This is not a question about programming, although that is what the search engines seem to think. I need someone with a long memory.
In the course of translating some material from 1998 into a modern language, I found this buried in my list of strings:
Congratulations. You’ve just smashed what is known in the trade as a Maximum Value Object.
I don't think I made this up. I think "Maximum Value Object" had meaning in some reasonably well-known adventure game or family of games from the mid '90's. Ring any bells for anyone?
Going back over old code is interesting. Sometimes I see exactly what's happening; other times I have to laboriously translate line by line until I figure out what's going on. ("Oh. It's a water trough with three spouts. Why didn't I say so?")
Other winning lines:
LUCY: “Alex? Is that you? I KNEW you’d try this.”
(Alex was my beta tester nonpareil-- she grew up to become a software tester in real life-- though again it took some searching to figure out what improbable command I expected her to try.)
And, my favorite to date, in a scene where you eavesdrop on some longshoremen (in what follows, I am relying on the word censors to do their thing, because I'm pasting verbatim):
LONGSHOREMAN #1: “OK, let’s start with this #*$!.”
LONGSHOREMAN #2: “Who packed this #*$! anyway? Didn’t the stupid #*$!s ever hear of weight distribution?”
vs.
LONGSHOREMAN #1: “I say, Basil, here’s a spot of work.”
LONGSHOREMAN #2: “Blimey, Nigel, don’t the poor sods who pack these crates have any notion of weight distribution?”
I haven't got to the code yet, but I think there was some earlier point where the game classifies you as "adult" or "child". Har, har.
