Welcome to the Interactive Fiction story "Alien Abduction?"
by Charles Gerlach (cagerlac@merle.acns.nwu.edu)
This file contains no spoilers for the game, only some helpful ideas
so that the player/author communication will not be hindered by parser
battles.
Files:
abduct.gam (TADS binary game file)
aaintro.txt (This file)
aawlkthr.txt (walk-through)
aaqanda.txt (puzzle solutions in question and answer format)
To play this game, you'll need the TADS runtime for your system, which
you can download through anonymous ftp to ftp.gmd.de
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The notes for experienced IF players (Novice players should skip ahead)
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In general, I hate having to open and close doors within a game unless
there's a good reason for it. Since this game has no need for accurate
door mechanics, all doors that need to be opened are done implicitly
when you go in that direction.
There is a car in the game. To drive it, get in it and type
>drive car
There is a keypad in the game. Use the command structure:
>type 1234 on pad
When interacting with characters, it is possible to
>talk to <character>
but in general, this does not yield satisfactory results. Most useful
information will be gleaned by the standard four constructs:
>ask <character> about <object>
>tell <character> about <object>
>show <object> to <character>
>give <object> to <character>
Although I'm sure I haven't covered everything, (and am therefore setting
myself up for a fall), most characters should have something to say about
everything relevant to the story, even if it's not an actual object that
you can manipulate. For an example completely unrelated to my game:
>ask priest about God
Clearly, God is not something you're gonna pick up and carry around with
you, unless the game is some bizarre existential nightmare. At the same
time, it is a topic that will be relevant to a priest, and the priest
should not say: "I don't know much about that."
Having said this, of course, I am sure that there will be many ways to
coerce equally stupid statements out of my characters, but I've really
tried to cover the bases. (And in doing so, discovered that there are a
*lot* of bases out there.)
Please note that you are controlling a defined player character, Isaiah
Knott. Isaiah definitely has his own personal history, which you will
discover through the course of the game.
The command "examine me" will give you a physical description of
yourself. You should use it at various points in the game, just to check
up on yourself.
******** Personal Preference On *************************
If you get stuck and are going to look at the solutions, I guess I'd
encourage you to look at the walkthrough, instead of the Q&A file.
The reason for this is as follows: I didn't want the Q&A file to be simply
Q: How do I do this?
A: Put flap A into slot B.
and so I put some (but by no means all) of the reasoning behind the game
into the answers. I'd really prefer people who are stuck to follow the
walk-through, which will (hopefully) lay out the story as it was intended
to be read, and then draw their own conclusions about motivations and
mechanisms.
The downside to this suggestion, is, of course, that it's much harder
to avoid spoilers that you didn't want to see in a walk-through.
Obviously, the choice is entirely up to the player, but this is my
suggestion.
******** Personal Preference Off ***********************
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Notes for Novice IF players
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Welcome to Interactive Fiction! Here's the amazingly short course in what
you need to know.
You will be put inside of a story, where the narration will tell you where
you are, what you can see, etc. In general, you type in whatever you want
the player character to do in a complete english command, e.g.
>get the key
or
>ask the policeman about the pickpocket
or
>examine the rodent
You can omit the articles from your sentences for easier typing, if you
wish.
Movement is generally done with compass directions: north, east, west,
etc. These can be helpfully abbreviated: n,ne,e,se,s,sw,w,nw. "In" and
"Out" will also occasionally work. "Up" and "Down", while standard
commands, are not needed in this particular game.
"get" and "drop" are the crucial commands to get your character to carry
objects around that he finds. If you ever wish to know what you are
carrying, the single word "inventory" or the letter "i" will list your
possessions.
Other than that, the most important command is "examine <object>", which
can be abbreviated by "x <object>". This will get you a more detailed
description of the <object> in the command.
This concludes our whirlwind tour of IF games. You should now go back
and read the tips for advanced players, if you have not done so already.
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