Hi. This is the Inform source for my game "Guess The Verb!" It's my
first Inform game, and I basically learned Inform while writing it, so
it's horribly written. But you can use it to find stuff you missed
while playing the game, and who knows, you might find some of it
useful in your own games.

Each scenario has a directory. Some of the scenarios are split across
files in one directory; I did this whenever I began finding it
unwieldy to keep all scenario information in one file. I think I may
have bent some Inform rules about include files in the process; all I
can say for sure is that it works on my Linux box.

Compiling in debug mode will enable the "warp" command, which will
take you from the main scenario to the scenario of your choice (use,
eg., WARP FASTEN to get to Wyrmsworth Caverns). Note that warping from
one verb scenario to another is not always foolproof.

Compiling in debug mode will also make the warlock in UNDO potentially
a lot tougher. This is not to punish you for using debug mode (since
you can just comment out the offending lines) but to give you a chance
to play a scene that didn't make it into the released version.

Enjoy, and let me know of any bugs you find or enhancements you think
up. My email address is leonardr@segfault.org and the Web page for
this game is http://www.crummy.com/devel/if/gtv/.

TODO:

I have to move the changes I made to the Inform library out of the
library and into the main code. The most significant change is the
smart-aleck change to SACK_OBJECT, but there are others.

DISEMBARK doesn't have much to do (I wrote it over an afternoon). I'm
thinking of expanding the ship, or letting you move around the space
station some. This would be a good place to add a non-verb puzzle.

Get rid of the time limit in SCRUTINIZE--it's annoying and serves no
purpose other than to prevent you from brute-force trying all the
buttons on the coffeemaker. A more subtle approach is called for.

Implement the FULLSCORE gag. (I had this planned but lacked time.)

Do'papoc needs a description.

Fix the bug in the generated hint code that sometimes occurs when you
expand the last hint in a category all the way and then try to go up
to the top level.

CHANGELOG:

Release 2 (20001210)
--------------------
This release takes into account many complaints raised in competition
reviews of GTV. First, though, I'll run through some things I didn't
change (even though people complained about them):

* In UNDO, the funyun spell still does different things in different
  contigencies. In FASTEN, TIE does not work as a synonym. The idea is
  that these scenarios are unfair or poorly designed parts of larger
  games. RECONFIGURE is still unbearably in-jokey. Sorry. That's how
  those games are.

* The game is still nondeterministic. You might win five rounds
  straight (as Adam Cadre did) and conclude that there's nothing more
  to the game. You might get the less interesting scenarios and
  conclude that the game is lame. You might conclude that the game is
  lame anyway. Them's the breaks. I knew this going in, and on balance
  I think it's worth it.

* Lalrry still won't accept "b" or "g" as abbreviations for "boy" or
  "girl". This is part of his character development--he's very literal
  minded.

* The names of the scenarios are still up on the status line. They happen
  to be the same as the verb you need to complete the scenario. I'm
  uncertain as to the value of taking them out, but open to the idea.

* UNDO is still disproportionately hard. I'd like to correct this by
  beefing up the other scenarios rather than toning down UNDO.

* The exit from behind the booth is still northeast. If you're in
  front of a booth and you go southeast to get behind it, you go
  northeast to retrace your steps. I'll change this if enough people
  complain, but for now I'm stickin' to my guns.

General:

You now get a chance to restore a new game or start a script before
being ambushed by Lalrry and his interminable questions.

There is now a hint system, which I generated with the Infoclues
system. This is the main reason the new .z5 file is so much larger
than the one entered into the competition.  Unfortunately, the
Infoclues system was written for Inform 5.5, and there is a minor bug
which I was unable to track down in my port of it. The original .uhs
file is provided, as is the generated and hacked-up code.

The quotes are turned off by default; you can change this with
QUOTES/QUOTES ON/QUOTES OFF. I had a lot of fun grepping through
fortune files for the quotes, but I think they ultimately distract
from play, although I don't recall any reviewers being annoyed by
them. They're still there, if you want them. I mark a quote as seen
even if quotes were off when you would have gotten the quote; this may
not be correct behavior, but it seems reasonable to me.

Carnival:

Fixed a bunch of quote errors in Lalrry's dialouge.

FASTEN: 
The walkthrough for this scenario no longer tells you to "Wait until
[Duran] gives up," since he never really gives up. It tells you to
wait four turns.

Corrected the room description for the tourist stairway, which said
the exit was to the south even though it was to the southwest.

UNDO:

The name of Do'papoc's spellbook no longer has a newline in it.

Release 001023
--------------

General:

"help", "about", "credits", and "warp" are now meta verbs.

Carnival:

You can no longer guess verbs which have been removed from the wheel.

Fixed problem that caused SCORE to print "You have guessed 1 verbs..."

FASTEN:

Removed superfluous quote and "a" from intro.

RECONFIGURE:

The cashier now has the "female" flag set.

The racks and the pricing signs are now scenery instead of static.

"kiss adam" and "tell adam about x" now return false instead of true.

Picking up the paperclip now gets rid of the original examine message.

SCRUTINIZE:

Dave Griffith informs me that geologists do indeed get to futz around
with expensive equipment, so I changed "geology" to "field geology" in
the coffeemaker description.

UNDO: 

"scrape parrot" now works as per Nelson, "The Craft of Adventure".

Removed extra line break in rats' foobar routine.

The round 3 villans (the warrior and the demon) will now actually kill
you, rather than just hang around the room doing nothing. Oops. :)

R'''g' can now be referred to as such. Changed "searching" to
"questing" in its initial, just because that sounds more Lovecraftian.

Release 001005
--------------
Initial source release.

Carnival:

The telephone number on the bracelet is now randomly generated each
game. This was added because the hard-coded telephone number in the
previous version belongs to a woman in San Antonio, who probably does
not want to be swamped with calls from curious players.

FASTEN:

Changed the date on the canister of celluloid, as 1913 was a *little*
too early for Buster Keaton to be making films (his first dates from
1917).

The bottom of the cliff is no longer dark--Duran is always down there
with you, and he's got a light, so the assumption makes sense. This
fixed a bizarre-looking bug where you dropped the lantern on the cliff
before climbing down, causing you to get the "It's pitch black"
description and then the actual room description. That lantern is no
end of trouble, I tell ya.

The bridge troll will now answer to his name, Uhgru.

You can now ask Duran about adventures and dragons.

RECONFIGURE:

I have it on good authority that Mark Fasheh wears "pants", not
"jeans".

UNDO:

Compiling in debug mode will give you the "classic" (unreleased)
warlock behavior, which was taken out because it upset game
balance. If you want to see the perlsed spell actually do something
(and if you can get the perlsed spell in the first place), this is
your chance.

Release 861002
--------------
Initial contest submission.


