Initial Impressions - Jack Toresal and The Secret Letter
Thomas Insel
thought it might be helpful to anyone who's deciding whether to
purchase the game.
Thanks to Andrew for pointing out that the Mac version was available.
I downloaded and played this morning, and just completed it a little
while ago, reaching what I believe is the only possible ending, a
cliffhanger for the next episode. I have not gone back and explored
other avenues of play, nor will I given the current problems with
performance and saved games.
Without any personal knowledge of the development process, I think
building a new player, particularily using Silverlight, was a mistake.
The book-style interace is an interesting idea, but turns out to be
much more annoying than a scroll-buffer. Cut/past and scroll-wheel
support would have been nice. The only place I saw that it added value
over pre-existing tools were the clickable Invisiclues-style hints.
For reference, I played the game on a Mac with a slower Core 2 Duo CPU,
and saw serious performance problems. It seems that the game slowed
down as I played, so that by the end it took about a half second for
each keystroke to register. Processing delays can be tolerable, but
painful typing isn't. Save/restore was problematic. Silverlight seems
to allow a limited space for saved games, and I was only able to store
three. The fourth appeared to work, but hung on restore, as did a
later save attempt. A different restore attempt left me with the
transcript window permanently open over my game.
There seems to have been some online controversy over this release.
For the record, I don't think Textfyre is well served by representing
themselves as perhaps more "corporate" than they actually are, but I
have no problem with the potential success of new commercial IF, and
they seem more organized and serious than any other recent
enterprises. There's only a little hyperbole in the documentation:
"... unlike any other game, Secret Letter will let you type in your
commands from the keyboard..." but the game freely gives credit where
it's due. Unfortunately, when I wanted to dig a little deeper, I found
that typing "version" hangs the game.
I infer from the credits that story was written by Michael Gentry and
David Cornell, and implemented in Inform 7 by Graeme Jefferis.
Implementation on the Inform level is generally quite good, with only
minor glitches. The writing is not as memorable as Anchorhead, but
don't get me wrong -- this is competent young adult fiction with an
engaging storyline. There is, by the way, one story line, and the
player will be herded along it, but with a reasonable amount of
interactivity, or at least not much of "z.z.z."
In the opening chapter, the player evades some mercenaries in a large
marketplace. The scene offers nice urgency with no cruelty, introduces
the player to the character, and offers a few simple puzzles around the
theme of avoiding and escaping. The map was a tiny bit complicated,
but the entire market is slickly reduced to a single location when
revisited later.
I'll stop there to maintain non-spoilerishness, but the game continues
for a number of chapters, mostly well-balanced but sometimes a bit
obviously one-track. There aren't really that many obvious puzzles, or
perhaps they're so easy I didn't really notice them, but there are
things to be done to move the plot along. I used the hints once, and
never found myself unclear how to proceed otherwise. This doesn't only
mean the game's easy, but that the implementation was well-polished.
I'd guess it received a fair amount of testing, but then I can't see
how the UI passed muster. Perhaps it is much more useable under
Windows.
There's a scene of "political intrigue" near the end that I found a bit
unsatisfying, but I wanted just a bit more game at the end, which is a
good sign. I'll definitely buy the next installment, but hope for
serious improvements to the interpreter.
Adam Thornton
Thomas Insel <tin...@tinsel.org> wrote:
>Without any personal knowledge of the development process, I think
>building a new player, particularily using Silverlight, was a mistake.
>The book-style interace is an interesting idea, but turns out to be
>much more annoying than a scroll-buffer. Cut/past and scroll-wheel
>support would have been nice. The only place I saw that it added value
>over pre-existing tools were the clickable Invisiclues-style hints.
I've played Chapter One online, and basically I agree. I *do* like the
hint system, but overall....well, Parchment is just as spiffy, and it's
free (and feels a lot like the Silverlight terp). But it doesn't do
glulx, alas.
Adam
David C.
> This is not a perhaps a complete well-organized review, but I
> thought it might be helpful to anyone who's deciding whether to
> purchase the game.
>
I think this is a very fair review and appreciated.
The performance issues, on the Mac specifically, are known and being
addressed. The Save problem has already been addressed and you can
save many many times without any problems. The slow typing problem
seems to be related to a memory leak..since you can restart the game,
restore a saved point, and the game seems (at least in our tests) to
proceed with good performance. This latter issue does not appear in
the Windows version, but I think the memory leak is still
there...maybe Windows handles memory leaks better...or just expects
them more? We're working on it either way.
We will resolve the performance problems very quickly and all
customers will be able to download the latest install package from the
same place they originally downloaded it from.
As for the choice of user interface design, well, I like it. It's my
vision for what kids, parents, and teachers will like. I plan to
release every game on a simple text user interface too, but that's
lagging at the moment. The plain text interface is really meant for
people who use text readers and want a simple keyboard interface. It's
not meant for a classroom setting, which is our long-term target.
David C.
Nathan
> I plan to release every game on a simple text user interface too, but that's
> lagging at the moment. The plain text interface is really meant for
> people who use text readers and want a simple keyboard interface.
And how about for people who don't use Microsoft software?
James Jolley
And also, will we be expected to pay the same price for half the featureset?
David C.
We're going to use mono for a Linux terp. The Mac terp is still under
consideration.
David C.
David C.
Yes. A year or so after each game is released there will likely be a
second release at a reduced rate.
The price isn't set because of the UI. It's set because of how I value
the software in relation to my target market. Where I can accomodate
the IF community, I will try, but the benefits to the community aren't
going to be in discounted games. If I succeed, it will lead to a wider
audience for IF and probably more authors writing free games. It will
also potentially lead to partnerships with authors that have a great
deal of notoriety on their own and their published games will be
directly appealing (and targeted) to the IF community.
It's like a mantra. I started this a long time ago. I don't plan to
quit tomorrow. It's a process. We have to build the company, the
audience, everything from the ground up. I really want everyone here
to take a very long term view of Textfyre. If you don't like what you
see today, trust me, you will like what you see eventually. It's just
going to take time. I know what the expectations of the IF community
are as well as anyone. I can't meet them all today. But I will try to
meet most, if not all of them over time. I have a deep affection and
loyalty to the hobbyist side of IF and that will never change.
David C.
Ron Newcomb
> We have to build the company, the
> audience, everything from the ground up. I really want everyone here
> to take a very long term view of Textfyre. If you don't like what you
> see today, trust me, you will like what you see eventually. It's just
> going to take time.
Well put.
And we're happy* to help you out with Textfyre's growing pains.
-R
*happy, like Hamlet is "fun".
James Jolley
That's fair. I was only thinking that for blind users not being able to
see the flashy UI, the price could be looked at. You've explained
yourself though and that's fine.
best
-James-
Ron Newcomb
On the subject, Dave, has Textfyre looked at schools for the visually
impaired? Seems like they'd be even more enthusiastic customers than
regular schools.
stuffisthings
is very well-polished and should be satisfying for its target audience
(I actually found it pretty enjoyable, and I have zero interest in
young adult fiction; I don't even like Harry Potter). I feel like a
lot of the griping about the interface is unjustified -- except for
the technical bits, which of course should be fixed, and the fact that
the game ought to be released in standard format for users with
accessibility issues as well as "purists."
Remember that this is a *newsgroup* about *text adventures* and thus
quite far from the computing mainstream. I'd also like to remind
everyone that the VAST MAJORITY of computer users today, including
adults, have NEVER used or even seen a command-line interface. The
whole concept is alien to most people, and especially to people born
after the advent of the GUI. The closest association most people have
for a screen of text followed by a blinking cursor where you can type
something is a word processor, which immediately connotes school/work,
not fun. Thus, I think it was well worthwhile to implement a visually
slick interface that communicates the idea of "reading a story," not
"writing a book report." Naturally, there is room for improvement -- I
found the font a tad hard to read, and I have decent eyesight and
spend all day staring at a computer; plus the aforementioned technical
issues. But I commend the developers for focusing on their target
audience, not on appeasing the skeptics in the IF community.
That said, I did notice a couple of very minor bugs in the game itself
(possible minor spoilers):
- In the market sequence, I did manage to get myself stuck at the end,
when you apparently only have about 3 turns to disguise your
appearance and escape. I ended up making a wrong turn and locking
myself out of the solution, forcing a restart. Since this is the very
first bit of the game, it should probably be a good deal more
forgiving. Before reading the clues, I assumed that I actually needed
to somehow change my appearance, climb the pole, and slide down before
being spotted, which seemed impossible.
- I encountered a strange bug on top of the pole after acquiring the
cloak. The first time around I had used "loop cloak northeast," which
worked fine. The second time the parser asked "Do you mean your old
gray cloak or the green silk cloak?" I tried "old," "gray," "old
cloak," "gray cloak," but the parser was never able to understand. I
don't remember how I ultimately convinced it, but it was a pain.
Personally I don't see the benefit of having four different wires you
can slide down; this only makes escaping from the market impossible if
you go down the wrong one and end up on the wrong side of the market,
and potentially confuses the parser as well. In fact, since getting
the green cloak requires the player to have already figured out that
the gray cloak can be used to slide down the wire, an understanding
rule to just assume they mean the gray cloak the second time would
probably be in order.
- A minor one, but in the description of the hat stall the italics on
one word ("sappan," I think) are not correctly terminated and the
first 3-4 words of the next sentence are also italic.
- Attempting to go north on the part of Commerce Street with the
mansions fails with no explanation:
>n
>
This could be VERY confusing for new users, who would assume that they
successfully went north.
Finally, I have terrible spacial sense and a graphical map of the
Grubber's Market would have helped a lot (for some reason I have
special trouble dealing with northeast/southwest directions). I
imagine that young people who never use compass directions in their
day-to-day lives would have similar issues. An onscreen compass would
also be a wonderful addition. It could even help kids with their
geography! I mean, I'd be willing to bet most teenagers couldn't point
to "Southeast Asia" on a map...
Hope that helps, and I wish you guys a lot of luck in this endeavor,
especially if it leads to someday being able to pay recognized authors
to do more big and/or really tightly implemented games. Have you also
considered the sizable mobile market? With more and more phones
offering app stores, I bet a lot of people would be willing to pay $2,
$3, or $5 for a short, well-crafted text game. Add some simple
graphics to the mix and I could almost guarantee it. (I'm secretly
hoping for an iPhone-driven graphic adventure resurgence.)
stuffisthings
Do you mean the 3% or so of Earth's 1.2bn-ish computer users who run
MacOS, or the infinitesimal percentage who so dislike the company that
they avoid them on principle? I'm sure those people would be a
valuable market, given their attitude towards paying for software...
James Jolley
Certainly. I got into IF in school myself. We had a computer club at
the time and this work called "beyond the titanic"
Poster
> This is not a perhaps a complete well-organized review, but I
> thought it might be helpful to anyone who's deciding whether to
> purchase the game.
>
> Thanks to Andrew for pointing out that the Mac version was available.
> I downloaded and played this morning, and just completed it a little
> while ago, reaching what I believe is the only possible ending, a
> cliffhanger for the next episode. I have not gone back and explored
> other avenues of play, nor will I given the current problems with
> performance and saved games.
>
> Without any personal knowledge of the development process, I think
> building a new player, particularily using Silverlight, was a mistake.
Oh geez. Microsoft's Silverlight? *vomits* I'm rooting for Textfyre's
success (and not just to stick it to all the R*IF naysayers :) ) but
that's just icky.
> The book-style interace is an interesting idea, but turns out to be
> much more annoying than a scroll-buffer. Cut/past and scroll-wheel
> support would have been nice. The only place I saw that it added value
> over pre-existing tools were the clickable Invisiclues-style hints.
>
> For reference, I played the game on a Mac with a slower Core 2 Duo CPU,
> and saw serious performance problems. It seems that the game slowed
> down as I played, so that by the end it took about a half second for
> each keystroke to register. Processing delays can be tolerable, but
> painful typing isn't. Save/restore was problematic. Silverlight seems
> to allow a limited space for saved games, and I was only able to store
> three. The fourth appeared to work, but hung on restore, as did a
> later save attempt. A different restore attempt left me with the
> transcript window permanently open over my game.
Hmm. This is what I run also and it's not that old of a machine. Well,
if they ever need testing on such a beast I guess they know who to
contact eh?
--
Poster
www.intaligo.com I6 libraries, doom metal, Building
sturmdrangif.wordpress.com Game development blog / IF commentary
Seasons: fall '09 -- One-man projects are prone to delays.
Nathan
I shouldn't feed trolls, but let me be clear:
1. IF is a niche market.
2. The percentage of the community running free (as in freedom)
operating systems seems to be higher than that of computer users as a
whole.
It seems obvious that platform independence should be a greater
concern for an IF company than for other software publishers. And we
already have excellent cross-platform IF systems. I miss the good old
days; I would love to see commercial IF make a comeback--and I would
eagerly pay for it--but I'm extremely bothered by the idea that I
should have to install Mono/Moonlight to play a text game. That
software is far too encumbered; I won't touch it.
Now, personally, I don't hate Microsoft. I used to buy their software.
QuickBASIC 2.0 was very good in its day, and MS-DOS 3.3 was the best
operating system I ever saw run in 640K. Frankly, I wish they had
never lost their old ideals. But they just don't make good stuff
anymore, and I care too much about my data, my privacy, my freedom,
even my hardware to run Windows, Internet Explorer, .NET, or anything
else they make.
I think I understand David's plea for patience. Of course Textfyre
needs sales and publicity--as well as more investors, it seems--in
order to become what we would hope. But if they stick to a platform
that is against my principles, I regretfully will not become a
customer.
stuffisthings
> I shouldn't feed trolls, but let me be clear:
Sorry, I guess that was a fairly snide comment, but I hoped it would
get the point across succinctly.
> 1. IF is a niche market.
> 2. The percentage of the community running free (as in freedom)
> operating systems seems to be higher than that of computer users as a
> whole.
The whole idea, I think, is to *break out of* that niche market, which
means focusing on the majority of computer users.
> It seems obvious that platform independence should be a greater
> concern for an IF company than for other software publishers. And we
> already have excellent cross-platform IF systems. I miss the good old
> days; I would love to see commercial IF make a comeback--and I would
> eagerly pay for it--but I'm extremely bothered by the idea that I
> should have to install Mono/Moonlight to play a text game. That
> software is far too encumbered; I won't touch it.
Fair enough, but I believe they've indicated that they would release a
"text version" of the game, which I assume would mean the I7/Glulx
file. If I'm right about this then this whole silly "eww,
Silverlight!" debate is moot. I would love to see the good old days of
Lucasarts adventures return, but I wouldn't begrudge the game
companies for not sticking to the SCUMM engine.
> Now, personally, I don't hate Microsoft. I used to buy their software.
> QuickBASIC 2.0 was very good in its day, and MS-DOS 3.3 was the best
> operating system I ever saw run in 640K. Frankly, I wish they had
> never lost their old ideals. But they just don't make good stuff
> anymore, and I care too much about my data, my privacy, my freedom,
> even my hardware to run Windows, Internet Explorer, .NET, or anything
> else they make.
I'm with you to an extent -- as a Web designer, I spend several hours
each day cursing Internet Explorer, and from what little I've seen I'm
not a big fan of Silverlight. But the REASON I spend hours cursing IE
is because the Web sites I design *have* to work correctly on it,
because that is what the vast majority of Internet users use. If I
told my clients "Sorry, I only design sites for standards-compliant
browsers," they would rightly fire me. It's not a direct metaphor,
maybe, but asking a typical computer user to pay $25 for something and
then saying "OK, now download and configure one of these
interpreters..." and then having to support the game on all those
interpreters would be a much bigger burden for both the customer and
the company, on balance, than a Silverlight app that, while maybe
clunky, is straightforward to set up and run. I am young enough to
have had Windows-based computer classes in high school, and simply
starting up and configuring the program we were going to use could
consume up to 1/3 of the class time. I imagine youngins today are a
little more savvy, but a smooth and simple startup process would be a
big selling point in an educational setting. Also keep in mind my
earlier point that the vast majority of computer users today have
NEVER seen or used a command-line interface -- wheras the visual
"book" metaphor needs little or no explanation.
> I think I understand David's plea for patience. Of course Textfyre
> needs sales and publicity--as well as more investors, it seems--in
> order to become what we would hope. But if they stick to a platform
> that is against my principles, I regretfully will not become a
> customer.
Let's run the numbers: by quick calculation, for Textfyre to actually
run as a company with enough money to pay people to devote significant
time to their projects, I estimate that they'd need to sell something
like 5,000-10,000 units a year* -- tiny by commercial video game
standards. But how big a share of this does the "IF community"
represent? 100 units? 1,000? And what percentage of these potential
customers are so allergic to Microsoft that they would never run a
Silverlight app? And how much time and resources would it take to
appease them (keeping in mind that, in order to be even remotely
profitable, each hour of dev time ought to equate to at least one unit
sold)? More importantly, how many people in the IF community would
NEVER buy the game, not because of moral or philosophical or economic
objections, but simply because it doesn't interest them (I would put
myself in this category...)? Realistically, the IF community, at least
in economic terms, is probably worth about as much to Textfyre as a
single large middle-school computer lab, and while there is only one
IF community, there are more than 120,000 schools in the United States
alone... And ultimately, the more time they save by using dumb clunky
annoying Silverlight, the more time they have to devote to actually
making games. Think of it like a writer of static fiction distributing
their work electronically in PDF format rather than a .TXT file. It
would certainly please more people than it alienates.
* = 2-5 FTEs
David C.
> and saw serious performance problems. It seems that the game slowed
> down as I played, so that by the end it took about a half second for
> each keystroke to register. Processing delays can be tolerable, but
> painful typing isn't. Save/restore was problematic. Silverlight seems
> to allow a limited space for saved games, and I was only able to store
> three. The fourth appeared to work, but hung on restore, as did a
> later save attempt. A different restore attempt left me with the
> transcript window permanently open over my game.
All of these issues have been resolved and downloads are available to
existing and future customers. The latest version, v1.06, was pushed
last night. We implemented a user settings page to allow the user to
select both the font (from a handful of standard fonts), the font
color, and the background color. We removed the Goudy font as it was
the major memory leak culprit. We fixed the save process and allow you
to extend diskspace if needed. We fixed the keyboard lag problem too.
The game runs in 32MB on Windows and 200MB on OS X (Intel Macs only
for now).
We're also working on a Windows (non-Silverlight) version that more
matches what the community is used to as well as a console version
that works well with text readers.
David C.
S. John Ross
> color, and the background color. We removed the Goudy font as it was
> the major memory leak culprit.
Looks like it was also the source of the (serious, hideous, eye-
grating, sucking-blood-out-of-the-eyeballs, then ripping out the rest
of the eyes and just repeatedly raping the eyesockets) legibility
problems I was experiencing with the online demo, because those
problems are gone, gone, gone in the new implementation, so I can
finally give it a try! Huzzah :)
What kind of effed-up font WAS that thing? A font springing a
program's memory leak? Scary. I hope the font foundry has been
notified and they're doing something about the license fees and/or
providing a repaired version.
Ron Newcomb
I'll say this for commercial ventures: they get their shit fixed
quick. None of this "sometime in the next few months when I have
time" nonsense the rest of us [must] do.
Thanks, Dave.
Conrad
>
> I'll say this for commercial ventures: they get their shit fixed
> quick. None of this "sometime in the next few months when I have
> time" nonsense the rest of us [must] do.
Indeed. The profit motive motivates.
C.
Alan De Smet
good game, but not a great one. If it was free, I would give it a
medium recommendation, but it's a harder call at $25. I plan on
purchasing the sequel, which I suppose is an endorsement in itself.
For my full blathering thoughts, I posted a longer review on my web
site.
http://www.highprogrammer.com/alan/rants/reviews/video_games/if/jt1-secret-letter.html
My wife posted her own review which considers the themes and plot in
more depth than I did.
http://www.tinyurl.com/toresal-review