Gnu in the Zoo — 9 of 30

Section 7 - Out of this world

After printing the banner text:

say "Type HELP for help, and ABOUT for a little background."

Rule for amusing a victorious player: say "I hope you enjoyed that.[paragraph break]You worked out, I expect, that this game is a thinly-veiled tutorial on software licence compatibility. It should be fairly obvious that the character you play represents the GNU General Public Licence; that it’s version 3, maybe less so. But did you work out which licences the other twelve residents of the zoo represent? (For hints, see http://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html.)[paragraph break]You might also want to look out for the four possible ways to lose the game. But probably not."

Helping is an action out of world applying to nothing. Understand "help" as helping. Report helping:

say "If you are unfamiliar with playing these sorts of games, there’s a great cheat-sheet at http://pr-if.org/doc/play-if-card/. But the kinds of commands you need to know in order to play this game are:[line break]* GO NORTH or NORTH or N (etc.)[roman type][line break]* IN, OUT[line break]* EXAMINE (thing) or X (thing), TOUCH (thing)[line break]* TAKE (thing), DROP (thing), THROW (thing) AT (target)[line break]* UNLOCK (door) WITH (key)[line break]* INVENTORY or I − (tells you what you are holding)[line break]* SAVE, RESTORE − (in case you don’t manage it in one sitting)[line break]* UNDO[line break]* PETER, FOLLOW ME − (that is, to ask someone to do something, type their name, then a comma, then the instruction).[paragraph break]As a general tactic, you will find that examining things helps in many cases. Do you need more advice on what to do?[line break][command prompt]";

if the player consents:

say "The primary objective here is to escape the zoo. The secondary objective is to help the others to escape, but don’t get too hung up on that, because there’s only so much you can do for them.[paragraph break]The thing is, you can’t escape on your own: you need help. And the only animals that speak your language are other gnus (and even then, it’s late at night, everyone’s sleepy, so you’ll have to keep it very simple). And, sorry to say, there just aren’t enough gnus in the zoo. Once you’ve figured your way around that little problem, it should be (mostly) plain sailing.[paragraph break]If you’re still not sure what you should be doing, here are some pointers.[line break]* Have you asked the gnu next door to do something? (See above for how to do that.)[line break]* Have you found and examined some keys?[line break]* Have you tried stroking or waking up a cat?[line break]* The aviary is the most difficult bit: leave it till last.[paragraph break]Good luck!";

otherwise:

say "That’s the spirit. Good luck!"

Abouting is an action out of world applying to nothing. Understand "about" as abouting. Report abouting: say "The inspiration for this game came from two sources, really.[paragraph break]First was the set of four mini-games written for the TuxRadar podcast: see http://tuxradar.com/content/podcast-season-2-episode-18. You will probably be able to detect elements of at least three of those games in this one.[paragraph break]The other was some work I did in the latter half of 2010 on data licensing. This game is nothing to do with data licensing, but the connection will hopefully become clear.[paragraph break]Special thanks go to Barbara Ball and Chris Ball for testing the game for me."