Cloak of Darkness

From IFWiki

Cloak of Darkness
Game
Main linksDownloadSource code
Published17 September 1999
Credits
AuthorRoger Firth
Gameplay
Interaction style
Parser
Parser
Location
Building
Building
LanguageEnglish
Cruelty scaleCruel
AccessibilityColour: none. Graphics: none. Sound: none.
Technical details
Authoring systemInform 6
LicenseFreeware
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How it begins

Our heroic adventurer finds themselves in the foyer of an elegant opera house.

Notable features

This adventure is a tiny adventure designed to be easy to port to a given Authoring system. It is, if you will, the interactive fiction equivalent of "Hello, world!".

Note about versions

There are many ports for this game, which is rather the point of it. This list is currently incomplete. In addition to ports of Cloak of Darkness for most of the major authoring systems, there are some curiosities available for obscure or obsolete authoring systems or programming languages not designed to run interactive fiction.

The "Cloak of Darkness" specification

There are just three rooms and three objects.

  • The Foyer of the Opera House is where the game begins. This empty room has doors to the south and west, also an unusable exit to the north. There is nobody else around.
  • The Bar lies south of the Foyer, and is initially unlit. Trying to do anything other than return northwards results in a warning message about disturbing things in the dark.
  • On the wall of the Cloakroom, to the west of the Foyer, is fixed a small brass hook.
  • Taking an inventory of possessions reveals that the player is wearing a black velvet cloak which, upon examination, is found to be light-absorbent. The player can drop the cloak on the floor of the Cloakroom or, better, put it on the hook.
  • Returning to the Bar without the cloak reveals that the room is now lit. A message is scratched in the sawdust on the floor.
  • The message reads either "You have won" or "You have lost", depending on how much it was disturbed by the player while the room was dark.
  • The act of reading the message ends the game.
  • And that's all there is to it...

Ports to add

The following ports are listed on CASA and need their own wiki page:

  • A-code, written by Mike Arnautov in ????
  • Adventuron, written by Chris Ainsley in 2018
  • AGI, written by ??? in ????
  • AGT, written by Al Golden in 1999
  • AIFT, written by Dennis Merritt in 2004
  • Single wiki page should be two:
    • Alan 2.8, written by Stephen Griffiths in 1999
    • Alan 3.0, ported from the 2.8 version by Thomas Nilsson in 2008
  • CAT, written by Philip Richmond in 2000
  • Forth, written by Charles Childers
  • GAC, written by Richard Bos for ZX Spectrum
  • IAGE, written by Robin Rawson-Tetley in 2001
  • JACL, written by Stuart Allen in ????
  • LADS, written by Bob Newell in 2003
  • PAW, written by Richard Bos for ZX Spectrum
  • PAW, written by Gareth Pitchford in 2020
  • PAWS* 1.0, written by Neil Cerutti in 1999
  • PAWS* 1.1, ported from the 1.0 version by Roger Plowman in 2002
  • Quest 4, written by Alex Warren in 2003
  • Quill, written by Richard Bos for ZX Spectrum
  • Sinclair BASIC by Richard Bos, using magazine/book frameworks
  • Storytllr64, written by Marco Giorgini in 2022
  • SUDS, written by Roger Firth in 1999
  • TAB, written by Philip Richmond.
  • T/SAL, written by Richard Bos in 2014

* This PAWS is not Gilsoft's PAWS but Roger Plowman's Python Adventure Writing System; abbreviated here as PythonAWS.

Versions

Reference version

Date: 17 September 1999

  • Source code:
    • Cloak of Darkness - a simple demonstration of Interactive Fiction
    • This version for Inform written by Roger Firth on 17Sep99
    • This is from the source code page on the Mipmip/Roger Firth website.
  • Game:
    • A basic IF demonstration
    • Release 1 / Serial number 991212 / Inform v6.21 Library 6/10
    • This is from the game downloadable from the Mipmip/Roger Firth website.

Related games

Links

General info

Note: To refer to this game from another page, you can type {{game citation|Cloak of Darkness}}. This will display as Cloak of Darkness (Roger Firth; 1999; Inform 6).

Date: 17 September 1999

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