Trinity: design ruminations

This is not a detailed review of Infocom's Trinity, because Jimmy Maher has just finished that job. His sequence of posts (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9) puts the game into its context in Infocom's history and, more broadly, in the history of the Atomic Age (remember that?) and the Cold War. Go read.

Inevitably Maher comes around to the question of the ending -- the "...what just happened?" denouement. (You can read just that one post if you're familiar with the game.) It's not the first time, of course. Maher links to a Usenet thread in which we went 'round this topic in 2001.

It's generally agreed that the plot logic of the ending doesn't really hold together. In fact, my teenage self was moved to write a letter of complaint to Infocom! I received a gracious response -- I think it was written by Moriarty himself -- which basically said "The game ends the way we felt it had to end." Which is unarguable. (This letter is in my father's basement somewhere, and one day I will dig it out and scan it with great glee.)

But today I am moved to be argumentative. If I were the author of Trinity, what would I have done?

(Oh, sure, I'm being presumptuous too. All due apologies to Moriarty. But we're both thirty years older; we're different people than the author and player circa 1986. It's worth a rethink.)

(I will assume that you've played the game and read Maher's post. If not, massive spoilers ahoy.)

Sweet formatting for Inform 7 source code

One of my limited, high-level Kickstarter rewards was "The Hadean Lands source code, in book form". I had these printed in January, I mailed them out last week, and some of my backers have already received them. They're a hit!

@zarfeblong Hadean Lands source book looks fantastic. If I7 source is readable in book form, this is about as good as I'd expect it to look. (-- @dan_sanderson)

My Hadean Lands Source Codex book arrived. Wow - really nicely done. I'm in love with this strange artifact. Thanks @zarfeblong! (-- @telehack)

@zarfeblong Book received, really nice! What service did you use? Did I7 output source that nice-looking or did you post-process a lot? (-- @dan_schmidt)

That last is an excellent question. Everybody deserves nicely-printed source code, so here's how I did it.

(Spoiler: here's my Python script.)