-------------------------------------------------------- Hors Categorie -------------------------------------------------------- version 1.01 release date 11/24/07 authors Chris Calabro - programming David Benin - story design copyright The authors own the game, its code, and characters, but not those things already owned by others such as Advil, the Tour de France, the International Herald Tribune. You may distribute the game for free. You may modify the source code, but credit the original authors. You may not modify the source code slightly and claim that the work is your own. Table of contents ----------------- 1 System requirements (what you need to play) 2 Teaser (why you should play) 3 Intro (what is hors?) 4 How to play 5 Game development 6 Fun things to try 7 Version history 8 Todo 1 System requirements (what you need to play) --------------------------------------------- You can play the game on almost any system, including Windows Mac OS X Linux PalmOS Game Boy Advanced Dreamcast Emacs and even your cell phone. (iPhone anyway) All you need is to open the story file hors.z5 from within a z-machine interpreter, which emulates Infocom's virtual machine. z-machine interpreters: frotz - Standard, no frills. Works on many platforms. zip infinity and nitfol - Both are for Mac. Nitfol seems to work a little better. WinFrotz - A Windows port of frotz. There are many others, just google around. 2 Teaser (why you should play) ------------------------------ You are a champion cyclist on the Tour de France. Everyone knows that it takes superhuman strength to circumnavigate a nation, so why do they cry over a little artificial enhancement? Is it a test of inate human ability or the culmination of decades of bio-engineering? Where do you stand? 3 Intro (what is hors?) ----------------------- Hors Catégorie is an interactive fiction, taking place entirely in a single hotel room, with several subrooms. Unlike many adventure-like interactive fictions, location, possessions, and strength are not the main obstacles of this game, but rather player knowledge and moral choices. The point is to explore the inner conflict of the protagonist and shape his character. The title of the game comes from the 'out of category' classification of difficult climbs in the Tour de France, where the game is set. The protagonist is a rider in the Tour, just waking, getting ready to take on the day's current stage. 4 How to play ------------- Like most interactive fiction, the game is played in rounds, each consisting of typing an English-language command at a prompt and getting a response, telling you how the state of the world has changed. Some commands are rejected by the parser, usually telling you that your command was not understood; or that it was, but not allowed by the rules of the game. Only commands that the parser allows cause game time to pass. The parser only understands simple commands. You must use your imagination to figure out what is allowed and isn't, but to get you started, type 'help' at the game prompt. The game ends when the protagonist's charater is sufficiently determined, which may involve death or a great ride, for example. 5 Game development ------------------ Hors is the result of a collaboration between Chris Calabro (CSE dept) and David Benin (Communications dept) at UCSD, and was developed between the Spring and Fall of 2007. The game mechanics were largely inspired by Andrew Plotkin's Shade. 6 Fun things to try ------------------- get into the full tub with clothes and/or your bike play with the clock, tv inject an empty syringe break the window drink, then use the toilet from the tub wear multiple kinds of clothes at once get undressed think about things, or just think before/after shaving check mirror after shaving check inventory when carrying the bag make coffee and pour it back and forth between cup and coffee maker smell things look at everything, including the floor lock youself in the closet 7 Version history ----------------- 1.01 11/25/07 fixed minor bugs verb was ignored when executing commands on ideas, eg 'smash diego' responded the same as 'think about diego' 1.0 11/24/07 beta release 8 Todo ------ - minor bug: 'you don't see a toothbrus', caused by z-machine's word length restrictions - probably some responses fail to have a newline - clean up code by creating a protocol stack. eg - object not necessarily known - object known but not necessarily visible - object visible but not necessarily reachable - object reachable, but indirect object not necessarily known ... - object allows action