SPAG Issue #56 Now Available!
Jimmy Maher
Issue #56 of your favorite IF e-zine is now available at
http://www.sparkynet.com/spag/backissues/spag56.html.
In this issue:
Editorial
IF News
Impressions of an IF Newcomer by Dorte Lassen
A DRIFTer's First IF Comp by Duncan Bowsman
IF Competition 2009 Reviews:
The Ascot
The Believable Adventures of an Invisible Man
Beta Tester
Broken Legs
Byzantine Perspective
Condemned
The Duel in the Snow
The Duel That Spanned the Ages
Earl Grey
Eruption
GATOR-ON, Friend to Wetlands!
Gleaming the Verb
The Grand Quest
Grounded in Space
The Hangover
Interface
Resonance
Rover's Day Out
Snowquest
Spelunker's Quest
Star Hunter
Trap Cave
Yon Astounding Castle! of some sort
zork, buried chaos
IntroComp 2009 Reviews:
Gossip
Obituary
Selves
Other Game Reviews:
Acheton
The Bryant Collection
Cacophony
Finding the Mouse
The Nemean Lion
Sam Fortune -- Private Investigator
Shelter from the Storm
Spaceship!
Unscientific Fiction
SPAG Specifics
The King of Shreds and Patches
--
Jimmy Maher
Editor, SPAG Magazine -- http://www.sparkynet.com/spag
Thank you for helping to keep text adventures alive!
George Oliver
> Hello, folks...
>
> Issue #56 of your favorite IF e-zine is now available athttp://www.sparkynet.com/spag/backissues/spag56.html.
Well done! I especially liked Lassen's and Bowsman's perspectives.
Jim Aikin
>
> Impressions of an IF Newcomer by Dorte Lassen
Thanks for this article -- good observations across the board.
I'd like to follow up on one of Dorte's comments: "[I]t is a pain in the
butt to go back to the ABOUT menu over and over again, every time you
feel unsure about something. What basic verbs can I use? How do I
interact with other characters? How do I see what I am carrying? It
sounds terribly banal, but every player has to learn these things first.
I am not a big user of computer games or the computer itself. IF would
just be too tedious for me to sit down and learn through a lengthy ABOUT
text...."
Next time I write a game, I think I'll pack the tutorial into a separate
HTML file rather than tucking it away inside the game. This will have
two advantages, at the very least: Newcomers will be able to keep it
open on the desktop at the same time as the game, so they won't have to
keep going back to the ABOUT or INSTRUCTIONS menu. And it will be easy
to cross-link within the HTML page itself, so finding information will
be quicker.
If any public-spirited person wants to start working on such a file,
feel free to email me and we can kick around some ideas. I'm not an HTML
expert, just a fumble-fingered guy with a five-year-old reference book,
so my ideas are doubtless rather dusty. I'd love to see someone set up,
for instance, an HTML template page that authors could edit as needed
and bundle with their game.
Of course all this information is readily available on various sites.
The point is to make it dead easy for newbies to get started playing
games without having to poke around on the Web!
--JA
Andrew Plotkin
>
> Next time I write a game, I think I'll pack the tutorial into a separate
> HTML file rather than tucking it away inside the game. This will have
> two advantages, at the very least: Newcomers will be able to keep it
> open on the desktop at the same time as the game, so they won't have to
> keep going back to the ABOUT or INSTRUCTIONS menu. And it will be easy
> to cross-link within the HTML page itself, so finding information will
> be quicker.
>
> If any public-spirited person wants to start working on such a file,
> feel free to email me and we can kick around some ideas.
This was one of the points of the Dreamhold Parchment page I linked a
few weeks ago: <http://eblong.com/zarf/zparchment/dreamhold/>
It has some of the in-game "how to play" text linked as a separate
HTML page.
Gotta finish that. Damn.
--Z
--
"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the borogoves..."
*
Jim Aikin
>>
>> If any public-spirited person wants to start working on such a file,
>> feel free to email me and we can kick around some ideas.
>
> This was one of the points of the Dreamhold Parchment page I linked a
> few weeks ago: <http://eblong.com/zarf/zparchment/dreamhold/>
> It has some of the in-game "how to play" text linked as a separate
> HTML page.
>
> Gotta finish that. Damn.
That's the kind of thing I'm thinking of (the How To Play page), but
available offline, not just within a website -- which would probably
mean bundling the stylesheet with it, or other stuff such as nice
graphics. And making the page header non-Dreamhold-specific.
BTW, when the game itself loads into the Dreamhold main page, the left
half of the text (in IE) is over the dark blue background, making it
impossible to read.
--JA
ChicagoDave
> Jimmy Maher wrote:
>
> > Impressions of an IF Newcomer by Dorte Lassen
>
> Thanks for this article -- good observations across the board.
>
> I'd like to follow up on one of Dorte's comments: "[I]t is a pain in the
> butt to go back to the ABOUT menu over and over again, every time you
> feel unsure about something. What basic verbs can I use? How do I
> interact with other characters? How do I see what I am carrying?
>
> feel free to email me and we can kick around some ideas. I'm not an HTML
> expert, just a fumble-fingered guy with a five-year-old reference book,
> so my ideas are doubtless rather dusty. I'd love to see someone set up,
> for instance, an HTML template page that authors could edit as needed
> and bundle with their game.
This was partially the intent of my I7 Basic Help extension...to give
non-IF people an immediate way of getting basic help. It needs a lot
more work though. It should be integrated into invalid responses (so
if the player bungles the syntax, the help system will catch that and
possibly offer help). It needs to offer virtual help in the form of an
entire section of rooms that are specifically meant to teach a new
player IF. Call it an in-game tutorial, but standardized. I could even
see plug-in tutorials that have a set of standard requirements and the
author can pick which one (Basic Help with Mechancial Tutorial or
Basic Help with Dramatic Tutorial).
David C.
www.textfyre.com
Andrew Plotkin
> >>
> >> If any public-spirited person wants to start working on such a file,
> >> feel free to email me and we can kick around some ideas.
> >
> > This was one of the points of the Dreamhold Parchment page I linked a
> > few weeks ago: <http://eblong.com/zarf/zparchment/dreamhold/>
> > It has some of the in-game "how to play" text linked as a separate
> > HTML page.
> >
> > Gotta finish that. Damn.
>
> That's the kind of thing I'm thinking of (the How To Play page), but
> available offline, not just within a website -- which would probably
> mean bundling the stylesheet with it, or other stuff such as nice
> graphics. And making the page header non-Dreamhold-specific.
Yup. Everything there is easy to bundle around, deliberately.
> BTW, when the game itself loads into the Dreamhold main page, the left
> half of the text (in IE) is over the dark blue background, making it
> impossible to read.
Yeah, that's one of the things between me and calling it "finished".
That doesn't happen in the help page, though? Hm.
Jim Aikin
>
> This was partially the intent of my I7 Basic Help extension...to give
> non-IF people an immediate way of getting basic help.
In-game tutorials are good too, especially context-sensitive stuff that
guides new players. But having to consult an in-game tutorial text pulls
you away from the game. I'm seeing a real need for a separate html file
that can coexist on the desktop.
--JA
Kenji Yamada
try a couple of those Comp games.
} kenji