Bestiary of Maxine's Quest
The bestiary of Maxine's Quest is the set of creatures that attack Maxine in Maxine's Quest, the browser game and instrument interface of Molecular Reality Corporation. Nearly all of them are mushrooms modeled in clay. In the game's Live Signal mode each one is summoned by a spike in the current through a nanopore on the company's bench, and the kind of mushroom depends on the shape of the signal. In Random mode a timer summons them instead.[1]
The game loads five creatures. Its asset folder holds about as many more that it never loads, several of which appeared in a screenshot of the game published by the company in 2022.
Summoning
A spike in the trace is a current blockade: a particle in the pore displaces some of the conducting salt water, and the current dips while it stays. In Live Signal mode the game scores the latest packet of signal on two numbers, its span as a fraction of the largest span among the last twelve packets, and its persistence, the fraction of those twelve packets that contained a spike. A comment above the rule calls it a "Simple 2D mapping (tune by feel)".[1] Weak, isolated events make the easy monster, strong and sustained ones the hard monster, and any other packet the medium one. Live spawning ignores the level, so any of the three mushrooms can appear on any level when the signal calls for it.
In Random mode each level has its own mix, and the first monster arrives four to eight seconds after loading, the rest every two to six seconds.
Monsters
| Creature | Live Signal trigger | Random mode | Movement | On contact with Maxine |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pink oyster mushroom | Any packet that is neither easy nor hard; also the default before any signal has arrived | Two thirds of level 1; one third of levels 2 and 4 | Spirals inward from the ring to the pore | A chime and 100 points to the challenger |
| SpinShroom | Span under 0.6 and persistence under 0.1 ("Easy: short/weak isolated events") | One third of level 1; two thirds of levels 2 and 4; one fifth of levels 3 and 5 | Crosses the arena horizontally at 180 pixels per second | 100 points to the "Kent" row |
| DoomShroom | Span of 0.7 or more and persistence of 0.15 or more ("Hard: strong + sustained") | Four fifths of levels 3 and 5 | Straight lines at 300 pixels per second, turning at random at each edge | 100 points to the "Kent" row |
| Spore | Fired by pink oysters and the Mushromancer | Wherever they are | 180 pixels per second toward where Maxine was | 100 points to the "Kent" row |
| Mushromancer | None | Stands on the pore in levels 4 to 6 | Stationary | Counts as touching the pore |
Pink oyster mushroom
The pink oyster is a fan-shaped pink clay mushroom with two frames of animation, drawn at half the size of its image. It is born on the ring of signal lines and travels toward the pore along a spiral, the code for which still carries the comment "Translate the Python lines to JavaScript". The journey takes about a quarter of a minute and a little over two turns of the arena. Every 2.5 to 5 seconds it fires a spore at Maxine, but only while she is more than 300 pixels away, so it never shoots at close range.[1] When it reaches the pore it is destroyed and nobody scores.
It is the one creature that Maxine is meant to catch. Touching it plays a file named "good.wav" and gives 100 points to the challenger's row of the scoreboard.
The real pink oyster mushroom, Pleurotus djamor, is an edible tropical species. Oyster mushrooms of the genus Pleurotus are among the fungi that attack nematodes, which they paralyze with a toxin before growing into them.[2]
SpinShroom
The SpinShroom has a yellow-green cap with red spots over a white stem with black eyes and a frown, and spins through eight frames. It appears just inside the ring at the left or right end of the arena's long axis and crosses horizontally at 180 pixels per second, passing over the pore unharmed, until it leaves the ring on the far side. It does not fire. A collision costs Maxine 100 points on the Kent row and removes the SpinShroom.[1]
DoomShroom
The DoomShroom is a small purple clay cap with spikes, over a grey scowling face. At 64 by 44 pixels it is the smallest monster and the only one drawn at the full size of its image. It starts on the inner edge of the arena, moves in a straight line at 300 pixels per second, and picks a new random heading whenever it reaches the edge; its sprite turns to face each new heading. Touching Maxine costs her 100 points. A DoomShroom that runs into the pore is destroyed with the same chime as a caught oyster, and the challenger gets 100 points for it.[1]
In Random mode DoomShrooms live only on levels 3 and 5, which are hidden from the menu. On the levels a player can choose, they come only from the live signal, as the strong and sustained events.
Spore
Spores are pale pink with a net of red hexagons, animated in three frames and drawn at a quarter of their size. A spore is aimed at Maxine's position at the moment it is fired and flies straight on at 180 pixels per second, vanishing when it leaves the arena.[1]
Mushromancer
The Mushromancer, a skull-faced clay mushroom with a brown spotted cap and stick arms, stands on the pore in three levels hidden from the menu: "Mushromancer and the Oysters", "Mushromancer and the DoomShrooms" and "Mushromancer's Spiralling Spores". It makes a spore every second. On the first two of those levels the spores are created without a velocity, so they stay where they are made and pile up on top of him, one more each second. Touching him counts as touching the pore.[1]
The third level adds what a comment calls the "gurk cannon", which is to "make a ring of spores and throw them at Maxine". For about eight seconds the code carries every spore to a single point circling the arena at the radius of the signal ring. That point lies outside the boundary the game uses to delete stray spores, so each spore is deleted on the following frame. When the wind-up ends, the code works out the direction of each remaining spore in radians and passes it to a function that expects degrees, and a thrown spore leaves within about three degrees of due right, whatever Maxine's position.[a][1]
Unused creatures
The game's asset folder holds creatures that no level loads:[1]
- A purple boomshroom, a spiked mushroom with a skull face, drawn in ink.
- A brown mushroom trailing two wires that end in crocodile clips, filed under the name "mush1".
- Three frames of a dancing pink and white oyster cluster, drawn in ink.
- Four brainpods: a brain in a green jar, set in a pink clay console.
- Three white clay ghosts with blue eyes.
- Four frames of a green clay snake with a red eye, named "snalke" in the file names.
- The Dragon Tyrant, a green scaly clay head 1,024 pixels square, which belongs to the unfinished level Labyrinth of the Dragon Tyrant.
Origins
File:Maxines Quest 2022 screenshot.png The company's technical overview of December 2022 shows an earlier version of the game, captioned "Screenshot from live game play on Maxine's Quest with actual data".[3] Its arena is full of purple boomshrooms and red spores, and the brown wired mushroom sits on the pore where the Mushromancer later stands. A brainpod beside the chat window houses the brainbot, whose messages in the screenshot read "I require more fungal reproduction agents" and "check out this paper describing fungal spore monitoring techniques". A line along the bottom of the console asks "What size are these fungal spores?"
The theme is literal. Fungal spores are particles a few micrometers across, and counting and sizing particles as they pass through a hole is the Coulter principle on which the company's instruments rest. The first level of the game is named Spores and Pores.
See also
Notes
- ^ The angle returned by the arctangent lies between −π and π, that is, between about −3.14 and 3.14. Read as degrees, every such angle points almost exactly to the right of the screen.