LAIR of the CyberCow: Mooo....
Conrad
(pulls off rubber mask): And I would have gotten away with it, too,
if it weren't for you meddling kids!
Yes, as some noticed by the alternative ABOUT screen, I am Harry
Wilson, proud (*ahem*) author of _LAIR of the CyberCow_.
It was a game with modest goals that largely fell short of them. The
vast majority of people, going by the reviews, either couldn't play it
because of some kind of interpreter incompatibility that I was
unprepared for, or (worse) thought they could play it, but more
insidious incompatibilites scrambled the game logic.
I am *very* happy to say that two people, to my knowledge, happened to
run it on the correct interpreter, played it through, consulted the
help file very minimally, and said that it was thin but "not a waste
of time."
So: BONUS FEATURE: The Making of the CyberCow.
I wrote it with ADRIFT 3.9, which differs from 4.0 in that it is
free. If you don't know, Adrift works in lists: lists of characters,
lists of objects, of rooms, and so on. And, where most of the
programming comes in, lists of commands you can type in to the parser,
and what happens when you do.
So, you need to enter:
HIT MOLE WITH HAMMER
HIT MOLE USING HAMMER
HIT MOLE WITH MALLET
HIT MOLE USING MALLET
HIT MOLE WITH RUBBER MALLET
HIT THWACK-A-MOLE WITH HAMMER... etc.
You can cheat and use wild cards:
HIT *MOLE * MALLET
-- but that will then accept input like HIT XENOMOLE UNDER THE CHIN IF
IT TOUCHES THE MALLET (or whatever). So you have to be careful.
Adrift goes through this list of parser objects ('tasks') in sequence;
so if the input its handling matches an earlier one, it will never see
the later one. Which is fine, largely; you can use this to handle
repetition. But I discovered there's a trick:
I tested every piece of the game very thoroughly -- for example, I
made sure that constructing the Invincible Robot in your basement
worked well before going on to code what would happen if you ate the
fairy -- and that meant that often I had to go back and add in parser
objects to earlier spots in the list, so the game would sequence them
properly.
I found out at the end, when I had glued the whole thing together,
that this was a problem. Apparently, certain objects refer to items
in the parser list *by their absolute location*. So, when you add
something, or remove something, to a spot before that parser entry,
some of the game objects that refer to that parser entry are now
referring to next to it in the list.
And, it turned out the game didn't work that way.
Therefore, the final stretch of development time was not spent
leisurely fleshing out the in-game clues, but patching up game logic
that had been made hash in obscure drop-down menus I hadn't touched
for months.
People have complained that the writing style was over-terse -- well,
this isn't entirely why: I *like* terse writing in text games -- but
it was also threadbare, and this *is* part of the reason for that.
So:
To all those who were frustrated with the game:
Sorry...
And yes, it was beta-tested; I don't read About screens myself,
usually, and never noticed that it's customary to credit testers. But
the Beta-testing was caught up remedying the above troubles (and they
were all remedied, and I do thank my Beta-testers) rather than really
expanding the game to account for diverse user mentalities, as it
should have.
--I've been told I shouldn't have submitted it: well, I figured it
was worth a shot -- I just didn't know anything about the interpreter
problems that come along with Adrift.
Thank you all for playing.
Conrad.
ps - The IFC Rule 5 forum, as promised, has been made public: check
out what authors have been saying behind your back:
(pulls off rubber mask): And I would have gotten away with it, too,
if it weren't for you meddling kids!
Yes, as some noticed by the alternative ABOUT screen, I am Harry
Wilson, proud (*ahem*) author of _LAIR of the CyberCow_.
It was a game with modest goals that largely fell short of them. The
vast majority of people, going by the reviews, either couldn't play it
because of some kind of interpreter incompatibility that I was
unprepared for, or (worse) thought they could play it, but more
insidious incompatibilites scrambled the game logic.
I am *very* happy to say that two people, to my knowledge, happened to
run it on the correct interpreter, played it through, consulted the
help file very minimally, and said that it was thin but "not a waste
of time."
So: BONUS FEATURE: The Making of the CyberCow.
I wrote it with ADRIFT 3.9, which differs from 4.0 in that it is
free. If you don't know, Adrift works in lists: lists of characters,
lists of objects, of rooms, and so on. And, where most of the
programming comes in, lists of commands you can type in to the parser,
and what happens when you do.
So, you need to enter:
HIT MOLE WITH HAMMER
HIT MOLE USING HAMMER
HIT MOLE WITH MALLET
HIT MOLE USING MALLET
HIT MOLE WITH RUBBER MALLET
HIT THWACK-A-MOLE WITH HAMMER... etc.
You can cheat and use wild cards:
HIT *MOLE * MALLET
-- but that will then accept input like HIT XENOMOLE UNDER THE CHIN IF
IT TOUCHES THE MALLET (or whatever). So you have to be careful.
Adrift goes through this list of parser objects ('tasks') in sequence;
so if the input its handling matches an earlier one, it will never see
the later one. Which is fine, largely; you can use this to handle
repetition. But I discovered there's a trick:
I tested every piece of the game very thoroughly -- for example, I
made sure that constructing the Invincible Robot in your basement
worked well before going on to code what would happen if you ate the
fairy -- and that meant that often I had to go back and add in parser
objects to earlier spots in the list, so the game would sequence them
properly.
I found out at the end, when I had glued the whole thing together,
that this was a problem. Apparently, certain objects refer to items
in the parser list *by their absolute location*. So, when you add
something, or remove something, to a spot before that parser entry,
some of the game objects that refer to that parser entry are now
referring to next to it in the list.
And, it turned out the game didn't work that way.
Therefore, the final stretch of development time was not spent
leisurely fleshing out the in-game clues, but patching up game logic
that had been made hash in obscure drop-down menus I hadn't touched
for months.
People have complained that the writing style was over-terse -- well,
this isn't entirely why: I *like* terse writing in text games -- but
it was also threadbare, and this *is* part of the reason for that.
So:
To all those who were frustrated with the game:
Sorry...
And yes, it was beta-tested; I don't read About screens myself,
usually, and never noticed that it's customary to credit testers. But
the Beta-testing was caught up remedying the above troubles (and they
were all remedied, and I do thank my Beta-testers) rather than really
expanding the game to account for diverse user mentalities, as it
should have.
--I've been told I shouldn't have submitted it: well, I figured it
was worth a shot -- I just didn't know anything about the interpreter
problems that come along with Adrift.
Thank you all for playing.
Conrad.
ps - The IFC Rule 5 forum, as promised, has been made public: check
out what authors have been saying behind your back:
George Shannon
> (pulls off rubber mask): And I would have gotten away with it, too,
> if it weren't for you meddling kids!
>
> Yes, as some noticed by the alternative ABOUT screen, I am Harry
> Wilson, proud (*ahem*) author of _LAIR of the CyberCow_.
Ohhh, so you're the Conrad in Conrad Cook.
> I wrote it with ADRIFT 3.9, which differs from 4.0 in that it is
> free.
I did NOT know that. I remember complaining about having to install
an old interpreter, but that is a good reason for using it.
It's a shame about the limitations. I always kind of wondered if
Adrift was kind of... not as simple as it seems to be.
George Oliver
> People have complained that the writing style was over-terse -- well,
> this isn't entirely why: I *like* terse writing in text games -- but
> it was also threadbare, and this *is* part of the reason for that.
I haven't posted any review of LAIR, but I just wanted to say I also
liked the writing in the game, and gave the game a high score because
of it; I didn't actually -finish- the game, but nor did I run into any
bugs (perhaps these are related ;) ).
Conrad
>
> I haven't posted any review of LAIR, but I just wanted to say I also
> liked the writing in the game, and gave the game a high score
> because of it; I didn't actually -finish- the game, but nor did I run
> into any bugs (perhaps these are related ;) ).
Thanks!
As I say, a few people did finish it with minimum consultation of the
help system -- but most, from what I know, either didn't finish or at
some point switched over to the walkthrough.
And I think a lot of that has to do with the threadbare, under-
implemented nature of the game (because I didn't leave myself
development time to deal with an unexpected crisis) -- it just lacked,
for example, any way to do research on fairies, to get background info
on CyberCows, and so on -- those bits of detail that inform and
motivate a player's explorations.
Thanks for the high rating -- I can't complain about the low ones
(especially with the interpreter problems), but the high ones are very
encouraging.
And, anyone who has any specific notions for improving the game -- I'm
renewing my efforts to get up to speed on TADS3 -- I'd be grateful to
hear them.
I'd be interested to know this -- It's kind-of emblematic of the
stylistic difference I think I have with the mainstream:
How do you guys react to having exits listed at the end of a
description?
I set up LAIR for exit listing, because that's always my preference:
I want that information to be immediately avaliable, for when I'm
walking through a location without looking around. But some people
really resented this -- they saw it as an indicator that I took no
trouble with the game.
What do you guys think of exit listings?
To contiune that thought:
Similarly, the character description, on X ME: "A standard
adventurer." It really bugged people that I'd left in the default
message.
But in fact I had to over-ride the default message, "As handsome as
ever!" And Adrift doesn't like for you to over-ride default
messages: Basically, you have to create a text file with a table that
does string replaces:
As handsome as ever!|A standard adventurer.
--Which is made more difficult by the fact that there's no list of the
default messages. Also, it makes it impossible to replace some
default messages that include in-line references to custom parser
objects.
So, for example -- and I'm going off memory, but this is the gist of
it:
"You are standing in an empty room.
"> PUSH SHARK
"You try to push the shark, but nothing happens."
-- This is maddening. There is no shark there, but the parser will
talk about it as if there is. And because it mentions the parser
term, you can't update the error message.
I had to replace:
but nothing happens.|but nothing happens. (That is, I couldn't parse
this to the game situation, so I'm bluffing.)
--Which is at least honest, and ought to cover all "...but nothing
happens" -type errors, but it's really second-rate as error messages
go.
Or -- I found out about this one on the last day, after I had uploaded
the game file:
>SAVE
(A save box pops up: if you then cancel out, you get):
Quite right -- you're only playing a lot of rubbish anyway!
--And, you know, if Campbell Wild, who was insulting my players in my
name, was in the room with me, in that moment I so lost my temper that
I'm afraid I might have started beating him with my laptop.
So I had to write another slew of proper cancelation messages and re-
upload the game.
Conrad.
Conrad
> > I wrote it with ADRIFT 3.9, which differs from 4.0 in that it is
> > free.
>
> I did NOT know that. I remember complaining about having to install
> an old interpreter, but that is a good reason for using it.
It was the price I was looking for. The newer one, 4.0, may be much
better -- I don't know. But from reading the discussion boards, I
guess everyone has been waiting for 5.0 to come out, so there's less
activity with 4.0 now.
> It's a shame about the limitations. I always kind of wondered if
> Adrift was kind of... not as simple as it seems to be.
Yeah, you know... once you learn it, and if you don't aim to go
outside of what it's meant to do, you can put together a game very
quickly. I'm currently thinking it's probably good as a prototyping
and a learning device.
--learning, because I understood much better the kind of architecture
that goes into game programming. The way the TADS parser works, for
example, I always found kind of frustrating, wishing I could just
program on a command-by-command basis. So this was very illuminating.
Conrad.