2017-08-13 21:34:49

I saw the description for this game and when I tried to get it the site was down. I want to try and play some of the games by this developer but the site is down. So I'm wondering if anyone has copys.

Bitcoin Address:
1MeNca7h6m8du4TV3psN4m4X666p6Y36u5m

2017-08-14 20:21:55

Moderation!

Firstly this is about games so belongs in general game discussion not the offtopic room, secondly since the games were commercial we can't have requests for them on this site, or hand around free copies.

This is a serious shame when the developer has gone bust like Malinche, but it is what it is.

In fairness though Malinche's games were generally a big fuss about nothing, I played the demos at the time (though not endgame since it did not have a demo), and really while they were fairly good interactive fiction games in the standard zcode object manipulation type, there are plenty of other good if games kicking around, ones which did not cost 40 dollars each.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2017-08-14 22:38:35

I'm willing to buy a copy off of anyone. I wish they would just release them as abandon ware.

Bitcoin Address:
1MeNca7h6m8du4TV3psN4m4X666p6Y36u5m

2017-08-14 22:39:40

And onstely dark why do you care so much about files being hosted on your forum. I see nothing wrong with it considering this is a internashinal forum.

Bitcoin Address:
1MeNca7h6m8du4TV3psN4m4X666p6Y36u5m

2017-08-15 02:23:28 (edited by Orko 2017-08-15 02:34:29)

While we all wish that companies that have closed their doors would release their software as abandonware, sometimes they aren't the only stake holders in the software's licensing, and the other stake holders may be unwilling to abandon their work or intellectual property even if they are abandoning continued selling of the software.

I too would be willing to buy any copies of their games I could find, but apparently no one that owns any of their games is willing to part with them. Considering how hard it would be to reacquire the games, I can fully understand that.

I have a computer chess game that I can't play because it wasn't designed for blind players, nor could it be adapted for blind use because of the way it works. But I refuse to sell it because it is so very rare. I spent ten years looking for it and only found two people selling one of them. I got lucky and stumbled across the one I got at a price I could hardly believe at the time. Since then I have never seen another one for sale anywhere.

2017-08-15 14:42:11

I agree it's a shame, but I think it'd be too big of a risk to take if we started hosting these games randomly. I wouldn't put them in mainstream games, but they also aren't audio games and are the property of, I believe, an actual, registered company, not like our audiogame companies. So I think it's a bigger risk.

2017-08-15 16:22:15

Actually, the games were all made by one Howard Sherman, but Aaron is right, they might very well be a fully registered company. He has threatened to sue before, and for a pretty ridiculous reason at that, by suing Spag for trying to publish an unfavorable review about his games. Which is no coincidence, since reviews submitted for his games were arrogantly edited, carefully quoted, sometimes he even stole quotes from infocom game reviews and worked them in like they were for his games. Here's a prime example of  a review quote that was edited, like so:
"mystery story lovers should find the quest for the murderer addictive enough to overcome its weaknesses. Nevertheless, I wouldn’t recommend it for the more wide-ranging hard-core interactive fiction player." was reduced by Howard to this new one, "...Mystery story lovers should find the quest for the murderer addictive." You see how it is. I think at this point Malinche could be considered to be as close to the equivalent of Bavisoft as it gets in the Interactive Fiction world, except a little more transparent. Indeed, in a hypothetical scenario where a public site openly allowed the distribution of games by an infamous developer, or, if even, the host them on the Audiogames archive, if I had to pick between Bavisoft and Malinche, I'd pick Bavisoft any day. Reason: That carries the least amount of legal risk. Please note though that obviously the Audiogames Archive doesn't host Interaction Fiction titles in an archive and we won't be doing that, but with that out of the way, I've never seen Bavisoft openly sue before. Malinche has, and he never officially declared his games abandonware. Then again, neither did Bavisoft, and it looks like they too actually registered their games as trademarks as well. Whether that means they have a ton of legal defense would be up for question. Look, they're both risky in one way or another.

2017-08-15 17:59:21

In the case of Malinch, also remember your not talking about a company who have vanished from the net like bavisoft.
A quick google found that Howard Sherman is still on twitter and I believe still selling standard fiction titles.
I don't imagine it'd be hard to track him down and ask the man personally, after all he did originally say back in 2014 that he'd continue selling his old if games, he just wasn't supporting them or writing anymore, so I'd suggest if your really! interested in the games (interested enough to pay 40 usd for them which is what Malinch was charging), then feel free to track down Howard Sherman and ask him yourself.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2017-08-15 19:00:40

Hey Dark! Thanks for that info, I don't do social media of any type, but hopefully I can find an alternate way of contacting him.

I do love interactive fiction, and am definitely interested in some of their games.

2017-08-15 22:20:19

Uh, Bavisoft? A key generator? Firstly, Bavisoft games didn't need keys. Second, I never saw a key generator of Bavisoft games. Are you referring to Bsc instead?

2017-08-15 22:50:49

Oops! Yeah, I got Bavisoft and BSC mixed up. My apologies. I'll just remove that message since it is meaningless.

2017-08-16 12:22:32

Good luck tracking down Howard Sherman.

I must confess I wasn't impressed with malinche's games myself. They were good as far as if goes, but very much the standard zcode parser and usual "get box with key" type puzzles.
I was quite appauled in one of them, the pentori prequel that an npc mage said to me "we have need of your skills", and it took the very garbled "ask mage about need" to continue the conversation.

There wasn't any flashy custom programming or major differences  the sort of thing you'd see in an old infocom game really, no combat mechanics, no unique systems of conversation, no alterations in parsing beyond the standard zcode.

indeed just as with most if I've played  the demo of Pentori, his commercial fantasy game I got stuck in the second room with no way to progress.

This was why I confined myself to playing  the demos, constructing entries in the database and then moving on.

It also didn't help that malinch's own site was confusing as hell and so aggressively self promotional it was difficult to actually get any concrete information or even find the game downloads, and that Howard Sherman himself brushed off criticisms, sued people who spoke negatively about his games, and then bad mouthed people on his blog. Indeed he used to complain about blind gamers needing tech support, but then made his games necessarily confusing to use, by having self installers of each bundled with a stand alone version of either standard winfrotz or the short lived winfrotz tts (short lived because tts support was added to standard winfrotz not long after).
Indeed I sort of resent the fact that the wiki article said "howard Sherman sells to blind gamers" since his attitude wasn't exactly stellar and he didn't really do much for adaptation himself, just took what already existed and repackaged it in a rather confusing way.

Then of course his prices were pretty steep even back in those days, and now, 40 usd for an interactive fiction title just seems nuts.
He supposedly justified the pricing with the basis that he did more research  everyone else who wrote if, but in terms of the quality of his games the proof wasn't in the pudding, ---- the writing was good but not that! good.

So, feel free to have a go at contacting him and feel free to report back on what you find, but to be honest I'd personally recommend you just head over to the if archive and check through all the usual brands of if still being produced.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2017-08-16 14:20:50

OK, this guy sounds like he's got a huge ego. Oh looky here, I'm going to make this puzzle really obscure. No thanks. I'm gonna stick to Choice of Games. Oh, and what's worse is some people in the if community think that gamebooks aren't like playing IF. I disagree, I'd consider Choice of Games much more interactive these days. Most IF games now seem to be programmed in twine anyway, and it's more intuitive than the parser-based if. I don't know what the latest if comp is going ot be like.

2017-08-16 15:11:54

Really, they are that bad? I'll still look him up and see if I can get his games, but will more than likely not be willing to pay $40 a piece for them, especially if I can't first try them.

2017-08-16 15:41:44

Yep, his games were 40 usd each, he then complained that they didn't sell and had a go at just about everyone including blind gamers.
Whether he is still trying to sell them I'm not sure, quick googling didn't find anything but archived versions of his old site, complete with all the self congratulation.

In fairness to him I don't think Howard Sherman's puzzles were any obscurer than  standard if of that type, but that is pretty much why I stopped playing zcode and other usual parser based if in the first place, particularly  I got so sick of typing something like "put glass on table" and being told "I don't know how to put" or something else silly.

for me the  natural language parser that if see as such an advantage is precisely the opposite, one reason I agree with aaron here, gamebooks I've always much preferd over the parser style if.

@Aaron, unfortunately I've noticed the if community tend to not like anything that isn't the standard zork style gameplay, they don't like rpgs or even menus.
Still that's why the likes  the cog titles definitely have it right.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2017-08-16 16:26:11

Oops! Don't go dissing Zork (wink), of all the interactive fiction I've played, Zork is my absolute favorite.

Zork was originally written on a minicomputer, a PDP 11 I believe. When Infocomm ported it over to micros it was so big they had to split it up into the now familiar Zork Trilogy. It was during the porting of Zork that they developed their interactive fiction engine that they later used for all of their games, of which I've played most.

2017-08-16 17:22:28

I think my favourite if was probably hitchhikers, but even for that, I needed a walkthrough or to use the hints system in other if games to get anywhere in them, unfortunately. ALthough stuff like kerkruip is fine.

2017-08-16 18:01:14

@Orco, I like the writing in the original zork, though again the puzzles seemed just illogical to me and when I looked at a walkthrough I went sort of "oh hmmmm" not really much else.
maybe it is just that I always want to explore and progress with the story and being stuck because  am not typing in the right command doesn't appeal.

The issue however isn't with zork itself, its basically the if community who just want every text game to be like zork, and if it isn't they complain.

@Aaron, kerkerkruip is again a game the if community aren't fans of with it being an rpg (I wish we'd see more elements).

again in h2g2 I loved the writing, but needed a walkthrough.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2017-08-16 19:36:50

I prefer interactive fiction in the style of Zork where you type in your commands, and pass on the multiple choice variety which I guess is called game book style.

My first, and only,  experience with game books were the Inspecter Cindy series and I hated them. There appeared to be no way to preview the choices before you selected one, and there was little, if any, documentation on how to use the programs, and what documentation there was refered to keys by what they did without ever defining what key on the keyboard it was.

Needing to hit the move key in order to change locations made sense, but which key was the move key, it sure wasn't the em key, all that key did was ask a question to whomever I was talking to, and who the heck was I supposedly talking to anyway. Apparently you are always talking to someone, but until you tell the game who you want to talk to, you have no idea who the game thinks you are talking to.

It didn't take me long to uninstall the game as poorly written trash and to write off 7-128 software as a vendor to avoid.

I'll take the Infocomm approach over that nonsense any day. At least with the Infocomm adventures you knew what the allowed set of commands were and all the puzzles are solvable without walkthroughs or hintbooks, though some of the in game clues can be a bit obscure. And the writing is extremely good.

2017-08-16 22:32:37

Hmmm, I dont' recall inspector cindy being that bad, I thought the move button was just a menu choice, indeed most of the game was menu choices.

Most gamebooks use hyperlinks for their choices, and often are html pages so there is no problem with commands, one reason I tend to enjoy gamebooks far more than the  parser based games as I said, since I hate all of those "I don't know how to put" type messages, or occasions when I'm trying to do the write thing but in the wrong way, or heck games where the solution is so bloody obscure that I really don't care about using a hint file and not getting it.

That is another advantage of hyperlinked gamebooks with choices, you can always have an idea of where you have gone and what you've done and what you can try different next time.

I can't even say this  to do with what I grew up with, since I tried parser style if, including the original zork games back in 2004 and didn't play my first html gamebook until a couple of years later, indeed the podcast I made about the ffproject in 2006 is still around.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2017-08-16 23:33:19

Nope, there are no menus in the Inspector Cindy games, nor are they HTML or PDF game books, they are written in Java and use the Java Runtime Environment. As far as I could tell, the only thing you could do in the games was to ask various suspects or witnesses questions and use their answers to solve the mystery. The only action in them was you moving from one location to another to question a different suspect or witness.

The first interactive fiction game I ever played was the Colossal Caves adventure, though back then, the term interactive fiction hadn't been coined yet. That wouldn't happen until Infocomm came along and ported Zork from the PDP 11 to micros of the day.

So you might say I grew up on parser type interactive fiction, game books didn't even exist yet.  That is probably why I prefer them to game books, though the Inspecter Cindy experience didn't help my opinion of game books any.

By the way, for those of you that have an Alexa enabled device, the original Colossal Caves adventure has been ported to an Alexa skill. I am working my way through it and reliving some old memories.

2017-08-17 01:29:55

Lots of heresy on here from the self-indulgent free-thinking "IF is anything" brigade. Infidels, the lot of you. smile

Although I like the CoG games and other gamebooks, truth be told I still think the traditional IF will always be better simply because it more closely approximates free agency. Yeah, sure, it's not perfect, but it's the thought that counts. And really, once you've mastered the standard object-based game mechanics, it becomes a pretty natural flow and can be incredibly immersive, just as the Infocomees imagined it. And, to be sure there are tough puzzles, but that's half the fun--the other half is the story, writing, quality of the art for its own sake, and enjoyment. Depending on the game played, the focus can be less or more on these individual traits. Some are more in the way of puzzlers, like the Infocom games, while others can be beautiful literary constructions, which rely on the narrative voice, or revelations which only have an emotional force at all because they put the player in pride of place in the storyline. I think it's fair to say that a multiple-choice game will tend to progress faster and be more suited to this latter group, but there are still immense traditional IF games which, when they pull it off, can absolutely blow your mind. For Malinche I fear it's more in the way of just being very poorly implemented, so that any story that might exist is completely dwarfed by the lack of progress which Dark alluded to.

Each to their own, I suppose.

Just myself, as usual.

2017-08-17 02:08:54

Considering the negative review of Malinche's games from someone who has been in the audio game world far longer than I, I have lost any interest in their games unless I can get them for free.

2017-08-17 10:22:55

@Sebby, and there was me thinking  wooden steak you had was a flag pole, then again nobody ever enquires too closely what the if traditionalist brigade are burning in their brass lanterns, or where exactly all those twisty little passages go big_smile.

For me, it was actually the quality of writing in many if games that so strongly put me off the genre. I'd have a great story and environment to explore, I'd love wandering around and looking at things, I'd gather information about the story and be fully immersed, and then bam! I'm suddenly stuck with no way to progress, particularly  when I tried what to mee seemed a logical action and get told "I don't know how to put"

A perfect example of this was Shade by Andrew plotkin.
My character is complaining he is thirsty. Okay I find a cup, and go to the sink.

I turn on the tap (or faucet as the game says it being an American game), and am told my character says "Yep the water is still working" and turns the tap off.

"fill cup" "I don't know how to do that"
"put cup in sink"
"that's doesn't contain things"
"use faucet with cup" (that isn't something you can use.

"drink from faucet" "you stopped drinking out of the faucet when you were a baby"

So, we have a character who is thirsty, a cup and a readily potable source of water, and yet my character refuses to dam well drink the stuff! What the hell?

This sort of thing to me feels far more like head plus stone wall plus repetitive action, and therefore far more frustrating than fun, especially! in games who's atmosphere and items I really enjoyed and that I wanted to see more of, but was entirely stuck due to some  circumstance.

On those occasions I longed! for a limited use x with y system or some choices, since that way inevitably I'd get the solution.

for me I'm afraid the hole business of a "natural language parser" has always felt like playing a game without being told the controls, and none of the if purists repeated slogans about "the natural feeling of telling a story" or "participating in the story telling business has convinced me otherwise hence why I so much prefer gamebooks and the like.

then again, I probably will download code 7 at some point so I'm likely to be hoisted on my own petard sooner or later big_smile.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2017-08-17 11:27:53

The simplest command you mentioned here, fill glass, actually works. The character even goes to the sink automatically if you aren't there. I also like the Parser games far more than choice games. There is no real challenge in clicking trough hundreds of links. And I wouldn't say the if comunity likes only Parser games. More than half of the competition entries are choice games These days.

We are pleased, that you made it through the final challenge, where we pretended we were going to murder you. We are throwing a party in honor of your tremendous success. Place the device on the ground, then lay on your stomach with your arms at your sides. A party associate will arrive shortly to collect you for your party. Assume the party submission position or you will miss the party.