http://www.platypuscomix.net/freespirit/apple2/apple2jse.html#freespirit1|freespirit2
Today Free Spirit goes where no webcomic has gone before! You don't just read this week's adventure, you live it! You may even get to blow up something!
This game has a lot of Easter Eggs, but none I can discuss without spoiling anything. After you've played the game, check out the bonus post below for many bonus hints.
Today Free Spirit goes where no webcomic has gone before! You don't just read this week's adventure, you live it! You may even get to blow up something!
This game has a lot of Easter Eggs, but none I can discuss without spoiling anything. After you've played the game, check out the bonus post below for many bonus hints.
Space was a problem because this all had to fit on one disk 140kb in size. I had a list of everything I definitely wanted to do, and programmed those things first, then filled in the remainder. There didn't turn out to be much room for anything else. The Harpers go inside Zork and Mystery House, and ideally there would've been a third game. They also would've spent a longer amount of time messing around in those games in a hypothetical director's cut.
The first encounter with the Grue was supposed to work like this: there were 15 items in the attic, and you had to pick one to use as a weapon against him. They would all work, just in different ways. However, I ran out of room to put the scene in. The hamster thing was originally intended to be an Easter Egg; the hamster and the microwave were much father apart, not in adjoining rooms, and only a few players would remember they had it and put two and two together. The problem was, due to the way the final game was broken up, it couldn't save that data for very long. So then it became obvious, and then it became the only solution.
The sword is a red herring to take your attention away from the hamster. You can't remove it.
If Robb blows up the hamster, and returns to the living room afterward, there will still be a hamster there. Rather than fixing this, I had the characters react to it. Robb can keep returning to the room and blow up an endless amount of hamsters. If he blows up more than three, Jessie will say something different. if he blows up more than five, she'll remark that she's bored now.
If Robb blows up more than one, the Grue will accurately say "You blew up XX hamsters!" when you meet him. If Robb blows up more than fifty hamsters, the Grue will be so impressed that he'll let the gang win the entire game automatically. It will end there.
The command to go back downstairs once you're in the attic is unclear. If you fail to guess the correct wording 500 times in a row, Winnie will get fed up and say you won the game, leading to the ending screen.
The scrambled letters in the Grue's second game all form one very effective word if put together. The first batch of letters spells "FLAMETHROWER." The second batch spells "GWENETH PALTROW." Upon hearing "GWENETH PALTROW" the Grue will say "ANYTHING BUT THAT!" and immediately run away no matter how many points you have left. In fact, if you use "GWENETH PALTROW" in the first round, even though you don't have the letters, the Grue will run off.
The "font" scene would only work on the original disk it came from! In order for it to make the cut, I had to copy everything I'd written so far onto the ROM the fonts were on.
All the bonus games are hacks. "Laser Sword" is a game called "Lazer Wars".....the only thing I changed was the title screen. It fit perfectly -- I didn't write any of that ridiculous introduction, and the Star Wars theme is actually in the original. The only missing thing is a dragon. Better yet, we now have a Star Wars movie where someone calls a lightsaber a laser sword! (Luke, no less.)
"Laser Sword" was supposed to be a complete joke because it doesn't work properly on the Applewin PC emulator. To my surprise, it works perfectly on this one. Wasn't intentional.
"Hey You Robbachu" is hacked from a program called Random Insult Generator. Only problem is, the insults aren't truly random. He gives you the same combination of words every time you boot it up. I have no idea how to fix it and the problem appears to be the emulator -- the same thing happens on Applewin but it gives you a different variation of the same insults! Bizarre.
"Super Princess Winnie" is from Broderbund's Arcade Machine program, which let you create arcade shooter games. This was the very last thing I did and I had less than a day to put it together. The game on the disk is lazily one of the sample games, just with the player's sprite changed to Winnie. If there had been more time the game might've been different.
The first encounter with the Grue was supposed to work like this: there were 15 items in the attic, and you had to pick one to use as a weapon against him. They would all work, just in different ways. However, I ran out of room to put the scene in. The hamster thing was originally intended to be an Easter Egg; the hamster and the microwave were much father apart, not in adjoining rooms, and only a few players would remember they had it and put two and two together. The problem was, due to the way the final game was broken up, it couldn't save that data for very long. So then it became obvious, and then it became the only solution.
The sword is a red herring to take your attention away from the hamster. You can't remove it.
If Robb blows up the hamster, and returns to the living room afterward, there will still be a hamster there. Rather than fixing this, I had the characters react to it. Robb can keep returning to the room and blow up an endless amount of hamsters. If he blows up more than three, Jessie will say something different. if he blows up more than five, she'll remark that she's bored now.
If Robb blows up more than one, the Grue will accurately say "You blew up XX hamsters!" when you meet him. If Robb blows up more than fifty hamsters, the Grue will be so impressed that he'll let the gang win the entire game automatically. It will end there.
The command to go back downstairs once you're in the attic is unclear. If you fail to guess the correct wording 500 times in a row, Winnie will get fed up and say you won the game, leading to the ending screen.
The scrambled letters in the Grue's second game all form one very effective word if put together. The first batch of letters spells "FLAMETHROWER." The second batch spells "GWENETH PALTROW." Upon hearing "GWENETH PALTROW" the Grue will say "ANYTHING BUT THAT!" and immediately run away no matter how many points you have left. In fact, if you use "GWENETH PALTROW" in the first round, even though you don't have the letters, the Grue will run off.
The "font" scene would only work on the original disk it came from! In order for it to make the cut, I had to copy everything I'd written so far onto the ROM the fonts were on.
All the bonus games are hacks. "Laser Sword" is a game called "Lazer Wars".....the only thing I changed was the title screen. It fit perfectly -- I didn't write any of that ridiculous introduction, and the Star Wars theme is actually in the original. The only missing thing is a dragon. Better yet, we now have a Star Wars movie where someone calls a lightsaber a laser sword! (Luke, no less.)
"Laser Sword" was supposed to be a complete joke because it doesn't work properly on the Applewin PC emulator. To my surprise, it works perfectly on this one. Wasn't intentional.
"Hey You Robbachu" is hacked from a program called Random Insult Generator. Only problem is, the insults aren't truly random. He gives you the same combination of words every time you boot it up. I have no idea how to fix it and the problem appears to be the emulator -- the same thing happens on Applewin but it gives you a different variation of the same insults! Bizarre.
"Super Princess Winnie" is from Broderbund's Arcade Machine program, which let you create arcade shooter games. This was the very last thing I did and I had less than a day to put it together. The game on the disk is lazily one of the sample games, just with the player's sprite changed to Winnie. If there had been more time the game might've been different.
