Quest For Glory 2: Fun with Text Parsers


In the olden days, meaning before I was born, this thing you've got one of your hands on (a.k.a. a mouse) was not a particularly often-used item for control in video games. Depending on the game, this wasn't such a bad thing. For example, I defy you to try, say, an old game called Traffic Department 2082 (I don't know the year) with a mouse if such an option existed. But imagine a long-gone genre (if you don't count many of your more popular hentai titles) called the 'point-and-click' genre of games. Now imagine taking the point and the click out of the equation. That's basically what text parsers did. You literally had to type in every little action you wanted your guy to do, short of the arrow keys for moving around. If you spelled one thing wrong, nothing happened (and given some of the Internet sites I've been to, that would be a huge impediment indeed). In the famous Sierra series Quest For Glory (yes, Sierra existed before Half-Life), one of the games- the second- came in a modified version of such a format. You can use the mouse to move around and look at stuff. But everything else was up to you and the text parser, and it was not often clear just what you needed to do. Which led to situations like the ones below...


Not one minute into the journey had passed before I hit a snag. My guy had been diabolically super-glued into his seat!! Or at least that's what I thought for a while. Once I had to get up and send that root beer I'd drank a minute ago right back out, I was hit with an inspiration! Not to be confused with the karate mind concept of ascending to a higher level. Or was that judo? Who cares.
WHO IS THIS EFFENDI MAN YOU SPEAK OF!!?!
DE-nied. I was to become familiar with this message and its offshoots throughout my quest, as it seemed to pop up every time I confused the text parser.
And once that thought of possibly confusing the text parser crossed my mind, it hit me like a brick to the head, or one of Yuka's breasts to my face in many daydreams. I was speaking too eloquently for the parser! I decided to use a similar, but differently worded phrase. It turns out that your guy does this for the rest of the game.
Upon my guy's standing up, I walked out of the room for the first time in seven hours and found myself in a rather bizarre bazaar. Some guy tried to sell me a duck, and I walked through two townspeople. But I figured that my newfound phasing ability involved something in that alley... Answer: A whole lot of dark.
Putting in 'what's in the alley' had no effect either.
And I got no response. Perhaps I was possessed by Miss Deep during my session on the floor and never noticed. I took that as my explanation while feeling a wave of relief that Miss Deep hadn't phased out of me and ripped out a vital organ in the process- and I sure wasn't going into that alley to find out- and I went on my way.
'i' 'g' 'n' 'o' 'r'- Oh wait, he's done talking. Never mind. Upon giving up and leaving to the outside area, and having a minor bout with that condition you get when you go from temperate area to @$#%ing hot area, a guard found it wise to give out some advice. Knowing that I had to go into that desert- it was my destiny- I think- I attempted to ignore the guard's advice, but with the six keystrokes necessary, I'd accidentally zoomed through the conversation. I win either way.
I'd quickly learned I'd made a slight error in ignoring the guard, as it seemed that this desert in question was made up of around 5000 identical-looking locations. Then I remembered, a map would be handy for figuring out where I was... A map of this desert would most likely take up all the space on anyone's hard drive.
I'd quickly learned that I'd forgotten to buy a map, and that it wouldn't have done any good anyway because I hadn't bothered to think about it for a while now, thus rendering useless any map I would have had. That said, I knew what I had to do. Take the man's way out of this mess. A sissy man, but a man nonetheless.
'Yell', maybe?
I don't think it was so much my command went misunderstood than the fact that I'd realized no one was in a two thousand mile radius.
Given that that didn't work, I elected to try a more modern approach to my situation. What does a yellow light mean? It means that the sun is beating down too damn hard and hopping in the shade, if there was any, would be a good idea.
I cannot make this less wordy.
Okay, let's be frank, we all saw this coming.
I was getting desperate. Not many options were available to me, and I would have used my cell phone had it not been for the fact that they weren't invented yet. That said, I decided to try something that'd grab the game's attention. Gandhi I am not.
I tried to be more specific but I couldn't find the credits.
Okay, so no one understood what was going on, but I figured I'd at least gotten the game's attention.
I couldn't believe it when I'd found someone traveling the desert as well. He must have been as happy to see me as I was him as he was sure running fast. I figured I'd break the ice in order to get my plan of going back home going. That a sword in his pants or is he happy to see my guy? And if it's the second one, anyone got a grenade?
This does not bode well for hero-running guy relations.
Crap.
Unfortunately, the guy was not interested in helping me out. In the least. He instead seemed more interested in the stuff I was carrying, and seemed more than happy to use force to achieve that means. I was shocked and appalled by his actions... Unfortunately, I am now forced to use my 'Rockemsockemrobot' style of swordplay.
This game is lacking when it comes to teaching negotiation skills.
Neither the parser nor the guy was particularly interested in my solution, whereupon I was content to simply cut the @$#% out of him with a sword.
Yay! I'm a winner! Whatever works, I suppose.
I was a bit at a loss as to my next action, but I was pretty happy about managing to survive against the crazy bastard. Heat stroke does that to people, I guess. Hey, be glad I stopped short of 'dance on the idiot's corpse'.
This begins to annoy me.
Well, if nothing else, I was doing it outside of the game.
I figured that it would be useful to take the sword the guy dropped. It wasn't like he needed it anymore, and I could pull off an impressive Sir Jonathan Woo with it in my other hand. To think, if I hadn't taken 36 more swings, it would've been a process similar to a knighting.
Define 'bad shape', parser. I could understand this, I mean, the sword hurt like hell the time it hit my shoulder. That must have been tetanus from the rust on the sword! Of course! Silly me! I went on my way, content and suffering from tetanus.
DAAAAAAAAMN!!! Not before doing this, of course.
One more time- DAAAAAAAAAMN!!!
DAAAAAAAAAMN!!!
NOOOOO!!! Another running guy had accosted me! I was in no shape to fight again! I instead opted for the quick and easy way out of this. It took a lot of balls for this to work.
The cashews? Almonds? WHAT DO YOU WANT ME TO SAY?!
Nuts! Either this guy had an abnormally high pain tolerance- good reason to run- or this was one unusually masculine-looking woman- also good reason to run. Hopefully, in the latter case, Jerry Springer would show up and take care of this for me.
Unfortunately, the attempted kick put me into sword range. I prepared for battle, but DAMN did my 'rockemsockemrobot' style take it out of me. I was forced to evacuate. Put it this way, if a guy runs away in the desert and a bloodthristy brigand's the only one to see it, does it make a difference?
While escaping worked, the running guy was hot on my heels. It was time, despite my complete lack of stamina, to haul ass. Run, boy, run!!
No matter how fast I ran, the running guy could catch up. I had only one option left to me... EAT LEAD @$%#^*&!!ER!!!
Blasted pseudo-1500s technology.
And I'd completely forgotten that AK-47s hadn't been invented yet.
Given that I'd ran about 27 miles by now, I was curious as to a certain aspect of my athleticism. Current time: a low number.
We may never know...
Too bad I'd forgotten to bring a sundial.
Perhaps the 'make a trail with water' approach was not a good approach. Apparently, it had turned out that I'd also forgotten to bring water along. If it weren't for that 27-mile run, I might have fared a little better. I had no clue of it, nor did the running guy, nor did Miss Deep while exiting my body and ripping out my right lung by mistake. But as it stood, I was dead without even realizing I was dying- In the desert, no one can hear you dehydrate.



All right, all right, don't be so pushy.