Ok, time to finish this small sample project. We won’t do anything too complex, but we’ll add something that the player would need to understand to solve at least one puzzle.

Let’s start adding a new room – the outside.

and then let’s add a south direction to go there from the living room – but with a difference, compared to the other movements.

Something that will show this thing:

Yes, we’re “trapped” in our own apartment!

To handle that we just need to use a variable, that needs to be set to a certain value to let us out.

A locked door means we need to find a key – that will add to normalobj – but stating that’s not “normal” – because it starts without attributes – and that means we won’t be able to see, or take it, even if we put it in the bedroom. It’s more or less a hidden object.

How should the player take it, if it’s not visible? Well, we’ll add a description for the bedside table, telling that it’s got a drawer. And then, if we check the drawer, we’ll let the player find the key – changing the object attributes.

That way, after examining the drawer, the key would be handled by our default take verb.

With that in our inventory, we just need to add handling for unlock

And here we go.

Then we can leave our home, and finish the game (actually, the game won’t stop – but there’s nothing more to do, if not moving back and read some other descriptions)

What do you think about that? Things are quite straightforward – even if of course that doesn’t mean you won’t find some difficulty, at least at the start, because of the syntax and/or because this starts to be “linear” only after some tests.

But the point is – yes – with this tool, it all but impossible to build a graphic text adventure for C64.

I’ll add (and possibly change) something here and there, trying to simplify things and improve the whole system, but if you’re curious / interested, consider saving a bookmark for this blog, for my github page, or for my itch.io page.

(the whole project is available here)