MURDER ON THE BOAT a gripping cozy crime mystery full of twists by ADAMS JANE

Author:ADAMS, JANE
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Joffe Books crime thriller and cozy mystery
Published: 2021-11-28T00:00:00+00:00

Twenty-Seven

Richard Grey had considerable admiration for whoever had written this code, or rather, these layers of code. At first he had assumed that the machine code contained straightforward instructions for some new game-play the programmer had been creating. Every programmer has their own style; their own fingerprint as Richard Grey liked to call it and knowing who had written this particular piece of code, he was intrigued as to why Paul de Freitas had chosen to use machine code and not some much simpler computer language to develop what was, on the face of it, a relatively simple patch for an existing game.

All programming for games was created with back doors to allow the programmer to test out the elements of the game without the need for actually playing through entire levels. Regular players with a modicum of technical knowledge took delight in discovering these illicit ways in—hence the proliferation of forums and discussion sites for gamers where ‘cheats’ were exchanged and discussed. Far from being worried about this, many games designers would insert ‘easter eggs’, which were little surprises and prizes for those clever enough to figure things out. Often these would be an extra level of game-play or some new solution to a puzzle. Just occasionally, when too many tunnels had been dug through a particular game, or when a game was about to be re-released, programmers would patch the most well-known cheats and close some of the back doors and thus add to the challenge for old players as well as encouraging the newcomers. Richard knew of completists who bought every new edition of a favourite game, just to try and discover these little variations. Not as popular or as obvious—in fact, usually members only—these cheats also had their forums and their aficionados. Richard did not really number himself among them. In fact, he wasn’t what you might call a player of games but he kept abreast of the latest trends because you never knew what would be important or when it might become so. Richard was at the top of his particular profession and he fully intended to remain there.

He had thought at first that Paul had just been working on such a patch. The game in question, Eventides, was a Lovecraftian RPG, first person, so far as Richard was aware and that was what had first alerted him to something being odd. He had gone away and phoned a friend, checking that he was correct in his first-person assumption.

Yes, his friend told him, though there had been rumours for a while of a hidden level played from the perspective of a woman called Lydia, a minor character in the original. ‘It’s some sort of an in-joke,’ the friend told him. ‘Paul de Freitas did the original story development as well as a lot of the game-play. Eventides was one of their first games, from when Paul didn’t work for the company, he was just mucking about on the periphery.’

‘And the in-joke?’

‘Apparently, his sister-in-law is called Lydia.

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