Messages

Snail Quest. And Larry Vales. And META.

Why wouldn't you list all of them on the RFC? It's like easter eggs, and people will flock to your site trying to read all error messages!

Anyway I'd go for 400, 301, 503, and possibly 509. And 200

> Put everything except the green key in the linen bag
Ok.
> Give it to the squirrel
Which squirrel do you mean, the tall squirrel or the fat squirrel?
> Tall
Ok.
> Tall squirrel, go east then north then throw the bag into the volcano
Ok.


Don't bash parsers until you've played the good parsers.

It's not like oh... there were ever games like A Mind Forever Voyaging, or Gateway 2 or Trinity that were worthwhile before Yahtzee took a stab at the genre.

Enchanter trilogy, Spellcasting 101, and of course HHGTG!
That said, I must say I seriously don't get Trinity. After playing through it (and I admit to resorting to a walkthrough for some of the more obtuse puzzles) it didn't evoke any reaction from me other than a puzzled 'huh?'

The only issue I have with text adventures is that it's rather easy to get lost, for someone like me with a rather poor sense of direction

Well, buy a sheet of graph paper and draw a map! In nearly all situations in most games the orientation of rooms makes a lot of reasonable sense (excluding the occasional maze, of course, but you're supposed to get lost in those).

Well, you could just learn Allegro, DirectX or OpenGL; it's not that hard if you know how to code.

Ok, so there's four of us arriving in Alicante the afternoon of the 16th. We should probably meet up somewhere and bring large blue cups with us to recognize one another? Does anyone know Alicante airport and know of a convenient spot to gather in?

I don't think it's particularly problematic if you quote people from a public forum in an analysis of said forum; this is covered under the "fair use" clause of copyright law. Similarly, we quote one another on these forums without having to ask permission for that.

That said, asking us here is definitely the nice thing to do; and you should (of course) make it clear who you're quoting, and not copy/paste lengthy essays that people occasionally post on forums.

Imho, both are nice but it really depends on the implementation. A point-n-click is probably more userfriendly, but annoying if it lacks keyboard support or has a lot of pixelhunting. A typing system is generally more versatile, but annoying if the parser is poor.

I'm so worried about what's hapenin' today, in the middle east, you know
And I'm worried about the baggage retrieval system they've got at Heathrow
I'm so worried about the fashions today, I don't think they're good for your feet
And I'm so worried about the shows on TV that sometimes they want to repeat

Which goes to show that we haven't seen anything original on TV since the days Shakespeare lived.

We probably need a FAQ page for questions like this.

If you have an idea but no useful skills in game making (e.g. drawing, music making, coding, whatever, but just writing a plot outline doesn't count because everybody has their own ideas) it's exceedingly unlikely that anyone will want you on their team.

However, on these forums, if you're a decent artist (with an idea) you can probably find a musician to help you for that part, and so on.

The original Dune game was lame? What?!

Yeah, I probably agree with that. Note that the Dune most people know (the one that made the Real Time Strategy genre famous) is actually called Dune II. The game called Dune is pretty darn obscure (and not an RTS).

I'd recommend either contacting the owner of the copyright or just stay away from using someone else's setting. I don't think contacting the copyright owner would actually be that difficult - just get their address and mail them a letter. If you explain what you're trying to do, I think most times they'd be OK with it (just hang on to their response letter!).

Depends. If said owner is an individual, by all means talk to them (I actually managed to get permission from Richard Pini a long time ago, w00t!). If said owner is a corporation, don't even bother asking because they won't understand your point of view (for instance, the Garfield game was shot down when he kindly asked permission).

Yes, indeed i know about the Doom Roguelike, i even downloaded it, but the damn thing needs 800x600 graphics and my monitor doesn't support it. but that's another story.

Huh? I'm pretty sure it runs in textmode, like most roguelikes.

about fan-made remakes and sequels, what if i changed the name (from "Dune" to "Sands of Arrakis")

I doubt that Virgin (or was it Interplay) would do anything about it, considering that their license likely expired and/or didn't cover platform shooters. However, the one that might object (or might not) is Frank Herbert himself. It depends really if the rights to his books are held by an individual or a corporation.

It's always nice for designers to have graphics available. Maybe you should put them on the Instagame site or some other resource site.

[can't]

no, I'm saying that you can't keep the name, but you can keep the ideas.

But be careful with statements like that. While it's true that nobody can blame you for using an idea (fighting in hell, pirates, a wizard school, whatever), it is a violation of copyright if you follow another's plot or setting too closely. It is a common misconception to think that you can evade copyright law by taking an existing story and simply changing the names around. That won't do.

But then, if you go freeware it's quite possible to end up not noticed by a corporation's lawyers (for instance, there's a Doom clone using Rogue mechanics).

And I stand by my opinion about them, graphically adventure games weren't so much superior or realistic than other genres.

Well, good, but nowadays they still aren't graphically superior to other genres. Nor, indeed, more realistic. And what I object to was your earlier statement that (in the adventure game age) non-adventure games had bad graphics and boring gameplay.

A larry 1 world or a Maniac Mansion world were more wholesome or relistic world than a supposed vehicle digging in sand to colect gems or a circle eating smaller circles

Bad comparison; you're pitting real-world adventure games (unlike, say, Gobliins, or Future Wars) against non-adventures that are abstract and not focused on story. A better comparison would be e.g. Elite, or Sim City. Or possibly Alter Ego. Apples and oranges, you know.

And those people mostly are people our age who remember their childhood days with these games and try to relive those days. Today's kids mostly aren't drawn to old roms or old adventure games.

While most of today's kids aren't drawn to adventure games, neither were most kids ten or twenty years ago. It's not that the adventure game has less support than it used to, it's that far more people in general are into gaming, and this has skewed the distribution a lot.

Even before that. Computer RPGs existed since the early 80s. But they never drew a big crowd because they had bery poor gameplay.

Please do get your facts straight. Bard's Tale (1985) was a bestseller. So was the SSI series starting in 1988. Might & Magic ('87), Wizardry ('81) and Ultima ('81) are famous and spawned a hoard of ports and sequels. Even Rogue stems from 1980 and is a classic in gameplay.

Besides you missed my point ENTIRELY. I didn't say those were NEW STYLES.

It would be easier to get the overall idea if your point didn't include such obvious fallacies as "In the golden age of adventure games, other genres were pretty bad" and "other genres were ... reptitive".

Similarly, it's not true that the adventure element can be continued in 2 ways in modern commercial games in a way that will still appeal to huge crowds. If you look at sales figures, huge crowds are drawn to such games as The Sims, Sports games, battle-oriented MMORPGs and Star Wars spinoffs.

Apart from the zillions of dead ends -- Eagermind mentioned a nonsensical puzzle where you must use a piece of cheese to get machinery to work, and KQV has the exact same puzzle.

And it includes other things that don't make a whole lot of sense, such as that the cat can only be chased off with an old shoe, dropping gems at random in the forest, using the crystal on the guardian statue, giving the amulet to the servant girl, and waiting five minutes in the library.

My point is that nonsensical puzzles are as old as the genre, and did not contribute to its alleged demise.

The first adventure game about the so called Son of God. PRE-ORDER IT NOW...

Nah, I already know how the story ends.

But, if people do have to look up the solution, I'd prefer the reaction to be "Oh yeah, that makes sense. Why didn't I figure that out?" instead of "WTF? What were they thinking?" The first reaction will probably keep people involved with the game, maybe evening learning something to help with other puzzles. The second reaction will probably be followed by "This is stupid, I'm not wasting my time with this." It makes all the difference.

Three words: King's Quest V.

Rap, probably.