Fountains and Fortunes

October 18, 2019

Aboard the cruise ship in Sleuthhounds: Cruise, the owner Sir Price has spared no expense in getting the latest mechanical contrivances. One such contraption is a combination wishing fountain and fortune dispenser. The idea is that passengers throw a coin in, hitting a specific target, and the machine prints a daily fortune for them.

I’ve had the fortune fountain in the game for quite some time now. I actually incorporated it early on as part of a puzzle sequence unrelated to gathering fortunes. Without going into spoilery details, at one point the fountain dispenses something other than a fortune that is required to progress in the game. The whole fortune angle came about because I needed some way to justify what an odd piece of equipment would be doing on the ship.

At the time that I implemented fountain I only put into place what was needed for the required critical path sequence. I left notes to myself in the code indicating where the normal fortunes should be injected but otherwise I didn’t come up with the fortunes at that time. I specifically wanted to wait until I’d completed the critical path before filling in the fortunes.

The player can get a new fortune for Ampson and Homes each day they’re aboard the cruise ship. That break down matches with the act breaks in the game (i.e. Act 1 equals a day, Act 2 equals a day, and so on). I wanted to wait until I knew the specifics of what each character did during the different acts before determining what should be written on the fortunes. That way, the fortune text could provide general, high-level clues or comments on what each character would experience in a given act.

The idea of providing fortunes somewhere in the game is actually an homage to one of my favourite adventure games, in fact one of my favourite games period, of all time: Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers. In that game, the protagonist Gabriel Knight reads his horoscope every day in the morning paper. As the game proceeds his horoscopes get more dire, warning that death is walking alongside him and that on a given day he may die or have his life changed forever. I especially remember him commenting after one particularly dreadful horoscope that there’s a little old grandma out there with the same horoscope that must be really confused.

The implementation of the fountain itself is inspired by another favourite adventure game: The Lost Files of Sherlock Holmes: The Case of the Serrated Scalpel. At one point, it’s necessary for Holmes to play, and win, at multiple games of darts in order to get information from a bartender. While that particular sequence goes on for far too long (if I remember right, Holmes has to win no less than four games to proceed) I did like the way the dart board was implemented.

In the Sherlock Holmes game, the player has to tap the space bar to start a green bar going up the side of the dartboard. This controls the height at which the dart is thrown. The player taps space again to stop the height bar and then start a horizontal bar that moves left to right below the dart board, which controls how far across the board Holmes will throw. Tapping a final time causes Holmes to toss the dart at the desired location.

[The work in progress fountain toss.]
The work in progress fountain toss.

For Cruise I’ve simplified the toss down to a single vertical progress bar. Keeping in the spirit of the point-n-click interface, I’ve also changed the use of the space bar to be clicking on an onscreen button instead. Clicking the button causes the bar to start going up, with the target zone marked by two little brackets. Clicking the button a second time will have the character throw their coin to see if it hits the target to print the fortune.

Gathering the fortunes throughout the game is a strictly optional thing to do. As such, the player is free to keep trying for the fortunes as many times as is necessary to get them. However, this type of dexterity challenge is not everyone’s cup of tea. As a result, for the one puzzle sequence where getting something out of the fortune dispenser is required, the game detects the number of attempts the player has made. If too many tries are taken then Homes will automatically make the next throw so that the game can continue. There’s few things worse in an adventure game than getting stuck on some physical challenge where you know what to do but just can’t do it.

Filling in the fortunes for the fountain is part of my ongoing work to complete all the side investigations and actions that players can do. Admittedly, working through those side items has taken longer than I’d anticipated but there’s a light at the end of the tunnel. I’m expecting the sides to be completed early in November. Once done, the rest of production can move full steam ahead.