Strangers in the Night
An Interactive Gothic Hunt
by Rich Pizor

Version 1.0contest

You are a vampire living in the exclusive downtown district of a fictitious
city. With sunset this evening, you feel somewhat...hungry. You have 320 turns
before the sun rises again -- there are 40 turns in an hour (or one turn every
1.5 minutes) so you've got 8 hours (9pm to 5am). In that time, you must take at
least 3 drinks of blood and return to your apartment building. Note that not
all buildings are open at all times of the night.

Since this game is time-based, you will notice that the score display is a
little different than most games -- rather than displaying the number of turns
you have played, it will display the time. Remember that you must be home by 5
am. If you can't see the display or are too absorbed to look, you can always
check the time by issuing the "time" command, but this will cause one more
turn to increment.

Movement along the city is along the 8 cardinal compass directions.  To move
around the city, simply type the direction you wish to move, such as "east".
You can also abbreviate directions -- "nw" for "northwest", "e" for
"east", and so on. To examine the current location you're in, type "look" or
"l"; to examine a specific item in that location, type "examine object",
where "object" is the name of the thing you wish to examine.

Your area consists of the streets surrounding and inside a 4-block by 4-block
section of downtown. You are bounded to the north by 8th street, to the south
by 12th street, to the west by Jefferson Avenue, and to the east by Main
Avenue. Also in your territory are Clay Avenue, Oak Avenue, and Broadway. The
name of a street location consist either of an intersection, or of the name
of the street with the nearest cross streets. Examples:

"Jefferson and 12th" means you are at the intersection of Jefferson Avenue
and 12th Street

"Oak Avenue (9th & 10th)" means you are on Oak Avenue between 9th Street
(to the north) and 10th Street (to the south)

"10th Street (Clay & Oak)" means you are on 10th Street between Clay Avenue
(to the west) and Oak Avenue (to the west)

Note that not all street locations have descriptions. If there are entrances to
any buildings or any other items of note present, they will be displayed;
otherwise, the only messages you will see will be random bits of city
"flavoring" that will appear every so often.

In order to take a drink, you must find a victim and pursue him until he is
alone. Then issue the "bite" command and you will take a drink. If you take 2
drinks from a person, you will drain them to the point of delirium; they won't
die, but you'll leave behind shadowy evidence and difficult questions that, if
pursued, could lead to the discovery of vampires. There are other vampires in
the city, and they don't want to see this happen. If you take a third drink,
the victim will die, which for some reason the others find equally
unacceptable.

Of all the people in the city, only 5 are potential victims. You gain 30 points
for taking your first drink from any given victim; you *lose* 10 points for
taking a second, and you lose an additional 15 if you take a third and kill
them. Bonus points are available for taking that all-important first drink of a
4th or 5th victim, but *only* if the first three are all handled with only one
drink each.  (Feel free to try and drink from others -- the game won't let you,
but sometimes it gives you a cute message saying why.)

The sun will rise on the 320th turn; you must be inside your apartment building
by then or you will turn into a little pile of black powder.

Because of your predatory nature, you take care to leave no visible traces of
your passing -- at least, none visible to a mortal. Therefore, the mortals of
the city will not notice you or otherwise acknowledge your existence unless you
specifically interact with them.  You can interact to some extent with most
anyone, but the game will only let you actually take a bite when you are in a
location that is totally empty apart from you and your victim.

Don't forget to ask your doorman about things -- it's his job to be in the
know. To ask him about something, you simply have to be in the same room as
him, then type "ask doorman about blank", where "blank" is the place or thing
you want more info about.  For instance, if you wanted to ask him what time it
was, you'd type "ask doorman about time" and he'd promptly tell you.

Finally, a word of caution: due to the somewhat mature theme of this game, it
is not recommended that young children be allowed to play without parental
consent. Parents are urged to take a test drive and/or examine the source code
to ensure that their children can handle the content.

Any questions, bugs, problems, criticisms, or praise can be directed to:

[email protected]

or

[email protected]

This game is freeware, but I retain all copyrights and other rights. This
archive, it's contents, source code, and other associated files are (c)
copyright 1999 Rich Pizor, except for those portions which are copyrighted by
other authors as noted below.

This version was abridges somewhat from the original vision of this game in an
effort to complete it by deadline. There will be a 1.1 version, which will add the
following features:
- More locations in the city, so it doesn't feel so empty
- New people to meet, possibly more people to bite
- A vampire hunter wandering the streets
- HTML TADS users will also be treated to a MIDI soundtrack

Release date is not known at this time; check http://www.spiritone.com/~akira for updates.

Acknowledgements:

Thanks to Stephen Grande, whose advanced actor module made life *much* easier
-- as soon as I figured out that whole "replace gameinit:function" bit. ;)

Thanks to J. Menichelli, whose timedisp.t file provided the basis for what
eventually became the time display in this game.

Thanks to Michael J. Roberts, both for his instruct.t module and for answering
a lot of my questions about TADS via the source code to Ditch Day Drifter.

Thanks to Gerry Kevin Wilson, who's notify.t module provided an elegant way to
deal with the fact that scores go down as well as up.

Thanks to Ben Edman and Josh English for invaluable assistance with beta testing.

Special thanks to AnnaMaryse Klenman, who waded through over 150k of code in
a seemingly futile attempt to help me root out spelling and grammar errors. The
poor woman had no idea what she was getting into when she agreed to it.

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