A brief distraction for some of you
Last year, I sat down and started to work on a Mariner text adventure game. In March, I briefly posted it here for feedback, but I never got back to finishing it for a variety of boring reasons. Thanks to events of the last year, it’s no longer as applicable. Or at all, really.
Here, then, for your momentary enjoyment, if you are both a Mariner fan and someone who knows what happens if you say “plugh” and why an “elvish sword of great antiquity” glows, I offer to you: A Fine Day in Peoria. It’s a .z5 file. It comes with no warranty of any kind. No tech support, nothing. It costs nothing, and you are guaranteed to get your money’s worth. If you get a laugh out of it, that’s good enough.
Comments
57 Responses to “A brief distraction for some of you”
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
Zork-tastic, simply put. I laughed heartily.
and a z5 file is?
Let me google that for you
I can’t wait to try this out.
ZoneAlarm Mailsafe file, among other things, I hope.
reminds me of a .7Z archive. almost.
A .Z5 file is an Inform Z-Machine file. You can use an application called Windows Frotz to open it.
yeah, WinFrotz works well.
thanks derek. fun stuff.
Will I be able to use the elvish sword of great antiquity to slay Carlos Silva after distracting him with a triple/triple?
Ya. I tried to load it on my electric toothbrush and got a read error.
Any way to open this on a mac?
Peter give Zoom a try. Never used it, there might be something better, but a 10 second google search gave me that as a result.
oh, sure I can. And I can only harvest in a Guild Circle.
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by Carlos Silva.
This is fantastic. Thank you Mr. Zumsteg.
Don’t know. But I use Parallels or VMWare Fusion for times like this.
Damn that Billy Beane.
How the hell does this thing work? I loaded the program, read the intro and cant go anywhere. Help me!
demonstrating my total lack of knowledge of such things, I keep annoying Chuck.
For mac users, the Zoom app Replacementlvlposter mentioned worked great for me. Just save the link as a .z5 and Zoom will open it right up.
I tried “take money” right away, and a rather humorous message popped up. So I definitely got my free chuckle out of it.
I want my Juan Ramirez back.
Billy Beane keeps stealing my stuff. Bastard.
I’m stuck someone send me some basic commands!
You mean I can’t take the blonde fan for myself? Damn railroad plot.
I have no idea what you are supposed to do. Help!
“look at computer” got a pretty funny response.
WinFrotz seems a little wiggy… I see a lot of chopped descriptions and stuff.
I found out you can make Billy Beane stop signing all your players by saying “kill Billy Beane.” He doesn’t die, but he does leave. Funny stuff. Its fun just typing random stuff to see what it will let me do.
if some one could type up a step-by-step way to access the program that would be helpful….
Agreed.
Wow, I attacked Beane first thing. He only got the bucket of balls.
I wonder if I’ve done everything you can.
i typed answer phone then a series of yes and no throughout the program
i gained 25 points…
no what?
I saw that too. I just enlarged the screen and it seemed to go away. but I only got to 240 points or so, so I’m assuming I didn’t get very far along.
I really expected to see Beane armed with a vicious looking stiletto.
great stuff.
I can open the file and I start with a scene with Chuck Armstrong. How do I go from here? I hit enter and it says “I beg your pardon?”.
Am I supposed to be able to get infinite points by repeatedly talking to the reporter?
STEP BY STEP INSTRUCTIONS EVEN THOUGH THIS IS SUPER EASY AND I SAID I WOULDN’T DO TECH SUPPORT
1. Download the “A Fine Day in Peoria” file above. You’ll probably want to right-click it and then select “save target” or “save file as” or something. Make a note of where it goes.
2. Download something that can play .z5 files. There are some handy links in the comments above. Or you can google ‘winfrotz’ or ‘how to play z5 files’ or… whatever
3. Install the player. This may just be a matter of opening the file. I don’t know. For WinFrotz, you download the file, open it, select “extract all files” and whooop, it has its own folder and it’s ready to run.
4. Start the player.
5. Within the player, go file -> open
6. Tell it where you saved the .z5 file in step 1.
Ta da! Now you’re off and running.
You can now use standard text adventure commands, like
> look at desk
> answer phone
> take outlandish contract extension
and so on.
oh.
Examine things
like >examine outlandish contract extension
I have just taken Billy Bean captive and have him on Citi Bank’s just delivered billion dollar private jet enroute to Dubai where we are meeting with Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Al Saud of Saudi Arabia to sell him the secret of making money on a baseball blog. Al has also expressed interest in purchasing the A’s.
Needs a strategy guide.
Write one then.
I found a bug- when you take the cashews and hot dog wrapper out of the wastebasket and then examine the wastebasket it still says there are cashews and hot dog wrappers in it
demand your money back.
or just carry extra cashew and hot dog wrappers around. maybe Beane will take them off your hands.
I can’t figure out how to give the huge pile of money to Ichiro.
You can also enter an endless loop of point increases but I won’t say how because that might be a spoiler
“answer phone” doesn’t work (at least under WinFrotz.) Ideas?
On the other hand, I can take off my shorts.
Hilarious response when I try “attack Raul.”
“Raul Ibanez is the heart and soul of your team, the public face of the franchise, the best interview in the clubhouse, and a reliable left-handed bat in the middle of the lineup. Also, there are a lot of witnesses here.”
Anyone else notice Red in the crowd?
I had a little trouble getting WinFrotz to work… but there’s a newer version here that seems to work pretty well:
http://www.ifarchive.org/if-archive/infocom/interpreters/frotz/WindowsFrotzInstaller.exe
Since I left my shirt and shorts in the press box and am walking around in nothing but sunglasses, I’m glad this game is only text based
I gave Nolan Gallagher to a fan. I’ll be damned if Beane get’s his mitts on him.
I’m not going to look at it but wow.
WOW.
Dungeons and Baseball Dragons?
Thank you for displaying all the insight and wit we’ve come to expect from Dave Valle himself.
I’m on XP and I saw the same thing. I changed:
View->Display Options->Updates
to “Very Frequent” and it fixed that problem.
Has anyone else examined the shirt yet? It’s good for a laugh.
Yay! So excited. I’ll be looking at this at home tonight (especially with the kind assistance of fellow Mac users above).
Already I am hoping for, if this game is based on the last few years:
>examine outlandish contract extension
Why would you want to do that?
>examine outlandish contract extension
Why would you want to do that?
because it’s freaking hilarious
Ahhhh Zork… The first game I ever played (on my Commodore 64) until I saw the sun come up in the morning. One of the greatest games of all time.