biggest game ever?
dave.mansley
on my computer is 'Worlds Apart', which seems to be larger than 'Once and
Future'. Are there any larger games? Of course this can be hard to discern
as inform games are generally smaller and the use of graphics or sound will
also increase the size.
Robotboy8
I have a Vague Memory (tm) of a game with 10,000 rooms. OTOH, if I remember
correctly, this game was quite boring and 9,985 of these rooms were simply
{prisonroom1, prisonroom2..........prisonroom9,984, prisonroom9,985}.
--
If I say so then it is so; if it is so, it's probably because I said so.
Jake Wildstrom
Robotboy8 <robo...@aol.com> wrote:
>I have a Vague Memory (tm) of a game with 10,000 rooms. OTOH, if I remember
>correctly, this game was quite boring and 9,985 of these rooms were simply
>{prisonroom1, prisonroom2..........prisonroom9,984, prisonroom9,985}.
You might be thinking of Level 9's "Snowball", billed as having "a
million rooms". Of course, 999-thousand-odd of them were awfully
similar...
+--First Church of Briantology--Order of the Holy Quaternion--+
| A mathematician is a device for turning coffee into |
| theorems. -Paul Erdos |
+-------------------------------------------------------------+
| Jake Wildstrom |
+-------------------------------------------------------------+
Ulrich Schreitmueller
> In article <20010630135259...@ng-mh1.aol.com>,
> Robotboy8 <robo...@aol.com> wrote:
> >I have a Vague Memory (tm) of a game with 10,000 rooms. OTOH, if I remember
> >correctly, this game was quite boring and 9,985 of these rooms were simply
> >{prisonroom1, prisonroom2..........prisonroom9,984, prisonroom9,985}.
>
> You might be thinking of Level 9's "Snowball", billed as having "a
> million rooms". Of course, 999-thousand-odd of them were awfully
> similar...
Now why does this remind me of Starship Titanic?
Uli
Billy Harris
wrote:
> Question on the side: is Starship Titanic worth getting or is "a million
> similar rooms" a pretty good description?
If you have a mouse in one hand and a hint book in the other, it can be
an interesting diversion. If you are unlucky enough to get one of the
copies sold without a hint book, it will be an exercise in frustration
because you will not be able to read Douglas Adam's mind.
Ulrich Schreitmueller
> Question on the side: is Starship Titanic worth getting or is "a million
> similar rooms" a pretty good description?
>
> As I love the old "Hitchhiker's Guide," "Bureaucracy" and last but not
> least the novels by Douglas Adams (especially the Dirk Gentley's) and
> having read some favorable reviews about Starship Titanic, I'm wondering
> if I should actually pay some money and get it via ebay.
>
> Marco
Opinions seem to vary... all I can say is, don't pay full price for it or
you'll probably be disappointed.
Uli (who didn't like the game very much)
Andrew Plotkin
> Question on the side: is Starship Titanic worth getting or is "a million
> similar rooms" a pretty good description?
Several areas have a million similar rooms, but you shouldn't count
that as a mark against it. You only have to enter one of those
million. (It's a "Learn your room number, go to that room" puzzle.
You're not supposed to brute-force search them all. Furthermore, it's
*obvious* that you're not supposed to brute-force search them all. :)
Now, that's not to say the game is worth getting. I wasn't very
impressed. However, the design problems were with the puzzles
(confusing and arbitrary) and the NPCs (not nearly as interesting as
the designers thought they were), not with the map.
--Z
"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the borogoves..."
*
* Both candidates campaigned for votes; one then campaigned to not count votes.
dave.mansley
Robotboy8 <robo...@aol.com> wrote in message
news:20010630135259...@ng-mh1.aol.com...
> I have a Vague Memory (tm) of a game with 10,000 rooms. OTOH, if I
remember
> correctly, this game was quite boring and 9,985 of these rooms were simply
> {prisonroom1, prisonroom2..........prisonroom9,984, prisonroom9,985}.
Yeah, but room count is not really a good indicator of size, how about lines
of programming etc.
Andrew MacKinnon
Dangerous Curves by Irene Callaci uses up the full 512K (524288 bytes,
1K=1024Bytes) of space that the Z-Machine provides. Heroine's Mantle, by Andy
Phillips, (release 2 / serial number 001113) uses up 522752 bytes, only 1536
bytes behind Dangerous Curves. So, in this respect, Dangerous Curves is the
largest game, followed by Heroine's Mantle. There's probably some other games
in this range, too.
--
Andrew MacKinnon
andrew_mac...@yahoo.com
http://www.geocities.com/andrew_mackinnon_2000/
David Picton
I think there's a real problem here. Is there a basis for comparison which
(a) genuinely reflects the size of the game and
(b) can be accurately measured for all games and
(c) allows a valid comparison between different game platforms e.g.
TADS vs. Inform?
Patty
>(a) genuinely reflects the size of the game and
>(b) can be accurately measured for all games and
>(c) allows a valid comparison between different game platforms e.g.
> TADS vs. Inform?
This brings up a question I've wondered about- Which IF games are the biggest
in terms of how long they take to play through? Assuming you don't get stuck on
a puzzle and abandon the game for days, weeks, or months because you don't want
to use hints.
Adam Thornton
But what does *this* mean?
Most number of moves in a minimal walkthrough? Most number of moves in
a logically-minimal walkthrough (i.e. you collect all the clues
necessary to solve the puzzles without requiring
foreknowledge-through-prior-lives)? Most number of moves in minimal
game of "Maximum amount of text you can see in a single play session
[including | not including] use of undo?"
Of the games I've played, I'd have to say that the one that *feels* the
biggest is Anchorhead, even though I'm sure there are games with more
locations, more text, et cetera.
Adam
Michael Kinyon
> Patty <phil...@aol.comnojunk> wrote:
[snip]
>>This brings up a question I've wondered about- Which IF games are
>>the biggest in terms of how long they take to play through?
> Of the games I've played, I'd have to say that the one that *feels*
> the biggest is Anchorhead, even though I'm sure there are games
> with more locations, more text, et cetera.
My vote would have to be for Jacob Weinstein's TADS
game _Modernism_. It certainly kept me occupied.
MK
--
Michael K. Kinyon | email: mki...@iusb.edu (for now)
Department of Mathematics | http://www.iusb.edu/~mkinyon (for now)
Western Michigan University | phone: (616)-387-1417
Kalamazoo, MI 49008-5248 USA | fax: (616)-387-4530
Andrew Plotkin
> I think there's a real problem here. Is there a basis for comparison which
> (a) genuinely reflects the size of the game and
No.
> (b) can be accurately measured for all games and
Not unless you give up on (a).
> (c) allows a valid comparison between different game platforms e.g.
> TADS vs. Inform?
Not unless you give up on (a) and (b).
It's almost Asimovian, isn't it?
--Z
"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the borogoves..."
*
* Gore won the overvotes:
http://washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A53804-2001Jan26.html
http://www.miami.com/herald/special/news/elect2000/decision/003701.htm
Sam Kabo Ashwell
pict...@my-deja.com wrote on 7/9/01 11:29 AM:
Well, lines of code would be next to useless, seeing as you can write
identical code in different ways: for example, in TADS
foo:thing
bar={"blah blah blah";}
is identical to
foo:thing
bar=
{
"blah blah blah";
}
and so you'd be measuring the author's coding style as much as anything.
Size of compiled file might be better, but, ignoring debug compiles,
graphics, html and so on, this'd almost certainly <leap in dark> prejudice
against one game system or another.
The best guide to game size'd be the horribly subjective one of how long it
takes to play and how detailed it is. Anyway, I'm not sure what the need is
for exact comparative rankings: much as I'd love to see more large games, a
big game isn't going to be any better just because it's X larger than
another big game.
SKA
Duncan Stevens
Anchorhead's, but there are quite a few more puzzles. (What makes a game
"long" for me is the time one could reasonably expect to take to get through
it--Mulldoon took me a long time even with heavy reliance on a walkthrough,
whereas Anchorhead was just a few days, even with almost no hints. The
puzzles are harder in Mulldoon, of course, but there's also a lot more of
them.)
--Duncan
Adam Atkinson
Acheton is quite large, and I'm told Hezarin was even larger, but I
never got anywhere in it and it's now probably lost forever.
Quondam and Xeno would probably count as "long" in your terms, even
though they're both very small games.
--
Adam Atkinson (gh...@mistral.co.uk)
Kids! Bringing about Armageddon can be dangerous. Do not attempt it in
your own home. (Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman)
Gunther Schmidl
> Acheton is quite large, and I'm told Hezarin was even larger, but I
> never got anywhere in it and it's now probably lost forever.
The original might be, but the Topologika version lives on GMD.
-- Gunther
-- http://fourcoffees.com
Roger Durrant
While discussing records can I claim the longest interregnum between answers on an IF forum? No I thought not.
Roger Durrant
No man is an island? What about the Isle of Man?