Does anyone know where I can find a solution to ToSK? I can't seem to find anything online, and that zip file that has them is password locked, and probably pdf anyway. blah. Some help would be appritiated.

Hi Dan.

Well the vast majority of if is written in zcode and thus will work with winfrotz no trouble, including games like the legendary infocom ones and the commercial if from malinch. All the malinch games have db entries, and you can find a link on the winfrotz page to a place where the infocom games can be downloaded.

If you want an rpg, Wumpus 2000 is certainly worth a go. Random combat, a randomly generating map and lots of very nicely described monsters, see it's db page for details, (treasure of a slavers kingdom will be getting a page as well).

for more standard, puzzle like if, myself I can only recommend the games I have personally enjoyed, which tend to be those that are more focused on understanding and exploring the environment than solving random riddles.

Dreamhold by andrew plotkin, (also serving as something of an if intro), is a good one to start with. I also enjoyed wearing the claw by Paul Obrian, a rather fun surrealist fantasy, his earth and sky superhero series (the first game is zcode and will work with winfrotz though the second and third are glulx), Pythos Mask by emily short, a great piece of fantasy with a wonderful dialogue system, and djinni chronicles, though that one is a little tough in places and I found I needed to consult the walkthru.

there are likely others as well, though those are personal favourites in Zcode.

I don't kno blindncool. I might have to try the game, but judging by everything I've read I'm really not sure how much the attributes affect gameplay at all, indeed see the above comments in the spag review about the combat "interupting the puzzles"

Many if games have some sort of scoring or random numbers system. Dreamhold for instance has the mask collection as scoring, while even original Zork and the colossal cave had a very random combat sequence, and Djinni chronicles has a couple of stats, sinse every move you take up your djinni's spirit, and if you run out of spirit you die.

however, tough some of these traits are rpg ones, none exist in any of those games in enough of a degree to make me classify them as rpgs. While the genre classifications are of course fluid and not fixed, ---- eg Puppy1 could! count as either a flight sim or an arcade game, it's necessary to decide what a game's main emphasis is and what it most closely resembles.

though in puppy 1 you fly a plane, the game is fast action, sterrio targiting and building up score, not any kind of propper simulation of actual flight in three dimentions, so it's an arcade game.

path to Pelantas has you controlling a small number of characters as they battle, with stats, equippable weapons, battle tactics, very much text description and a large world. however, most emphasis is on the tactical battling placement and use of your resources in the game as you compete with other players, so pelantas is a stratogy game not an rpg.

So, I do wonder from what I've read if beyond Zork is more a standard, puzzle style if game than an rpg.

I'll try the game myself and we'll see, but from everything I've heard I'm still not entirely convinced.

I'm afraid I don't know about the plugin, Trenton is probably your man there, but Yep, that's the problem with the sapi, I'm hoping however it'll be fixed soon. winglulx has a very similar sapi function as well if you wanted to play kerkerkruip, or indeed the other earth and sky games.

I also mentioned winglulx to David kinda as needing the sapi updates like winfrotz, so hopefully that will be fixed soon, which is good sinse Victor who developed kerkerkruip has also written some inform extentions for making rpgs so we might see more in the glulx format at some point.

Kerkerkruip is particularly awesome though and well worth a try.

wjYep? That's correct. Make sure though, you don't place the entire folder in to the apmoduels folder. Just the frotz.py file.

Also, it seems better to work, if you load the game from the open dialog, and restore a saved one from there, and not from Windows explorer.
Hope that helps.

Hmm, that makes me think about BZ. Yes dark, Kerkerkruip is awesome. I just wish there was a way to play it online, since my laptop has just gone kerblonk and I'm stuck with my braillenote. I do hope Humanware adds support for Glulx. The console version of tads does a good job of cutting out multimedia, if only Humanware could get source from Mike for it.
Or hopefully they will add Tads support as magocracy is a tads game.

Thanks for the kind words on ToaSK, folks.

- S. John (Ghalev)