Guides/Manuals?

Are there guides/manuals for Gargoyle and other interpreters?

I started playing a game in Gargoyle, but it didn’t seem to follow my directions. I’d try to walk “s” and end up walking downstairs. I’d try to walk “up” and walk outside. So I decided to check “help”…

Now I’m stuck.

I see several items listed in help, but can’t go up or down in the list, can’t pick “instructions for play,” and can’t figure out how to navigate this “help”… “p” and “n” don’t work, though “q” leaves help. And arrows and the mouse don’t work either with this list.

Or get back to before the game started going haywire.

What game are you trying to play, what operating system are you using, and do you have any special customization set up in how you interact with your computer? (Since you haven’t been able to get this game working with either Gargoyle or Lectrote, I suspect there’s something unusual about the game itself or about your setup for playing it.)

I finally got one version of Gargoyle working. I use a macbook air, but usually with an external monitor, external mini keyboard, and vertical mouse. I have coordination problems and use Scroll+ to help with scrolling. I have sensory problems - including a strobe sensitivity - so I had to disable the flashing cursor in Gargoyle and can’t handle autoscrolling text in Gargoyle. I’m going to need to find some solution to scroll through the text in Gargoyle.

That said, a clear help guide, which isn’t as buggy as the in-Gargoyle guide, would help.

I don’t know how many commands are either game-specific or interpreter-specific.

A guide normally isn’t needed, your problems sound rather unique.

What game are you trying to play?

Incidentally, I have scrollwidth set to 12, but no scrollbar.

P.S. I moved the .ini file out of my Applications folder, and increased the width to 24. That should solve the problem.

You forgot to say which game you’re playing!

Gargoyle doesn’t actually have an in-Gargoyle help screen; what you’re describing sounds like the help screen of the game itself. You should be able to navigate that using the arrow keys, but apparently something with your setup is interfering with that (could be Scroll+, could be the OS - I know the 2011 version of Gargoyle has input problems on MacOS Sierra, which is why Zarf released an updated version).

But I agree, Gargoyle could have a lot more user-friendly documentation.

In answer to the second question: for the most part, all commands are handled by the game itself; the game will occasionally call upon Gargoyle to do something for it (like save the game), but Gargoyle itself doesn’t inject any special commands of its own into the game. The special commands provided by most games are: save, restore, restart, quit, undo, and often version, transcript, brief, superbrief, and verbose. A game might also have a help, about, or hints command specific to that game.

I hope you can get everything working the way you need it! Are you still having any problems?