[Once and Future] all it's cracked up to be?
Michael Gentry
am not all that thrilled with Once and Future.
I'm not bitter about the money. I've paid more money for games that were far
worse, and I'm happy to show my support to CMP. What I'm talking about is a
serious case of disappointed expectations. This game was very extensively
hyped, and I realize that extensive hype will naturally breed a few
disappointments. But still... the author worked on this game for *five
years*, and he came up with...this.
(Notice: I did not type a "...*this*?!?" dripping with italicized sarcasm
and contempt. I typed a quiet "...this." A confused and disappointed
"...this." I don't hate this game. I want you to remember that in the
paragraphs to come.)
Once and Future is, to me, a thoroughly mediocre game. The writing is decent
but nothing to rave about. The story, insofar as there is a story, is thin
and superficial.
My heart sank as I read the boilerplate introduction to my quest. King
Arthur has been "watching me for a long time now"? I've been, for some
reason, "chosen"? I'll grant you that taking that hand grenade was a pretty
brave thing to do, but surely mine was not the only act of heroism in the
entire Vietnam War? Suddenly I must prevent an unspecified "grievous fate."
What fate? Why me? Why Arthur? What reason do I have to care about any of
this? Arthur tells me, "I'm sure I don't need to spend time answering silly
questions." Uh, sure you do, Kevin. You had five years, after all.
So now I'm on Avalon, and it appears I have a shopping list: one sword, one
belt, one scabbard. I feel thrown back to my Zork treasure-hunting days; all
I need is a trophy case to put everything in. I dutifully grab pencil and
paper and start exploring, and soon I have mapped out a fairly generic
fantasy realm containing all the requisite biomes -- forest, lake, mountain,
wasteland, beach -- and a random assortment of doodads scattered haphazardly
about.
Some things I was unpleasantly surprised to find in Once and Future:
- Scads of "filler" rooms that have no apparent purpose other than to bloat
the map. Out of 61 rooms (so far) I have discovered about 23 in which I can
do something interesting. That's just barely over 1/3. Whole lot of space;
not much to do.
- A rigidly grid-like layout for the outdoor map of the island...and yet,
for some reason, the "diagonal" directions (nw, sw, se, ne) are not
implemented.
- Rooms that are charged with atmosphere, and yet seemingly placed without
any regard to geographical or narrative context.
- Cardboard NPCs with only a meagre handful of conversation responses, no
reason for being where they are, and no goals or motivations other than
simply standing there until, I suppose, you show or give them the right
doodad.
- Puzzles that require trial-and-error experimentation to solve, but kill
you if you guess wrong.
- Parsing bugs. Lots of parsing bugs. My favorite so far is the enigmatic
response to THROW SELF ON GRENADE.
- Mimesis-bruising in-joke references to old Infocom games. (Had Zork even
been published at the time of the Vietnam War?)
...and so forth. The feelies are nice, yes, but the feelies aren't the game.
The scope is very big, yes, but all it really takes to make a big game is a
lot of patience. And finally, there just isn't anything gripping about this
game at all. I have no sense of story, no sense of my own character, no
sense of anything *happening*. I'm just blundering around with a suit of
platemail on over my army fatigues, wondering where I should play this
flute.
If I had judged this game in this year's IF competition, I would have given
it a solid 5, time limit notwithstanding.
I've been looking through some of the "help me" posts from people who've
gotten farther than me, and I don't see much evidence that it will get any
better. Lots of mechanistic, plotless puzzles, many of which are buggy.
I haven't finished the game. In fact, I feel like although I've covered a
whole lot of ground, I've really hardly started. If the game really does get
better further along, please let me know. I'll feel a little better if it
turns out that the game simply takes time to get rolling, although I will
still maintain that the game takes *much* too long to get there.
Feel free to debate this with me; I'm very interested to hear what others
think. Some will probably argue that the game has nostalgia value, or that
it is very good "for what it is." Unfortunately, "what it is" (so far) is a
genre of game that was dying out even before Infocom had gone belly-up. I
would really like to see Cascade Mountain Publishing turn into a successful
business venture, and for that reason alone I'm not sorry I bought the game.
But I predict that CMP will not last long unless they start publishing works
more interesting, more original, and more ground-breaking than this one.
-M.
================================================
"If you don't eat your meat, you can't have any pudding.
How can you have any pudding if you don't eat your meat?"
William Lash
Michael Gentry <edr...@concentric.net> wrote:
>Okay. I'm going to be the first person, I guess, to step up and say that I
>am not all that thrilled with Once and Future.
>
>but nothing to rave about. The story, insofar as there is a story, is thin
>and superficial.
>
>My heart sank as I read the boilerplate introduction to my quest. King
>Arthur has been "watching me for a long time now"? I've been, for some
>reason, "chosen"? I'll grant you that taking that hand grenade was a pretty
>brave thing to do, but surely mine was not the only act of heroism in the
>entire Vietnam War? Suddenly I must prevent an unspecified "grievous fate."
>What fate? Why me? Why Arthur? What reason do I have to care about any of
>this? Arthur tells me, "I'm sure I don't need to spend time answering silly
>questions." Uh, sure you do, Kevin. You had five years, after all.
I think I will reserve any judgement about these until I finish the
story. The story may very well explain why you were chosen, etc. I
guess I kind of like stories that have heros who didn't realize they
were being heroic, so I may end up satisfied with the overall story in
the end. I really won't know till the end.
It sounds as if I have gone some places that you haven't yet, and I
will say that the Avalon section of the game hasn't been as interesting
for me as some of the other sections.
>
>So now I'm on Avalon, and it appears I have a shopping list: one sword, one
>belt, one scabbard. I feel thrown back to my Zork treasure-hunting days; all
>I need is a trophy case to put everything in. I dutifully grab pencil and
>paper and start exploring, and soon I have mapped out a fairly generic
>fantasy realm containing all the requisite biomes -- forest, lake, mountain,
>wasteland, beach -- and a random assortment of doodads scattered haphazardly
>about.
>
>Some things I was unpleasantly surprised to find in Once and Future:
>
>- Scads of "filler" rooms that have no apparent purpose other than to bloat
>the map. Out of 61 rooms (so far) I have discovered about 23 in which I can
>do something interesting. That's just barely over 1/3. Whole lot of space;
>not much to do.
I don't see this as a problem. I don't think that a 1 to 3 ratio of
rooms to "do something" rooms is too sparse.
>
>- A rigidly grid-like layout for the outdoor map of the island...and yet,
>for some reason, the "diagonal" directions (nw, sw, se, ne) are not
>implemented.
I agree with this to some degree, but then again, I have been able to
play the game without drawing a map, (well except for some small areas
where I needed to actually see what was going to happen when I did
things).
>
>- Rooms that are charged with atmosphere, and yet seemingly placed without
>any regard to geographical or narrative context.
I think I see your point. I think in some places this was done to indicate
that the area has a lot of magic to it, but it can be a little jarring.
>
>- Cardboard NPCs with only a meagre handful of conversation responses, no
>reason for being where they are, and no goals or motivations other than
>simply standing there until, I suppose, you show or give them the right
>doodad.
>
You may find better NPC interaction later, although in several places
it is pretty well scripted. This interaction does give a deeper
understanding of some of the characters involved.
>- Puzzles that require trial-and-error experimentation to solve, but kill
>you if you guess wrong.
>
Some of the puzzles are very good, some are as you describe. There is one
in particular that the only way I found to slove was by trial and error,
and on enough errors you die.
>- Parsing bugs. Lots of parsing bugs. My favorite so far is the enigmatic
>response to THROW SELF ON GRENADE.
>
Perhaps it is because I am using the Linux version of the tads runtime,
but I get a lot of [TADS ERROR XXXX] Wrong number of arguments ...
It would be nice it CMP provided a place to report bugs on the Web Site,
and also a way to read a list of bugs others have found.
>- Mimesis-bruising in-joke references to old Infocom games. (Had Zork even
>been published at the time of the Vietnam War?)
>
I kind of like these. I guess I have also never really thought that real
mimesis would make a game that I enjoy. I know a lot of other folks feel
differently.
>I haven't finished the game. In fact, I feel like although I've covered a
>whole lot of ground, I've really hardly started. If the game really does get
>better further along, please let me know. I'll feel a little better if it
>turns out that the game simply takes time to get rolling, although I will
>still maintain that the game takes *much* too long to get there.
It will be interesting to see how well you like the game once you have
finished it.
I am currently stuck in the game at a particular point, and have been
for a few days. This is frustrating, and right now I am betting that
I am going to be disappointed about why I am stuck. I think it will
probably be one of those things that I just can't phrase properly, or
don't understand what I need to do and when. That being said, I have
enjoyed the game so far. I don't think that it will change the way
we think about interactive fiction, but why should it?
Bill Lash
wel...@xnet.com
David Glasser
> Perhaps it is because I am using the Linux version of the tads runtime,
> but I get a lot of [TADS ERROR XXXX] Wrong number of arguments ...
Make sure that you are using the latest version of the TADS runtime. Be
thankful you are not on a Mac.
I have no right to complain (I got my copy of OaF for free, as it was
Dan Shiovitz's extra copy), but it shows that not enough attention was
paid to detail when the Mac executable at the top level of the disk
*quits before it gets to a prompt* with that error, because it was
accidently bound to an old MaxTADS runtime.
You'd think they'd at least check to see if it runs or not!
--
David Glasser gla...@NOSPAMuscom.com http://onramp.uscom.com/~glasser
DGlasser @ ifMUD : fovea.retina.net 4000 (webpage fovea.retina.net:4001)
Sadie Hawkins, official band of David Glasser: http://sadie.retina.net
"We take our icons very seriously in this class."
Dave G
>
> Okay. I'm going to be the first person, I guess, to step up and say that I
> am not all that thrilled with Once and Future.
I am actually quite relieved to see this post. You could not have
stated my opinions much better. I finished the game (although I'm not
certain I found the "best" ending) last week, and have been tempted to
post a lukewarm (not awful, just lukewarm) review of the game, pointing
out many of the things that you have mentioned. Yet I didn't quite feel
comfortable being the first not-all-that-thrilled voice regarding a game
on which many have pinned hopes as being the "rebirth of commercial
IF." Now, the preceding post has said almost everything I meant to say,
and so much better than I could have phrased it, I guess I feel
comfortable being the second such voice.
> Once and Future is, to me, a thoroughly mediocre game. The writing is decent
> but nothing to rave about. The story, insofar as there is a story, is thin
> and superficial.
What he said, in a nutshell. Once and Future was amusing; I enjoyed
playing it. However, it was instantly forgettable. The characters and
locations never felt "real"; the plot was standard "save the world" and
even at that, failed to make sense in the end (I still have no idea what
the heck the point of the whole "quest" was in the first place).
Mostly, Once and Future was a string of puzzles, most of which were
fairly straightforward. (In fact, this may be the only full-length game
I've ever finished without hints.)
Michael mentioned a recollection of Zork at an early point in the game;
I, too, was reminded of Zork often (and I don't mean the IF in-jokes; I
mean the style of play). But more so, repeatedly while playing OaF I
was reminded of the game "Time: All Things Come To An End", another game
that I enjoyed playing, but instantly forgot (and which has taken, I
think, more than its share of abuse on raif). These games boil down to
a series of puzzles (although OaF's are not, like Time's, ridiculously
impossible); have many one-use characters, and objects with one-line
descriptions; and jump the player nonsensically from one puzzle to the
next. (At one point, in response to the command "YES", by the time the
player gets another command prompt the PC has, utterly without warning,
been changed into an ox, spent the entire day plowing fields, and thrown
into a jail cell.) But I think what really made me feel the parallel to
"Time" is that both games gave me the impression that the author had
constructed a grand plot, with meaning and importance and well
fleshed-out characters, that built to a tremendous climax; but was
unable to successfully instill that plot into the final product.
Some examples of what I mean:
There are several points in OaF where the character suddenly has a
recollection of his father, or brother, or an event in his childhood.
And I feel as if the author intends for me to be "touched", involved, at
these moments -- yet I could not be more distant. I don't know the PC's
relatives or background, and the recollections aren't flashbacks,
they're simply terse reports of what happened. The end result of these
failed attempts is that I become even MORE detached from the game. The
author clearly has a fleshed-out PC in his mind, but the occasional "You
are reminded of when your father died of cancer" doesn't flesh out the
PC in MY mind.
Again the game seems to want to affect me through my PC's reaction to
the tragedies that his Vietnam buddies go through. Yet I have never had
a chance to interact with these buddies; I know that my PC cares about
them deeply only because I'm told, bluntly, that he does. But that
doesn't make ME care. And I was absolutely *stunned* when, near the end
of the game, I find that, apparently, I am utterly devoted to and in
love with a woman I met earlier in the game, have never spoken to, and
interacted with for all of TWO TURNS. This revelation came completely
out of left field -- which completely drives a wedge between player and
player character. Yet again it seems clear that the author has really
thought out all the relationships, that he's got a whole lot more story
going on in his head than he ever even began to put into the game.
If OaF were a movie, I'd guess that the director had to leave a lot of
material on the cutting-room floor. What's left just doesn't hang
together on its own.
> My heart sank as I read the boilerplate introduction to my quest. King
> Arthur has been "watching me for a long time now"? I've been, for some
> reason, "chosen"? I'll grant you that taking that hand grenade was a pretty
> brave thing to do, but surely mine was not the only act of heroism in the
> entire Vietnam War? Suddenly I must prevent an unspecified "grievous fate."
> What fate? Why me? Why Arthur? What reason do I have to care about any of
> this? Arthur tells me, "I'm sure I don't need to spend time answering silly
> questions." Uh, sure you do, Kevin. You had five years, after all.
Unfortunately, these questions are never answered. I think the most
jarring moment in the game is when I finally found out what my "ultimate
quest" was -- the historical event that I needed to change to set
everything right in Avalon and in my own world. To avoid spoilers, I
won't say what that action is, but I will say what my reaction to it
was: "What the hell?!" I have no earthly idea why changing this event
should have anything to do with -- well, with anything. (In fact, I
don't even see it as being a good thing in "my" world, and there is no
explanation of how it gives any benefit to -- or has any bearing upon --
Avalon or Faerie or Arthur or Merlin or Stonehenge...)
> Some things I was unpleasantly surprised to find in Once and Future:
>
> - Scads of "filler" rooms that have no apparent purpose other than to bloat
> the map. Out of 61 rooms (so far) I have discovered about 23 in which I can
> do something interesting. That's just barely over 1/3. Whole lot of space;
> not much to do.
-- Yes, this game has a ton of empty locations. It became simply
tedious to map the place (so I stopped doing so). There are several
grids of locations in the game, within which are only a few locations
where you can actually interact with anything in the room description.
(Example: a lake which is 9 locations - a 3 by 3 grid - yet there is
absolutely nothing to do at any of them except the edge where you enter,
and the center of the lake. Why not just have "edge of lake" and
"center of lake"? I don't get it.)
-- On the flip side, there are about a dozen "one-room dillies": the
only way out is to solve the one puzzle facing you. Many times these
are rooms that DO, normally, have exits; but for some unknown reason
they cease to exist until you solve the puzzle at hand. (Even the
game's "exits" command -- which, by the way, I like a lot -- would say,
at these times, "There are no exits", even though there are exits in the
room description.)
> - Rooms that are charged with atmosphere, and yet seemingly placed without
> any regard to geographical or narrative context.
-- Rooms that had precisely one thing to say. The land of Faerie was
almost entirely composed of rooms that each had one interesting
landmark. In such rooms, the only thing to do is "x landmark" and move
on. These interesting landmarks would work much better if they were
clustered together in fewer rooms, with some sort of transitional
landscape so they're not so disjointed; and even better if they were
clustered in rooms where there are also objects the player can interact
with, so their own non-interactivity doesn't come across so strongly.
> - Cardboard NPCs with only a meagre handful of conversation responses, no
> reason for being where they are, and no goals or motivations other than
> simply standing there until, I suppose, you show or give them the right
> doodad.
-- In particular, why is Mordred standing where he is?
-- The only exceptions to the limited "ask/tell" relationships with the
NPC's are the conversations between Merlin and the knights. What
annoyed me about these conversations is that the characters reply to
each other only every 6 or 8 turns -- and pressing "z" doesn't count as
a turn in this sense. So to hear the conversation, you have to keep
doing stuff (like go west then east repeatedly).
> - Puzzles that require trial-and-error experimentation to solve, but kill
> you if you guess wrong.
-- I don't remember any of these, actually. The puzzles were the game
-- not especially inspired, but I enjoyed them. (I happen to like
puzzle-y games.)
> - Parsing bugs. Lots of parsing bugs. My favorite so far is the enigmatic
> response to THROW SELF ON GRENADE.
-- Yep, I ran into that exact same response. I had expected that with
all the time put into OaF, it would be very thoroughly bug-free; yet I
ran into more "significant" bugs in this game than in any
non-competition game I've played. Bracketed TADS errors (I'm using the
interpreter that came on the CD), objects being moved out of (or into)
my hands to/from other locations, being able to go in directions that
I'm not supposed to be able to, my PC knowing about things that he
doesn't know yet since I apparently didn't do certain tasks in the
intended order, a smoldering corpse that doesn't appear in the room
description. And of course the bug that Whizzard posted about, which
prevents you from winning the game if you don't regularly read rgif.
(And I suppose, to be fair, I let some of this bother me more than it
normally would have, simply because I paid for the game and so am
expecting a more "professional" product.)
-- There are at least 3 points in the game where the PC, after using an
object, decides he doesn't need it, and tosses it aside (whereupon it
disappears). I understand that it's hard to code interaction between
all the different objects in a large game; but even the objects that are
left don't seem to have responses coded for them for any other than
their one intended use (why couldn't I use the hammer or chisel on
anything?). I know, I know, it's a large game, so some inventory
control needs to be in place. But the discarding objects thing breaks
mimesis. And also...
-- Is it really such a large game? For years it's been touted as being
absolutely HUGE. Yet even with all the fluff locations, I'm not sure
it's any larger than any other "full-size" game. Smaller than some,
even. I'm guessing there are around 50 takeable objects (though I'm
probably way off). The number of puzzles and overall playing time is
comparable to other games. Which, I should quickly add, is perfectly
fine -- it was a good length. It's just that, well, after all the hype
about its size, I feel like I've missed something.
> - Mimesis-bruising in-joke references to old Infocom games. (Had Zork even
> been published at the time of the Vietnam War?)
-- As a general rule I don't like i-f in-jokes, or i-f references of any
sort, in games. (Even something as harmless as the lantern on the coin
in Photopia bothered me.) If it's subtle, so the uninitiated player
won't even notice that the in-joke exists, that's somewhat acceptable
(the lantern-coin is an example). But OaF contains at least one in-joke
which is bound to completely confuse any player who doesn't "get it" --
and for a game which is supposed to be marketed to a broader audience,
that's unacceptable.
> ...and so forth.
> I haven't finished the game. In fact, I feel like although I've covered a
> whole lot of ground, I've really hardly started. If the game really does get
> better further along, please let me know. I'll feel a little better if it
> turns out that the game simply takes time to get rolling, although I will
> still maintain that the game takes *much* too long to get there.
-- My experience was that, all of a sudden, it's over.
My concern in posting any of this is that, with the degree to which OaF
was built up long before its release, it's all too easy to tear it
down. Posting a review in the context of a public assumption that Once
and Future will be (ahem) the "holy grail of IF", the natural tendency
is to point out why it's NOT all it's cracked up to be -- hence an
overly negative review. (I mean seriously, could any game have lived up
to the hype that Avalon received?) And, like many of you, I am hoping
for the sake of CMP that this game does meet with modest success. So I
hope -- in fact, I encourage it -- that someone more objective than me
can post a review of OaF starting from the assumption that OaF is a
thinly-plotted, uninvolving puzzlefest -- and then demonstrate why it's
more than I've made it out to be.
Michael Gentry
Dave G wrote in message <36587C...@bigfoot.com>...
>Michael Gentry wrote:
>> - Puzzles that require trial-and-error experimentation to solve, but kill
>> you if you guess wrong.
>
>-- I don't remember any of these, actually.
The one I ran into was the collapsing cave puzzle in the mousehole. The only
warning I got before entering was the mole being scared and telling me that
the cave was unstable. I suppose some people might have thought "Hmm, an
unstable cave; I'd better get a plank to prop up the ceiling before I go in
there, and what's more, I should test that board's sturdiness first." I
didn't. I didn't know there was an arch in that room; I didn't know the
keystone needed propping. And yet, go in without a board, and you die. Go in
without testing your board first, and you die. I'd be much obliged if anyone
can tell me how that puzzle can be reasoned out without prior knowledge.
>My concern in posting any of this is that, with the degree to which OaF
>was built up long before its release, it's all too easy to tear it
>down. Posting a review in the context of a public assumption that Once
>and Future will be (ahem) the "holy grail of IF", the natural tendency
>is to point out why it's NOT all it's cracked up to be -- hence an
>overly negative review. (I mean seriously, could any game have lived up
>to the hype that Avalon received?) And, like many of you, I am hoping
>for the sake of CMP that this game does meet with modest success.
One of the reasons I was uncomfortable posting this is because I didn't want
people to think I was tearing down OaF just for the sake of tearing it down.
It's precisely because I want CMP to be a success that I am giving as honest
a review as I can to this game. Failing to point out its shortcomings
doesn't help anyone -- not CMP, not Kevin Wilson, not anyone who wants to
see text IF come back as a marketable genre of computer game.
Al
> in the Secret Chamber?
>
> A curse has been placed on GKW for foisting this
> "game" on the unsuspecting public.
>
> A future review will be posted to SPAG.
>
> Tain't gonna be a nice one.
>
> Anyone else with bitches feel free to add to this thread.
>
Jason Compton
: One of the reasons I was uncomfortable posting this is because I didn't want
: people to think I was tearing down OaF just for the sake of tearing it down.
: It's precisely because I want CMP to be a success that I am giving as honest
: a review as I can to this game. Failing to point out its shortcomings
: doesn't help anyone -- not CMP, not Kevin Wilson, not anyone who wants to
: see text IF come back as a marketable genre of computer game.
I don't know Kevin very well but I'm getting to know Michael and I think
it's fair to say he can take constructive criticism. Plus which, any
businessman should be thrilled to have a one-time customer tell him what's
going to get him to come back for more.
--
Jason Compton jcom...@xnet.com
http://www.cucug.org/ar/ http://www.xnet.com/~jcompton/
Magnus Olsson
Michael Gentry <edr...@concentric.net> wrote:
>
>Dave G wrote in message <36587C...@bigfoot.com>...
>>Michael Gentry wrote:
>
>>> you if you guess wrong.
>>
>>-- I don't remember any of these, actually.
>
>warning I got before entering was the mole being scared and telling me that
>the cave was unstable. I suppose some people might have thought "Hmm, an
>didn't.
>I'd be much obliged if anyone
>can tell me how that puzzle can be reasoned out without prior knowledge.
Well, it can be reasoned out, in the sense that the steps of deduction
that you listed aren't totally unreasonable.
But you have a point, of course, in that it's *rather* unreasonable to
expect the player to solve it in his/her head before even venturing
into the room in question.
Personally, I got killed a couple of time in that room and I didn't
mind it very much. I think this is because I felt that it wasn't
totally unfair as long as there was a possibility that I could have
figured it out beforehand. (As opposed to puzzles that are
theoretically impossible to solve without knowledge from previous
lives).
But this is a matter of taste.
>>My concern in posting any of this is that, with the degree to which OaF
>>was built up long before its release, it's all too easy to tear it
>>down. Posting a review in the context of a public assumption that Once
>>and Future will be (ahem) the "holy grail of IF", the natural tendency
>>is to point out why it's NOT all it's cracked up to be -- hence an
>>overly negative review. (I mean seriously, could any game have lived up
>>to the hype that Avalon received?)
All this is true, and I think OaF is a victim of overhype, in the sense
that people are bound to have unrealistic expectations.
>One of the reasons I was uncomfortable posting this is because I didn't want
>people to think I was tearing down OaF just for the sake of tearing it down.
>It's precisely because I want CMP to be a success that I am giving as honest
>a review as I can to this game. Failing to point out its shortcomings
>doesn't help anyone -- not CMP, not Kevin Wilson, not anyone who wants to
>see text IF come back as a marketable genre of computer game.
This is true, but - and this is a big but - by reviewing it the way
you did, by just listing all the flaws you could find, without a single
redeeming feature (or, at best, some damning faint praise), gives
the impression that you really *hated* the game.
In fact, your review struck me as one of the most umitigatedly
negative reviews I've ever seen of a major piece of IF. IMAO, you
could just as well have written "this game sucks" and been done with
it.
And no, I don't think your criticism was very constructive. Just
listing all the flaws you can find in a work of this size isn't very
constructive; you can't just say "this didn't work, and this didn't
work, and this didn't work...", you have to discuss why it didn't
work. And, equally important, you should discuss what *did* work, or
(in the context of the general tone of your review) the only
conclusion the author (or prospective audience) can draw is that
*nothing* worked and you just listed the really bad parts.
Finally, two more concrete points:
1) The grid-like map and atmospheric locations without geographic
context: I agree with you as far as the Isle of Avalon itself is
concerned. But I think that the rest of the game was far better in
this regard.
2) The NPC's: true, there are a copule of (less important) NPC's with
no fepth of character and very limited conversation; NPC's that serve
more or less only as part of a puzzle. But what about the important
NPC's? The ones that carry on conversations between each other, and
who have meaningful answers for questions on more or less every single
object in the game? Are they also cardboard?
On reading your review, I get the feeling that you were so very
disappointed by the game not living up to the hype that you couldn't
find a single redeeming feature, and that the flaws you found utterly
destroyed any enjoyment you could get from the game. That may very
well be so. But I think you should be aware of the fact that your
review gives the impression of an utter assassination, rather than the
constructive criticism you claim it to be.
--
Magnus Olsson (m...@df.lth.se, zeb...@pobox.com)
------ http://www.pobox.com/~zebulon ------
Mike Berlyn
Michael Gentry wrote in message <736p2i$a...@journal.concentric.net>...
>Okay. I'm going to be the first person, I guess, to step up and say that I
>am not all that thrilled with Once and Future.
I'm sorry you're not thrilled with the product.
FYI: Before striking a deal with Kevin, I played through Once and Future
and, in some ways, thought it was better than some of the Infocom games. It
is a straight "quest" adventure, complete with a lot of object-oriented
puzzles, though. If you were expecting a breakthrough product as opposed to
an adventure game, I can understand your disappointment. As a farily
straight-forward adventure, though, I thought some of the writing was good,
while some of the writing was excellent, and the puzzles were logical and
consistent. The environments and writing sure went a long way to making *me*
feel something for the character, and for placing me into the environments.
YMMV.
Kevin is working hard to create a patch file to address the reported bugs,
and we will post this file on our site for downloading.
I appreciate the criticisms in this thread and think they're healthy,
right-spirited attempts to voice disappointment and concern. I can only ask
your patience as we continue to bring more products to market. Some will be
breakthrough products, some will be straight-forward adventures. One thing I
have learned is to place more importance on labeling the products, e.g.:
text adventure VS. interactive fiction.
Again, thank you for your feedback.
-- Mike Berlyn
mailto:mbe...@cascadepublishing.com
http://www.cascadepublishing.com
Michael Gentry
Magnus Olsson wrote in message <73bn1s$edu$1...@bartlet.df.lth.se>...
>And no, I don't think your criticism was very constructive. Just
>listing all the flaws you can find in a work of this size isn't very
>constructive; you can't just say "this didn't work, and this didn't
>work, and this didn't work...", you have to discuss why it didn't
>work. And, equally important, you should discuss what *did* work, or
>(in the context of the general tone of your review) the only
>conclusion the author (or prospective audience) can draw is that
>*nothing* worked and you just listed the really bad parts.
All right:
- The introduction to the quest (Arthur's speech) didn't work because the
"I've been watching you for a long time now; you've been chosen" gimmick is
overused and stale. It doesn't tell me anything about the character I'm
playing, nor why I should care that he's dead, nor why I should have any
stake in returning from the grave, nor why I should feel obligated to run
errands for King Arthur, nor why it must be me and no one else, nor why King
Arthur feels the need to have someone else fix the problem in the first
place (I'm no more or less dead than he is, after all). There is nothing to
engage my interest, no hook to pull me in.
It's true that, in many stories, the Hero Who Saves the World does not
discover until later exactly why or how he became a Hero. But there are
better ways to introduce such a story than by having the Deus ex Machina
walk up to you and say, "Congratulations, you're the Chosen One." At the
beginning of the game, I just didn't know enough about the character (even
with the feelies) to believe it. Hell, I had a hard time believing that he
was someone brave enough to throw his body on a grenade. I got the
impression from the feelies that he was just an ordinary kid scared shitless
in Vietnam.
It's okay to hold off answering the "why" until later; it's not okay to
step right up at the very beginning and say that the answer is "no
particular reason."
- Large amounts of filler rooms don't work because they are tedious,
serving only to drag the game out through excessive mapping, or to put undue
weight on the player's faculties if he's navigating by memory. It doesn't
make the game feel bigger; it just makes it feel more spread out and
unfurnished.
I will recant one thing I said earlier: it *does* take more than
patience to make a really huge game. But it doens't take much *more* than
that to implement four empty, connected rooms, give them nearly identical
descriptions and call them all "Dead Woodlands".
- Not implementing diagonal directions in an outdoor grid doesn't work
because it breaks mimesis. We know the diagonal directions exist -- there
are plenty of diagonal tunnels in the mousehole. So why can't I walk
southwest on a wide open heath? It was a bad oversight.
- Rooms that are placed without regard to context don't work because,
again, they bust up my mimesis. If this were meant to be a Myst-type game of
surreality I would be more forgiving, but this game deals with worlds that
have been, at least metaphorically speaking, pretty well mapped out already.
I expect to be drawn into a landscape that will contain fantastic and
mythological elements, but I also expect that world to be internally
consistent and true to its own imagery. When it is not, I cannot get a
mental grasp on the world I am supposed to be imagining; I am not drawn in;
I am not immersed.
As a concrete example, I cite the entire mousehole sequence. The first
few tunnels are not bad, but as soon as you dig through the first dirt wall
everything flies out of whack. Rooms and objects are described with
absolutely no regard for scale -- either these are all very tiny caves with
needle-like stalactites, or the author has simply forgotten that the player
is now a mouse. A gold necklace can be comfortably worn while mouse-sized or
while human-sized with equal ease, and it apparently grows with you if you
wear it during transition, although no mention is made of this. An entire
carrot, which would be about three times the size of an average mouse and
would take days to eat, can be devoured in a single command with the generic
response, "Yum, a carrot." There is no acknowledgment that a "plank" small
enough to be snapped by a jumping mole would be several times more flimsy
than your average popsicle stick, and no explanation for how such a stick
would be able to hold up the ceiling of a collapsing cave is ever offered.
And finally, the witch-dunking tub. I did like the witch-dunking tub. It
was an impressive witch-dunking tub, chillingly described. I particularly
liked the image of the wooden tear. But what reason it could possibly have
for being scaled to roughly five inches in length and stuck in the bottom of
a mousehole persistently eludes me. I cannot fathom why it is there, and I
gather from at least one post I've read that it in fact has no reason for
being there other than to provide atmosphere, and to be a repository for two
of the popsicle sticks.
It doesn't work because it is neither a consistent nor convincing world,
and it thus comes across as haphazardly designed.
- Cardboard NPCs do not work, period. My example here is Mordred. Mordred
is a very important figure in the King Arthur myth, with real emotions and
complex motives. I would not have been surprised to find that he was a major
villain in this game, perhaps even the perpetrator of the catastrophe that
the PC is trying to prevent. I *was* rather surprised to find him loitering
at the edge of a lake three rooms into the game, just sort of irritably
standing around as though waiting for a bus. His description is meager, his
intelligent responses few. He appears to know very little about himself or
his surroundings, is not in the least perturbed by my anachronistic dress,
and has nothing to say about my quest except to briefly gloat about how he
fouled up the Holy Grail. Once again: neither consistent (other than
consistently shallow) nor convincing. I am not drawn in. I'm not interested
in interacting with a small chunk of code with its short_name property set
to "Mordred." I'm interested in interacting with a character.
I am given to understand from several people that characters further on
in the game are much better defined. I'm quite glad to hear this; it
encourages me and provides me with more incentive to finish. I'm still sorry
to see Mordred crumble like a gingerbread man, though.
- Trial and error puzzles that kill you on a wrong guess don't work
because they force me to use SAVE and RESTORE in order to solve them, a
bullet through my mimesis. I did not fail the collapsing cave puzzle because
of faulty reasoning or bad comprehension or failure to read carefully; I
failed because I followed my natural adventurer's instinct: before one can
solve a puzzle, one must at least *see* that puzzle so as to understand what
the puzzle *is*. Unfortunately, the puzzle was a sucker-punch, specifically
targetting those who followed this instinct. This does not contribute to my
understanding of the game world or the story unfolding therein. It only
contributes to my understanding of which hoops the author wants me to jump
through.
- Parser bugs don't work because parser bugs are inexcusable. If there's
one thing that cannot be overhyped *enough* in a game that has been
developed as long as OaF has, it's a rock-solid parser. If CMP needed
another year to beta-test the thing, then they should have taken it. It's
not like their target audience is going anywhere.
- In-jokes just don't work for me. It's a matter of opinion. Some feel
differently, although I think it was a mistake to say that the granite wall
reminded the PC of a computer game he played when he was a kid, when the PC
would have been a kid circa 1958.
Now, here are things that I liked: I liked the archaic language in Arthur's
death scene in the very beginning. It was convincing. I liked the fact that
the author did his homework on the Arthur myth -- there are *still* people
writing Arthur stories who think that Excalibur was yanked out of an anvil,
arrgh. I like the idea of revisiting scenes from the PC's experience in
Vietnam. I like the idea of summoning the Arthurian heroes through the
sword, and the fact that solving the game requires an understanding of their
individual characters. I liked the descriptions of the wasteland and the
dead forest. I liked the girl trapped on the oracle's throne. I didn't like
the Mr. MediocreBar, but I did like the fact that you get to keep your
helmet, your fatigues, and your dogtag (singular because, of course, the
medics yanked the second one off -- nice detail) in the afterlife. I liked
the fact that the Holy Grail has been worked into the plot, and the fact
that the Author didn't shirk away from filling it with the Blood of Christ
(instead of making it a generic Really Nice Cup), because it's a wonderful,
evocative image that you can do a lot with. And I liked the feelies.
But on balance, it just wasn't enough for me because:
I would have liked to have seen a more story-oriented game. The legend of
King Arthur is a grand and richly detailed story. A story-less,
puzzle-oriented game sprinkled with elements of King Arthur is, in essence,
little different from a story-less puzzle-oriented game sprinkled with
elements of Quendor or Tolkien or Dr. Who or Dukes of Hazzard. I would have
liked to have felt a sense of something *happening* in the land of Avalon --
the magic is dying, or political intrigue is tearing the Faerie Court
asunder, or the old heroes are fading away because we in the real world no
longer remember them, or insert something better here -- something to
indicate that the PC was moving through an unfolding narrative. I would have
liked to have had more interaction with things that were obviously
important. I would have liked to have had more interaction with things that
obviously weren't that important. I would have liked to have seen less Greek
mythology. I would have liked for Mordred to have had more of a presence. I
would have liked for the gold necklace to have had a better description than
"glimmering". I would have liked to have been able to >THROW MYSELF ON THE
GRENADE.
>On reading your review, I get the feeling that you were so very
>disappointed by the game not living up to the hype that you couldn't
>find a single redeeming feature, and that the flaws you found utterly
>destroyed any enjoyment you could get from the game.
Following is, absolutely and without exception, the ONLY hype that I wanted
the game to live up to:
"You can't buy our software in stores, and we're proud of it! The
rehashed, same old tired stuff you've come to expect from publishers is not
our specialty -- our software designers like to stretch, to try new things,
to intrigue your minds as well as their own.
Aren't you tired of copy-cat, me-too software? Don't you want some
stimulation? Something above and beyond the norm? Something different?
Try our software and we'll promise you this: Our software will stretch
your mind, your experiences, and will immerse you in experiences other
publishers are afraid of trying."
That's lifted directly from the Cascade Mountain Publishing website. I think
it's a very worthy goal. I think it's a very *necessary* goal for CMP,
because if they don't strive for this goal in all their products, they're
not going to sell enough games to remain in business.
Once and Future is a solid, decently written, puzzle-oriented game, and a
lot of people on this newsgroup are very happy with that, and that is just
fine. Once and Future does not, however, try new things. It is neither above
nor beyond the norm. It does not intrigue me, immerse me, or stretch my
mind. It is not something I would imagine many companies would be "afraid"
of trying, except insofar as they'd be worried that it wouldn't make them
much money, and frankly I wouldn't blame them. I don't pretend to be an
expert in economics, but I'll bet you that this newsgroup, by itself, is not
enough of a consumer base to keep a company afloat for very long. And OaF
isn't going to convince anyone who isn't a dedicated fan of the genre that
text adventures are a great idea. It certainly doesn't convince me (myself a
dedicated fan) that I need to pay $25 for a text adventure when there are
better ones available for free.
I briefly considered directly addressing your characterization of my review
as "utter assassination," Magnus, but finally decided not to because I don't
much enjoy pissing into the wind. If my review hurt anyone's feelings, I am
sorry. I meant no offense to Kevin Wilson, and I'm pretty sure I meant none
to you. If anyone feels that my criticisms are not valid, they are free to
dismiss or dispute them. I only offer them because I want to see CMP
publishing games for some time to come, and I don't see that happening with
products like this one.
Adam Cadre
> BTW - I had to save and restore quite a lot with Blue Men and had to replay a
> whole section of it three times, because I had to have prior knowledge
> (acquired through replay) to solve one of the puzzles that would have left me
> permanently stuck.
>
> Not saying Blue Men isn't entertaining, though. Because it is.
>
> Doe :-) (Those who live in glass houses...)
I'm not at all a fan of this type of argument -- it seems to me to be not
too far away from the old chestnut, "If you don't like it, I'd like to see
you do better." As if I have to be a brilliant artist myself before I'm
allowed to point out that the anatomy or perspective in some drawing
isn't quite right. Or as if Roger Ebert were barred from saying anything
negative about the movies he reviews because thirty years ago he wrote
the screenplay to "Beyond the Valley of the Dolls." Critical and
creative faculties are quite separate. I've known many brilliant
literary scholars who would be hard pressed to write a passable short
story, and that makes their critical work not a whit less brilliant. By
the same token, many of my favorite songs have been written by people
whose thoughts on music could not possibly impress me less. That makes
those songs no less wonderful.
For what it's worth, I've found Michael Gentry's contributions to this
thread to be quite compelling. I also thought that Little Blue Men
rocked: one of the best games I've ever played. And I also have to
wonder, if people who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones, who
does that leave? The people who have offered the community no houses at
all, so that they can toss stones about with merry abandon with no fear
that anything of their own will come to harm?
-----
Adam Cadre, Anaheim, CA
http://www.retina.net/~grignr
Doeadeer3
In article <73d36u$a...@journal.concentric.net>, "Michael Gentry"
<edr...@concentric.net> writes:
>It certainly doesn't convince me (myself a
>dedicated fan) that I need to pay $25 for a text adventure when there are
>better ones available for free.
Not very many new games (of the more traditional IF variety) can compete with
the already existing Curses and Jigsaw. So I hope you don't mean that.
BTW - I had to save and restore quite a lot with Blue Men and had to replay a
whole section of it three times, because I had to have prior knowledge
(acquired through replay) to solve one of the puzzles that would have left me
permanently stuck.
Not saying Blue Men isn't entertaining, though. Because it is.
Doe :-) (Those who live in glass houses...)
Doe doea...@aol.com (formerly known as FemaleDeer)
****************************************************************************
"In all matters of opinion, our adversaries are insane." Mark Twain
Doeadeer3
In article <Pine.SOL.3.91.98112...@godzilla1.acpub.duke.edu>,
Adam Cadre <ad...@acpub.duke.edu> writes:
>For what it's worth, I've found Michael Gentry's contributions to this
>thread to be quite compelling. I also thought that Little Blue Men
>rocked: one of the best games I've ever played. And I also have to
>wonder, if people who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones, who
>does that leave? The people who have offered the community no houses at
>all, so that they can toss stones about with merry abandon with no fear
>that anything of their own will come to harm?
After ignoring/not responding to me (and others) for year(s) are you now going
to comment on my every comment?
This will make life VERY interesting. ;-)
I have not played O&F, but along with Magnus I felt Mr. Gentry's first "review"
of O&F was also a slash and burn. I don't remember him saying what he liked
about it either. However, he is entitled to his opinion and I am glad he
finally posted some of what he liked. Maybe O&F is a lousy game, maybe Michael
expected more because he paid for it, maybe both. Or maybe expectations were
way too high.
Although he is entitled to say what he likes, I also was offended at the highly
negative tone and hoped he would tone it down. Very few of the contest games
got that bad a reaction even though most of them were probably a lot worst.
And I am of the opinion that CMP won't work. Be nice if it would, but doubt it.
So, personally, I don't have anything riding on their success. Not even my
hopes.
Not out to do "battle" with anyone over anything, instead of saying what I just
said above, bluntly, I tried to say it indirectly/funnier by poking Michael in
the ribs with a feather. I usually am tongue in cheek, which might be good to
remember.
Doe :-)
Magnus Olsson
Michael Gentry <edr...@concentric.net> wrote:
>I briefly considered directly addressing your characterization of my review
>as "utter assassination," Magnus, but finally decided not to because I don't
>much enjoy pissing into the wind.
Well, actually, in this case it wouldn't really be pissing into the
wind. I realized after posting my reaction to your review that that
remark was a bit over the top; sorry for that.
What I meant was certainly not that your review was a deliberate
attempt to shoot down "OaF"; however, the impression I got from
reading it was that you absolutely hated OaF, that you couldn't find a
single redeeming feature in it but that you could find lots and lots
of absolutely show-stopping faults, etc, etc. Again, I'm sorry, but
however noble your intentions were, that's the impression it made on
me. "Assassination" is a bad characterization since it implies
malicious intent, but what I meant was that reviews like yours can
actually have the same effect as one.
> If my review hurt anyone's feelings, I am
>sorry. I meant no offense to Kevin Wilson, and I'm pretty sure I meant none
>to you.
This is not a matter of hurting people's feelings, really. I can't
speak for Whizzard, of course, and I don't really think that he needs
to be protected (to paraphrase Espen Aarseth) from the harsh reality
out there. I certainly don't think that Mike Berlyn or CMP need such
protection - CMP is a commercial outfit and must be prepared to be
treated more harshly than us amateurs.
I did get a bit upset, but that was not because you had hurt my
feelings, but rather because I think you were being unfair to a game
that I happen to think is a good game, *despite* its flaws (just for
the record, I agree with you about some of the flaws you've listed; in
other cases, I don't agree).
Clearly, our opinions differ as to the enjoyability of "OaF", and of
course I respect your opinions. I just felt I had to react to a review
that focused entirely on the game's flaws, while ignoring the good
sides, and doing so in a rather upset and accusatory tone, to boot - I
felt it gave a very skewed picture of the game.
Also, I stand by my remarks that just listing the flaws of a work:
"This doesn't work, that feature utterly stinks, etc" (yes, I know,
this is a caricature of your review) isn't very constructive
criticism. In the big flamewar/debate about harsh criticism after last
year's competition, somebody wrote that he'd been taught that
constructive criticism must include some praise. At the time, I was
inclined to dismiss that comment as softie nonsense; today, I'm more
inclined to agree. (Your amended review was much better in several
regards, by the way).
You may say that this is just the pot calling the kettle black. I've
written some pretty scathing reviews myself, haven't I?
Yes, I have. To this, I can only say mea culpa; I think I've learned
something since I wrote them. It's very very easy to write negative
criticism; it can also be fun, or at least relieving, to get your
frustration out of the system. But I really don't think it's good
practice to do so.
As for SPAG policy: I've so far never rejected a review for being too
one-sided or too negative. However, I might very well do so in the
future. I think the crucial point is not negativity, but
one-sidedness, but of course I'd feel rather silly rejecting a review
for being too nice to the author :-).
However, and for the record:
You - and everybody else - are very welcome to submit negative reviews
or OaF or any other game to SPAG; but if they're simply a list of
flaws, I may ask you to at least consider writing something about the
good sides of the game as well (or if the game really doesn't have
any redeeming features at all - such games exist - at least to
motivate why you're feeling this way).
>If anyone feels that my criticisms are not valid, they are free to
>dismiss or dispute them. I only offer them because I want to see CMP
>publishing games for some time to come, and I don't see that happening with
>products like this one.
I don't feel your criticisms are invalid, but rather that the way they
were delivered would increase the likelihood of their being dismissed,
or, which would be worse, simply discouraging poeple from writing IF
(rather than taking the criticism to heart and writing *better* IF).
To put it another way: if somebody writes a work of IF (or any other
creative work), and all the feedback they get is a list of things that
are terribly wrong with the work, without any mention of what's good
and what's work, they're not very likely to correct the errors -
they're far more likely just to conclude that the work was a dismal
failure that should be bureid and forgotten as quickly as possible.
So why don't I post a review of my own instead of attacking yours? you
may ask.
The answer is that I will, but I've reserved my opinions for SPAG #16,
which will be out in a few days. Have patience until then.
Magnus Olsson
response to your particular points. I'm not out to debunk you, or to
prove your arguments invalid. This is just discussion.
In article <73d36u$a...@journal.concentric.net>,
Michael Gentry <edr...@concentric.net> wrote:
>- Large amounts of filler rooms don't work because they are tedious,
>serving only to drag the game out through excessive mapping, or to put undue
>weight on the player's faculties if he's navigating by memory. It doesn't
>make the game feel bigger; it just makes it feel more spread out and
>unfurnished.
You're assuming that the rooms are there just as filler material, to
"make the game feel bigger". My impression is that they're there to
provide atmosphere and flesh out the game world - a very different
thing. Of course, in some places (especially some locations on Avalon
itself), the game doesn't suceed very well. But just filler - no, I
don't think so.
> I will recant one thing I said earlier: it *does* take more than
>patience to make a really huge game. But it doens't take much *more* than
>that to implement four empty, connected rooms, give them nearly identical
>descriptions and call them all "Dead Woodlands".
Now, this is quite a nasty thing to say. The implication is that the
author has more patience than talent. Is this really what you call
constructive criticism?
>- Not implementing diagonal directions in an outdoor grid doesn't work
>because it breaks mimesis. We know the diagonal directions exist -- there
>are plenty of diagonal tunnels in the mousehole. So why can't I walk
>southwest on a wide open heath? It was a bad oversight.
I agree with you here. The entire geography of Avalon is confusing,
and not just because of this. I would actually have liked *more*
"filler" rooms in some places, to make the transition between the different
sub-sections of the island less abrupt.
>- Rooms that are placed without regard to context don't work because,
>again, they bust up my mimesis. If this were meant to be a Myst-type game of
>surreality I would be more forgiving, but this game deals with worlds that
>have been, at least metaphorically speaking, pretty well mapped out already.
Come on - GKW's Avalon is to quite a large extent his own
creation. I'm sure that if he'd followed the existing literature, some
people (if not you) would have condemned the game for being too
derivative.
>I expect to be drawn into a landscape that will contain fantastic and
>mythological elements, but I also expect that world to be internally
>consistent and true to its own imagery. When it is not, I cannot get a
>mental grasp on the world I am supposed to be imagining; I am not drawn in;
>I am not immersed.
I think this is partly a problem with confusing geography, rather than
internal consistency, but, yes, OaF does suffer from the traditional
shortcoming of many adventure games, that of putting a lot of different
locations in close vicinity.
To be fair, I think OaF suffers from this to much less extent than most
similar games. But its world doesn't have the sense of unity that many
recent works have.
> As a concrete example, I cite the entire mousehole sequence. The first
>few tunnels are not bad, but as soon as you dig through the first dirt wall
>everything flies out of whack. Rooms and objects are described with
>absolutely no regard for scale -- either these are all very tiny caves with
>needle-like stalactites, or the author has simply forgotten that the player
>is now a mouse.
I think this is entirely in lione with the genre. Remember that this is
not a realistic caving trip; it's a mixture of myth and fairy tale.
>A gold necklace can be comfortably worn while mouse-sized or
>while human-sized with equal ease, and it apparently grows with you if you
>wear it during transition, although no mention is made of this.
For crying out loud, it's a maigcal necklace. Does everything have to
be spelled out in block capitals?
>An entire
>carrot, which would be about three times the size of an average mouse and
>would take days to eat, can be devoured in a single command with the generic
>response, "Yum, a carrot."
This does seem to be a real consistency problem.
> There is no acknowledgment that a "plank" small
>enough to be snapped by a jumping mole would be several times more flimsy
>than your average popsicle stick, and no explanation for how such a stick
>would be able to hold up the ceiling of a collapsing cave is ever offered.
Well, it was the stick that didn't break that could :-).
But I also had a problem with the "planks" - primarily because of a
different scale problem; I thought "plank" meant a human-sized plank,
not a mouse sized one, so I needed a hint even to try picking it up.
> And finally, the witch-dunking tub. I did like the witch-dunking tub. It
>was an impressive witch-dunking tub, chillingly described. I particularly
>liked the image of the wooden tear. But what reason it could possibly have
>for being scaled to roughly five inches in length and stuck in the bottom of
>a mousehole persistently eludes me. I cannot fathom why it is there, and I
>gather from at least one post I've read that it in fact has no reason for
>being there other than to provide atmosphere, and to be a repository for two
>of the popsicle sticks.
Suppose somebody has been doing a witch-hunt among the mice?
Remember, this is a fairy-tale world. Sorry if it doesn't work for
you, but it does for me.
> It doesn't work because it is neither a consistent nor convincing world,
>and it thus comes across as haphazardly designed.
What is convincing or not is of course entirely subjective.
But the world didn't strike me as more than marginally inconsistent
(and certainly more consistent than most fantasy games). I don't think
it's haphazardly designed at all, but maybe the author suffers a little
from the common fantasy syndrome of throwing too much into one world.
For me, these worldbuilding problems were a bit irritating at times,
especially on Avalon. But they never broke my suspension fo
disbelief. Obviously, YMMV.
>- Cardboard NPCs do not work, period.
You're awfully cathegorical, aren't you? And why are you singling out
OaF, when there's hardly an NPC in the entire IF corpus that isn't
cardboard?
I suppose your answer is "because the game was hyped as having very
well fleshed-out and deep NPCs"? It was, and I can understand your
disappointment. But OaF is rather uneven when it comes to NPC's, and I
think you're consistently passing judgment on it by its worst sides,
while ignoring the good ones. See below.
>My example here is Mordred. Mordred
>is a very important figure in the King Arthur myth, with real emotions and
>complex motives. I would not have been surprised to find that he was a major
>villain in this game, perhaps even the perpetrator of the catastrophe that
>the PC is trying to prevent. I *was* rather surprised to find him loitering
>at the edge of a lake three rooms into the game, just sort of irritably
>standing around as though waiting for a bus.
Mordred was a disappointment, yes. However, for me that disappointment was
outweighed by the NPCs I met further on.
> I am given to understand from several people that characters further on
>in the game are much better defined. I'm quite glad to hear this; it
>encourages me and provides me with more incentive to finish.
Wait a minute - you're saying that you haven't even *seen* the other
NPCs? In other words, you're condemning a game where you haven't even
*seen* more than a quarter of it? You're on very deep water, my friend.
Of course, if the first quarter of the game puts you off, this will
colour your perception fo the rest of the game, and you may not even
be willing to continue. Your criticism certainly remains valid criticism
of those parts you've seen.
But then YOU SHOULD SAY SO. I think it's overly harsh to condemn the rest
of the game when you haven't even met the major NPCs. At the very least,
you should give it the benefit of the doubt.
>- Trial and error puzzles that kill you on a wrong guess don't work
>because they force me to use SAVE and RESTORE in order to solve them, a
>bullet through my mimesis. I did not fail the collapsing cave puzzle because
>of faulty reasoning or bad comprehension or failure to read carefully; I
>failed because I followed my natural adventurer's instinct: before one can
>solve a puzzle, one must at least *see* that puzzle so as to understand what
>the puzzle *is*. Unfortunately, the puzzle was a sucker-punch, specifically
>targetting those who followed this instinct. This does not contribute to my
>understanding of the game world or the story unfolding therein. It only
>contributes to my understanding of which hoops the author wants me to jump
>through.
I think that this is a very individual thing. The puzzle didn't strike
me as particularly unfair or mimesis-breaking. This is of course no defence
for the puzzle ("the player's always right"), but I think it's very hard
to make puzzles that please everybody.
To go out on a limb, I think that as soon as you have a puzzle in a
game, it will break mimesis for *somebody*. And OaF is traditional IF
in the sense that it's a puzzle game with a story, not an interactive
story with puzzles.
>- Parser bugs don't work because parser bugs are inexcusable. If there's
>one thing that cannot be overhyped *enough* in a game that has been
>developed as long as OaF has, it's a rock-solid parser. If CMP needed
>another year to beta-test the thing, then they should have taken it. It's
>not like their target audience is going anywhere.
Here we agree: the game really needed more beta testing, especially in
terms of vocabulary. It's not just outright parser bugs, but I had
rather a lot of problems with missing vocabulary.
>- In-jokes just don't work for me. It's a matter of opinion. Some feel
>differently, although I think it was a mistake to say that the granite wall
>reminded the PC of a computer game he played when he was a kid, when the PC
>would have been a kid circa 1958.
I frankly don't understand what Whizzard was thinking of when he put
in that reference. Thinko?
>I would have liked to have seen a more story-oriented game. The legend of
>King Arthur is a grand and richly detailed story. A story-less,
>puzzle-oriented game sprinkled with elements of King Arthur is, in essence,
>little different from a story-less puzzle-oriented game sprinkled with
>elements of Quendor or Tolkien or Dr. Who or Dukes of Hazzard.
If you haven't played the entire game, you really aren't in a position
to judge the entire game in this respect. The story-oriented aspect
becomes more prominent further on (though it never takes over) and the
game is far from story-less.
Of course, if the lack of driving plot in the beginning prevents you
from getting involved, that's a valid criticism, but that's not what
you said.
>I would have liked to have been able to >THROW MYSELF ON THE
>GRENADE.
IIRC, "lie on grenade" works. Perhaps this is just a parser problem
(which should have been caught by beta testing)?
>Once and Future is a solid, decently written, puzzle-oriented game, and a
>lot of people on this newsgroup are very happy with that, and that is just
>fine. Once and Future does not, however, try new things. It is neither above
>nor beyond the norm. It does not intrigue me, immerse me, or stretch my
>mind.
Excuse me for pointing out the obvious, but this is a very far cry
from your earlier characterization of OaF as very mediocre.
Jason Compton
: the screenplay to "Beyond the Valley of the Dolls." Critical and
: creative faculties are quite separate. I've known many brilliant
: literary scholars who would be hard pressed to write a passable short
: story, and that makes their critical work not a whit less brilliant. By
John Updike has written some pretty authoritative stuff on the "Why
criticism is at least as good if not better than creativity" issue, and
while he happens to be both, they're still words to live by.
--
Jason Compton jcom...@xnet.com
www.xnet.com/~jcompton
David Thornley
Doeadeer3 <doea...@aol.com> wrote:
>
>In article <Pine.SOL.3.91.98112...@godzilla1.acpub.duke.edu>,
>Adam Cadre <ad...@acpub.duke.edu> writes:
>
>>For what it's worth, I've found Michael Gentry's contributions to this
>>thread to be quite compelling. I also thought that Little Blue Men
>
>of O&F was also a slash and burn. I don't remember him saying what he liked
>about it either. However, he is entitled to his opinion and I am glad he
>finally posted some of what he liked. Maybe O&F is a lousy game, maybe Michael
>expected more because he paid for it, maybe both. Or maybe expectations were
>way too high.
>
he expected. For years, we've been hearing about Avalon. It's the
first standard IF game in a long time to be released in a payware
format. Both of these raised expectations. Since this is a commercial
game that was many years in the making, it would be reasonable to expect
something comparable to the IF available for free that just appeared
at ftp.gmd.de along with a newsgroup announcement. My reading was
that Mr. Gentry liked O&F less than, perhaps, Curses or Anchorhead
or Jigsaw or Spider and Web.
>Although he is entitled to say what he likes, I also was offended at the highly
>negative tone and hoped he would tone it down. Very few of the contest games
>got that bad a reaction even though most of them were probably a lot worst.
>
I would be appalled at having a contest game taken apart that badly, but
this wasn't a contest game. The contest games arrive in an archive, and
the only thing they ask of us is that we play them and rate them. We
expect to find clunkers, but hope for touches of greatness (like
Photopia). We expect to find that commercial products are of high
quality.
>And I am of the opinion that CMP won't work. Be nice if it would, but doubt it.
>So, personally, I don't have anything riding on their success. Not even my
>hopes.
>
Agreed. On the other hand, they're acting like a real company, so I
see no harm in treating them as such. I think they would consider it
insulting if we quietly agreed the company was doomed and started
humoring it, like you might humor a six-year-old who won't have a seventh
birthday. Let's let CMP have its best shot, and that includes saying
where it succeed and where it fails.
--
David H. Thornley | These opinions are mine. I
da...@thornley.net | do give them freely to those
http://www.thornley.net/~thornley/david/ | who run too slowly. O-
Magnus Olsson
David Thornley <thor...@visi.com> wrote:
>In article <19981124012921...@ngol08.aol.com>,
>Doeadeer3 <doea...@aol.com> wrote:
>>
>>In article <Pine.SOL.3.91.98112...@godzilla1.acpub.duke.edu>,
>>Adam Cadre <ad...@acpub.duke.edu> writes:
>>
>>>For what it's worth, I've found Michael Gentry's contributions to this
>>>thread to be quite compelling.
For the record, I also found his contributions compellin, though I
disagree about some of them (see my detailed response to his
critique). What I was reacting against was rather the way he presented
his opinions in the first post.
I'm sorry if I overreacted in some ways. I just don't like it when a
game (or book, or film, or piece of music) that I liked (because I
liked OaF, despite its flaws) gets such - as I see it - undeservedly
rough treatment.
>>I have not played O&F, but along with Magnus I felt Mr. Gentry's first "review"
>>of O&F was also a slash and burn. I don't remember him saying what he liked
>>about it either. However, he is entitled to his opinion and I am glad he
>>finally posted some of what he liked. Maybe O&F is a lousy game, maybe Michael
>>expected more because he paid for it, maybe both. Or maybe expectations were
>>way too high.
>>
>I read it as saying that O&F wasn't a bad game, but nowhere near what
>he expected.
On second (or third, rather) reading, filtering out the emotions, and
especially after reading Michael's second post, I get the same
impression. However, my first reading of his first post was that he
was *very* disappointed and that he absolutely hated it.
>>Although he is entitled to say what he likes, I also was offended at the highly
>>negative tone and hoped he would tone it down. Very few of the contest games
>>got that bad a reaction even though most of them were probably a lot worst.
>>
>I would be appalled at having a contest game taken apart that badly, but
>this wasn't a contest game.
But very few games at all get taken apart that badly, at least not on
this newsgroup.
>We expect to find that commercial products are of high
>quality.
(...)
>Agreed. On the other hand, they're acting like a real company, so I
>see no harm in treating them as such. I think they would consider it
>insulting if we quietly agreed the company was doomed and started
>humoring it, like you might humor a six-year-old who won't have a seventh
>birthday. Let's let CMP have its best shot, and that includes saying
>where it succeed and where it fails.
However, let's not forget that GKW is still one of us. Just because
he's sold his game to a commercial publisher doesn't mean that he's
suddenly turned into an evil pachydermal capitalist, on whom we must
use the heavy artillery to make a point.
Remember also that this is hardly the first game for which we're being
asked for money. Sure, it's a full-blown commercial product, but there
used to be a lot of shareware games around with similar prices. Heck,
there still is one: "Losing Your Grip", with a similar (lower, but not
by an order of magnitude) pricing.
Considering the fact that OaF is still a one-man project (it would be
different if CMP had thrown a large staff of programmers at it, but
then it'd have a $50 price tag), together with the exceptionally high
quality of some freeware games (such as "So Far"; just to name one), I
don't think we can demand very much more from OaF than from freeware
games. We're paying mostly for packaging, distribution and the extra
goodies, not for game contents.
What perhaps gives us reasons to be disappointed is that OaF doesn't
live up to the hype.
But that's not the game's fault. And I think this is one of the things
that made me irritated about Michael's first post: he seems to be
blasting the game because it doesn't live up to the hype, rather than
because it doesn't live up to the standards you would expect if it
weren't so hyped. Call me childish, but I find that unfair.
y
Papanele
>- Mimesis-bruising in-joke references to old Infocom games. (Had Zork even
>been published at the time of the Vietnam War?)
Could someone please explain to me what on earth mimesis is??
- Elena
John Francis
many years, so my expectations probably match those of Micheal Gentry.
In article <73ecb5$e5g$1...@bartlet.df.lth.se>,
Magnus Olsson <m...@bartlet.df.lth.se> wrote:
>OK: instead of criticism of how you deliver your criticism, here's a
>response to your particular points. I'm not out to debunk you, or to
>prove your arguments invalid. This is just discussion.
>
>In article <73d36u$a...@journal.concentric.net>,
>Michael Gentry <edr...@concentric.net> wrote:
>>- Large amounts of filler rooms don't work because they are tedious,
>>serving only to drag the game out through excessive mapping, or to put undue
>>weight on the player's faculties if he's navigating by memory. It doesn't
>>make the game feel bigger; it just makes it feel more spread out and
>>unfurnished.
>
>You're assuming that the rooms are there just as filler material, to
>"make the game feel bigger". My impression is that they're there to
>provide atmosphere and flesh out the game world - a very different
>thing. Of course, in some places (especially some locations on Avalon
>itself), the game doesn't suceed very well. But just filler - no, I
>don't think so.
Well in that case it sounds as though, for at least one customer,
it didn't work at all, and even for you it failed in some places.
>
>> I will recant one thing I said earlier: it *does* take more than
>>patience to make a really huge game. But it doens't take much *more* than
>>that to implement four empty, connected rooms, give them nearly identical
>>descriptions and call them all "Dead Woodlands".
>
>Now, this is quite a nasty thing to say. The implication is that the
>author has more patience than talent. Is this really what you call
>constructive criticism?
But - it's presumably true, isn't it? We'd criticise HarryH if he did
this in a competition game, so I don't see why Whizzard should be spared
this complaint. But then, I feel that a game that asks for my money should
be held to a higher standard than one that merely asks for my time. From
some of the other postings I've seen not everybody shares this viewpoint.
>>- Not implementing diagonal directions in an outdoor grid doesn't work
>>because it breaks mimesis. We know the diagonal directions exist -- there
>>are plenty of diagonal tunnels in the mousehole. So why can't I walk
>>southwest on a wide open heath? It was a bad oversight.
>
>I agree with you here. The entire geography of Avalon is confusing,
>and not just because of this. I would actually have liked *more*
>"filler" rooms in some places, to make the transition between the different
>sub-sections of the island less abrupt.
>
>>- Rooms that are placed without regard to context don't work because,
>>again, they bust up my mimesis. If this were meant to be a Myst-type game of
>>surreality I would be more forgiving, but this game deals with worlds that
>>have been, at least metaphorically speaking, pretty well mapped out already.
>
>Come on - GKW's Avalon is to quite a large extent his own
>creation. I'm sure that if he'd followed the existing literature, some
>people (if not you) would have condemned the game for being too
>derivative.
That's not what he's saying, and you (should) know it. But just in case:
GKW chose to set his game in the conventional semi-realistic setting,
rather than in the more surreal landscapes of a Myst-type game. And he
failed to provide the internal consistency such a seting demands.
>>Once and Future is a solid, decently written, puzzle-oriented game, and a
>>lot of people on this newsgroup are very happy with that, and that is just
>>fine. Once and Future does not, however, try new things. It is neither above
>>nor beyond the norm. It does not intrigue me, immerse me, or stretch my
>>mind.
>
>Excuse me for pointing out the obvious, but this is a very far cry
>from your earlier characterization of OaF as very mediocre.
Excuse me? Doesn't 'mediocre' *mean* 'neither above nor beyond the norm' ?
Magnus Olsson
John Francis <jfra...@dungeon.engr.sgi.com> wrote:
>Disclaimer: I haven't played A&F (yet). But I have followed r*if for
>many years, so my expectations probably match those of Micheal Gentry.
>
>
>In article <73ecb5$e5g$1...@bartlet.df.lth.se>,
>Magnus Olsson <m...@bartlet.df.lth.se> wrote:
>>response to your particular points. I'm not out to debunk you, or to
>>prove your arguments invalid. This is just discussion.
>>
>>In article <73d36u$a...@journal.concentric.net>,
>>Michael Gentry <edr...@concentric.net> wrote:
>>>- Large amounts of filler rooms don't work because they are tedious,
>>>serving only to drag the game out through excessive mapping, or to put undue
>>>weight on the player's faculties if he's navigating by memory. It doesn't
>>>make the game feel bigger; it just makes it feel more spread out and
>>>unfurnished.
>>
>>You're assuming that the rooms are there just as filler material, to
>>"make the game feel bigger". My impression is that they're there to
>>provide atmosphere and flesh out the game world - a very different
>>thing. Of course, in some places (especially some locations on Avalon
>>itself), the game doesn't suceed very well. But just filler - no, I
>>don't think so.
>
>it didn't work at all, and even for you it failed in some places.
That's true. What's your point? I wasn't trying to debunk Michael's
argument, or to prove him wrong; merely contrasting my impression
of OaF with his.
>>> I will recant one thing I said earlier: it *does* take more than
>>>patience to make a really huge game. But it doens't take much *more* than
>>>that to implement four empty, connected rooms, give them nearly identical
>>>descriptions and call them all "Dead Woodlands".
>>
>>Now, this is quite a nasty thing to say. The implication is that the
>>author has more patience than talent. Is this really what you call
>>constructive criticism?
>
>But - it's presumably true, isn't it? We'd criticise HarryH if he did
>this in a competition game, so I don't see why Whizzard should be spared
>this complaint.
The complaint should certainly be made. There's just no need to insult
the author in the process, whether he's called Kevin or Harry.
If I haven't made myself clear enough: complaining about the geography
of Avalon and trying to explain why it doesn't work for you is constructive
criticism. Accusing the author of putting in lots of filler rooms because
he hasn't got the talent to do it properly is pretty darn rude. Criticism
is *not* about taking out your disappointment in something that doesn't
live up to your expectations by insulting the author, however tempting
it may be (I know: been there, done that).
> But then, I feel that a game that asks for my money should
>be held to a higher standard than one that merely asks for my time.
But it's surely not OK to insult the author over mere matters of taste?
>>>If this were meant to be a Myst-type game of
>>>surreality I would be more forgiving, but this game deals with worlds that
>>>have been, at least metaphorically speaking, pretty well mapped out already.
>>
>>Come on - GKW's Avalon is to quite a large extent his own
>>creation. I'm sure that if he'd followed the existing literature, some
>>people (if not you) would have condemned the game for being too
>>derivative.
>
>That's not what he's saying, and you (should) know it.
I know that's not what he's saying; I'm just not sure of what he really
means.
>But just in case:
>GKW chose to set his game in the conventional semi-realistic setting,
>rather than in the more surreal landscapes of a Myst-type game. And he
>failed to provide the internal consistency such a seting demands.
I don't think this necessarily follows to the degree that Michael
seems to have expected. Sure, if you mean that the world isn't a dream
world but should have some internal consistency I'm with you. But I can't
see where it's been prescribed that games set in Avalon must not have
witch-dunking tubs placed inside mouseholes.
>>>Once and Future is a solid, decently written, puzzle-oriented game, and a
>>>lot of people on this newsgroup are very happy with that, and that is just
>>>fine. Once and Future does not, however, try new things. It is neither above
>>>nor beyond the norm. It does not intrigue me, immerse me, or stretch my
>>>mind.
>>
>>Excuse me for pointing out the obvious, but this is a very far cry
>>from your earlier characterization of OaF as very mediocre.
>
>Excuse me? Doesn't 'mediocre' *mean* 'neither above nor beyond the norm' ?
Etymologically, it has that meaning, yes. As I'm sure you're well
aware of, it also has all kids of negative connotations as well.
Consider the following two statements:
"John Doe is a solid, decent writer, who placed in the mid-field of the
Competition"
and
"John Doe is an extremely mediocre writer".
These may mean the same thing according to the lexicon, but while the
first statement may be damning with faint praise, the second one is
about as negative as you can get without using actual pejoratives.
Michael Gentry
Doeadeer3 wrote in message <19981123212903...@ngol01.aol.com>...
>
>>It certainly doesn't convince me (myself a
>>dedicated fan) that I need to pay $25 for a text adventure when there are
>>better ones available for free.
>
with
>the already existing Curses and Jigsaw. So I hope you don't mean that.
>
I bloody well do mean it. If Curses and Jigsaw cannot be improved on (or at
least matched), why should anyone bother to sell games for money at all?
Brad O`Donnell
>
> >- Mimesis-bruising in-joke references to old Infocom games. (Had Zork even
> >been published at the time of the Vietnam War?)
>
>
> - Elena
Mimesis? What mimesis?
I've never heard found a satisfactory definition; I looked it up in
a dictionary and it sounded like something I don't really care about in
a game. As far as I can tell, mimesis is either:
1. The "you are a part of the story" aspect of gaming.
2. The likeness of the text screen to a novel page. (This
is what I gleaned out of the dictionary.)
3. A plant. (A la Sins Against Mimesis)
Of course, it's probably none of the above. So would someone tell
me, too? All I got is a joke answer, last time. (A good joke, but
still uninformative.)
--
Brad O'Donnell
"A story is a string of moments, held together by memory."
Michael Gentry
Magnus Olsson wrote in message <73ecb5$e5g$1...@bartlet.df.lth.se>...
>OK: instead of criticism of how you deliver your criticism, here's a
>response to your particular points. I'm not out to debunk you, or to
>prove your arguments invalid. This is just discussion.
Thanks. Likewise, these are merely responses to *your* responses. Now we
have a discourse going.
First of all, let's talk about the fact that I haven't yet finished this
game. I did make it pretty clear in my first review that I hadn't finished
(my exact words, in fact, were "I haven't finished this game."), and that my
review was of an incomplete game. I hadn't finished for two reasons: 1) I
was stuck, which is not the game's fault and did not figure into my opinion
of the game; and 2) I was so completely un-grabbed by the game that I
couldn't motivate myself to keep trying, which *is* the game's fault and
*did* figure prominently in my review. Now, I don't want to hear any crap
about how I can't write a fair review of a game I haven't finished. First, I
haven't criticized any part of the game that I haven't actually played. And
second, it doesn't matter if your game has the most mind-blowingly stellar
climax since "The Empire Strikes Back" -- if the customer turns it off
halfway through because the game isn't satisfying, then that game has failed
on its own merits.
One of my reasons for posting that review was to find out if anyone else had
felt like I did at the beginning, but found that the game improved later on.
The general consensus seems to be, yes, the game does improve later on. What
little has been described to me sounds much better than what I'm currently
stuck in, so now I would really like to keep playing; unfortunately, I'm
still pretty stuck. Anyone know how to move that boulder?
Nevertheless, the game still suffers from the rather serious flaw of having
a very long, sprawling beginning with little or no plot, little or no NPC
interaction (which would be fine, if only there were no NPCs), and little or
no PC characterization. It's 61 rooms and some 10 or 12 hours of playing
time that I would have happily skipped, if only it were possible, in order
to get to the good stuff.
[regarding the the filler rooms]
>Now, this is quite a nasty thing to say. The implication is that the
>author has more patience than talent. Is this really what you call
>constructive criticism?
Okay, let me see if I can put it better.
It is quite possible to evoke a sense of vast space or sprawling landscape
in a single room description, if it is well written and well placed. Beyond
that, placing rooms should be a question of what purpose you want the area
to serve -- the function should help determine the form. If you're going to
add another room to the area, it should be because that room has an
important landmark or scene or interactive whatsit. It should, in short,
contribute.
A forest which contains, for example, a dead tree with a snake in it and a
spooky ring of menhir stones really only needs two rooms: one for the tree
and one for the stones. If you're still having trouble achieving a proper
sense of size, other techniques can be used: perhaps make an "entry point"
room -- "Edge of Forest: You are standing at the edge of a dark, sprawling
forest. From here it seems as though the tangled trees stretch on forever. A
twisty path leads southwest into the woods." You can establish the forests's
size right up front, and then any important locations inside the forest can,
through well-written description, help maintain the feeling that the
character is lost in the middle of acres and acres of dense woodland.
Now let's take a look at the "Dead Woodland" area of Once and Future. Five
rooms in all, one of which contains the raven and the necklace. The other
four rooms do not work because they do not contribute to anything. I liked
the descriptions and the atmosphere they evoked, but I also felt that the
descriptions were all essentially the same, and could easily have been
consolidated into one room. This was further exacerbated by the fact that
there wasn't anything to *do* in any of the rooms. It was just spooky trees
and more spooky trees, and I had already learned all I needed to know from
the very first room description. As a single room, then, the Dead Woodland
would have been a nice, atmospheric backdrop for the raven sequence; as two
rooms, it would have perhaps given a little bit more of a sense of
exploring; as five rooms, however, it was simply a waste. For me, they
failed to provide atmosphere and they failed to flesh out the world --
therefore, they succeeded only as filler.
It occurs to me that this may be yet another unpleasant side effect of the
grid-pattern problem I was talking about earlier. By visualizing the island
as a real map divided by a square grid, the author has fallen into the trap
of treating the landscape as a simulation -- every square needs to be
accounted for, even if there is nothing interesting in it. I think the
author would have done better if he had conceptualized the island as an
interconnected series of landmarks, making only the important places actual
rooms, and allowing his room descriptions to convey the sense of space and
terrain around those landmarks.
Incidentally, such a conception would not work at all as a grid. You would
need a variety of different sorts of connections, including the diagonal
directions.
>I agree with you here. The entire geography of Avalon is confusing,
>and not just because of this. I would actually have liked *more*
>"filler" rooms in some places, to make the transition between the different
>sub-sections of the island less abrupt.
Good Lord, no. If the author were to go about fixing this using his grid
paradigm, the result would be disastrous -- a whole transitional room in
between each pair of differing terrains -- and the island would bloat to
twice its current size.
One method for implementing transitional landscape is to put text in a
room's before [; Go:...] routine. (I don't know what the syntax is in TADS,
but I'm sure you can do it) When the player moves from one room to the next,
he gets descriptions "in between" the rooms, like this:
<transcript>
The Wasteland
The cracked, dusty earth stretches to the horizon in all directions, broken
only by stands of scraggly, thorny brush. The sun beats down unmercifully.
To the south, you can make out hazy clouds.
>GO SOUTH
As you trudge southward, the air gradually cools. The cracks in the earth
become smaller and fewer and then disappear altogether, and soon you see
grass growing in patches here and there. The ground starts to slope upward,
and you realize that you have reached....
The Foothills
The gentle slopes quickly turn to steep, rocky crags to the north. To the
south are the wastelands, and from this elevation you can see the whole
sun-blasted valley spread out before you.
</transcript>
That's not the only technique you can use; I think the "entry point" concept
I mentioned earlier works well also. The point is, you don't need a 3x3 grid
of "Dark Forest" rooms surrounded by a ring of 16 "Edge of Forest" rooms to
evoke a landscape. A big grid of empty, repetitive rooms just doesn't work.
You may disagree with me about how atmospheric it all was, but I've yet to
read a post by anyone who was really happy with the Isle of Avalon map.
>Come on - GKW's Avalon is to quite a large extent his own
>creation. I'm sure that if he'd followed the existing literature, some
>people (if not you) would have condemned the game for being too
>derivative.
Yeah, but they'd be wrong. :-)
Writing a game based on the myth of King Arthur isn't derivative in the same
way as writing a game based on, say, Star Trek or Xanth. King Arthur isn't
about what historical figure Lancelot was based on or where in England
Camelot was actually located; it is a vast myth, an arrangement of
leitmotifs (sp?) that helped to shape the way we (we as in most of Western
culture) understand such humongous concepts as loyalty, betrayal, sin,
purity, and redemption. It's not the literature that I think the author
should have followed; it's the myth.
When I say that the world of King Arthur has already been mapped out, I
don't mean that in the same way that Middle Earth or the Forgotten Realms
have already been mapped out. I mean that there are motifs running through
every King Arthur story -- that those motifs are what *makes* it a King
Arthur story -- that it's not enough to just put the Holy Grail in your
game; your game should contain those themes of suffering and sacrifice and
redemption as well, because those are the themes that spurred mankind to
invent the myth of the Holy Grail in the first place. (It sounds like, later
in the game, these themes do make an appearance. That's great. See my
complaint about taking too long to get to the interesting parts.)
Now, I'm starting to make it sound like I expected Once and Future to be a
timeless myth, but that's not really the case. I understand that Kevin
Wilson was using the myth of King Arthur as a structure on which to build
his own creative ideas. However, there is a difference between using the
myth as structure, and simply running off on an irrelevant tangent. I think
the author crossed this line at times. Prime offender is my favorite
whipping boy, the mousehole sequence. I enjoyed being turned into a mouse;
when the raven started hopping nearer I was excited; when I found the
mousehole I thought it would be an interesting diversion. If the mousehole
had involved one or two pertinent puzzles, it *would* have been an
interesting diversion. Instead, I found a 30+ room cave complex with very
few objects, some unrelated puzzles, and the ultimate goal of (I think)
recovering the necklace that I could have just bent down and picked up in
the first place, if the author hadn't felt the need to send me on this wild
goose chase. It took *way* too much focus from what I thought was the point
of the game, namely, the motifs of King Arthur and the Holy Grail and how
they intertwined with the fate of a scared but selfless young soldier in
Vietnam.
>I think this is entirely in lione with the genre. Remember that this is
>not a realistic caving trip; it's a mixture of myth and fairy tale.
A series of tiny, mouse-sized caves would have made a nice fairy tale. A
tiny mouse trying to navigate through massive caverns and towering forests
of crystal stalagmites would have made a nice fairy tale. Being forced,
after every room description, to think, "Huh? Wait, am I still a mouse?" did
not make a good fairy tale.
>For crying out loud, it's a maigcal necklace. Does everything have to
>be spelled out in block capitals?
No, but I do expect the author to let me know that he knows what he's doing,
that he's paying attention to all the little details. The author can confuse
me, mislead me, spin me in circles all he wants, but if I'm not confidant
that he's doing it all *on purpose* and *to some effect*, then it all falls
apart.
>Suppose somebody has been doing a witch-hunt among the mice?
Okay, then who? Why? What on earth does it have to do with King Arthur or my
quest to save the world? Couldn't he have saved that wonderfully described
witch-dunking tub for a scene that was actually relevant?
It's not enough to simply say "It's a fantasy world, anything goes." That
attitude -- and I will stand by this one -- *is* lazy. The author could just
as easily have stuck the Great Flathead Dam, control panel and all, down
that mousehole, and it would have had the same effect. Incongruency, all by
itself, does not make a scene interesting. I'm not going to be impressed
just because a dunking tub in a mousehole is "strange."
>>- Cardboard NPCs do not work, period.
>
>You're awfully cathegorical, aren't you?
Are you suggesting that cardboard NPCs are a good design element?
>And why are you singling out
>OaF, when there's hardly an NPC in the entire IF corpus that isn't
>cardboard?
I'm not singling out OaF; I am critical of any NPC that isn't reasonably
fleshed out. And I disagree with you; I think there are lots of memorable
NPCs floating around the IF-archive. Not all of them are brilliant, and none
of them can approach the level of complexity of a real person, obviously,
but surely we can do better than Mordred.
>I suppose your answer is "because the game was hyped as having very
>well fleshed-out and deep NPCs"?
Actually, I don't remember that being a specific selling point.
I have already explained as clearly as I know how which hype I did and did
not put faith in. All that I ask is that CMP's products live up to the
standards that CMP set for themselves. Those standards also happen to be the
standards by which I judge a game worth my time and money.
And no (in response to an offshoot of this thread), I didn't pay $25 for the
packaging. If I thought that that was CMP's attitude, I wouldn't be wasting
my time discussing this game; I would be pounding on Mike Berlyn's door,
demanding a refund. I paid $25 dollars for a *game*, dammit, and I expect
the return on my investment to come from that game, not from the feelies or
the cardboard box.
>If you haven't played the entire game, you really aren't in a position
>to judge the entire game in this respect. The story-oriented aspect
>becomes more prominent further on (though it never takes over) and the
>game is far from story-less.
I wasn't judging the entire game. The lack of story throughout the LONG
beginning is what turned me off; I then turned the game off. By the
criterion of keeping me wanting to play through to the end, the game failed.
Now that I know it gets better, my curiosity is piqued and I'm going to
continue to play. But I normally wouldn't bother to start a game (much less
purchase one) if I knew beforehand that it took that long to get to anything
interesting.
>>Once and Future is a solid, decently written, puzzle-oriented game, and a
>>lot of people on this newsgroup are very happy with that, and that is just
>>fine. Once and Future does not, however, try new things. It is neither
above
>>nor beyond the norm. It does not intrigue me, immerse me, or stretch my
>>mind.
>
>Excuse me for pointing out the obvious, but this is a very far cry
>from your earlier characterization of OaF as very mediocre.
In fact, this is PRECISELY what I meant when I said that OaF is very
mediocre.
Michael Gentry
Brad O`Donnell wrote in message <365B4A...@unb.ca>...
> I've never heard found a satisfactory definition; I looked it up in
> a dictionary and it sounded like something I don't really care about in
> a game. As far as I can tell, mimesis is either:
I think the word was sort of "adopted" by this group, and used to mean
something slightly different from its dictionary definition. (We don't use
it to mean how much the game screen looks like a book page).
Mimesis is defined as that part of my enjoyment of a game which is broken
everytime something forces me to stop thinking about what's happening in the
game, and instead wonder:
"Whoops -- I guess the author didn't think of that."
...or...
"Ugh, there's a bad mistake the author should have caught."
...or...
"Huh? That doesn't make sense -- what was the author thinking?"
In other words, mimesis is immersion. It's a measure of how well the game
makes you forget that IF can never really simulate real experience.
Not all games strive for perfect mimesis, but it's considered a flaw if the
game needlessly breaks it.
Adam Cadre
> Could someone please explain to me what on earth mimesis is??
I wrote about this a while back: http://x5.dejanews.com/getdoc.xp?AN=384630291
In brief, there are generally two different things people on this group use
the word "mimesis" to refer to:
(1) The extent to which the player feels like she's experiencing what
the game tells her she is, rather than experiencing the sensation of
typing on a keyboard and watching words scroll by on a screen;
(2) The extent to which stuff in the game seems to work the way things
work in real life, or at least the extent to which it maintains a degree
of internal consistency.
Hope that helps.
Robert A. Pelak
I think it would be a good time to reconsider what a professional writer
has to say on giving criticism:
From: jwei...@castor.usc.edu (Jacob Solomon Weinstein)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: IF Criticism (or, Review of Review: The Light...)
Date: 1 Apr 1996 11:08:15 -0800
Jacob's Guide To Giving Constructive Feedback on IF
---------------------------------------------------
1) Discuss the game, not the author.
Wrong: The latest game from Jane Doe proves, once again, that she needs
to pay more attention to grammar.
Right: In "Mr. Bily's Real Good Game," the numerous spelling and
grammatical errors give an unprofessional appearance.
2) Be specific.
Wrong: I didn't like the plot of this game.
Right: I thought that the idea of giant ants terrorizing the populace was
kind of silly, and I found it unbelievable that the President would ask a
kindergartner to help solve the problem.
3) Offer suggestions on how to fix things.
Wrong: Captain Ahab wasn't a very interesting character.
Right: Captain Ahab wasn't a very interesting character. I would have liked
him to react to being shown or given more objects. He certainly should react
when you show him the sword you stole from his cabin.
4) Phrase your criticisms politely.
Wrong: The prose sucks.
Right: The prose needs a great deal of polishing.
5) Don't be afraid of criticising.
Wrong: (said to oneself) "Well, gee, I really didn't like this game, but I
don't want to hurt the author's feelings, so I'll just say how much I liked
the title and leave it at that."
Right: (said to oneself) "Well, gee, I really didn't like this game, but if
the author doesn't get feedback from players, he'll never be able to
improve, so I'll post some polite and constructive criticism. And I'll be
sure to include some mention of what worked in the game, so he'll know
what he's doing right."
6) Don't be afraid of praising.
Wrong: (said to oneself) "Well, gee, I thought this was the greatest game
since Zork I, but it's a traditional puzzle-oriented game, and I'm afraid
that if I say how much I like it, people will make fun of me, and,
besides, just telling the author how great the game is won't help him
improve."
Right: (said to oneself) "Well, gee, I thought this was the greatest game
sinze Zork I, and so I'm going to post specific and detailed comments
about what I liked. This will let the author know what his strengths are
as a writer. And if those avant-garde anti-puzzle types don't agree, they
can post responses, thereby provoking an interesting and useful discussion."
7) If you disagree with another poster, let the world know.
Wrong: (said to oneself) "Oooh, that Jacob Weinstein makes me mad. I'm going
to sit at the keyboard and fume silently."
Right: (said to oneself) "Ooh, that Jacob Weinstein makes me mad. I'm
going to swallow my anger and post a polite and thoughtful response
disagreeing with him."
8) Admit to your biases.
Wrong: I thought the section in the labyrinth of Crete was the best part
of the game.
Right: I'm a sucker for clever variations on the old maze puzzle, so I
though the section in the labyrinth of Crete was the best part of the game.
-Jacob
Emerick Rogul
:: ... Or as if Roger Ebert were barred from saying anything
:: negative about the movies he reviews because thirty years ago he wrote
:: the screenplay to "Beyond the Valley of the Dolls."
: Is this TRUE?
Yup.
-Emerick
--
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Emerick Rogul /\/ "...i saw your girlfriend and she's eating her
eme...@cs.bu.edu /\/ fingers like they're just another meal."
------------------------------------------------- 'summer babe', pavement
Michael Gentry
>>I bloody well do mean it. If Curses and Jigsaw cannot be improved on (or
at
>>least matched), why should anyone bother to sell games for money at all?
>
up
>to those standards.
>
Ah, Christ.
Two things:
First, I think both Curses and Jigsaw have *already* been improved upon, by
more than one game.
Second, "improved on" was a bad way to put it. Perhaps I should have said
"moved on from". I am interested in seeing games with engaging stories and
excellent prose, that try new and interesting things with the medium of
interactive fiction, games like Spider and Web and Edifice and -- yes --
Photopia. Any of these are the equal of Curses or Jigsaw. They are
attempting different things than Graham Nelson was, and they do it well.
The idea that Graham Nelson's games -- and don't get me wrong, God bless the
man -- represent the end-all be-all of interactive fiction, and that we
shouldn't even bother to shoot for that goal, is...well, frankly it's
repulsive to me. If your goal is to create a traditional, enjoyable,
medium-well text adventure game, then by all means do it. Lots of people
enjoy them (even me, believe it or not). Post it to the internet. Spread the
love around. But don't expect me to shell out $25 for it. Traditional,
enjoyable, medium-well text adventures are available for less than a dollar
a pop from Activision, and all over the internet for absolutely free.
Finally (three things, I meant three things) the corollary to my second
point is, of course, "Who the fuck is Mike Gentry, anyway?" Jesus, if you've
built something and you're really proud of it and you want to send it to
CMP, why on earth should I stop you? If they decide to publish it, great. If
it turns out I like it, even better. But you'd better believe that I'm going
to hold you up to a high standard -- precisely $25 (plus shipping) higher
than Graham Nelson.
No one on this newsgroup is obligated to give their work away for free. But
I am also not obligated to give money to anyone just because they're a part
of this community.
Steve Young
Doeadeer3 wrote in message >
>Although he is entitled to say what he likes, I also was offended at the
highly
>negative tone and hoped he would tone it down. Very few of the contest
games
>got that bad a reaction even though most of them were probably a lot worst.
They may well have been worse, but they were free, and didn't cost the same
as a full priced game, so it is hardly comparable.
Steve
John Francis
Magnus Olsson <m...@bartlet.df.lth.se> wrote:
>In article <73eube$dk...@fido.engr.sgi.com>,
>John Francis <jfra...@dungeon.engr.sgi.com> wrote:
>>Disclaimer: I haven't played A&F (yet). But I have followed r*if for
>>many years, so my expectations probably match those of Micheal Gentry.
[long, and in some places rather vituperative, posts snipped]
>The complaint should certainly be made. There's just no need to insult
>the author in the process, whether he's called Kevin or Harry.
>
>If I haven't made myself clear enough: complaining about the geography
>of Avalon and trying to explain why it doesn't work for you is constructive
>criticism. Accusing the author of putting in lots of filler rooms because
>he hasn't got the talent to do it properly is pretty darn rude. Criticism
>is *not* about taking out your disappointment in something that doesn't
>live up to your expectations by insulting the author, however tempting
>it may be (I know: been there, done that).
>
>> But then, I feel that a game that asks for my money should
>>be held to a higher standard than one that merely asks for my time.
>
>But it's surely not OK to insult the author over mere matters of taste?
This, I think, is where it becomes a matter of interpretation.
You seem to think that Michael (and I, inasmuch as I support his stance)
accuse GKW of having no talent. That's not exactly how I see it.
There are, by all accounts, several portions of O&F that *do* live up
to the expectations engendered by the pre-release discussions, etc.
That's why it's all the more depressing to find parts that don't live
up to those standards. Saying "this part of the game is nothing more
than pure cookie-cutter data magnification" is not the same as saying
the whole game is structured that way. Yes, the point could be put
across in a less confrontational way. But I don't think it goes as
far as being an insult. I hear sadness, not anger.
It's precisely *because* we know he can do better that this is such
a devastating disappointment. And sometimes the frustration shows.
That said: I'm still looking forward to playing the game. I'll be
getting a copy this Christmas (in a somewhat roundabout fashion).
Until then I'm only skipping through the reviews, trying to avoid
blatant spoilers and plot details.
Lelah Conrad
wrote:
>... Or as if Roger Ebert were barred from saying anything
>negative about the movies he reviews because thirty years ago he wrote
>the screenplay to "Beyond the Valley of the Dolls."
Is this TRUE? I demand to know. If so it makes me very happy in a
sort of wacky way.
Saudade
Jason Compton
: On Mon, 23 Nov 1998 23:12:16 -0500, Adam Cadre <ad...@acpub.duke.edu>
It's true.
Lelah Conrad
>Could someone please explain to me what on earth mimesis is??
Well, I have an ancient massive Websters that says it means imitation,
mimicry. But here people use it to mean the state of absorption in a
game where you more or less forget yourself. You get so caught up in
the game or the story that you are practically a real character in it.
If something happens that is jarring or out of character for the
story, then the sense of mimesis is broken, at least for some people.
Lelah
Doeadeer3
In article <19981124134331...@ng-fi1.aol.com>, papa...@aol.com
(Papanele) writes:
>Could someone please explain to me what on earth mimesis is??
>
>- Elena
Basically it is suspension of disbelief. The game world is internally
consistent enough that you as the player can get immersed in it. You are
willing "to play along", to be that PC, to explore that world.
All kinds of things can break mimesis, even simple things, like too many
parser/command problems, having to keep have to hunting for the verb/word, you
are rudely reminded you are just playing a game, in other words, the game's
mechanics become your primary focus, not the story. Plot inconsistences, NPCs
you can't communicate with, all kinds of things can break mimesis.
HTH. HAND.
Doeadeer3
In article <73fir3$q...@chronicle.concentric.net>, "Michael Gentry"
<edr...@concentric.net> writes:
>Doeadeer3 wrote in message <19981123212903...@ngol01.aol.com>...
>>
>>In article <73d36u$a...@journal.concentric.net>, "Michael Gentry"
>><edr...@concentric.net> writes:
>>
>>>It certainly doesn't convince me (myself a
>>>dedicated fan) that I need to pay $25 for a text adventure when there are
>>>better ones available for free.
>>
>>Not very many new games (of the more traditional IF variety) can compete
>withthe already existing Curses and Jigsaw. So I hope you don't mean that.
>
>I bloody well do mean it. If Curses and Jigsaw cannot be improved on (or at
>least matched), why should anyone bother to sell games for money at all?
Well, I was thinking of submitting a game to CMP, now I won't, I can't live up
to those standards.
Doe :-)
Jason Compton
: In article <19981124134331...@ng-fi1.aol.com>, papa...@aol.com
: (Papanele) writes:
:>Could someone please explain to me what on earth mimesis is??
:>
:>- Elena
: Basically it is suspension of disbelief. The game world is internally
: consistent enough that you as the player can get immersed in it. You are
: willing "to play along", to be that PC, to explore that world.
It's also worth pointing out that in recent times it's become a big
buzzword around these newsgroups among people who think it's very
important that it be preserved at all costs, and among those people who
feel they'll be cast out of paradise if they disagree.
I think your definition here leans heavily towards the "breaking mimesis
is definitely a bad thing in virtually all imaginable cases"
interpretation.
Jason Compton
: Doeadeer3 wrote in message
:>Well, I was thinking of submitting a game to CMP, now I won't, I can't live
: up
:>to those standards.
:>
: Ah, Christ.
I think she was being a little facetious.
And since we're talking about CMP again, I thought I'd address something
more than a couple of people (the two of you included) have
mentioned--that CMP's business model might not be sound because competing
with free IF is quite a task. It's worth pointing out that IF publishing
is just one part of what Mike set up CMP to do.
Doeadeer3
In article <73g00f$m...@journal.concentric.net>, "Michael Gentry"
<edr...@concentric.net> writes:
>If your goal is to create a traditional, enjoyable,
>medium-well text adventure game, then by all means do it. Lots of people
>enjoy them (even me, believe it or not). Post it to the internet. Spread the
>love around. But don't expect me to shell out $25 for it. Traditional,
>enjoyable, medium-well text adventures are available for less than a dollar
>a pop from Activision, and all over the internet for absolutely free.
That is my goal, medium-well text adventure game, traditional format.
But if none of those are what CMP should be publishing then, frankly, they
won't find
much to publish.
>Finally (three things, I meant three things) the corollary to my second
>point is, of course, "Who the fuck is Mike Gentry, anyway?" Jesus, if you've
>built something and you're really proud of it and you want to send it to
>CMP, why on earth should I stop you? If they decide to publish it, great. If
>it turns out I like it, even better. But you'd better believe that I'm going
>to hold you up to a high standard -- precisely $25 (plus shipping) higher
>than Graham Nelson.
Who you are is someone who could rip my little old game to complete shreds
after it got published by CMP. Frankly, I am not that brave. Not by a long
shot.
And I think CMP is in BIG trouble, right now, from the start.
Steven Marsh
I've seen in a looooooong time that has been both interesting AND
on-topic?
Thanksgiving. A time to be thankful.
Steven Marsh
ma...@nettally.com
"Well, it all began on the square Bizarro world, where everone
is an imperfect duplicate of Superman or one of his friends..."
Doeadeer3
In article <91197913...@ns2.saturn.ispc.net>, "Steve Young"
<steve...@eclipse.co.uk> writes:
>Doeadeer3 wrote in message >
I was figuring if CMP worked, it would benefit all of us. All of IF.
I really don't think Kevin is making much money off it (if he has seen a dime
yet) and/or Mike (who obviously will have to wait some time to recover his
investment).
So money isn't really the issue -- publicity is.
But I guess I was wrong. Silly me.
Gerry Kevin Wilson
"Michael Gentry" <edr...@concentric.net> wrote:
[snip]
Well, in brief:
Approximate # of NPCs in OaF: 40
Approximate # of NPC conversation responses: 600
The Oracle, a character plainly visible in the area you were adventuring in, responds
to over 50 statements, not counting responses to show and tell.
And, in case you still feel that the original post wasn't hurtful...let me quote some
relevant bits....Try to imagine coming home from a 70 hour work week, sitting down
to relax, and reading these statements about a game you worked 5 years on...
>Once and Future is, to me, a thoroughly mediocre game. The writing is decent
>but nothing to rave about. The story, insofar as there is a story, is thin
>and superficial.
>Feel free to debate this with me; I'm very interested to hear what others
>think. Some will probably argue that the game has nostalgia value, or that
>it is very good "for what it is." Unfortunately, "what it is" (so far) is a
>genre of game that was dying out even before Infocom had gone belly-up. I
>would really like to see Cascade Mountain Publishing turn into a successful
>business venture, and for that reason alone I'm not sorry I bought the game.
>But I predict that CMP will not last long unless they start publishing works
>more interesting, more original, and more ground-breaking than this one.
The rest of the post I can't really argue with, though I suppose I like the fairy
tale elements a lot more than you do. But then, I was raised on a lot more
fairy tales than Arthurian myths. Your mileage may vary. Sorry if you don't
like the game, but I'm pleased with the way it turned out, and if you give
the later parts of it a try you MAY (emphasis there) be pleasantly surprised.
Of course, it may not change your initial impression at all.
Joe Mason
>And since we're talking about CMP again, I thought I'd address something
>more than a couple of people (the two of you included) have
>mentioned--that CMP's business model might not be sound because competing
>with free IF is quite a task. It's worth pointing out that IF publishing
>is just one part of what Mike set up CMP to do.
Yes, CMP's success doesn't stand or fall on IF alone.
I also think its worth pointing out that the amount of free IF may drop now
that there's a publisher - I for one don't plan on releasing anything for
free until CMP's been given a chance to reject it.
Joe
--
Surely you're not trying to tell us that you've never, nay _never_ walked
across miles and miles of Scottish heath searching for a witch only to
find that three go by all at once? -- Den of Iniquity
Doeadeer3
In article <kgO62.10580$c8.65...@hme2.newscontent-01.sprint.ca>,
jcm...@uwaterloo.ca (Joe Mason) writes:
>I also think its worth pointing out that the amount of free IF may drop now
>that there's a publisher - I for one don't plan on releasing anything for
>free until CMP's been given a chance to reject it.
>
>Joe
Ditto. WTG (Way to go)
Doe :-) (Regardless of what Mr. Gentry thinks of traditional IF.)
Florian
> In other words, mimesis is immersion. It's a measure of how well the game
> makes you forget that IF can never really simulate real experience.
>
> Not all games strive for perfect mimesis, but it's considered a flaw if the
> game needlessly breaks it.
(Hi, I'm a newbie that dares raise his voice first time here.)
Mimesis was first defined by Aristotle. It means imitation (of reality). Its aim
is indeed immersion, so I think Michael Gentry's explanation is very good. As an
author, whether of IF or tragedy, you're not supposed, says Aristotle (well, he
didn't refer to IF), to have things happen that don't happen in life. You should
make your audience believe in the world you created -- immersion.
However, in modern literary theory, there is an opposite to it: Diegesis. The
term was coined by a man called Gerard Genette. It's not considered a bad thing
to let the reader know, sometimes, that he's only reading a piece of art. Many
authors do it: Cervantes in Don Quixote, Brecht, Lawrence Sterne in Tristram
Shandy, to name the most commonly known. It's also what Infocom did in the Zork
series. They disrupt your immersion. Diegesis is much harder to handle for the
author, because it can so easily drift off into nonsense, bad jokes, inside
jokes and other annoyances.
My personal theory is that you need to be able to write mimetical "texts" well
before you can tackle interesting diegetic ones.
Well, in case anyone wanted to know.
Florian
Paul O'Brian
> Elena wrote:
> > Could someone please explain to me what on earth mimesis is??
Should this information go in the FAQ? David? Steve? Somebody?
[If it does go in the FAQ, I think we should give credit to Roger
Giner-Sorolla, who planted the mimesis meme here lo these many years ago
with his "Crimes Against Mimesis" series.]
Paul O'Brian
obr...@colorado.edu
http://ucsu.colorado.edu/~obrian
David Thornley
Jason Compton <jcom...@xnet.com> wrote:
>
>: Basically it is suspension of disbelief. The game world is internally
>: consistent enough that you as the player can get immersed in it. You are
>: willing "to play along", to be that PC, to explore that world.
>
>It's also worth pointing out that in recent times it's become a big
>buzzword around these newsgroups among people who think it's very
>important that it be preserved at all costs, and among those people who
>feel they'll be cast out of paradise if they disagree.
>
this year's competition, but last year we had "Sins Against Mimesis"
and that game where you were stuck in an unfinished game. I enjoyed
both, although I thought the latter wound up dragging a bit later on.
I think that mimesis is generally good, and that it should not be
broken without some sort of reason. Breaking mimesis by accident
is almost certainly a bad thing.
One of my favorite examples of breaking it is in John Dickson Carr's
book _The_Three_Coffins_, where Dr. Fell sits his friends down, explains
that they're all in the middle of a detective story, and proceeds
to discourse on locked-room mysteries. (A more indirect example was
in Agatha Christie's _Partners_in_Crime_, where Tommy and Tuppence set
themselves up as private detectives, out to solve mysteries in certain
literary styles. In the first chapter, Tuppence deliberately creates
a mystery, in the style of a mystery writer.) Yes, I'm fond of
British-style pre-WWII murder mysteries. Does it show?
--
David H. Thornley | These opinions are mine. I
da...@thornley.net | do give them freely to those
http://www.thornley.net/~thornley/david/ | who run too slowly. O-
Mike Berlyn
Doeadeer3 wrote in message <19981125001048...@ngol02.aol.com>...
Pardon my long and rambling message, but I felt this needed to be posted.
Of all the messages posted here, in this and other threads, yours troubles
me the most, Doe.
FYI, we are *not* in big trouble at all. For that matter, the business
itself is coming along a little ahead of schedule. We are still in our
"working out the bugs" stage in taking orders, making boxes that work,
shipping on time in a reasonable way, etc. Like any new business, there are
problems (mostly of communication between the various parts) which need to
be worked out. However, I should point out that our books are being well
received, and our eBooks are about to launch over the next few weeks. I
decided to stage the business launch in a way which would afford us the most
opportunities to fix problems and improve products and service. Had I not
done that, the failure in reliable web ordering we experienced early on,
double shipment of product, etc., could have been devastating. As it is now,
these problems have been addressed and have ensured better service for the
future.
We will continue to publish traditional "quest" or adventure games as well
as products which work hard to push the envelope in interactive fiction. As
I said in another thread, Once and Future is a traditional quest with some
excellent writing.
We at CMP view this community, specifically raif, as a *small subset* of the
potential IF market, albeit an extremely important one. It is vocal, honest
in its opinions, and extremely supportive to our cause. We would not have it
any other way. I personally read the threads in this group and in raif. But
if we had to support the business on sales of IF to this community alone, we
would not have launched the business. We are a broad-based publisher,
actively seeking submissions in all areas of software and book publishing.
Marketing for Once and Future kicks in next month. Look for the ad in Games
magazine (most of whose readers have not heard of these two ngs).
Over the years I have worked on (as designer) some 17 games and have coded
13 of them myself. I have been criticized for every choice I have made in
every game I have had published. In one, the characters were not
well-developed, in another the puzzles were too easy, too hard, too
illogical, too logical. Sigh. I have written four novels, one of which was
reviewed as follows: "They should have spared the trees." That was the
entire review. In another magazine, that same novel was praised for its
daring, its vision and its prose. It was recommended for the Nebula Award
(an award given by SF writers to the best of the year) and did extremely
well in the balloting. I was a member of a rock band which had a recording
contract with ABC records in the 70s. Unfortunately, the band broke up
before the studio work was completed, but we had people who loved our music,
and people who hated our music.
I explain all of this to simply say to you, some people will like what you
do, others will not. When you're in the business of making product, that's
what happens. Both my wife and I over the years have learned to take
important information from the bad and use it to better understand what
people like, what they don't like, etc. If we stopped making product just
because some people didn't like it, we'd be selling real estate in Florida
today. While that's fine for some people, it simply was not for us.
I expect you to submit your product to us for evaluation. I have read over
what you sent to me via e-mail and was extremely excited by what you
proposed. I look forward to hearing from you.
Best,
-- Mike
mailto:mbe...@cascadepublishing.com
http://www.cascadepublishing.com
Doeadeer3
In article <73h832$8...@enews1.newsguy.com>, "Mike Berlyn"
<mbe...@cascadepublishing.com> writes:
[snip]
>I expect you to submit your product to us for evaluation. I have read over
>what you sent to me via e-mail and was extremely excited by what you
>proposed. I look forward to hearing from you.
Thanks Mike for your post. I think some of those things needed to be said,
which is partly why I said the things I said.
I am glad to hear that you view these newsgroups as only a "subset" of your
planned marketing strategy, because when I said I thought CMP was in trouble
now, it was because I was wondering, "How are you going to make them pay for it
when they have been getting it for free?" (The you is a "one", not you
personally.)
It seemed to me this was the real underlying issue in this thread.
I will be happy to submit my game to you when it is ready.
And live with the inevitable criticism if you do decide to publish it. All your
comments on that were enlightening.
You know folks, there is absolutely no reason in the world that an IF author
shouldn't get a few bucks back for all their time and effort. It used to be
that way (somewhat) with Shareware (although hardly anyone ever paid) and maybe
everyone has become spoiled since (the main reason it went to Freeware is
because no one would pay on the "honor" system, Graham Nelson, aside).
I also still think, all money issues aside, it will be good for IF to have more
publicity, ads in magazines, etc. We are only reaching a small fraction of
people who might enjoy IF if they knew it was still around. Let's face it, even
now, most graphic games do not offer the same degree of immersion or
interactivity.
Doe :-) Besides, I have always been paid for my programming before.
Paul O'Brian
> In article <73fir3$q...@chronicle.concentric.net>, "Michael Gentry"
> >
> >least matched), why should anyone bother to sell games for money at all?
>
When I read this, I thought "That's like saying 'I was thinking about
submitting my novel to a publisher, but now I won't because I'm not as
good as F. Scott Fitzgerald.'"
I was going to reply, "Go ahead and submit it! The worst thing they could
do is reject it, and if that happens, release your game to GMD (or send it
to any other IF publisher that might be around at that time) and start
working on the next one!"
Then I read this:
> Who you are is someone who could rip my little old game to complete
> shreds after it got published by CMP. Frankly, I am not that brave. Not
> by a long shot.
When I read this, I thought: "Oops. Glad I didn't advise her to submit
anything. Sounds like not only should she never submit anything, she
should never even release anything, since criticism is the occupational
hazard of anyone who shares her art with the public. Sounds like not
even the affirmation of being published would give her enough self-esteem
to stand up to one withering critic."
I was going to reply, "Anytime you release anything of your own, you take
the risk of it being ripped to shreds. If you don't think you can handle
that, don't release it. However, by not taking that risk you also miss out
on any rewards you might have reaped by being brave enough to release your
work."
Then I read Mike Berlyn's long reply to Doe's message, which was both more
helpful and more encouraging than anything I had come up with, not to
mention more interesting.
So now my reply is this:
[Pointing at Mike Berlyn's post] Doe, what he said.
Stephen van Egmond
Roger Giner-Sorolla wrote an essay in 1996 called "Crimes Against
Mimesis". You can see a link to it at
http://bang.ml.org/library/design/index.html .
Roughly speaking, mimesis means the imitation of reality. In the
interactive fiction context, it's a measure of how immersive the game is.
In The Seventh Guest (?), a graphical game released some time ago and
considered the precursor of Myst and Riven, there is one scene where the
player's pursuit of a bad guy is held up by the player-character noticing
soup cans in the kitchen! 999 out of a 1000 grues surveyed said that, if
they were pursuing a bad guy, they would not pause to examine soup cans.
Hence, broken mimesis.
/Steve
--
,,,
(. .)
+--ooO-(_)-Ooo------------ --- -- - - - -
| Stephen van Egmond http://bang.ml.org/
Weird Beard
Come on! If he didn't care about the money, it would be on the if-archive,
and it would still be called Avalon.
Weird Beard
rude if not more so than anything else in this entire thread.
Cameron Smith
>
> In article <19981124134331...@ng-fi1.aol.com>,
> Papanele <papa...@aol.com> wrote:
> >Could someone please explain to me what on earth mimesis is??
>
> Roger Giner-Sorolla wrote an essay in 1996 called "Crimes Against
> Mimesis". You can see a link to it at
> http://bang.ml.org/library/design/index.html .
>
This sounds similar to the term "suspension of disbelief" that Tolkien
uses in his essay "On Fairy Stories" (published in "Tree and Leaf").
Cameron
bre...@hotmail.com
doea...@aol.com (Doeadeer3) wrote:
>
> In article <kgO62.10580$c8.65...@hme2.newscontent-01.sprint.ca>,
> jcm...@uwaterloo.ca (Joe Mason) writes:
>
> >I also think its worth pointing out that the amount of free IF may drop now
> >that there's a publisher - I for one don't plan on releasing anything for
> >free until CMP's been given a chance to reject it.
> >
> >Joe
>
> Ditto. WTG (Way to go)
Well, yes and no. I too have a large game that I plan on submitting to CMP
when its done. However, I have two smaller games I work on when I Dont feel
up to the task of working on TimeLost. One of these will prob be uploaded for
free summer 99, the other will prob be next years competition entry. (For the
curious: the titles are Piece of Mind, and Beat The Devil)
And for the record, I found o&F to be superior to any graphic adventure I
played in 98. That to me makes it money well spent.
B
-----------== Posted via Deja News, The Discussion Network ==----------
http://www.dejanews.com/ Search, Read, Discuss, or Start Your Own
Doeadeer3
In article <73i979$cet2$1...@newssvr04-int.news.prodigy.com>, "Weird Beard"
<weird...@prodigy.net> writes:
>PS That....thing....about Whizzard not having made 10 cents yet , is just as
>rude if not more so than anything else in this entire thread.
You really think so???
I just meant his royalities may be deferred until CMP is breaking even (we
can't know, but that would not be that unusual). Even then his royality
(percentage) per piece (CD) is probably not very high or at least not as high
as some seem to think by the way they are reacting (even overreating).
That IS all I meant.
Doe :-)
Doeadeer3
In article <Pine.GSO.3.96.98112...@ucsu.Colorado.EDU>, Paul
O'Brian <obr...@ucsu.Colorado.EDU> writes:
>[Pointing at Mike Berlyn's post] Doe, what he said.
Yes. I was wavering back and forth. Now I have decided.
He said it right. :-)
>From: bre...@hotmail.com
>Date: Thu, 26 Nov 1998 04:15:37 GMT
>>> In article <kgO62.10580$c8.65...@hme2.newscontent-01.sprint.ca>,
>>> jcm...@uwaterloo.ca (Joe Mason) writes:
>
>> >I also think its worth pointing out that the amount of free IF may drop now
>> >that there's a publisher - I for one don't plan on releasing anything for
>> >free until CMP's been given a chance to reject it.
>> >
>> >Joe
>>
>> Ditto. WTG (Way to go)
> Well, yes and no. I too have a large game that I plan on submitting to CMP
>when its done. However, I have two smaller games I work on when I Dont
feel
>up to the task of working on TimeLost. One of these will prob be uploaded for
>free summer 99, the other will prob be next years competition entry. (For the
>curious: the titles are Piece of Mind, and Beat The Devil)
Well, ditto on that too. There are some things I am working on (or thinking
about working on) that I think are too "ungamelike" or too short or too insider
for CMP, so those I would not even try to submit, just release them to gmd.de
when finished.
No reason one can't do both. No reason at all.
bre...@hotmail.com
svane...@home.com (Stephen van Egmond) wrote:
> In article <19981124134331...@ng-fi1.aol.com>,
> Papanele <papa...@aol.com> wrote:
> >Could someone please explain to me what on earth mimesis is??
>
> Roger Giner-Sorolla wrote an essay in 1996 called "Crimes Against
> Mimesis". You can see a link to it at
> http://bang.ml.org/library/design/index.html .
>
> interactive fiction context, it's a measure of how immersive the game is.
> In The Seventh Guest (?), a graphical game released some time ago and
> considered the precursor of Myst and Riven, there is one scene where the
> player's pursuit of a bad guy is held up by the player-character noticing
> soup cans in the kitchen! 999 out of a 1000 grues surveyed said that, if
> they were pursuing a bad guy, they would not pause to examine soup cans.
> Hence, broken mimesis.
>
> /Steve
Um, IMO thats a really BAD example for a couple of reasons:
1) 7th guest is _not_ an adventure game. Its a puzzle game. And Im not
talkiing standard IF puzzles either, Im talking puzzles you could find in a
magazine. In no way shape or form can or should it be viewed as the
precursor of Myst and Riven.
2) Spoiler alert
You dont pursue the bad guy in T7G. Hell, he doesnt even show up till youve
beaten the entire game. You simply spend the game wandering around solving
the puzzles that you are lead to by watching the various ghosts. And This
particular grue says If Im in a haunted house and wander into the kitchen and
see a ghost examining soup cans you can bet Im gonna check em out. Mimemsis
intact, at least for me (and most others I know of who played the game) YMOV.
David Glasser
> I also think its worth pointing out that the amount of free IF may drop now
> that there's a publisher - I for one don't plan on releasing anything for
> free until CMP's been given a chance to reject it.
Gah. That's evil.
Especially because I know I'd buy anything from you.
Personally, I wouldn't go to CMP (at least not now), but that's more
because I like the idea that anyone who wants to could play my game
without any payment. Plus, it's too much trouble, at least for me,
really.
--
David Glasser gla...@NOSPAMuscom.com http://onramp.uscom.com/~glasser
DGlasser @ ifMUD : fovea.retina.net 4000 (webpage fovea.retina.net:4001)
Sadie Hawkins, official band of David Glasser: http://sadie.retina.net
"We take our icons very seriously in this class."
David Glasser
> On Tue, 24 Nov 1998, Adam Cadre wrote:
> > Elena wrote:
> > > Could someone please explain to me what on earth mimesis is??
> > [concise explanation of mimesis snipped]
>
> Should this information go in the FAQ? David? Steve? Somebody?
>
> [If it does go in the FAQ, I think we should give credit to Roger
> Giner-Sorolla, who planted the mimesis meme here lo these many years ago
> with his "Crimes Against Mimesis" series.]
Uh...sure. If you say so. I guess is one of those frequently used
words. I'll search for Roger's posts on Deja; I haven't read them for a
while.
Michael Gentry
quote some
>relevant bits....
All I can do is assure you that I meant no malicious intent.
For what it's worth, I think Magnus's prodding has helped me do a much
better job of analyzing what I didn't like and why I didn't like it. I've
made some extensive follow-up posts to my original review. They may not make
you any happier, but maybe you'll find them more constructive.
-M.
================================================
"If you don't eat your meat, you can't have any pudding.
How can you have any pudding if you don't eat your meat?"
David Thornley
Cameron Smith <cks...@western.wave.ca> wrote:
>Stephen van Egmond wrote:
>>
>> In article <19981124134331...@ng-fi1.aol.com>,
>> Papanele <papa...@aol.com> wrote:
>> Roger Giner-Sorolla wrote an essay in 1996 called "Crimes Against
>> Mimesis". You can see a link to it at
>
>uses in his essay "On Fairy Stories" (published in "Tree and Leaf").
>
like it. His opinion of a successful fantasy is that it creates
another world that we can believe in normally, rather than a construct
that we can manage not to disbelieve.
I suppose that this is essentially the same as mimesis. The author
does, in fact, create a secondary world. It's more interactive
than _Lord_of_the_Rings_, and that gives it more potential, for good
or for bad. (No, I'm not saying that I've read any I-F as good
as the best fantasy, but I've read I-F as good as pretty good fantasy.
I don't know whether I-F can be better than the best dead-tree
fiction, or if it can't be as good, but I'd bet on the former.)
Magnus Olsson
Michael Gentry <edr...@concentric.net> wrote:
>
>Magnus Olsson wrote in message <73ecb5$e5g$1...@bartlet.df.lth.se>...
>>OK: instead of criticism of how you deliver your criticism, here's a
>>response to your particular points. I'm not out to debunk you, or to
>>prove your arguments invalid. This is just discussion.
>
>
>Thanks. Likewise, these are merely responses to *your* responses. Now we
>have a discourse going.
OK. Let's continue it.
>First of all, let's talk about the fact that I haven't yet finished this
>game. I did make it pretty clear in my first review that I hadn't finished
>(my exact words, in fact, were "I haven't finished this game."), and that my
>review was of an incomplete game.
Yes, you did, and I saw that the first time around but somehow missed
it when I wrote my comments.
I still think you should have pointed it out more clearly, because it
wasn't clear from your review that you'd only seen a small part of the
game. Just one example: when writing about cardboard NPC's, it wasn't
at all clear that you were really criticizing the Mordred NPC. Even if
you didn't intend it that way, you sounded very general, as if you
were saying "This game contains only cardboard NPC's" rather than "The
first major NPC I encountered was so shallow that it turned me off the
entire game"
If this seems unreasonable of me, let me give you an analogy:
Suppose a friend of yours goes on a trip to Sweden and comes back
saying: "I didn't like Sweden; all Swedish cities are so ugly. Of
course, I haven't seen every Swedish city, but I didn't see a single
interesting sight."
Now, it would be rather different if this person had been travelling
around Sweden for six months, seeing, if not every Swedish city, but
at least a representative sample; or if he'd only visited Sweden for a
weekend and stayed all that time in the same region of the country.
Similarly, "I haven't finished the game, but it was a big
disappointment" (I hope you can excuse me paraphrasing you in that
way) can mean two very different things:
1) "I played 25% of the game, and it was such a disappointment that it
turned me off", which is pretty bad, but still gives the benefit of
the doubt.
2) "I played 95% of the game, and it was such a disappointment that I
couldn't finish it", which is a good deal worse.
Tell you something: I haven't finished "OaF" either, but I think I've
played enough to say that some of your points aren't true for the
whole game.
> I hadn't finished for two reasons: 1) I
>was stuck, which is not the game's fault and did not figure into my opinion
>of the game; and 2) I was so completely un-grabbed by the game that I
>couldn't motivate myself to keep trying, which *is* the game's fault and
>*did* figure prominently in my review. Now, I don't want to hear any crap
>about how I can't write a fair review of a game I haven't finished. First, I
>haven't criticized any part of the game that I haven't actually played.
Well, I'm going to give you some crap, in that case:
You cannot possibly write a review that's fair to the parts you
haven't played. If you can, then you must have psychic powers.
Your review can of course be entirely fair to the parts you've played,
but I don't think it's fair not to be clear about just how small the
part you've seen actually is.
And, before you beat me over the head with a two-by-four, let me say
what I mean by "fair": I don't think it's fair to dis all the immense
efforts that Whizzard has put into this game based on 25% of it.
Saying that "I played the game for 2 weeks, or 2 hours, or 25 minutes,
or 25 seconds," (or whatever), "and what I saw turned me off totally"
is IMHO fair, since the reader can draw his own conclusions. Just
saying (which you didn't, but I'm exaggerating a bit for argument's
sake) "This game stinks. It stinks so bad that I didn't finish it."
isn't fair unless you've played enough to see a representative sample.
I guess my argument boils down to that you weren't reviewing a
representative sample, and there's no way for someone who hasn't
played more than you have to realize that.
One more comment on your review, and then I promise I'll shut up about
these issues, and go on to the more concrete points you raise:
I understand that you didn't intend to "assassinate" the game, to hurt
Whizzard's feelings or anything like that. There just were some
features of your reveiw that had that effect. I'm sure it wasn't
intentional, and I won't go harping on this anymore, but I think
there's a lesson for us all here:
It's not that we shouldn't write negative reviews (as some people have
suggested). It's just that if we write a negative review, we should
try to cushion the blows, as it were, *unless* we really want to kill
the game. (If you think that, say, "Aayela" really stinks, and want to
make sure I never write anything like it again, then by all means
write a devastating review; but if you only want to point out problems
to help me (and others) not to make the same mistakes again, then
you'd better read the advice on how to make constructive criticism).
OK. Rant mode off. Back to the concrete issues.
>And
>second, it doesn't matter if your game has the most mind-blowingly stellar
>climax since "The Empire Strikes Back" -- if the customer turns it off
>halfway through because the game isn't satisfying, then that game has failed
>on its own merits.
This is a very valid criticism, and I think we can only note that
"OaF" didn't work for you in this respect. Your criticism is very
valuable for preventing this happening again with other games, I'm
sure.
>One of my reasons for posting that review was to find out if anyone else had
>felt like I did at the beginning, but found that the game improved later on.
>The general consensus seems to be, yes, the game does improve later on. What
>little has been described to me sounds much better than what I'm currently
>stuck in, so now I would really like to keep playing; unfortunately, I'm
>still pretty stuck. Anyone know how to move that boulder?
I think you've been bit by the fatal bug with Merlin's withholding
important information, but you don't have to move the boulder yet -
there should be more areas to explore in other directions.
>Nevertheless, the game still suffers from the rather serious flaw of having
>a very long, sprawling beginning with little or no plot, little or no NPC
>interaction (which would be fine, if only there were no NPCs), and little or
>no PC characterization. It's 61 rooms and some 10 or 12 hours of playing
>time that I would have happily skipped, if only it were possible, in order
>to get to the good stuff.
This reminds me of the opening chapters of "The Lord of the Rings",
which have caused many people to stop reading out of sheer boredom,
only to be persuaded by people who've read th ebook that it's worth
continuing.
>
>[regarding the the filler rooms]
>>Now, this is quite a nasty thing to say. The implication is that the
>>author has more patience than talent. Is this really what you call
>>constructive criticism?
>
>
>Okay, let me see if I can put it better.
>
>It is quite possible to evoke a sense of vast space or sprawling landscape
>in a single room description, if it is well written and well placed.
Yes, but then you run into other problems with scale - if some rooms
are entire sprawling landscapes, while others are just a small spot
(say, a vast desert in one room and a small oasis with just one date
palm in another), which can make for rathe confusing, disjointed
geography, unless the author is very skillful.
I don't know if you've played "Path to Fortune", but I think that game
suffers from such problems; enormous stretches of forest, which would
take the better part of a day to traverse on foot, occupy only single
rooms. Sometimes you can take a different path to the same
destination, where each room in the path has a much "smaller" feeling,
with the rather disorienting effects.
>Beyond
>that, placing rooms should be a question of what purpose you want the area
>to serve -- the function should help determine the form.
Dfinitely!
> If you're going to
>add another room to the area, it should be because that room has an
>important landmark or scene or interactive whatsit. It should, in short,
>contribute.
Yes, but this is the old chestnut of what is a "contribution". Does a
room where nothing really happens, but which is very atmospheric,
contribute or not?
>A forest which contains, for example, a dead tree with a snake in it and a
>spooky ring of menhir stones really only needs two rooms: one for the tree
>and one for the stones. If you're still having trouble achieving a proper
>sense of size, other techniques can be used: perhaps make an "entry point"
>room -- "Edge of Forest: You are standing at the edge of a dark, sprawling
>forest. From here it seems as though the tangled trees stretch on forever. A
>twisty path leads southwest into the woods." You can establish the forests's
>size right up front, and then any important locations inside the forest can,
>through well-written description, help maintain the feeling that the
>character is lost in the middle of acres and acres of dense woodland.
But what if you want to avoid the feeling that the stones and the dead
tree are almost adjacent to each other? Below you suggest adding
messages when you enter and leave the rooms; this can work, but I
don't think it's a panacaea.
>Now let's take a look at the "Dead Woodland" area of Once and Future. Five
>rooms in all, one of which contains the raven and the necklace. The other
>four rooms do not work because they do not contribute to anything. I liked
>the descriptions and the atmosphere they evoked, but I also felt that the
>descriptions were all essentially the same, and could easily have been
>consolidated into one room. This was further exacerbated by the fact that
>there wasn't anything to *do* in any of the rooms. It was just spooky trees
>and more spooky trees, and I had already learned all I needed to know from
>the very first room description. As a single room, then, the Dead Woodland
>would have been a nice, atmospheric backdrop for the raven sequence; as two
>rooms, it would have perhaps given a little bit more of a sense of
>exploring; as five rooms, however, it was simply a waste. For me, they
>failed to provide atmosphere and they failed to flesh out the world --
>therefore, they succeeded only as filler.
I see what you mean, and I agree with you that some parts of "OaF"
suffer from this problem.
>It occurs to me that this may be yet another unpleasant side effect of the
>grid-pattern problem I was talking about earlier. By visualizing the island
>as a real map divided by a square grid, the author has fallen into the trap
>of treating the landscape as a simulation -- every square needs to be
>accounted for, even if there is nothing interesting in it.
Quite possible so. In particular, condensing the entire forest to one
room would have made it too small, if the room is viewed as a square
on a grid.
>I think the
>author would have done better if he had conceptualized the island as an
>interconnected series of landmarks, making only the important places actual
>rooms, and allowing his room descriptions to convey the sense of space and
>terrain around those landmarks.
I'm inclined to agree with you here. But I'm not quite sure how this
should be done to be the most effective - I find it quite hard to
start from a map and turn it into a set of adventure rooms, for
exactly the reasons you describe, but I also find it hard to skip the
map, because then it's very hard to get the geography consistent. I
had big problems in "Dunjin", where the outdoor sections were
basically designed as a set of connected landmarks, with some "filler"
rooms, and where I had to go back afterwards, draw maps, move rooms
about and even add new rooms just to get a consistent geography.
Do you have any examples of games that succeed in this regard?
>Incidentally, such a conception would not work at all as a grid. You would
>need a variety of different sorts of connections, including the diagonal
>directions.
Indeed.
>>I agree with you here. The entire geography of Avalon is confusing,
>>and not just because of this. I would actually have liked *more*
>>"filler" rooms in some places, to make the transition between the different
>>sub-sections of the island less abrupt.
>
>
>Good Lord, no. If the author were to go about fixing this using his grid
>paradigm, the result would be disastrous -- a whole transitional room in
>between each pair of differing terrains -- and the island would bloat to
>twice its current size.
Well, I don't mean he should keep the grid paradigm in the case.
>One method for implementing transitional landscape is to put text in a
>room's before [; Go:...] routine. (I don't know what the syntax is in TADS,
>but I'm sure you can do it) When the player moves from one room to the next,
>he gets descriptions "in between" the rooms, like this:
>
><transcript>
>The Wasteland
>The cracked, dusty earth stretches to the horizon in all directions, broken
>only by stands of scraggly, thorny brush. The sun beats down unmercifully.
>To the south, you can make out hazy clouds.
>
>>GO SOUTH
>As you trudge southward, the air gradually cools. The cracks in the earth
>become smaller and fewer and then disappear altogether, and soon you see
>grass growing in patches here and there. The ground starts to slope upward,
>and you realize that you have reached....
>
>The Foothills
>The gentle slopes quickly turn to steep, rocky crags to the north. To the
>south are the wastelands, and from this elevation you can see the whole
>sun-blasted valley spread out before you.
></transcript>
Yes, this works, but it has its dangers. For example, if the player
has to move a lot back and forth through this landscape, the
transition messages will turn irritating rather quickly. These
messages are in essence very short "cut scenes", and like all cut
scenes they tend to break mimesis on repetetion. And, of course, many
people don't like cut scenes because of their
non-interactivity. Suppose the transition message mentions some
interesting scenery that you'd like to stop and examine? (Of course,
you could argue that in that ase, the scenery should have its own
room, but then we're back at the transitional rooms you wanted to
abolish).
>That's not the only technique you can use; I think the "entry point" concept
>I mentioned earlier works well also.
This approach, however, has the danger of "telling, not showing". (You
may think I'm a real wet blanket here, just pointing out problems with
everything, but I honestly feel that *all* these approaches have their
problems).
>The point is, you don't need a 3x3 grid
>of "Dark Forest" rooms surrounded by a ring of 16 "Edge of Forest" rooms to
>evoke a landscape.
No, definitely not!
>>Come on - GKW's Avalon is to quite a large extent his own
>>creation. I'm sure that if he'd followed the existing literature, some
>>people (if not you) would have condemned the game for being too
>>derivative.
>
>Yeah, but they'd be wrong. :-)
>
>Writing a game based on the myth of King Arthur isn't derivative in the same
>way as writing a game based on, say, Star Trek or Xanth.
No, but if the game stuck to closely to the well-known Arthur stories,
it would be in the same danger of being unoriginal as a game set in a
standard fantasy world (even though it doesn't borrow from any
specific author).
>King Arthur isn't
>about what historical figure Lancelot was based on or where in England
>Camelot was actually located;
No, but then nobody has said that "OaF" should be about that, either.
> it is a vast myth, an arrangement of
>leitmotifs (sp?) that helped to shape the way we (we as in most of Western
>culture) understand such humongous concepts as loyalty, betrayal, sin,
>purity, and redemption. It's not the literature that I think the author
>should have followed; it's the myth.
But how closely can - or should - you follow the myth in a work that
is
a) a game, with puzzles and whatnot
b) not a re-telling of the Arthurian mythos, but an original story set
partly in that world.
>When I say that the world of King Arthur has already been mapped out, I
>don't mean that in the same way that Middle Earth or the Forgotten Realms
>have already been mapped out. I mean that there are motifs running through
>every King Arthur story -- that those motifs are what *makes* it a King
>Arthur story -- that it's not enough to just put the Holy Grail in your
>game; your game should contain those themes of suffering and sacrifice and
>redemption as well, because those are the themes that spurred mankind to
>invent the myth of the Holy Grail in the first place.
That's more or less what I meant, too, though perhaps that wasn't too
clear from what I wrote :-).
>(It sounds like, later
>in the game, these themes do make an appearance. That's great. See my
>complaint about taking too long to get to the interesting parts.)
Actually, you've already encountered these themes. At least, I think
so. IMHO, the witch-dunking tub and Snookums' story fit into those
themes - it's not just some irrelevant stuff that the author put there
to make the mousehole more interesting.
>Now, I'm starting to make it sound like I expected Once and Future to be a
>timeless myth, but that's not really the case. I understand that Kevin
>Wilson was using the myth of King Arthur as a structure on which to build
>his own creative ideas. However, there is a difference between using the
>myth as structure, and simply running off on an irrelevant tangent. I think
>the author crossed this line at times.
I'm not at all sure he did. In fact, I think there is quite a lot of
basic thematic unity of most of the subplots. Perhaps that unity is in
danger of breaking sometimes, but I don't think this is the authorial
intent (but perhaps the result of the author's overreaching himself).
>Prime offender is my favorite
>whipping boy, the mousehole sequence. I enjoyed being turned into a mouse;
>when the raven started hopping nearer I was excited; when I found the
>mousehole I thought it would be an interesting diversion. If the mousehole
>had involved one or two pertinent puzzles, it *would* have been an
>interesting diversion. Instead, I found a 30+ room cave complex with very
>few objects, some unrelated puzzles, and the ultimate goal of (I think)
>recovering the necklace that I could have just bent down and picked up in
>the first place, if the author hadn't felt the need to send me on this wild
>goose chase.
As I wrote above, I don't think this was really a wold goose chase at
all.
And we should consider that the Arthurian mythos is pretty full of
apparent wild goose chases - some knights get diverted from the quest
of the holy grail and go on an adventure, which is only later revealed
to relate to the main themes.
>It took *way* too much focus from what I thought was the point
>of the game, namely, the motifs of King Arthur and the Holy Grail and how
>they intertwined with the fate of a scared but selfless young soldier in
>Vietnam.
I think you're having a problem here of having formed your conceptions
of what the game really is about too early on. This is of course, if you like,
the game's fault: had it presented a clearer sense of purpose early
on, this wouldn't be a problem.
But I think the author's intention is that the player should start of
as confused as Frank Leandro, going through a series of initially
irrelevant-seeming adventures, only to gradually realize what his true
quest is.
OK, it didn't work out this way for you. Do you think you could shed
more light on why it didn't?
Also, bear in mind when Whizzard started writing "OaF", this
was more or less the norm for adventure games (with some exceptions,
of course): you start the game knowing very little about the game
world or of what you're supposed to do, and part of the game is
finding out just what is going on. Of course, it is not by accident
that this paradigm has been largely abandoned...
>>I think this is entirely in lione with the genre. Remember that this is
>>not a realistic caving trip; it's a mixture of myth and fairy tale.
>
>
>A series of tiny, mouse-sized caves would have made a nice fairy tale. A
>tiny mouse trying to navigate through massive caverns and towering forests
>of crystal stalagmites would have made a nice fairy tale. Being forced,
>after every room description, to think, "Huh? Wait, am I still a mouse?" did
>not make a good fairy tale.
This is, I think, a failure more of descriptions than of the basic
sub-plot or of internal consistency. (I mentioned another example
before: when what is really just tiny little sticks of wood are called
"planks", it's not apparent from the descriptions that these are
mouse-size "planks" rather than human-size ones).
>
>>For crying out loud, it's a maigcal necklace. Does everything have to
>>be spelled out in block capitals?
>
>
>No, but I do expect the author to let me know that he knows what he's doing,
>that he's paying attention to all the little details. The author can confuse
>me, mislead me, spin me in circles all he wants, but if I'm not confidant
>that he's doing it all *on purpose* and *to some effect*, then it all falls
>apart.
Of course, this is a vicious circle: once you start doubting the
author like this, mimesis has broken down, and then you'll tend to see
*everything* in the worst possible light, while if you do trust that
the author knows what he's doing, you'll forgive him these little
transgressions.
Not to say it's the reader's fault if he notices inconsistencies, of
course!
>>Suppose somebody has been doing a witch-hunt among the mice?
>
>
>Okay, then who? Why? What on earth does it have to do with King Arthur or my
>quest to save the world? Couldn't he have saved that wonderfully described
>witch-dunking tub for a scene that was actually relevant?
I think what I find disturbing about this is that because the game
didn't draw you in at the beginning, you've really made up your mind
that the author doesn't know what he's doing, hence anything that
seems irrelelvant must also be irrelevant, hence you can stop looking
for relevance later on.
Let me stress that I'm not accusing you of being narrow-minded or
anything, just that your initial disappointment in the game really
*does* seem to have turned you off it. Perhaps it would be best just
to give it a rest and then come back to it later, when you've come
over your initial disappointment and can view it with a fresh eye?
And of course you can say that it's the author's job preventing such
things to happen. It is, but I daresay it's an impossible task to
please *everybody*.
>It's not enough to simply say "It's a fantasy world, anything goes." That
>attitude -- and I will stand by this one -- *is* lazy.
It is. In fact, I *hate* that attitude. I just don't think this is
what the author is doing at all.
>The author could just
>as easily have stuck the Great Flathead Dam, control panel and all, down
>that mousehole, and it would have had the same effect. Incongruency, all by
>itself, does not make a scene interesting. I'm not going to be impressed
>just because a dunking tub in a mousehole is "strange."
Oh, my, you've really made up your mind that Whizzard is a really
inept author, haven't you? Before you protest: if you haven't, why do
you consistently (no, not always, but rather often) explain things you
don't like with authorial incompetence?
Oh, sure, it can be argued that any failure of the author to make
things sufficiently clear is a kind of incompetence, and I can't
dispute that, but there's a huge difference between being obscure or
ineffective in putting a point across, and being unable to think of a
point to make, n'est-ce pas?
>>>- Cardboard NPCs do not work, period.
>>
>>You're awfully cathegorical, aren't you?
>
>Are you suggesting that cardboard NPCs are a good design element?
Of course not if you mean something to actively strive for; what I
mean is that cardboard NPC's can work in a setting that doesn't call
for a fleshed-out character. Mordred isn't such a case, though - I
agree with you that his inactivity and lack of motivation is quite a
flaw in the game.
>>>And why are you singling out
>>OaF, when there's hardly an NPC in the entire IF corpus that isn't
>>cardboard?
>
>I'm not singling out OaF; I am critical of any NPC that isn't reasonably
>fleshed out. And I disagree with you; I think there are lots of memorable
>NPCs floating around the IF-archive. Not all of them are brilliant, and none
>of them can approach the level of complexity of a real person, obviously,
>but surely we can do better than Mordred.
OK, this was a misunderstanding: I really thought you meant all NPC's
in "OaF", not just Mordred.
>>I suppose your answer is "because the game was hyped as having very
>>well fleshed-out and deep NPCs"?
>
>Actually, I don't remember that being a specific selling point.
OK. That was actually one thing that made me a bit disappointed,
though I did of course take that particular piece of hype with a *big*
grain of salt.
>I have already explained as clearly as I know how which hype I did and did
>not put faith in. All that I ask is that CMP's products live up to the
>standards that CMP set for themselves. Those standards also happen to be the
>standards by which I judge a game worth my time and money.
OK. I just think that you're puttin up very high standards here, by
intepreting CMP's salestalk as a promise only to put out truly
revolutionary work.
>And no (in response to an offshoot of this thread), I didn't pay $25 for the
>packaging. If I thought that that was CMP's attitude, I wouldn't be wasting
>my time discussing this game; I would be pounding on Mike Berlyn's door,
>demanding a refund. I paid $25 dollars for a *game*, dammit, and I expect
>the return on my investment to come from that game, not from the feelies or
>the cardboard box.
OK. My very personal thoughts on this is that I don't see how *any*
text-only IF at today's state-of-the-art (or that of the foreseeable
future) could be worth $25 by those standards. With games like "So
Far" and "Curses" out there for free, a game would have to be an
immense improvement to be worth $25. This doesn't mean that I don't
think you can improve on today's gmes; just that I don't think you can
improve them *enough* to justify going commercial.
On the other hand, I would be prepared to pay $25 for, say, "So Far"
if it were professionally packaged, and if it were not available for
free. That doesn't mean that the trinkets or the cardboard box would
be worth that much - it's just that I don't think it's reasonable to
talk about what a game is "worth" in relation to quality etc.
Does that seem illogical? Am I contradicting myself? Well, what I mean
is that I'd be prepared to pay $25 for playing "Avalon", but not
because I think the game would be "worth" that much more than other
games in some idealistic sense. I'd be prepared to pay $25 to play
games like "So Far" as well.
>>If you haven't played the entire game, you really aren't in a position
>>to judge the entire game in this respect. The story-oriented aspect
>>becomes more prominent further on (though it never takes over) and the
>>game is far from story-less.
>
>
>I wasn't judging the entire game.
The problem is that this was far from obvious from your review,
despite your disclaimer that you hadn't played all of it.
>>>Once and Future is a solid, decently written, puzzle-oriented game, and a
>>>lot of people on this newsgroup are very happy with that, and that is just
>>>fine. Once and Future does not, however, try new things. It is neither
>above
>>>nor beyond the norm. It does not intrigue me, immerse me, or stretch my
>>>mind.
>>
>>Excuse me for pointing out the obvious, but this is a very far cry
>>from your earlier characterization of OaF as very mediocre.
>
>
>In fact, this is PRECISELY what I meant when I said that OaF is very
>mediocre.
As I wrote in another post, unfortunately "mediocre" has rather
negative values. You may have meant precisely the same thing; it
didn't make that impression. (Mainly, I think, because the implication
is that a mediocre (without qualification) game has nothing in
particular to recommend it).
--
Magnus Olsson (m...@df.lth.se, zeb...@pobox.com)
------ http://www.pobox.com/~zebulon ------
Cameron Smith
WARNING! This post contains some minor spoilers.
I've played Once and Future for about a total of two hours now, and I
think that it is more than a standard "quest" adventure. To be honest,
I'm not the best puzzle-solver -- I'm easily stumped by puzzles, and my
attention span isn't all that great. However, I've been quite satisfied
by my experience with OaF so far.
I didn't find the opening section on the Island to be all that
difficult... the puzzles that I solved were fairly easy object puzzles,
I think and they were quite logical. I then visited my three friends in
the present (or was it the future?) and fairly easily solved the puzzles
there. I thought the writing was great, the NPCs were interesting
(although I didn't interact with them directly) and the story made my
want to continue on.
I liked the changing pace and "feel" within the game so far, from the
opening scene where things are relatively non-linear, and the player has
to explore the island, to the Vietnam scenes where things are more
linear and the player jumps quickly from scene to scene. I felt that
the puzzles were straightforward enough in this section that they were
there just to slow me down a bit and force me to read the text while the
plot advanced. I found this section to be highly "story-based", in
contrast to the opening section.
I apologize if I sound too positive so far -- I do agree that the game
isn't fully polished. I've noticed a few bugs that I intend to send to
Kevin. (In fact, one of the bugs gave away a puzzle.) But, I haven't
found any bugs that have seriously detracted from the gameplay.
So, in conclusion, I'd say that so far the game has been fun and if the
game doesn't worsen as I continue, it was definitely worth the money I
payed for it (and at our horrible Canadian exchange rate it wasn't
incredibly cheap).
Cameron
J. Robinson Wheeler
>
> Michael Gentry wrote:
> >[regarding the the filler rooms]
> >It occurs to me that this may be yet another unpleasant side effect of the
> >grid-pattern problem I was talking about earlier. By visualizing the island
> >as a real map divided by a square grid, the author has fallen into the trap
> >of treating the landscape as a simulation -- every square needs to be
> >accounted for, even if there is nothing interesting in it. [snip]
> >
> >The point is, you don't need a 3x3 grid of "Dark Forest" rooms surrounded
> >by a ring of 16 "Edge of Forest" rooms to evoke a landscape.
>
> No, definitely not!
But why is this necessarily invalid? It's not the usual IF experience, and
it may not be to everyone's taste, but I don't see why it falls into the
category of "definitely not."
In fact, based on your description of the grid-like maps with all terrain
accounted for, I was reminded first of playing the Ultima games, which had
tons of terrain you just had to walk through. Two seconds later, I came
up with a more apt analogy: the way an RPG (role-playing game) is mapped
by a dungeon master.
Anyone who knows GKW knows that RPGs are one of his main interests and
amusements, and it makes perfect sense that he crafted his game using
a similar technique of world-building. I note that OaF has a PC whom the
game player must portray, instead of a generic adventurer. The genre of
writing is IF, but also RPG.
As such, its being to the author's taste and style, I think perhaps the
"role-playing" perspective is inherent to OaF and ought to be defended
as artistically valid. Even if it's not your cup of tea, perhaps it's
stilll possible for you to bend a little in the direction of appreciating
it.
--
J. Robinson Wheeler
whe...@jump.net http://www.jump.net/~wheeler/jrw/home.html
Magnus Olsson
>> >grid-pattern problem I was talking about earlier. By visualizing the island
>> >as a real map divided by a square grid, the author has fallen into the trap
>> >of treating the landscape as a simulation -- every square needs to be
>> >
>> >The point is, you don't need a 3x3 grid of "Dark Forest" rooms surrounded
>> >by a ring of 16 "Edge of Forest" rooms to evoke a landscape.
>>
>> No, definitely not!
>
>
>it may not be to everyone's taste, but I don't see why it falls into the
>category of "definitely not."
To clarify: I meant that you definitely don't need a 3x3 grid etc (in
the literal sense of "you don't need"; not the colloquial one of "you
don't want"), not that it would necessarly be a Bad Thing.
>In fact, based on your description of the grid-like maps with all terrain
>accounted for, I was reminded first of playing the Ultima games, which had
>tons of terrain you just had to walk through. Two seconds later, I came
>up with a more apt analogy: the way an RPG (role-playing game) is mapped
>by a dungeon master.
This, of course, depends a lot on the RPG system. But RPG maps have to
be "real" maps with distances and shapes, not just topological maps
that show how to get from one place to another, because most RPG's
allow players to throw things, fire weapons, hide behind rocks or
inside buildings, run to the next door before the bad guy has
reloaded, etc, all of which depend critically on geometry. Most works
of IF don't allow actions such as "walk ten feet to the north, and
*then* throw the grenade", so they don't need an accurate geometric
description of how things are organized.
Doeadeer3
>Doeadeer3 wrote in message
>>>I bloody well do mean it. If Curses and Jigsaw cannot be improved on (or
>>> at least matched), why should anyone bother to sell games for money at all?
>>Well, I was thinking of submitting a game to CMP, now I won't, I can't live
>>up to those standards.
>
>Ah, Christ.
>
>Two things:
>
>First, I think both Curses and Jigsaw have *already* been improved upon, by
>more than one game.
>
>Second, "improved on" was a bad way to put it. Perhaps I should have said
>"moved on from". I am interested in seeing games with engaging stories and
>excellent prose, that try new and interesting things with the medium of
>interactive fiction, games like Spider and Web and Edifice and -- yes --
>Photopia. Any of these are the equal of Curses or Jigsaw. They are
>attempting different things than Graham Nelson was, and they do it well.
>
>The idea that Graham Nelson's games -- and don't get me wrong, God bless the
>man -- represent the end-all be-all of interactive fiction, and that we
>shouldn't even bother to shoot for that goal, is...well, frankly it's
>repulsive to me. If your goal is to create a traditional, enjoyable,
>medium-well text adventure game, then by all means do it. Lots of people
>enjoy them (even me, believe it or not). Post it to the internet. Spread the
>love around. But don't expect me to shell out $25 for it. Traditional,
>enjoyable, medium-well text adventures are available for less than a dollar
>a pop from Activision, and all over the internet for absolutely free.
I have been thinking about this.
I guess, in all honesty, I am not a big fan of interactive-fiction.
I AM a big fan of text adventure games.
I keep thinking of that IF newbie out there who has laid out money for a CD.
That person who may or may not remember Infocom, but, if so, has had little
other exposure to IF. If that were me, if I had paid money, when I played the
game(s) on the CD, I would expect them to be GAMES.
I wouldn't be expecting stories or things so far "out there" I didn't "get" it.
I guess some feel they are pushing the boundaries, creating art. Fine, more
power to them. All arts/crafts advance by those that are "on the edge", trying
new things.
I also feel that the boundaries of current hardware/software also impose some
pretty strong limitations. Like no currently easy-to-create virtual reality, no
real AI, etc.
I agree Edifice is brillant, the puzzles are integrated so seamlessly into the
plot, it is not overwhelming evident they ARE puzzles.
Photopia I see mainly as a CYOA story. Spider & Web I have only started, it may
be truly interactive, I don't know, I reacted negatively to the
stopping/starting and apparent lack of PC control (no deliberate spoilers
here).
I do know I am not interested when playing "games" in exploring an author's
"vision", I can do that with reading. I am interested in DOING things, in
interacting with a plot, NPCs and even puzzles; in using the computer's
interactivity ability.
And I think most of the IF ignorant public will have the same attitude.
So maybe Mike's idea won't fly as well in raif and rgif, as it will out of
them.
Michael Gentry
>
>I guess, in all honesty, I am not a big fan of interactive-fiction.
>
>I AM a big fan of text adventure games.
Oh, good. Then we can stop arguing. See, I don't like broccoli... because it
tastes like broccoli. You DO like broccoli... for the same reason.
>I do know I am not interested when playing "games" in exploring an author's
>"vision", I can do that with reading. I am interested in DOING things, in
>interacting with a plot, NPCs and even puzzles; in using the computer's
>interactivity ability.
Me too. Particularly the "plot," "interactivity" and "NPC" bits. Which is
why I'm more inclined toward the "interactive fiction" distinction. We have
some rather different ideas regarding what structure best utilizes those
bits, which won't be resolved anytime soon, but I'm willing to let it go at
that.
Michael Gentry
Magnus Olsson wrote in message <73p69f$tmv$1...@bartlet.df.lth.se>...
Thanks for the rejoinder; you're making me think. (I guess that means *your*
criticism of *my* criticism was *constructive* criticism.)
>You cannot possibly write a review that's fair to the parts you
>haven't played. If you can, then you must have psychic powers.
I didn't review the parts I haven't played.
>Your review can of course be entirely fair to the parts you've played,
>but I don't think it's fair not to be clear about just how small the
>part you've seen actually is.
Fair enough.
I've explored the entire mousehole. I've explored the entire island of
Avalon except for the Siren's lair, which I have so far been unable to
penetrate. I've found the lightning bolt, been at the bottom of the lake,
found the armor and retrieved the flute. I've found the big tree and I
gather that it's Merlin, but I haven't worked out how to free him yet.
That's it. Yes, it's a small sample. Yes, I said as much in my original
review. (Another quote: "In fact, I feel like although I've covered a whole
lot of ground, I've really hardly started." Take that as you will.) The
problems I encountered within this small segment, which I played over the
course of a week for what was probably, cumulatively, 12-14 hours, were
kiss-of-death to me. The only thing that has kept me interested in this game
is the knowledge that there is a lot more, and the assurance that it gets
better.
>I think you've been bit by the fatal bug with Merlin's withholding
>important information, but you don't have to move the boulder yet -
>there should be more areas to explore in other directions.
Thanks, but no -- I haven't been able to pry Merlin out of the tree yet.
I've been all over the island (see above) and can't find much of anything
that seems to connect to anything else.
>This reminds me of the opening chapters of "The Lord of the Rings",
>which have caused many people to stop reading out of sheer boredom,
>only to be persuaded by people who've read th ebook that it's worth
>continuing.
They didn't bore me; if they had, I wouldn't have finished the book. It
would be a valid criticism in this case to say that the Ring trilogy suffers
from long-windedness, which in the case of some readers is outweighed by the
work's other merits.
>Yes, but then you run into other problems with scale - if some rooms
>are entire sprawling landscapes, while others are just a small spot
>(say, a vast desert in one room and a small oasis with just one date
>palm in another), which can make for rathe confusing, disjointed
>geography, unless the author is very skillful.
All writing/design techniques are most effective when employed by a skillful
author. I prefer to read/play the works of skillful authors. Authors that
are less skillful should practice; when they get more skillful, I will enjoy
their work.
>I don't know if you've played "Path to Fortune", but I think that game
>suffers from such problems
Sounds like the author wasn't as skillful as he needed to be.
>Yes, but this is the old chestnut of what is a "contribution". Does a
>room where nothing really happens, but which is very atmospheric,
>contribute or not?
Not when there are three others just like it.
>I'm inclined to agree with you here. But I'm not quite sure how this
>should be done to be the most effective - I find it quite hard to
>start from a map and turn it into a set of adventure rooms, for
>exactly the reasons you describe, but I also find it hard to skip the
>map, because then it's very hard to get the geography consistent. I
>had big problems in "Dunjin", where the outdoor sections were
>basically designed as a set of connected landmarks, with some "filler"
>rooms, and where I had to go back afterwards, draw maps, move rooms
>about and even add new rooms just to get a consistent geography.
I had the same problems with Anchorhead, and I didn't manage to solve them
all, either. It's a tough thing to get right.
Did you ever watch "A River Runs Through It"? I found it quite boring, but
there was one scene that I really enjoyed. Boy's father is teaching boy the
craft of writing. Boy writes an essay. Boy brings four pages in to his
father, who looks it over and says: "Write it again. Half as long."
Boy despondently leaves, then brings back two pages. Father glances at it,
says: "Write it again. Half as long."
One page. "Half as long."
Half a page. "Half as long."
And so on.
The point of that scene is NOT that Boy should restrict all future essays to
a quarter page in length. The point is that Boy must learn discipline in
writing. Overwriting is one of the most common problems beginning writers
indulge in. The fine art of slashing and burning huge chunks of your own
beloved text is a painful and difficult skill to master. But it pays off
because you learn to be careful. You learn to only add something when you
*know* it will only improve the work. (BVE said something intelligent to
that effect recently: Pick a sentence, any sentence, and delete it. If the
meaning of the story has not changed, don't put it back in.)
I'm in some danger of going on a tangent, here, so let me bring it back to
OaF and game design in general. Yes, it's hard to get right. But the
discipline is what's important. If you start out thinking, "Okay, I need a
big, fantasy-type playing field, with forests and deserts and mountains and
lakes and so forth," and worry about filling those spaces second, you're
going to run into problems. I find, on the other hand, that if you start
with what's important, and strive to add only what improves upon that (what,
ahem, "contributes"), you will do much better.
The point: the minimalist room method is not a hard-and-fast rule. It's a
discipline. I think OaF needs more of it.
>Do you have any examples of games that succeed in this regard?
Edifice did a very good job. "Wait!!" you say. "Edifice had like *nine*
Grassland rooms that were all the same!" Yes, but those rooms served the
purpose of creating a puzzle: the player had to learn to track the
wildebeest. Contribution, contribution, contribution. And the other
important bits -- the stump, the tree, the pond, the poisoned stream -- each
had one room apiece. And that's all that was needed for level one. A whole
African veldt in hardly a dozen rooms.
Jigsaw did a good job. The Wright Brothers' beach had roughly the same
number of rooms as the inside of the abandoned bomber, and yet one was a
claustrophobic metal-walled prison, while the other was a wide open beach.
Graham (admittedly a tough act to follow) did it all with only two or three
sentences to each room description.
Trinity did a good job. Some of the mushrooms lead to wide open spaces (the
Russian tundra), some lead to very cramped spaces (the underground tunnel).
None contained more than a bare handful of rooms. You have outer space, an
obviously HUGE landscape that is only described with one room, yet still
gives the impression of travelling (around the Earth), even though you
cannot move in any direction. You have the Trinity site itself, which blends
vast tracts of desert with small, adjacent rooms in ranch houses -- and the
ranch house contains about as many individual locations as the entire rest
of New Mexico.
So Far did a good job. The tundra world gave me a very good sense of
stumbling around an empty wasteland, and yet there was not a single room
that was not significant in either its content or its placement. So Far also
demonstrated an inverse application of my theory -- you can intentionally
spread a cramped, enclosed space out over several rooms (the theatre in the
opening scene), in order to heighten the struggling effect, requiring a lot
of effort in order to make a little progress. Once again, it's the specific
purpose, the contribution that makes it work.
>This approach, however, has the danger of "telling, not showing". (You
>may think I'm a real wet blanket here, just pointing out problems with
>everything, but I honestly feel that *all* these approaches have their
>problems).
None of my ideas are fool-proof, and none of them work unilaterally in every
imaginable case. I was just offering a couple of examples. The point is, you
would have to work hard to make them work well in the context in which
you're using them. It might take you...gee...several years to get it
perfect.
[stuff about Arthurian themes]
>No, but then nobody has said that "OaF" should be about that, either.
My complaint is that the game lacked focus. I wasn't implying that OaF
should have followed the specific stories of the Arthur mythos (in fact, I
said the opposite: "It's not the literature that I think the author should
have followed..."). But a world which contains the Arthur mythos is a world
in which those stories have happened or are about to happen. It's not enough
to just have Mordred and Lancelot wandering around bumping heads. (Not
accusing OaF of portraying Lancelot that way. Just giving generic Bad
Example.) The characters have motives and relationships among one another,
and those motives and relationships (and the themes they symbolize) should
have an effect on the story you're trying to tell, even when the kernel of
your own story is something other than the traditional Arthurian tales.
If those themes have no effect on your story, then there wasn't a whole lot
of point in making it a King Arthur story at all. I repeat: a plotless,
puzzle-oriented game sprinkled with bits of King Arthur is not essentially
different from a plotless, puzzle-oriented game sprinkled with bits of Zork.
The latter portion of the game, apparently, overcomes this problem. Great.
The beginning didn't. The beginning was not essentially different from Zork,
which I've already played.
>Actually, you've already encountered these themes. At least, I think
>so. IMHO, the witch-dunking tub and Snookums' story fit into those
>themes - it's not just some irrelevant stuff that the author put there
>to make the mousehole more interesting.
I wasn't able to get any story out of Snookums, other than that the Stick
Man had been tormenting her and stuffing her into the witch tub. Intriguing,
but it went no further. Does Snookums figure importantly later in the game?
Does the Stick Man? I'd be a lot happier if they did.
>And we should consider that the Arthurian mythos is pretty full of
>apparent wild goose chases - some knights get diverted from the quest
>of the holy grail and go on an adventure, which is only later revealed
>to relate to the main themes.
I would argue that those side adventures are only later revealed to relate
to the main *plot*. It's usually pretty apparent how they relate to the main
*themes*. In other words, the long sidetrack in the mousehole wouldn't have
been so bad if it had been apparent that the author was eventually going
somewhere with it.
>I think you're having a problem here of having formed your conceptions
>of what the game really is about too early on. This is of course, if you
like,
>the game's fault: had it presented a clearer sense of purpose early
>on, this wouldn't be a problem.
>
>But I think the author's intention is that the player should start of
>as confused as Frank Leandro, going through a series of initially
>irrelevant-seeming adventures, only to gradually realize what his true
>quest is.
You have to be careful when you do that. There's a difference between
seeming irrelevant and just seeming disconnected. The little scenes in
Photopia and the various worlds in So Far seemed very disconnected, but they
did not seem irrelevant. I was plenty confused, but I was also intrigued. If
the beginning of a game seems irrelevant, then I'm not intrigued, I am not
interested, and it's going to have to be *really* excellent writing, at the
very least, to keep me playing.
>OK, it didn't work out this way for you. Do you think you could shed
>more light on why it didn't?
See above. It's okay that the mouse-hole was disconnected; it wasn't okay
that it seemed irrelevant. It would have been okay for me to be in the dark
about where the author was going with all this, if I'd had a clearer sense
that he was going *anywhere* with it. Perhaps he was, but everything was so
unfocused and seemingly random that it didn't come through. I lost patience.
>Also, bear in mind when Whizzard started writing "OaF", this
>was more or less the norm for adventure games (with some exceptions,
>of course): you start the game knowing very little about the game
>world or of what you're supposed to do, and part of the game is
>finding out just what is going on. Of course, it is not by accident
>that this paradigm has been largely abandoned...
I thought of that. I began to get the suspicion early on that the island of
Avalon had been written first, and was therefore actually a five-year-old
game. My advice to authors who take several years to finish a work: in all
likelihood, your style has evolved and your skills improved in the interim.
Go back and revise your beginning HEAVILY. Throw it out altogether, even,
and rewrite it. Consistency is a good thing.
[the caverns: big or small?]
>This is, I think, a failure more of descriptions than of the basic
>sub-plot or of internal consistency.
I think it was the fault of the room descriptions as well. But I see
internal consistency as an issue that is present in every element of the
game, room descriptions and plotting both.
>Of course, this is a vicious circle: once you start doubting the
>author like this, mimesis has broken down, and then you'll tend to see
>*everything* in the worst possible light, while if you do trust that
>the author knows what he's doing, you'll forgive him these little
>transgressions.
It's the little transgressions that cause me to doubt the author in the
first place. If I trust an author, it means he hasn't made any
transgressions yet.
>I think what I find disturbing about this is that because the game
>didn't draw you in at the beginning, you've really made up your mind
>that the author doesn't know what he's doing, hence anything that
>seems irrelelvant must also be irrelevant, hence you can stop looking
>for relevance later on.
>
>Let me stress that I'm not accusing you of being narrow-minded or
>anything, just that your initial disappointment in the game really
>*does* seem to have turned you off it.
Well, insofar as the game's initial failures made me stop enjoying it, yes.
>Perhaps it would be best just
>to give it a rest and then come back to it later, when you've come
>over your initial disappointment and can view it with a fresh eye?
This discussion, actually, has been serving that exact purpose. I haven't
played the game since my first review. After this thread peters out, and I
wheedle a useful hint out of RGIF, I'm going to tackle the game again and
see if I can't get past the beginning.
>And of course you can say that it's the author's job preventing such
>things to happen. It is, but I daresay it's an impossible task to
>please *everybody*.
That's why poor reviews should be expected now and again. :-)
>>It's not enough to simply say "It's a fantasy world, anything goes." That
>>attitude -- and I will stand by this one -- *is* lazy.
>
>It is. In fact, I *hate* that attitude. I just don't think this is
>what the author is doing at all.
Actually, I was just trying to nip your "Remember, it's not a realistic
caving trip" defense in the bud. I needed you to be more specific about why
dunking tubs were okay in that situation.
>Oh, my, you've really made up your mind that Whizzard is a really
>inept author, haven't you? Before you protest: if you haven't, why do
>you consistently (no, not always, but rather often) explain things you
>don't like with authorial incompetence?
Um, because the author wrote the game, and is therefore responsible for
every element in it, good or bad.
I'm not really trying to say that Kevin Wilson is inept. I'm trying to say
that Once and Future is ineptly done (or at least, the beginning is). This
statement necessarily implies "....by Kevin Wilson." If he writes another
game, I promise that I will judge that game on its own merits. I will also
expect that he will have improved since Once and Future -- if not by my
standards, then at least by his own.
>>>>- Cardboard NPCs do not work, period.
>>>
>>>You're awfully cathegorical, aren't you?
>>
>>Are you suggesting that cardboard NPCs are a good design element?
>
>Of course not if you mean something to actively strive for; what I
>mean is that cardboard NPC's can work in a setting that doesn't call
>for a fleshed-out character.
A cardboard NPC is, by my definition, a failure. There is a difference
between a minor or "walk-on" character, who doesn't require a whole lot of
background, and a cardboard NPC.
Mordred is a cardboard NPC.
The girl on the oracle's throne, on the other hand, is not. She is (so far)
a minor character. I don't know a whole lot about her. But she has
interesting touches that make her just fleshed out enough for the purpose.
The fact that she's a young girl. The fact that she's apparently bound to
the throne against her will. The fact that there is a strong implication
that I may be called upon to rescue her in the future.
Mordred just has... well, he has a mace. And an attitude. I liked the troll
in Zork I a lot better.
>OK. I just think that you're puttin up very high standards here, by
>intepreting CMP's salestalk as a promise only to put out truly
>revolutionary work.
I don't have a lot of tolerance for empty sales talk. Mike Berlyn mentioned
in an earlier post that they intend to release some boundary-pushing games,
some traditional puzzle-hunt games. That's fine; but I think CMP should
revise their ad copy to reflect this.
>OK. My very personal thoughts on this is that I don't see how *any*
>text-only IF at today's state-of-the-art (or that of the foreseeable
>future) could be worth $25 by those standards.
The Infocom games were worth $25 dollars in the 80s. Surely today's IF
should be at least that good if it's to be worth $25 today.
>With games like "So
>Far" and "Curses" out there for free, a game would have to be an
>immense improvement to be worth $25. This doesn't mean that I don't
>think you can improve on today's gmes; just that I don't think you can
>improve them *enough* to justify going commercial.
Let me make something clear: neither Kevin Wilson nor anyone else on this
newsgroup needs to "justify" going commercial. We all have the right to
demand money for our work. I would have payed $25 for either So Far or
Curses, and been happy with the product. That they are free *now* is
after-the-fact argument. I would pay $25 now for a game as good as So Far or
Curses.
It's not so much that I'm *raising* my standards when the wallet comes out;
I'm just more strict in the application of those standards when judging the
game, in proportion to how much money it costs.
>As I wrote in another post, unfortunately "mediocre" has rather
>negative values. You may have meant precisely the same thing; it
>didn't make that impression. (Mainly, I think, because the implication
>is that a mediocre (without qualification) game has nothing in
>particular to recommend it).
I know mediocre has negative connotations. I still meant it. I don't think
mediocrity is something that should be striven or settled for.
Mark J. Tilford
>
>One of my favorite examples of breaking it is in John Dickson Carr's
>book _The_Three_Coffins_, where Dr. Fell sits his friends down, explains
>that they're all in the middle of a detective story, and proceeds
>to discourse on locked-room mysteries. (A more indirect example was
>
Wow, I'm not the only person here who reads Golden Age detective fiction!
The Three Coffins is great, but I enjoyed The Judas Window more, and I
kind of prefer Ellery Queen to JDC/CD. Not that any of this is relevent
to A/OaF/mimesis.
--
-----------------------
Mark Jeffrey Tilford
til...@cco.caltech.edu
Doeadeer3
In article <73qij3$9...@journal.concentric.net>, "Michael Gentry"
<edr...@concentric.net> writes:
>Oh, good. Then we can stop arguing. See, I don't like broccoli... because it
>tastes like broccoli. You DO like broccoli... for the same reason.
Oh, good. I have been dismissed. I can leave this thread now.
Doe
Doeadeer3
In article <19981129025220...@ngol02.aol.com>, doea...@aol.com
(Doeadeer3) writes:
>In article <73qij3$9...@journal.concentric.net>, "Michael Gentry"
><edr...@concentric.net> writes:
>
>>Oh, good. Then we can stop arguing. See, I don't like broccoli... because it
>>tastes like broccoli. You DO like broccoli... for the same reason.
>
>Oh, good. I have been dismissed. I can leave this thread now.
Got ticked. Felt you were being dismissive of practically everyone's (but a
handful of people's) work (which, btw, covers a lot of ground, most of the
"games" at gmd.de, plus future ones). Also felt as if you patted me on the
head, "If you want to write a traditional IF game, go right ahead, I may even
condescend to play it, myself."
I really wonder if that is what you meant or how you wanted to come across?
So expound on what interactive-fiction is, how it differs from "text adventure
games", what you expect in the future, how IF is "better", etc.
I'll listen.
Unless that is what you meant and how you wanted to come across.
Doe :-)
Michael Gentry
What I meant was:
I have described OaF as a "solid, decently written, puzzle-oriented text
adventure."
Several people, including you, have made it abundantly clear that they enjoy
that type of game over more experimental types of IF such as Photopia, that
that's just what they expected from OaF, and that they're happy with it.
I'm not out to argue with anyone's personal taste.
When an arguement boils down to:
1) This is a terrible apple
2) Yes, but it makes a perfectly good orange, and I happen to like
oranges
...then the argument can go no further. Which isn't really a problem for me.
In fact, I'm happy to let it go at that, since at the moment I've got my
hands pretty full.
That's maybe why I sounded dismissive. Sorry; didn't mean it like that. The
argument between you and me didn't start by being about specific merits of
the game, but when it did begin to move in that direction, it pretty much
directly jumped to "I like average, traditional puzzle-hunt games and I
don't like stuff I don't 'get'."
I think pretty much the opposite. Let's shake on it.
Michael Gentry
post.
-M.
Doeadeer3
In article <73rlb1$8...@journal.concentric.net>, "Michael Gentry"
<edr...@concentric.net> writes:
>That's maybe why I sounded dismissive. Sorry; didn't mean it like that. The
>argument between you and me didn't start by being about specific merits of
>the game, but when it did begin to move in that direction, it pretty much
>directly jumped to "I like average, traditional puzzle-hunt games and I
>don't like stuff I don't 'get'."
>
>I think pretty much the opposite. Let's shake on it.
No, actually I didn't say that. (Haven't played O&F so I can't comment on it.)
I never used the word average. I also "get" almost everything, I just don't
always "get" why I should want to play it or why it is "fun".
I said I like INTERACTIVE-fiction ("text adventures"). It seems to me when
people get fancier, more experimental, etc., the whole experience often becomes
less INTERACTIVE. The less interactive it is, the less I tend to like it.
Because if I want just a story or to spend most of my time exploring a
particular author's perspective, I can read a book or see a movie. But when I
am playing a computer IF "game" (whatever you want to call it), I want
interactivity. To me, that is the whole point, using the medium, the computer.
That is what makes it a DIFFERENT experience from just reading or watching.
I also don't feel that there ARE that many good IF games (traditional variety)
at the archive. Many are too buggy, many are too short, many have some sort of
problem or other, poor/inconsistent plot or something (a lot of contest games
from previous years, for example, are never updated with even bug fixes).
So there is something I am simply not getting here. You specifically stated
that you wanted CMP to publish a certain type of IF game. Limit itself to the
more experimental ones, I guess, I am not sure. You implied anything other than
that was a waste of your time. By that implication you were dismissing 80-90%
of IF games already at the archive (and future games) as being essentially
"inferior".
All that is pretty sweeping, so I would like to hear what you have to say about
IF, what is inferior (medicore, average), what is better, what IS experimental,
the difference between interactive-fiction and text adventures and what you see
happening in the future. Is experimental always better? Does it actually offer
a better "playing" experience?
Otherwise I can not make much sense of your broad generalizations. Unless you
think CMP should only publish contest winners.
And you may give me some ideas about what to write or how to write it.
Michael Gentry
Doeadeer3 wrote in message <19981129134645...@ngol03.aol.com>...
>
>In article <73rlb1$8...@journal.concentric.net>, "Michael Gentry"
><edr...@concentric.net> writes:
>
>>That's maybe why I sounded dismissive. Sorry; didn't mean it like that.
The
>>argument between you and me didn't start by being about specific merits of
>>the game, but when it did begin to move in that direction, it pretty much
>>directly jumped to "I like average, traditional puzzle-hunt games and I
>>don't like stuff I don't 'get'."
>>
>>I think pretty much the opposite. Let's shake on it.
>
>No, actually I didn't say that. (Haven't played O&F so I can't comment on
it.)
>
>I never used the word average. I also "get" almost everything, I just don't
>always "get" why I should want to play it or why it is "fun".
Sorry; these are specifically the statements I was thinking of:
"I wouldn't be expecting stories or things so far "out there" I didn't "get"
it."
"That is my goal, medium-well text adventure game, traditional format."
"I guess, in all honesty, I am not a big fan of interactive-fiction. I AM a
big fan of text adventure games."
I took this to mean that you prefer traditional, puzzle-over-story type
games and that you're not crazy about the experimental stuff.
>I said I like INTERACTIVE-fiction ("text adventures"). It seems to me when
>people get fancier, more experimental, etc., the whole experience often
becomes
>less INTERACTIVE. The less interactive it is, the less I tend to like it.
>
>Because if I want just a story or to spend most of my time exploring a
>particular author's perspective, I can read a book or see a movie. But when
I
>am playing a computer IF "game" (whatever you want to call it), I want
>interactivity. To me, that is the whole point, using the medium, the
computer.
>That is what makes it a DIFFERENT experience from just reading or watching.
Okay. When you use the word interactive, it sounds to me like you mean
picking up things, using those things on other things, exploring all the
things you could reasonably be expected to explore, etc. I would also guess
that you mean being able to affect the outcome of a story, although I'm
still not sure if story is a big priority for you.
When I use the word interactive, I mean the ability to *participate* in the
narrative of the game. This may or may not include messing with things; it
may or may not include affecting the outcome of the story. To some degree,
participation is facilitated by allowing me to type in commands and see how
they affect the game. It is also facilitated by the author's ability to draw
me into the game and make me feel like I (the PC) am a part of an unfolding
story. That's why, for example, Photopia (and please, let's NOT turn this
into another Photopia thread) really worked for me, even though there is not
a great deal of breadth to explore. Instead, there was a lot of *depth* that
I felt immersed in, and felt as though I was participating in. That's why it
seemed very interactive to me, and hardly interactive at all to you.
I enjoy exploring and picking up things and using things on things and
solving puzzles as well, but only when they are subservient to an engaging
and immersive story. I don't like room descriptions and object descriptions
purely for their own sake.
I am very interested in exploring an author's vision. That's what I go into
any book, movie, or game looking for. I'm a writer and I like good writing
and I like it when good writers impress and surprise me. I enjoy stretching
my experience; I enjoy reading something strange and new that I have to work
a little to appreciate. I like work that pushes in new directions. Not all
of those directions always work for me, but I think it's a good thing to
have happening regardless.
I would like to see more games with "authorial vision" released, and I would
like to see them strive towards utilizing the interactive capabilities of
the IF medium to the best effect in supporting that vision. I want to see
stories that, by their very nature, could only have been told in the
interactive fiction medium, because the player's participation is necessary
to understand fully the author's vision.
>I also don't feel that there ARE that many good IF games (traditional
variety)
>at the archive.
I don't either (traditional variety or otherwise). I think there are a bunch
of mediocre ones, a hefty batch of stinkers, and a handful of real gems.
>So there is something I am simply not getting here. You specifically stated
>that you wanted CMP to publish a certain type of IF game. Limit itself to
the
>more experimental ones, I guess, I am not sure.
That's not true. I stated that I want CMP to live up to the standards that
they advertise. If they are going to publish traditional, puzzle-oriented
text adventures, they should advertise as such, but aside from that I don't
have a problem with it. I probably won't buy very many.
Now, I *also* stated that I don't think CMP will go very far with
traditional, puzzle-oriented text adventures. The reason I said this is
because my impression is that the market for traditional text adventures is
pretty small. The people in it are pretty set in their ways; they know what
they like and they expect their games to deliver the goods. I don't think
traditional text adventures have a whole lot to offer people who are not
already a part of this limited market. Therefore, even a well-advertised
game isn't going to make that market grow. On the other hand, games that try
to push the boundaries of what IF can do, and that manage to surprise people
who thought they knew what IF was about, have a better chance of changing
the mind of a non-fan and bringing new people into the market. Market gets
bigger, company does better. I would like to see CMP succeed as a business
venture, so I hope they throw a lot of effort into boundary-pushing games.
Mike Berlyn has a different opinion of the IF market; he thinks it's bigger
than I do and he's confidant that the traditional games will do very well.
I'm not sure I'm convinced, but I accede that Mr. Berlyn would probably know
better than I would.
>You implied anything other than that was a waste of your time.
What I meant to imply is that I don't enjoy them, I'm not obligated to play
them, I'm not obligated to like them, and I'm not obligated to buy them.
The same goes for you. I never got the impression that you felt Photopia was
time well spent on your part.
>By that implication you were dismissing 80-90%
>of IF games already at the archive (and future games) as being essentially
>"inferior".
If I had to guess, I'd estimate that maybe 80% of what's on the IF archive
right now is just not my cup of tea. I don't like them as much as the games
that *are* my cup of tea. Now what law am I breaking, exactly?
>All that is pretty sweeping, so I would like to hear what you have to say
about
>IF, what is inferior (medicore, average), what is better,
A lot of that I've already answered up at the top of this post. I don't like
traditional puzzle-hunt games very much. I like games in which story is
given priority over puzzles, in which the game's design is shaped in
accordance with that story.
>what IS experimental,
What is experiemental? Well, I suppose it's something that hasn't been tried
before. Something that utilizes the medium of IF in an unconventional
manner. Something that is about more than mazes with brass lanterns and
zorkmid coins and empty volcanoes and hot air balloons scattered here and
there. Pick an original vision and mold the conventions of IF in a new way
to fit that vision; you've done something experimental.
To return (briefly) to the example of Photopia: I don't think it failed to
use the medium of IF in a conventional manner. I think it succeeded in using
the medium of IF in an entirely original manner. Thus it was a very
successful experiment.
>the difference between interactive-fiction and text adventures
See above.
>and what you see happening in the future.
In the future, I see both types of games being designed, and I'm always
going to be more interested in the one type than the other.
>Is experimental always better?
Is it better than what? If you mean, "Does an experimental game always work
well?" then the answer is no. If you mean, "Is it always better that we
continue to experiment?" then the answer is yes. If you mean, "Will you
(Mike) always be more interested in experimental over traditional IF?" then
the answer is yes.
>Does it actually offer a better "playing" experience?
It does for me.
>And you may give me some ideas about what to write or how to write it.
I hope so.
Doeadeer3
In article <73s9nf$q...@journal.concentric.net>, "Michael Gentry"
<edr...@concentric.net> writes:
>Okay. When you use the word interactive, it sounds to me like you mean
>picking up things, using those things on other things, exploring all the
>things you could reasonably be expected to explore, etc. I would also guess
>that you mean being able to affect the outcome of a story, although I'm
>still not sure if story is a big priority for you.
[everything else I wanted to quote snipped because this post got to long to
send]
Thank you for your post, I understand better where you are coming from.
I was repeating some of your words back to you. Also I am sometimes unclear in
my language because I am groping around for terms that may not exist yet or I
am simply unclear and/or often being facetious and people don't realize it.
I was also trying not to mention specific games (but I had quite a few more in
mind than Photopia, btw). For example, Tempest, an experiment, but one that had
such decreased interactivity, it did not work for most people.
How puzzless IF can remain interactive I have no idea, I don't think we've
really seen the potential there yet. No, interactivity does not have to mean
going around and picking things up (although that is the time honored and
easiest way to do it, so it will continue to be used), but it does mean the
player can try to DO things, especially things the author may not want them to
try. Also try them in an order the author did not foresee. They can explore
outside the author's boundaries a bit. This is complex, because the author has
to code for stuff outside their boundaries also, so all the interactivity is an
illusion. However, if done well, the illusion remains.
But when the author limits my actions mainly to the exact things they want me
to do, I feel it isn't really that interactive and that I, as player, have
little free will, thus, little desire to play along.
I like better, more defined plots too (when I said exploring the author's
vision I was thinking of specific games that, while interesting, are so
author-oriented and so unplayer-oriented they actually have little
interactivity). I've always liked plots, ever I first got hooked on IF with
Witness and Deadline.
My concern, I guess, is that authors, in trying to be more writers and not just
dungeon designers, will do that. Focus more on what they want to say and less
on what the player can do for themselves. Write more author-oriented games and
less player-oriented games. Decrease the interactivity, lessen the experience.
And by decreasing the interactivity, decrease the whole point of it being
INTERACTIVE-fiction and not just fiction in the first place.
Doe :-) Thereby decreasing the reason I love it.
Al
> > Will someone please post the solution to the skull puzzle
> > in the Secret Chamber?
> >
> > A curse has been placed on GKW for foisting this
> > "game" on the unsuspecting public.
> >
> > A future review will be posted to SPAG.
> >
> > Tain't gonna be a nice one.
> >
> > Anyone else with bitches feel free to add to this thread.
> >
Well after having read the latest issue of SPAG 16, I feel that I may
have acted too hastily. However since I haven't finished the game and
am waiting for the hints I sent GKW a private apology.
I did solve the skull puzzle, but by sheer dumb luck. The colors changed
constantly and it will be interesting to see whoever posts the walkthru
of this
entire game to rgif how this one is solved.
This does not mean that the future review will be a flowers and roses
however.
The biggest bitch I have is for the price of the game, some InvisiClues
or on-line hints could have been put on the CD with little effort.
A complete walkthru and maps also could have been put on as well.
My CD (hopefully arriving next summer will have all the above and
printable documentation in the format of Acrobat documents.
Lelah Conrad
>My concern, I guess, is that authors, in trying to be more writers and not just
>dungeon designers, will do that. Focus more on what they want to say and less
>on what the player can do for themselves. Write more author-oriented games and
>less player-oriented games. Decrease the interactivity, lessen the experience.
>
>And by decreasing the interactivity, decrease the whole point of it being
>INTERACTIVE-fiction and not just fiction in the first place.
I think this is a valid point, and one maybe not yet fully appreciated
by those of us enchanted with Photopia. Eventually, we might tire of
games where interactivity was limited to what might be seen as page
turning. This year, it was a novel approach.
I would like to say something about Once and Future, though I realize
this comment is buried so far inside this thread that maybe Whizzard
won't see it:
I'm enjoying it! It is a big, rambling game, and one that
tries to do what you mention above, create a story while at the same
time allowing the player to make lots of choices. (You'd probably
like this one, Doe!) I'm not a very good puzzle solver, and yet I'm
finding OaF's puzzles to be quite solveable (yay!)-- so far, I've
only had to get one hint. It occurs to me that games which are for
sale to the beyond-r*if public ought to have puzzles that are of this
level of difficulty.
Another thing I've noticed is that even though I haven't
solved several puzzles along the way, I have still been able to
proceed. I find this *very* admirable in an author, and something
else that makes the game forgiving, and appealing to a broader public.
Of course, I may never achieve a rank beyond, let's see, Command
Sergeant Major (is that low? is that high? I have no military
background so I'm feeling pretty good about it anyway -- no scoffing
you whiz kids!! :) And maybe I'll be closed off later from finishing
the game. But so far, I'm making forward motion, being entertained,
and seeing lots of strange and fascinating things.
Is it buggy? Well, yes. Is it disjointed? A bit, but there
are so many interesting things to do and see that I haven't minded,
even if I don't exactly know *why* I'm doing and seeing them. I'm
definitely into it, and if I ever finish it I'll try to post an
overall review.
Lelah
Jason Compton
: PS That....thing....about Whizzard not having made 10 cents yet , is just as
: rude if not more so than anything else in this entire thread.
And by the by, at the very least the "New authors wanted!" bit on Cascade
Mountain's website promises royalties "from the first unit" I believe is
the phrasing. So Kevin has probably made at least 10 cents.
--
Jason Compton jcom...@xnet.com
www.xnet.com/~jcompton
Stacy the Procrastinating
> And I think CMP is in BIG trouble, right now, from the start.
>
CMP doesn't need me to defend them, but as someone mentioned earlier, IF
is just one part of what CMP does/will do. It also seems to be very well
run: small company, few employees, slow and thorough rollout. This is
not some huge company with a crazy burnrate that needs to make money right
out of the gate (well, it doesn't look that way...if it is they hide it
well!). I don't think anyone really expected OaF to be the next Myst. I'm
hoping CMP's timeframe is in years, not months. Maybe OaF isn't the
genre-shattering holy grail of IF, but it's a first step. It's wha
they'll be turning out five years from now that I'm really interested in
seeing. (Or five months--having loved Suspended, I'm eagerly awaiting
Chameleon).
-stacy
***************************************************************
* To reply to this message, cut the animal out of the address *
***************************************************************
Stacy the Procrastinating
> Joe Mason <jcm...@uwaterloo.ca> wrote:
>
> > I also think its worth pointing out that the amount of free IF may drop now
> > that there's a publisher - I for one don't plan on releasing anything for
> > free until CMP's been given a chance to reject it.
>
> Gah. That's evil.
>
> Especially because I know I'd buy anything from you.
>
> Personally, I wouldn't go to CMP (at least not now), but that's more
> because I like the idea that anyone who wants to could play my game
> without any payment. Plus, it's too much trouble, at least for me,
> really.
I'm hoping CMP will actually increase the amount of free IF out there by
attracing new players to the genre, some on whom will have the reaction
many of us have--"hey, I wanna write one too!" And I suspect that there
will always be a nice balance of people who prefer having a wide audience
to getting paid (not that there's anything wrong with getting paid!). If
commercial IF becomes viable once again, it'll be wonderful for all of IF.
- Stacy
Doeadeer3
In article <Pine.SOL.3.96.981201162058.12777D-100000@eclipse>, Stacy the
Procrastinating <sc...@okapi.columbia.edu> writes:
>I'm hoping CMP will actually increase the amount of free IF out there by
>attracing new players to the genre, some on whom will have the reaction
>many of us have--"hey, I wanna write one too!" And I suspect that there
>will always be a nice balance of people who prefer having a wide audience
>to getting paid (not that there's anything wrong with getting paid!). If
>commercial IF becomes viable once again, it'll be wonderful for all of IF.
Ditto. Good summation. If CMP works (on the IF publishing part), I also think
that would be the result.
After all, most of us got interested originally (well, a lot of us) because of
Infocom.
Doe :-)
Weird Beard
rgiving, and appealing to a broader public.
>Of course, I may never achieve a rank beyond, let's see, Command
>Sergeant Major (is that low? is that high? I have no military
>background so I'm feeling pretty good about it anyway -- no scoffing
>you whiz kids!! :)
You'd be ranked somewhere between Klinger and Hawkeye, if you're a MASH fan,
or O'Rourke and Parminter, if you like F Troop.
Avrom Faderman
Doeadeer3 wrote in message <19981129183355...@ngol07.aol.com>...
>
>How puzzless IF can remain interactive I have no idea, I don't think we've
>really seen the potential there yet. No, interactivity does not have to
mean
>going around and picking things up (although that is the time honored and
>easiest way to do it, so it will continue to be used), but it does mean the
>player can try to DO things, especially things the author may not want them
to
>try. Also try them in an order the author did not foresee. They can explore
>outside the author's boundaries a bit. This is complex, because the author
has
>to code for stuff outside their boundaries also, so all the interactivity
is an
>illusion. However, if done well, the illusion remains.
This raises a really interesting question: *can* puzzleless IF be
"interactive," in this sense? I offered a *few* *vague* suggestions for how
this might be done elsewhere, but they're still pretty vague.
So here's the general question: Is is possible (and if so, how *well* can
it be done) to create a work of IF that combines these two features:
1) Allows the "player" to push the author's boundaries, do things the
author didn't exactly forsee, do things in a surprising order, and have a
feeling of being able to affect the story in some way
2) Explores interesting and complex issues, stirs deep emotions, and
creates, with almost any successful play, a compelling story
I won't discuss Photopia again here, at Doe's request not to turn this into
YAPT.
Tapestry does SOME of this--the player can affect the story (a little), it
stirs emotions, and the issues are interesting, if not profoundly original,
but the ability to push the author's boundaries or try something out of
order is sorely limited.
AMFV, as I've written elsewhere, fell a bit short for me on *both* counts.
A fair number of games--The Legend Lives and Jigsaw, to name two, do 1 well
and tell cute and interesting--if not very deep--stories.
Trinity does 1, tells a bunch of gripping little vignettes, and certainly
stirs emotions, but it doesn't feel like it has much complexity or
originality in the ideas the story communicates.
The two games that best "balance" these, that I know of, are So Far and
Muse.
But So Far doesn't exactly tell a story; it just hints at one and links
together a bunch of compelling imagery organized around a central theme.
And Muse, beautifully told though the story is, is really a simple romance
(not that, I gather, it was intended to be anything more) with a simple
message.
I gather Brandon van Every thinks the combination of 1 and 2 is just plain
impossible--that a great story will never have any flexibility in it.
But what do other people think? Are So Far and Muse the limits of this
particular art?
Oh, one thing I'm *not* asking here, or saying, is whether this particular
art is a *desirable* one to push. I'm not making or entertaining any claims
about whether The Magic Toyshop (which does 1 brilliantly but doesn't even
attempt 2) or Photopia (which IMO at least does 2 brilliantly but doesn't
even attempt 1) are good or bad or mediocre games for it. My question is
just whether, *given* that someone had this goal, it was possible to attain,
or even come closer to than Muse/So Far.
Best,
Avrom
Michael Gentry
>author didn't exactly forsee, do things in a surprising order, and have a
It bears mentioning that, insofar as every last detail, no matter how
insignificant-seeming, that exists within the world of a game must
necessarily have been deliberately coded there, line by weary line, by the
author, it is patently impossible to do *anything* that the author didn't
foresee.
Any contingency that is not specifically coded for by the author is left to
the Library, which is also a known quantity. For example, I "foresee" that,
in any instance in which a player DROPS an object in my game, the game will
reply with the message, "Dropped," unless I have specifically provided
another contingency.
Having ruled out specific instances of coding on the author's part, and the
standard suite of messages provided by the Library, anything in the game
that the author didn't expect to happen is, by definition, a bug.
As a player, you will never "push the author's boundaries." Breadth of
interactivity is always simply a matter of how wide and/or how invisibly the
author has set those boundaries for you.
Brandon Van Every
Michael Gentry wrote in message <742hpb$e...@chronicle.concentric.net>...
>
>It bears mentioning that, insofar as every last detail, no matter how
>insignificant-seeming, that exists within the world of a game must
>necessarily have been deliberately coded there, line by weary line, by the
>author, it is patently impossible to do *anything* that the author didn't
>foresee.
The interactions of systems of rules, such as in a game of chess, can create
emergent behavior that nobody forsees. However, the question is whether
such emergent behavior is intelligible and/or meaningful. A simulation
might tell a good story, but it probably won't.
Cheers, 3d graphics optimization jock
Brandon Van Every Seattle, WA
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
If we are all Gods and we have thrown our toys the mortals away
and we are Immortal What shall we do
and we cannot die to entertain ourselves?
Brandon Van Every
Avrom Faderman wrote in message ...
>
>1) Allows the "player" to push the author's boundaries, do things the
>author didn't exactly forsee, do things in a surprising order, and have a
The problem is that when a player has this freedom, such as in a free-form
PBEM RPG, the player is not necessarily a good actor or a good storyteller.
The surprise often is... that the player is boring! Or bored, if not
fundamentally boring. Even when authors are players and authors are good,
they can slip into deleriums where they bore themselves. It's like playing
football or doing an improv, the game doesn't always go well.
>But So Far doesn't exactly tell a story; it just hints at one and links
>together a bunch of compelling imagery organized around a central theme.
The paintings of Salvador Dali operate much like this. They are filled with
theatrical devices that appear to tell stories. As your mind attempts to
link the images together, you produce a Surrealist narrative. Some
Surrealist narratives are better than others, and it depends very much on
the imagination of the viewer.
>I gather Brandon van Every thinks the combination of 1 and 2 is just plain
>impossible--that a great story will never have any flexibility in it.
No, rather a great story will be one in which the author has planned the
flexibility. I seriously doubt that players left to their own devices can
tell good stories. They tend to wander off in directions driven by their
adrenaline, their libido, their greed, or other base instincts. The
complexities of recognition and reversal do not spontaneously arise, rather
they tend to produce the exceedingly obvious.
Now, a good *author* might have a better go of your game. But then are you
producing a game, or a collaborative writing project? The Game Of Immortals
is the latter, because I discovered at one point that it's more entertaining
than running a mere game. Not to mention less work!
David Glasser
> On Thu, 26 Nov 1998, David Glasser wrote:
>
> > Personally, I wouldn't go to CMP (at least not now), but that's more
> > because I like the idea that anyone who wants to could play my game
> > without any payment. Plus, it's too much trouble, at least for me,
> > really.
>
> I'm hoping CMP will actually increase the amount of free IF out there by
> attracing new players to the genre, some on whom will have the reaction
> many of us have--"hey, I wanna write one too!" And I suspect that there
> will always be a nice balance of people who prefer having a wide audience
> to getting paid (not that there's anything wrong with getting paid!). If
> commercial IF becomes viable once again, it'll be wonderful for all of IF.
Ah, that's something to hope for.
I hope I didn't give the impression that I'm anti-CMP; I mean, I just
broke out in joy over the prospect of a Real Printed Inform Manual, and
OaF looks good enough (must...find...free...time). I just think that,
personally, releasing a piece of quality (ha!) free IF is sort of a way
of paying back all the other authors who have allowed me to play their
IF for free. Well, sort of. I dunno. It's probably illegal for me to
make any deals with CMP, anyway.
--
David Glasser gla...@NOSPAMuscom.com http://onramp.uscom.com/~glasser
DGlasser @ ifMUD : fovea.retina.net 4000 (webpage fovea.retina.net:4001)
Sadie Hawkins, official band of David Glasser: http://sadie.retina.net
"We take our icons very seriously in this class."
Geoff Bailey
In article <742hpb$e...@chronicle.concentric.net>,
Michael Gentry <edr...@concentric.net> wrote:
>
> It bears mentioning that, insofar as every last detail, no matter how
> insignificant-seeming, that exists within the world of a game must
> necessarily have been deliberately coded there, line by weary line, by the
> author, it is patently impossible to do *anything* that the author didn't
> foresee.
I disagree. While individual objects/features often have this property,
the interactions between them cannot all be foreseen. (The number of
interactions is at least quadratic, and possibly exponential, in the number
of things which can interact.) Interactions are responsible for all sorts
of interesting and often unexpected behaviour. For example, this is the
source of many security holes in operating systems. It is also part of what
made Magic: the Gathering such an enjoyable game.
An illustrative example:
: From: go...@cs.buffalo.edu (Phil Goetz)
: Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
: Subject: Re: IF 'spective, retro and per
[ ... ]
: But there's still lots of potential for this in text games.
: Sometimes with surprising results. I was once implementing a puzzle in
: which you were supposed to get objects through a narrow place, which was
: too narrow for you to carry them through. This was implemented by
: having a size for every object, and a capacity for every object.
: The passage was a low-capacity room. It turned out you could solve the
: puzzle by cutting off your hands and then carrying the objects through.
: Hands had to be physically present in order to say things like "hit XX with
: fist", so I made them objects attached to the body. The "cut" code knew
: that an axe could separate things that were attached. But I hadn't modelled
: anything about what hands were used for, just that they were attached
: to the body. Look, ma, no hands!
:
: Phil
: go...@zoesis.com
Cheers,
Geoff.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Geoff Bailey (Fred the Wonder Worm) | Programmer by trade --
ft...@cs.usyd.edu.au | Gameplayer by vocation.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Stacy the Procrastinating
> Stacy the Procrastinating <sc...@okapi.columbia.edu> wrote:
>
> > I'm hoping CMP will actually increase the amount of free IF out there by
> > attracing new players to the genre, some on whom will have the reaction
> > many of us have--"hey, I wanna write one too!" And I suspect that there
> > will always be a nice balance of people who prefer having a wide audience
> > to getting paid (not that there's anything wrong with getting paid!). If
> > commercial IF becomes viable once again, it'll be wonderful for all of IF.
>
> Ah, that's something to hope for.
>
> I hope I didn't give the impression that I'm anti-CMP; I mean, I just
> broke out in joy over the prospect of a Real Printed Inform Manual, and
> OaF looks good enough (must...find...free...time). I just think that,
> personally, releasing a piece of quality (ha!) free IF is sort of a way
> of paying back all the other authors who have allowed me to play their
> IF for free. Well, sort of. I dunno. It's probably illegal for me to
> make any deals with CMP, anyway.
>
Oh, I don't think you came off that way :) and I feel the same about
freeware IF (I'll release a game one o' these millenia), but that's
because for me this is a hobby and not a career tie-in. I just get all
silly excited at the thought of (one day, one day) being able to walk into
a computer store and say "see? that's what I spend my time playing with!"
Some of my friends will just never get over their fears of Frotz and GMD,
sigh.
Avrom Faderman
Michael Gentry wrote in message <742hpb$e...@chronicle.concentric.net>...
>>1) Allows the "player" to push the author's boundaries, do things the
>>author didn't exactly forsee, do things in a surprising order, and have a
>
>
>It bears mentioning that, insofar as every last detail, no matter how
>insignificant-seeming, that exists within the world of a game must
>necessarily have been deliberately coded there, line by weary line, by the
>author, it is patently impossible to do *anything* that the author didn't
>foresee.
I agree that there can not be (or at least, I can't see how there can be)
any specific action that the player can take that the author didn't
explicitly code and therefore plan. But there are "actions" more broadly
construed, particular *combinations* of individual actions, that the author
didn't foresee.
For example (I'll try to stay vague enough to avoid spoilers), "Tapestry"
might have allowed the player to "switch paths" mid-stream. The author
would have had to code for each possible action (which would change some
parameters of the game universe) but might not have had to explicitly code
each possible switch. Perhaps the story in "Tapestry" would not then have
worked. But another story might have, no?
In So Far, it is possible to get farther than Zarf ever intended (I'm almost
positive) without using one of the items he intended you to use (although
it's then impossible to win). This is due to the complexity of the way
individual objects are coded; it requires no single move that he didn't
foresee, just an unexpected combination of them in unexpected places.
Even a change of *order* of actions to something an author didn't forsee can
have important effects for the player. Did the creators of Zork see that it
was possible to kill a certain NPC too soon? Even if they did, did they
need to?
...
But really, maybe "push the author's boundaries" wasn't exactly what I
intended to say.
It's not, for the sake of interactivity (in this sense), necessary to be
able to do things the author didn't plan for (a more ingenious author
doesn't decrease interactivity by planning for more things). It's necessary
to be able to do a rich range of things, necessary that many of these things
have diverse and lasting effects on the story, and (possibly*) necessary
that not all of these things directly advance the author's main point.
*I'm really not sure of this. Maybe if everything a reasonable player might
think to try advances the author's main point, and if the situation allows a
fairly diverse range of these things, and if they have diverse effects--even
if all the effects advance the same point--that counts.
Best,
Avrom
Magnus Olsson
>>author didn't exactly forsee, do things in a surprising order, and have a
>>feeling of being able to affect the story in some way
>
>
>It bears mentioning that, insofar as every last detail, no matter how
>insignificant-seeming, that exists within the world of a game must
>necessarily have been deliberately coded there, line by weary line, by the
>author,
This is true in the sense that everything that exists within the game
must necessarily be the *consequence* of something that's been
deliberately coded there (by the game's author or by the library
author).
It doesn't follow that every aspect of the game's behaviour has been
explicitly or deliberately put there by the author.
>it is patently impossible to do *anything* that the author didn't
>foresee.
This requires that the author be if not omniscient, then at least
aware of every single consequence that any code change he makes can
possibly have. And that is very rarely the case.
>Having ruled out specific instances of coding on the author's part, and the
>standard suite of messages provided by the Library, anything in the game
>that the author didn't expect to happen is, by definition, a bug.
I think this is a rather wide definition of bug, because the word
"bug" has the connotations of not only unintentional, but harmful,
behaviour.
My point is that even rather small adventure games are very complex
systems of interacting objects (whether they're written in OO
languages or not :-)). Changing the behaviour of one object may lead
to changes in these interactions which are very hard to foresee.
Of course, you can say that it's the responsibility of the author if
not to foresee all such interactions, then at least to catch them (by
playtesting). So perhaps we should say that any particular piece of
behaviour in an adventure game is either put there intentionally by
the author, or put there unintentionally but "sanctioned" by the
author (allowed to stay because it fits the game), or a bug.
--
Magnus Olsson (m...@df.lth.se, zeb...@pobox.com)
------ http://www.pobox.com/~zebulon ------
Daryl McCullough
>>going around and picking things up ... but it does mean the
>>player can try to DO things, especially things the author
>>may not want them to try. Also try them in an order the
>>author did not foresee. They can explore outside the
>So here's the general question: Is is possible (and if so, how *well* can
>it be done) to create a work of IF that combines these two features:
>
>1) Allows the "player" to push the author's boundaries, do things the
>author didn't exactly forsee, do things in a surprising order, and have a
>feeling of being able to affect the story in some way
>
>2) Explores interesting and complex issues, stirs deep emotions, and
>creates, with almost any successful play, a compelling story ...
>
>The two games that best "balance" these, that I know of, are So Far and
>Muse.
It's funny that you should mention So Far as an example of
allowing the player to push the author's boundaries. I don't
remember where (so this is not a spoiler!) but at one point,
the player can do something that elicits a response something
like "Sorry, you have wandered past the boundaries of the game".
Of course, it does allow you to try some wacky things...
Daryl McCullough
CoGenTex, Inc.
Ithaca, NY
Daryl McCullough
>
>>1) Allows the "player" to push the author's boundaries, do things the
>>author didn't exactly forsee, do things in a surprising order, and have a
>
>
>It bears mentioning that, insofar as every last detail, no matter how
>insignificant-seeming, that exists within the world of a game must
>necessarily have been deliberately coded there, line by weary line, by the
>foresee.
No, that's not completely true. The author quite often doesn't
consider all the possible interactions between objects and
actions. For example, the author may have never thought about
the possibility of putting his jacket into his
jacket pocket, or the possibility of taking the sun. That's
what beta testers usually discover: things that the author
*didn't* foresee.
Of course, it is rare (if ever) that a result unforeseen
by the author will make sense in the game's terms.
Daryl McCullough
CoGenTex, Inc.
Ithaca, NY
>Any contingency that is not specifically coded for by the author is left to
>the Library, which is also a known quantity. For example, I "foresee" that,
>in any instance in which a player DROPS an object in my game, the game will
>reply with the message, "Dropped," unless I have specifically provided
>another contingency.
>
>Having ruled out specific instances of coding on the author's part, and the
>standard suite of messages provided by the Library, anything in the game
>that the author didn't expect to happen is, by definition, a bug.
>
>As a player, you will never "push the author's boundaries." Breadth of
>interactivity is always simply a matter of how wide and/or how invisibly the
>author has set those boundaries for you.
>
Doeadeer3
In article <742j3h$g9d$1...@ash.prod.itd.earthlink.net>, "Brandon Van Every"
<vane...@earthlink.net> writes:
>No, rather a great story will be one in which the author has planned the
>flexibility. I seriously doubt that players left to their own devices can
>tell good stories. They tend to wander off in directions driven by their
>adrenaline, their libido, their greed, or other base instincts. The
>complexities of recognition and reversal do not spontaneously arise, rather
>they tend to produce the exceedingly obvious.
Planned flexibity is a good term.
But IF can do much more than tell a story and I don't view players as lowly as
that, most people playing IF are far from boring or ordinary.
Fiction is static, interactive-fiction is dynamic (variable, interactive). The
player can do things a the way (or in an order) the author did not always
intend or plan for (and that is not a bug, if it still "works"). Unless the
author plays his/her own story beforehand in every possible combination that
could occur (unlikey).
I think the main thing IF has to offer is not just within itself, but IS its
AUDIENCE. IF's dynamism is created by a NON-PASSIVE listener/reader, a
"player".
Striving for good stories is desireable, but if we just ape other types of
fiction where the reader/listener MUST be passive because they CAN'T interact
(in that medium), we lose something, we lose what makes IF different.
Emailing with an iffy bud lately about what IF can do better than an oral
storyteller or a piece of static fiction can do, I came up with this list
(which I am sure can be improved upon).
Interactivity unique to IF or done better in IF:
player can interact with characters
player can interact with plot
player can interact with clues (objects, in a mystery, say)
player can AFFECT characters
player can AFFECT plot
player can AFFECT clues
menus (I prefer sparing use)
interactive footnotes (etc.)
offering choices (of various types)
keeping track of the player's choices (flags, etc.) < that's a BIG difference
plot branching
becoming other characters
Doe :-) Hey, I forgot to even mention puzzles.
(BTW - This post is not addressed to you, Brandon, it is addressed to this
thread.)
Magnus Olsson
Michael Gentry <edr...@concentric.net> wrote:
>Magnus Olsson wrote in message <73p69f$tmv$1...@bartlet.df.lth.se>...
>
>Thanks for the rejoinder; you're making me think. (I guess that means *your*
>criticism of *my* criticism was *constructive* criticism.)
I'm glad there was some constructivity to it, despite the overly
emotional tone.
>>You cannot possibly write a review that's fair to the parts you
>>haven't played. If you can, then you must have psychic powers.
>
>
>I didn't review the parts I haven't played.
Of course not, and I wasn't really accusing you of doing that :-). My
point was that a very negative review that's based on a
non-representative part of the work being reviewed will probably be
unfair to the rest of the work unless it's very clear just which parts
where reviewed.
>>This reminds me of the opening chapters of "The Lord of the Rings",
>>which have caused many people to stop reading out of sheer boredom,
>>only to be persuaded by people who've read th ebook that it's worth
>>continuing.
>
>
>They didn't bore me; if they had, I wouldn't have finished the book. It
>would be a valid criticism in this case to say that the Ring trilogy suffers
>>from long-windedness, which in the case of some readers is outweighed by the
>work's other merits.
I'd like to say that it suffers from long-windedness in places,
especially so in the first part, and that that first part is very
non-representative of the work as a whole.
>>Yes, but then you run into other problems with scale - if some rooms
>>are entire sprawling landscapes, while others are just a small spot
>>(say, a vast desert in one room and a small oasis with just one date
>>palm in another), which can make for rathe confusing, disjointed
>>geography, unless the author is very skillful.
>
>
>All writing/design techniques are most effective when employed by a skillful
>author. I prefer to read/play the works of skillful authors. Authors that
>are less skillful should practice; when they get more skillful, I will enjoy
>their work.
Of course; but there are different kinds of authorial skills, and I'm
not sure that all otherwise skillful IF authors are also good at
creating geography in this way.
>>I don't know if you've played "Path to Fortune", but I think that game
>>suffers from such problems
>
>Sounds like the author wasn't as skillful as he needed to be.
Not in that regard, perhaps.
>>Yes, but this is the old chestnut of what is a "contribution". Does a
>>room where nothing really happens, but which is very atmospheric,
>>contribute or not?
>
>
>Not when there are three others just like it.
Perhaps, perhaps not. It's dangerous to generalize, and repetition can
be a powerful device. But in most cases, of course, you're right.
>Did you ever watch "A River Runs Through It"?
No, in fact I haven't even heard of it.
>I found it quite boring, but
>there was one scene that I really enjoyed. Boy's father is teaching boy the
>craft of writing. Boy writes an essay. Boy brings four pages in to his
>father, who looks it over and says: "Write it again. Half as long."
>
>Boy despondently leaves, then brings back two pages. Father glances at it,
>says: "Write it again. Half as long."
>
>One page. "Half as long."
>
>Half a page. "Half as long."
>
>And so on.
>
>The point of that scene is NOT that Boy should restrict all future essays to
>a quarter page in length. The point is that Boy must learn discipline in
>writing.
I've seen similar advice, the point being not only that discipline is
important, but that the art of revision consists much more of cutting
things out than putting them in (though that is of course also
necessary).
>Overwriting is one of the most common problems beginning writers
>indulge in.
Not only beginning writers. We tend, by nature, to be verbose and
redundant.
>(BVE said something intelligent to
>that effect recently: Pick a sentence, any sentence, and delete it. If the
>meaning of the story has not changed, don't put it back in.)
For various meanings of "meaning", yes.
And this doesn't mean that we should all strive for bare-bones,
minimalist prose. One writer may use ten words to describe what
another uses fifty for. But if they're both good writers, not a word
should be superfluous in either text. (This isn't a paradox at all).
[ Some very good examples of effective room allocation snipped. ]
>My complaint is that the game lacked focus. I wasn't implying that OaF
>should have followed the specific stories of the Arthur mythos (in fact, I
>said the opposite: "It's not the literature that I think the author should
>have followed..."). But a world which contains the Arthur mythos is a world
>in which those stories have happened or are about to happen. It's not enough
>to just have Mordred and Lancelot wandering around bumping heads. (Not
>accusing OaF of portraying Lancelot that way. Just giving generic Bad
>Example.) The characters have motives and relationships among one another,
>and those motives and relationships (and the themes they symbolize) should
>have an effect on the story you're trying to tell, even when the kernel of
>your own story is something other than the traditional Arthurian tales.
>
>If those themes have no effect on your story, then there wasn't a whole lot
>of point in making it a King Arthur story at all. I repeat: a plotless,
>puzzle-oriented game sprinkled with bits of King Arthur is not essentially
>different from a plotless, puzzle-oriented game sprinkled with bits of Zork.
>
>The latter portion of the game, apparently, overcomes this problem.
Yes, I think it does; but I'm not enough well-versed in the Arthurian
mythos to say if it really fits in or if there would have been
dissonances with the established mythos if I had known it better.
>The beginning didn't. The beginning was not essentially different from Zork,
>which I've already played.
If I may venture a guess here, I think part of the reason for this is
that Whizzard's "model audience", which he had in mind when writing
the game, would be motivated enough just by the presence of a lot of
territory to explore and puzzles to solve that they would be hooked on
the game before they were turned off by the lack of direction. It
worked that way for me, and apparently for the beta testers as well (cf. the
reviews in SPAG 16). This may have been a more reasonable assumption
five years ago than today, when people are more used to games that are
strongly plot-driven already from the start (not that there weren't
such games before, of course).
>>But I think the author's intention is that the player should start of
>>as confused as Frank Leandro, going through a series of initially
>>irrelevant-seeming adventures, only to gradually realize what his true
>>quest is.
>
>
>You have to be careful when you do that. There's a difference between
>seeming irrelevant and just seeming disconnected.
Indeed, and I didn't say that the author had succeeded as well as you
might wish in this regard. But, again, I think our tastes have become
more sophisticated in the last five years.
>>Of course, this is a vicious circle: once you start doubting the
>>author like this, mimesis has broken down, and then you'll tend to see
>>*everything* in the worst possible light, while if you do trust that
>>the author knows what he's doing, you'll forgive him these little
>>transgressions.
>
>
>It's the little transgressions that cause me to doubt the author in the
>first place. If I trust an author, it means he hasn't made any
>transgressions yet.
But what I meant was that once this distrust has been established, you
may view things as "transgressions" that you would have let slip by if
you hadn't distrusted the author.
>>Oh, my, you've really made up your mind that Whizzard is a really
>>inept author, haven't you? Before you protest: if you haven't, why do
>>you consistently (no, not always, but rather often) explain things you
>>don't like with authorial incompetence?
>
>
>Um, because the author wrote the game, and is therefore responsible for
>every element in it, good or bad.
>
>I'm not really trying to say that Kevin Wilson is inept. I'm trying to say
>that Once and Future is ineptly done (or at least, the beginning is).
Actually, my point was that you seemed to guess at the author's
intentions.
I think this works both ways, and it's a very common trap for critics
to fall into. Consider the difference between the following:
1) I didn't get this. The author obviously didn't have a message, he
just put in something irrelevant to make the story seem more
interesting.
2) I didn't get this. Perhaps the author had a message, perhaps not,
but whatever it was, it didn't get through.
3) I didn't get this. The author obviously had a message, but somehow
he didn't manage to get it through to me.
4) I didn't get this. This author is known for his deep symbolism, but
I'm afraid I wasn't really up to figuring it out this time.
5) I didn't get this. It must be great art!
>>>Are you suggesting that cardboard NPCs are a good design element?
>>
>>Of course not if you mean something to actively strive for; what I
>>mean is that cardboard NPC's can work in a setting that doesn't call
>>for a fleshed-out character.
>
>A cardboard NPC is, by my definition, a failure. There is a difference
>between a minor or "walk-on" character, who doesn't require a whole lot of
>background, and a cardboard NPC.
Oh, sorry, my fault - I fell victim to the common confusion between
"cardboard" and "two-dimensional".
>>OK. My very personal thoughts on this is that I don't see how *any*
>>text-only IF at today's state-of-the-art (or that of the foreseeable
>>future) could be worth $25 by those standards.
>
>The Infocom games were worth $25 dollars in the 80s. Surely today's IF
>should be at least that good if it's to be worth $25 today.
I think OaF is at least as good as most Infocom games. Conversely, I'm
not so sure that many Infocom games would live up to your standards if
they were published today. This is not to say you're wrong in setting
high standards, of course.
Michael Gentry
>And this doesn't mean that we should all strive for bare-bones,
>minimalist prose. One writer may use ten words to describe what
>another uses fifty for. But if they're both good writers, not a word
>should be superfluous in either text. (This isn't a paradox at all).
True, because what "contributes" and what does not depends in part on what
the artist is trying to accomplish -- and how the artist wishes to
accomplish it. What Ernest Hemingway was trying to accomplish in his writing
requires far fewer words than what Mervyn Peake was trying to accomplish in
*his* writing.
>I think OaF is at least as good as most Infocom games. Conversely, I'm
>not so sure that many Infocom games would live up to your standards if
>they were published today. This is not to say you're wrong in setting
>high standards, of course.
You're right; most Infocom games don't live up to my standards. (...anymore.
I was excited as anyone when Zork first came out, you know.) And yes, I
think that OaF is at least as good as...well, if not *most*...at least
several. But not as good as the ones I would still pay money for. (The ones
that, in fact, I *have* recently paid money for -- I bought the Masterpieces
CD, and there are about 20 games I could happily do without.)
Yes, I have high standards. I don't happen to think that they're
*unreasonable* standards, though.
-M.
Michael Gentry
Geoff Bailey wrote in message <742k07$s...@staff.cs.usyd.edu.au>...
>
>In article <742hpb$e...@chronicle.concentric.net>,
>Michael Gentry <edr...@concentric.net> wrote:
>>
>I disagree. While individual objects/features often have this property,
>the interactions between them cannot all be foreseen. (The number of
>interactions is at least quadratic, and possibly exponential, in the number
>of things which can interact.) Interactions are responsible for all sorts
>of interesting and often unexpected behaviour. For example, this is the
>source of many security holes in operating systems.
You don't consider that a bug?
>It is also part of what made Magic: the Gathering such an enjoyable game.
True, but Magic is a different type of game than an interactive fiction. The
purpose of the card game is not to create a coherent narrative. IF does not
revolve around the principle of every object in the game being fully
implemented to interact in *any* way imaginable with every other object. In
fact, most games severely restrict the interactivity of objects, relative to
the full permutational total
.
>An illustrative example:
[snipped. guy solves puzzle by lopping his own hands off, basically]
Actually, this anecdote might serve better as a warning against implementing
unnecessary objects for the sole purpose of supporting unnecessary grammar.
I'm not sure what I would think about a game wherein the PC can sever his
own hands with no greater consequence than gaining the ability to take
advantage of a programming loophole; I certainly wouldn't consider it a good
simulation. In fact, unless the game's premise had led me to believe that
self-dismemberment could be a reasonable approach to solving puzzles (maybe
I'm a zombie?), I would consider it a bug. So I'm not sure how this example
contradicts my original statement; to wit: everything in a work of IF is 1)
a special case deliberately coded bythe author; 2) a predictable effect of
the game engine, which the author trusts to sensibly take care of
nuts-and-bolts interactions such as taking, dropping, containers, doors,
etc.; or 3) an interaction that causes the game to operate in a way that the
author did not intend, is therefore something to be corrected, and is
therefore a bug.
Michael Gentry
Avrom Faderman wrote in message ...
>might have allowed the player to "switch paths" mid-stream. The author
>would have had to code for each possible action (which would change some
>parameters of the game universe) but might not have had to explicitly code
>each possible switch. Perhaps the story in "Tapestry" would not then have
>worked. But another story might have, no?
But the author would have had to have written the story in such a way that
it worked: whether by writing it in discrete chunks that are deliberately
crafted in such a way that they make sense in any order, or by carefully
planning the points at which the player can switch streams and modifying the
story to take each contingency (or combination of contingencies) into
account.