The Beast of Torrack Moor - 30th Anniversary Edition

The Beast of Torrack Moor - 30th Anniversary Edition

MOBILE VERSION IMPORTANT INFORMATION: This initial release is subject to an ITCHIO platform bug, which forces the game into landscape mode. There is nothing I can do but wait for the bug to be investigated (and hopefully fixed) at present, so for now, ignore the sections of this document that deal with the mobile version. 

The Beast is a text-adventure game that casts you in the role of an intrepid reporter, sent to investigate sightings of a wild beast on Torrack Moor.

Contrary to the title, The Beast does not belong to the horror genre but rather, is a rather quaint mystery set in the English countryside. 

The joy of this type of game is immersing yourself in the environments, solving puzzles, unlocking blocks of story and, if playing on keyboard, enjoying the tactile feedback of a good keyboard.

The original release was written by Linda Doughty for the ZX Spectrum microcomputer in 1988 (more information on the original can be found further down the page).

This updated version, seeks to pay tribute to the original, whilst adding in features that would be impossible via emulation, and making it all super easy to consume via the web as a platform.

This project would not have been possible without Linda's blessing, so a huge thank you to Linda, for her consent, her support and for creating this game.

Instructions

The Beast is an old-school text adventure and involves typing (or speaking) commands to interact with the game.

Most common commands have shortcuts, but some commands require full sentences to be typed in. 

The commands shown below are representative of the type of commands the game will accept, but the game requires that you try things out including verbs not listed here.

Movement

• NORTH, SOUTH, EAST, WEST, UP, DOWN, ENTER, EXIT (or first letters of word).

Object Management

• INVENTORY ... show list of things you are holding.

• GET APPLE
• DROP ORANGE
• WEAR HAT
• REMOVE HAT

Conversation

• ASK BRUCE ABOUT CARDS
• TELL SID ABOUT BARBARA

Interactions

• GIVE MUG TO PETER

Exploration

• EXAMINE DESK

Game Management

• SAVE
• LOAD

Other Helpful Commands

• HELP
• SETTINGS
• SOUND ON or SOUND OFF
• THEME 1, THEME 2, THEME 3 .... THEME 9
• GRAPHICS ON or GRAPHICS OFF
• TIMES ... shows the known timetable so far.
• EXITS .. show the exits in the current location.
• WHERE IS X? (where ? is the name of a met character)
• 125% (zoom to 125%)

(all these commands are detailed in the HELP screen)

Features

The 30th Anniversary has the following features.

• FREE - Absolutely no cost.
• CHOICE OF STYLES - Multiple skinning options, including several "retro" skins, and the ability to use modern truetype fonts.
• NEW ARTWORK - Addition of new retro-style artwork from the wonderful Andy Green. Andy spent a great deal of effort crafting dozens of incidental graphics, a brand new loading screen, and a brand new end-game graphic. (NOTE: Where it made sense, some of Linda's original in-game graphics remain) .
• TIMETABLE COMMAND - The 30th anniversary ships with a command (TIMES) that will summarize all schedules learned in the world of the Beast so far.
• WHERE COMMAND - Keep track of (certain) NPCs using this handy command.
• NEW FONTS - Fantastic fonts by Paul Van Der Laan, Eeve Somepx, and Pentacom, as well as support for system fonts.
• ADAPTIVE UI - The game adapts to screen size, and will re-format content depending on the device type / screen resolution / screen orientation.
• SUBTLE REFINEMENTS - Bugfixes, and enhanced usability features (such as click to navigate in some skins).
• BLIP HEAVEN - If you love blips, you got blips. If you hate them, switch them off.
• ADAPTIVE PARSER SPEED - The parser is configured to run at a different speed depending on the theme. Players can override the parser speed.
• MODERN DEVICE SUPPORT - Modern device support via HTML5 technologies.
• NOT EMULATION - The game has been ported to a new engine that is free of the limitations of emulation (such as being able to have an adaptive layout depending on device type).
• POWER EFFICIENT - The game will not consume any meaningful amount of power when idle, unlike emulation.
• TOUCH UI - The first release ships with a basic touch event handler. Touch a noun to append it to the command line. Touch a direction word to move in that direction. Long press a noun, to submit an examine command.
• AUTO-SAVE - A revisit to the game page will resume where you left off.
• AUTO-COMPLETE - Press Tab to autocomplete known verbs / nouns.

Themes

The game has a number of themes, which can be selected at the beginning of the game, and can also be changed in-game by typing SETTINGS. The themes are essentially changes to the way the screen is formatted, font sizes, text colour, highlight colour, header bar colour choices, default parser delays, and a few more items.

The "monospace" theme is roughly equivalent to the DOS prompt.  You can try out all the themes at the beginning by clicking on them, or by typing the number next to the name of the theme.

Hyperlinks

This version of the game features a very simple form of hyperlinks. Nouns displayed as text can be clicked (via mouse or touch) to add the noun to the current command line. Right clicking (or long touching) a noun will submit an EXAMINE <> command.

Right clicking (or long touching) a non noun will bring up a menu containing a few useful commands, such as "FULLSCREEN", "LOOK", and "INVENTORY".

The game also allows the player to click on presented options, when the game is asking a question, and presenting a variety of choices. There are 4 ways to interact with these dialogs.

1. Type a few letters that exist in the answer (but not in the other answers), then press enter.
2. Type the prefix number, then press enter
3. Click the desired option with a mouse.
4. Touch the desired option with your finger (if on a touch screen device).

A point release of the game will present more advanced hyperlink features, but this version is perfectly playable, even on mobile, using the existing hyperlink functionality + hardware / software keyboard.

Autosave

The Beast will automatically save the state, so if you close the browser tab, the current progress will be saved, and reloading the game will resume precisely at the same spot. Manual save slots are supported via the LOAD and SAVE commands.

Screenshots




Video - Leaving The Office (Spoilers)

The video shown here demonstrates how to complete the early portion of the game.

More Tips can be found on the CASA website.

Acknowledgements

• Many (many) thanks to Linda, for approving of the project, and for her input and blessing in making some of the edits made to this release.
• Many thanks to Andy Green  for donating his considerable talents to this project.  Andy is an exceptional pixel artist, with an natural ability to squeeze the best out of the ZX Spectrum screen mode.  If you like his work here, do check out his twitter page (@AndyMGreen68) and his Facebook Group,
• Thanks to (the legend that is) John Wilson (@RochBalrog) for taking to the time to play-test the adventure, and unearth some nasty bugs early-on.
• Thanks to Eeve Somepx (@somepx), for making Compass Pro and Equipment Pro fonts, and making them free to use for any purpose. A very talented typographer.
• Thanks to Paul Van Der Laan for creating the Clairsys font, which is a wonderfully evocative font choice.
• The 30th Anniversary Edition is running on the Adventuron engine. Be sure to follow Adventuron ( @adventur_on ) for community announcements and information on forthcoming games. 
• Finally, thanks to (@ItchIo) for providing a really great platform for self-publishing. It really takes the pain out of distributing a free projects like this.

The Beast, 1988

The original version of The Beast (of Torrack Moor) was written by  Linda Doughty in 1988 for the Sinclair ZX Spectrum 128K home computer.

The Beast  was created using the excellent PAW adventure game creation system, by Gilsoft - a tool which if taken together with its predecessor, THE QUILL, led to the production of over a ONE THOUSANDtext adventures in  approximately a 15 year period.

The standard ZX Spectrum 128K was not a powerhouse of a home computer, lacking the disk drive that was (typically) a pre-requisite of the more complex Infocom text adventures, and games with this level on interactivity were very rare indeed in the late 80s UK-based home-grown  segment of the adventure game market.

Linda's mastery of PAW, learned over the course of making her prior games,  allowed her to create the illusion of a dynamic fictional village, with a cast of NPCs to inhabit her world, each with their own personality and routines.

The Beast, offered an exceptional narrative experience and in my opinion, THE BEAST represents one of the high-points of the UK-based home-grown narrative-focused text adventures of the 1980s.

The game is hugely ambitious, and when performing this port, I was in awe at how well considered the game was.

As an example of the attention to detail put into the beast, there exists a routine for chronicling the movement of the mobile library prior to arriving on the village green, just on the off-chance that the player character was in one of the those transitional locations.

Linda mapped out not just every important event in the game, where characters move between locations, but she also mapped out all the transitional locations, and custom messages to display during those transitions.

You may only see one or two of those transitional moments in the game, but when you see them, it fools you into thinking that the world is very much alive.

The review in Your Sinclair only gained a 6 / 10 score despite a glowing review in the review text. I can only assume it was a misprint. 

The game was well received by Crash magazine earning a "Crash Smash" (a score of 91%). 

Thanks to Gareth Pitchford for providing these scan,  and well done Linda, on your Crash Smash!Important Release Notes - Mobile Platforms

Mobile

The 20th Anniversary Edition was designed to provide a good experience across a range of form factors, HOWEVER:

Itch.io Wrapper Bug (Forced Landscape Mode)

Itch.IO appears to have a bug that forces HTML5 games into landscape orientation. This bug is being looked at by the Itch support team and should hopefully be resolved soon.

If playing on Android:

• Make sure you are running Chrome 71 or above, which incorporates a required fullscreen mode bugfix. 

If playing on iPhone:

The Beast utilizes an engine (Adventuron) that uses a HTML Input widget in the browser, but iOS has a "feature" whereby an additional bar above the soft keyboard is shown if an input widget is on the page.

The casual observer may perceive this as a browser bug. but officially it's a "feature"/

This may be acceptable on "tall" iPhones, such as iPhone X, but on an iPhone SE, it makes the game borderline unplayable unfortunately.  

A solution may be forthcoming, and if anyone has an iPhone, please send in screenshots of any rendering issues you may encounter.

Bug Reports

If you have any bug reports, please let me know either through the @adventur_on Twitter page.

Future Enhancements

This game will receive a number of enhancements as the game engine accrues new features. 

Social Media Links

• @adventur_on -> Adventuron's Twitter Page
• @ainslec -> Chris Ainsley's Twitter Page
• Adventuron's Facebook Group

Original Version Screenshots

Here are some screenshots from the original 1988 version of the beast, just out of interest.

Original ZX Version Screen (1) - NOTE: This screen not in 30th Anniversary Edition

Original ZX Spectrum Version (2)

Original ZX Version (3) Recommended Reading

If you don't know much about the UK-based text-adventure / IF scene of the 1980s/90s, I recommend reading:

• Classic Adventurer, by Mark Hardisty, a superb limited run set of magazines with interviews from various figures from the history (and renaissance) of (primarily) the UK text adventure game community.  Mark is a superb writer, an even better interviewer, and these magazines are beautiful and enthralling in equal measure. Four issues have been released, and there is rumour of a fifth. Do also check out Mark's page of links related to 8-bit text adventures.
• Twilight Inventory, by Gareth Pitchford. Gareth is an exceptionally talented, generous, and prolific individual. His book focuses on the home-made adventure game scene games made in the late 80s through to the late 90s. In the Twilight years, hence the book title. His book is available (for a limited time) as a free PDF document, or you can order a physical copy from the link above.  
• THE SPECTRUM OF ADVENTURE, by Thomas A. Christie. Thomas' book is a huge tome that features 100 reviews of classic games on ZX Spectrum, but unlike Gareth's, tends to focus on adventures before and during the twilight period.
• For more information on PAW, see this superb article by Stefan Vogt, on PAW, and its place in the history of the UK Text Adventure scene.

Also....

• Although not 100% dedicated to adventures, do also check out Shaun McClure's books on ZX Spectrum Game reviews, which includes quite a lot of text adventure reviews, and Stuart Williams' adventure game segments in Crash Issues 99, and 100, and the ZZap 2018 annual. Shaun will be releasing a book on Adventure games in 2019 I'm informed.

The 2007 Inform Port

A port of the Beast was made to the Inform system (also with permission) made back in 2007, by Steve Haddon. Find out more about that version here. 

Where Are The Ambient Sound Effects?

This edition of the Beast  was originally intended to ship with sound effects, and ambient sound, and a YouTube video was posted a few months ago with the sound wired up in the early part of the game.

Unfortunately, it was not possible to complete the work on the sound version, so the initial version shipped will ship without sound effects or ambient sound.

It is possible however for this to be resolved in a later update as the engine fully supports music, incidental sound effects, and ambient sound.

Legal Information

This version of the beast should not be downloaded, modified, or redistributed anywhere else.

The original version of the Beast's copyright belongs to Linda Doughty, and Linda has kindly granted permission to use "The Beast" intellectual property for the purposes of creating and distributing this 30th anniversary edition.

Version History Version 1.0.0 - Initial Release, 19th December, 2018.

The initial version of the game.

Version 1.0.1 - Minor Update, 20th December, 2018.

Some vocabulary updates, and typo fixes.