could be something else.

I give in and take another hint to learn that I completely misjudged a puzzle. At "Baker", I was supposed to notice that we can look inside the compound using the binoculars. Doing that shows us not only some of the men that we overhear on the walkie-talkie, but also a box "similar to the one you saw under the tower" with a silver key. Unfortunately, I cannot find any way to grab the key and I end up taking another hint: we have to ask the roadrunner to get it for us. I would not have considered the bird to be nearly intelligent enough for that. The bit earlier in the game with the dolphin and coconut at least seemed plausible as we see dolphins obeying simple commands at SeaWorld and similar parks, but a roadrunner? Not really. In any event, doing that gets us lots of points. Yay? I feel like I completely dropped the ball on this one.

I race back to the tower and can open the box at the base to reveal a circuit breaker. I flip it and the base goes nuts. They immediately suspect sabotage and scrub the launch, but it doesn't take them long to catch me and the game still ends in a nuclear explosion, just a slightly later one. If I flip the breaker off and then on again, I am rewarded by another point and a brief dialog on the walkie-talkie. What was the point? I have no idea since I didn't gain anything obvious by the exchange.

Classical music swells...

The Final Puzzles

Everything is lining up now, but I realize that I need more time to get back to the tower. I conduct an experiment: I drop the bag of crumbs next to the sleeping dog. If I do so and wait for the roadrunner to show up, he pauses to eat them before torturing the dog! While I am enroute to the tower, he apparently finishes and begins his taunts because we hear the distant sound of barking and see the spotlight move. I can climb up successfully! We made it back to the bomb and it's only 5:23 AM. I have seven minutes to spare to do… something. I'll pause to note that this sequence may pay homage to the 1953 Merrie Melodies short, Zipping Along, or one of the later ones. This is the first time that Wile E. Coyote nearly entrapped his nemesis using a conveniently placed container of free birdseed. Unfortunately, Moriarty does not list Chuck Jones in his extensive bibliography…

Once I get back inside, I open the panel with the screwdriver and peek inside. It's dark and I didn't bring my lantern. I end up restoring back and playing again, this time keeping the lantern in my inventory after the ranch house but discarding the unneeded birdcage. I have the guide on the piece of paper so I cut the detonator wire and that's the wrong one. I die. I restore and cut other wires and still die. I die and die and die. What am I missing?

I take yet another hint to learn that I needed to wait until the final countdown to cut the wire, so as to not give the team enough time to react and call off the launch. I have no idea how I was supposed to infer that. This becomes trickier because the lantern has a limited remaining charge, but I'm used to optimizing at this point. I finally cut the correct wire with the kitchen knife (on my second attempt) and…

You slide the blade of the steak knife under the striped wire and pull back on it as hard as you can. The thick insulation cracks under the strain, stretches, frays and splits...

Snap! A shower of sparks erupts from the enclosure. You lose your balance and fall backwards to the floor.

"X-unit just went out again," shouts a voice.

"Which line is it, Baker?"

"Kid's board says it's the informer. The others look okay. We're lettin' it go, Able. The sequencer's running."

The walkie-talkie hisses quietly.

"Congratulations."

You turn, but see no one.

"Zero minus fifteen seconds," crackles the walkie-talkie.

"You should be proud of yourself." Where is that voice coming from? "This gadget would've blown New Mexico right off the map if you hadn't stopped it. Imagine the embarrassment."

A burst of static. "Minus ten seconds."

The space around you articulates. It's not as scary the second time.

"Of course, there's the problem of causality," continues the voice. "If Harry doesn't get his A-bomb, the future that created you cannot occur. And you can't sabotage the test if you're never born, can you?"

The walkie-talkie is fading away. "Five seconds. Four."

The voice chuckles amiably. "Not to worry, though. Nature doesn't know the word 'paradox.' Gotta bleed off that quantum steam somehow. Why, I wouldn't be surprised to see a good-sized bang every time they shoot off one of these gizmos. Just enough fireworks to keep the historians happy."

The scene shifts back to Kensington Gardens and it is the beginning of the game again. I explore and it goes almost exactly like before. I buy the crumbs and help the old woman with the umbrella. The game ends with a cute scene: this time, we've made friends with the roadrunner and we are off to find a soccer ball to do it all over again. The end.

I'm frustrated by how many questions were left unanswered, but that may have been the point. Who was that voice in our ear that made "gnomon" puns the whole game? Am I supposed to recognize his "folksy" speech patterns? I have no idea. And if the game is a time loop, how and when do I die so that the next me can find my body in the crypt? So many questions, but it's time for the final rating.

Time played: 6 hr 05 min
Total time: 16 hr 15 min
Score: 100 of 100

So much text until the actual ending.

Final Rating

Since writing the above, I have given a few days for my "victory" to settle in, but I have been unable to stop thinking about this game. Judging by the comments, several of you at least have had the same experience. I am sure that there are hundreds of details that I missed and I almost want to play it over again immediately, but at the same time I don't really want to put myself through that again. I cannot quite articulate how I feel about this game, except to say that it both hurts and feels good at the same time. Take that as you will.

Puzzles and Solvability - This game is nearly a masterclass in puzzle design, with the showpiece puzzles among the best that Infocom has ever done. Puzzle difficulty increases gradually as you exit Kensington Gardens, explore to the various time zones, and finally fight through the timing and "did you bring the right tools?" puzzles of the Trinity site. In the end, I found the final round of puzzles too difficult for me. I absolutely did not understand the "what wire to cut" puzzle while playing the game. Only after reading the hints did I learn that I needed to use the information from when we pulled the breaker to know which wire I was supposed to cut. Even with the crushing difficulty at the end-- I lost track of how many times I had to reload and play everything all over again to bring a different item with me-- this is still one of the greatest set of puzzles I have experienced in a game. My score: 7

My final map of the Trinity site. I never did map all of the desert.

Interface and Inventory - I've commented so many times on the standard Infocom interface that to do so again would be redundant, but of course it is best in class for the era. This the second "Interactive Fiction Plus" title and supports some basic use of color (both for background and text color) as well as the nice jump-quotes that appear at the top of the screen. Those alone do not add up to an extra point so I will go with the Infocom-standard score. My score: 4.

Story and Setting - I'm torn on this one because while the setting is fantastic and the connections between the worlds make a certain internal sense, the story did not stick the landing. Introducing the time loop is fun, but the more you think about it the less sense it makes. How would your actions affect future nuclear bombs? If you are in a time loop forever, how does your dead body end up in the crypt? Still, you cannot but admire the amazing worlds that Moriarty has built. My score: 6.

Sound and Graphics - As you probably expect, we have a zero here. The additional color (which was also present in A Mind Forever Voyaging) doesn't add enough for a point. My score: 0.
Environment and Atmosphere - This is a game that it is hard to stop thinking about. I'm still making new connections in my head days after playing it the last time. The wabe is amazingly designed and each of the other environments are fun and unique. This game also gave me nightmares and that has to count for something. It takes great writing to affect me so much! My score: 8.

Dialog and Acting - Moriarty's text is amazing and the game showcases a couple of great characters. The roadrunner comes alive and the little scratch you give him behind the ears as we (and he) re-enter the time loop brings a smile to my face. The narration over the Trinity segment, which I read dozens of times, still never got old-- in part because it was based on real-life transcripts. I also loved the dolphin, the bubble boy, and so many other little touches. I have no idea who the mystery voice was, but he was well-written with nice colloquial touches that made him seem familiar somehow. The jump quotes were also insightful and well-selected. My score: 7.

Let's add those all up: (7+4+6+0+8+7)/.6 = 53. 

That is an amazing score, beating out The Witness as our top scoring Infocom game! (It has been said that I am a lower scorer than Ilmari; if so, that makes this victory all the more impressive.) This places it in good company with graphics games of the period such as Space Quest I and Kings Quest III. In fact, it is our highest scoring "Missed Classic" so far. If you remove the penalty because the game doesn't have graphics, it would have scored 64 and just missed our top ten. It is absolutely my "favorite" game of the Infocom marathon, even though I hope not to play it again for a long time.

The average guess was 44 so I suspect that most of you felt that I wouldn't like this as much as I did. With a perfect landing, Adam Thornton got the bullseye with his guess of 53 points! Congratulations! CAPs will be distributed with the next mainline game.

Up next for me is still one final Trinity post wrapping up this series as I play Leather Goddesses of Phobos. TBD already covered it for the site so I am playing it only for my own experience, although I may write a bonus post and put it up someplace. As a bit of an homage to Leather Goddesses, I will do a very quick "Missed Classic" in a few weeks about a much less well-written "mature" game before picking up again with Moonmist. I'd really like to knock that out before I play Space Quest V, but we'll see whether the scheduling gods smile down at me. Adios!