Hollywood Hijinx

Hollywood Hijinx
Developer: Infocom Publisher: Infocom Platforms: DOS, Mac OS Classic, Apple II, Amiga, Commodore 64, Atari ST Released internationally: December 15, 1986 This game has debugging material.

Hollywood Hijinx is a text-adventure game created by Infocom and released in 1986. It was written by Dave Anderson and only had 1 version released to the public. The main character (you) will inherit the estate of your Aunt Hildeguard, a Hollywood socialite if you can find 10 treasures on her property before the next morning.

Debug Code

There was only one released version of Hollywood Hijinx story file which contained a debug mode and special debugging command for the developers. The debug mode would display the arguments sent to the PERFORM function which calls the appropriate routine for the command given to the game. These arguments are the number corresponding to the verb given, the direct object, and indirect object if they exist. The special command allowed the developers to quickly jump to certain locations in the game without having to solve the in-game puzzles.

At the time of the release, the only way to enter debug mode was by changing a certain default global variable value. Users could do this with a hex editor and set the 2 byte word at 232A to 0001. With this, every command will display

[PERFORM: verb number/direct object/indirect object]

To get the special debugging command, the user of the game has to be changed from the default blank value. The valid users were TOMAS or DA. I do not know who TOMAS is, but DA refers to David Anderson, the author of the game. At the time of the game's release, the only way to change this was with a hex editor. ASCII values of the user name were placed at locations 38 to 3C of the header of the story file. TOMAS is 54 4F 4D 41 53 while DA is 44 41. When the game startups, the story file will recognize the DA or TOMAS user name and set a special variable.

Now, the special debug command could be given:

FLUSH 33

This would transport the user to the "Work Room", which had the following description:

                            Cellar
                   Cannon     |     Crawl Space North
                 Emplacement  |    /
                          ____|___/
                          |       |
            Boat Dock ----| Work  |----Heart of Maze
                          | Room  |
                          |_______|
                         /    |    .
                        /     |     .
                    Attic  Upstairs  Bomb Shelter
                          Hall Middle

By going in any of the cardinal directions, you would be transported to the indicated location. Also, the game would automatically turn on your flashlight and give you a green match.