MIDNIGHT DEEP

Alright, somebody tell me what I need to have to pass through the doors in the ruins. I've tried the Ankh with every 'token of friendship' I can find, and the skull with every battle trophy I can muster.
Also, how do you rescue the woman trapped in the magical tower?

waterbased
Tue Nov 15 00:05:35 2005
Midnight Deep

never mind, figured it out

THe Nameless One
Thu Nov 17 23:29:32 2005
Midnight Deep

There are certain actions you have to do based on the path you choose near the beginning, good, evil. or balance. I don't know how to do the sopiler thing with my screen reader, so I will leave it at that.

waterbased
Fri Nov 18 07:37:50 2005
Midnight Deep

helpful

waterbased
Fri Nov 18 22:56:22 2005
Midnight Deep

but about the broad in the tower...
anyone???

The Nameless One
Sat Nov 19 05:45:30 2005
Midnight Deep

Try as many paths as you can. Don't try to hard witht the girl in the tower, there are far more important things to worry about.

Gamebook Fanatic
Sun Nov 20 08:23:41 2005
Midnight Deep

The lady in the magic tower can only be rescued if you picked the right special skill at the beginning of the game. But as Nameless One said, you don't have to try too hard. Rescuing her isn't what i'd call rewarding... But if you really wsh to do that here's the way:

SPOILER

END SPOILER

Hope you find that helpful, waterbased.

Anyway, about the difficulty rating suggested by Dark, I'm not sure if it'd be as helpful as it sounds, the reason being that different people will have different opinions about what's difficult. Not everyone might agree with the list provided by the site admin. The ones at the two ends of the list are probably easier, since I don't think anyone here would dispute that a book like Hellfire is more difficult than, say, Impudent Peasant. But those in the middle would be hard to rank. I, personally, would rank Bodies in the Docks further below the list, mainly because of the difficult combats at the end, even though the 'true path' is easy to find. It all depends on what you're ranking them by. If combat difficulty is the main criteria, Curse of the Yeti would obviously be first, since there are no actual combats or stats in the book. But if the difficulty is about finding the true path, it would go a lot lower, due to the rather confusing maze-like settings.

Not to shoot this idea down entirely though. For the ranking list to be really helpful, it would need a more detailed structure. Perhaps a difficulty rating in all the usual criterias (with numerical 1-5 values), then making the list using the average values. For example:

House of Horror:

Combat Difficulty: 2

Navigation (finding the true path): 4

Random Disasters: 1 (there are no references whereby you are just told to roll a dice, not testing any stats, and die if you roll an odd number, or a value below 3)

Stat-testing frequency: 2

Amount/lethality of dead ends and deathtraps: 3 (probably connected with navigation as well, but navigation also involves having enough clues to know where to go next or where to avoid, while this one also takes into account of how much chance you have of surviving when making the wrong options, in addition to how often you run into them).

Item-hunting: 3

Average rating: (2+4+1+2+3+3)/6 = 3.5

Perhaps no a very accurate rating either. There are probably other difficulty factors which I hadn't considered. This is just a rough sketch of the ratings structure I have in mind. Another way is to display the ratings for all the factors rather than just showing the average. That way, the readers can choose for themselves whether they like to navigate a complex maze or fight tough monsters, of perhaps all of them.

Just a suggestion, of course. I do realise it might take quite a bit of work and time, perhaps more than necessary. I personally don't mind if there's a difficulty rating or not, much better to find out by reading. After all, the site admin and the book authors aren't making us pay to read the books, so we won't have to worry about wasting money on a book that we end up hating. :D Anyway, if you do set up a ratings section later, I hope my idea is worth considering. (though of course, you might have already thought of that).

Dark
Sun Nov 20 18:31:39 2005
Midnight Deep

Well personally Gbf, it wasn't in terms of dice rolling that I was thinking of the difficulty raiting. After all sinse these books are online, you can add whatever page your on to the favourites list and thus have a save point. i hope this isn't cheating or against the rules, I just felt that something like Hellfire is a bit much to play through in one sitting.

Anyway, as far as difficulty goes, I was thinking purely in terms of puzles and alternate paths, and also to a lesser degree, how much of a maze the game locations are. this would mean that novices who come to the site --- like me, wouldn't find themselves embroiled in the horrors of something like Hellfire or Laire of the trogs too soon.

while I know that some people who come here are obviously big fans of the genre and have been playing for years, others (maybe because they need a screen reader), might not.

I've played through bits of interactive fiction aka Text adventures such as Zork before, but these are generally different from gamebooks sinse you can often go back to where you were before, there's no combat whatsoever, and a greator --- sometimes too great! emphasis on finding your way. There are also no stats, and thus no rewards other than in game ones such as opening a locked door.

for this reason some difficulty ratings would be sort of nice.

Btw, thanks for the hint reguarding project.aon, I've been wading through the Lonewolf series and very good they are.

ffproject
Thu Dec 1 18:39:06 2005
Isle Of The Cyclops

Isle Of The Cyclops

The prolific Andrew Wright has produced yet another gamebook, this one using non-FF rules. See the downloads page.

Andrew Wright Sat Dec 3 11:01:33 2005 Isle Of The Cyclops	Actually, Andy, the link doesn't appear to work on the downloads page for Isle of the Cyclops. Is it because you have it set at CYCLOPS.DOC instead of as a PDF? cheers Andy
	Yes it is. Thanks for pointing this out, I've fixed it now.

dark Tue Dec 6 19:33:01 2005 Isle Of The Cyclops	I'm looking forward to Isle of the Cyclops being posted up on the site so that I can play it. Pdf's are a bit of a pest with speech synthesisors, and anyway, finding page numbers with ctrlf without accidently viewing spoilers can be tricky.
	Despite its obvious high quality, I wouldn't hold your breath for this one. The different combat system and open ended approach to Isle Of The Cyclops makes adaptation tricky. I haven't decided what to do with it yet.

Andrew Wright
Tue Dec 6 23:15:11 2005
Isle Of The Cyclops

How would a .doc version of Isle of the Cyclops be with speech synthesizers? I've got one, the problem is it is in two columns using the Bembo typeface font, and if you don't have Bembo, then the layout is all over the place.

cheers

Andy

dark
Fri Dec 9 22:43:11 2005
Isle Of The Cyclops

Well, a doc would be fine, but I'm not that certain about colums, or this Bembo font business, pluss there's stil the problem of turning to different pages within the text. I did a few experiments with Impudent peasant (sinse i finished that one), but searching for no 9, when told to turn to page 9 usually brings up every fight in the entire book with an enimy of a skill of 9, pluss the original page turning reference.
It would be handy if page numbers were written as: @@09, then you could use ctrl to find stuff.

OK, the next time I adapt a gamebook I'll also produce a text file where each reference number is prefixed by @@. If any public spirited individual with too much time on their hands wants to do this for any of the existing gamebooks, then I would be happy to post the result on the downloads page.

Legion Tue Dec 13 01:32:04 2005 I'm Writing A Gamebook	How about if my gamebook is almost identifcal to Fighting Fantasy? I'm wondering about the combat rules though. I don't like FF rules one bit. They make boring combat. Could your engine still be used if three "6" dices were to be used? Any other ideas to make combats more exciting? They call us many for we are Legion.
	The software isn't particularly adaptable, it was written specifically for Fighting Fantasy rules. Of course anything is possible, but if a gamebook has a different combat system it does make an adaptation significantly harder (and therefore less likely to happen). If you do write this gamebook by all means send it to me and I'll put it on the downloads page at the very least.

Dark
Thu Dec 15 20:50:11 2005
I'm Writing A Gamebook

Well I don't know about the engine, that's business for the site Admin.
Personally, I agree with you on combats, sinse in the Ff I've seen you don't generally have many other things to do in combat than hit or run away. I must admit, I rather liked some of the Lw combats, while the actual fighting itself boiled down to a similar thing to Ff, there seemed to be many more ways a combat could be influenced outside the actual fight ---- using a boe on an enimy before hand, or attacking an enimy from the blind side etc.
I certainly think Combats are always more fun when they involve more items to do different things (another bonus in Lone wolf).

Shadowdragon
Wed Dec 21 14:17:04 2005
General Chat

Heh, I tried to play some of the books from shadowvault, but most of them are too crazy in pdf, lol. Its so hard to find the page numbers because thy aren't even lined up, you have to find the page of the pdf they're on and the page number on that page of the section you're supposed to go to. Personally I'd rather just stick to the FFBook engine. Do you plan to put any of the shadowvault books up on here? Or anymore I should say. I'd kinda like to see that snakeland scorpion one, or that one where you end up put in a prison for something you didn't do. There's a lot more interesting ones, but those are the only ones I can think of at the time.

A long time ago I did try to contact Robert Douglas - the author of Snakeland Scorpion and Prison Of Pestilence - regarding getting permission for an online adaptation, but was unsuccessful. Maybe one day he'll come forward.

Ibrahim
Wed Dec 21 15:11:54 2005
General Chat

Hi.

I have been a visitor to this site for some years now and I am totally blind as well. Come on guys. Andy has done a terific job of putting a dozen well written books up here for all to enjoy. No doubt this is a hobby for him and I'm sure he's got other matters like a job or family to tend to first. I would also like to see new books posted, but please remember that andy is a meer mortal like the rest of us and he can't delivery as we might want. My understanding of it that the books have to be adapted and rewritten to make them work with this engine and outsider must have taken an age to do so please everyone be patient.

Thanks Ibrahim, although I hadn't sensed much impatience. Your assessment of the situation is entirely correct. The books need converting into a particular format to work with the software, this conversion process takes time, and my time is limited. Of course the raw material - amateur FF gamebooks - are also in relatively short supply.

shadowdragon
Thu Dec 22 00:02:57 2005
Outsider!

Heh, this is probably an extremely delayed question, but did afterlife ever get finished? I assume not since you probably would've posted it by now, but I have to say that's probably my favorite book on the site. Black Aria is awesome! Actually I like Nightshade Phantom better, but don't tel Aria I said that! *Smirk*. Always was a fan of the bastard sword, especially when wielded by someone huge, stealthy and dressed in black.

Not to my knowledge. In fact Gavin Mitchell subsequently came up with a couple more - excellent - gamebook ideas, but these were never developed either. The most recent writing of his that I am aware of is RING, which can be found at http://www.fanfiction.net/u/295976/.

Ibrahim
Thu Dec 22 09:01:31 2005
Outsider!

Well, if you ever need assistance with Outsider, just give me a shout. I have reached all endings and exhausted all avenues so I know the game intimately. I still from time to time play it as the story line is so good and the game so well placed. I like it that you have to work your way up the ladder from being a down and out of the field guy to *I won't say here* but I think all of you should give it a shot at least once.

Agreed. And don't settle for dying in the sewer, this is not the best ending.

Ibrahim
Thu Dec 22 16:28:25 2005
General Chat

I've noticed that a lot of people want more control over combats and stuff like that that the basic FF rules don't accomodate. Not trying to steel patronism away from this site, but I've discovered a very good FF type web game at http://www.sryth.com where among other things you can fight using different weapons, use magical powers and skills as well explore a virtually unlimited world and become the character of your choice rather than being lumbered with whatever the author of the book has determined. Furthermore, there is no specific ending or goal to be reached but the more you complete and the more adventures you conclude successfully, you can obtain experience to enhance your skills and even buy magical items with icons you win in competative sporting events such as archery contests or gladiator type hand to hand combat competitions. Anyway, check it out.

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