Archived from groups: rec.games.int-fiction (More info?)
I was thinking of playing some tandem IF games with a gaming newbie
friend, by feeding them cut and pasted commands and letting them read along
(similar to Zork GI's wonky Linked Play option).
Problem: Most IF games have some kind of random element in them, which
would mean that two people playing the same game and inputting exactly the same
moves may NOT be seeing the same thing. In a game that has no random elements,
you should be able to create a movelist that can play the entire game from
beginning to end from a pre-set move list, and make it to the end successfully
every time.
Unfortunately, there are very few games like that. Plundered Hearts is
one of them. Hollywood Hijinx is 99% fixed (the only random element being the
song that gets played on the piano). Most other games have random elements
What I want is a way to play the same game on two different computers in
different locations, and guarantee that both games are outputting the same
results to the same commands. One way of doing this might be setting the -s
switch to 1 in Frotz, but the help file seems to indicate that that only
affects random events set up before the game begins, not ones that take place
during the game. Another option is to use the Alt-S function to set the number
of possibilities in a random choice to 1.
I'm thinking that by combining these two (-s 1, and Alt-S 1), on both systems,
I can guarantee that both games will produce the same output. Is there anyone
who's tried this, and can confirm that it will work?
I was thinking of playing some tandem IF games with a gaming newbie
friend, by feeding them cut and pasted commands and letting them read along
(similar to Zork GI's wonky Linked Play option).
Problem: Most IF games have some kind of random element in them, which
would mean that two people playing the same game and inputting exactly the same
moves may NOT be seeing the same thing. In a game that has no random elements,
you should be able to create a movelist that can play the entire game from
beginning to end from a pre-set move list, and make it to the end successfully
every time.
Unfortunately, there are very few games like that. Plundered Hearts is
one of them. Hollywood Hijinx is 99% fixed (the only random element being the
song that gets played on the piano). Most other games have random elements
What I want is a way to play the same game on two different computers in
different locations, and guarantee that both games are outputting the same
results to the same commands. One way of doing this might be setting the -s
switch to 1 in Frotz, but the help file seems to indicate that that only
affects random events set up before the game begins, not ones that take place
during the game. Another option is to use the Alt-S function to set the number
of possibilities in a random choice to 1.
I'm thinking that by combining these two (-s 1, and Alt-S 1), on both systems,
I can guarantee that both games will produce the same output. Is there anyone
who's tried this, and can confirm that it will work?