>This may be a bit disjointed, as I managed to delete the original post I'm
>replying to (my apologies to that post's author). Anyway, I'm commenting
>on someone commenting that he didn't like Undertow because [paraphrasing]
>a) the game was timed, and b) interaction with characters was so poor.
>
>I can understand your aversion to timed games, and that is a personal
>dislike that I can't really fault. However, in my defense, I couldn't
>come up with a way to realistically make the game untimed. The game
[..]
I agree with your reasoning here. I still don't like timed games, but I
don't have a way to write this sort of game without a timer either.
>I believe that the second charge leveled at Undertow is the serious flaw
>in the game. As I was writing the game, I quickly realized that I
>wouldn't be able to handle a huge amount of possible reactions among the
>NPCs and the players. I *did* try to add some independent reactions (try
>annoying a character by asking them about something repeatedly, or even
>pouring a drink over their heads), but I was hampered by the time in which
>I had to write the game. At one point I considered having the characters
>randomly fight or argue, but that seemed too...well, random. I'm open to
>any suggestions as to how to improve this flaw.
It is the serious flaw, but I'm not really sure how to fix it. Most of the
characters kept giving me the impression of being, well, set pieces and
not actors. First they'd do this for a while, then they'd walk straight to
the next location and do something there for a while, and so on. It would be
more difficult, but it seems like "real people" tend to be in motion more.
I'm not sure exactly how to bring that into a game, but it would be nice.
>On a slightly unrelated tangent, I noticed that several people mentioned
>that Zebulon's Will and Undertow both broke no new ground. My question
>is, how much new ground do you expect IF authors to break when given three
>months to write a game playable in two hours? It's like holding a gun to
>Faulkner's head and saying, "Ok, we want you to write a five-page short
>story in which you revolutionize fiction. Oh, and do it in six days." I
>got into the contest late--I had one week for research, five weeks to
>program, and one week to playtest/debug and rewrite, all while working at
>a full-time job. Give these restrictions, I can't imagine making bold new
>strides in IF. I was just happy enough to come up with a mildly-diverting
>game
This didn't bother me terribly. Hopefully hopefully next year's contest
will start a little earlier and end a little later and make the myriad of
rules changes necessary to satisfy everyone :P Like you say, the games that
wandered off track did tend to get trashed. On the other hand, short pieces
can often do things that you can't support in a longer game. For instance, you
could write a short game that was played backwards: you started off with max
score, dropped objects when you took them, got objects from people by giving
it to them, and had to "unbeat" the game before your turns hit zero. This
could work in a small game, even though it would get tiresome in a large game.
This is not to say that all small games should be novel, or that all small
games with a new format are good. But it is a pity that both Undertow and
Zebulon did stuff that wasn't mold-breaking, because both the authors showed
a potential for more than we saw.
>
>Ok, enough soap-boxing. Hopefully this will start some good threads on
>r.a.i-f.
> Stephen Granade sgranade@phy.duke.edu
---------------------------------------------------+ Dan Shiovitz /**/ scythe@u.washington.edu | "Thys ys a happi snakc. The Grim Reaper /**/ shiov@cs.washington.edu | Happi snakc ys fun to eat. -------------------------------------------------+ Uh-oh, yt's a ceiboard!" http://weber.u.washington.edu/~scythe/ | -------------------------------------------------+