Elysium Enigma Post-Comp Release
Eric Eve
into third place in this year's comp. Many thanks too to all those
who posted reviews and provided feedback, both appreciative and
critical.
I've now attempted to address some of the issues provided by this
feedback in a post-comp release (version 2) of the Elysium Enigma.
I've just uploaded it to the IF-Archive where it will, no doubt, in
time migrate to the appropriate games/tads directory. In the
meantime it may also be downloaded from
http://users.ox.ac.uk/~manc0049/files/Elysium.zip. The changes are
mostly a series of tweaks rather than anything very substantial
(more details below), but if you have a reasonably fast internet
connection (it's a 540K download) it's probably worth getting this
version if you're thinking of replaying EE (or, indeed, playing it
for the first time).
In the main I've attempted to address most of the issues mentioned
by more than one reviewer, together with some issues mentioned by
only one reviewer where an obvious improvement occurred to me.
There is, however, one big exception: I've not done much about the
puzzles. These seem to have enjoyed a mixed reception with some
reviewers apparently quite happy with them and others feeling that
at least some of them were incongruous (or too 'old school'). Well,
you clearly can't satisfy everyone, but I can see what the second
group are getting at. That said, to make any substantial changes to
EE's puzzles would, I think, cut too deeply into the structure and
design of the game (as well as risking breaking things that
currently work), so I've decided to leave well alone (instead
resolving to keep the critical comments in mind when it comes to my
next effort). I have, however, tried to improve the clueing of a
couple of puzzles that are essential to reaching a winning ending
(especially the one that nearly everyone found too difficult).
Most of the other changes are fairly minor and cosmetic: a couple of
typos have been corrected, one room description has been rewritten,
a particular set of conversational responses has been modified, one
or two synonyms have been added, the inventory command now lists the
contents of the PC's pockets (separately from what he's actually
carrying), and one or two other things have been changed to attempt
a slight reduction in the gap between PC and player perceptions.
-- Eric
d...@pobox.com
On Nov 18, 3:45 pm, "Eric Eve" <eric....@NOSPAMhmc.ox.ac.uk> wrote:
> Most of the other changes are fairly minor and cosmetic: [...]
> the inventory command now lists the
> contents of the PC's pockets (separately from what he's actually
> carrying)
It's so pleasing when author's have the good grace to take note of even
the embittered whinging comments that aren't very constructive (that'll
be me) and make a small improvement to their game (though I wasn't the
only person to comment on the pockets thing).
Thanks Eric.
drj
Eric Eve
news:1163865771.6...@b28g2000cwb.googlegroups.com...
Yes, I noticed that at least two people commented on this, which
made it seemed definitely worth changing (especially since the
change was trivially easy to make: I simply made the pockets
Containers instead of OpenableContainers). In my mind's eye I was
envisaging the tunic pockets as the sort that have buttonable flaps
so you wouldn't be able to see inside them. There wasn't meant to be
any kind of puzzle to them, and in the comp version a simple LOOK IN
POCKETS command reveals the contents of both pockets at once, so it
didn't occur to me that anyone would have much trouble with this.
But this looks like a case where simulation got in the way of game
play. There's no particular game-play reason why the pockets *need*
to be openable, and it turns out that if they're open all the time
the TADS 3 Inventory command quite happily lists their contents
after listing what the PC actually has in his hands, which seems to
me to be an improvement all round.
> Thanks Eric.
You're welcome!
-- Eric