IF Comp 2007 – Pack Rat, Act of Murder, Slap

In the past I’d work hard at reviews. <shrug> This year, I do not feel so motivated, so here are a few quick reviews, dashed off. I tend to forget things about games if I don’t make notes, be all vague and all that, and I only made a few notes. For better reviews read others’. I also can’t seem able to do it this year without spoilers, so bear that in mind. I also haven’t arrived at my final scores for each, so these are without scores. 

SPOILERS FOLLOW

Pack Rat

The second game I played, and I rather liked it, but it is seriously flawed. The premise is cute, sort of the aftermath of a fairly tale. The PC is a pack rat, but really a petty thief and he has found a castle, like Sleeping Beauty’s castle, where everyone inside is under a spell and has been sleeping for a long time. A good opportunity for a little thieving, er, pack ratting, right?

Alas and alack the idea has occurred to others as well and the castle is already picked pretty clean. I enjoyed the premise, and the prose that is lightly tongue-in-cheek, and the dashes of humor.  “That was too easy.” “You are sorry to see it go. Genuine teak.” Also the PC has chances now and then to be noble, and he isn’t totally sure how he feels about that. Heh.

But many of the puzzles border on the too hard. I was actually figuring them out and wouldn’t have complained about that, because there are ALMOST enough clue lead ins in the prose, except for the poor implementation. Doors that seem important aren’t actually there, “x door” — “you can’t see any such thing.” And some of the puzzles DON’T have enough lead in. For instance, SPOILER ON, just exactly where to get out of the chest once it is in the water — also get out of chest doesn’t work while get on landing does. And I had to ask someone what to do with the chest in the first place, because the moat does not include a description that even MENTIONS water. Big slip up there. I wasn’t positive there was any. SPOILER OFF.

The game crashed on me, yup, literally crashed, when I was trying to solve the puzzle involving the lantern. Crashed with illegal op codes. I was on the right track, but the command sequence seemed to have to be rather exact, so I finally took a look at the walkthru. When I tried to follow it from where I was, the game crashed. The sequence wasn’t exactly the way it was in the walkthru and puzzles should be able to be worked out of sequence. Looking at the walkthru, though, it seems I made it about half way through the game.

But I have to mark it down seriously for crashing.

This could have been a pretty good game, more entertaining than some and the puzzles wouldn’t have been too hard with a tiny bit more lead in here and there, and a nice premise. But I have the feeling the author is not a programmer, or they haven’t used I6 before using I7, or something. This game needed serious play testing before being released to catch the things not implemented, the missing lead ins, and the possibility of crashing.

With a lot more programming and a little more puzzle hinting in the prose, this could be a pretty decent game.

Act of Murder

I debated holding off my review of this until a second-replay. I suspect this will place in the top three (hard to say  yet when I have played so few so far).

This was the first game I played, either unfortunately, or fortunately (because it is good). I liked it right of the bat, very Infocom-esque and it even has an Inspector Duffy. I loved Witness and Deadline (Infocom), they were the first Infocom games I ever played and I always hoped for more Infocom mysteries, and the only one that later came down the pike was Suspect (which I remember getting really excited about at the time).

Although it in some ways it’s not quite Infocom-esque, as it is a lot easier, not as involved or complicated as their games were. But there is a level of complexity that is pretty pleasing for a game that is supposed to be played in two hours and not over the course of a week or two or three.  Also it lacked that Infocom type of humor, college boy gee-whiz comments (although I did find one). But it comes very close — I really loved the Infocom flavor and that is all there is to it.

Except I ran into two problems, therefore, in the end, I will probably not give it a ten. They weren’t programming problems, I found everything implemented, and I found no real bugs (I did see one double a in one sentence, that was about it for the author missing things. This, I believe, WAS well beta-tested and it shows). The writing is brief, also like Infocom (they had memory limits) but just descriptive enough. The characters are pretty well drawn. No, my problems were not that it lacked good game qualities, my problems were in solving it.

The major puzzle involves numbers and math is my downfall. SPOILER ON. I am just not good at that kind of thing, not good at word math problems. I couldn’t even conceptualize how to put the problem and had to ask someone. I was aware that Duffy could be called in to do the math, but I wanted to solve “who done it” before I called in Duffy, and I couldn’t. There should have been a hint, either in the hint menu, or in the prose on how to even solve that problem. I didn’t see one. I had no idea what measuring the post, the water level, and looking at the tide table would do for me. I didn’t know what to do with the information once I had it. SPOILER OFF.

The second problem, for me, is I didn’t have a good idea when I was done. I can see leaving out a score, but on the other hand, I didn’t know when I had enough clues to call in Duffy. So I sort of flopped around for a while looking for other things, unsure if I was finished. There should really be some way to let the player know, yup, you have enough to call Duffy. Maybe just something in the text that says, “You feel you have enough now to call Duffy if you can figure out who did it.”

I would also suggest the directions in the menu be a little clearer exactly what Duffy will do once he is called in. Because it seemed he put together some of the clues in ways I had not anticipated. I was trying to have it all pinned down first, and I didn’t really need to in every case. In the end, I picked the wrong person. I simply overlooked the significance of one particular clue. And I was tired, I think if I hadn’t been so tired, I might have gotten it. But being disappointed that I didn’t solve it means that I felt challenged, and I like being challenged, so I am very intrigued about replaying this game and seeing if I can solve it next time. That is another neat thing about it, it has more than one murder scenario, a different murderer for each one, and it can be replayed (I am not sure how many there are). Unfortunately, naturally it will easier on replay as I will already be familiar with the characters, game map, clues, and props. (It seems just the murder weapon and murderer differ each time. Although the props are  used differently each time to support different motives. I will have to replay to see, really.)

In the end, this game will probably stand out in my memory for some time, contrasted to lots of other IF games that I have forgotten over the years, simply because I enjoyed playing it more than tons of other IF games that I have played. It is well programmed, well enough written, and well thought out — and I feel it could be even better with just a little brushing up.

This probably comes as close as we will ever get to having another Infocom mystery, so play and enjoy.  

Slap That Fish

That’s what this game is, slapping fish. You can just read the title and be done with it. A totally silly game with no point. I was mildly amused the first two turns, but I am not a violent woman and beating up two fish was about my limit. I was told it varies a little more later, but my impression is that it is highly repetitive.

It’s not badly implemented or written, although all the descriptions are very brief — it’s just that one joke games get old, quick. This did and it will get a correspondingly jokingly low score from me.

More to come… 

IF Comp 2007

Just a short hi, after a long absence.

Been ill, nothing too serious as it turns out, but it means I was either very worried and/or very tired for about six weeks, a month and a half. This brought my work to the Quick Tour to a halt, which was annoying because I was close to finishing. Eric has been patient. Hopefully I can finish it up in the next two to three weeks and it will be out there for you guys to use. I think Eric has already released some of the demo games he developed for the Quick Tour (at my strong urging, want credit here, heh), so that should have helped.

I started playing the comp games, and luckily hit on a good one for my first one. Think the last time I really played the comp games was 2002. Although I may have played the top winners in a few of the following comps, frankly, I forget. I used to try every year to play MOST of the comp games and do reviews of MOST. Seems unbelievable now that I did that. This year I am aiming for only say eight to ten reviews.

I’d post them here except I haven’t written them yet, heh, and I never do my final scores until I have finished all the games I am going to play. Yes, sometimes I like to adjust one or two up or down slightly in light of the context of the whole comp, to where I thought they should come out.

So far I’ve played one almost very good game, a mystery, (it will probably win or come in the top three), one sort of medieval one that was promising and had some good humor but serious implementation problems and ended up crashing on me (though it did not crash on everyone), one short and totally silly one with repetitious actions, and one that was very well-done historical one but not that exciting and it had too many numbers in it. So deduce from that what you will.

I was going to go on how this comp may show I7 to be either a boon or bane, but, frankly, I haven’t played enough yet to make any judgments on that. And maybe no conclusions can be drawn, because there have been both well-written and poorly implemented games before.

 Watch this space, the Quick Tour will emerge in all its finalized glory someday. Heh.

Quick Tour – First Peek

(Note this article has been changed from first post.) 

Yes, you may now take a peek at the Quick Tour. It is about 3/4 done. In other words, the NPC stuff isn’t there yet, plus it needs some editing. The way Eric and I have done this is that he has sent me summaries of the classes, I have put them into HTML with revisions (my revisions to clarify them in my own mind), also asking him questions to clarify some things. Then when I am done he edits the page. We are now on second pass editing — redrafts being edited. I wrote the Using TADS 3 and The TADS 3 Language and Verbs & Action pages myself, but they have errors and I haven’t done Eric’s edits on those pages yet. There also need to be edits done on most of the other pages — second pass edits.

(When I say errors, I mean factual errors, so beware. I am often writing things incorrectly, because I am a T3 newbie and get things wrong. That is part of why this is working, when I don’t understand something Eric can explain it to me. I figure anything I don’t “get” as a T3 newbie maybe someone else won’t “get.” So clarifying those areas, trying to put them into clear and complete enough language, though briefly, will help others as well.)

I am also going to rewrite the first page, right now it’s a tad too complicated. Okay, version 1.05 does not yet incorporate Eric’s edits for the How to Use and Verbs & Actions pages, so THEY HAVE ERRORS. When you see version 1.06, then How to and Verb errors will have been corrected. Version 1.07 will be when all second pass edits are done. Version 1.08 will likely be when the first page is rewritten, and 1.09 on will be when new things have been added. That the version numbering that I see occurring, roughly.

But, if you’ve bookmarked this blog, or are paying attention, you can take a peek at the TADS 3 Quick Tour now. I won’t be announcing this anywhere else.

Here is what I am wondering.

Do you think this would help you learn TADS 3? (Well, if you know it already do you think it would help someone learn TADS 3?)

And, if you are interested, some actual editing would be nice, such as finding typos, misspellings, and awkward sentences.

Also, if a T3 newbie, where mentally do you get lost? Page by page, where do you get lost? I’d like to target any unclear areas and clarify them.

Bear in mind what I said about errors, edits, and plans to rewrite the first page.

For the first two questions you can answer here.

For any edits, more discussion, and any points that you still find unclear (where you get lost), please email me.

I am very uncomfortable, right now anyway, with posting my email address here. However, go to the IF Art Show Gallery and email the curator. That will do it. 

The quick tour is at:

http://members.aol.com/doepage2/QTour/

I should also say that the map is not progressively colored in yet, that some larger map graphics are going to be replaced, and at least one is going to be added.

T3 Quick Tour – Progress

We’ve renamed the Game Writer’s Digest to Quick Tour, because that is exactly what it is. So far it is about 1/2 done. It will be a quick overview of the library (mainly, a little on TADS 3 as a language, etc., too). So that one can get a sense of what is in the library before one plows into other material to read-more-about-it. Actually one may get more than a sense of what is in the library, we are making it fairly complete — summary of classes. I foresee it may run to 12-15 pages. But with lots of graphics. I think this will really help people learn TADS 3.

Wish I could finish it sooner, but I have other things to do in my life, surprisingly. This is definitely a joint venture between Eric and I. He sends me class summaries and I plug them into web pages, editing and adding if I think they are unclear. Or unclear to me anyway. Which also necessitates various explanations by Eric to me, since I am still learning T3. Actually I may be still learning T3 for a long time, it is a huge library.

When more is done I will let people know for a preview. Watch this space.

T3: Game Writer’s Digest

Well, gang, it’s a go. I drafted some preliminary web pages, showed them to Eric Eve, using some of the draft material he sent me, and we have agreed to go forward. Lots and lots of details and mutual editing to work out. Be nice if it got up there right away, but it’s going to take time to make sure things are concise and clear.

Basically this will be a visual dummies guide to the T3 library (well, a little higher level than that, but not a great deal higher.) Something that can be read quickly, but will still cover most of the library in a very logical way. Sort of a prequel to other T3 material.

I foresee it not only being a T3 learning tool, but also a way for more experienced T3ers to remind themselves of just what is in the library. Decide which class/object they may want to use for a particular item in a particular game.

Eric and I think a lot a like about a lot of things, which is going to make this work. I am providing the context and putting HTML stuff together, Eric is providing the technical expertise and better writing J. A lot of clarification of the T3 library, in various ways, may grow out of this. Anyway, we seem to bounce ideas off each other well and it is proceeding forward.

Once there is a draft that both he and I are happy with, I may share the link here. Share it here long before it is officially released. Because the initial pages will only be part of the library — it is going to get added onto as it goes and grows. But early feedback might be helpful and telling.

Not totally decided on this yet, but watch this space. Rather excited about this project. From b.. complaining and all that, I’ve gone to helping. I think people will really like it. And, yes, Virginia, I think it will help a lot of people learn T3 easier and quicker. 

T3: TMI & In the Dumps

TOO MUCH INFORMATION.

In the T3 dumps, and people assume it’s because the library is large and complex. Well, that is part of it, but mainly it is because there is too much information. I’d like just a brief overview of what is even IN the library, classes/subclasses and their basic properties, methods, strings/message setups, and actions that can be performed on them. All with short explanations. Something really brief. Something that gets me an overview what is even THERE that I might want to use in coding.

The Tour Guide goes into great detail, which, sure, is useable for looking things up later — it makes a great how-to-do-it-look-up-reference. A map gives a rough overview, the Reference Manual is useable for looking things up, but really ONLY ONCE YOU KNOW those particular things are there to be looked up in the first place (it also has no real organization of grouping like classes like the Tour Guide does, which is nice). But nothing but nothing gives a brief overview. This really, really raises the learning curve and I find it a major oversight. I also find it extremely frustrating.

It also means that learning T3 is much, much tougher than it really needs to be.

Yeah, I was going to do one. I was going to call it “Game Writer’s Digest to the T3 Library.” Only, to be truthful right now it would take me too long, because I’d have to dig out the relevant material from too many sources:  the Tour Guide, the Reference Manual (because it doesn’t show templates and the Guide does so it’s not that easy to correlate the two), the Templates Quick Reference and so on. Also because I don’t know T3 that well yet. Although I feel I could do it. I feel I could even start a section now, the first section with the easier rooms and connectors, following the basic organization of the Tour Guide (Eric and I had discussed this). But I simply do not have the time right now. There are other things, real-life things, that I really need to be doing.

So the thing I mentioned before to cut down on the learning curve is not going to happen. At least not now, maybe later. Sorry. I wish I had more time. I really do. Or maybe SOMEONE ELSE will do it. Because it needs truly to be done. It truly does. 

T3 – A Shortcut to Learning the Library

I am working on a shortcut method to learn what is in the T3 library, with Eric Eve’s help. We have been in communication. It will be a sort of tutorial, sort of not tutorial. Since I am still reading all the T3 documents this may seem premature, but I have an idea that may lower people’s learning curve (including mine). I will be drawing from several T3 resources, and I am not sure how long it will take me. However, when it is finalized I will share it. Note that this would not be possible without Eric’s help.

So I will be silent on T3 for a while while I tackle this.

More to come…

More I7 Resources

 The I7 Manual — An Unofficial Index

I believe in cutting down on learning curves, either with visual aids and/or short cut ways of seeing more complex things — seeing them in a simpler way. For more detail, one must go to something else, but sometimes one just needs to get an overall picture, or have material shuffled in another way to make it more accessible. In light of this approach I offer this…

I was pointed to this by Lucian P. Smith, the I7 Manual — An Official Index.

http://nothings.org/misc/i7index.html

It seems to be out of date, not sure, but it seems to be. But at the top is a downloadable zip that has the program that built the index. I have double-checked and the latest version manual includes a manifest.txt, needed to create a new index. So you can probably create a newer one yourself.

http://www.inform-fiction.org/I7/Download%20-%20Documents.html

Inform 7 for the Fiction Author – Emily Short

Emily Short’s article on things to consider when writing a game. This is intended for the fiction writer new to game design, but is reportedly a very good read for more experienced game designers as well.

http://emshort.wordpress.com/2007/06/11/inform-7-for-the-fiction-author/

Revisiting I7 (& T3) – An Unfair Comparison

I had a nice long post, then accidentally deleted it before saving it, so this will not be as good as the original.

I’ve decided to give up on I7. Oh, yeah, you say. “I thought you decided to give up on T3?” Well, <blush>, yes. I’ve been back and forth, up and down, and all over the town. The thing is, for me, both have a steep learning curve, and before I actually set out to learn rather than just read, I want to be sure which to tackle. Learning will mean actual coding and that takes time. Sometimes a LOT of time.

A WIP I am dusting off and working on requires complex scoping. Scoping meaning having objects in scope for the player character. What I want is an area, several rooms, where the player can see and hear things going on all over the area, but not take, touch, and smell them. Let’s just say for the purposes of this story I need that area to be several rooms, not one.

My WIP is originally written in I6, which I could proceed forward with, or not. Since I don’t have much written yet I could also rewrite it in T2. Or I could rewrite it in I7 or T3. This is partly why I have been bouncing all over the place, whatever will scope the best for me will probably be what I go with. So it’s all open, it could be either old or new Inform or TADs. OTOH, both T3 and I7, for me, have steep learning curves. So stay with the old, or go with the new? I know difficult scoping in I6 is hard and hacky (I know I6 pretty darn well). Not sure about T2, it may not be a lot better (I only know the basics of T2). Or maybe I this is an opportunity to pursue a newer system.

Going with that idea I asked both Emily and Eric how I would code this in I7 and T3 respectively.

It turns out that there is a complex scoping example similar to what I want already in the I7 manual. Emily pointed me to it, Stately Gardens:

http://www.inform-fiction.org/I7/ex245.html#e245

Now, I know I did not prepare myself by reading the manual up to that point, and I know I barely know I7, but when I saw that my brain said quite clearly… 

{  give(me, clean simple code) = that I can read
        + please, please, please!!! } and a lot SHORTER than I7 too;

Because I like my brain (I’d have a hard time getting along without it), I stopped and listened. Okay, brain, I7 is out.

But, let’s face it, I7 was not designed for programmers. That was not its intent – it was designed for non-programmers.  I really admire, and I mean really, that Graham, with Emily’s help, have designed a system that non-programmers can use.  This was something people had asked (and begged) for in raif for years. Writers would eagerly come and discouragedly go, wanting to write games but being unable to code. However, practically everyone thought it could-not-be-done.

It is a master stroke that Graham has apparently accomplished the impossible.

So for non-programmers (and programmers alike)  I7 is brief and easy for the easy stuff, for the short stuff, like laying out a game map, room descriptions, and bare-boned NPCs. If I have sounded bitter (actually I know I have sounded bitter, or disappointed anyway), I must admit that it has stemmed from envy. The idea of laying out a game map with the basics, of fleshing out a game so quickly and easily, appeals greatly. But because of my dyslexia, writing the more complex and longer sentences would be very difficult, as I tend to get phrases in the wrong places. Or get them in places the I7 compiler does not like. Also because words can overwhelm me, I cannot always see the logic underlying them. So I have had to be in the envious corner.

But, still, is it really brief and easy? I7 sentences are really macros that invoke more complex coding under the surface, in the VM. So by forcing programming into a NL interface it makes it so that complicated things in I7 just about have to be wordy. Because in simple declarative English it takes a lot of sentences to say complicated things. Without real conjunctive phrases, abbreviations, and programming conventions like brackets, punctuation, and other things, there is really no way to be brief in such English for complicated things.

Recently, answering Dave C.’s poll on raif, someone said that unfortunately I7 reminded them of unpleasant COBOL, and I knew exactly what he meant. (I had to learn COBOL way back when in college for a CS major.) Wordy, wordy  – COBOL takes a lot of words to say something simple, because everything but everything must be spelled out exactly. It gets very tedious. It gets tedious quickly.

Here is Eric’s response:

DistanceConnector [room1, room2, room3, room4, room5, room6];

It may need a little tweaking, but that is essentially it. Brief, brief, brief. It is with type of thing, frankly, that programming has it all over English and always will. Now, of course, this probably won’t work for non-programmers, not when they have to understand even more code, essentially understand programming, to be able to understand that statement. So it’s not really fair to compare I7 to T3, the design intents are quite different. But for programmers, what a relief!

So, for me, I7 is now out. T3 is back in. Now we shall see about that steep learning curve and if there is any way to lower it down a bit.

I7, on the other hand, has done something radical, something new – it has busted open the rather exclusive IF world composed of programmers and writer/programmers to a larger group, that of just writers. This is exciting as well as challenging. Whether it will work, that non-programming writers can learn to write IF and learn to love writing IF, I think has yet to be proven. But based on the last yearly comp it already seems to be happening.

Hats off to Graham and Emily! It’s a brave new world.

P.S. I will eventually be reading all of the I7 manual and making more comments in the future. I still think the manual would benefit from some diagrams explaining the syntax logic, like it is explained in the BNF, but simpler so a normal person can read it,  and with keyword highlighting.

Learning T3, Pt. 3 – The Library

I said nothing about T3 for a few weeks. Well, I was wrong. I’ve decided to stick to I6 for a current game, because I know how to do some tricky things in I6. But T3 is actually great.

Unfortunately, this may be hard to see because of all the manuals, not having a good, simple tutorial, and such a massive library. I am about 1/4th of the way through the Tour Guide (which I cannot seriously recommend, but if you want to learn T3 it is just about required. More on that later.)

However, T3 has a logic and beauty that programmers, and probably only mainly programmers, will appreciate. The design philosophy though is a tad debatable. Whereas T2 had basically only two library include files, but was extremely customizable by the game writer, T3 has numerous library include files (I have not counted them yet). It is also quite customizable by the game writer. But the overall philosophy is quite different. The parser itself is included in the library (so it can be customizable as well).

The philosophy change, however, goes even deeper than that. Everything but everything (including the kitchen sink) is in the library. The attitude seems to be why make the game writer reinvent the wheel? Let’s do the wheel for him/her. And templates are used which really cut down on coding. In fact, with templates, a T3 game could take as little time to write as an I7 game.  

The problem is, and it IS a problem, sorry, (I am getting negative feedback on the if-mud about carping, but I don’t like being censored), is for the game writer to KNOW something is already in the library. That something in the library already, there for use, maybe straight out of the box, maybe with only a little customizing. So the game writer is in danger, not a serious danger , but in danger of creating their own code to duplicate something that already exists.

I can’t speak as to structures yet, what T3 can and cannot do that way, but I think it can do just about anything any game writer would ever want. And I am not sure I will continue learning it – the learning curve is quite steep. But I suspect I will read all the manuals. I suspect I will read all of the I7 manual, as well. I cannot decide between the two systems right now and want to get a better feel for both.

However, I can say that T3 is probably worth the effort that went into it, singly and jointly. Now if someone would just write a good, simple beginner’s manual…

more people would be willing to tackle it.

Doe’s Course of Study to Learn T3 to come later.