Before Crimson Room...
Before Princess Tomato...
Before Maniac Mansion, Shadowgate, the Space Quest series, King's Quest series, Quest for Glory series, and even H2G2...
There was the cave.
Welcome to Adventure! Would you like instructions? yes Somewhere nearby is Colossal Cave, where others have found fortunes in treasure and gold, though it is rumored that some who enter are never seen again. Magic is said to work in the cave. I will be your eyes and hands. Direct me with commands of 1 or 2 words. You can type "help" for some general hints. For information on how to end your adventure, scoring, etc., type "info"
Adventure was the first notable adventure game, giving its name to the genre. You might know it under another title, such as ADVENT, Colossal Cave, or Colossal Cave Adventure. Your goal is to find the aforementioned cave, gather the treasures, and make it out alive. Originally for the PDP-10, it has been ported to numerous systems; you can even play it via text message nowadays. People have modified it to change the rooms, puzzles, treasures, and maximum score. If you have not played it yet, I suggest trying it before you watch this run.
SPOILERS AHEAD
The goal of this run is to complete the 350-point Flash version by Wesley Holland, abbreviated as HOLL0350. This involves exploring the cave, finding the treasures, placing them in the building, and solving some puzzles. I used Sean L. Palmer's walkthrough as a base and made minimal adjustments: You can just pour and fill to pour out the contents of the bottle and to fill it with appropriate material, respectively.
Theme and variations
These are some differences that I have found between HOLL0350 and other versions (mostly DOS ones but also looking through the Crowther and Woods source code):
- Requires more than the first four/five letters of words in commands.
- Dwarves can follow you past the troll bridge.
- Dwarves do not block your way.
- Feeding the bear does not use up all of the food.
- You can go back from Witt's End.
- New layout for the battery vending machine maze.
- Different room numbers for some locations.
- Scoring.
The battery vending machine maze layout is as follows:
| Current Room | n | s | e | w | u | d |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 107 | 139 | 131 | 137 | 138 | 135 | 61 |
| 112 | 132 | 114 | 133 | 137 | 139 | 138 |
| 131 | 138 | 139 | 112 | 107 | ||
| 132 | 133 | 134 | 138 | 135 | ||
| 133 | 137 | 112 | 136 | 132 | 107 | |
| 134 | 131 | 137 | 135 | 139 | 138 | |
| 135 | 107 | 133 | 134 | 136 | 112 | |
| 136 | 112 | 135 | 107 | 131 | ||
| 137 | 136 | 132 | 139 | 112 | 134 | |
| 138 | 135 | 136 | 131 | 134 | 133 | 107 |
| 139 | 134 | 138 | 132 | 133 | 137 |
Room 61 is the west end of the long hall. The only way to enter the maze is to go south from room 61, which puts you into room 107. Room 114 has the vending machine.
RNG
This run manipulates RNG when fighting dwarves and when waiting for the pirate to steal your treasures. It turns out that finding RAM addresses for Flash Player is rather difficult, so I did that by trial and error. I tried to find basic things like current room and number of turns used via Cheat Engine in Windows and libTAS's RAM search in Linux but was unsuccessful. Thus, the following information is based on observations of game behavior.
Things that are affected by RNG include:
- Chance of falling into a pit if moving in the cave without a light.
- When the first dwarf spots you in the cave.
- Movement of the dwarves and pirate.
- Success of attacks against or from dwarves.
Some of my observations:
- Delaying input for different numbers of frames does not seem to change the outcome of the next event, but might affect later events.
- The actual input seems to change the outcome.
For example, my input while waiting for the pirate was
off -> dig -> on -> rub lamp. I experimented with other input sequences, such as changing off to exit (same number of frames), but the pirate did not appear.
Scoring
This was the most frustrating part of HOLL0350. It turns out that scoring is quite different from other versions of Adventure. I ended up using a Flash decompiler to find out what was happening, so the following assumes that the decompiler was accurate.
| Points | Action |
|---|---|
| 100 | Visiting 20 locations, 5 points each |
| 150 | Dropping 15 treasures in the building, 10 points each |
| 19 | Beating the game |
| 1 | Dropping the magazines at Witt's End |
The total of the above is 270 points. This leaves an interesting line in the printScore function:
_loc1_ += Math.min(Math.ceil(beenThere.length * 79 / 80),79);
_loc1_ is the score, and beenThere is an array of locations visited. It seems to be impossible to get more than 79 points by visiting different locations, so the maximum possible score seems to be 349. (The quest to reach more rooms while waiting for the endgame teleportation was how I discovered the changed layout of the battery vending machine maze.) Based on the above analysis, I contend that this run gets the best possible ending despite not achieving the maximum possible score, since Master Adventurer Class A starts at 330 points.
Other
Potential improvements come from manipulating dwarf and pirate movement. Based on the decompiler output, it looks like the lamp is absolutely required, since you will die after 4-5 movements in the dark.
The game does not work in Gnash or Lightspark. It seems to be a problem with the textbox used for input.
Credits
- William Crowther and Don Woods for the original game.
- Wesley Holland for the Flash port.
- Nathanael CJE Culver for maintaining an Adventure Family Tree with links to many known versions.
- Rick Adams for a site with helpful links.
- Sean L. Palmer for the walkthrough.
- Mari Michaelis for a map that I used to keep track of locations visited.
- keylie and anyone else who has worked on libTAS.
Thou cannotst go there. Who do you think thou art? A magistrate?!
Ye arrive at Dennis. He wears a sporty frock coat and a long jimberjam. He paces about nervously. Obvious exits are NOT DENNIS.
Man, that art a nice jimberjam.
feos: Judging...
Dacicus: Cancelling due to sync issues.