Tuesday 17 September 2024

Death in the Caribbean - I Believe this Motel Will Be Standing Until I Pay My Bill

Written by Michael


In the introduction, I started to explore the game world and landed in the afterworld.  So let’s start again.  I start out on the same path and go exploring.



I eventually come across a tree with a swing hanging from the branches.  When I look at it, I’m told, “The swing is made of a rope and a seat.”  Let’s test the parser.  


USE SWING

“You cannot USE SWING here.”


SWING

“That was fun!!  Now what?”


Well, ok.  How about TAKE SWING?

“The swing is made of two parts.”


That means I have to take each separately, so I TAKE ROPE and TAKE SEAT.


I hope I’m not late.


Some more exploring, and I come upon a church. I can walk in front of or behind it.  Again, the game sometimes is lacking.  


LOOK CHURCH

“Do not bother looking at the church.”



But it’s okay, because if I try to
ENTER CHURCH I am taken to the doors with some beautiful stained glass windows.  It seems, however, that the doors are locked, and the game didn’t understand KNOCK DOOR, so I won’t be able to do anything here yet.


Some more exploring, and I find a wagon left abandoned at the end of a dead-end path.  It looks like the joints and seams of the wagon are covered with tar.  Still, I take it.  I can always wash my hands later, I suppose.



Some more exploring finds me overlooking a cliff, and when I try to go in that direction, the game is direct: “You must figure out how to get down the cliff.”  So, that will definitely be a puzzle to solve.  After all, I’m not really able to explore outside this general area yet.  



So you know what a jungle needs?  An ant hole.  Oh, wait, it’s the same one that killed me in the last post.


Okay, so I'll go south.  I continue down the path where there is a box.  It looks like an oversized cigar box to me, but let’s see.  I cannot take it, but I can look inside, and I find a key.  The game makes a point of telling me the lining of the box is beautiful, but I try to interact with it, and no luck.  I was thinking, maybe something hiding behind it, or I just need to take it, or I don’t know... even LOOK LINING fails.  Huh?


Let’s go back north,



Ugh.


Restoring, I try to cover the hole with the wagon, without luck, so I just get the heck out of there.  After all, I have a key, what did I see before that was locked?


Since we have a Church Key, I hope we find some sacrificial wine in there.

Inside the main room of the church, we’re told there is a trap door, which I suppose could be mistaken for a carpet, so thank you, game..  There’s a rope hanging from above, could that be for the door?  Nah, it’s for the bell.


Wait, did this game kill me again?


Trying again, I LOOK WALL.  “If you are really frustrated, try climbing the walls.”  Well, this game IS getting to me.  CLIMB WALL.  “Climbing the walls is a sign of great frustration.  Take a break.”


Well, this game knows itself, I suppose.  I open the “trap-door” but the game won’t let me down without a lit lantern.  So, instead, I head south (remember, game tosses the pictures around!) and find a room with an old pipe organ.  Um, more specifically, by going south I find the organ on the west wall of the church.


I haven’t decided to give up on this game yet, but wow, it’s tempting.



On the organ, which hasn’t been played for years, there is some music.  When I look or read it, I’m told it’s dusty, but in the artwork, I can see it is
Mozart’s Concerto #1.  I remember very little about reading music, even though I had to when I was in choir, back in high school, but I think the first note is a G and it looks like there’s a sharp notation next to the clef, but I don’t know if I’ll need to know any of this.  But who knows, anymore.  They’re giving this such a prominent display...

Oh, and DUST MUSIC has no effect.PLAY MUSIC doesn’t work either, so I guess we don’t know how to play the piano.  Oh, wait, check the parser.  PLAY ORGAN tells me the organ doesn’t work, so can I FIX ORGAN?  “You cannot fix it.”


Okay, so this game is making me very angry already, but this joke did make me smile.
So, I’m stumped right now.  I think I’m going to take a break, and I’ll come back with a fresh mind another day.

Progress so far

Session Time: 30 minutes

Total Time: 40 minutes


10 comments:

  1. Wonder what's the correct monitor/ video mode to play this. That mozart text in the piano seems like those video artifacts from not using the correct mode.

    I'm sure we can emulate this with a better and more genuine output

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I left AppleWin at the default settings - Color TV and 50% scan lines. These are the same settings I played Sherwood Forest in, so comparing the two to each other should be fair.

      The screen display in this emulator is sometimes really accurate -- if I hit the key to capture the screen, sometimes I get it mid-cycle as the screen is refreshing, and the screenshot is useless and I have to throw it out.

      Delete
    2. ok, not discussing the cycle accuracy or refresh rate. Actually the way these old games worked on CRT monitors and how they designed graphics to work with specifically those.

      These Mac old computers, seem to have some oddities on the video architecture from a hardware point of view, a famous one is Color fringe, which seem those weird artifacts seen in borders.

      You can also see the game was designed for CRT since every screenshot has weird patterns/pixels. That's supposed to be seen as a merged color, a dithering pattern.

      Nowadays luckily, most emulators can be upscaled to ridiculous resolutions for its time (like 4k) and apply a ton of shaders and output alterations to simulate how the game used to look back then.

      I recommend to improve the experience by this trend of having better historic video accuracy.

      Delete
    3. https://old.reddit.com/r/crtgaming/comments/ogqgvq/looking_at_this_picture_finally_the_best_way_to/

      (PVM = professional video monitor, a very high-end CRT not for general consumers)

      Delete
    4. CRT monitors (not quite the same as CRT TVs) also have variable quality, with later models being sharper:

      https://forums.libretro.com/t/please-show-off-what-crt-shaders-can-do/19193/3887

      Delete
    5. yeah, would be fun to find a video or a capture like that for AppleII games, since they have a different kind of limitations, it's not just color bleeding and scanlines, it's much more limited

      Delete
  2. Close, but the first note on that music sheet is an A.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yup. Also, Mozart's first keyboard concerto (the one you linked) is in F. Mozart's only first concerto in G is his flute concerto K. 313 and the third measure played by the oboes sort of looks like the image in the game but it's a very unprecise depiction. Also, it's not the main theme or anything but rather a few random notes from the middle of a counterphrase. The second part (b,d,e) also looks sort of like the fourth measure (b,d,g) of the concerto but only sort of, and only like one of the voices.

      I reckon that the game designer was looking for music to put in the game and imperfectly copied from the sheet music he might have had lying around in his household.

      Delete
  3. Nice Warren Zevon reference, Michael!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks. I sometimes stray from the 90s. :)

      Delete

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