Messages

*Helm burns his 'I organized a Mittens meeting and lived to tell the tale!' non-t-shirt.*

Nikolas, if this is what I think it is about, just threaten your wife with even more violence and you'll be ok, she'll never press charges. It's the greek way.

WHY WASN'T I INVITED?!

Encouraging user choice in what could and could not be wanting further investigation is a good idea. Not giving everything on plate is a good idea. Hints are nice, lists of keywords are not. Just my opinion.

Oh yeah definately put it in the readme or something, that x and l aren't the same. I've played a lot of IF that uses them as synonims, but they clearly aren't and a lot of games would benefit from the two layers of examinaton of an object, a casual and a more intentful one. if you want l and x to be the same, then at least give us 'inspect' or 'search' for more thorough looking around.

Example. Pressing the 'look at' icon on document pile or typing 'look at documents' wields something in the lines of 'the few memos on the top are pretty uninteresting, maybe however there's something more the abundant paperwork in this office'. If then the player types 'browse documents' or 'examine documents' he should get a more thorough description with some more important or relevant information, and maybe a hint about something being underneath the pile of paper. Then if the player types 'look under documents/papers/memos' (which there's no way to do with a point and click LEC style interface) he should perhaps find an item under the pile of paper.

Remember, 'look at' and 'examine' ( l, x ) are and SHOULD be considered different things by good IF. There's one thing to casually inspect something and another to be thorough about it.

interaction with an environment, even if it strictly to get information to the player is much more rewarding in parser games. Just clicking 'eye' on everything has an adverse psychological effect for the player. Getting him to think of the environ as a living thing to be explored, and not a collection of hotspots is a very good idea.

In that sense, although having right click as 'look at' like in Quest for Glory 1 and 2 is a wonderful idea which I endorse completely, be sure that a lot of vital information can be found out and accessed through creative exploration of the environment, not just 'looking at' everything, be it through clicks or parsing.

I suggest you get a livejournal or myspace page.

This is my preffered hybrid gui, personally. I'd definately love to play this more than a typical LEC-style point and clicker, as there's quite a bit more depth possible with parser-driven games.

Having made Gladiator Quest however, I can tell you you ARE going to lose some of your audience. People have grown too accustomed to pointless clickery.

Just make sure you implement shortcuts for the more repeated commands. l door should work as 'look door' and so on. Binding a few game-related repeated commands like QfG 1 and 2 also is a good idea. So if for example there's a lot of gunplay in your game, ctrl-g should parse 'take gun out of holster' automatically, and so on.

Hero Theorem just became 10 times more interesting, for me.

As important as I consider Fish, Marillion is also Stever Rothery and everybody else. I don't want to hear some other guitarist play the leads in Blind Curve or Kayleigh. Also, Fish is in another place, it's not honest to try to speak from the point of view of Misplaced. It's been 20 years.

A shame all-around

No... I guess Fish is back on board? I don't think I care for reunion tours.

As you are prepared to admit yourself, speed was hardly the issue. If someone inks blonde hair convincingly (with skillfull line variation of the outlines and such), and then does black hair convincingly, you'll find that the missing step of filling in the blank space with ink doesn't take much time at all. The saving of time between the two scenarios is close to nothing. Also, 'gray' hair as mentioned, would be achieved by the usage of raster tone, which takes up it's own time itself, even moreso if you consider how the majority of manga artists go in and rub out meticulously designed highlights in the tone with sharp and eraser.

Now, having blonde characters, as well as characters with extraordinary hairstyles for distinction issues does make sense, especially since a lot of manga artists draw basically the same face on all the pretty girls, especially in girl-orientated comics. That I can buy.

I like power metal and I think Theocracy are ridiculous.

Radiant: interesting choice by Marillion. I'd go with the whole of Misplaced Childhood, personally.

THE POWER GLOVE. IT'S SO BAD.

like she feels like she's being treated like a lesser being.

Don't say such things in the place of other people. If she DOES feel so, that's her own problem, nobody here has treated her like this.

I don't see how this would benefit from being in the Completed Games forum instead of here. I don't even see OS Squinky asking for this.

I thought it went without saying that my opinion is just that. Well, I guess I shouldn't take any chances. So here it is: everything I say is just my opinion (sometimes even less that that), I hold no faith that others agree with me or that it in fact has any relevance to actuality, reality, truth or what-have-you.

Sure. Some aren't as easily amused.

I was thinking about your 'sitting next to the woman on the ship' thing. If the game aknowledged that sort of role-playing, what you did would indeed be grounds on which to say the game is great. If the game perhaps, when you moved there and looked at the sea together, after a while subtly switched the music to aknowledge what you were trying to do, that'd be great. That would be extremely little scripting that DOES go a long way to make the experience so much more fuller.

But as it stands, you put that extra bit in on your own, completely, and it's a very nebulous argument to suggest that 'the game was so good that it called for me adding to it on my own'. You could add to a connect 4 match if you felt like it, as I said before.

Somebody mentioned before what ages these games are designed for. Yes, I think this is a key issue. These games seem designed for 10 year olds, the moral choices they usually present and the depth of character that is on display. Doesn't mean a 20 year old can't enjoy a game designed for 10 year olds, though. But if they do, they have to accept that the game will seem to treat them like idiots.

Truly great games, in my opinion ( like Quest for Glory 4 ) have humour and content for all ages. Stuff you'd get when you are 10, stuff you'd get when you're 20 and subtle bits of content you'll appreciate only after you've played the game 10 times.

Goldmund: in your scenario, a choice WAS made, the repercussions of this choice might be close to minute, scripting-wise. But a choice was made. A choice is not presented but fake. I am very aware that there is no 'freedom' in video games and it's quite an art-form to make a good illusion of freedom for the player. We as game designers are a bit more critical when we play these games than the average joe because usually we know how they're made and we're testing the limits. But still, a choice with minute represcussions, a choice with some reprecussions, a choice with game-reaching repercussions, these are all things to discuss on their own merits. FAKE choices don't and shouldn't exist in computer games.

Richard Longhurst and the box that ate time. Beard option. This isn't a fake choice. When you adjust it, more or less beard appears on the character. That's all this choice dones. But I laughed, it added to the game, it COULD have added more but that's a different discussion. I didn't click on +beard and have the game tell me "oh come on, you don't need more beard".

The thing is, a choice is the way we interact with a game. Even if the choice is limited, like in most linear adventure games, go solve this puzzle or that puzzle first, when the game spells it out: YOU HAVE TWO CHOICES, and then essentially robs you, that's not nice, it's like pissing on the interactivity principle. If that's how it is, why don't the game just do a huge cutscene from beginning to end and tell me what my character does and I'll see it later. Oh, wait

Mordalles, good work on flexing your impressive ironic muscle. You've made a great impression on your peers.

Besides, not dropping for all that time IS a big deal.