[Comp01] Results
Stephen Granade
are in. The top three games are
1 All Roads, by Jon Ingold
2 Moments Out of Time, by L. Ross Raszewski
3 Heroes, by Sean Barrett
We also have the results of the Miss Congeniality contest:
1 All Roads, by Jon Ingold
2 The Beetmonger's Journal, by Scott Starkey
3 Vicious Cycles, by Simon Mark
Full results and statistics are available on the competition web page,
which now lives at http://ifcomp.org.
My thanks to all who entered and who judged. Special thanks go to
those without whom this competition would not have taken place,
including Mark Musante, Lucian Smith, John Cater, Ivan Cockrum, David
Cornelson.
Full results list:
1 All Roads, by Jon Ingold
2 Moments Out of Time, by L. Ross Raszewski
3 Heroes, by Sean Barrett
4 No Time To Squeal, by Mike Sousa and Robb Sherwin
5 The Beetmonger's Journal, by Scott Starkey
6 Vicious Cycles, by Simon Mark
7 Best of Three, by Emily Short
8 Earth And Sky, by Paul O'Brian
9 Triune, by Papillon
10 Film at Eleven, by Bowen Greenwood
11 Prized Possession, by Kathleen M. Fischer
12 Journey from an Islet, by Mario Becroft
13 Grayscale, by Daniel Freas
14 The Chasing, by Anssi Raisanen
15 The Coast House, by Stephen Newton and Dan Newton
16 A Night Guest, by Valentine Kopteltsev
Carma, by Marnie Parker
18 Fusillade, by Mike Duncan
Fine Tuned, by Dennis Jerz
20 The Evil Sorcerer, by Gren Remoz
21 The Gostak, by Carl Muckenhoupt
22 The Isolato Incident, by Alan DeNiro
23 Crusade, by John Gorenfeld
24 2112, by George K. Algire
25 You Are Here, by Roy Fisher
26 Elements, by John Evans
27 The Cruise, by Norman Perlmutter
28 Shattered Memory, by Akbarr
29 Bane of the Builders, by Bogdan Baliuc
To Otherwhere and Back, by Gregory Ewing
31 Stiffy Makane: The Undiscovered Country, by Adam Thornton
32 Kallisti, by James A. Mitchelhill
33 Colours, by J. Robinson Wheeler
The Cave of Morpheus, by Mark Silcox
Silicon Castles, by David Given
36 Timeout, by Stephen Hilderbrand
37 Begegnung am Fluss, by Florian Edlbauer
38 an apple from nowhere, by Brendan Barnwell
Stranded, by Rich Cummings
40 Schroedinger's Cat, by James Willson
41 Stick it to the man, by Brendan Barnwell
42 Jump, by Chris Mudd
43 Volcano Isle, by Paul DeWitt
44 Mystery Manor, by Mystery
45 Invasion of the Angora-fetish Transvestites, by Morten Rasmussen
46 SURREAL, by Matthew Lowe
47 Goofy, by Ricardo Dague
48 The Test, by Matt, Dark Baron
49 Lovesong, by Mihalis "DarkAng3l" Georgostathis
50 The Newcomer, by Jason Love
51 The Last Just Cause, by Jeremy Carey-Dressler
52 You Were Doomed From The Start, by Jeremy Carey-Dressler
Tina
Stephen Granade <sgra...@phy.duke.edu> wrote:
>Mark Musante has finished tabulating all of the votes, and the results
>are in. The top three games are
>
>1 All Roads, by Jon Ingold
>2 Moments Out of Time, by L. Ross Raszewski
>3 Heroes, by Sean Barrett
I love it when I didn't manage to play any of the top three games... or,
as it turns out, any of the top SIX games. Damn you people for making me
have to find time to play six more games! :)
Congratulations, guys!
david carlton
> Full results and statistics are available on the competition web page,
> which now lives at http://ifcomp.org.
I am amused by the scores histogram for _The Gostak_ on
<http://ifcomp.org/comp01/detailed-results.html>. I'm not surprised
that the reception was mixed, but I wouldn't have expected it to be
mixed quite so thoroughly.
david carlton | <http://math.stanford.edu/~carlton/>
car...@math.stanford.edu | Go books: <http://math.stanford.edu/~carlton/go/>
NATHAN... your PARENTS were in a CARCRASH!! They're VOIDED -
They COLLAPSED They had no CHAINSAWS... They had no MONEY
MACHINES... They did PILLS in SKIMPY GRASS SKIRTS... Nathan,
I EMULATED them... but they were OFF-KEY...
Curt Siffert
(is that the word)?
Stiffy MacKane's reminds me of an upraised middle finger, which
I find funny.
Curt
Carl Muckenhoupt
sif...@museworldSPAMSUCKS.com says...
> Wow, that's weird! It's the only one that is an actual trough
> (is that the word)?
Even though it only did above-average scorewise, I'm quite proud to have
achieved the highest standard deviation in comp history.
david carlton
> Wow, that's weird! It's the only one that is an actual trough
> (is that the word)?
> Stiffy MacKane's reminds me of an upraised middle finger, which
> I find funny.
Yeah. And the thing is, it's a pretty flat trough. I can imagine
people who would immediately dislike it and give it a low score. I
can imagine people who would totally love it. (Actually, that I can
even experience myself.) So I can imagine a sort of upside-down bell
curve (or "bimodal distribution" or whatever you want to call it),
with high parts at the ends and a big gap in the middle.
But that the numbers of such people are fairly close to equal and
that, furthermore, they're fairly close to equal to the number of
people who, presumably, thought something like "I can see what it's
doing, but it's really not my thing so I won't try to seriously play
it, but it's probably reasonably well done for what it is" and give it
a middle score, is pretty impressive.
david carlton | <http://math.stanford.edu/~carlton/>
car...@math.stanford.edu | Go books: <http://math.stanford.edu/~carlton/go/>
I'm changing the CHANNEL.. But all I get is commercials for
``RONCO MIRACLE BAMBOO STEAMERS''!
Branko Collin
15:05:03 -0800:
>In article <574220e9.01111...@posting.google.com>, sgra...@phy.duke.edu (Stephen Granade) writes:
>
>> Full results and statistics are available on the competition web page,
>> which now lives at http://ifcomp.org.
>
>I am amused by the scores histogram for _The Gostak_ on
><http://ifcomp.org/comp01/detailed-results.html>. I'm not surprised
>that the reception was mixed, but I wouldn't have expected it to be
>mixed quite so thoroughly.
I noticed that too. :-)
I just love statistics.
BTW, congratulations to the winners.
--
branko collin
col...@xs4all.nl
Adam Thornton
Carl Muckenhoupt <ca...@wurb.com> wrote:
>Even though it only did above-average scorewise, I'm quite proud to have
>achieved the highest standard deviation in comp history.
Damn you! DAMN YOU TO HELL!
(and I was beaten by the German one too. I shall have my revenge.
Perhaps: _Mentula Macanus: Apocolocyntosis_)
Adam
Petter Holmlund
ended up at a lower placement than deserved:
[18] Fine Tuned, by Dennis Jerz
[21] The Gostak, by Carl Muckenhoupt
[38] an apple from nowhere, by Brendan Barnwell
I believe that those three will remain in my memory long after the top
ten are forgotten. Not because they were bug-free, or profound, or all
that original or similar in any way other than making me go "Wow, I
wish I had written that." Only those three. My compliments.
/Petter
Frank Borger
> Carl Muckenhoupt <ca...@wurb.com> wrote:
> >Even though it only did above-average scorewise, I'm quite proud to have
> >achieved the highest standard deviation in comp history.
Is this the same as that "golden banana of discord"?
(BTW, I have put the Gostak on my palm pilot and will keep on frobbing
it in that otherwise idle hours.)
> (and I was beaten by the German one too. ...
For this I couldn't find an explanation, until I read a reviewer
stating that he had given it an 1 because he could not play it. (This
is perfectly legal, but not common behaviour; most will not rate a
game at all, if they cannot play it for, ehm, technical reasons.)
"Begegnung am Fluss" has the smallest number of votes (32) and 13 gave
it a 1. So I guess that only 20 (+/- 1) voters did actually play
it. And five of them may have added a few extra points _because_ it is
in german language.
cu
--
Frank Borger | Aliloka chielo
fr...@tmt.de | estas sama chielo.
Bayreuth (49°57,566'N 11°34,473'O)
Timofei Shatrov
confuse everyone with this message:
>Mark Musante has finished tabulating all of the votes, and the results
>are in. The top three games are
>
>1 All Roads, by Jon Ingold
>2 Moments Out of Time, by L. Ross Raszewski
>3 Heroes, by Sean Barrett
I AM SHOCKED!
--
GRUE@|And to auoide tediouse repetition of these woordes: is equalle to:
MAIL|I will sette as I doe often in woorke use, a paire of paralleles of
RU|one lengthe, thus ===, bicause noe .2. thynges, can be moare equalle.
GRUE.FREESERVERS.COM|Robert Recorde,"The Whetstone of Witte',1557.[4*72]
Florian Edlbauer
> Even though it only did above-average scorewise, I'm quite proud to have
> achieved the highest standard deviation in comp history.
Yes, you beat me by 0,05. Sigh. Congrats, nevertheless!
Florian
Adam Thornton
>ad...@fsf.net (Adam Thornton) writes:
>
>> Carl Muckenhoupt <ca...@wurb.com> wrote:
>> >Even though it only did above-average scorewise, I'm quite proud to have
>> >achieved the highest standard deviation in comp history.
>
>Is this the same as that "golden banana of discord"?
Yes. The two are synonymous.
And, obviously, I wasn't trying for a particularly high placement with
SMTUC. Although I would like to point out that it's correctly spelled,
grammatical, free (I believe) of VILE ZERO errors, and so forth. Say
what you will about it, the craftsmanship is more than adequate. And
there was a fair amount of slyness lurking underneath the stupidity;
that is to say, there were a number of throwaway riffs designed to make
the alert player blink a couple times and wonder on how many levels he
was being taken for a ride.
The fact that few players seem to have found many of these speaks, I
think, to one of the problems with the comp, which is that 52 games make
you very tired. After the first five or six I played, I was playing
with walkthrough in hand. And thus I couldn't tell you whether _All
Roads_ or _Heroes_ really lived up to their concepts. With _All Roads_,
particularly, I felt utterly lost but also that if I'd been paying more
attention and playing more seriously maybe I would have seen what was
going on. Either a lot of voters *did* see what was going on, or
*everyone* was too embarassed to admit that they Didn't Get It but
assumed from the quality of the prose that It must be Really Good. I
sure hope it's the former, but if I had scored games, it would have
been, in my case, the latter.
On the other hand, I do think that I lost the banana fair and square to
_Gostak_. Just my luck that this year, someone else was trying to do a
game that inspired awe and irritation at the same time. And, while
doing all the Glk stuff was quite hard, it wasn't as hard as inventing
my own language. It's also not at all obvious how much fiddly crap
there is to get right with Glk until you try it yourself: Stiffy was
*much* harder to write than it looked. And _Carma_, doubtless, much,
*MUCH* harder. Note to self: write and release some object-oriented
Glk-softening libraries before attempting next Glulx game (which, I'm
sure you will all be relieved to hear, will probably not be Stiffy
Makane in any way, shape, form, or fashion).
(As an aside: the Gull page and especially Doe's unglklib library are
very helpful, but they both depend quite heavily on magic global
variables and are not OO in the slightest. I found this annoying to
integrate into my coding style, so over the next few months, if real
work doesn't intrude too much, I hope to put together a set of Glulx
Inform class libraries to make interface building, keeping track of the
state of the interface, and doing special effects like animation much
easier and much less pollutive of the global namespace.)
If I want that Golden Banana, it's almost going to have to be _Mentula
Macanus: Apocolocyntosis_, and I'm not sure I want the banana that
badly. _Gostak_ *did* want it that badly. Damnit.
Has anyone published a Latin Inform 6 library? If I don't have to
implement it myself, this goes from a Sisyphean pointless effort to a
merely Herculean one, at which point, there's not really the impetus
anymore.
>(BTW, I have put the Gostak on my palm pilot and will keep on frobbing
>it in that otherwise idle hours.)
I don't have that many idle hours, I'm afraid. I was able to figure out
Nalian because it was a much smaller problem, and I was a grad student
with much more time on my hands then.
>> (and I was beaten by the German one too. ...
>For this I couldn't find an explanation, until I read a reviewer
>stating that he had given it an 1 because he could not play it. (This
>is perfectly legal, but not common behaviour; most will not rate a
>game at all, if they cannot play it for, ehm, technical reasons.)
>"Begegnung am Fluss" has the smallest number of votes (32) and 13 gave
>it a 1. So I guess that only 20 (+/- 1) voters did actually play
>it. And five of them may have added a few extra points _because_ it is
>in german language.
I'm actually rather interested. _Stiffy_ got a number of "1" votes,
which I was certainly expecting. However, of the reviews I have so far
read, only Adam Cadre's might have been one of those (and I might have
garnered a 2 from him; I can't tell the depths of his displeasure).
Now, there are three possible categories, and I'll never know how these
broke down, which is kind of too bad.
First: people who read the disclaimer, said "fair enough, I'm going to
hate it, and I don't need to play it: one", which is the reason for the
disclaimer, after all. It was suggested to me by one reviewer in email
that this was inappropriate, in that I was trying to artificially boost
my score by excluding people likely to hate my game. In retrospect, he
was right: I should have explicitly said, "feel free to vote it a one
without playing if you're sure you'll hate it." It appears that people
got that message anyway.
Second: people who read the disclaimer, didn't believe it, and said,
somewhere in the game, "Ewww! One." Heh. I was hoping to trap a few
of those.
Third, and finally, were the barrelled fish I was really hoping to
shoot: AIF players who approached the keyboard drooling, with their
pants around their knees, tremulously typed (with their left hand only,
natch) "y", "n", "y", and began the game. And then, somewhere in scene
three, suddenly felt horrendously betrayed, because the game, to quote a
poster in alt.games.xtrek, "radically degenerates into some wierd gayass
shit at the end, which wasn't at all tastefully done!"
Oh, I hope that the majority of my 1s were from that group. Paul
O'Brian was largely right, you see: part of my goal was to anger people
who *did* feel that the Terri Barcelona and Holodeck parts, because they
were about Stiffy doing some chick, were "tastefully done," but being on
the receiving end of a moose's affections was beyond the pale. Those
people, I feel, got precisely what they deserved.
Let's face it: Stiffy's sexuality *ought* to be pretty repellent. In
the Stiffyverse, concave objects exist pretty much solely to be
penetrated. If anyone is identifying with Stiffy to the degree that
they care whether the orifice is a child (er, in the Inform object-tree
sense only, of course) of another object which
has male proper animate
or
has female proper animate
then they have **** Completely Missed The Point ****
Adam
Carl Muckenhoupt
>
> With _All Roads_,
> particularly, I felt utterly lost but also that if I'd been paying more
> attention and playing more seriously maybe I would have seen what was
> going on. Either a lot of voters *did* see what was going on, or
> *everyone* was too embarassed to admit that they Didn't Get It but
> assumed from the quality of the prose that It must be Really Good. I
> sure hope it's the former, but if I had scored games, it would have
> been, in my case, the latter.
FWIW, I found that the story of All Roads was quite comprehensible on the
second play-through, although there was one significant detail I hadn't
noticed until it was pointed out to me. (There may be subtleties I'm
still missing, of course.) There are really only two major shifts of
understanding you need, and the first is pretty much unavoidable.
Explanations follow spoiler space. (I recommend playing the game rather
than reading my explanations; I provide them to prove that some of us are
not simply 'too embarassed to admit that they Didn't Get It'.)
The first thing you have to realize is that the PC's description of what
'travelling through darkness' does is utterly wrong. You're not
travelling through space, but through time. And it's only your
consciousness that does this. You're like Billy Pilgrim, only more
confused.
The second realization is that, when you send your consciousness through
time like this, you don't necessarily wind up in the same body. Some of
the scenes are spent in de Losa's body, others in that of the Denizen's
aide. Once you know this, it's fairly easy to spot which is which.
L. Ross Raszewski
>
>(As an aside: the Gull page and especially Doe's unglklib library are
> very helpful, but they both depend quite heavily on magic global
> variables and are not OO in the slightest. I found this annoying to
> integrate into my coding style, so over the next few months, if real
> work doesn't intrude too much, I hope to put together a set of Glulx
> Inform class libraries to make interface building, keeping track of the
> state of the interface, and doing special effects like animation much
> easier and much less pollutive of the global namespace.)
Please do take a look at GWindows,
http://justice.loyola.edu/~lraszews/if/gwindows.zip
If nothing else, it might give you a starting point.
Florian Edlbauer
>
> (and I was beaten by the German one too. I shall have my revenge.
> Perhaps: _Mentula Macanus: Apocolocyntosis_)
I promise I'll not do it again. Submit a German game, I mean.
Florian
Adam Thornton
I have. I haven't wrapped my brain around it yet, and there's at least
one more layer of abstraction I want to add on top of the window, but it
is, I think, a place to start for the interface side.
What I want in an interface piece--let's call it a "pane" for a bit--is
not just something that is a rectangle that can hold pixels that exists
in a specified relationship to other pixel-holding rectangles, but
something that knows about what it's displaying. I think the best way
to do this is to make the actual Glk Window just one of the fields of
that object and have a Contents (or something) field that points to an
Object, which in turn has a Picture field that is sent a Draw() message
each turn if it's appropriate.
Basically, this boils down to the problem I ran into in Stiffy and was
forced to solve in an ugly and ad-hoc way: when the character leaves a
room, it's easy to change the picture representing current location.
However if one of the other windows represents
object-or-character-currently-the-focus-of-player-attention, then I need
some way for the window to know what that is and to clear itself if the
object is no longer in scope (for instance, the player was examining
something he left behind).
Almost all of the problems I want to solve are easy to do on an ad hoc
basis. However, solving them consistently and cleanly in a reusable
framework is going to be much harder, I think.
That said, writing libraries is fun, and if I do this, I will not only
get the pleasant glow of having written a useful library, but it will
make my next planned Glulx game a good deal easier to write.
Adam
Cedric Knight
> FWIW, I found that the story of All Roads was quite comprehensible on
the
> second play-through, although there was one significant detail I
hadn't
> noticed until it was pointed out to me. (There may be subtleties I'm
> still missing, of course.) There are really only two major shifts of
> understanding you need, and the first is pretty much unavoidable.
> Explanations follow spoiler space. (I recommend playing the game
rather
> than reading my explanations; I provide them to prove that some of us
are
> not simply 'too embarassed to admit that they Didn't Get It'.)
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I replayed it and if anything I got the drift and motivation more the
first time around. The two "shifts of understanding" Carl described
were perfectly clear by the end of the first play through (the central
idea was familiar from e.g. Tim Powers's _Anubis Gates_), and the
reverse order of the main sequence, but it's the other stuff that
remains obscure. "X me" doesn't make much obvious except whether
it is before or after the initial rope-cutting exercise. It's the fact
that you sometimes have the *same* body but a different PC's *mind* that
confuses me.
These are the kinds of things I still haven't got:
What is the relation between the Resistance woman (Francesca) and the
guard (Antonio?) She is presumably undercover in the escape scene, but
why is she helping you after she got you locked up? It seemed the same
cell was used by the city guards and the resistance, but that was
presumably my mistake.
Who is William DeLosa? Who is the other woman who you wake up with
(Francesca presumably delivered the note as you betrayed her at home;
not the Denizen?; she apparently also "slides")? What is the history of
the ring (belonged to the Denizen, later referred to as "yours"?)
What are the times of the various scenes? Executions are only done on
Fridays, so why is it being taken down on the first view of the visit to
the Denizen, and put up on the second?
Is handwriting part of the transferred personality? What exactly is
happening when you exit the Doge's Palace for the second time and
someone else has control of the current body? Or when you are DeLosa
outside a body altogether at the end, plus DeLosa is in Delosa's body?
Why do you say you have not carried out the plan to kill Guiseppe when
you have your own plan, *plus* you inform on him? What do the
resistance members make of this sliding, which you seem to think is
unique? Why do some things suggest you are in a loop (you *say* you
keep finding self on scaffold), while others do not (final scene)?
As you can see, I'm still bewildered.
CK
Carl Muckenhoupt
ckn...@gn.apc.deletethis.org says...
>
> p
> r
> e
> t
> t
> y
>
> b
> i
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>
> s
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> i
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> s
>
My replies may be inaccurate in some details, but I think they're broadly
right.
(Note: In my previous post, I got the names confused. Seppe is the
Denizen's aide, Sebastian is the assassin.)
> What is the relation between the Resistance woman (Francesca) and the
> guard (Antonio?)
As far as I can tell, nothing in particular. They're both Resistance
members, that's all.
> She is presumably undercover in the escape scene, but
> why is she helping you after she got you locked up?
Francesca is apparently in love with Sebastian, and was persuaded that
he returned her affections. She got angry with him when she realized
that he was with another woman the previous night. (Her reasons for
thinking this are invalid: Sebastian actually *did* get her note, but he
didn't realize this yet when he was questioned, due to being possessed by
the time-tripping PC. However, her conclusion happened to be correct all
the same.) At this point, she wanted him dead. But she was afraid that
the Resistance might decide not to kill him, so she went and told the
city guard to look for him and slipped him the key.
> It seemed the same
> cell was used by the city guards and the resistance, but that was
> presumably my mistake.
There are two different cells: the cellar of the Resistance hideout and
an actual prison. Sebastian is thrown into the first when he's suspected
of selling out the Resistance, then Seppe is put in with him so Sebastian
can prove his loyalty by completing his mission. He does this (albeit in
a subtle way) and is allowed to leave. Then Seppe receives the note and
key that were intended for Sebastian and escapes, only to be caught by
the city guard, imprisoned, and hanged. This is clearer if you choose
not to 'travel through darkness' when you're given the opportunity: you
can stay with Seppe from one cell to the other.
> Who is William DeLosa?
This is the bit that I hadn't noticed until it was pointed out. Try
praying when you're in the church, and you'll get a crucial piece of the
puzzle. William DeLosa is the PC. William DeLosa is dead. Also,
William DeLosa has apparently been working as an assassin, with
Sebastian's help, ever since he died, by possessing people and
manipulating them.
But possessing other people seems to involve a certain amount of
confusion: William emerges from his 'rest' with no memory, merges with
the mind of the person he's possessing to some extent, and invents
explanations for what's going on that don't necessarily fit the truth.
Just about all he seems to understand at the beginning is that he's an
assassin and has some kind of special ability to 'move through darkness'.
By the end, however, he understands everything, even if the player
doesn't.
> Who is the other woman who you wake up with
> (Francesca presumably delivered the note as you betrayed her at home;
> not the Denizen?; she apparently also "slides")?
As far as I can tell, she's just a prostitute that Sebastian picked up
the previous night. She doesn't 'slide'; that's just William's confusion
trying to explain an unexpected presence.
> What is the history of
> the ring (belonged to the Denizen, later referred to as "yours"?)
Sebastian stole it from the Denizen's desk while pretending to apply to
the army. Then he put it on Seppe when they were in the Resistance
cellar together, and Seppe didn't throw it away when he escaped because
William wouldn't let him.
> What are the times of the various scenes? Executions are only done on
> Fridays, so why is it being taken down on the first view of the visit to
> the Denizen, and put up on the second?
This is the confused William trying to explain things under the
assumption that events are seen in chronological order. He sees workmen
around the scaffold and assumes that they're taking it down, when in fact
they're putting it up in preparation for tomorrow's hangings.
The real sequence of events is:
At 10:00 on Thursday, Sebastian wakes up, receives note, leaves room and
goes to the Denizen's office (arriving shortly before 11:00), where he
steals a ring. He then goes to the Resistance hideout, running into
Francesca on the way. The resistance is led to believe he's betrayed
them, and they lock him in the cellar. Then Seppe shows up. He's been a
double agent for a long time, and the Resistance knows this. They tie
him up and lock him in with Sebastian, and Sebastian puts the ring on
his finger. Seppe then escapes, but it caught by the city guards in the
church, who have been tipped off by Francesca. The Denizen visits Seppe
in his cell at night, but refuses to help him. At 6:00 the next morning,
Seppe is hanged.
(Not 'hung'. Portraits are hung. Condemned prisoners are hanged.
That's another thing the game consistently got wrong.)
> Is handwriting part of the transferred personality? What exactly is
> happening when you exit the Doge's Palace for the second time and
> someone else has control of the current body?
That's not 'someone else'. That's you, earlier. Surely you noticed that
the body is repeating your actions from the first visit? That's because
it's the same visit.
> Or when you are DeLosa
> outside a body altogether at the end, plus DeLosa is in Delosa's body?
Sebastian DeLosa is in Sebastian DeLosa's body. William DeLosa is
watching things from outside.
> Why do you say you have not carried out the plan to kill Guiseppe when
> you have your own plan, *plus* you inform on him?
William's confusion.
> What do the
> resistance members make of this sliding, which you seem to think is
> unique?
It is unique. But they seem to understand it better than you do. At
least, that's how I understood their comments about your 'reputation'.
> Why do some things suggest you are in a loop (you *say* you
> keep finding self on scaffold), while others do not (final scene)?
I don't recall anything suggesting a loop per se. But some scenes are
shown twice, including the hanging.
Adam Thornton
Carl Muckenhoupt <ca...@wurb.com> wrote:
>(Not 'hung'. Portraits are hung. Condemned prisoners are hanged.
>That's another thing the game consistently got wrong.)
Now, Mr. Makane would like to point out that...
Oh, never mind.
Adam
Matthew Russotto
You're way too late for that...
--
Matthew T. Russotto russ...@pond.com
=====
Get Caught Reading, Go To Jail!
A message from the Association of American Publishers
Free Dmitry Sklyarov! DMCA delenda est!
http://www.freedmitry.org
Florian Edlbauer
> >ad...@fsf.net (Adam Thornton) wrote
> >> Damn you! DAMN YOU TO HELL!
> >>
> >> (and I was beaten by the German one too. I shall have my revenge.
> >> Perhaps: _Mentula Macanus: Apocolocyntosis_)
> >
> >I promise I'll not do it again. Submit a German game, I mean.
>
> You're way too late for that...
For what? for stopping him writing Mentula Macanus?
Florian
Matthew Russotto
Nat Kealen
P
O
I
L
E
R
S
P
A
C
E
.
.
.
.
.
.
Hmm... From what I gathered in playing the game it seemed like one of the
women were "leaping" as well. The one even appears to know about William.
-nat kealen
Daniel Barkalow
> Third, and finally, were the barrelled fish I was really hoping to
> shoot: AIF players who approached the keyboard drooling, with their
> pants around their knees, tremulously typed (with their left hand only,
> natch) "y", "n", "y", and began the game.
That reminds me: I was somewhat disappointed that the game wouldn't let me
play after I said I'd be offended. Given the disclaimer, I'd expect any
sensible player to expect to be offended, regardless of whether they
wanted to play the game anyway. I was really hoping for a response of
"Good, so you're paying attention. Do you agree not to do anything
terrible once you've gotten offended?"
-Iabervon
*This .sig unintentionally changed*
Adam Thornton
Daniel Barkalow <iabe...@iabervon.org> wrote:
>That reminds me: I was somewhat disappointed that the game wouldn't let me
>play after I said I'd be offended. Given the disclaimer, I'd expect any
>sensible player to expect to be offended, regardless of whether they
>wanted to play the game anyway. I was really hoping for a response of
>"Good, so you're paying attention. Do you agree not to do anything
>terrible once you've gotten offended?"
You know, *if* there is a Post-Comp release (and, honestly, I think
there are better wastes of my time), then *maybe* I will include
something along these lines.
On the other hand, you could always lie.
Adam
Adam Thornton
Matthew Russotto <russ...@wanda.pond.com> wrote:
>In article <67815c45.01112...@posting.google.com>,
>Florian Edlbauer <florian....@zdnet.de> wrote:
>>For what? for stopping him writing Mentula Macanus?
>Yep.
I haven't *written* it yet.
I still have to get Latin.h and LatinG.h written first, don't I?
You may all count yourselves fortunate that I have a lot of Real Work
until at least Christmas.
Adam
Craxton
>Third, and finally, were the barrelled fish I was really hoping to
>shoot: AIF players who approached the keyboard drooling, with their
>pants around their knees, tremulously typed (with their left hand only,
>natch) "y", "n", "y", and began the game. And then, somewhere in scene
>three, suddenly felt horrendously betrayed, because the game, to quote a
>poster in alt.games.xtrek, "radically degenerates into some wierd gayass
>shit at the end, which wasn't at all tastefully done!"
>
Pardon me, but...
There's a very good reason for that. There is, within the realm of the
erotic arts industry, a very clear seperation between M/M and other
variaties of sex. Websites, retailers, and virtually all content developers
I know of draw a sharp line between the two. Why this is true, and why the
same *doesn't* hold true for F/F sex, I don't know. (I could theorise,
though...) Nevertheless, there is a line, and not crossing it is a unwritten
rule.
That said, those fish STILL deserve what they got. Not for objecting to the
content, but for taking SMTUC as a work of serious AIF. It's obvious from
the first line that the game is a full-on parody, nothing more or less, and
the encounter with Barcelona confirms it moreso for the clueless. Anyone who
did not get that through their skull deserves a sharp *FLICK!* of my index
finger directly at the center of their forehead.
(But I still think Makoto Kino was miscast. ~_^)
-Craxton
Adam Thornton
>(But I still think Makoto Kino was miscast. ~_^)
But you're ignoring the larger societal context.
I do not debate what you say about Sailor Jupiter vs. Sailor Venus.
However: Terri Barcelona of Io
Tracy Valencia of I-0
And Io is a moon of *Jupiter*, not Venus.
Adam
Cedric Knight
Spoilers below. This is for people who've finished the winning game,
but are still struggling, plus maybe for Jon to see if he can make it
easier for us bewildered masses! Perhaps the best thing is to make a
transcript of the game, then re-read it, rather than playing through 2
or 3 times.
Carl
Thanks, it does make a lot more sense now. Maybe I should visit the
ifMUD more often.
In particular, I hadn't worked out that there was a third individual
involved, the disembodied PC. I was too attached to the swapping idea
of mind*swapping*(I said I was thinking of Anubis Gates, when I should
have been thinking "Getting Home"). It also confused me that you are
present twice within Sebastian at the palace - I assumed I was playing
the "real" Sebastian one of those times. First time, I also thought the
first scene in the bird room was Sebastian.
As you say, is that you have an unreliable narrator who is experiencing
things in the same order as yourself - hence he sees the ring as "his",
and the dark haired woman as someone "following" him.
The plot cartainly links up, but I wish there had been more clues to
understanding the above. Of course, there are still things I'm not sure
about - said ring being take on & off in front of owner's eyes; both the
Denizen and her aide seem to be spies, etc.
> My replies may be inaccurate in some details, but I think they're
broadly
> right.
> (Note: In my previous post, I got the names confused. Seppe is the
> Denizen's aide, Sebastian is the assassin.)
Or strictly speaking, isn't William the assassin? "He's all yours,
DeLosa".
>
> > What is the relation between the Resistance woman (Francesca) and
the
> > guard (Antonio?)
>
> As far as I can tell, nothing in particular. They're both Resistance
> members, that's all.
Right - however, it does seem odd that the Resiastance can lock people
up, and post their guard in a public street.
>
> > She is presumably undercover in the escape scene, but
> > why is she helping you after she got you locked up?
>
> Francesca is apparently in love with Sebastian, and was persuaded that
> he returned her affections. She got angry with him when she realized
> that he was with another woman the previous night. (Her reasons for
> thinking this are invalid: Sebastian actually *did* get her note, but
he
> didn't realize this yet when he was questioned, due to being possessed
by
> the time-tripping PC. However, her conclusion happened to be correct
all
> the same.) At this point, she wanted him dead. But she was afraid
that
Parenthetically bit understood - we don't see Sebastian pick up the
dark-haired woman, so presumably he's in control up to that point.
> the Resistance might decide not to kill him, so she went and told the
> city guard to look for him and slipped him the key.
***Surely it is Giuseppe she releases? In which case it's part of the
plan to get him caught? In which case why does she need to deceieve
Antonio?
>
> > It seemed the same
> > cell was used by the city guards and the resistance, but that was
> > presumably my mistake.
>
> There are two different cells: the cellar of the Resistance hideout
and
> an actual prison. Sebastian is thrown into the first when he's
suspected
> of selling out the Resistance, then Seppe is put in with him so
Sebastian
> can prove his loyalty by completing his mission. He does this (albeit
in
> a subtle way) and is allowed to leave. Then Seppe receives the note
and
> key that were intended for Sebastian and escapes, only to be caught by
> the city guard, imprisoned, and hanged. This is clearer if you choose
> not to 'travel through darkness' when you're given the opportunity:
you
> can stay with Seppe from one cell to the other.
I used "enter darkness" the first time, not the second. Perhaps the
cell just needed a little more description to distinguish it from the
bird room.
>
> > Who is William DeLosa?
>
> This is the bit that I hadn't noticed until it was pointed out. Try
> praying when you're in the church, and you'll get a crucial piece of
the
> puzzle. William DeLosa is the PC. William DeLosa is dead. Also,
> William DeLosa has apparently been working as an assassin, with
> Sebastian's help, ever since he died, by possessing people and
> manipulating them.
Right.
>
> But possessing other people seems to involve a certain amount of
> confusion: William emerges from his 'rest' with no memory, merges with
> the mind of the person he's possessing to some extent, and invents
> explanations for what's going on that don't necessarily fit the truth.
> Just about all he seems to understand at the beginning is that he's an
> assassin and has some kind of special ability to 'move through
darkness'.
> By the end, however, he understands everything, even if the player
> doesn't.
Flashbacks from a disembodied mind recovering from amnesia would *not*
be a way to clarify anything.
>
> > Who is the other woman who you wake up with
> > (Francesca presumably delivered the note as you betrayed her at
home;
> > not the Denizen?; she apparently also "slides")?
>
> As far as I can tell, she's just a prostitute that Sebastian picked up
> the previous night. She doesn't 'slide'; that's just William's
confusion
> trying to explain an unexpected presence.
At the fountain, she is scared of Giuseppe, simply because of the wine
stains, not anything to do with having seen you before?
>
> > What is the history of
> > the ring (belonged to the Denizen, later referred to as "yours"?)
>
> Sebastian stole it from the Denizen's desk while pretending to apply
to
> the army. Then he put it on Seppe when they were in the Resistance
> cellar together, and Seppe didn't throw it away when he escaped
because
> William wouldn't let him.
OK. This brings up another misdirection - the "escaping hanging by
joining the army motif" which is the erroneous thought of "William I"
(i.e. the first view of these scenes), not a clue for what your
motivation is here either time.
>
> > What are the times of the various scenes? Executions are only done
on
> > Fridays, so why is it being taken down on the first view of the
visit to
> > the Denizen, and put up on the second?
Note from my use of the word "view" that I had at least worked out that
these were exactly the same events seen from different standpoints. No
problem there.
>
> This is the confused William trying to explain things under the
> assumption that events are seen in chronological order. He sees
workmen
> around the scaffold and assumes that they're taking it down, when in
fact
> they're putting it up in preparation for tomorrow's hangings.
But the later William seeing identical events has it worked out.
>
> The real sequence of events is:
> At 10:00 on Thursday, Sebastian wakes up, receives note, leaves room
and
> goes to the Denizen's office (arriving shortly before 11:00), where he
> steals a ring. He then goes to the Resistance hideout, running into
> Francesca on the way. The resistance is led to believe he's betrayed
> them, and they lock him in the cellar. Then Seppe shows up. He's
been a
Who is it who says "I have heard nothing from you"? William again,
rather than Sebastian, who has, I presume.
> double agent for a long time, and the Resistance knows this. They tie
> him up and lock him in with Sebastian, and Sebastian puts the ring on
> his finger. Seppe then escapes, but it caught by the city guards in
the
> church, who have been tipped off by Francesca. The Denizen visits
Seppe
> in his cell at night, but refuses to help him. At 6:00 the next
morning,
> Seppe is hanged.
Right.
>
> (Not 'hung'. Portraits are hung. Condemned prisoners are hanged.
> That's another thing the game consistently got wrong.)
>
> > Is handwriting part of the transferred personality? What exactly is
> > happening when you exit the Doge's Palace for the second time and
> > someone else has control of the current body?
>
> That's not 'someone else'. That's you, earlier. Surely you noticed
that
> the body is repeating your actions from the first visit? That's
because
> it's the same visit.
OK. The second time ("William II") the disembodied PC knows what is
going on, and traps Giuseppe by writing in the book. Everything you do
is in William's writing. However, Sebastian must have some control
here, because you write "S. DeLosa." described as "Curious."
>
> > Or when you are DeLosa
> > outside a body altogether at the end, plus DeLosa is in Delosa's
body?
>
> Sebastian DeLosa is in Sebastian DeLosa's body. William DeLosa is
> watching things from outside.
Why do they have the same surname?
>
> > Why do you say you have not carried out the plan to kill Guiseppe
when
> > you have your own plan, *plus* you inform on him?
>
> William's confusion.
William I that is. William II has greater understanding, but lacks the
ability to explain. Presumably something goes a bit wrong here, and the
first possession locks out the possession by William II?
>
> > What do the
> > resistance members make of this sliding, which you seem to think is
> > unique?
>
> It is unique. But they seem to understand it better than you do. At
> least, that's how I understood their comments about your 'reputation'.
OK. So they may also understand William's confusion, and therefore want
him restrained? (I think this is wrong.)
>
> > Why do some things suggest you are in a loop (you *say* you
> > keep finding self on scaffold), while others do not (final scene)?
>
> I don't recall anything suggesting a loop per se. But some scenes are
> shown twice, including the hanging.
Well the bit leading up to the 5th stroke, and the bit after are
separate.
"And every morning, it pulls me away. I can't control where it takes
me - this
morning it took me to the scaffold." This last bit is confusing because
at exactly 6am, it takes him away from the scaffold.
"And then as every morning the darkness swallows you, and you are
powerless to
prevent it."...
"The three of you leave {Sebastian, rncaseca and father]. You, to fill
your pockets with gold, as ever, another
job completed by the usual cycle. An assassin, such as yourself - you
have no
need of weapons." That makes it clear you will be moving on, somehow.
CK
Craxton
Adam Thornton wrote in message <9tfgnq$703$1...@news.fsf.net>...
Oh.
...
I didn't notice that.
-Craxton