Duck! Me? – Development & Beta Testing

[EdwardianDuck]

Bug fixes, built using --OSRDCH so that one can paste in test commands under emulation.

Jeremy

[iamaran]

On the off-chance anyone is still interested in this, I've uploaded Beta 10 to the top post. Hopefully this will be the final beta. Mostly just internal fixes to the skeleton code & enhancements for the future. Other than a few text changes, there are no changes to actual game play.

Jeremy

I'm interested, but very time-poor atm and can't see this changing in the foreseeable, otherwise I'd have definitely been there from the start. Sorry.

[fredrikr]

Compared to the original version, it is a lot slower, but should run on a wider range of machines.

You should probably read the Game Author's Guide, available in the "documentation" folder of your PunyInform directory, to get some ideas for things you can do to make the game smaller and faster. Making a game smaller actually makes it faster as well, since a smaller game means less swapping.

I'd be happy to have a look at the source too, if you want, to see if I spot anything you can do in a more efficient manner. Let me know if you're interested.

[fuzzel]

I'm lucky enough to have a bit of free time for the next few weeks so I'm intending to play a few adventures. First up is Duck! Me? And duck me, what a cracker it is! So far I've spent a couple of hours wandering around, getting a feel for the game and testing a few ideas out. I've made a map of the easy to reach locations with objects and puzzles noted down and I'll be taking this away with me on a short break so I can have a good ponder and hopefully come up with a decent list of things to try out when I get back. I have to say, I've played a lot of BBC games since getting back into the beeb a few years ago and this one is right up there with the likes of Locks of Luck, What's Eeyores? and It's Magic for sheer un-put-down-able-ness. Something about it reminds me of Infocom, not sure whether it's the high quality prose, the slight unease you get that perhaps you're the victim in some horribly mad science experiment or maybe it's just the sheer originality. Whatever, it's a damn good game. Looking forward to seeing how far I get before I'm back begging for clues.

[EdwardianDuck]

@fredrikr Thank you for the input. I went through the GAG at the weekend and applied the recommended optimisations saving about 3Kb (down to about 80Kb now). I'm still working on other tweaks, so this hasn't been released yet.

@fuzzel I'm glad you're enjoying it so far. I have some time off work next week so I'm hoping to give this a final polish and get back to the sequel.

I'm also interested to know if players think the PunyInform version (latest beta) plays at an acceptable speed on whatever configuration you are using, even if players just try a few locations to gauge speed but don't play through the game. I don't have a feel for what performance is expected for an adventure game on vintage kit. On a Master 128 using a PiTubeDirect 2nd processor it runs really well at ~273Mhz.

Jeremy

[fredrikr]

I went through the GAG at the weekend and applied the recommended optimisations saving about 3Kb (down to about 80Kb now). I'm still working on other tweaks, so this hasn't been released yet.

Great!

Note: The most important thing you can do for speed is to start using OPTIONAL_MANUAL_SCOPE.

I'm also interested to know if players think the PunyInform version (latest beta) plays at an acceptable speed on whatever configuration you are using, even if players just try a few locations to gauge speed but don't play through the game. I don't have a feel for what performance is expected for an adventure game on vintage kit. On a Master 128 using a PiTubeDirect 2nd processor it runs really well at ~273Mhz.

It should run well at 273 MHz... The challenge is in getting it to run well at 1-2 MHz.

Not sure what config you've tested on. While Infocom games could be played on 32 KB machines, games were never fast on those machines. The computer typically needs ~2KB for system stuff. The Z-code interpreter is ~10 KB. Parts of the story file that are needed every turn (object data, input buffers, the parser and vocabulary etc) is ~30 KB for an early Infocom game. Just adding all this up, you can see that the interpreter will have to swap from disk constantly. With 48 KB of RAM it's much better, and 64 KB works quite well. Early Infocom releases didn't even bother about using the last 12 KB of RAM on the C64, as they're slightly harder to access, and these games worked quite well.

Also note that Ozmoo isn't the tiniest interpreter around. Our goal was to write the best interpreter we could for the C64, thus sometimes opting for solutions that take up more space but are faster or make for a better presentation. If we had aimed to make the smallest possible z3 interpreter, we could probably have shaved off ~2 KB.

The PunyInform library has about the same memory footprint as Infocom's original "library" (they didn't really have a library, but they had a bunch of code which was copied from game to game, which worked much like a library). The Inform 6 library adds ~35 KB to this, and most of it is used every turn. This is the biggest reason why Inform 6 games can't be expected to perform well on 8-bit machines.

Compare the speed of your game to playing Zork 1, built with Ozmoo, on the same machine. If your game is about as fast, there's not much more you can do to improve the speed.

[fredrikr]

If you want more beta-testers, you may want to publish the beta as a z3 file as well.

Once you're ready for a production release, you could use https://github.com/ByteProject/Puddle-BuildTools to build 25 different disk images, covering all sorts of retro systems.

[EdwardianDuck]

Thank you for the guidance. After working through the rest of the recommended optimisations and disabling a couple of things I'd added which are clearly slow, I was able to get about the same speed as Zork 1, so I'm moving in the right direction. The worst offender is my code to implement variable light levels. Having compared this to the semidark example, I have clearly overengineered this. I'll look into the semidark example and see how I can modify it to suit my needs. It seems pretty straightforward.

Jeremy

[EdwardianDuck]

No new public beta yet, as having removed the variable light level code, the game is no longer completable!

Jeremy

[fuzzel]

I've just completed Duck! Me? I very much enjoyed it and am looking forward to the sequel. I got stumped a couple of times - I was lucky that I blundered across the pryrel after activating the znpuvar whilst looking for something else. Am I right in thinking that the fbnc, crevfpbcr and fcvprf are erq ureevatf ? Also, I couldn't find a use for the ynetr ebpx apart from getting a clue when gnxvat vg.

[EdwardianDuck]

Well done! I'm glad you enjoyed it. Just out of curiosity, which beta did you play?

Yes, the items mentioned are <erq ureevatf> and the <ynetr ebpx> is just hiding a clue.

The crevfpbcr is slightly interactive, but is mostly there for the benefit of a colleague who plays adventure games. You can <ybbx guebhtu crevfpbcr> if you like.

Jeremy

[fuzzel]

I used beta 10 which I assumed was the most up to date. The only bug I encountered was when cvpxvat hc gur ebpx you get the zrffntr jurerire lbh cvpx vg hc.

[EdwardianDuck]

That's the last beta I wrote from scratch in 6502 assembler. The latest beta is 12 which has been rewritten in PunyInform and has been extended (watch out for pesky <frpbaqnel irtrgnoyr zngrevnyvfngvbaf>) as I wasn't entirely satisfied with some of the puzzles.

For some reason, perhaps a forum limit, I wasn't able to upload more files to the top post, so beta 12 is attached to the first post on page 3.

While the 6502 version was an interesting project, I've identified a number of design issues which would require a major rethink and rewrite to resolve, which is a shame, hence the move to PunyInform.

I'm currently working on resolving some performance issues with this version.

Jeremy

[EdwardianDuck]

I've uploaded the latest beta (13) to the top post. I've removed the earlier betas (1-10) to allow adding the latest one. I imagine that if anyone is collecting these, they've already downloaded them. They can always be reposted should the need arise.

As per @fredrikr's suggestion, I've also posted the Z3 version (zipped) in case anyone wants to play it on more modern equipment (I know, heresy).

Changes since beta 12 include:

• A complete rewrite of the way partial darkness is implemented. This was far too slow originally. The current implementation uses the "semidark" example as a starting point.

• The "exits" display has also been reimplemented to be faster and can now be toggled using the EXITS ON and EXITS OFF commands.

• Change from Inform 6.34 to 6.35 as this fixes a bug which made the game hard/impossible to complete in Z3 format.

• Changed to Z3 format (was Z5).

• Various performance improvements as per the PunyInform documentation.

Changes since beta 10 include:

• gur arrqyr naq guernq ner abg whfg ylvat nebhaq

• gurer'f n snve ovg zber gb gur pryrel/qevax chmmyr

• n arj chmmyr va gur fghql

I felt the game was a little empty/flat as it stood and needed a bit more depth.

I'm fairly happy with it now as a game and the performance seems reasonable on a basic Master 128. On a Master Turbo (4Mhz) it's really quite nippy.

From here onwards I think it will just be a case of fixing reported bugs and perhaps tweaking some of the text.

Now, where did I put those scraps of paper with the ideas for the sequel?

Jeremy

[SteveF]

I'm glad you got to a satisfactory point with the optimisations! I've had a *very* quick play with this and it looks very nicely done.

Some of the information in the first post is a bit out of date now, though. The Ozmoo version of the game will run on all sorts of Acorn machines, not just a Master, and the RAMSAVE/RAMLOAD/VERBS/CO40 commands aren't recognised. It might be worth tweaking that, so as not to put the model B purists off.

[EdwardianDuck]

Good point, thank you. Top post updated.

Jeremy

[BigEd]

(I'd be very interested to hear reflections on the differences between implementing in 6502 and in Ozmoo. Perhaps here, or perhaps at a dev night ABUG?)

[EdwardianDuck]

I've replaced the files attached to the top post with those for beta 14.

Lots of cosmetic changes (so many new lines added), added some extra responses (trying to get or move static objects now shows more tailored messages) and some minor fixes.

Special thanks to @fredrikr for the test report, advice and an overnight fix for a PunyInform bug which was impacting the sequel.

Jeremy

[EdwardianDuck]

I've replaced the files attached to the top post with those for beta 15 in response to further testing by @fredrikr.

I've also created a basic page (mostly a placeholder) for this here.

Jeremy

[EdwardianDuck]

Apropos nothing in particular, my game was mentioned here, although I've no idea in what context.

Current status = stuck in beta test. I don't think anyone has played the PunyInform version to completion yet.

I have done some preliminary work on the sequel.

Jeremy

[lurkio]

Apropos nothing in particular, my game was mentioned here

Nice! (Shame they broke the link back to Stardot, though.)

You might want to give the game a plug at intfiction.org and/or ask for beta-testers there.

[EdwardianDuck]

While interest in this has (quite reasonably) tailed off, I just wanted to post a brief update for anyone who is playing or might start playing this to avoid disappointment. I upgraded to PunyInform 3.3 and while regression testing I spotted serious issues with my implementation of partial darkness. To be clear, these issues were always there and it's not a PunyInform issue, I just hadn't spotted some things my code is breaking. The game can still be completed, but with issues and as such doesn't meet my minimum quality level. I'm not sure quite what I'm going to do about this, but given that (as I understand it) darkness is considered a weak puzzle these days, I may take the big hammer/small nut approach and rewrite the game without any darkness at all. That will require changes to some puzzles.

As ever, any feedback is welcome.

Jeremy

PS. I haven't plugged this at intfiction.org, that forum is much more focussed on modern IF, as far as I can see.

[BigEd]

Maybe visible interest has tailed off but this surely counts as a very notable thread for 2021!

[EdwardianDuck]

Well it's certainly true that I have been not able to get this finalised and released.

[BigEd]

They call it Punny Inform for a reason...

[EdwardianDuck]

I've uploaded yet another beta version to the first post. There have been quite a few changes, some arising from my rewrite of partial darkness (again!) and the rest as I've refined the game a bit. Spoilers in <ROT13>. The version in the ZIP file is a .z3 file, which is how the game was designed (there only being a .z3 interpreter for the Atari 8 bit). However, the version built with the Acorn Ozmoo tools is a .z5 file, as the .z3 caused the build to fail (something about Acorn screen hole not defined) and I was unable to figure it out.

• How constraints on what you can do in partial darkness was breaking how default scenery (name property in rooms) works, so I had to start again with that.

• The <frpbaqnel irtrgnoyr zngrevnyvfngvba> bit was annoying as it <fraq gur cynlre bss ba n grqvbhf srgpu dhrfg>.

• I removed the bit which was blatantly not child friendly (<ahqr fzhes>)and replaced it with some foreshadowing. I'm still not claiming the game is suitable for children though.

• Changed/extended a number of the puzzles to flesh the game out a bit.

• The Ozmoo build is reporting different memory models now, so I guess I've pushed it over some limit.

• Added more subtle clues and foreshadowing.

As ever, any feedback is welcome.

Jeremy

[ash73]

Perfect Christmas present thanks! I'll have a play.

Superb game.

[EdwardianDuck]

I've uploaded an additional disk image to the top post. This is the same Beta 16, but built/packaged using the latest Acorn Ozmoo (Preview 8 Alpha 26). I've applied my test walkthrough to this without issue, which is promising. The latest Acorn Ozmoo was able to handle the .z3 file which is what I was hoping for.

Jeremy

[EdwardianDuck]

I've uploaded a new SSD and a (zipped) .z5 file to the top post. This is release 1. In terms of changes from the final beta, other than building with the latest Inform6, PunyInform and Acorn Ozmoo there are only minor cosmetic changes (see below). Other than bug fixes should anyone find any issues, I'm not planning to change the actual game any more.

Please post any issues or requests for hints here. You can ROT13 anything that might be spoilers if you like.

Specific changes since the last build.

<ROT13>
Erzbirq n pbafgenvag ba abg orvat noyr gb jrne gur onqtr orsber rknzvavat vg. Gung jnf whfg fvyyl.
Ercynprq ersrerapr gb gur anzr "Phapucneq" jvgu n znqr hc anzr nf "Phapucneq" vf Wbua Oryy'f VC.
QhpxBybtl vf abj QhpxFcnpr nf jjj.qhpxbybtl.pb.hx ab ybatre rkvfgf.
</ROT13>

Plus a couple of trivial formatting/grammar issues.

Enjoy
Jeremy

[EdwardianDuck]

This is also available to play online over at bbcmicro.co.uk. When playing online, the options screen doesn't have the option to select which mode the game runs in (not sure why) and starts up in mode 7. If you prefer to play in 80 columns, you should download the image and play locally. I don't know if load/save work online, I haven't tried it, but I assume not.

Also the screen shot shows the game in mode 3 with a blue background. That looks weird to me, personally I'd prefer to see a black background on the screenshot, but that's not something I can control.

Jeremy