Macrocosm

[Macrocosm]

Four years in the making, this project was finally completed June 1st...


MACROCOSM



What is Macrocosm?

"Set in the far future, Macrocosm is a massive work of graphical interactive fiction.

Features:

• An entirely original work of fiction with which the player intereacts via natural language
• Original musical soundtrack
• Scores of graphics and full illustrations
• Various animations and ingame sound effects"

In essence, the purpose of this project was to push the boundaries of the 'interactive fiction' genre and thereby open it up to a much broader audience, recreating the experience of classic graphical "text adventure" games to run on newer systems, updated to the modern era with sound effects, music, and full 24-bit illustrations woven into an epic storyline.


Download directly from the official website:
http://macrocosm.bizhat.com





[center]Sample Media:














MACROCOSM | The Official Site [/center]

[eMTe]

Sorry, but I'm out of words.

[Scythe]

Time to dust off the ol' parser, eh? I don't believe I've touched interactive fiction since Hound of Shadow; this should be interesting!

[Pater Alf]

In a certain way I miss the good old text adventures. Might be interesting...

[Scythe]

I now recall all the frustrating hours of getting the parser to understand what I'm trying to tell it to do. I know what I want to do and, man, am I sick of:

You cannot use that object in a constuctive manner. (typo, btw)

The story doesn't understand that command.

Unfortunately, such an action would yield no desirable results.

That isn't going to work.

The word "xxx" is not necessary in this story.


Looks like a nice space yarn, but I'm really fighting with the parser here. I realize how impossible it is to anticipate the player's actions and provide for all eventualities, but I'm really running my head into a wall here.

I've got a cylindrical beacon, I've got a carpenter's tool and a cylanoid (I don't even know what that means, but...) socket. Now, I imagine I can do something to the beacon to make it fit the socket (maybe this is plain wrong - it wasn't plain wrong, but I was pretty stupid), but the parser kicks me in the nuts every time I try to do so. Yeah, I'm not very far into the game.

(slight spoiler perhaps) And btw, closing the hatch of the wrecked boarding vessel after getting it open seems to trap you inside a loop. Why would I do that? Perhaps the vessel would have offered some protection from the elements.

[Scythe]

Thankfully, logic prevailed and I figured it out. Which is not to say that the parser doesn't annoy the heck out of me anyway.

[Drasir-Vel]

Can't seem to find a download link.

[Pater Alf]

http://www.ifarchive.org/indexes/if-arc ... Xtads.html

[Drasir-Vel]

Game entry on ifdb.tads.org

http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=c8qs0xgkkfp5u6u4

[Drasir-Vel]

Remember to save frequently because you can die in this game. Use "examine" on any and all objects that are mentioned.

I also had a lot of trouble with the parser. It's necessary to say things in a specific way and use specific words for it to react. I spent a lot of time guessing and using trial and error to figure out how to make it do something that should be obvious. It shouldn't be necessary to play "guess the sentence".

If you can get past the problems with the parser, the rest of the game is excellent. Imo, it's a great story with atmospheric music and artwork. I was immersed a lot of the time, except when the story was ground to a halt by the parser.


Some sentences that will be useful at the right places in case you're stuck for as long as i were:

open beacon

look inside maintenance compartment

point at containers