Thaumistry text adventure Kickstarter is now live

The Kickstarter campaign for my new game has just kicked off. Here is the link:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1575848200/thaumistry-in-charms-way-a-new-comedy-text-adventu

Of all the potential audiences for the game, this group is the one I most hope to please.

–Bob

Really looking forward to this, I was a huge fan of Eric The Unready.

The check is in the mail!

Hi,

Good luck with this project. I put in a small pledge. every little helps.

Absolutely. Thank you very much!

Pledged!

Congratulations, funding goal reached. I am really looking forward too play this actual text adventure game. Eric the Unready is one of my faves.

Goal reached in 10 days, that is awesome. I hope things like this can help give text adventures a boost.

By the way, is this coming out during IFComp? I saw somewhere that its release date was October 6. I don’t think it will make much difference for IFComp, but it could lower sales for Thaumistry’s debut if some people wait till after IFComp to buy it. I’ve seen at least one group of people online saying they were planning on getting it after the competition is over. I don’t know if this is helpful to Bob or anyone else, but it’s something to think about.

Thanks for the heads-up. Unfortunately, the game was already delayed from my initial July release target – I broke my hand this summer and could only type/code at a turtle-like speed for over a month, and I’m still wearing a really awkward finger splint – so I don’t feel I can delay it any further. Hopefully people who are interested will still remember it after IFComp is over! --Bob

I’m sorry about your hand! That makes sense not to delay it any more.

You know, they’re looking for more Ifcomp prizes…it might be fun advertising and make someone’s day if you threw a free copy in as a prize. I know a lot of people are excited about Thaumistry.

This is a great idea! Thanks!

I’ll write off to the prize pool people and see if they will accept 5 copies of Thaumistry.

Still on track for delivery to Kickstarter backers this Friday (!), and to the general public next week.

Here’s hoping there are no last-minute glitches!

Cheers,

–Bob

The game is now live on Steam:

store.steampowered.com/app/53298 … Charms_Way

I notice that the release notes for version 1.1 (now available for backers, and also the Steam release) say:

This is better than the usual TADS/Inform situation (where save files are absolutely not usable between game file versions) so I took a look. The T3 files in the apps (Contents/Resources/vmimage.bin) are identical. However, the 1.1 app contains a T3 source file (patch.t) which appears to dynamically replace some global variables and object methods. I assume this is compiled and executed every time the interpreter starts up.

Does that sound right? It’s an interesting solution to the problem. Although sadly not applicable to I7 games, due to the lower-level VM design.

That sounds about right. TADS 3.1 added “dynamic compilation”, which basically means the compiler is now part of the runtime. patch.t is compiled at runtime and executed on every start and after every restore. There are some limitations (this is not what the feature was intended for) and bugs though, but overall, it works. You end up with almost the same byte code as if you had compiled the new version of the game the traditional way.

If anyone else is thinking of doing this: you will make your life easier by never using anonymous objects in your game. If you do, you can’t refer to them by their name anymore, and thus can’t patch them at runtime. You should also avoid implementing functions. Use methods instead and put them in a common class/object. The reason is that you can replace methods at runtime (and thus fix bugs in them), but you can’t replace functions.

It’s documented in the DynamicFunc section in the system manual.

I got this as prize for IFComp. I’m super excited to try it!

Congrats! I hope you enjoy it! --Bob

I came late to the party. I purchased a commercial version. I am stepping my way through now. Great game. I hope there are more to follow.

fos1

Bob Bates: LEGEND Continues!

Hi all,

I would like to play Thaumistry on my Kindle using a generic TADS interpreter (via gargoyle). This does not seem to be possible, I get this error message:

VM Error: this interpreter version cannot run this program (program requires intrinsic function set bodgers/001, which is not available in this interpreter)

I guess this means that the game needs some proprietary extensions. Does anyone know if there is a workaround to be able to run the game using “vanilla” TADS3?

Cheers
Pete

Hi Pete,

We are working on a “vanilla” TADS3 release (and by we, I mean Nick :slight_smile: ). He should have an answer for you soon.

Cheers,

–Bob