Welcome to HyperQuest #1: The Orb of Power. by Thomas Beach
The tale behind the quest --
Through the years, many people have heard the legend of the Orb of Power. The stories of its wondrous ability to grant wishes have been repeated down through the centuries. A smaller number of the curious have even located a copy of the arcane tome that describes the legend in detail, including cryptic instructions on how to find the cave where the Orb is supposedly hidden. But none have deciphered the riddles and actually found the cave. At least none who lived to tell of it.
In our modern world, such fairy tales are no longer taken seriously. But when you happen upon the ancient text, and read the description of the cave entrance, the puzzle is obvious to you! You'd only seen the cave once, when you stumbled upon it as a child and had been far too frightened to enter or even speak of it, but the description is clear! And you are older and more courageous now (if perhaps not wiser) so you purchase a spelunker's helmet with head lamp, and off you go! ...scroll for more...
Playing the HyperQuest Adventure --
A picture and text description will be displayed for each room you enter. A field in the lower right tells you the name of the room and the viewing direction for the picture shown. Control buttons at the bottom of the screen are used to navigate from room to room. You can also click on doorways or places visible in the pictures to move between some rooms. The button "Back" will move you back to the room you just left (if this is possible). Do not confuse this with the button "Rear", which is used to exit through a door that may be behind you and thus not visible in the picture of the room.
There may be objects or areas of the picture which will display additional information for you when clicked upon. Some of these items can be clicked on directly, but others (such as open doorways) will require that you click on the "Examine" button first. When in doubt, click the "Examine" button first.
Some objects in the picture can be taken by clicking the "Take" button before clicking on the object (the default mode is Examine, not Take). These items will go into your sack and appear on the Inventory card. Choosing "Inventory" will allow you to drop, use, or perhaps further examine the objects. The "Drop" and "Use object" buttons on the main display take you to the inventory card and set the proper action mode. When you drop an object in some rooms, you may be given a choice of where to drop it (on the floor or into a pit, for example).
Note that you must perform certain actions in the proper order to solve some of the puzzles of this adventure. If you find yourself stuck with no way to obtain the Orb, you may have done something out of order or incorrectly. Or you may just not have thought of the answer yet. Think carefully!
You may quit the adventure at any time from the inventory card. Sorry, there are no provisions in this short game for saving your position, so be careful.
NOTE! Take it slow and easy with your mouse clicks in this game. Please respect the watch cursor and wait until it's gone before clicking. Normally there is no problem, but sometimes HyperCard does some strange things if you get ahead of it with the mouse.
When you enter a room for the first time there will be a slight delay due to room initialization. The delay is shorter when you enter the room again later. Just be patient.
A note about the Horta: This critter comes from an episode of Star Trek. Although knowledge of this episode may be helpful, the important features of this creature's behavoir can be deduced from its actions here.
Happy adventuring!
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About the Stack Protection...
This stack is password protected for three reasons:
1) To remove the temptation to "cheat just a little bit" on the quest. This is a minor consideration, since I really don't care if you cheat.
2) To prevent indiscriminant navigation through the stack. This is important as a protection for the player! If you hop indiscriminantly from card to card, you can end up in situations that the program can not correctly handle.
3) To discourage poorly-thought-out or accidental modifications to the adventure.
These last two possibilities are vital for avoiding frustration and confusion for innocent players, so please leave the protection in place on any copies you give out. ...scroll for more...
The protection IS NOT in place to discourage you from studying and making careful modifications to this stack. In fact, I sincerely hope that those of you interested in learning how this puppy works will do so.
With that in mind, the stack password is revealed at the successful completion of the adventure. If you have the know-how to get the password by some other means (and prefer to do that) then go ahead, since that probably means you are skilled enough with HyperCard to be trusted with it.
Thank you.
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Shareware Notice...
HyperQuest 1 -- The Orb of Power Version: 1.03
I wrote this stack in an attempt to develop an adventure game system for use with HyperCard. The cave is fairly small, but I have tried to include a few good puzzles.
Players: Playing this game is free. Although there is no shareware fee for playing, I would appreciate any comments or suggestions regarding the game system used or the quest itself. Feel free to distribute this game to your friends, but please pass it on in its original form. Do not give out modified or unprotected versions -- this may cause confusion or frustration for someone who gets such a copy (see the note on stack protection). Have fun adventuring!
Adventure Authors: This stack is primarily for you. I have tried to include most of the important adventure elements within this stack. A good deal of special code is included as an example of how to handle more difficult global situations.
To make you own HyperQuest adventure:
1) Plan the adventure. Map it. Decide what objects will be used. It pays to plan very carefully.
2) Delete all but one room card. Equip this card with a full complement of the object (icon) buttons that you intend to use, representative handlers (such as move and use handlers), and a set of typical door and object buttons from this stack. The object buttons must be the lowest numbered buttons on the cards. The icon pictures are customized using ResEdit or a similar program. Delete the room picture
(except for a border around the picture display area IN THE CARD LAYER) and text information. Make sure any special handlers that may be used in many room cards are included in this card's script (it's easier to delete them later than to go through and add them to a lot of cards).
3) Duplicate this card as needed for the number of rooms. Customize each room card by adding a picture, text description, and buttons. Modify the handlers to suit this room. Add sound effects if you have 'em!
4) Put as many of the handlers as possible into the Background. This can save you lots of duplicate code.
5) Modify the Inventory (last card), Death message fields (card 4), Victory message (card 3), and Initialization & Intro cards (cards 1 & 2) as needed.
6) Polish it up and beta test as completely as possible.
7) Send me a copy. This is the shareware fee I am asking. If you find this stack is helpful to you in writing an adventure stack, please send me a copy of your completed adventure. Please feel free to use the term
"HyperQuest" if you do not substantially alter the card formats used here. I haven't heard that name used yet, so it's ours.
Have fun writing!
Tom Beach
315 Common Street
Waterville, MN 56096
November 1987
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IMPORTANT! READ CAREFULLY BEFORE COMPACTING THE STACK!!
The game stack will increase in size when the adventure is played.
To remove the free space within the stack:
1) Press Command-SpaceBar to make the menu bar visible.
2) While holding down the Command key, pull down the "File" menu to
select "Compact Stack".
WARNING!
If there is no free space in the stack when you compact it, HyperCard will remove the special object icons used by the game from the stack.
So: DO NOT COMPACT THE STACK WHEN THERE IS NO FREE SPACE IN IT!
I don't know why HyperCard does this obnoxious thing, but follow this rule and you will avoid ruining the adventure stack. Unless you know that the stack size has increased, do not compact the stack.
Version 1.03 of HyperQuest#1 takes up about 260 K when compacted.