From user@msn.com Mon Dec  1 10:06:03 MET 1997
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I remeber David Ahl's "101 Computer Games" and a similar sized book on how
to disassemble and make sense of 6502 code on the Apple ][ and the many
happy midnight hours which I spent cracking the Infocom interpreter, and the
code for the early Sierra graphic adventures.

Way back when British Telecom was Post Office Telephones (UK), and on-line
access was via Teletype machines and a 200bps modem, we had access to an
extended version of StarTrek which had far greater dimensions and in which
the Romulans and Klingons etc had some kind of AI so you had to forecast
their movements. There was also a very large adventure game which I forget
the name of which was completely different from Colossal Cave [Adventure] or
Zork and their variants. These games were available on either a B5500 or on
an IBM mainframe of the same era (I can't remember which). This era being
somewhere between 1972 and 1976, prior to the availability of commercial
Small Business Computers with the Z80 chip.

Sadly, these games and the sources have disappeared, and are not available
in any archive that I know of.

John Tempest (UK)

Brock Kevin Nambo wrote in message ...
>Magnus Olsson wrote in message <64c2a4$r6t$1@bartlet.df.lth.se>...
>>The source code for a BASIC version of "Star Trek" was published in
>>David Ahl's classic "101 Basic Computer Games", or possibly in the
>>sequel "More Basic Computer Games".
>
>I have the book (It's "Basic Computer Games") and it has the program "Super
>Star Trek."  (This program was so mander long that I gave up and didn't
even
>notice everything that came AFTER it in the book at the time; duh me)
>
>>>BKNambo
>--
>Visit my homepage, [now under major reconstruction,] come.to/brocks.place
>World Domination Through Trivia!
>Divide  in half-- that's you! badger@innocent.com
>
>
>
>




From dwildstr@athena.mit.edu Mon Dec  8 12:19:00 MET 1997
Article: 28128 of rec.games.int-fiction
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From: dwildstr@athena.mit.edu (David J Wildstrom)
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Container wierdnesses in Zork 2 (probably no spoilers)
Date: 3 Dec 1997 15:20:50 GMT
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OK.... some wierd things about Zork 2 here:

1) In all releases, the steel box fits inside the wooden chest, but _ONLY
   when it itself is empty. Strangely, even if it is closed with objects in
   it it does not fit, so it's not an "overflowing the top" sort of physical
   limitation. As an additional wierdness, if the steel box is already in the
   chest, you can put other items into it then, but not before you put it in.

2) In Rel. 7, the Zork 1 embedded container bug is replicated, in part. You
   need to get the box (or chest) and put the ruby stand in the box (using the
   "read the stand" bug), then sapphire on ruby, diamond on sapphire, teapot
   full of water on diamond (the stands can be in any order, of course), and
   before "quantity of water" it should print out garbage before the inventory.
   Trying to nest further with the steel box inside the chest doesn't work,
   since the program obstinately refuses to recognize the existence of items
   inside the box inside the chest, so you can't put anything "on" them.

+--First Church of Briantology--Order of the Holy Quaternion--+
| A mathematician is a device for turning coffee into         |
| theorems.              -Paul Erdos                          |
+-------------------------------------------------------------+
|                       David Wildstrom                       |
+-------------------------------------------------------------+


From sbernard@earthling.net Sat Dec 13 16:35:27 MET 1997
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From: Steve Bernard <sbernard@earthling.net>
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: I just noticed...[Trinity Spoiler!]
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Uh, this is kind of a pointless post, but anyway... just so I don't get
yelled at on my first post from a real ISP...

d
o
w
n

h
e
r
e
|
|
|
|





I was just playing Trinity the other day and thinking about some
interview I'd read with Brian Moriarty.  In this interview, he was
talking about the Book of Hours and how it represented history and how
you, as Wabewalker are writing the history as you play (that's why your
commands show up in it)...

So anywho, when I got all the parts of the potion together and put them
in the cauldron, I had to leave the cottage to avoid the explosion that
makes the emerald.  When I went back in, I noticed that the book gets
burned to ashes in there.  So therefore, since you need the emerald to
win, you have to destroy history itself before you can proceed onto the
Trinity Site with any hope of stopping the test.

I like that...
            -Steve Bernard Jr.

P.S. Told you it was pointless

P.P.S. Note the lack of Dejanews.  Woo Hoo!


--
It began with a certain disgust, and it ended-
Since we could not immediately seize upon eternity-
It ended in a scattering of perfumes.
 -Arthur Rimbaud




From erkyrath@netcom.com Mon Dec 15 11:12:09 MET 1997
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From: erkyrath@netcom.com (Andrew Plotkin)
Subject: Re: SPAG #12 is out
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> In article <Pine.HPP.3.93.971214162954.11452A-100000@merle.acns.nwu.edu>,
> Second April <dns361@merle.acns.nwu.edu> wrote:
> > 
> > About a certain review I wrote--Cody Sandifer, author of "Everybody Loves
> > a Parade," is NOT female, lest I perpetuate the illusion. (Why'd I think
> > that? I dunno, but I coulda sworn I've read something on the newsgroups
> > referring to Cody as a woman.)

Actually, when I read the review, at first I thought that was deliberate. 
Heh.

cody sandifer (sandifer@crmse.sdsu.edu) wrote:
>
> Maybe it was that "high heels do wonders for my back" comment 2-3 weeks 
> ago. 

La la la.

--Z

-- 

"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the
borogoves..."


From gkw@pobox.com Mon Dec 15 16:43:35 MET 1997
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From: gkw@pobox.com (Gerry Kevin Wilson)
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Subject: Re: New Free IF Mag on WWW
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In article <01bd08e9$c9051e80$f74698c2@default>
"Jeremy A.Smith" <jeremyasmith@lwtcdz.prestel.co.uk> wrote:

>> In the ZTUU interview, we don't just talk to people about the game, we
>> talk to *the* people about the game: Marc Blank, Mike Berlyn, Dave
>> Lebling (all ex-Infocom) and Laird Malamed, again of Activision.
> 
> The ex-Infocom stuff I liked. That was cool. Not enough credit to Gerry
> Kerry 'Whizzard'  Wilson (er, hope I got that right!!), [close enough :)]
> though. I thought it was a bit smug referring to him as "The
> Programmer" all the time, like the bloke that sweeps the stage after
> a play. But that wasn't your fault.

Bahahaha.  I'm reminded of the sweeper woman from the Carol Burnett
show by this remark. :)  And hey, Laird gave me a very kind mention, as
well as making sure my name got in the credits for the game.  I didn't
work with 'the writers' in any real depth, just an email or two of questions
that I needed answered, so there's no real reason for them to have any
comments on my job.  And hey, I got to be the first professional Inform
programmer, even if I did have to learn the language for the occasion.
(I ported Underoos over to Inform to do so, and someday I might even debug
it.)

Apart from some hair tearing over two or three bugs ('drop three bar'  AIEEE)
it was a very positive experience, and it looks very nice on my resume.
(I put 'Head Programmer' as the job title. <wink>)  And in case I haven't
thanked Graham for his help with those bugs that couldn't be debugged
lately, let me take this opportunity to do so.  Graham was a great help ironing
out the last few things that would've required taking the library apart with
my teeth in order for me to fix.

G. Kevin Wilson: Freelance Writer and Game Designer.  Resumes on demand.



From jcmason@undergrad.math.uwaterloo.ca Wed Jan  7 10:10:55 MET 1998
Article: 28807 of rec.games.int-fiction
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From: jcmason@undergrad.math.uwaterloo.ca (Joe Mason)
Subject: Re: COMP 97: My reviews, part 5 -- LONG!
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>SHE'S GOT A THING FOR A SPRING by Brent VanFossen
>
>She's Got a Thing For a Spring (hereafter called "Spring") is one of the
>most delightful and well-written games I've played in a long, long time.
>Its author is one of the few professional writers who has created
>interactive fiction, and his expertise shines throughout the game. Spring

I agree fully!  This is one of the few games that have literally absorbed me
and not let me turn away - notable others being "A Change in the Weather",
"So Far", "Delusions" and "The Edifice"  (You may be interested to note that
there are no original Infocom's in there.  Not yet, anyway.)

>is set in a mountain wilderness with no magic spells, no high-tech
>devices, in fact no fantastical elements of any kind. Yet this game
>imparts a sense of wonder that is matched by only the very best
>interactive fiction. I found some of the scenes absolutely breathtaking in

In this respect, I'd have to compare it to "A Change in the Weather": it 
certainly felt magical, even a fantasy setting, but this was from the
sheer beauty of it, not from any actual magic.

I've often encountered that same "magic" feeling when coming upon an especially
beautiful place in real life.  I still vividly remember my first visit to
Kapkigiwan Provincial Park in Ontario, which was when I was between eight and
ten and was exploring the ruined vistas of Planetfall and Zork.  That was, in
fact, the moment that made me decide to write text adventures - I wanted to
provide others with the feeling of exploring that park.

>However, the intensity and power of this realism brings with it a certain
>burden, and it's a burden that the game is not always prepared to handle.
>One problem was that some of the puzzles required me to act in a way that
>I felt was out of character. [SPOILERS FOLLOW] For example, one puzzle
>required me to take the roll of toilet paper out of Bob's outhouse and
>burn it. Now, a typical IF character would have no compunction whatsoever
>about this. But in Spring, the protagonist is supposedly a regular, kind
>person -- for her to steal and burn the only toilet paper from a man who
>shows her nothing but kindness and hospitality is a significant break from
>character, especially since Bob does not grant permission to do so. Other

I liked the fact, however, that Bob distinctly let me into the house.  I snuck
in before that, and really felt like an intruder.  I didn't find the
toilet-paper thing as objectional as you did, probably because I had to use
the hints for the puzzle and so the mood was broken for me anyway.

One problem with the puzzles that you don't mention, though, is the endgame.
It involved repeatedly getting almost to the goal and then finally finding
that just one more piece was necessary.  Because of the almost transcendant
nature of finally finding the hot springs, I found it disappointing that more
was required after this, and extremely annoying to have to keep going back
and forth for yet more pieces of the puzzle.  The game should have wrapped up
by the time the final location was reached. 

On SINS AGAINST MIMESIS (oops, cut the header)

In fact, I cut out the entire section while looking for the line that I wanted
to reply to.  Stupid trn. :-)

[MINOR SPOILERS]

Anyway, I wanted to say that my favourite part of the game was matching the IF
"classics" to the sins.  "Zork" (a game about finding treasure) for Avarice
was a brilliant stab at the genre.  "The Erotic Adventures of Stiffy Makane"
for "Lust" was a pretty obvious choice, although it was funny to see it pop
up after all the classics.  I'm a little divided about one game, however -
should I be happy to see "In The End" in there, or not?  (My roommate thought
it was hilarious that it should show up as Sloth - I thought it was entirely
too perceptive, as I think the major failings of "In The End" were due to
laziness on my part.) 

>SUNSET OVER SAVANNAH by Ivan Cockrum
>
>Sunset Over Savannah (hereafter called Sunset) is one of the most
>impressive, enjoyable, and successful games of the 1997 competition.

I disagree.  I thought it was a very good attempt, and very enjoyable, but
marred by a heavy-handed plot which utterly failed to match the setting.

>Interestingly, it shares a strategy with another very successful game,
>"She's Got a Thing for a Spring": both games present a natural world where
>fantasy-style magic is subtle to the point of nonexistence, but which

Sunset had more magic than Spring, though - [SPOILERS]






The dragon was certainly magical, and I would class the glass mites as
"magical" too.  (Incidentally, I spent several turns trying to destroy them,
having read George R. R. Martin's "Sandkings".)

>nonetheless is suffused with wonder, divulging incredible sights which
>move the spirit as strongly as ever did any of Gandalf's fireworks. The
>game takes place on a beach whose implementation is exquisitely complete,
>a small space which allows a great number of options within it... narrow
>but very deep. In itself, implementation of this depth carries a kind of
>magic, the kind of delirious sense of possibility inherent in all the best
>interactive fiction. The magic goes beyond this, though. The puzzles in

As you've probably guessed from my discussion of Weather and Spring above, I
heartily agree with you.

>In a gutsy choice, Cockrum centers his game around emotional transition,
>presenting a player character whose inner state is conflicted: you're at
>the end of your vacation (shades of Trinity), and the experience has made
>you reassess your life, especially in relation to your mind-numbing job.
>Is it possible that the best thing you could do is to quit, and try to set
>your feet on another path? In pursuit of the answer to this question, you

I found the implementation of this question spoiled the rest of the game for
me.  Its interesting that you portrayed many of the main characters of other
games as "whiners" and seemed quite put out by that - I had no problem with
them, but I found the main character of this game to be an EXTREME whiner.
After every wonderful vista I experienced, I was brought down to earth with
a tremendous flop: "The beautiful setting has left you wondering, 'Should you
really quit?' You still need more arguments to persuade you."  This type of
itemizing (I need to see five things, no more, no less, to persuade me to
quit) clashed completely with the open feel of the rest of the game.

>Cockrum focuses the action upon it. The game's "scoring" system does keep
>track of puzzles solved, but does it in emotional rather than numerical
>terms, starting with "conflicted" and moving through "astonished",
>"respectful", etc. I thought this innovation worked brilliantly. As

I thought that the emotional state represented in [] on the status line
was perfect as well, it was the itemization on typing "score" which I
resented.  And, since the latest portion of this itemization was provided
after every magical sight, it was impossible to get away from it.

However, I should note that I thought the brief moves away from the base state
(such as after eating something moving to "contented" and then back to your
normal feeling) was brilliant.

>someone who is interested in experimenting with the concept of score in
>IF, I was greatly pleased to see a game whose scoring system fulfilled the
>basic purpose of a score (keep players posted on their progress) and went
>beyond it in such a flexible and artistic way. The fact that the "emotion

It's interesting to compare this with Edifice, which implemented the same
type of "score" (from amazingly discontented to amazingly contented, I
believe) but did it in a much more confusing way.  I wrote to L.P. Smith to
ask for clarification on the two confusing points mentioned in your review
(the score not changing and the fact the the hint glyphs didn't seem to
record your progress correctly) and he told me that your "contentedness" was
based on how many of the glyphs you had looked at in order to solve the game.
Since I regularly read the hints for every puzzle after I finish it in order
to see the "author's interpretation" (looked at all the glyphs in this case),
my score never budged above "discontent".

>Plot: I think the game's plot is a master stroke. Sunset has as much or
>more thematic unity as any interactive fiction game I can think of, and
>this unity lends a sense of sweep to the plot which makes the game such a
>powerful experience. Sunset establishes its focus from its first few
>sentences, and from that point on every piece of the game is an
>elaboration or variation on that conflicted, questioning theme. This
>seamless melding of plot and design made Sunset seem like more a work of
>art than a computer game.

As I believe I've said, I disagree totally.  I thought that the question
put to you was completely mundane, and thus clashed with the incredible feel
of the setting every time it was brought up, which was far too often.

>SYLENIUS MYSTERIUM by "whomever wrote it"

I won't bother to reprint your points: I agree with them totally.  This is the
only game that I rated without playing either the whole thing or for the full
two hours: I found the entire arcade sequence so frustrating that I quit after
trying it for five minutes.  I didn't even have the incentive to try to figure
out how it worked. 

I thought the opening was very well done, and rated it around the middle of the
pack on the strength of that.  It would have merited an 8 if the entire game
had been written as well, on my scale - as it is, I believe I gave it a 4 or
5 (I've left my ratings on my other computer, since I finished them off at
home over Christmas - I'm afraid I can't remember most of them now).

Joe



From adam@princeton.edu Wed Jan  7 10:21:17 MET 1998
Article: 28652 of rec.games.int-fiction
From: Adam Thornton <adam@princeton.edu>
Subject: _Sins Against Mimesis_
Date: Sun, 04 Jan 1998 09:41:29 -0600
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Now that the competition is over, I can go ahead and
let y'all in on a little secret: I wrote _Sins Against
Mimesis_.

It's my first Inform game and was written during an
extremely dark period in my life, in large part to keep
my mind off things I didn't want to think about.

I will be fixing the reported bugs (and if anyone has
any bugs they would like to report or suggestions for
improvement, please send them to me) and then releasing
the Version 2 source.

I'd like to say that I've been pleasantly surprised
by the number of favorable comments I got.  I wrote
_Mimesis_ as a one-off in-joke game.  After last year's
competition I expected that we would be deluged with
heavy, dark, long, difficult, upsetting games along
the lines of _Tapestry_ and _Delusions_.

My game was thus intended to be a light, fluffy romp
through some IF conventions.  It was never intended
to be comprehensible to any but raif regulars, since
I figured that's my core target audience; at the very
least, those are the people whom I really wanted to
reach.  If non-regulars vote they should score _Mimesis_
down severely, since it will neither be funny nor
coherent.  The game was intended to be an in-joke, and
more specifically, to be something fun to fiddle with
for much less than two hours between Serious Literary
Experimentation games.

I think it's odd that David Dyte and I got the same
number of votes.  We've talked before about how our
games try to do something similar, and it's interesting
to see that that's the common perception.

Let me end up with a brief capsule review of some of
the more memorable, for me, games this year, as long
as I'm being self-indulgent.

My favorite, through and through, was _Edifice_.
Beautifully constructed; the language puzzle was
nothing I'd ever seen.  The hint system was cool,
and I just loved the care with which the game was
evidently put together.

My second favorite was _Glowgrass_.  Short, sweet,
to the point, a great story, engaging prose that
really sucked me in, and even some reasonably logical
and interesting puzzles.  Plus it really was a two-
hour game.

I never got very far into _Babel_.  I'm not sure why
people got all excited about it because I never really
got into it.  It failed to hold my attention, and I'm
not sure whether it's because I came to it late or
because the writing didn't grab me.

I'll go out on a limb here and say that I liked
_Phred Phontious_, but there was no way it was a two-
hour game, and some of the puzzles made very little
sense.  It was kind of like _Spiritwrak_ in that
sense--I liked playing it, but wouldn't have gotten
anywhere without the walkthrough.

_The Frenetic Five_ was cool.  Alas, without a
walkthrough I got stuck having escaped my bonds in
the flange factory and never got farther.  It had
great prose, though.

I greatly enjoyed _Bear's Night Out_.  Much like
_Mimesis_ in some ways, but sweet, cute, and
thoroughly charming.

_Madame L'Estrange_ is the hardest of the games to
rate.  I really wanted to find out how the story
ended.  I *had* to know.  But the game was so buggy
that "Save" stopped working halfway through, and the
writing was full of problems (like slipping from
second to third person all the time).  There are
any number of reasons to have written it off as a
crappy game, but I was engrossed to the point of
working around the bugs to find out where the story
was going.

_Zero Sum Game_.  Cute, but my God how incredibly
cold.  Brrr.  I started out thinking "this is a funny
and cute game" and ended up feeling all dirty.  It's
an amazing piece of writing (the multiple dragon-
resurrection scenes alone are great), but if the
author was trying for an ironic deconstruction of the
amoral adventurer, it was a success.  If not the tone
was exceedingly creepy and left a nasty taste in my
mouth.  In short, after you're done, it wasn't as much
fun as it seemed like at the time.

_Savannah_.  Beautiful.  Atmospheric.  Way too big
and hard for a two-hour game, even with the walk-
through.  I think I would have released this one and
done a shorter competition game.  It's a fine game
on its own merits, although with too many "huh?"
puzzles.  But the attention to detail and the care of
craftsmanship is evident, and it's a really neat
piece.

And finally, I'd like to get to _The Tempest_.  Graham,
what the hell were you trying to do?  The rewriting
of the libraries into Elizabethan English is
brilliant.  The language is fine, the presentation
is beautiful, and it's no damn fun at all.  I *know*
the play pretty intimately and I couldn't ever
finish the game.  Even now I'm stuck having reanimated
the statue in Hell.  If I were giving marks I wouldn't
know whether to rank this game high for its evident
technical wizardry and ambition or very low because
it is no fun to play.

I'm posting via Dejanews because Princeton's news
server no longer reaches the outside world.  Let me
know if you have any suggestions for Release 2 of
_Sins Against Mimesis_.

Adam

-------------------==== Posted via Deja News ====-----------------------
      http://www.dejanews.com/     Search, Read, Post to Usenet


From erkyrath@netcom.com Wed Jan  7 19:18:29 MET 1998
Article: 28743 of rec.games.int-fiction
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From: erkyrath@netcom.com (Andrew Plotkin)
Subject: Re: FemaleDeer's Comp97 Reviews - Pt 3
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FemaleDeer (femaledeer@aol.com) wrote:
> Well, I think I saw somewhere you were a beta-tester for this game, so...
> nevermind.

> But if you really WANT to know, it was at the end when there was some comment
> about (quoting from memory) ...and Plotkin actually thinks people should play
> his game So Far this far to see how it comes out... or something like that.

Er, hate to say, but that's the literal truth. Originally the author
copied the actual final responses from _So Far_. I was a beta-tester, and
I *really did* request that he take them out, because it gave away the
ending to my game. He was a nice guy, and did that. 

You did try "maybe", right? I'm laughing now just thinking about it.

--Z

-- 

"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the
borogoves..."


From straight@email.unc.edu Wed Jan  7 19:18:40 MET 1998
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From: Michael Straight <straight@email.unc.edu>
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: FemaleDeer's Comp97 Reviews - Pt 3
Date: Tue, 6 Jan 1998 08:39:07 -0500
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On 5 Jan 1998, FemaleDeer wrote:

> >Which knock?
> >
> >(I tried to send this via email, but it bounced.)
> >
> >--Z
> 
> Well, I think I saw somewhere you were a beta-tester for this game, so...
> nevermind.
> 
> But if you really WANT to know, it was at the end when there was some comment
> about (quoting from memory) ...and Plotkin actually thinks people should play
> his game So Far this far to see how it comes out... or something like that.
> 
> Hey, you don't feel knocked, then it's s'alright.

Regardless of whether Andrew felt knocked, *I* would have been extremely
upset if one of the contest entries gave away the ending of what, if the
Xyzzy awards are a good metric, was one of the best IF works of 1996.
Just because I haven't had time to play So Far yet doesn't mean I don't
want to.

Michael Straight thinks he got at least half of the jokes Memesis.
FLEOEVDETYHOEUPROEONREWMEILECSOFMOERSGTIRVAENRGEEARDSTVHIESBIITBTLHEEPSRIACYK
Ethical	Mirth Gas/"I'm chaste alright."/Magic Hitler Hats/"Hath	grace limits?"
"Irate clam thighs!"/Chili Hamster Tag/The Gilt	Charisma/"I gather this calm."




From vanfossen@compuserve.com Wed Jan  7 19:20:18 MET 1998
Article: 28836 of rec.games.int-fiction
From: vanfossen@compuserve.com (Brent VanFossen)
Subject: Re: [Comp97] A Lurker's Reviews
Date: Wed, 07 Jan 1998 07:16:30 GMT
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On Mon, 05 Jan 1998 15:15:21 -0500, Dennis Matheson
<"Dennis..Matheson@"@transquest..com> wrote:

>She's Got a Thing for a Spring
>
>   This game clearly shows that you don't need to look to fantasy or
>science fiction or mystery or horror to have a satisfying adventure.
>Spring is set on a wilderness camping trip in the real world.  As a
>backpacker myself, I was impressed by the author's descriptions and
>obvious love of the outdoors.  
>   Everthing felt real, and I spent a lot of time just exploring the
>area before I even started trying to solve the game. (Is the game set in
>a real place?  Where is it?  I want to go there!)

Thanks for the review, Dennis.  You're right, I love the outdoors. 

There is no single place like the one in Spring.  It's a composite of
my favorite places from all over North America.  For favorite hot
springs, try Liard Hot Springs in northern British Columbia, where the
ferns hang over the edges of the pools, and a hanging tufa garden
nearby.  Or visit Ainsworth Hot Springs, also in British Columbia,
where a watery tunnel was blasted into the cliff back in the 20's or
30's.  The minerals in the water have started to create the limestone
formations we all know from natural caves.

Jasper National Park in Alberta and Rocky Mountain National Park in
Colorado are both great places to find elk and pikas.  For pikas, also
try the Mount Baker area in Washington state.

The cabin is one of any number of log cabins from the turn of the
century all across the country.  Try Petit Jean State Park in
Arkansas, or the Hume Ranch area of Olympic National Park in
Washington state.

>How was I supposed to know what to do
>with the egg?  (And it did bother me that I had to disturb the nest in
>order to do it; my hiker ethic showing.) 

Okay, I admit it.  *I* don't even understand the egg thing, and it
will be gone in the next release.  That puzzle was left over from the
first playable version of the game when it was more of a fantasy.  I'm
just sorry I didn't take it out before the competition.

>   I also hit one amusing bug in which I would pick a berry only to have
>it teleport back to the bush every time I entered the location.  (A
>found_in problem?)

Well, I learned something about found_in.  NEVER use found_in for
anything other than scenery or static objects.  This bug is a clear
reason why.  That 11th hour addition to the game wasn't (obviously)
tested, and I never considered the potential problems of floating
objects.  But then, the competition is about learning.

All I can really say is thank you to all who took the time to play or
review my game, either publicly or in private.  And if anyone else
would like to email bug reports, I welcome them, and should be able to
respond personally.

>   My score - 9

Thanks, again!  I'm glad you liked it.

Brent VanFossen



From femaledeer@aol.com Thu Jan  8 12:35:39 MET 1998
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From: femaledeer@aol.com (FemaleDeer)
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Comment on CASK
Date: 8 Jan 1998 04:16:25 GMT
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>From: harryh@iu.net.idiotic.com.skip.idiotic.com (HarryH)
>Date: Wed, Jan 7, 1998 20:12 EST

I feel like saying, "calm down". So I will, "calm down". 

1. Mixing competition and "art" (i.e. the contest) may not be a good idea,
anyway.

2. I didn't like your game because it was JUST puzzles, that is not my idea of
an adventure game, it is not to my taste. I really loved the old Infocom games
(except the Zorks) and they were a combination of story (with good atmosphere)
AND puzzles. True  Interactive-FICTION.

This is why most people did not like your game (plus you could also die a lot).


3. You can write whatever kind of game you want, but if you want to have an
audience you might rethink what kind of game you want to write.First, we all
have to "compete" in a sense with the original Infocom games and even though
some innovative IF has been done since then, "surpassing" those original
Infocom games has rarely happened. 

This is the primary underlying competition we are all up against, not just each
other. I, personally, think THAT is enough competition and I personally think
competition and art rarely mix well anyway.

So maybe you are starting from the wrong premise and maybe the contest also
starts from the wrong premise.

Sorry, I can't say it clearer.

FD 


------------------------------------------------------------------------------
FemaleDeer@aol.com       "Good breeding consists in 
concealing how much we think of ourselves and how 
little we think of the other person."             Mark Twain


From erkyrath@netcom.com Thu Jan  8 12:42:40 MET 1998
Article: 28888 of rec.games.int-fiction
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From: erkyrath@netcom.com (Andrew Plotkin)
Subject: Re: COMP 97: My reviews, part 5 -- LONG!
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Brent VanFossen (vanfossen@compuserve.com) wrote:
> On Tue, 6 Jan 1998 22:40:11 GMT, jcmason@undergrad.math.uwaterloo.ca
> (Joe Mason) wrote:

> >>SHE'S GOT A THING FOR A SPRING by Brent VanFossen
> >
> >One problem with the puzzles that you don't mention, though, is the endgame.
> >It involved repeatedly getting almost to the goal and then finally finding
> >that just one more piece was necessary.  Because of the almost transcendant
> >nature of finally finding the hot springs, I found it disappointing that more
> >was required after this, and extremely annoying to have to keep going back
> >and forth for yet more pieces of the puzzle.  The game should have wrapped up
> >by the time the final location was reached. 

> SPOILERS
> (And possible slight spoiler to Kissing the Buddha's Feet)

> I'm curious what I could have done differently here without
> significantly shortening the game. 

I can't think of anything simple. But I agree that it throws the pacing 
off. 

> I don't know if you played Kissing the Buddha's Feet from last year's
> competition, but the same technique was used there, to good effect.
> Every time I thought I had the game licked, there was something else I
> had to do.

Well, but Buddha was a frustration game. You play a character who is 
being driven nuts by his roommate and friends. That's why the effect 
worked. 

Spring is a peaceful wilderness game. (Bar the occasional sexually
frustrated moose. :) You play someone looking forward to a hot spring.

How about not letting the player get *in* the water unless all the 
ingredients are held and usable? You'd have to be very persuasive about 
this, or the player will be annoyed -- "I just want to get in the damn 
water already!" But if it was suitably gentle:

"The water looks wonderful. You recall other treasured dipping-spots, 
with fragrant water... Come to think of it, a bath would be even better 
if you had something to infuse the pool with. There must be something 
around here."

And then if you try again:

"The hot spring wouldn't be complete without something to scent the water."

(This is tricky -- I spent about five minutes just trying to word that 
properly. You want to get the player *enthusiastic* about going out 
herb-hunting. If it comes across as "I won't let you in unless you have 
some herbs," the ending falls apart.)

You could put the various ingredients in parallel, too -- mention all the 
ones the player doesn't have yet.

--Z


-- 

"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the
borogoves..."


From jfrancis@dungeon.engr.sgi.com Thu Jan  8 13:36:53 MET 1998
Article: 28872 of rec.games.int-fiction
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From: jfrancis@dungeon.engr.sgi.com (John Francis)
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Personal Notes about the Competition
Date: 8 Jan 1998 00:29:29 GMT
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In article <%MCs.43$QE6.594088@news1.atlantic.net>,
HarryH <harryh@iu.net.idiotic.com.skip.idiotic.com> wrote:
>In article <34B09FEF.MD-0.198.s590501@tfh-berlin.de>, s590501@tfh-berlin.de 
>says...
>[snip]
>
>>It all boils down to this: if you can't offer a decent entry that is
>>at least bug-free enough to satisfy a one-hour beta testing by the author;
>>that is fun to play; and that has an interesting premise -- don't enter!

Good advice, but probably impossible to follow.  I can't count the number
of times that I've released code that I've tested thoroughly (I thought),
only to have it fall apart the first time somebody else touched it.
The author of any piece of code will only use it the way he intended it
to be used, so it will work (for him).  A one-hour (or even a ten-hour)
beta-test *by the author* won't do very much good.

>So you wrote _Ralph_, eh? That was a lame game about a dog. And I LIKE MY 
>GAME. You don't see any bugs on my game with the walkthrough, right? No 
>run-time errors and all. Besides, you don't have to worry about container and 
>supporter problems in Inform. I do.

But this is an overly sensitive over-reaction.  Admittedly it is hard when
your brain-child is criticised - it is very easy to take the criticism as
a personal attack, and to respond in like fashion. But that doesn't help
at all.  You might not have liked Ralph - fine.  But it wasn't really a
lame game.  Throwing insults around doesn't help anything (except possibly
your feelings).  And it certainly won't encourage other people to treat
you as anything but a brat.

Now, to the other points.
You like your game.  I hope so - it would be stupid to release a game
that you thought was crap.  It doesn't stop Rybread Celsius, mind you.

There are no bugs on the walkthrough path.  Again, I would hope not.
But that isn't the point.  There *are* bugs (lots of them) for a player
who deviates from your path.  And playing "Guess-the-verb" to try and
find out exactly which synonym you had in mind isn't really the kind
of puzzle that endears your game to players.
(Actually, there *are* bugs on the walkthrough path - the descriptions
of the rooms.  Look at the description of the Wine Room again:
"Although not quite bare, it still has relatively few noteworthy.")

Containers & supporters - yes, these can be a little bit tricky. But
you aren't the only first-time game author to have to deal with them.
The others don't seem to have your problems.  You seemed to be aware
of this problem, too, as you mentioned it in the accompanying docs.
Did you really think it wouldn't influence your final score?
Maybe if you couldn't get the feature to work, you should have been
a little less ambitious.

>Maybe some people will complain of "Instant Death", but I actually have 
>completely eliminate them. I mean, what kind of a sane person would touch a 
>bare wire hanging from the ceiling when the nearby switch is on? The hints 
>are all there, buddy. You just have to look for them.

You don't understand. That *is* "Instant Death" - you haven't eliminated it.
The game would work just as well if the response was something like:

    > PULL WIRE    [which, incidentally, doesn't work]

    You reach for the wire.  As you touch it a jolt of electricity
    runs through your outstretched arm, knocking you to the floor.

The player still needs to solve the puzzle properly in order to get the wire,
but you don't have to kill the character to get the point across.  Especially
when you explicitly mention that the chair is a wooden chair - wood is a very
good insulator.  And, as you describe it as a "coil of wire", it would be
plausible for there to be insulation on the wire.

Killing the character should be a last resort, after persistent stupidity.
It usually doesn't add anything to the storyline - there are other, less
fatal, ways to discourage the 'wrong' actions. This is particularly bad if
the "Instant Death" occurs as part of a tricky timing-specific puzzle.
Not that CASK was the only (or even the most blatant) game in this year's
competition to have "Instant Death" situations.  In one case there was no
way (or at least none that I found) to know which was the correct course
of action except trial-and-error.

>Yes, my puzzles are crappy. Stories well too short. No betatesting whatsoever 
>(except by myself, and I spent a *lot* of time). But give me a break. This is 
>my first game. But the story is original and the puzzles were not as tired as 
>they are now when I first conceived them (which was about ten years ago).

But you didn't enter the game in the 1987 competition - you entered it in the
1997 competition. As such, it got judged by 1997 standards.  Still, by 1998
you should have become more familiar with some of the trickier constructs
in Inform games.  With that, and with genuine third-party beta testing,
you may very well get the rating you hope for.  Good luck!
-- 
John Francis  jfrancis@sgi.com       Silicon Graphics, Inc.
(650)933-8295                        2011 N. Shoreline Blvd. MS 43U-991
(650)933-4692 (Fax)                  Mountain View, CA   94043-1389
Unsolicited electronic mail will be subject to a $100 handling fee.


From lknauth@imap1.asu.edu Thu Jan  8 13:56:45 MET 1998
Article: 28854 of rec.games.int-fiction
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From: lknauth@imap1.asu.edu
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction,rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Hello world! -from the author of Erden
Date: 7 Jan 1998 19:21:38 GMT
Organization: Arizona State University
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Hello,

  I just wanted to officially introduce myself to this IF group as I 
perhaps should have done a year ago when I began lurking around here.  I 
am Laura Knauth, a student of Electrical Engineering at Arizona State 
University and hopefully graduate to be this May.  Travels in the Land of 
Erden is my first attempt at IF authoring, and I that's probably a major 
part of the reason I was possessed to put it in the contest having not 
written it expressly for that purpose.  I just happened to be finishing 
it up when I heard about the contest in late summer.  I think I was just 
so excited that I was actually nearing the completion of my first game, 
and since I love a good competition, I thought the contest was the best 
forum for people to access my work on Erden.  OK, not the best bit of 
logic mainly due to the two-hour judging rule.  I initially justified the 
entry to myself by interpreting the two-hour rule such that the judges 
would play the entries for two hours and then score them no matter if 
they finished or not.  Even with that scenario though, people didn't see 
as much of my game as I thought they might.  Any IF I enter for a 
contest in the future will definitely be written as a competition game, 
and any future an interactive novel will just be released whenever its 
finished.  And another newbie mistake, I don't think I appreciated just 
how important beta testers are.  I was the only person to test Erden 
before the competition, and have found that the bug reports people have 
sent me have really helped to improve the second version of Erden that 
I've started working on now that the results from the contest are finally 
being posted.  And yes, that is a tacit plea for anyone who's willing to 
send me error reports!  I very much appreciate the reports people have 
sent to me so far.  Anyway, hello to you all.  And, I hope to contribute 
more to this newsgroup in the near future.

			'til next time!
      \|/ ______ \|/             
       @~/  Oo  \~@               Laura A. Knauth  
      /_< \____/ >_\             
         \___U__/        http://www.public.asu.edu/~lknauth
				Laura.Knauth@asu.edu 



From erkyrath@netcom.com Thu Jan  8 15:35:06 MET 1998
Article: 28585 of rec.games.int-fiction
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
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From: erkyrath@netcom.com (Andrew Plotkin)
Subject: COMP97: Zarf's comments
Message-ID: <erkyrathEM4HFH.K3C@netcom.com>
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Now hear this:

My scoring system is very simple: I ask myself "How much did I enjoy
playing this game?" There is no question of whether a game deserves to
win, or whether my scoring is biased. If I enjoyed it, points. If I
didn't enjoy it, no points. Any particular aspects of the game (writing,
puzzles, characters) are included in the overall score only to the
extent that they affected my enjoyment.

The scores are normalized, so that I give a 10 to the game I enjoyed the
most and a 1 to the game I enjoyed the least (of the entries that I
played.)

Also, I played all the games as they were uploaded at the contest
beginning. I ignored later releases of games *and* walkthroughs and
hints. Sorry; there is a deadline, and meeting it is part of the contest
conditions as I see them. (Exceptions: Whizzard uploaded a changed
release of "Spring" almost immediately, and there was an early
re-release of "Bear" which the author said he had gotten Whizzard's
approval for.)

I did not play every TADS or Inform game. This was due to my lack of
attention span, not lack of time. (Every game that I did play, I played
during October.) I did glance at all the games, and the ones I skipped
were the ones that seemed least interesting; I think that I would have
given them scores of 3 or less. But of course I'm not certain of that.

I was a beta-tester for two games. In the interests of fairness, I did
not vote on those two. I did pick the score I would have given them if I
had voted on them; they're included below.

My scores:

10: Sunset Over Savannah (savannah.gam) [BETA-TESTER]
10: Babel (babel.gam)
9: The Edifice (edifice.z5)
9: Sins Against Mimesis (mimesis.z5) [BETA-TESTER]
9: Zero Sum Game (zero.gam)
8: A Bear's Night Out (bear.z5)
8: Glowgrass (glow.gam)
7: Poor Zefron's Almanac (almanac.gam)
7: The Lost Spellmaker (lost.z5)
7: She's Got a Thing for a Spring (spring.z5)
6: VirtuaTech (vtech.gam)
6: Travels in the Land of Erden (erden.z5)
5: The Frenetic Five vs. Sturm und Drang (frenfive.gam)
5: Symetry (reflect.z5)
5: A New Day (newday.z5)
4: Friday Afternoon (friday.z5)
3: The Tempest (tempest.z5)
3: A Good Breakfast (agb.z5)
2: The Obscene Quest of Dr. Aardvarkbarf (aardvark.gam)
2: Phred Phontious and the Quest for Pizza (pizza.z5)
2: Temple of the Orc Mage (temple.gam)
2: Sylenius Mysterium (sylenius.z5)
2: CASK (cask.z5)
1: E-MAILBOX (emailbox.agx)
1: Aunt Nancy's House (house.z5)
1: Coming Home (home.z5)

Now, my comments. Hear this also: these are neither reviews nor
explanations of my votes. These are brief comments on what I thought was
good or bad about each game. Sometimes I spend more time on the good;
sometimes on the bad. It's whatever caught my interest. You may consider
me to be speaking to the author -- describing bits which can be
improved, or which made the game for me, or which ruined it. I may
comment on the worst thing about a good game, or the best thing about a
bad game. So don't expect the tenor of my comments to match the score I
give.

Consistency wasn't a big factor either. Do I contradict myself? Hot
damn, then I contradict myself.

It is not my job to be encouraging or polite. If you want to hear
pleasant lies about your game, please read somebody else's post.

The following comments are given in the order that I played the games.
(Note that I never got around to writing comments for "A Bear's Night
Out", even though I did finish it. Attention span again.)

Oh, one other thing. A *lot* of the Inform games were released with
debugging mode still turned on. It's hard to feel challenged by a game
when "purloin" works. Pay some attention, folks.

----------

Glowgrass -- Nate Cull

A short SF story. The puzzles are a fairly standard mechanical brand;
make the machine work by putting part A in slot B. The game puts in its
effort on the plot -- you, a xenohistorian, stranded while exploring an
archaeological site -- and the character you meet.

The plot is presented extremely well; you discover things along with the
protagonist. I'm not sure the story quite measures up. It's not bad,
mind you; the writing is fine, the pacing is good, the scenes are vivid
and they have a point. I'm just not completely moved by the story
itself. The ending didn't quite seem to go anywhere interesting.

Maybe I'm expecting too much. It's more a mood piece than a story, and
so it doesn't need to *go* anywhere. Well, that's not right either,
because it does (although the story ends open-endedly, it does end.) 

Heck, I don't know.

----------

Friday Afternoon -- Mischa Schweitzer

Another one for authorial telepathy. Well, it wasn't that bad: the magic
command seems to be "ask person about thing". Pretty much every time I
checked the hints, that was the answer. 

Puzzles aside: the scenario was cute, but it's been done before. Somehow
the "Build my college / office / house" approach never fails to turn me
off. (Except of course in "Kissing the Buddha's Feet," which only goes
to prove that I'm open-minded.)

The gameplay had some irritating holes: I tried several ways to call
people on the telephone (dial 123-4567, push 1, dial phone, call
123-4567) before I checked the hints and tried "call fred". Not that
"call fred" is an unreasonable way to handle things -- it's actually a
good solution; but none of the others *told* me that "call fred" was
sufficient.

The time limit, though very long, was still something of an irritation.
I never actually hit it, but the warnings made me feel like I shouldn't
experiment, which drove me to the hints faster.

----------

A Good Breakfast -- Stuart Adair

Nice start, and some memorable bits. The cuter-than-Floyd robot is
possible the most irritating object I've come across in a game; I
approve highly. And the description of the photos made me laugh.

Unfortunately, I could not find a way to put the cornflakes in the bowl.
The command in the walkthrough doesn't work. I must assume the game is
unsolvable.

----------

The Lost Spellmaker -- Neil James Brown

I am amused. The conceit of the Cute Little Dwarf Village comes across
well, and without being disgusting. (Which, of course, it really is. :-)
Short but clear plot. I got stuck in a few places, notably trying to
find a container -- there's one listed in a room, but it's hard to pick
it out of the scenery.

The dialogue and characters are, again, brief but clear. You can't
dislike the cow. (Almost said you can't *argue* with the cow. Heh.)

I suspect there is some sort of Metaphor going on, but I can't imagine
what it is.

(Bonus point for the wackiest title screen in the competition.) (That's
a moral bonus point, not a competition vote bonus point.)

----------

E-Mailbox -- Jay A. Goemmer

Oookay. Not so much a game as a sequence of pieces of text, each leading
to the next via a specific command. It pretty much tells you what to do.
(This game took me somewhat less than two hours.)

The "commands" are somewhat arbitrary; "examine letter" seems to be the
same as "open box". Maybe this is deliberate. It's hard to tell.

Funny idea, not carried through into much more than a one-liner.

----------

Sins Against Mimesis -- One of The Bruces

Ok, I was a beta-tester. But I found this really funny. 

I don't think there's anything more to be said about it. Play it
yourself.

Wuss.

----------

A New Day -- Jonathan Fry

Promising beginning; you start out in an unfinished adventure game.
Unfortunately, it becomes pretty arbitrary after that. Weird commands:
"push cat northwest"? There's a park bench which is described as
"unsteady", which turns out to be because it has something in it; then a
later bench which is described as "steady", which apparently also means
that it has something in it. This is not what works for me. 

At the end the plot turns into "computer program tries to leave computer
and take over the world", which, I hate to say, I am thoroughly sick of.

Nonetheless there are things I liked. The scene with unimplemented ducks
in an unfinished room works great. (Everyone's been in a game where the
author forgot to implement some object. This is what it feels like.)

Peculiar time limits. (In one place there's a ticking bomb, which turns
out not to be a time limit, and then there's an unexpected time limit
anyway.) Many one-way "doors", and it's possible to leave vital objects
behind.

Be sure to watch the "exits" list in the status line, since many exits
are not mentioned otherwise. I don't like this.

----------

Sunset over Savannah -- Ivan Cockrum

Well, I was a beta-tester and I sank some serious commentary into the
game. So my biased opinion is, it's terrific.

There's a huge number of things to play with; just plain old beach
stuff. You can dig holes and build castles and jump on the castles. You
can tie things to other things. (This is the most complete set of
ropes-and-straps code that I've ever seen in a game. Most of it is just
for fun.)

The writing is detailed and embellished -- some will probably say
overembellished, but you can live with it. It does tell you things a
little more than it should, as opposed to showing them; this is mostly
in the "score" messages. But that's mostly to clue the player about
which way the game should go.

Simple, affecting storyline.

Also, may I note that this game brings new meaning to the way of easter
eggs. Try "xyzzy" on the end of the pier, or "say 'hello sailor'" (and
then ask the old man about the girl, several times.) Rich stuff.

Too bad I'm not voting on this game, because this is the most positive
review I've written thus far. Heh.

----------

Poor Zefron's Almanac -- Carl W. Klutzke

A nifty little fantasy story (billed as "cross-genre", but I think one
can legitimately talk about the genre of fantasy that includes goofy
spaceships. :-) You're a wizard's apprentice, the wizard has
disappeared, and a dragon is ravaging the town.

This game doesn't strain the boundaries of IF literature, but it's
well-filled-out. There is a whole range of gradations of "An End",
including more than one which might be considered fully ideal.

The writing is funny, albeit in a generic-silly-fantasy sort of way.
Several minor NPCs that run and hide in uniform, unashamed cowardice.
(Worth a chuckle.)

It's possible to get stuck, and there are also various ways you can lock
yourself into satisfactory-but-not-perfect endings. There are some
fairly restrictive time limits, particularly in the ending. (A
temptation often succumbed to, one admits.)

The title conceit is worth mentioning -- your master's Almanac contains
a huge array of useful game information, useless information,
background, poetry, and bad jokes. Also the game's credits,
instructions, and hints. It's a good plot device, or maybe I should say
scenery device.

----------

Babel -- Ian Finley

Now this doth please me very much. A genuinely creepy piece of science
fiction (not "horror") set in an isolated Arctic biological research
lab. Your memory is gone -- you do not know who you are -- but you have
a strange ability to pick up memories of past events, imprinted on
objects. So you move around the game, learning more about the laboratory
and what has happened there.

I think the word that comes to mind is "integration". Everything in this
game fits together. The station is plausibly designed as a research
facility, but also forms the structure of the puzzles and the plot. Your
imprint-reading ability and its effects are the keystone of the plot,
but they also are the mechanism through which the background and
storyline are revealed to the player. The devices and tools you find are
the equivalent of magic spells in a fantasy game, but they make perfect
sense in a lab. The atmosphere is both frightening -- creeping through
darkened halls -- and realistic -- an underground facility low on power.

(Speaking of darkness, this game demonstrates the use of darkness
without resorting to a flat "It is pitch black." There are many dim
areas, which conceal secrets until you can find light, but which are
still navigable. And you *are* scared of the dark.)

There are several characters, seen only in flashback -- an old but
effective technique; the imprint-reading episodes are "cut scenes",
uninteractive but full of dialogue, the best way to define character.
The added gimmick in this game is that one of the characters must be
you, but you have no memory of which it is.

There is no way to lose or get stuck or run out of time, but again,
Babel demonstrates that you can have the emotional effect without using
classic IF limits. The power is slowly failing throughout the game, with
periodic warnings; but it does not actually fail during play. I felt
hurried by the warnings, and afraid I would run out of time, but it did
not prevent me from winning.

The puzzles were mostly very good -- well integrated, as I said. A
couple may have been too obscure. (The cabinet and the exit combination
in particular.) But these are minor problems.

----------

The Obscene Quest of Dr. Aardvarkbarf -- Gary Roggin

Well, what can I say... vaguely irritating and not much fun.

You run around a college campus trying to deliver a letter. The
descriptions are sort of funny, but not in a very interesting way. All
the professors are weirdos. This can be done well (I've been re-reading
Daniel Pinkwater novels) but it can also be done badly. Sigh.

There is an annoying inventory limit, an annoying food limit ("If you do
not eat soon, you will pass out," we're supposed to be past this by now)
and a large swath of missing synonyms. (Up a tree, you can't go "down",
you must "climb down tree". This occurs in several places.) And missing
alternate solutions: you have a hammer and a screwdriver, but some
things can only be pried with one of them. The author needs to pay some
more attention to state: some descriptions don't change when they ought
to (e.g., the torch); and there's a glaring plot hole in the ending if
you don't take an optional action in the beginning. (Hitting the panel.)

Ok, I'm complaining a lot. Many of these problems can be fixed. Good
points: there's a lot going on around campus, and much of it has nothing
to do with your quest. I still don't know what's up with the janitor.
This kind of side detail is nifty. And, hey, you can hit a lot of things
with your hammer.

Footnote: I hate to whine, but it's spelled "fluorescent".

----------

Phred Phontious and the Quest for Pizza -- Michael Zey

This would be the "magic fantasy forest" genre. You are attempting to
find the ingredients for a pizza.

The game is, on the whole, badly constructed. I think the combination of
strictly timed sequences and inventory limits is about the most annoying
design mistake you can make. So after a few minutes of getting killed by
the gravedigger, I switched to the walkthrough and didn't look back.
Unfortunately, this didn't help, since the dragon seems to want to fry
me before I can follow the commands in the walkthrough. I must consider
this game unsolvable.

I can comment on the part of it I saw, though, and my main comment is
"Don't do that." Puzzles based on puns are not a good idea. Let's talk
about "mimesis" here for a minute. Better yet, let's not.

----------

The Tempest -- Graham Nelson

What a clever idea! (Which, together with a ha'penny, will buy you a
brick.)

I couldn't figure out what the hell to do. Even reading the beginning of
the original play. I got as far as when the King's party jumped
overboard, and then I was stuck. So I split. I split, I split, I split.

----------

Temple of the Orc Mage -- Gary Roggin

A "dungeon crawl" if ever there was one. There is no story; you crawl
through the dungeon and collect treasures, magical artifacts, and keys
which unlock doors to more treasures and magical artifacts.

I didn't actually finish the last few commands of this game; a critical
item refused to come loose. I think this is because I left a magical
book behind somewhere. I was not motivated to go back looking for it.

The game area is very large and tolerably well described; the writing
works pretty well. I did, indeed, feel like I was wandering around a
gloomy -- er -- dungeon.

There's just a numbing sameness about it all. A piece of scenery will be
mentioned only if there's something hidden in it. There is a long string
of locked doors and locked chests. And most of the things you find don't
do much (although some do); you generally find things in order to have
them.

As with Gary Roggin's other game ("Aardvarkbarf"), there is some weak
parsing, notably "climb down" instead of "down" or "d". And there are --
again -- food requirements and an inventory limit, neither for any good
reason.

----------

Travels in the Land of Erden -- Laura A. Knauth

This cleanly sketches out the advantages and disadvantages of very large
games. (And I mean large in terms of area, not necessarily in terms of
plot length. Although the plot is fairly involved as well.)

Erden is huge; I spent half of the allotted time just mapping the place
and trying to examine everything. It does a very good job of the "Beyond
Zork" scale -- outdoor locations, ranging from forest to swamp to
mountains, with lots of detail. And it doesn't fall into the "Zork Zero"
extreme of having a whole forest be a single room. This is very solid
background.

The down side is, there's too damn much stuff. I think, in a game this
large, you have to be very careful *not* to ask the player to examine
every single scenery object. There are too many of them. Most of them
are very well described, which makes matters worse, since then you have
to examine all the sub-objects. If there are a few rooms in a game, this
is reasonable; here, it is not.

I wound up with a headache, and I missed several critical objects -- the
walkthrough doesn't say how to get them, so I guess they're "obvious".
Not all that obvious. I was unable to finish because of this. (Couldn't
find any spyglass or silver coins.)

The author has gone to effort to make multiple solutions available to
many problems. This is good. However, many of the puzzles are somewhat
undermined by bad programming. (The behavior of the raft is rather
arbitrary and crashed the game at one point. The ladder can be leaned
against all sorts of things, without much clue as to what is really
happening. Out of four magic words, one is critical, but the other three
generate "That's not a verb I recognise.")

Fixable problems, yes. But overall I think I would have solved the game
on the walkthrough rather than by play. (Even if I'd found the damn
spyglass, I mean, wherever it was.) Too much stuff, too little guidance
about what you're supposed to pay attention to.

----------

Zero Sum Game -- Cody Sandifer

A goofy idea -- you are at the end of an adventure, and you have to work
your way back to the beginning, losing all your points. ...Because
you've been *killing* and *stealing* for those points, and your Ma is
very *disappointed* in you.

A goofy idea, as I said; and like all goofy ideas, it stands or fails in
the writing. This one succeeds brilliantly. Between your hillbilly
mother, the dimwit Sidekick Maurice (you find him mourning his dead
adventurer comrade, but he'll be happy to follow you instead), and of
course Chippy the Chipmunk, the game whizzes past with a manic grin and
the occasional whack on the back of your head.

I dunno if I can say anything else. There's comic style and there isn't.
This is.

I didn't have much trouble playing. I missed one puzzle because I didn't
know it was something I was supposed to do (getting to where I could
take the scroll.) Probably this was because I never examined Benny after
he retrieved his stuff. The ending was also a little confusing, but this
was more because the hints were badly written than any problem in the
game itself.

----------

Cask -- Harry M. Hardjono

The author says "My first stab at Interactive Fiction," which sums it
up. I try to allow for technical bugs when playing these games, but
there are just too many here. The author didn't have (or take) the time
to polish things up, get descriptions of containers right, make sensible
synonyms, etc.

The up side: the single puzzle is fairly well conceived, although it's
not well enough described to really understand what's going on. That is,
when I *did* understand it (after reading the walkthrough), the
mechanics of it made sense. I would add a little more information
(probably having lights go on/off when you flip the light switch.) But
the idea is fine.

I would say one thing about the writing... don't use the word "hehehehe"
in a game. Just don't.

----------

The Frenetic Five vs. Sturm und Drang -- ?

Well-written but unsolvable. Need I say more?

Ok, I should. This is a superhero parody romp; credit is given to "The
Tick", if I recognize the name aright. It is unusual in that you are the
leader of a superhero *team*, the Frenetic Five.

The fun here is managing your team and their powers. And their
personalities. There's a lot of detail here; they make smart comments,
react to your actions (or lack thereof), and they each have their own
annoying habits. This is all very good. And I loved the lobster.

Unfortunately, the parsing is weak ("adapt fork" produces "You don't see
any adapt here," when your super-power is supposed to me adapting
anything into a tool.) The syntax for commanding NPCs is also shaky, and
usually works only for the few commands which are relevant to the plot.
This is obviously a problem in a team game.

And the ending seems to fall apart completely. The problem of untying
yourself is solved by a rather contrived sequence which, at the least,
needs more synonyms. And when you face Sturm and (I mean "und") Drang, I
really don't know what the hell is going on. You're separated from them
by a skylight, but this doesn't seem to prevent you from touching them
or their evil device. The commands in the walkthrough don't seem to do
anything, and following the walkthrough doesn't actually end the game.

I feel like the author didn't finish writing the game. When it is
finished, I'll highly recommend it.

(Footnote: I tried it again, and I saw what I was doing wrong. I managed
to finish now. I still hold to my judgement; there needs to be a lot
more detail text in there. I was confused because the wrong character
was holding the bedsheet, and nothing at all happened instead of the
wrong thing happening. As I said, needs more work.)

----------

Aunt Nancy's House -- Nate Schwartzman

Er... "There are no puzzles, the idea is mainly to wander about in an
interactive environment and have fun." Well, it's a house. You can do
stuff.

I apologize if I'm taking this wrong, but somehow I get the impression
that the author has spent a lot of time being *bored* in this house. I
mean -- I wandered around, I turned on the tv and the video game
machine, I turned them back off, I poured myself a soda. Then I went
back upstairs. Yeah, I've spent a lot of time at relatives' houses that
way. I suppose that means it gets realism points...

Technically, it's fine; everything pretty much works right. Although the
tv in the master bedroom can be heard all over the house, which seems
pretty loud. Heh. There do need to be a lot more synonyms. ("book"
"shelf" as well as "bookshelf", that kind of thing.) And the
implementation of a room with two hot water taps and two cold water
taps, while functional, can probably be approached more realistically.
:) 

----------

Symetry -- Rybread Celsius

This is terribly, terribly unfair. I'm really sorry. But I just started
laughing hysterically, and it's not what the author intended. In the
middle of an intense ending sequence, I read the line:

   "My blood pumper is wronged!"
   
I just lost it. It's a very "Eye of Argon" sort of line.

But I don't want to focus on that line. Let me back up.

This is a horror short-short. The writing is quite good; the prose is
quite bad. Or vice versa. What I mean is... the idea for the story, and
the events, do work. It's a creepy situation.

The actual text is, well, not very skilled work. Lousy spelling,
grammar, general clumsiness. Not much I can add about that. Read more
good books, practice more. (I wish I could believe that the title was
misspelled deliberately. Sigh.)

Technically, also pretty bad. ("in" works to get in the canopy bed, but
"get in bed" screws up dramatically. And the business of the lamp needs
more detail text; it's not obvious that you can only reach it from
inside the bed.) The central puzzle is, again, a good idea; but it's
implemented weirdly. (Your clothing, which is critical, seems to appear
only after several turns. And "stab me" should work the same as "stab
chest".)
 
But, on the other hand, I thought the hidden text (in "amusing") was
pretty nifty. "...communism, silver and various isotopes of uranium."
Good!

----------

Sylenius Mysterium -- ?

The gimmick is, a real-time arcade game. The problem is, it's buggy.

I actually managed to play some of the arcade game under MaxZip. (I have
an advantage here. I'm the interpreter author, so I was able to jigger
MaxZip to ignore certain Z-code errors. Most people would just see
crashes.)

I wasn't able to get very far. The text adaptation of a platform
scroller was a cute idea, but it didn't really give enough information.
When a monster appeared, I had no idea what to do in order to attack it;
the basic positional information was lacking. (Is the monster in front
of me or behind, is it tall or short, etc.) I was able to get halfway
through the level by jumping madly, but then I jumped into a bottomless
pit. Again, in an actual video game, I could see the pit coming and at
least try to jump *over* it. Didn't work here. I felt like I was playing
blindfolded.

This approach *can* work, but it would require much, much more
descriptive text. Of course then the player is forced to absorb that
much information once per second. 

There is a frame game which is in the usual Adventure mold; it's also
pretty buggy. (What *was* up with the New Age rock melody with the
backbeat? And Margot gave me the cold shoulder for buying tokens with
*my* money. And I don't think the keys are mentioned anywhere in the
game, except the walkthrough.) The three NPCs are well-developed,
however.

I can't evaluate the plot, since I only saw the beginning of it.

----------

The Edifice -- Lucian P. Smith

A surreal little story, in which you witness three epochal events in the
history of civilization. You start out as an arboreal ape of some sort;
but your species and your understanding change in each scenario.

This is very clever work, with a number of nice touches. (At the
beginning, you see the Others, your Enemies, and Rock. Later Rock turns
into Useful Rock. Everything is personal. I like that.) The Edifice of
the title is history reified, a tower with a stairway up the inside. It
also provides hints, another clever touch -- murals on each level record
what you've done and show what you might do next.

The scenarios themselves are concise and well-written. I solved the
first with no trouble (well, almost no trouble -- see below.) The second
ran me out of patience just a little early, and I went to the
walkthrough to get the language straight. (I like the puzzle, I just
feel like I'm in a hurry with 35 competition entries. Yes, it's a
problem.) The third was harder; I didn't have much idea how to control
what was going on, or what range of actions were possible.

(This is a general problem in this game; looking at the walkthrough, I
saw commands far outside the range of what is "expected" in IF. "hide
>from enemies" and "look for food" are early examples. Those particular
commands are provided entirely for color; it's not necessary to use
them. So that's no problem. In the third scenario, however, you have to
do some things which are pretty odd. I don't know if I would have gotten
them without the walkthrough. On the other hand, I solved the puzzle
using the walkthrough commands as examples; I didn't have to follow it
step-by-step.)

There are multiple endings, or rather multiple *denouments* (which I
think I prefer.) It's suitably open-ended and allegorical. Heh.

There were a lot of bugs, which I spent some time working around. In
particular, the first scenario refused to register "solved" when I
solved it; I had to go back and follow the walkthrough. I think this is
a by-product of the detailed hint system; I did some early step in an
unexpected way, and the hint system didn't track me the rest of the way
through. In any case, this is fixable.

----------

She's Got a Thing For a Spring -- Brent VanFossen

(Very tempted to start this review "I was really screwed by the author
in this game." Nah.)

So, this is where everyone says, "Whoa, the author sure put in lots of
accurate detail from his own experience." Which is true. You wander
around a wilderness, full of, well, everything. With a guidebook (nice
touch.) More detail than you can shake a stick at, once you get the
stick. This is great to play but very brief to review, so I'll talk
about something else. 

There is an NPC, Bob, who is -- well, more detail than you can shake a
stick at. Goes through this whole routine, drops golden nuggets of
wisdom, reminisces about everything, talks to you, listens to you,
offers you lunch. To be completely honest I wanted to throw a brick at
his head. But that's just me. He's a very well-done NPC. 

There are a few puzzles, which rated fairly high on the obscure-ometer
for me. (I didn't understand the egg thing at *all*.) Again, the detail
problem; there's so very much around that it's hard to examine the right
things. For example, there are very specific "You can't go that way
because..." messages; most of them are scenery, but some are solvable
problems. There's no good way to tell which is which.

I relied heavily on the dynamic hint system, anyway.

(Footnote: I did in fact throw a brick at Bob. He said something patient
and sad and forgiving. Grrrn.)

(Footnote 2: "stalagtites"? Those are the ones that stick out from the
wall? :-)

----------

Coming Home -- Andrew Katz

An amateur effort. It mostly does not work. That is, the game works, but
the game design does not. You can't tell what's going on, nothing makes
much sense, you can't see most of the exits, there is no scenery, you
starve to death fairly quickly, and you can't figure out how to go to
the bathroom. Well, I couldn't, anyway. 

You have to go to the bathroom.
You can't hold it in any longer and you go on the floor.

    *** You have died ***

I'm supposed to be all encouraging here, so, please, try again.

----------

VirtuaTech -- David Glasser

A very short SF scenario; you have to get your computer working to print
out a school report. There isn't much story here. The game is
essentially a showcase for two nifty interfaces: the virtual computer
interface, and the hardware you can wire together. Both of these are
well-done, but not really enough to be compelling.

The setting, a futuristic university dominated by a megacorporation,
isn't much either. It's impossible to avoid being reminded of _The
Legend Lives_. Except in _Legend_ it was more than a setting; it worked
into the plot.

It feels like the game is actually too short, in fact. If there were
more plot, the gizmos would be useful background instead of a brief "use
the thing" foreground.

A game with this few rooms also has to watch out for repetitive
description. The main room, your apartment, is a good introductory
description, but the text reappears every time you type "look". It's
worth putting in some effort to be dynamic -- have it get briefer after
the first time. Or briefer when you "re-enter" it from a virtual zone,
with the full description repeated -- but without as much emotional
setting -- when you "look". That kind of thing. There are several
possibilities.

Similarly, the virtual space of your computer shows an "anomaly" even
after you've fixed the bug. And, not so similarly, the game should
automatically put the scanner on the desk instead of printing a "You
can't do that until the scanner is on the desk" message.

I don't mean to imply I disliked the game. I like gizmo puzzles, and
these are well-done. It's a very easy piece, but gizmo puzzles *don't*
have to be hard to be entertaining. They just have to make sense, and in
this game they do.

----------

A Bear's Night Out -- David Dyte

(Ran out of steam before I wrote comments about this. However, I did
play it and I liked it quite a bit.)

----------

--Z

-- 

"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the
borogoves..."


From obrianNOSPAM@colorado.edu Thu Jan  8 18:09:46 MET 1998
Article: 28598 of rec.games.int-fiction
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From: Paul O'Brian <obrian@ucsu.Colorado.EDU>
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: COMP 97: My reviews, part 1 -- LONG!
Date: Thu, 1 Jan 1998 19:20:26 -0700
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I've split up my message into several parts since I wrote long reviews for
the competition games. If you don't want to download these postings, but
still want to read the reviews, they are posted on my IF web page at
http://ucsu.colorado.edu/~obrian/IF.htm. Note also that although my scores
go out to the first decimal place for a little greater precision, I
naturally rounded off when I submitted them for the contest.

This posting contains reviews for:

Aunt Nancy's House
Babel
A Bear's Night Out
CASK
Coming Home

AUNT NANCY'S HOUSE by Nate Schwartzman

When I began learning Inform, one of the first things I did was to put
together a little simulation of the cottage I was living in at the time.
It was great fun making a text adventure out of my current environment,
adding both magic and realism as I saw fit. That Inform program would have
easily been finished in time for submission to the 1995 IF competition,
but I didn't submit it. My reasoning at the time was that even though it
was fun for *me* to walk around my virtual cottage, it would be really
boring for other people. Now that I've played Aunt Nancy's House
(hereafter called ANH), I know I made the right decision. 

According to its author, "Aunt Nancy's House is actually based on my
aunt's (soon-to-be-former) house, and was created as a way of teaching
myself Inform. There are no puzzles, the idea is mainly to wander about in
an interactive environment and have fun." Well, "wander" was certainly
there, but "fun" wasn't, at least not for me. Basically ANH simulates an
empty house. That's it. I have no doubt that creating this simulation was
pretty exciting for the author, but without that connection to the subject
material, other players are going to be bored. 

ANH taught its author how to use Inform -- I look forward to when he
applies that knowledge to the creation of a game. 

Prose: The game's prose wasn't outstanding, but it served its purpose.

Plot: ANH has no plot.

Puzzles: ANH has no puzzles. (Hey, puzzleless IF!)

Technical:
     writing -- I spotted a few grammatical errors in the game, which I've
passed along to the author.       
     coding -- ANH has a number of bugs, which I've also forwarded to the
author, but for a first exercise in learning Inform, it was put together
pretty well.

OVERALL: A 2.9


BABEL by Ian Finley

Babel is not only one of the best competition games I've ever played, it's
one of the best pieces of interactive fiction I've ever seen, period. The
game starts from a well-worn IF trope: you awaken alone, with no memory of
your identity. Then, Babel unfolds into a breathtaking, emotional story.
The work of exposition and plot development is performed through the
protagonist's enhanced powers of tellurgy, which the game defines as "the
ability to experience past events by touching objects present when the
event occurred." The clarity of these visions varies according to the
emotional intensity of the event being witnessed. This device, reminiscent
of that in Stephen King's The Dead Zone, is the central convention of the
game, and it allows a degree of character development very rare in
interactive fiction. Certainly other games (most notably Zork:Nemesis)
have used this device in the past, but none have brought it about so
convincingly and so effectively as does Babel. The tellurgic episodes
gradually bring an awareness of the character's identity, and how he came
to be in his amnesiac state, as well as tell a chilling story of
scientific arrogance and attendant disasters.

Another interesting aspect of Babel is the moral ambiguity of its main
character. Typical IF heroes (or heroines) have few ethical shades: they
are either unambiguously on the side of good, working to save the universe
or some version thereof, or basically self-interested seekers of wealth
or fame. The hero of Babel falls into neither of these convenient
categories. Instead, he appears first as a victim, then eludes that simple
assignation as well, becoming a character of depth and complexity very
rarely realized in IF. The experience of playing such a character was a
powerful one, especially as the story gradually revealed just how willing
a participant he was in his own undoing.

Finally, I think it's worth noting that after playing only three games
>from the '97 competition, I've already seen *two* that deal with a
metallic research station where the player discovers the
frightening results of unbridled scientific inquiry run amok. The meaning
of this thematic fascination in a community devoted to the supposedly
"archaic" text form is a speculation for another essay, but I feel safe
enough asserting this: Babel is an outstanding treatment of the theme, the
best I have ever seen in IF, and one of the best I've ever seen in any
medium anywhere.

Prose: Babel's prose was nothing short of outstanding. It unerringly
conveyed the experience of being stranded in a deserted Arctic outpost,
addressing all the senses and the emotions as well. Powerful turns of
phrase abounded, and extreme experiences (such as being out in the Arctic
winter wearing only a hospital gown) were very vividly rendered. The
characterization and dialogue in the cut-scenes of the tellurgic visions
were sharp and effective, outlining strongly defined and complex
characters. Small touches like tiptoeing across the cold floor in bare
feet, or the equation of the cold-hearted scientist's eyes with the Arctic
ice (notice the pun), combined with broader strokes for an astonishingly
realistic and well-written whole. 

Plot: The game's plot unfolds masterfully, revealed in dribs and drabs by
the tellurgic episodes. The author provides a chronology for all these
events with the (rather forced) device of giving the character a calendar
on which he "instinctively" jots down the date of each occurrence. As the
story develops, the tension becomes greater and greater: the unfolding
mystery of the character's origin serves to heighten the power of the
story's eventual climax. Some of the Biblical imagery is just a tiny bit
heavy-handed, but the whole is strong enough to overpower any objection of
didacticism or triteness.

Puzzles: The puzzles almost effortlessly achieved the ideal of blending
seamlessly into the narrative. There were no arbitrary puzzles, and the
artfully gradual revelation of the plot was served elegantly by simple but
logical obstacles. There were no puzzles that were particularly ingenious
or unique, but that wasn't the point of this game. The puzzles were there
to provide some control over the narrative flow, and in this they served
their purpose just right. 

Technical:
     writing -- The prose mechanics were excellent. I only noticed a
couple of proofing errors in this very word-heavy game.   
     coding -- Coding was equally strong. I found a couple of very minor
bugs, but there were many, many touches that made it clear that a great
deal of thought, foresight, and effort went into the coding of this game. 

OVERALL -- A 9.8


A BEAR'S NIGHT OUT by David Dyte

So you've played the plundering adventurer. You've been the mage, and the
detective, and the stellar patroller. You've stepped into the shoes of
priests, tourists, English lasses, time travelers, and picnic-weary
bridge-lovers. You've even played a dog. Time for A Bear's Night Out
(hereafter called ABNO), which puts you into the persona of one of the
most unlikely heroes ever seen in IF: a teddy bear. The game is based
around a magical "Velveteen Rabbit" premise -- when the humans fall
asleep, the stuffed animals get up to roam the house. When the night
comes, you must set to work, gathering various objects so that your owner,
who is perfectly wonderful but somewhat disorganized, will be ready to
take you to the Teddy Bear Picnic tomorrow. This charming idea is carried
out with aplomb by ABNO's lovely prose. The author has obviously taken a
great deal of care to ensure that everything from room descriptions to
libarary messages assist in constructing the player character, a cuddly,
fuzzy teddy bear owned by some fellow named David. For example, to the
command "jump", the game responds "Full marks for cute and furry, but none
for achievement." This kind of care with implementation really helps a
player become immersed in the setting and the characters.

Interestingly, ABNO bills itself as "An Interactive Children's Story."
Perhaps this is from some misconception that playing a teddy bear is an
activity suitable only for children. Whatever the reason is for the
description, I think it's a mistake; the difficulty of its puzzles makes
ABNO a mighty tough game for kids. This is not to say that the story's
content is unsuitable for children in any way -- it certainly is not.
However, several of the puzzles had me stumped, and I suspect the same
would be true for the majority of kids who encountered them. Some of these
difficulties are due to some missing verbs: [SPOILERS AHEAD] for example,
one of the crucial puzzles in the game requires you to ride the cat, but
the word "ride" isn't implemented. Other puzzles are difficult, well, just
because they're difficult. Many key elements of the game are unreachable
without first solving several interrelated puzzles, none of which by
themselves are enough to significantly advance the story. The game
provides a fine hint system, and its puzzles are logical and fit well into
the story. However, the textual clues that surround them still fall a bit
short of sufficiency; several of the messages given by the game fail to
indicate the significance of the particular actions as well as they
should. 

This point aside, ABNO is a delightful game. It is well-written and, for
the most part, well-coded, including a number of details which serve to
enrich the childlike, enchanted game world. For example, the television
runs a very funny infomercial for a hardware z-chip, to turn your computer
into "the interactive fiction machine of your dreams!" The cat's random
event routines create an endearing illusion of feline unpredictability.
Judiciously chosen box quotes enhance the game's sense of magic and
wonder. Finally, perhaps the best touch of all, all the elements of the
full score are written alliteratively: "furry fashion" for wearing your
coat, "kindness to kittens" for petting the cat, etc. The combined result
of all these details is a world well worth visiting by children and adults
alike. 

Prose: ABNO's prose is without a doubt its best feature. The writing
strikes just the right tone, soft and forgiving, much like the game's
protagonist. The author clearly understands how much the game's prose
serves to shape the main character. For example, describing the door
leading outside as "A tall and forbidding locked door" performs several
functions in one concise phrase: "Tall" reminds us that we are playing a
short teddy bear, to whom ordinary objects seem quite imposing.
"Forbidding" reminds us that our character is used to the home -- the
outside world is large and scary. And of course "locked" lets us know that
we won't be getting through it without a key. The game's prose is full of
this kind of well-crafted prose. Bravo.

Plot: Here the game falters just a tiny bit. The idea of playing a teddy
bear is great, but the plot of gathering items for the picnic doesn't lend
much of a sense of urgency to the game. It's sweet, and it serves, but it
doesn't propel the narrative with much strength. Instead, it seems more of
an excuse to take our furry protagonist around the various areas of the
house so that we can experience them at a bear's eye view. 

Puzzles: [SPOILERS AHEAD] As discussed above, the puzzles aren't terrible
or unfair or irrational, but some of them are a bit illogical (an
answering machine crashing to the floor fails to wake my owner?), and
others are somewhat counterintuitive (a soft little teddy bear can hit a
pipe with enough force to dislodge the sludge that gravity isn't
affecting?). In addition, as I mentioned, some of the puzzles aren't
really as well-clued as they should be. At their core, the puzzles are
good, but they could use another round of testing to iron out the kinks. 

Technical:
	writing -- I found no technical errors in the game's writing.
	coding -- Aside from the fact that "ride" should have been
implemented as a verb, the game's implementation was quite solid. 

OVERALL: An 8.3


CASK by Harry M. Hardjono

Well, a game subtitled "my first stab at Interactive Fiction" doesn't
inspire much confidence. CASK is another one of those "I wrote this game
to learn Inform" games that seem to be so popular this year. None of the
other languages, even AGT, have inspired this particular genre of
competition entry this year (with the possible exception of Mikko
Vuorinen's "Leaves," written in ALAN), and I think it's worth ruminating
on the reasons for that. Inform is a sophisticated system, and there
certainly have been no dearth of complaints on the IF newsgroups about how
difficult it is to write programs with its C-like, object-oriented
structures. Nonetheless, many people (including some of the people
complaining on the newsgroups) have been able to use Inform well enough
that they felt the results of even their first efforts were worthy for
submission to the competition. 

I think that part of the reason for this is that Inform's libraries are
comprehensive and detailed enough that even the barest shell .z5 game
seems rich with possibility -- dozens of verbs are implemented and ready
to use, and creating simple rooms and objects is quite easy. The depth to
which the Inform libraries are crafted allows even a designer's initial
efforts to seem, at first blush, on a par with simpler Infocom adventures.
Moreover, Inform enjoys a special place in the ftp.gmd.de hierarchy:
besides being lumped in with all the good, bad, and indifferent systems in
if-archive/programming, it also resides in if-archive/infocom/compilers.
Consequently, anyone who came to IF by way of Infocom can stumble upon
Inform in their first visit to the archive, simply through connecting to
the most familiar word and then saying "Wow, the Infocom compiler is
here?" I know that's how it happened for me. Inform's .z5 format is a nice
piece of wish-fulfillment for all of us who wish that we could still get a
job at Infocom. So just because Inform is granted this privileged
association with Infocom, does that mean that a certain set of its users
feel that their first efforts are on Infocom's level, without a
substantial amount of effort on the part of the author? Perhaps, but all
these pieces combined don't explain the trend I've seen this year. I'm not
sure what the rest of the explanation is, but I do know this: I hope the
trend won't last. It doesn't add a lot of quality interactive fiction to
the archive, just a lot of shoddy Inform examples. 

Which brings me up to CASK. The idea here is that you're trapped in the
basement of a winery, abducted for no apparent reason by your new
employers. You must use your wits and the objects about you to make your
escape. However, the real truth is that you're trapped in a below-average
interacive fiction game, which was entered in the contest for no apparent
reason by its author. You must decipher vague prose, evade coding bugs,
and defy logic to escape. Luckily, it doesn't take too much time as long
as you have help. Bring your walkthrough! CASK helped its author learn
Inform. Let's see that knowledge applied to the creation of a quality IF
game. 

Prose: There were a number of areas in which the vagueness of the prose
contributed rather unfairly to the difficulty of the puzzles. [SPOILERS
AHEAD] For example, at one point in the game you find a rusty saw, whose
description reads "It is a rusty saw." (Oooh! Now I understand! Glad I
examined that!) When you try to cut something with the saw, the game tells
you "You cut your fingers on the saw. Ouch!" Now, I'm no genius, but I do
know which end of a saw to hold. The handle, right? There's nothing in the
description suggesting that this saw doesn't have a handle, so how would I
cut my fingers? Is the handle sharp? Turns out you have to wrap a cloth
around the saw then cut a hole with it. Though it seems to me a saw with a
cloth wrapped around it isn't going to have much cutting power. Dealing
with prose like this makes me feel like the character is supposed to be
woozy and probably blind and pretty clueless as well. I hope the effect is
unintentional. 

Plot: Oh, I'm sorry. I gave away the plot earlier. You have to escape from
a basement. 

Puzzles: There are really only a few puzzles in this very short game,
several of which involve having a switch in the right position (though
figuring out which position is right is largely a matter of guesswork.
Luckily the switch has only two positions, so even the brute-force
solution doesn't take long). There's also a bit of outfox-the-parser, some
find-the-bug, and a good deal of figure-out-what-the-hell-the-prose-means. 

Technical:
	writing -- The writing featured several entertaining errors. In
one room (of the three total in the game) you can see that the room "has
relatively few noteworthy" aside from "an old heavy machinery".
	coding -- This game could definitely have used a great deal more
testing. Object descriptions repeat when they shouldn't, and some trapped
responses behave in bizarre ways. 

OVERALL: A 3.1


COMING HOME by Andrew Katz

Coming Home is an unremittingly awful game, one which never should have
been released publicly. It's hard to think of it even as an exercise for
the author to learn Inform, so buggy and illogical are its basic design
and implementation. Perhaps it could be considered a first step toward
learning the language; in my opinion, such bumbling, poor initial efforts
have no place in a public forum, let alone a competition. It's not much
fun wandering through somebody's ill-conceived, cobbled-together,
inside-joke universe. In fact, playing Coming Home is a kind of Zen
torture, an experiment in just how unpleasant interactive fiction can
possibly be. Perhaps it's what IF is like in Hell.

Frankly, I don't feel like putting much effort into this review, since the
author obviously put so little effort into creating a quality game for the
competition. I know it wasn't a personal affront, but I felt insulted that
he thought this jerry-built piecework was worthy of anyone's time. It
certainly was a wasted 15 minutes for me before I turned to the hints, and
another wasted 15 minutes before I decided to just let the recording show
me the rest of the game. 

I want to encourage anyone who is interested in IF to contribute to the
medium by writing a good game. But please, until it's good (Lord, at least
until it *works*)... keep it to yourself.

Prose: Coming Home doesn't waste much time on prose. Which is unfortunate,
since it's supposed to be a text game and all. What's there is really bad
-- not fun bad or silly bad like "Detective", just bad. I think even the
MST3K crew would get bored with this one.

Plot: Like the rest of the game, the plot is unclear, and what can be
discerned doesn't seem to make much sense. Apparently you're a very small
person (a child?) who has been away from home for a long time, can't
survive without eating and going to the bathroom every few minutes, and
lives in a haunted house where doors close and lock of their own accord,
people behave like furniture in some rooms and mysterious forces in
others, and the bathrooms are smeared with urine and feces until you tell
Mom to clean them up to a nice sparkle.

Puzzles: Puzzles? How to interact with the parser. How to move from place
to place as directions randomly disappear. Why people appear and vanish,
apparently magically.

Technical:
     writing -- The writing didn't have terrible mechanics (nothing like
Punkirita from the 1996 competition, for example), but it sure wasn't good
either.      
     coding -- To even try to summarize all the problems with the coding
would take more time than I'm willing to give to this game. If you've read
this far, you probably have a basic idea.

OVERALL: A 1.2

Paul O'Brian                                      obrian@ucsu.colorado.edu
"I think it's important to remember that no one falls into a simple set of
labels. Even more important is to learn from your mistakes, and to fight
for the positive choice."                            -- Lindsey Buckingham




From obrianNOSPAM@colorado.edu Thu Jan  8 18:10:06 MET 1998
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From: Paul O'Brian <obrian@ucsu.Colorado.EDU>
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Subject: COMP 97: My reviews, part 2 -- LONG!
Date: Thu, 1 Jan 1998 19:41:19 -0700
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If you don't want to download these postings, but still want to read the
reviews, they are posted on my IF web page at 
http://ucsu.colorado.edu/~obrian/IF.htm. Note also that although my scores
go out to the first decimal place for a little greater precision, I
naturally rounded off when I submitted them for the contest.

This posting contains reviews for the following games:

Congratulations!
Down
E-MAILBOX
The Edifice
The Frenetic Five vs. Sturm und Drang

CONGRATULATIONS! by Frederick J. Hirsh

This game started out with such promise. It cleared the screen, then gave
a good paragraph outlining the situation: you've just had a baby, and are
awed with the responsibility inherent in your new life as a parent. You've
brought your baby home, and prepare to face your new challenges. Wow, I
thought. What a great setting! The baby can provide realistic character
interaction because although IF characters are only capable of very simple
responses, that's all a baby is capable of, too! Not only that, there are
several natural puzzles inherent in the situation of new parents -- the
game can be challenging, fun, and maybe even educational. I shouldn't have
gotten my hopes up. The first clue that all was not well in
Congratulations! was the first room description: "You are in your
comfortable living room. There is a room to the north and stairs to the
west." Wow, I feel like I'm there! OK, so there's no need for sarcasm --
it was a disappointment, just like most of the rest of the game. The
in-game instruction book felt woefully inadequate (especially since the
last game I played was Poor Zefron's Almanac), the puzzles were lame and
the implementation was lazy. It was also short, though in this case the
brevity was a blessing.

All of the text in the game (with the exception of the opening paragraph)
is terse and uninformative. Details are nowhere to be found, and in fact
even full sentences seem pretty scarce from time to time. For example, a
common distress message is "Baby cries!" Articles, anyone? I'm always a
little puzzled when a piece of text IF offers so little in the way of
text, but Congratulations! does just this. It almost feels like a skeleton
of coding, waiting to be fleshed out by a real game. You know, paragraphs
and such. I'm not sure whether this sparseness has to do with lack of
effort, inability to write, or what, but it detracts greatly from the game
experience.

Unfortunately, the coding seems to adhere to the same standard as the
writing. Room headers appear in caps or lower case more or less at random.
The response to "examine baby" is "As you gaze into your baby's eyes, it
stretches out its arms, opens its mouth, and barfs on you." Mildly funny
once, nonsensical and irritating after that. A reasonable command like
"put diaper on baby" is met with:

 Baby wails!
Putting things on the baby would achieve nothing.
 Baby cries!

It goes on like this. If having kids was as difficult and tedious as
playing Congratulations!, our population problem would be solved. 

Prose: I think "minimalist" is the key word here. How about these room
descriptions: "bedroom: You are in your nice bedroom."; "cute baby
nursery: You are in your cute baby nursery."; "Kitchen: You are in your
brand new gourmet kitchen! To the south is your pleasant living room." You
get the idea. The same applies to object descriptions, character
responses, and pretty much everything else written by the author. The
Inform library's stock responses seem florid and baroque by comparison. 

Plot: Stop the baby from crying. Yes, that's it. Hope I didn't give away
too much. 

Puzzles: It's not that the puzzles themselves are all that bad, just that
the poor implementation makes a lot of the puzzles into wrestle-the-parser
problems. For example, I have a baby and a diaper. What do I do? "Put
diaper on baby?" No. "Diaper baby?" No. "Baby, wear diaper?" No. "Give
diaper to baby?" No. "Cover baby with diaper?" no. "Wrap diaper around
baby?" No. That's how most of it goes.

Technical:
	writing -- Aside from the occasional period missing off the end of
a sentence or letter missing a word, the writing was technically fine.
What there was of it, anyway.
	coding -- As I've outlined above, the coding left quite a bit to
be desired. Many synonyms were missing, many illogical situations were
allowed, and the commands available were far too restrictive. 

OVERALL: A 3.9


DOWN by Kent Tessman

Well, Down is the first Hugo game I've ever played, so I know that many of
my initial reactions to it were actually reactions to the Hugo engine and
interface itself. These first reactions were mainly positive. I used the
DOS version of the Hugo engine, and found that its presentation was clean
and asethetic. There were some nice effects available from using colored
text, and an attractive menu system. Room descriptions looked good, with
bold titles and slight indentations at the start of their descriptor
sentences. Having sized up this interface and found it good, I was ready
to enjoy "Down," a game written (as I understand it) by the same person
who created Hugo itself. 

Unfortunately, I ran into difficulty right away. [SPOILERS AHEAD] The game
presents a puzzle within the first few moves, announcing that the player
character's leg is broken, making walking impossible. OK, so what's the
logical solution? How about crawling somewhere? Regrettably, "crawl n"
brought the response "You're not going to get anywhere on just hands and
knees--you'll have to try and figure out some way to walk." OK, dang. So
I can't crawl anywhere either. I spent the next 20 minutes trying to
figure out how to leave the initial location. Finally, frustrated to the
breaking point, I turned to the walkthrough, only to find out that what I
needed to do was "crawl west." Hey, wait a second! I thought I wasn't
going to get anywhere on my hands and knees! I guess I can after all. The
game has several instances of this kind of problematic prose, making it
difficult to progress without a walkthrough.

[THE REST OF THIS REVIEW WILL CONTAIN SPOLIERS] However, the story is
worth experiencing, walkthrough or not. The author presents a very
realistic and highly compelling puzzle-solving situation: you are the
survivor of a plane crash. You must help your fellow passengers and
somehow prevent the plane from killing you all when it explodes, as it
inevitably will. This situation is a natural one for interactive fiction:
you must traverse a limited area, under pressure from a time limit,
solving very real puzzles with dozens of lives in the balance. Even though
there are some problems with the prose and puzzles, it's still a memorable
feeling to crawl through the wreckage, a situation made even more
evocative by the fact that it really could happen to most anyone. 

Prose: The prose often does a nice job, especially with broad, sweeping
tones such as setting up the feeling of urgency associated with the plane
and with rendering the human tragedy caused by the crash. It's in smaller
moments that it fails, and the failure is not so much one of tone or voice
as it is one of diction. The words chosen are simply not the correct ones
to convey what turns out to be the case. For example, a seat is described
as "almost against the wall," but when you look behind it you see a small
boy. Well, to me when something is almost against the wall, the distance
in between is a matter of inches, certainly not something a child could
fit into. Down would have benefitted from words more carefully chosen.

Plot: The plane crash is definitely a very strong foundation upon which to
build a plot, and Down exploits many things about that situation quite
well. Interestingly, however, there are some narrative hooks on which
resolution is never delivered. For example, I fully expected to be able to
radio for help from the cockpit, so that my fellow survivors and I could
get the medical attention that we need. Instead, there wasn't even a radio
mentioned. Also, you meet two passengers (husband and wife), one of whom
is injured and bleeding badly. I thought perhaps this was a puzzle, and
that I needed to help stop the bleeding. Not the case -- apparently they
were just there for scenery. The man never gets help from his wound, even
at the end. I found this ending unsatisfying, though that's not
necessarily a bad thing. It makes sense that even after serious heroics,
survivors of a plane crash would still find themselves in a very difficult
situation, but it's not the kind of resolution I'm used to. 

Puzzles: The puzzles in general didn't make a whole lot of sense to me. I
liked the splinting puzzle, since it was logical and fit well into the
story's flow. However, other puzzles like that of the tree lodged in the
plane didn't ring true to me. Would you really set a huge fire inside
something that you thought might explode? Wouldn't you spend your time
helping other passengers take sheter in the woods instead? 

Technical: 
	writing -- I found no errors with the writing. 
	coding -- The game's implementation was solid as well. 

OVERALL: A 6.3


E-MAILBOX by Jay Goemmer

Well, if there's a prize for shortest competition game, E-MAILBOX will win
it hands down. Clocking in at just under ten minutes, it barely gets off
the ground before telling you either that you've won or that you've just
met your death by having your body's cells torn apart from one another.
Not much of a menu, but at least either way the end comes quickly. The
game purports to be "A true story based on actual events that occurred to
a real individual," but is written in a broad, exaggerated tone that is
probably meant to be burlesque. It's funny, in a limited kind of way, but
it's hard for the game to do very much when it ends so quickly.

One thing that it does do well is proves that an AGT game can hold its own
in a modern competition. E-MAILBOX is short, yes, but it's fun while it
lasts. I used Robert Masenten's AGiliTy interpreter for the first time,
and found that it produced output that was well-formatted, easy-to-read,
and even sometimes (gasp!) aesthetically pleasing. The game achieves a few
nice special effects -- nothing that couldn't have been done with Inform
or TADS (I don't know enough about Hugo to say one way or the other) but
nothing to sneeze at either -- and generally works imaginatively with the
text format. Of course, one wonders whether E-MAILBOX was kept so short in
order to disguise the limitations of its programming system. There is
virtually no navigation within the game, and the very linear design
prevents most parser experimentation. Thanks to the handy AGT counter, I
know that E-MAILBOX has a grand total of 4 locations, some of which only
respond to *one* command. This game is a brief bit of fun, but the jury's
still out on whether AGT can match up to more modern systems when it comes
to more substantial works. 

There are some interactive fiction games that are epic, and may take even
a great player a three-day weekend to complete (without looking at any
hints, of course). Then there are those which could take up a day or two,
and those (many of the competition games, for instance) which might fill a
long lunch break. Play E-MAILBOX over a 15 minute coffee break. You'll
have some fun and still have time for a brisk walk. 

Prose: I found the prose in E-MAILBOX to be pretty over-the-top. As I say,
I think it was intended as burlesque, but its outrageousness seems forced.
It comes across as the prose of a voice which is promising, but has not
quite fully matured. It's not exactly the sophomoric arrogance of
something like Zero Sum Game -- more an overly sincere zaniness.

Plot: The plot is so short and simple that it's hard to tell much without
giving away the ending. Basically, it centers around trying to send an
email message. (See, I told you: short and simple.)

Puzzles: Well, I never found anything that I thought really qualified as a
puzzle. The actions necessary are either entirely obvious, or entirely
obscure but well-prompted by the parser. 

Technical:
	writing -- I found no errors in E-MAILBOX's writing.
	coding -- As I said above, the game does a nice job for something
so short. The author makes an AGT game fun to play, which in my experience
is no small feat. A well-implemented piece of work, short work though it
may be. 

OVERALL: A 5.8


THE EDIFICE by Lucian Smith

You're an ape, spending your days hunting for Food and fleeing from
Enemies. You have these little thumbs, too, that set you apart from the
others. Suddenly one day, a huge black Edifice appears before you,
arousing your wonder and suspicion. I can almost hear "Also Sprach
Zarathustra" in the background: Daaaaaaaa, Daaaaaaaaa, Daaaaaaaaaa.....
Da-Dummmmmmm! However, from this highly derivative beginning, the Edifice
ventures quickly into much more original territory. It seems that once you
enter the monolith, you find yourself able to enter various stages of
human development, from the discovery of fire to protecting your village
against plundering marauders. The idea works very nicely, putting the
player into puzzle-solving situations which blend very naturally into the
game's environment and using the edifice itself as a sort of frame around
the smaller narratives as well as a hinting device. 

One section of the game in particular I found really remarkable. [PLOT
SPOILERS AHEAD] On the second level of the edifice, you find yourself as a
very early human, living in a family unit in the woods. Your son has a
fever, and to cure him you must find the Feverleaf, which can be made into
a healing tea. However, no Feverleaf seems to be available anywhere, until
you stumble across a Stranger. Unsurprisingly, however, the Stranger does
not speak your language, and so you are faced with a problem of
communication. The game does an incredible job with simulating this
situation. I was astonished at the level of realism which this character
was able to achieve, and at the care that must clearly have gone into
fashioning this interaction. I've rarely seen such a thorough and
effective establishment of the illusion of interactivity. The Stranger did
not of course respond to English words in understandable ways. However,
you could point to objects, or speak words in the Stranger's language, and
gradually the two of you could arrive at an understanding. It was an
amazing feeling to be experiencing this kind of exchange in IF... I really
felt like I *was* learning the Stranger's language. It will always remain
one of the most memorable moments of this 1997 competition for me. 

I spent a lot of time on this one encounter, but I spent more time on the
first level of the edifice, [SPOILERS FOLLOW] where you learn how to
fashion a spear, how to hunt, and how to cook your meat over a fire. All
of the puzzles in this section were logical, and the implementation was
characteristically thorough and rich. However, this level is also where I
ran into the game's one major flaw: its scoring system. Upon typing
"score", you are told something along the lines of "You have visited two
levels of the Edifice and solved none of them.  You are amazingly
discontent." However, sometimes "amazingly discontent" changes to "very
content." for reasons that aren't at all clear. Moreover, I did everything
that the etchings indicate on that level, but the game still insisted I
had not solved it. I worked on this until I got so frustrated with it that
I just went up to the next level. I'm not sure whether these
irregularities in the scoring system were intentional or not, but I found
that they were the only significant detractions from an otherwise
excellent game. 

Prose: The author did a superb job with the prose. Objects and rooms were
described carefully and concisely, and in fact their descriptions often
changed to reflect the character's expanding knowledge. In the beginning,
words are simple and their meanings often archetypal: Rock, Enemies,
Others, etc. As the game progresses and the character continues to evolve,
the diction becomes more complex and the meanings more specific. This is
the type of prose effect that a graphical game could never achieve, since
it arises from the nature of the prose itself. That the game can achieve
this effect shows that it is very well written indeed. 

Plot: I didn't finish the game, so I'm not sure whether the mystery behind
the edifice is ever revealed. From what I saw, the game's plot was a
clever device to put the player into various moments in the history of
human development. Its central device is rather clearly lifted from 2001:A
Space Odyssey, but other than that it's an excellent frame story around
fascinating vignettes. 

Puzzles: I think the language puzzle was the best one I've seen in
interactive fiction this year. Certainly it was the best in the
competition -- it advanced the narrative, developed the character,
achieved a new kind of IF character interaction, and packed a powerful
Sense of Wonder. The other puzzles I encountered were also very good,
arising quite intuitively out of the game's situation and objects. My only
frustration was with the elements of the game which suggested I had more
to solve but never seemed to indicate what those things were. 

Technical:
	writing -- The Edifice's prose was quite error-free.
	coding -- Aside from the problems with the scoring system, the
coding was outstanding. Synonyms abounded, and almost all logical or
intuitively available actions were accounted for. 

OVERALL: A 9.2


THE FRENETIC FIVE VS. STURM UND DRANG by Anonymous

Here's my confession: I love superheroes. Ever since my first Marvel comic
at age six, I've always been a fan. Even now, well into my twenties and
possessing a Master's degree in English Lit, I still make sure I get my
monthly superhero fix. Yes, I know that violent revenge power-fantasies do
not great works of literature make. Yes, I love comics and I know that the
comics market is overcrowded, to the exclusion of other quality works,
with bulging musclemen in tight spandex. Yes, I know that the constant
deaths and resurrections of the superhero set strain plausibility to the
breaking point. (Though really, who cares about plausibility? We're
talking superheroes, here!) And yes, I'm disturbed by the almost
grotesquely idealized bodies (especially women's bodies) relentlessly
depicted in superhero comics. But what can I say? No matter how guilty it
gets, it's still a pleasure.

Consequently, I was anxious to start playing The Frenetic Five, and gave a
small cheer when Comp97's magic shuffler put it towards the front of the
line. I've always thought that the whole superhero genre would make a
great one for IF -- if it's a great power fantasy to watch some comicbook
character shoot fire out of his hands, how much greater to actually play
the character that does it! I quickly learned that FF is in fact a
superhero spoof (seems that very few people who think of themselves as
sophisticated can enter the superhero genre without wearing the
bulletproof bracelets of satire and ridicule), and a very funny one too,
in the tradition of Superguy. You play Improv, whose power is the
ingenious use of household objects, and other members of your team include
a boy who can see tomorrow's headlines, and a woman who can find lost
objects by clapping her hands (named, of course, The Clapper). The prose
maintains a consistently high quality, from the characters' dialogue with
one another to the snappy responses provided for some unlikely actions
("get house" returns "You can count the number of superheroes you know who
can lift an entire house on one finger: Forklift Man. (Come to think of
it, Forklift Man could lift an entire house with one finger.)") It's
hilarious.  

Sadly, there are some problems as well. For lack of a walkthrough, I was
unable to complete the game, and this frustrating experience revealed most
of the game's shortcomings. First of all, I was disappointed that my
supposed super-power was not implemented, as it would have been one of the
most natural (and coolest) hint systems ever devised. Anytime I needed
help with a puzzle, I could have just drawn on my "super Improv power" to
help me make the intuitive connections between those ordinary household
objects. Instead, the game left me to hope that I (as a player) developed
those MacGyver talents on my own. Not likely, I'm afraid. In addition, the
game did not meet the challenge of allowing me to use even this setup,
because it did not allow alternate solutions to puzzles by using objects
in unconventional ways. Very few alternate solutions were implemented, and
few are even anticipated with a snarky response. For example, when tied
up, I tried many unconventional ways to escape my bonds (cut them with my
shard of glass, put eyeglasses into sunlight to focus the light into
enough heat to burn the ropes, blow on the eyeglasses to put them in the
right place, bite the ropes, wrap duct tape on my fingers to get more than
one object at a time, etc.) Each attempt was met with one of two (equally
lame) responses: either very clumsy non-recognition of the verb ("You
can't see any bite here.") or "That's not really possible in your current
state." I got the impression that the author hadn't really thought about
all the clever things that could be done with the inventory objects
provided, just the *one* clever thing that would solve each puzzle.
Finally, there were a number of just plain bugs in the game, which always
decreases the fun factor. The Frenetic Five has an excellent premise and,
on the level of prose, an excellent execution. However, interface design
and implementation are too important to be treated the way this game
treats them, and it suffers for it. I'm still waiting for the game that
does superheroes just right.

Prose: As mentioned above, the prose was excellent throughout all of the
game that I saw. The dialogue and characterization for each member of the
team was sharp and funny, and room descriptions (which adapted somewhat to
the character's mental state) were both concise and vivid. Even some of
the most everyday IF responses were considerably enlivened by the
superhero treatment -- for example, saying "down" in a locale where that
direction is not available evokes the response "Sadly, you're not equipped
with the ability to tunnel through solid ground."

Plot: Since I wasn't able to complete the game, I can only report on as
much of the plot as I saw, which was basically pretty middle-of-the-road
superhero cliche. Since this was a spoof, of course, cliches were a good
thing, and many of the touches (like having to take the bus to the
supervillains' hideout) were quite funny. The landscape, the premise
(SuperTemps, whose logo is a muscled forearm holding a timesheet), and the
spoofing of venerable superhero tropes (a mission interrupts relaxation,
the villains explain their nefarious scheme to the bound heroes, etc.)
were all very cleverly done. There were some coincidences which strained
even the generous boundaries of satire, but I'll discuss those below. 

Puzzles: In fact, I'll just discuss them right here. The puzzles were a
weaker part of this game. I found basically two types of puzzles in the
game. One group was the puzzle based on extremely contrived circumstances
-- for example, the door to the villains' hideout uses a
"guess-the-big-word" lock, and what do you know, I happen to have someone
on my team whose superpower is guessing big words! Lucky me! The other
type of puzzle was supposed to have drawn on my character's superpower,
the ingenious use of household objects. However, since this power wasn't
implemented (as a hint system) within the game, I was left to think of
these ingenious uses by myself, the problems of which have already been
discussed above.

Technical:
     writing -- I found no errors in grammar or spelling in this game.
     coding -- I think the main failure of the coding was the one I've
already discussed: the lack of depth in coding alternative uses for
inventory items. When a game's main character is someone whose primary
trait is the ingenious use of objects, it is incumbent on that game to
provide specific code for as many of those ingenious uses as possible.
Frenetic Five fell well short in this regard. The game also had a few
regular bugs, including the most egregious occurrence of the typical TADS
disambiguation bug I've ever seen -- when I and my team members were tied
up, and I tried to do something with the ropes, I was asked "Which ropes
do you mean, the ropes, the ropes, the ropes, the ropes, or the ropes?"

OVERALL: A 7.2


Paul O'Brian                                      obrian@ucsu.colorado.edu
"I think it's important to remember that no one falls into a simple set of
labels. Even more important is to learn from your mistakes, and to fight
for the positive choice."                            -- Lindsey Buckingham



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Subject: COMP 97: My reviews, part 3 -- LONG!
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If you don't want to download these postings, but still want to read the
reviews, they are posted on my IF web page at
http://ucsu.colorado.edu/~obrian/IF.htm. Note also that although my scores
go out to the first decimal place for a little greater precision, I
naturally rounded off when I submitted them for the contest.

This posting contains reviews for the following games:

Friday Afternoon
Glowgrass
A Good Breakfast
Leaves
The Lost Spellmaker

FRIDAY AFTERNOON by Mischa Schweitzer

You work in a cubicle. When the printer breaks, you're called upon to fix
it. You write programs and then write the documentation for them. But
you're *not* a nerd! This is the premise behind Friday Afternoon
(hereafter called Friday), Mischa Schweitzer's game set in corporate
cubicle culture. Friday isn't Dilbert by any stretch of the imagination --
it's less a spoof on that culture than it is a puzzle-solving game using
the cubicled workspace as its backdrop. It starts with a relatively simple
goal (finish the items on your to-do list), throws in a few puzzles to
complicate things, and goes from there. These puzzles are well-done --
they don't serve to advance the plot very much (since there is no plot to
speak of), but they feel natural to the setting, and their solutions are
usually sensible and intuitive. In fact, several puzzles can be solved by
relatively mundane actions, but the feeling of putting together the logic
to find the *right* mundane action is quite satisfying.

A less pleasant part of Friday is its construction of yet another annoying
player character. This character's main motivation seems to be a desire to
prove the fact that he (see below) is not a nerd, by way of going on a
date. Now, maybe many people do struggle with this kind of identity
crisis, but for the narrative's purposes it makes the main character seem
shallow and unappealing. The character's gender is never specified by the
game, but one section in particular shows that the character is very
probably a male, and very definitely a sexist. The unfortunate thing about
this is that none of it is really necessary. The sexism demonstrated by
the calendar puzzle could just as easily have been pushed off onto other
characters without touching the main character. The date doesn't have to
prove that the character isn't a nerd -- it could just be a date, like
regular people go on without having to prove something to themselves. As
it is, Friday contributes to some rather unattractive stereotypes about
the type of person who works in a cubicle. 

Of course, this is not to say that the game sets out to make a grand point
-- I'm quite sure that it doesn't. According to the author, the game
started out as a light satire of his own office. I have no doubt that this
early version was a great success, since the core of the game is
entertaining and clever. For the competition version, he added a couple of
puzzles, and removed all the inside jokes and Dutch words. The result is
definitely generic enough to feel like it applies across the board. I work
in a financial aid office as a counselor, but several of the puzzles still
felt like they could have happened to me. Overall, Friday Afternoon is an
enjoyable game and a nice utilization of an underused subgenre in IF.
(What happens when the protagonists of college games graduate? They become
the protagonists of office games!) It's flawed by some problems with the
player character, but is aided by fine characters, very good puzzles, and
solid implementation. 

Prose: The prose in Friday definitely has an odd feel to it, as if
something is just a bit off. I attribute this to the fact that the author
is not a native English speaker -- the awkwardness is probably due to a
very slight discomfiture with the language. Of course, this is not to say
that the prose is bad. It usually does its job quite well, conveying humor
and frustration effectively. There's just a slight unnatural feeling to
it. 

Plot: There isn't much of a plot in Friday. It's basically yet another
variation on the "check items off of a list" flavor of IF. Of course, the
great thing about Friday is that by placing the to-do list in an office
setting, the game gains a very realistic feeling. I really do deal with
situations every day where I have a list of things that need to be
completed before I can leave work, and so the logic of a game written
around such a list feels quite genuine. This device allows the game to
escape the aura of contrivance that mars other "recipe" games. 

Puzzles: The best feature of Friday is definitely its puzzles. They fit so
seamlessly into the setting that I'd be willing to bet that the author has
faced several of them in real life. Puzzles like repairing the glasses
require several steps, wherein each step is logical and natural but also
requires a bit of resourcefulness. Solving puzzles like these provides a
feeling of accomplishment that no simple mechanical or lock-and-key puzzle
can give. 

Technical:
	writing -- There was a slight flavor of awkwardness to the
writing, but to the author's credit it didn't often manifest itself in
outright errors. 
	coding -- I found no bugs in Friday.

OVERALL: A 7.7 


GLOWGRASS by Nate Cull

Glowgrass is a fine piece of interactive science fiction in the tradition
of Planetfall. Once again, you play a character whose ship has failed,
touching down amid the well-preserved ruins of an ancient civilization.
You explore these ruins, piecing together strange technology and small
clues which lead you to the discovery of how a deadly plague wiped out the
race which once dominated the planet. Of course, there are differences
along with the similarities. Rather than an Ensign Seventh Class, you play
a "xenohistorian", and the ruins you are exploring belong to the Ancients,
who are apparently (it's a little unclear) not a separate race from your
own, but rather your people's ancestors. Also, Glowgrass is a much more
serious game, with none of the silliness and whimsy of Planetfall.
Finally, it is, as befits a competition game, much shorter, and therefore
its ending is rather unsatisfying, leaving off just when it feels like the
real game should begin. I won't give away anything about this ending, but
it pulls a little surprise which casts the assumptions of the rest of the
game into doubt. I'm hopeful that Glowgrass is a preview of a longer
adventure, so that the secret revealed at the ending can be explained and
explored to its full extent. 

Another important way in which Glowgrass distinguishes itself from
Planetfall is that its postapocalyptic exploration is clearly
focused on our own world. Various clues scattered throughout the game make
it clear that the player character is exploring the ruins of old Earth.
However, the old Earth explored by the character is not our present-day
world, but rather a speculative extrapolation of a future 60 or so years
>from now. Thus Glowgrass becomes a small puzzle-box of possible futures,
one fitting inside the other, and each one interesting in its own way.
Cull does a very nice job of extrapolating technologies, both for the
"Ancient" future and the far future, using small touches to demonstrate
the character's far- future understanding colliding with a researched past
(which is our future.) If my description is confusing, it's only because
I'm not doing as good a job as Cull does of making the overlapping eras
perfectly clear.

Glowgrass also concerns itself with an imagination of virtual reality. The
number of IF games which involve some type of VR or simulated reality
(Delusions, AMFV, Mind Electric, etc.) leads me to believe that our medium
is particularly suited to exploring the possibilities of VR. It makes
sense, considering that IF partakes of some element of simulation, that it
demonstrates a particular facility for making itself a simulation of a
simulation. Glowgrass pushes the envelope a bit by making its only NPC a
virtual reality construct, thus neatly avoiding the problems of sentience,
competence, and individual action -- the character can't go anywhere or do
much of anything except talk, and her knowledge is limited by her
programming: a perfect IF character. Glowgrass is a well-written game with
a pleasantly creepy aura, a pleasurable way to spend a couple of hours and
hopefully a prelude to more quality work.

Prose: The prose in Glowgrass was quite effective. In particular, the
author made good use of the opportunities afforded by the player's first
entry into a particular location. For example, in one part of the game you
find an "Ancient" skycar, and the game effectively capitalizes on the
natural first reaction to finding such a vehicle: "Looking at the skycar,
you feel a surge of hope. Despite the vehicle's age, it seems intact.
Maybe, if you could somehow get it to work..." However, having evoked and
emphasized that reaction, the game quickly quashes it: "The thought dies
as quickly as it came. Stupid idea. You have no idea how to fly the thing,
and who knows what parts are missing?" Prose techniques like his build a
very convincing player character, and help the game to succeed in creating
an immersive fictional experience.  

Plot: I've covered the basics of the plot above, so I'll just use this
space to say that the plot is not what it seems, and that I found the
ending rather frustrating. In the last few sentences of the game, the
author rearranges and twists your perceptions of the setting and the
characters, but just as the secret is unfolding, the game ends. I'm
hopeful that this game will one day serve as a prologue to a more thorough
exploration of Glowgrass' absorbing world. In short: I want more!

Puzzles: According to the author, Glowgrass is "a story, not a puzzle
game," so the puzzles are intended to serve as natural propulsion for the
storyline. In the main, they work quite well in this regard. Really the
only area where I had trouble was in figuring out a piece of technology
whose description was (I felt) a little too vague to suggest the use
intended by the author. Once I consulted the walkthrough and found my way
past this obstacle, the game flowed quite smoothly. Thus, if that part of
the game (which I consider more a faltering of the prose than a puzzle)
were polished a bit, Glowgrass' narrative flow would be very well served
indeed by its puzzles.

Technical:
     writing -- I found no mechanical errors in Glowgrass.
     coding -- The game's coding was quite well done, with some very nice
touches (I appreciated a response to "Who am I?"). [SPOILERS AHEAD] There
were only a few areas where the illusion broke down a bit too far, the
main one being the "sculpture" which you can "SIT" on but not "ENTER".

OVERALL: A 9.4


A GOOD BREAKFAST by Stuart Adair

This one was a tough decision. It's a good game in many ways, but the
version initially submitted for the competition has a serious bug which
makes it unwinnable. The author submitted a fixed version in November,
more than a month after the contest began, and moderator Kevin Wilson left
it up to each judge to decide how to assign ratings in light of the
situation. It's a hard choice -- obviously the author worked hard on the
program, so perhaps it's fair to allow him to correct such a gross mistake
so that the entire game would be available for review. On the other hand,
the contest did have a deadline, so is it fair to allow authors to evade
that deadline, especially if the decision is made based on the enormity of
the flaw in the original submitted game? As I understand it, the bug was
not due to any error on Kevin's part, but rather to authorial oversight.
Can it be ignored? I gave it some serious thought, and my decision was:
no. The deadline is part of the challenge: you must submit the best
current version of your game as of the deadline, and the judges will make
their decisions based on the version you submit on that day. "The best
current version" means completed, proofed, and playtested (and played
through at least once to make sure it's winnable, thank you.) Wearing the
Claw was thoroughly tested and debugged last year before I entered it, and
even then the competition release had a major problem which I would dearly
love to have fixed. But I didn't even ask, because it was after the
deadline, and I felt that it would have been cheating to ask that a fixed
version of my game be judged when everyone else's had to stand on its own
merits as submitted. Consequently, I've decided to rate A Good Breakfast
(hereafter called AGB) in the version that I downloaded, right along with
all the other games, on October 9.

Even in the broken version, there's a lot I liked about this game. The bug
simply stops forward progress about 2/3 of the way through the game, so I
did see a majority of it before being forced to quit. Basically, the
premise of AGB is based around a simple, long time limit. You've just
awoken, famished, after a long night of drunken revelry. You must comb
through your demolished house and put together, as the game's title
suggests, a good breakfast. Eventually, if you don't eat, you die. Now, a
great deal of logic gets sacrificed along the way to this goal. Elements
occur in the plot which are highly contrived and very obviously only there
to drive the narrative. However, the situation is delivered with a great
deal of panache, and some interesting side roads to explore on the way to
finding that sought-after bowl of cereal. In addition, there are a couple
of good puzzles to be found in the game.

Interestingly, aside from the serious, game-killing bug, the code wasn't
all that buggy. There was a television that wasn't implemented properly,
but there was also a much more complicated computer and robot which were
bug-free (as far as I could tell, anyway). The author seems to have some
proficiency in Inform, so I'm betting that the game didn't go through much
beta testing. Once it does, it will be an enjoyable way to spend a couple
of hours.

Prose: The prose is one of the better features of this game. It's
generally judiciously chosen, and often quite funny. AGB memorably
captures the feeling of waking up in one's house after a wild party has
occurred there, from the TV set festooned with silly string to the strange
inability to find one's clothes. Suzy the robot is sufficiently endearing,
and the computer exaggerated to the right point for laughs. The game's
prose has a distinctly British flavor (more so than many other games
submitted by UK residents) which also adds to its charm. 

Plot: AGB uses the typical, simple adventure plot of constructing a
desired object from various widely scattered parts. The post-party setting
provides just barely enough plausibility for this scattering, and adds a
touch of absurdity that makes questions of plausibility seem less
important anyway. Of course, I didn't reach the end of the game, so I
can't report on the plot in its entirety, but from what I saw, the plot
(like those of many competition games) was very simple and served its
purpose more than adequately.

Puzzles: On the whole, the game does a very nice job of blending its
puzzles with the main narrative flow, allowing them to naturally arise
>from the setting and situation. Examples of this are the dirty bowl and
the high shelf. Other puzzles, like Suzy's game of "onny-offy", are more
arbitrary, but still quite forgivable. Then there are puzzles which seem
quite gratuitous, adding a layer of pure contrivance to the plot, and
which probably would have been better left out or redesigned (I'm thinking
here of the milk puzzle). On balance, the majority of the game's puzzles
are well-designed and competently implemented.

Technical:
     writing -- I found no technical errors in the writing.
     coding -- As I mentioned above, the game's major downfall is that it
has a bug so serious that it prevents players from being able to progress
past about 2/3 of the way through the game. The author has obviously
already caught this bug, and so it shouldn't be a problem in future
versions of AGB. Beyond that, there are definitely some bugs in the game,
but in proportion to the game's size they are few in number. 

OVERALL: A 5.3


LEAVES by Mikko Vuorinen

You might think that a game called "Leaves" would have something to do
with leaves. You'd be wrong. The game's actual theme is escape: you, as
the main character, must escape from a heavily guarded complex. Who are
you? It's not clear. Where are you? It's not clear. Why are you there?
It's not clear. Why do you want to escape? It's not clear. What is clear
is that Leaves isn't much concerned with having a story, but rather with
setting up a sequence of linear, one-solution puzzles, the completion of
which leads to a full score but not much narrative satisfaction.

Now, by the author's own admission, he came up with most of this stuff
when he was fourteen, so the immaturity of the work is fairly
understandable. In addition, Leaves is better than the only other ALAN
game I've played, Greg Ewing's "Don't Be Late" from last year's
competition (though this may be due more to improvements in ALAN rather
than any particular ingenuity on the part of the author of Leaves).
Finally, since the author is Finnish, it may be that English isn't his
first language, which would help to explain the middling quality of the
writing. However, all these considerations aside, the fact remains that
this is an immature piece. There's no story, the writing is mediocre, and
several of the puzzles are based on a crude, adolescent fascination with
sexuality.

On the positive side, Leaves was coded well. I found no bugs in the code,
and although many synonyms were unusable (including an inability to
substitute an adjective for a noun, though that may be the language's
design rather than the author's failing) many surprising responses
actually were anticipated. I'm hopeful that, since ten years have passed
since Vuorinen came up with the design for Leaves, his abilities have
grown. It would be wonderful to see him create the first really
high-quality adventure in ALAN, since he clearly knows the language well
enough to create a bug-free game.

Prose: There's nothing particularly wrong with the prose in Leaves.
Overall, it's really quite serviceable. Of course, there's nothing
particularly wonderful about it either. Really, the main thing that the
prose fails to do is to give a stronger sense of story. Room and object
descriptions in IF can be used to create a marvelously vivid narrative
which slowly accretes as the story is explored. The prose in Leaves
doesn't do this. Rather, it provides brief, functional descriptions which
never transcend their basic, practical level. 

Plot: Well, there isn't much of a plot to speak of in Leaves. You are
imprisoned for some reason, and must escape. Outside of your prison is a
forest, inhabited by one poorly drawn character, a cow, and a big rock.
Past this, there's the obligatory underground maze, strewn with a couple
of artifacts which the game does not bother to attempt explaining. This is
less a plot than a string of dimly conceived settings, each serving as
nothing more than a stepping- stone to the next. 

Puzzles: The puzzles in Leaves range from the nonsensical (directions
which can't be taken, no explanation given) to the simple (cut wires with
a wire-cutter.) For the nonsensical ones, there's nothing to do but try
the limited number of options at hand; pretty soon you'll hit on the right
one. For the simple ones, the answer is pretty much the same, except fewer
alternatives need be tried. 

Technical:
     writing -- Impressively, I found no grammatical or spelling errors in
this game. The same can't be said for many competition games penned by
native English speakers.     
     coding -- The game was also bug-free. It would be wonderful to see a
well-designed game coded with this much care.

OVERALL: A 5.6


THE LOST SPELLMAKER by Neil James Brown

It's not often that you see a thread from one of the newsgroups translate
so directly into an actual piece of IF, but that's what's happened with
The Lost Spellmaker. This summer, the discussion raged (and I do think
that's a fair characterization) in rgif about "Gay characters in IF." Some
people held that if a piece of IF were to feature a gay character, that
piece would need to have homosexuality as its primary concern. Others,
including Neil James Brown, contended that a character's sexual
orientation can function simply as a vector to deepen characterization, of
no more central concern to the game's theme than her gender, her height,
or what food she likes to eat. The Lost Spellmaker proves Brown's point
quite handily. 

The game's protagonist is Mattie, a dwarf Secret Service agent dispatched
to discover the whereabouts of Drew Tungshinach, last in a long line of
local spellmakers who have disappeared mysteriously. The fact that Mattie
is both a dwarf and a Secret Service agent is an indication of the clever
world that Brown has created, which consists of equal parts Ian Fleming
and Brothers Grimm. The fact that Mattie loves candy comes in handy in a
couple of puzzles, and helps explain why she lives in the town Sweet Shop.
And finally, the fact that Mattie is a lesbian has a bearing on the love-
interest subplot with the local librarian. Yet none of these incidental
facts impinge on the game's central concern, the rescue of its eponymous
Lost Spellmaker. Instead, they enrich our understanding of the characters,
for which purpose Mattie's status as a lesbian is no more or less
important than, for example, her status as a dwarf.

I don't know whether Brown wrote this game to prove his point, but it
certainly does. It's also a fun piece of IF apart from any political or
identity considerations. The quest for Drew brings Mattie in contact with
a number of amusing characters, and the milieu is small enough to make
most of the puzzles fairly easy. Of course, I can't deny that I personally
find it quite refreshing to play a game where heterosexuality isn't the
implied norm, but The Lost Spellmaker has more than that to recommend it.
It's a snappy quest in a creatively conceived world, a pleasant way to
spend a couple of hours.

Prose: The prose in The Lost Spellmaker never jarred me out of the story,
and I often quite enjoyed reading it. The village wasn't particularly
vividly rendered, but the characters often were, and some of the game's
lighter touches were hilarious. Dialogue was, as a rule, quite
well-written, especially the Reverend's constant malapropisms, which made
me laugh out loud over and over, even when seeing them for the second and
third times.

Plot: Considering the weird, mutant setting Brown has achieved by breeding
traditional fantasy elements (magic, dwarves, talking animals) with James
Bond derivations (the Secret Service, a one-letter superior, his
secretary "Mr. Cashpound"), the plot walks a fine line, and does it well.
The plot is not simply a fantasy, though it does involve using magic to
halt the decline of magic, and manipulating fantasy characters to solve
puzzles. Nor was it simply espionage, though it did involve a heroic spy
facing off against the obligatory Femme Fatale. Instead, it swerved back
and forth between the two, making for a merry ride. 

Puzzles: I only had to consult the walkthrough one time, for a puzzle
which was logical, but could have used an alternate solution. The puzzles
weren't the focus of the story, so they served the basic purpose of small
goals to help advance the plot. In this role, they worked admirably well.
There were no particularly witty or clever puzzles, but by the same token
there were no unfair or "guess-the-verb" puzzles either. 

Technical:
     writing -- I only noticed one proofing error in the game. The vast
majority of the prose was competently and correctly written. 
    coding -- There were a few bugs in the game, one of which may be more
of a library issue than a lack of attention on the part of the author.
Also, there were a few places where a response beyond the default would
have been appreciated. Overall, the code was relatively bug free. Kudos
must go here to the title page, which employed a really nifty z-machine
special effect. 

OVERALL: A 9.1


Paul O'Brian                                      obrian@ucsu.colorado.edu
"I think it's important to remember that no one falls into a simple set of
labels. Even more important is to learn from your mistakes, and to fight
for the positive choice."                            -- Lindsey Buckingham



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Subject: COMP 97: My reviews, part 4 -- LONG!
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If you don't want to download these postings, but still want to read the
reviews, they are posted on my IF web page at
http://ucsu.colorado.edu/~obrian/IF.htm. Note also that although my scores
go out to the first decimal place for a little greater precision, I
naturally rounded off when I submitted them for the contest.

This posting contains reviews for the following games:

Madame L'Estrange and the Troubled Spirit
A New Day
The Obscene Quest of Dr. Aardvarkbarf
Phred Phontious and the Quest for Pizza
Pintown

MADAME L'ESTRANGE AND THE TROUBLED SPIRIT by Ian Ball and Marcus Young

Madame L'Estrange and the Troubled Spirit (hereafter called MmeLTS) is a
frustrating game, because it builds such a slipshod house upon a very
promising foundation. The game is riddled with what I would guess are at
least a hundred grammar and spelling errors. It flipflops seemingly at
random between past and present tense. It can't seem to decide whether to
address the player in the second or third person. It consistently causes a
fatal crash in at least one interpreter (WinFrotz). All this would be easy
to evaluate as simply the product of incompetent authors if it didn't take
place in a game that starts with an interesting premise, executes a number
of great interface decisions, and manages to unroll a complicated mystery
plot along the way. As it is, MmeLTS is a great mess that could've been a
contender if only it had been written with more care.

One area in which the game does succeed is that of the innovations
introduced by its authors, especially in the area of navigation: MmeLTS
combines the direction-based locomotion of traditional IF with the more
intuitive "go to location x" type of travel used in games like Joe Mason's
"In The End." The title character (a "spiritualist detective" who is also
the player character) can travel to various locations around Sydney with
the use of the "travel to" or "go to" verb. However, once she has arrived
at a particular location she uses direction-based navigation to walk from
place to place (or room to room, as the case may be.) Moreover, the
authors often write direction responses as a simple set of actions
performed by the title character rather than implementing entire rooms
which serve no purpose. These methods of navigation combine the best of
both worlds, providing a broad brush for cross-city or cross-country
travel but not taking away the finer granularity available to the
direction-based system. A related innovation concerns Madame L'Estrange's
notebook, in which the game automagically tallies the names of important
people and places which come up in her investigations. This notebook
(similar to the "concept inventory" used in some graphical IF) provides a
handy template for travel and inquiry, and would be welcome inside any
game, especially those involving a detective. 

One other point: MmeLTS takes the character all over Sydney, and in doing
so provides an element of education and travel narrative along with its
detective story. The medium's investigations take her from Centennial Park
to the Sydney Harbour Bridge to Taronga Zoo to the University of New South
Wales. Locations are often well-described, and after playing the game for
two hours I felt more knowledgeable about Sydney than when I started (I
hope the game's locations weren't fictional!) As an American whose
knowledge of Australia is mostly limited to "Mad Max" movies, I can attest
that the travel aspect of the game is a lot of fun. 

Prose: It's not that the game's prose was terrible of itself. The game is
quite verbose, outputting screenfuls of text as a matter of course, and
much of this text is effective and worthwhile. As I mentioned, many of the
descriptions worked quite well, and the game does manage to clearly
elucidate its plot as events happen. It's just that the mechanics of the
prose are *so* bad (see Technical/writing). When technical problems are so
pervasive, they can't help but have a tremendous negative impact on the
quality of the prose. 

Plot: The game's plot is actually quite interesting. [SLIGHT SPOILERS
AHEAD] Mme. L'Estrange is presented with two apparently unrelated
mysteries: strange wildlife deaths ascribed to a mysterious beast loose in
Centennial Park, and the apparent suicide of a marine biology worker. As
one might expect, these two situations eventually turn out to be linked. I
wasn't able to finish the game in two hours (in fact, I only scored five
points out of 65 in that time, which makes me wonder just how much of the
game I haven't yet seen), but what I saw makes it clear that the game is
well-plotted. I was interested in seeing its mysteries unfold.

Puzzles: I didn't really find many puzzles as such -- the game is mainly
focused on exploration. Those puzzles which I did find were quite soluble
as long as enough exploring had been done. What took up most of my time
was visiting locations, talking to characters, and "tuning in" to the
spirit world to commune with the spirits of the dead or learn more about a
place's spiritual aura. This kept me busy enough that I didn't really miss
the lack of puzzles. 

Technical:
     writing -- The mechanics of the writing are just horrible. Sentences
constantly lack periods or initial capital letters. Words are constantly
misspelled. Typos are everywhere. The tense shifts back and forth at
random between past and present; either one would have been workable and
interesting, but the game seems unable to make up its mind. A similar
phenomenon occurs with the voice, which vacillates between second and
third person address. This avalanche of mechanical problems cripples what
could have been an excellent game.
     coding -- The jury is still out on how well the game is coded. When I
was using WinFrotz to play the game, I encountered Fatal errors
repeatedly, but I'm not sure whether they were the fault of the designer
or of the interpreter. JZIP presented the game with no problem, but again
that could be because the interpreter was ignoring an illegal condition.
Several aspects of the coding, such as Madame L's notebook, were quite
nifty (unless that's what was causing the problem with WinFrotz crashing),
and the implementation was solid overall.

OVERALL: A 7.1


A NEW DAY by Jonathan Fry

A New Day is an ambitious piece of work which attempts to examine IF
metalevels in a fairly original way. Its author bills it as his first real
work of interactive fiction (he dismisses "Stargazer", his entry in last
year's competition, as a kind of instructional prelude to his actual IF
writing career); in Fry's words, New Day is the first thing that is "for
better or worse, truly a Jonathan Fry game." More often than not, it's
better. Although the game certainly packs some frustration and confusion
(the unwelcome kind, not the pleasurable kind), it also provides some
fresh surprises and a thought-provoking premise. 

I found the plot a little difficult to follow, but from what I could piece
together, the game opens shortly after its author has died (apparently
electrocuted by his laptop), leaving his IF work in progress an incomplete
shambles and ruining his plans to enter the competition. In addition,
something else has emerged on which the author hasn't planned: an entity
who calls himself Winston. Winston claims to have been created as a part
of the game, but to have gained sentience all on his own, along with some
measure of control over the game's virtual setting. He further contends
that he himself has entered the game in the competition so that you (the
player) could help him investigate the author's death. Thus in the first
few moves of the game we already have the real author (who appears in the
acknowledgments section), a fictional representation of the real author,
the game, the game's characteristic representation of itself (or an aspect
of itself), the player, the player's murky fictional avatar within the
game (just what is the interface simulating?), etc. Things get even more
complicated from there. 

Clearly, A New Day wants to position itself in the avant-garde of IF and
explore fictional levels in the manner of experimental modern fiction.
This is certainly a worthwhile project (and one that has been touched upon
by many games including A Mind Forever Voyaging, Piece of Mind, and
Bureaucracy), and New Day manages to break some intriguing ground along
the way. However, the game is by no means an unqualified success. The
author overuses one off-the-wall prose technique in one section of the
game, a little of which would have gone a long way. Also, I found the
puzzles often to be counterintuitive and confusing. Finally, the game
gives the impression of having bitten off a bit more than it can chew. I
found myself wondering if the author had carefully thought through all the
semantics and implications of the levels he imagines -- by the end it all
seems a bit of a muddle. Still, A New Day has some shining moments, and
the author is right to think that it's a significant step up from
"Stargazer." I look forward to the continued maturation of Jonathan Fry's
artistic voice. 

Prose: The prose is smooth in some areas, faltering in others. On occasion
the author still suffers from the awkward phrasing which plagued him in
"Stargazer," but it's clear that a significant improvement has been made.
The Athens section does a nice job of communicating the feel of the city
(or so it seemed to me, but then I've never been to Athens), and other
parts of the game neatly sidestep the necessity for strong prose by
deliberately excluding description. [SPOILERS AHEAD] In addition, the
author pulls a wild prose stunt about 2/3 of the way through the game,
breaking down the most basic conventions of words and sentences in order
to simulate a software crash. This works wonderfully at first; Fry uses an
well-judged combination of sense and nonsense to convey the barest notion
of setting. However, it becomes pretty tiresome after a while (and the
nature of the puzzles dictated that I would be seeing a lot of that area).
Fry finds the right balance of gibberish with text for his experiment, but
misses the mark in measuring how much is too much in the larger context of
the game. 

Plot: I've recounted much of the plot above, so I'll just say here that I
found it to be one of the most complicated, but also one of the most
predictable, of the competition games I've played so far. The levels of
representation certainly do get entangled (perhaps moreso than the author
bargained for), [SPOILERS AHEAD] but some elements, such as the
"revelation" that Winston was the murderer and the final, climactic scene
inside the guts of the computer, were strictly pro forma. The combination
makes the game feel rather more gimmicky than it should, as if the
stylistic devices haven't been considered beyond their immediate surprise
value.

Puzzles: [SPOILERS] I found A New Day's puzzles to be rather difficult and
counterintuitive on the whole. The last puzzle was especially tough, but
more because I wasn't clear on exactly how the setup of wires and sockets
and etc. was arranged. I'm inclined to think that this is more a fault of
the prose than necessarily a shortcoming in the puzzle itself -- however,
in its present form the unclear prose made a difficult puzzle quite
impenetrable for me. I also found many of the puzzles to be rather
gratuitous, working against rather than with the flow of the story.
Examples that come to mind are the tourist's handbag and the password in
the garbled section.

Technical:
     writing -- The writing was fine on a technical level.
     coding -- The game included some nice coding touches, including an
exits list on the status line which was context-sensitive depending on
what section the game found itself in. Also, Winston was quite thoroughly
programmed, which helped to flesh out his character and deepen his
effectiveness. Overall, Fry's coding job was admirable. 

OVERALL: a 7.7


THE OBSCENE QUEST OF DR. AARDVARKBARF by Gary Roggin

Oddly enough, due to the vagaries of Comp97 I played The Obscene Quest of
Dr. Aardvarkbarf (hereafter called OQDA) immediately after playing its
direct competitor in the silly name wars, Phred Phontious and the Quest
for Pizza. Consequently, my expectations of OQDA were probably distinctly
affected by that recent experience. I was expecting another lackluster
game where goofy names and so-so jokes were supposed to make up for
careless writing, buggy programming, and weak design. Luckily, I was
pleasantly surprised. OQDA is a fairly enjoyable college game (with a
minor time travel motif) which kept me pretty entertained for the two
hours I played it. Of course, this is not to say that the game doesn't
have its problems. It certainly does: there are many spelling and grammar
errors (though not as many as in Phred) and some bugs are definitely still
in the game (again, my recent experience with Phred made these seem
relatively few as well.) Also, there are several elements about OQDA's
narrative strategies that I found rather grating -- more on this later.
Still, with some polishing this game could be an enjoyable vignette.

One interesting thing about OQDA is that not every object in its world
serves a purpose within the game. There are locked doors that never need
(or even can) be opened. There are many objects that serve no specific
purpose. In fact, as far as I can tell, there are a number of puzzles that
never need to be solved in order to complete the game. This strategy has
its weaknesses: the danger of the red herring count exceeding the
tolerable limit is quite high, and solving puzzles is less satisfying when
you realize that your brainwork has achieved no appreciable results.
Still, on balance, I liked the feeling of openness and mystique that
resulted from all these frills in the game universe. That, along with the
author's willingness to implement multiple puzzle solutions and the fact
that OQDA is apparently the first chapter of an ongoing work, gave me a
similar feeling to that which I had when I first played Zork: the
experience of being in a mysterious world which is simultaneously a fun
game. 

However, there were several elements of the game world which I could have
done without. One of these is the way that OQDA constructs its player
character. You are told from the beginning that you work in your present
job because you were expelled from school during your senior year, due to
an "incident involving a freshman (of the opposite gender), a stolen time
machine and a bottle of cheap champagne." The opening text makes clear
that you mourn your lost career hopes. Fine. After that, though, almost
every single room in the campus Physics building has some kind of remark
about how you spend your days weeping and crying. Example: upon examining
a couch, "You have spent many an afternoon lying on this couch and weeping
into the pillows, wondering what happened to your life. It's very cozy."
After a while of this, I started to wonder why I cared about this
miserable loser who seemed physically incapable of getting on with life. I
stopped wanting to play the character, because my sympathy and
identification were eroded by a stream of self-pitying text. Infidel plays
a similar trick with an unsympathetic player character, but while Infidel
at least gives you the pleasure of playing an outright villain, OQDA just
provides the less thrilling experience of playing a pathetic whiner. 

Prose: As I just mentioned, the prose sometimes goes much too far in
repeating the same thematic point in object after object. Another example
of this is the game's treatment of the Anthropology building. There are
eight locations around the perimeter of the building; six of these use the
word "massive", "looms", or "towers", or some combination of these three.
We get the point. On the plus side, the humor in the writing often works
well, and some of the silly points within the game were really quite
funny. [JOKE SPOILERS AHEAD] I especially enjoyed some of the professors'
names, like French professor Dr. Eaubooboo, or Philosophy teacher Dr.
Jobless -- "pronounced (zhahb- LAY)."

Plot: Well, it's hard to say too much about the plot at this point, since
the game makes clear that it is only the first chapter of an ongoing saga
(the second chapter is apparently scheduled to be delivered for the '98
competition). So far as it goes, OQDA's plot rests on a very realistic
device exaggerated to the point of hilarity. Your boss, Temporal Physics
professor Dr. Bignose, has asked you to deliver an envelope to a box on
his colleague's desk. He even gives you a key to the appropriate building.
However, in typical absent-minded professorial fashion, he isn't quite
sure where he left the envelope, nor can he verify that his colleague's
office is where he thinks it is, or even if that key really unlocks the
building it's supposed to (predictably, it doesn't). Unsurprisingly, this
apparently simple errand turns into a wide-ranging exploration of a very
strange campus. It seems to be only a prelude, but it works well. 

Puzzles: One great thing about the puzzles in OQDA is that a number of
them are solvable with more than one method. Such a capability always
takes extra effort on an author's part, and it does not go unappreciated.
The game has its fair complement of locked doors and their corresponding
keys, and there are a number of more inventive puzzles as well. The only
problem I really found with the puzzles is that a few of them seemed to be
based on wanton destruction for no satisfying reason. There's nothing
anywhere in the prose to indicate that the character is evil (only
pathetic and possessed of rather bad judgment), so puzzles which require
highly destructive actions went against the grain for me. 

Technical:
     writing -- There are a goodly number of technical problems in the
game's writing, including misspellings, typos, awkward sentences, and
mangled grammar. 
     coding -- A number of bugs also exist within the game. The majority
of these are puzzles which can be solved over and over, and objects which
do not behave consistently when their state is changed. 

OVERALL: a 6.9


PHRED PHONTIOUS AND THE QUEST FOR PIZZA by Michael Zey

Before I begin, let me make it clear that I'm a fan of silly, absurd
humor. I'm a loyal Monty Python watcher. I think The Jerk and Pee-Wee's
Big Adventure are two of the best movies ever made. I gave last year's
competition entry Phlegm an 8.5 because it cracked me up. Consequently, I
had high hopes for any game that would title itself Phred Phontious and
the Quest for Pizza (hereafter called PPQP). However, I was disappointed.
PPQP certainly wants to be a funny game, and it does have some genuinely
hilarious moments. Unfortunately, much of the game is buggy, error-laden,
and tedious, and nothing saps my sense of humor more quickly and
completely than those three things. In addition, the game seems to have
caught the same disease from which Laura Knauth's Travels in the Land of
Erden suffers (perhaps I'll start calling it Erdenitis): a great deal of
swelling and very little focus. The *walkthrough* goes on for 17 screens.
This isn't a two hour game, folks (see my review of Erden for further
comments on this.) Even setting aside the game's size, it has both surface
problems (lots of grammar and spelling errors, a number of serious bugs)
and deeper ones (badly designed puzzles.)

There are some things that PPQP does right. For one thing, it made me
laugh out loud several times. [JOKE SPOILERS AHEAD] My favorite has to be
when you come upon a butcher who is described thusly: "Gunnar is burly,
scary-looking brute. But he has the heart of a lamb. He has the heart of
cow, too. He has many hearts in a pile on top of the counter." That was
hysterical. [JOKE AND PUZZLE SPOILERS AHEAD!] I also enjoyed killing a
vampire by driving a fatty steak into his heart before he arose from his
coffin. As he dies, he exclaims "Too much cholesterol. My arteries can't
take the torture." In addition, many of the names chosen for places and
people strike the right note of humor. In fact, many of them are strongly
reminiscent of the Unnkuulia series (for example, "Mizztik Island"), which
in my mind is a good thing. These moments of mirth prove that the author
is definitely capable of writing funny moments. Unfortunately, the game
proves unable to sustain the humor, a task made no easier by its bugs and
errors. 

I won't go on for too long about these, except to say that the game
clearly should have had some intense playtesting before it was released to
the public. Playing it reminded me of the old New Zork Times playtesting
article with the story of how initially in Dave Lebling's "Suspect" it was
possible to carry Veronica's corpse around the party and not have anyone
react to you in any way. In PPQP I was able to solve a puzzle or two
without ever having found the items necessary to do so, and to add an
unconscious dwarf to my inventory after I tried to take off his vest.
These things were funny, but I don't think this was quite the type of
absurdity the author was aiming for. 

Prose: At times, the prose works beautifully, delivering funny lines with
good pacing and diction. Other times, it feels a bit over the top, trying
too hard to be funny and falling short. The conclusion I came to after two
hours of play is that the author is probably quite funny, and is working
on the craft of distilling that humor into written form. Sometimes it
works and sometimes it doesn't, but I look forward to his future creations
if he continues to develop his comic voice.

Plot: Well, play a silly game, find a silly plot. The idea behind PPQP is,
quite predictably, a treasure hunt. This particular variety of treasure
hunt asks you to chase down all the ingredients necessary to make a pizza
as demanded by Phred Phontious (not the main character, surprisingly
enough), the court jester who is your boss' boss. You, the lowly peon,
must traverse the faux fantasy landscape to come up with the sauce,
cheese, mushroom, etc. It's a silly, shopworn device that nonetheless
serves its purpose. Of course, I didn't come close to finishing the game
in two hours so I don't know whether the pizza ever actually gets made,
but that's not the point anyway.

Puzzles: This was one of the weakest areas in PPQP. A number of the
puzzles are highly dependent on each other, and a few are not as well
clued as they should be. [SPOILERS AHEAD] I found myself completely stuck
after exploring for a little while, only to discover that I was supposed
to pull a hook in the kitchen. I didn't see anything suggesting that the
hook should be pulled, and the prose led me to believe that the hook was
in the ceiling and (I reasoned) hard to reach. Turns out the hook was in
the wall, and pulling it opened a secret passage to a wine cellar which
held a bottle of wine absolutely necessary for any progress in the game.
This struck a sour note with me, and I found myself using the walkthrough
repeatedly after that. I still didn't come anywhere close to finishing in
two hours. 

Technical:
     writing -- There were quite a few mechanical errors in the writing.
     coding -- As mentioned above, the game was quite buggy. It definitely
could have used another round or two of playtesting.

OVERALL: A 4.2


PINTOWN by Stefan Blixt

Playing Pintown was an extremely frustrating experience. The game
was loaded with errors, both in its writing and in its coding. Even
the walkthrough had bugs. I went through two hours and two interpreters
trying to get the program to respond in such a way as not to crash the
game, and after 45 minutes I stuck with the walkthrough. Even with the
walkthrough, it took me another hour to finally get the game to stop
crashing, and once I had done that a runtime bug derailed three puzzle
solutions and magically eliminated the person following me. By the time I
figured out that the game is unwinnable (at least according to the
walkthrough provided by the author) I really didn't care anymore. The
game's puzzles were infuriatingly arbitrary, its plot made no sense, and
its prose was both very unhelpful and heavily burdened with grammar and
spelling errors. I recognize the fact that the author of Pintown is
Swedish and therefore might not have the best grasp on English. That's why
beta testing is important -- not only does it get rid of those pesky
game-killing bugs, but testers who are fluent in English can help correct
all those mechanical mistakes. 

In Pintown you play a musician (though the game will only respond to "play
guitar" in one location at one particular time) who's just come off a
bender where you had a major row with your girlfriend. Now it's your task
to find her and make peace. Of course, the game gives you no hint as to
where she might be, and characters who seem to have no programmed
responses to any questions or actions aren't much help either. A vital
part of the plot hinges on your getting into a parking garage, but you can
only get in there at one crucial point in the game, and your are given no
hints as to when and how that point arises. I only managed to get that far
with the walkthrough in hand. As to how the game ends, I have no opinion
since I never got there -- the game's bugs prevented me.

This game recalled some of the more disappointing moments of last year's
competition, and I found myself once again asking that question: why would
anyone who cares about his work at all enter a buggy, error-laden,
unwinnable game into the IF competition? There's clearly a precedent
(upheld by many of this year's entries) of high quality among many of the
competition games. And surely authors understand that the idea of the
competition is to encourage the writing not just of IF, but of *good* IF.
So why would people humiliate themselves by entering poorly written,
untested games? It's a puzzle too tough for this adventurer to solve. 

Prose: The prose in Pintown was weak. On the one hand, it's one of those
situations where there are so many technical errors that the overall prose
quality is dramatically impacted for the worse. Then again, even without
all those errors, I still think the prose would be bad. There's a
character who responds to every subject with "I don't know." Room
descriptions leave out crucial objects. Sentences often make little sense.
Clearly, there was a lack of effort here.

Plot: It's hard to use the word "plot" in connection with a work like
Pintown. The game's basic goal, according to the designer, is "simply to
get along with your girlfriend." Of course, this is hard to do when she's
nowhere to be found until the endgame. Actually, the main goal of the game
is to be in the right place at the right time, then to steal a car, set
some random events in motion with an arbitrary action, then to clean up
your apartment in exactly the right way, and finally to rescue a cat and
"discover" your girlfriend's hiding place. These plot points are
relatively unconnected by any sort of logic.

Puzzles: The puzzles are very much of the "read the game designer's mind"
variety. First, you wake up and the first thing you need to do is go back
to sleep. Then, you need to follow someone without really knowing why; if
you don't do this, you'll never finish the game. Then, you steal a set of
keys and a van to drive to your apartment. There is no alternate solution
to the apartment puzzle. You can't call a cab, or walk there, or ask
anyone where it is. You've got to be there at the right time to get those
keys and steal that van. Well, you get the idea.

Technical:
     writing -- There were many grammar and spelling errors in the game.
They include words missing letters, misspelled words, and made-up words
("trafficated?")     
     coding -- But if the writing was bad, the coding was downright awful.
Playing the game under WinFrotz led to many game-killing bugs of the
"FATAL ERROR: Illegal Object Number" or "Illegal Attribute Number"
variety. Under JZIP, the game would just stop responding at random points.
In addition, the game state was unstable enough to eliminate a follower
and return two solved puzzles to an unsolved state, all at once.
Unsurprisingly, beneath these major bugs was a panoply of minor bugs,
including a dearth of synonyms, important missing verbs (like "pet cat"),
and readable materials that only respond to "examine", not "read."

OVERALL: A 1.5


Paul O'Brian                                      obrian@ucsu.colorado.edu
"I think it's important to remember that no one falls into a simple set of
labels. Even more important is to learn from your mistakes, and to fight
for the positive choice."                            -- Lindsey Buckingham



From obrianNOSPAM@colorado.edu Thu Jan  8 18:10:49 MET 1998
Article: 28603 of rec.games.int-fiction
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From: Paul O'Brian <obrian@ucsu.Colorado.EDU>
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Subject: COMP 97: My reviews, part 5 -- LONG!
Date: Thu, 1 Jan 1998 20:46:35 -0700
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If you don't want to download these postings, but still want to read the
reviews, they are posted on my IF web page at
http://ucsu.colorado.edu/~obrian/IF.htm. Note also that although my scores
go out to the first decimal place for a little greater precision, I
naturally rounded off when I submitted them for the contest.

This posting contains reviews for the following games:

Poor Zefron's Almanac
She's Got A Thing for a Spring
Sins Against Mimesis
Sunset Over Savannah
Sylenius Mysterium

POOR ZEFRON'S ALMANAC by Carl Klutzke

Right about the time that Poor Zefron's Almanac (hereafter called PZA)
starts feeling like another humdrum sword-and-sorcery game, it executes a
nice surprising twist. To say too much more would be to give the game
away, but the fact that the author bills PZA as "an interactive
cross-genre romp" is a clue toward its direction. This twist made the game
refreshing and fun again, especially after the frustration it caused me
when I began playing it. More on that later. PZA does several things very
well, one of which is its eponymous book, a tome owned by your wizardly
master Zefron and left behind after his mysterious disappearance. This
almanac contains a feature unique to all the CONSULTable items in IFdom
(as far as I know): it can be BROWSEd. Browsing the almanac brings forth a
random entry from within its pages; not only is it great fun to read these
random entries, it also gives a sense of how thoroughly the almanac has
been implemented. This device would be most welcome in other IF... how I'd
love to browse the Encyclopedia Frobozzica or the Hitchhiker's Guide to
the Galaxy! Just having the book at hand lent a sense of scope and
excitement to PZA. 

Unfortunately, my first 45 minutes or so of playing this game were
extremely frustrating. PZA suffers from a couple of serious design flaws,
the gravest of which is its repeated violation of the Fifth Right (from
Graham Nelson's "Player's Bill of Rights"): not to have the game closed
off without warning. Because of a fairly flexible (but extremely
temporary) magic spell that becomes available at the very beginning of the
game, I found myself repeatedly stranded, unable to proceed and forced to
RESTART. This happened again later on in the game -- I committed a
perfectly logical action and found out hundreds of turns later that this
action had closed off the endgame. This is a frustrating experience, and
one that could easily have been avoided with a few minor changes to the
game's structure, changes which would not have had any discernible effect
on puzzles or plot. In addition, there are a few areas in which the player
character can be killed without warning, always an unwelcome design
choice. PZA is (as far as I know) Carl Klutzke's first game, so chalk
these flaws up to inexperience. I look forward to playing another Klutzke
game as well-implemented as PZA, but designed more thoughtfully.

One nice element of PZA was its facility with IF homage. The game's
"cluple" spell not only had a name that sounded straight out of Enchanter,
it was virtually identical to that series' "snavig" spell. The almanac
itself (as well as a number of other features) was a skillful allusion to
the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Finally, the XYZZY command response
is one of the more clever I've seen in a while. Clearly PZA's author is a
devotee of the old games, and his devotion shows in his work. I am hopeful
that his next piece of IF will live up to his worthy aspirations. 

Prose: The prose in PZA is generally very good. Rooms, objects, and random
events are described concisely but with attention to detail. Some of the
locations are rather sparsely treated (for example, the town consists of
one location), but such skimping is always done in service of the plot,
and more detail would serve to distract rather than to enrich. 

Plot: This is definitely the strongest point of PZA. The game starts out
with an engaging hook, and after the twist I was definitely enjoying the
direction of the story quite a bit. In addition, the author has
manipulated the scoring system in such a way as to give the feeling of
multiple endings. Granted, many of those endings amount to one version or
another of "*** You have died ***", but not all of them. There are more
and less successful solutions to the story, and they are integrated so
naturally into the endgame text that they almost escape notice. One of the
nicest implementations of multiple endings in the competition.

Puzzles: Here there were problems. What happens to PZA is that its
individual problems are well-considered, and their solutions are perfectly
logical. However, when the actions that comprise those solutions are
attempted in other areas of the game, they all too often drive the
narrative into a blind alley from which there is no escape. It's one of
the hardest balancing acts in interactive fiction: how to have sensible
puzzles logically integrated into the game, without making the narrative
too linear, which in their elements create no dead ends for the player.
PZA doesn't pull it off. 

Technical:
	writing -- I found no technical errors in the writing.
	coding -- Once I played PZA on WinTADS, I had no problems with it.
I started out trying to use it on my old DOS version of TR, and before I
could even get one command out it was giving me TADS "Out of Memory"
errors. Whether this is a bug in the program of the interpreter, I don't
know enough about TADS to say.

OVERALL: An 8.0


SHE'S GOT A THING FOR A SPRING by Brent VanFossen

She's Got a Thing For a Spring (hereafter called "Spring") is one of the
most delightful and well-written games I've played in a long, long time.
Its author is one of the few professional writers who has created
interactive fiction, and his expertise shines throughout the game. Spring
is set in a mountain wilderness with no magic spells, no high-tech
devices, in fact no fantastical elements of any kind. Yet this game
imparts a sense of wonder that is matched by only the very best
interactive fiction. I found some of the scenes absolutely breathtaking in
their beauty. Living in Colorado, I've spent a fair amount of time is
settings similar to those described by the author, and I felt that the
prose perfectly conveyed the both the tiny joys and the majestic grandeur
of the mountains. In addition, the game's code usually dovetailed neatly
with its prose, creating at its best a seamless experience of walking in
nature.

Spring also introduces an interface innovation for conversing with NPCs.
The game keeps track of the last NPC with whom the player has interacted
and what type of verb (e.g. "give", "ask", etc.) was used in that
interaction. Then whenever the player is around that NPC and types in a
word not recognized as a verb by the parser, the game tries to use that
word to interact with the NPC, using the current verb type. It creates
interaction like this:

>ask bob about woods
"Lots of aspen around here. I just love the forest."

>aspen
"Aspens are my favorite trees."

This is a very smart move, and it works superbly in the game. What
enhances the NPC experience even more is that the game's primary NPC (Bob,
a friendly old gent who lives alone in the woods) is coded *very* well. He
goes about his business with or without the player's presence, and it is
possible to have a long conversation with him without breaking mimesis.
The author has clearly gone to great lengths (including, I think, some
close scrutiny of Gareth Rees' source code for Christminster) to make sure
that his NPC is one of the most realistic and satisfying in IF. The depth
of this NPC works along with the game's outstanding prose to create an
extremely realistic gameplay experience.

However, the intensity and power of this realism brings with it a certain
burden, and it's a burden that the game is not always prepared to handle.
One problem was that some of the puzzles required me to act in a way that
I felt was out of character. [SPOILERS FOLLOW] For example, one puzzle
required me to take the roll of toilet paper out of Bob's outhouse and
burn it. Now, a typical IF character would have no compunction whatsoever
about this. But in Spring, the protagonist is supposedly a regular, kind
person -- for her to steal and burn the only toilet paper from a man who
shows her nothing but kindness and hospitality is a significant break from
character, especially since Bob does not grant permission to do so. Other
puzzles required a bit more verb-guessing than I care for, especially the
walking stick puzzle. In addition, Bob is missing a few important
responses, and the game also has some basic bugs. Still, the fact that
these flaws are so jarring is a strong indication of what a high standard
the game sets, and minor problems do not greatly detract from the fact
that Spring is a wonderful piece of IF, as refreshing as a pine-scented
mountain breeze after an invigorating hike.

Prose: The prose in Spring is simply first-rate. The author's professional
writing experience is clear throughout the game. In fact, the prose is of
such a quality that it's hard to talk about it without wanting to simply
quote long passages and allow the writing to speak for itself. I'll save
those surprises for the game, but I have to comment on one or two favorite
scenes. [SLIGHT SPOILERS AHEAD] I remember coming upon the fireflies and
gasping in awe. The author creates a mesmerizing, magical picture of these
fantastic creatures. I had similar reactions to all the wildlife in the
game. In fact, though I said above that the game has no fantastical
elements, that's not precisely true: the element of fantasy in the game is
that it presents a nature trip as one wishes it could always be. Sighting
elk clashing antlers with each other, encountering someone as nice as Bob,
walking into a cloud of fireflies: these are magical moments. When they
happen on a real camping trip, they are foremost among the memories you
bring back home with you. In Spring, all that happens and more. Its magic
is in bringing rare moments together to be experienced all in one sitting,
yet never taking away the sense of preciousness carried within each
moment.

Plot: Spring isn't really a plot-driven game. It has a relatively simple
goal, and the pleasure of the game comes from exploring the milieu rather
than stepping through a more complicated story. Still, there were some
interesting aspects to the plot pieces that were there. One thing that
sets Spring apart is that its character is set within a warm, happy
marriage. The context of that relationship bubbles under all the events in
Spring, and even brings a degree of sexuality in the game's ending.
Presenting sex in the context of a positive, healthy relationship is a
rare thing to do in IF, especially since Spring is nature writing rather
than romance. The one drawback to the plot, as I mentioned above, is that
it sometimes required actions that were out-of-character. Perhaps with
some fine-tuning to Bob, this problem could be remedied.

Puzzles: I thought the puzzles were a weaker part of Spring. While it was
wonderful to wander around the lovingly described wilderness, it was hard
to get anywhere without doing some things that I wouldn't expect the
character to do. Perhaps the answer to some of these problems is to give
Bob a little different attitude. [SPOILERS AGAIN] Perhaps have him offer
to give the player a hint as to how to get rid of the wasps, then offer to
let her use the toilet paper. Otherwise, she's doing something morally
wrong by burning it. Again, this would not normally be a problem in most
genre if, but Spring is a different sort of beast, or it feels that way to
me. Other puzzles were rather non-intuitive, like the egg/foam connection.
I used the hints for almost every puzzle in Spring, and I'm a good enough
player that I think that means there's something wrong. 

Technical:
     writing -- The writing was, predictably, flawless.
     coding -- I'm a lot more inclined to be forgiving when an author
takes on a significant coding project such as the NPC interaction
innovation in Spring. Consequently, the fact that there were quite a few
bugs in the game did impact its final rating, but not as significantly as
it might have. 

OVERALL: An 8.9


SINS AGAINST MIMESIS by "One of the Bruces"

Few things are more unfunny than an in-joke that you're not in on. On the
other hand, an in-joke that you *are* in on can be hysterical, as it
provides not just the pleasure of humor but also the feeling of community
that comes from shared experience. Sins Against Mimesis is definitely a
very in-jokey game, and consequently not for everyone. However, having
been a longtime (since 1994) lurker and sometime participant in the
rec.*.int-fiction newsgroups, I was part of the audience at which the game
was aimed, and I have to admit that I found a lot of the in-jokes really
funny. In fact, one of the most fun parts of the game was to play
name-that-reference -- kind of the IF equivalent of listening to a World
Party album or a Dennis Miller routine. Of course, the nature of the game
(and the fact that it was written pseudonymously) also invites us to play
guess-the-author. I'm casting my vote for Russ Bryan. I'm not sure why --
something about the style just struck me as a little familiar and rang
that particular bell in my head. Or maybe it's just a masochistic desire
to humiliate myself publicly by venturing an incorrect guess. I'll find
out soon enough, I suppose. 

If you haven't played much IF, and in fact even if you haven't spent much
time on the IF newsgroups, most of this game is going to mean very little
to you. Even its title is an allusion: to "Crimes Against Mimesis," a
well-crafted series of articles posted to the newsgroups by Roger
Giner-Sorolla (whatever happened to him, anyway?) a year or so ago. The
rest of the game continues in that vein. The opening paragraph alludes to
Jigsaw. The score of the initial part of the game is kept in IF disks
which magically pop into the player's inventory every time a correct move
is made. In some ways, this familiar, almost conspiratorial approach is a
weakness. Certainly in the context of the competition it won't endear Sins
to any judge who stands on the outside of the privileged circle at which
the game aims itself. Even for an insider, the constant barrage of "if
you're one of us, you'll know what I mean" references can start to feel a
little cloying. However, the game is cleanly coded and competently
written, and on the first time through I found it quite entertaining. 

There aren't many games which I would highly recommend to one group of
people and discourage others from playing, but Sins is one of them. If
you're an raif and rgif regular, I think you'll find Sins quite funny and
entertaining. If not, forget it. It's bound to be more baffling and
irritating than anything else. 

Prose: The prose is generally somewhere between functionally good and
rather well done, with occasional moments of brilliant hilarity. [SPOILERS
AHEAD] The best one has to be when the game is in "lewd" mode and the
player amorously approaches the plant: "Your embrace becomes hot and heavy
and you surrender to the delights of floral sex." An LGOP reference and an
extremely bad pun at once! Can it get any better? 

Plot: The plot is based around several clever tricks which are quite funny
at the time, but aren't worth repeating. If you've already played, you
know what they are, and if you haven't played yet I won't give away the
jokes. Like the rest of Sins, the plot is funny the first time through but
won't wear well. 

Puzzles: Actually, this was the weakest part of the game. Many of the
puzzles can be solved by performing extremely basic actions, which of
course hardly makes them puzzles at all. Others, however, depend either on
extremely specific (and not well-clued) actions or on deducing something
about the surroundings which is not included in object or room
descriptions. For a game so adamantly self-aware, it's ironic that Sins
falls into some of the most basic blunders of puzzle design.

Technical:
     writing -- I found no mechanical errors in Sins' writing.  
     coding -- I found no bugs either. 

OVERALL: An 8.3


SUNSET OVER SAVANNAH by Ivan Cockrum

Sunset Over Savannah (hereafter called Sunset) is one of the most
impressive, enjoyable, and successful games of the 1997 competition.
Interestingly, it shares a strategy with another very successful game,
"She's Got a Thing for a Spring": both games present a natural world where
fantasy-style magic is subtle to the point of nonexistence, but which
nonetheless is suffused with wonder, divulging incredible sights which
move the spirit as strongly as ever did any of Gandalf's fireworks. The
game takes place on a beach whose implementation is exquisitely complete,
a small space which allows a great number of options within it... narrow
but very deep. In itself, implementation of this depth carries a kind of
magic, the kind of delirious sense of possibility inherent in all the best
interactive fiction. The magic goes beyond this, though. The puzzles in
the game (at least, the ones I had time to solve) are focused on a single
theme: finding magic and wonder in a seemingly mundane world. As you
wander the game's beach and find ways to ferret out its secrets, those
secrets display themselves in fiery sequences of enchantment and glamour.
It's an effect whose emotional impact could not be duplicated in a
graphical game, only imitated. The arresting visuals would be there, but
they would only carry a pale shadow of the reverential awe conveyed by the
author's excellent prose. 

In a gutsy choice, Cockrum centers his game around emotional transition,
presenting a player character whose inner state is conflicted: you're at
the end of your vacation (shades of Trinity), and the experience has made
you reassess your life, especially in relation to your mind-numbing job.
Is it possible that the best thing you could do is to quit, and try to set
your feet on another path? In pursuit of the answer to this question, you
wander the beach at Tybrisa Island, near Savannah, Georgia (hence the
game's title,) discovering amazing sights in your explorations. Going
further than simply making an emotional journey the subplot of his game,
Cockrum focuses the action upon it. The game's "scoring" system does keep
track of puzzles solved, but does it in emotional rather than numerical
terms, starting with "conflicted" and moving through "astonished",
"respectful", etc. I thought this innovation worked brilliantly. As
someone who is interested in experimenting with the concept of score in
IF, I was greatly pleased to see a game whose scoring system fulfilled the
basic purpose of a score (keep players posted on their progress) and went
beyond it in such a flexible and artistic way. The fact that the "emotion
register" on the status bar changed not just in response to progress in
puzzle-solving, but also to smaller changes in game state (switching
briefly to "refreshed" after a quick dip in the ocean, for example) lent a
depth of characterization to the player's avatar which was perfectly
suited to the medium of IF. I hope that authors take the lesson from
Sunset that score can serve not just as a gaming metafunction, but also as
a primary driver for the plot. 

The game's design is also first-rate. Following the example set by
LucasArts' games, Sunset is impossible to put in an unsolvable state.
Impressively, it achieves this degree of closure without ever resorting to
arbitrary, contrived, or artificial devices. Instead, the gaps are covered
so naturally that they often enhance the game's sense of realism. For
example, if you pry a brick from the stony path, then lose that brick
beneath the waves, the game says "With the path breached, you could
probably excavate another brick." It's simple, it's natural, and it
prevents the irrevocable loss of an important item. The game's structure
is tight and smart, forgiving and flexible. In addition, there are several
touches which reveal significant care and attention on the part of the
author. Sunset provides very thorough instructions for players new to IF,
a document into which the author clearly put great deal of effort. It also
presents a thoroughly implemented hint system, and several sections of
documentation, including credits, a list of features, and a listing of the
author's design philosophy, in which he acknowledges his debt to
LucasArts. The puzzles are difficult, and there are a few bugs in the
implementation, which are why this game stopped just short of being a
perfect 10 for me. Once those bugs are fixed, Sunset Over Savannah will be
one of the best games ever to have emerged from the interactive fiction
competitions. 

Prose: The game's prose is of a very high quality. Cockrum faultlessly
conveys the mood of the beach in Sunset's room description. The prose
employed at the magical moments was breathless with a sense of wonder,
imparting just the right amount of awe and astonishment without going over
the top into cheesiness or melodrama. And as someone who works in a job
that I find less than thrilling, I thought that the sections dealing with
the emotional turmoil brought be examining such a situation and trying to
figure out what to do about it were expertly handled. 

Plot: I think the game's plot is a master stroke. Sunset has as much or
more thematic unity as any interactive fiction game I can think of, and
this unity lends a sense of sweep to the plot which makes the game such a
powerful experience. Sunset establishes its focus from its first few
sentences, and from that point on every piece of the game is an
elaboration or variation on that conflicted, questioning theme. This
seamless melding of plot and design made Sunset seem like more a work of
art than a computer game.

Puzzles: This is where I stumbled just a bit. However, I'm not yet
convinced that my stumbles are entirely the fault of the game. For one
thing, the game's environment is so rich that I didn't get around to
really focusing on puzzles until I'd played for about an hour, at which
point I only had an hour left to concentrate on puzzle-solving before the
competition time limit ran out. However, during that time I found it
difficult to solve any puzzle, and I finally turned to the hints with
about a half-hour left. What I discovered was that often the answers to
the problems I was having were things that never occurred to me because of
my unconscious, implicit assumptions about the depth of the game's
implementation. [SPOILER WARNING] For example, at one point I need a thin
line to tether something, and the solution is to take the strap off of the
swimming goggles I've found. It simply never occurred to me to take this
tack in the game, though it's something I would have come up with pretty
quickly in real life. Why? I just assumed that the goggles were
implemented to be all of a piece -- I didn't realize that the game
designer had put enough care into them to make the strap detachable. I
solved two major puzzles in the game, and I look forward to returning to
it and solving more. I'll do so with a new paradigm in mind, and the fact
that Sunset can make me change my perspective in such a way is a testament
to its implementor's prowess. 

Technical:
	writing -- I found no technical errors in Sunset's writing. 
	coding -- There were a few bugs in the game's implementation. I
found one action which provokes no response from the game. Another action
is supposed to change the setting in a particular way and fails to do so,
even though the game tells you it has succeeded. There were one or two
"guess-the-word" problems. I don't think any of the game's problems will
be too difficult to fix. 

OVERALL: A 9.6


SYLENIUS MYSTERIUM by "whomever wrote it"

[Because of the nature of Sylenius Mysterium, any or all of this review
could be considered a spoiler. In addition, spoilers are present for
"Freefall" and "Robots." You have been warned.]

There seems to be this strange impulse in the text adventure community to
recreate the experience of graphical arcade games using the Z-machine. The
first evidence I ever saw of this trend was Andrew Plotkin's "Freefall", a
z-machine Tetris implementation using realtime opcodes to reproduce the
geometrical game with ASCII graphics. Others have followed, including
Torjborn Andersson's "Robots", which recreates one of the earliest
computer games, and a DOOM implementation which I haven't played. I have
to say that this notion baffles me. When I first saw "Freefall", I thought
it was good fun. It struck me as a typically amazing Plotkin programming
exercise which showcased the versatility of the z-machine. But it didn't
become an arcade staple on my machine. As a text adventure, it was pretty
wild. As Tetris, it was pretty average. I played it once or twice to see
what it could do, then deleted it. "Robots" I kept, but I don't play it.

Now here's Sylenius Mysterium (hereafter called SM), the bulk of which is
a textual emulation of a horizontally scrolling run-and- jump game, a la
Pitfall or Mario Brothers. This kind of thing used to come up as a joke on
the IF newsgroups from time to time, and now here it is, a real game.
Unfortunately, SM demonstrates the reason that those games were
implemented graphically in the first place. Namely, it's silly to
implement an arcade game in descriptive mode. ("You begin walking right."
"You execute a running jump." "Beneath you is a low wall.") These types of
structures are what graphics are best at doing, and they were being done
15 years ago. It's both more fun and less confusing to see an arcade
environment in graphics, and if even ancient computers are capable of
doing so, what's the point of making a text adventure which simply
produces an inferior copy of the original? Playing SM just made me wish
that the author had sacrificed portability and implemented the arcade
section in graphics. Hell, even cheesy ASCII graphics would have made for
a more fun experience than one long room description reading "A panoramic
landscape, parallax layers of empty, ruined buildings, scrolling by with
your movements." It seems to me that text is good at certain things and so
is graphics, and to make a text version of Pitfall makes about as much
sense as a joystick-and-fire-button version of A Mind Forever Voyaging.
It's great to know that the z-machine has enough realtime capabilities to
produce a text arcade game, but surely those capabilities can be put to
better use. 

SM does have a prologue which operates in a traditional text adventure
mode, and this section of the game is quite well-done, with the exception
of a number of problematic bugs. The game does a very nice job of defining
an engaging and convincing setting and characters, as well as creating a
sense of nostalgia for the old gaming consoles. The Atari system was my
first introduction to videogames that could be played at home, and I have
many fond memories of days spent at friends' houses playing "Missile
Command" or "Donkey Kong" or "Pitfall." In fact, the game evoked nostalgia
so well that my disappointment was all the sharper when I realized that
its "arcade" section was nothing more than realtime text.

Prose: The prose in the IF section of the game was really quite
accomplished, so much so in fact that it sent me to the dictionary a
couple of times to confirm the meaning of unfamiliar words. All the game's
elements, from the sterile quiet of a mall after-hours, to the almost
exaggerated "skate punk" main character, to the loving descriptions of the
old-time game consoles, were written in a style that I found quite rich
and absorbing.

Plot: The plot in SM is mainly a device to whisk the player to the arcade
section. The plot of that section is (intentionally, I think) extremely
pure and simple: find the bad guy and undo his evil deeds.

Puzzles: Again, the puzzles outside the arcade section were few, and those
inside the arcade section can't really be called "puzzles" in the
traditional sense, though I would argue that the game does propose an
interesting juxtaposition between the challenges of a Mario Brothers-style
arcade game and IF puzzles -- the two are closer than they are sometimes
thought to be. Those puzzles within the IF section were usually quite
simple, though from time to time bugs arose that made the simplest actions
seem unintentionally like puzzles themselves. 

Technical:
     writing -- The writing was technically excellent.
     coding -- Here there were a number of problems. I was keeping a text
file of all the major bugs I found until I realized that the author had
provided no email address (not even an anonymous remailer for comp97) to
which bug reports could be sent. Suffice it to say that there were a
number of situations, both inside and outside the arcade section, that
needed much improvement. That being said, however, I'm willing to forgive
quite a bit from someone who takes on a project as ambitious (even though
I personally don't find it to be very interesting) as the arcade section
of SM. That section suffers from game-killing bugs of the "FATAL: No such
property" variety (or at least it does under WinFrotz), but the working
sections of it seemed to work quite well, and I salute the serious effort
it must have taken to create them. 

OVERALL: A 6.8 


Paul O'Brian                                      obrian@ucsu.colorado.edu
"I think it's important to remember that no one falls into a simple set of
labels. Even more important is to learn from your mistakes, and to fight
for the positive choice."                            -- Lindsey Buckingham



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Subject: COMP 97: My reviews, part 6 -- LONG!
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If you don't want to download these postings, but still want to read the
reviews, they are posted on my IF web page at
http://ucsu.colorado.edu/~obrian/IF.htm. Note also that although my scores
go out to the first decimal place for a little greater precision, I
naturally rounded off when I submitted them for the contest.

This posting contains reviews for the following games:

Symetry
The Tempest
Temple of the Orc Mage
The Town Dragon
Travels in the Land of Erden

SYMETRY by Rybread Celsius

Oh, man. When I saw the title, one misspelled word, I began to feel the
familiar dread. When I read the tortured sentences of the introduction
("Tonight will be the premiere of you slumbering under its constant eye.")
the fear built higher. And when I saw the game banner, I knew that it was
true: Rybread Celsius has returned! Yes, the infamous Rybread Celsius,
author of last year's stunningly awful "Punkirita Quest One: Liquid" and
only slightly less awful "Rippled Flesh." Rybread Celsius, who announced
to the newsgroups that his games would suck, and proved himself
extravagantly correct. Rybread Celsius: I hope it doesn't hurt his
feelings if I call him the worst writer in interactive fiction today. 

See, he just doesn't write in English. Sure, it may *look* like English,
but on closer inspection we find that the resemblance is passing, perhaps
even coincidental. Misspellings and bad grammar are just the tip of the
iceberg. The sentences often just don't make sense. (For example, "A small
persian rug sits as an isolated in the center of the room..." I'm not
making this up. In fact, this all comes before a single move can be made
in the game.) 

But OK, say you were smart and had a good translator, and could understand
what the game is talking about. Then, my friend, you would have to deal
with the bugs. The game world makes almost zero sense, even if you can get
past the prose. Simple commands like "get in bed" thrust you into
darkness, at the same time insisting "But you're already in the Your Bed."
(you weren't.) Perhaps you'd turn to the walkthrough in such a situation.
No luck. In fact, the (twelve-move) walkthrough includes a command which
isn't even in the game's vocabulary. The best you can achieve is "A Phyric
Victory" (I think he means "Pyrrhic.")

I don't mean this as a personal attack. I really don't. I would love to be
proved wrong, to see "Rybread" come up with a great game, or even an
understandable one. But I'm not holding my breath. Go ahead, play
"Symetry." Just don't say I didn't warn you.

Prose: ... oh, forget it. 
Plot:
Puzzles:
Technical:
     writing --
     coding --

OVERALL: A 1.4 (you've got to give the guy credit for persistence.)


THE TEMPEST by "William Shakespeare"

                      "Yet look, how far
The substance of my praise doth wrong this shadow
In underprizing it, so far this shadow
Doth limp behind the substance." 
                         -- William Shakespeare
                     The Merchant of Venice III.ii.126-129

The Tempest attempts a great deal, and achieves much of it despite being
somewhat flawed. The work presents itself not as a game, but as an
"interactive performance" which asks the player to perform as the magical
will of Shakespeare's Prospero, guiding the spirit Ariel (a.k.a. the
parser) through the plot of The Tempest (the play), though not necessarily
in the order in which Shakespeare wrote it. Remarkably, this complicated
positioning of subjectivity works quite well (and opens some unexplored
territory for the mixing of first, second, and third person forms of
address in IF). It is blended with a new approach to dialogue which
prevents the player character from speaking at all but presents many
screenfuls of dialogue between other characters (and sometimes including
Ariel himself), the exchanges broken up by pausing for keystrokes between
each character's lines. In a sense, the player's commands to the parser
become essentially stage directions issued to an onstage persona via a
magical conduit. This idiom also works beautifully, bestowing the game
with a powerful aura of theatrical performance. The Tempest is
entertaining and innovative; it often feels quite magical to inhabit the
Prospero/Ariel connection, and to take part in a groundbreaking
interactive experience. I think that the game also has great potential as
an educational tool, allowing readers to experience Shakespeare's language
in a new and thrilling way. 

All this being said, however, the Tempest is not without its problems.
Actually, perhaps the game just has one major problem which manifests
itself in several ways. Although the author does an excellent (sometimes
astonishing) job of rearranging Shakespeare's scenes and lines to fit the
interactive mode, the fit is not perfect. Several times during the game I
felt faced with responses which, if not complete non sequiturs, were
certainly only tenuously connected to the command I had typed. The author
wrenches in bits and pieces of dialogue from all over the play for various
purposes, pressing them into service as room descriptions, parser
rejoinders, and other sundry purposes. Sometimes they are perfectly suited
to their purpose and sometimes less so. When I was on the wrong end of
this continuum, my relationship with the game became strained -- the
parser's responses were beautiful, but didn't make enough sense, and not
because of any opacity in the Elizabethan English. This situation creates
a problem with the game's puzzles: usually interactive fiction prose can
be written in such a way as to suggest subtle hints to the problems facing
the player. However, when control of the prose escapes the author, those
hints become harder and harder for a player to come by. It is to this
difficulty with the prose (and, of course, to the lack of any hint system
or walkthrough) that I ascribe the problems I've seen players having,
often with the very first puzzle of the game. With a typical piece of IF,
the author could simply tailor the game's responses to help the player
along -- the Tempest often achieves this goal, but all too often it falls
short. 

[POTENTIAL SPOILERS AHEAD] Before I played The Tempest, I was unlucky
enough to run across a USENET conversation which suggested that Graham
Nelson is the game's author. I thought this was a spoiler, and I admit
that it did set up a bit of preconception for me before I had even seen
the first word of the game. Having said that, several things about the
game do have a strong air of Nelson about them. The author's erudition is
clear, from the simple choice of subject matter to the deft interweaving
of other Shakespearean and Renaissance phrases into the play's text when
necessary (for example, to the command "throw x at character" the game
responds "I have no aim, no, no chance of a palpable hit.", a phrase
echoing Hamlet). Such attention to scholarly detail recalls some of the
finer moments of Nelson's epics, especially Jigsaw. Moreover, the game's
help menu (which it calls its frontispiece) contains fascinating blurbs on
lost islands and the play's history, as well as notes on the game, its
creation and characteristics. Such additions are strongly reminiscent of
the diplomatic briefings in Nelson's 1996 1st Place game "The Meteor, the
Stone, and a Long Glass of Sherbet." Finally, the author's technical skill
and innovations with Inform are tremendous, and who better to code so well
than the language's inventor? It may be that Nelson is in fact not the
author of the work (in which case the author should take the comparison as
a compliment of the highest order), but even if that is so, the talent
behind this game is clearly a major one. The Tempest was Shakespeare's
last play, and as such carries a distinct air of finality -- I only hope
that whoever authored this work will not allow it to be his or her last as
well. 

Plot: I predict that a certain contingent of voices will raise the hue and
cry over what they perceive to be the Tempest's lack of interactivity. I
wasn't able to finish the game in two hours (far from it, in fact -- I got
only six points, another example of an excellent competition game which
breaks the two-hour rule), but the parts I saw made it pretty clear that
the game leads you along rather carefully from one plot point to the next,
allowing for very little branching. My own opinion is that this structure
is not a problem -- after all, the piece bills itself as "more a
'performance' than a 'game'," and as such it's perfectly appropriate for
the Tempest to enforce a certain degree of rigidity to accommodate the
exigencies of its plot. In fact, what this achieves is the inclusion of a
much more complicated plot than is common in interactive fiction; by
limiting the player's ability to affect the narrative stream, the game
allows the complexity of Shakespeare's plotting to shine through even in
this challenging new form. I'm satisfied with the trade-off.

Prose: I suppose this is where I ought to weigh in on the debate over the
originality of a work like the IF version of the Tempest. It's my opinion
that the IF Tempest is absolutely a different piece of work from the
Tempest, the play. Yes, the author uses almost the entire script of the
play, but I would argue that such usage is not plagiarism, because
whatever Shakespeare's intentions, I think it's safe to say that the play
was not written to be adapted into interactive form. Consequently, I don't
see the IF Tempest as any less an original work than Emma Thompson's Sense
and Sensibility or, for that matter, Shakespeare's MacBeth (whose plot was
lifted from Holinshed's histories.) Yes, the seams do sometimes show
between the author's additions and Shakespeare's text -- these are the
work's weaker moments. However, in judging the Tempest's prose, I judge
not the quality of Shakespeare's writing, but the quality of its usage in
its new medium -- on that basis, more often than not, it succeeds. 

Puzzles: As noted above, this is where I identify the major weakness of
the Tempest. [SPOILERS AHEAD] I cite as an example the first puzzle of the
game, where Ariel must blow a storm to upset the boat and set the plot
into motion. The reason that players are finding this puzzle so difficult
is that it requires rather close knowledge of the play (and not just of
the play's first scene), which most players, even very well educated ones,
are not likely to have at their fingertips. No hint is given of Ariel's
powers or of his purpose in regard to the ship. Now, in a typical IF game,
there might be a sentence or two in the introductory paragraph which
introduces the idea and sets players on their way. However, because of the
constraints imposed by using a collage of prewritten text, these hints are
unavailable and thus players flounder in a
"read-the-playwright/designer's-mind" sort of puzzle. It won't be the
last time. 

Technical:
     writing -- The prose did an excellent job with handling a number of
difficult technical tasks with regard to writing and using Elizabethan
English. 
     coding -- I found only one bug in Tempest (at least, I think it was a
bug), among a thoroughly reworked library of Inform responses and the
introduction of a number of excellent devices for the presentation of
dialogue and clarification of the plot.

OVERALL: A 9.2


TEMPLE OF THE ORC MAGE by Gary Roggin

Temple of the Orc Mage does not bring new meaning to the term "dungeon
crawl". It's a generic, Dungeons & Dragons style quest for a magical gem.
Of course, there's nothing inherently wrong with this, and Temple doesn't
do it exceptionally badly. However, it doesn't do it exceptionally well,
either. The game occupies a sort of limbo between a bland interactive
story, with little plot (besides "find the treasure") and character
development, and a bland RPG, with arbitrary magic items and valuables
strewn around a dungeon setting so conventional that anyone who's read a
few D&D prefab modules could recite its elements before ever seeing the
game (an underground river, a ruined bedchamber, deep pits, tapestries).

This is not to suggest that the game is altogether bad. In fact, it often
succeeds at some of the things that an RPG is best at: creating a sense of
atmosphere, providing the thrill of vicariously handling fabulous wealth
and magic, and giving the feeling that each obstacle overcome simply draws
one's character deeper and deeper into the difficulties. However, there
are many important things missing as well, not least of which is any sense
of logic to the dungeon and the items found within. For example, how is it
that you find fresh meat in a kitchen strewn with cobwebs? How is it that
you are the first one to seek after this treasure? Or if you're not, what
happened to everyone else? The game starts with a strong sense of story,
and several nice narrative touches, then rapidly devolves into a sort of
"just because" logic that poisons any sense that the eponymous Temple is
anything more than an arbitrary collection of rooms and magic items. It's
as if the game wants to be a hybrid of IF and RPG, but adopts the least
interesting conventions of each category while ignoring the best, making
itself a rather dull concoction.

I think that there's a place for such a hybrid. I've always liked Rogue
and Rogue-like games, and I think that there's something to be said for
the idea that it's much easier to find a computer game to provide an
immersive RPG experience than it is to find a lot of like-minded peers to
provide it. I can envision an IF/RPG game which combines the best elements
of IF, including strong story, interesting puzzles, and the feeling of
"being there", with the joys of Rogue -- abundant magic and mystery, a
strong sense of score, ever-increasing risk and reward, and the feeling
that there's always a possibility of finding some ultra-rare artifact,
hidden away in the code for discovery by the lucky and the strong. Recent
discussions about RPG-style combat in IF have even tempted me to believe
that such a system could exist without being boring or pointless. Now, I
admit that I'm much more of an IFer than an RPGer, so there may be such a
product out on the market right now which I'm missing simply because I
never sought it out. However, one thing is quite clear to me: Temple of
the Orc Mage is not it. 

Prose: I thought that the prose was actually one of the best features of
Temple. More often than not it succeeded in drawing vivid portraits of
places and items. The intro is captivating (though it could stand to be
broken up a bit), and some of the room descriptions have nice atmospheric
touches, bringing in temperature or quality of light to engage the senses.
Sometimes the style can become a bit overly utilitarian (listings of
exits) or terse ("The ceiling is low and wet. Light filters in from cracks
in the wall and ceiling. Water drips slowly from stalactites above. The
air is cold."), but overall I didn't find it too jarring.

Plot: There was only the most rudimentary of plots: you have decided to
brave the scary dungeon to find big money and become a hero! This is a
tried-and-true IF convention, so much so that it has become a bit of a
cliche. Sometimes cliches can work to an author's advantage. Not this
time. 

Puzzles: Too often, the puzzles were either simple (try all your keys
until you find the one that opens the locked chest/door) or required just
examining the right object. OK, well, maybe those two are the same thing.
Still, I generally felt that the puzzles had no rhyme, reason, or thought
behind them. They felt generally tacked-on, and on the few times I got
stuck, I discovered that the solution to the puzzle is something I would
never have guessed, because there were no hints to suggest it. Example:
[SPOILERS AHEAD] There's a twenty-foot wide pit blocking your way. The
solution? Jump over it, and the game tells you "Propelled by the boots,
which you now believe to be magical..."

Technical:
     writing -- There were a number of technical errors in the writing,
but many (though not all) of these are attributable to typos rather than
actual ignorance.     
     coding -- I found no serious bugs in the game, but there was a
distinct lack of implementation for nouns and synonyms. For example, the
game describes water in at least a third of its rooms (in fact, there's a
room called the Dry Room, notable simply for its *absence* of water), but
doesn't know the word "water." Also, a number of times in the game
"examine" will turn up a hidden artifact while "search" returns "You find
nothing of interest."

OVERALL: A 6.0


THE TOWN DRAGON by David A. Cornelson

The Town Dragon is a game with a lot of problems. The fact that the game
is confusing was evident from the very start: after a few turns, I was
told "Peter is following, looking at you strangely." I thought, 
"Following? But I haven't gone anywhere!" Turns out that when somebody is
following you, the game tells you so *every turn*. This type of sloppiness
occurs throughout. There are numerous grammar and spelling errors, so many
that I stopped keeping track of them. The game's prose is often terse and
uninformative, reducing room descriptions to simple lists of exits and
object descriptions to brief lines like "They're copper and few would
trade on them" for a handful of coins. In addition, the game suffers from
a number of technical bugs, including failure to properly define a short
name for objects and failure to respond to player commands at certain
points during the game.

In fact, the game reminded me of nothing so much as an early piece of
homemade interactive fiction, perhaps vintage 1982 or so. What's amazing
about this is that it was made with Inform, a very sophisticated tool. I
found myself marveling that something with such a primitive feel could be
constructed with materials so obviously intended to allow a programmer to
avoid this kind of aura. I suppose that the experience once again brought
home the knowledge that even the highest quality tools do not
automatically confer high quality upon their product. From time to time
the argument comes up that games with "from scratch" parsers are somehow
more pure or have more integrity than games made from prefab libraries, on
the grounds that the prefab games can't help but be good. I think that
what the Town Dragon shows us is that sophisticated parsers and libraries
are of no use unless they are put to a sophisticated purpose.

Still, with all these problems, I enjoyed the game for what I felt were
its merits: sincerity and consistency. The Town Dragon impressed me as a
game written by someone who cared about his story but didn't have much
skill with prose or with Inform. This doesn't make for a great product by
any means, but I enjoyed it a tiny bit more than the last game I played
(Zero Sum Game) a piece with good writing and coding but a very cold
heart. With an improvement in prose quality and code, this game could be
enhanced into a fair example of standard fantasy IF. I could see that
potential, and it helped to mitigate the game's other disappointments.

Prose: Even aside from the grammar and spelling problems, the game's prose
leaves a lot to be desired. Several important locations were described in
20 words or less -- not much on which to hang a mental picture. The milieu
was not well or thoroughly imagined, and some descriptions actually left
out crucial pieces of information. People and objects also were not
well-described, with many descriptions turning on some variation of "looks
ordinary."

Plot: The plot worked to drop a few clues and build to a climactic
revelation at the end, with mixed results. Certainly there was some degree
of building the mystery, and there was a revelation at the end. However,
some pieces of the game (especially the daughter's responses) gave the
secret away rather too easily, and the crippled prose was unable to create
tension or emotional investment effectively. 

Puzzles: Puzzles suffered from the same afflictions as the rest of the
game. The prose was sometimes too ineffective to convey sufficient
information to solve the puzzle logically. The buggy programming hampered
my confidence as a player that I would be able to tell the difference
between puzzles and bugs. In addition, the game broke several commonly
held "players' rights": An arbitrary time limit was imposed, a couple of
gratuitous mazes created frustration (especially since there were too few
inventory items handy for the 'drop and map' method), and information from
"past lives" was often necessary to avoid disaster. 

Technical:
     writing -- The game was littered with grammar and spelling errors.
These errors ranged from the simple ("vegatation") to the subtle (a room
description read "To the southeast you see a supply store and roads in all
major directions," implying that all the major roads were to the
southeast.)     
     coding -- There were several coding errors as well. Again, some of
these were simple errors like missing new_lines. Others were more
difficult to deal with, like the lack of a short name for the volunteers
who follow the player.

OVERALL: A 5.4


TRAVELS IN THE LAND OF ERDEN by Laura A. Knauth

Erden is a sprawling, ambitious game which probably does not belong in the
competition. This isn't to imply that the game is without merit; on the
contrary, it seems to have the potential to become an enjoyable fantasy
excursion. However, the game is *huge* -- I played for two hours and I
didn't even visit every location, let alone solve many puzzles. Moreover,
Erden could use another few rounds of testing; I found several coding bugs
and a plethora of grammar and spelling errors. In my opinion, the best
thing that could happen to this game is thorough testing and proofing,
then release in the spring of 1998, when we've all recovered from our
competition hangover and hunger for substantial new adventures. 

I can see why there's a temptation to submit longer games to the
competition. For one thing, there seems to be ongoing debate about the
meaning of the "two-hour" rule: is it that your game can be any size but
will simply be judged after two hours of play, or does it mean that your
game should be winnable in two hours? And if it's the latter, what do we
mean with an imprecise term like "winnable?" Hell, with a walkthrough and
a good headwind even Curses is winnable in two hours -- that doesn't make
it a two hour game! Then also there's the fact that historically, the
games that have won or placed high in the competition (Weather, Sherbet,
Delusions... the list goes on) have strained or outright flouted the
two-hour convention. According to Whizzard, the idea behind the rule is to
prevent new authors from having to be intimidated by the prospect of going
up against a Jigsaw or Christminster, an epic game with a huge scope, and
I think that this rule still has value, despite the beating it's taken
over the years. I tend to be of the opinion that the ideal size for a
competition game is something that I (an experienced IF player, but no
great shakes as a puzzle solver) can see 90-100% of in a two-hour sitting.
I designed "Wearing the Claw" this way, and I appreciate competition games
that do the same. However, the way it's worked out in practice is that the
large-scope games still slip in -- perhaps not epics, but much more than
vignettes, and they often succeed. And perhaps that's for the best; after
all, in a competition like this one (where the works are labors of love
and the financial stakes are rather low) it's better to have fewer rules
and more flexibility, thus to encourage more entrants. 

Still, what Erden demonstrates is that there is another advantage of
keeping your competition entry small: focus. I don't have an accurate idea
of how big Erden is (since I didn't see the whole thing, probably not even
half of it, in my two hours), but it seems to me that if the author had
concentrated her energies on a game perhaps a quarter of the size of this
one, she would have had time for much more extensive proofing and
beta-testing, and the result might have been a tight, polished gem rather
than the rough and gangly work she submitted. In addition, she'd have had
the opportunity to implement a taut and crystalline design structure,
which is beneficial to any game writer. I think that after serious and
detailed revision, Erden could be a fantasy odyssey on a par with Path to
Fortune; at the moment, however, it is neither that nor a particularly
thrilling competition entry.

Prose: The prose in Erden is often awkward, and can be difficult to read.
Misplaced modifiers, unmarked appositives, and endless strings of
prepositional phrases abound. The author also seems to have a particular
dislike for commas, stringing clause after clause breathlessly together. I
often reached the end of a sentence and found myself wondering how it had
started. There are times in which this turgid prose style makes for some
nice effects, as it gives a baroque feel to some of the game's ornate
artifacts. Other times, it's just confusing. Overall, Erden could be made
a much more evocative game with the help of some serious editing. 

Plot: One interesting aspect of Erden's plot is that it feels much more
"in medias res" than most interactive fiction. You enter the mysterious
fantasy land *after* the dragon has already been vanquished. Of course,
there are other quests to be undertaken, but the absence of the dragon
helps to give the milieu a satisfying sense of history. That being said,
I'm not sure that I gleaned much more about the plot. Certainly the
retrieval of a mystical ruby is your main goal, and several subquests pop
up along the way, some of which I didn't even begin before my two hours
ran out. However, what the meaning of the ruby is, or whether the plot
offers any twists, turns, or even character development of any kind is
still opaque to me. 

Puzzles: I spent enough time traversing the land that I'm not sure I even
encountered any puzzles. There's apparently a lantern to be obtained, but
the parameters of doing so were so broad that I have no idea how long it
would have taken to succeed. I collected several objects whose use was not
immediately apparent, but I'm not sure if they ever come in handy or not.
There was one area of the game that seemed pretty clearly to hide a
gateway to underground caverns, but once I thought I had found the answer
to opening the gate, the parser was stubbornly unresponsive to my ideas.
So I have no idea whether what I was seeing was an unsolved puzzle or a
red herring. What's more, the game lacked a scoring system so I wasn't
ever sure when I had done something important, but let me put it this way:
I didn't *feel* like I had done anything clever. Because
of all this, I can't venture much of an opinion about the puzzles in the
game. 

Technical:
     writing -- There were dozens of writing errors in the game. Beyond
the awkward, overloaded prose there were any number of misspellings and
misplaced modifiers.   
     coding -- Erden suffered from many niggling coding errors, especially
missing or added new_lines. Some important scenery objects are missing
(for example, the game describes huge hieroglyphics carved into a
cliffside, the examination of which returns "You can't see any such
thing."). Like the writing, the coding would benefit from an attentive
overhaul.

OVERALL: A 6.3


Paul O'Brian                                      obrian@ucsu.colorado.edu
"I think it's important to remember that no one falls into a simple set of
labels. Even more important is to learn from your mistakes, and to fight
for the positive choice."                            -- Lindsey Buckingham



From obrianNOSPAM@colorado.edu Thu Jan  8 18:11:48 MET 1998
Article: 28606 of rec.games.int-fiction
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From: Paul O'Brian <obrian@ucsu.Colorado.EDU>
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: COMP 97: My reviews, part 7 -- LONG!
Date: Thu, 1 Jan 1998 21:26:22 -0700
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If you don't want to download these postings, but still want to read the
reviews, they are posted on my IF web page at
http://ucsu.colorado.edu/~obrian/IF.htm. Note also that although my scores
go out to the first decimal place for a little greater precision, I
naturally rounded off when I submitted them for the contest.

This posting contains reviews for the following games:

Unholy Grail
VirtuaTech
Zero Sum Game
Zombie!

UNHOLY GRAIL by Stuart Allen

Playing Unholy Grail puts me in mind of the old saw about the glass being
half-full or half-empty. For each positive I can think of, a
counterbalancing negative also comes to mind. While the prose creates
sharp, clear, atmospheric images, it is also burdened with numerous
grammar and spelling errors. While the game had an inventive plot, this
same plot was punctuated with moments of tediousness, implausibility, and
pure frustration. And while Grail is orders of magnitude better than
Allen's 1996 entry "The Curse of Eldor," it still fails to realize both
its own potential and that of its author.

Allen has accomplished a noteworthy programming achievement: he has
written his own IF engine, one which mimics much of the important
functionality of the current front-runners Inform and TADS. Unfortunately,
it still doesn't perform at the levels of either of these popular
"standard" IF engines, and suffers greatly by comparison. Again, it's a
yin and yang situation: a quality engine is written from scratch, but it's
still a poor competitor to the dominant systems, marred by problems
ranging from the complex (tortured disambiguation) to the amazingly simple
(an inexplicably arbitrary pathname in the CONFIG file.)

Still, Unholy Grail is the first competition game I've played, and it's
not an altogether inauspicious start. For one thing, it represents
remarkable progress on the part of the author. [No, the comparison to
non-competition games is not affecting my overall rating -- I simply
mention it in this review for the sake of completeness.] Unholy Grail is
not the fulfillment of Stuart Allen's promise, but it marks him as one to
watch. With the improvements he's already made to his JACL engine it seems
entirely plausible that it could one day match the quality of the current
state of the art. Also, this game is one of the few conceptually complete
pieces of IF I've seen in the "thriller" genre, a field which is in many
ways well-suited to IF, but whose only significant representative has been
"Border Zone," a quality game but one whose gimmick of real-time has often
overshadowed discussion of its generic groundbreaking. Unholy Grail was
uneven; some things were really very good, other things really not very
good at all. I hope it's a marker of better things to come.

Prose: I found the prose in Unholy Grail fairly difficult to read.
Sentences seemed to string endlessly, clause following clause until I
thought perhaps the author had asked Henry James to ghost-write. However,
I also think that the lack of a status line and room name threw me out of
my ingrained IF reading habits, the disorientation of which probably
contributed to my difficulty in following the author's long narrative
strands. Or it could just be my own denseness -- that's always a
possibility. Despite the game's verbosity, though, strong images floated
up to me out of the sea of words. I have a very distinct picture in my
mind of the swivel chair and radar screen in the control room, of the
battered hut whose floorboards parted to show the ground below, and of the
elegant, elaborate hotel. The author clearly had done his homework, and
was able to create a very convincing picture of the character's
environment. I just had to read some of the sentences a few times before I
felt sure I knew what they were saying.

Plot: The most ringing endorsement of the plot I can give is this: after
the two-hour judging period had expired, and I was only 75% through with
the game, I spent another half-hour on it because I *needed* to know how
it ended. I found the plot difficult to get into at first (see Puzzles),
and needed to refer often to the science encyclopedia so I could have a
basic clue of what the hell the game was talking about, but once I
understood, I was inexorably drawn in by the skillfully dropped hints and
slowly unfolding drama. On the other hand (and there's always another hand
when it comes to Unholy Grail), I found some things in the plot pretty
difficult to believe. Small points like the layout of the complex were
jarring: would the military really set up a female officer's room so that
her only access to it is through a civilian male's room, and have her
share a bathroom with him as well? Also, some larger points (such as the
Rotenone) seemed only to serve as red herrings, but created major
implausibilities in the plot: if I've determined that Rotenone is causing
the fish deaths, how can it be true that they're being caused by something
which in fact behaves entirely differently? For that matter, if my basic
science encyclopedia tells me that Rotenone causes fish to drown, why do I
blame it for cancer?

Puzzles: For the first hour I played the game, I was absolutely stumped.
Finally, I resorted to the hint system and learned that because an
extra-long sentence in the room description of the lab, I had neglected to
examine the lab bench as closely as I ought. Once I found the global
positioner, I was off and running. Consequently, I struggled with this
game a lot more than its puzzles may have merited. Most of the puzzles
were fairly easy, when they didn't involve guessing the verb (Can't turn
the drum. Can't move the drum. Can't push the drum. Can't pull the drum.
Can't look under the drum. Oh, look *behind* the drum!), and some were
quite satisfying (especially the filing cabinet.) However, one puzzle was
amazingly tedious -- it basically involved typing "n" 20 times and "w" 20
times, then doing the opposite. Here's where a "swim to" verb would have
been much appreciated!

Technical:
     writing -- In addition to the stylistic factors I mentioned in
"Prose", Unholy Grail was also plagued with grammar and spelling errors.
Certainly there was some attention to proofreading, but one or two more
passes were needed.    
     coding -- Unfortunately this is where Grail stumbles the most. JACL
does a good job of imitating mainstream systems (especially Inform) in
many ways, but in other crucial areas it falls critically short. For
example, the system allows only one saved game at a time, and it lacks an
"oops" verb. Also, its disambiguation is weak, a fact which caused a great
deal of frustration for me as my reasonable answers to its reasonable
questions kept getting the response "The sentence you typed was
incomplete." The system also overuses Graham Nelson's famous "You can't
see any such thing," applying it to sentences whose nouns are examinable
and manipulable in other contexts. In addition to these general systemic
problems, Grail itself had a number of particular bugs which I've reported
to the author in a separate email. 

OVERALL -- A 7.O


VIRTUATECH by David Glasser

If sword-and-sorcery fantasy was the overused genre of the 1996 IF
competition, I'm beginning to believe that virtual reality will win the
honors for 1997. Of course, it's not David Glasser's fault that Comp97
scheduled his game to be played after several other VR- themed pieces on
my list, but I can say that it took away some of the thrill for me to see
yet another page from the VR handbook. The other unfortunate part of this
is that VirtuaTech's use of VR is pretty humdrum: step inside your
computer a la Planetfall, or "VirtuaPhone" other entities, none of whom
turn out to be characters. The game's near-future milieu was reasonably
interesting (though rather cliched), but it felt like a thin
science-fictional sheen over what is basically a very simple college game
-- fix your computer and print out your paper to bring it to class.

As such, VirtuaTech isn't bad. It's short, easy, and inoffensive. There is
some entertainment to be had from solving the game's puzzles and exploring
its limited geography, but it doesn't deliver much in the way of
excitement or thrills. The puzzles are mainly a matter of putting the
right key in the right lock, and finding numbers to type on a variety of
keypads. The game's one slightly more interesting puzzle (opening the
portal) I solved just by noodling rather than through any kind of
inductive reasoning, so I didn't have the pleasure of experiencing any
great flash of insight.

On the plus side, there isn't much particularly *wrong* with the game. The
writing could be better, but it certainly works. The design is compact and
efficient, and the setting as a whole is consistent and makes logical
sense. There are very few bugs in the code (I only found one real
problem), and the puzzles may be unimaginative, but they're fair.
Consequently, VirtuaTech turns out to be a pleasant way to spend 45
minutes or so. 

Prose: There's certainly a level of awkwardness to the prose in
VirtuaTech. Many of the sentences are rather clunky, and the whole thing
could use an edit for elegance and rhythm. However, I only rarely found
myself confused by descriptions or situations, so the writing did its most
important job: it conveyed the scene with accuracy and clarity. 

Plot: The game's plot is very, very simple, which is probably what makes
it such a short game to play. [SPOILERS AHEAD] In fact, I was rather
surprised that all I needed to do was to get the paper printed and to walk
out the door. When the winning message came up, I said "That's it?" It
was. 

Puzzles: As mentioned above, the puzzles are pretty garden-variety. Lots
of typing codes into keyboards or pushing the right button. Still, the
puzzles all make sense within the game's world, and there are no
"guess-the-verb" or "read-the-designer's-mind" puzzles to be found.

Technical:
     writing -- I found a couple of grammar errors in the game, but
nothing too egregious.  
     coding -- There was only one bug in the game, and its effect on
gameplay was negligible. A couple of verbs could have been better
implemented, but solutions to these problems were also not hard to find.   

OVERALL: An 8.0


ZERO SUM GAME by Cody Sandifer

Zero Sum Game (hereafter called "ZSG") is like the proverbial apple which
is shiny & enticing on the outside, but inside is rapidly rotting away.
The game starts with a fun premise: You've won. You've collected treasures
and solved puzzles, and now (before the first move of the game) you're
bringing them home to your mother. Unfortunately, she doesn't approve of
theft and killing and other such goings on, and orders you to go back and
put right all the wrongs you've committed. Thus the game's name: you try
to bring your score down to zero before your moves (5000 of them) run out.
This could have been a fun romp of reverse thinking, or an interesting
exploration of the morality of the traditional stock adventurer character,
or even both. As it turns out, the game doesn't really succeed on either
count.

The main problem that I had with ZSG is that it takes a much more callous
approach to cruelty (no, not Zarfian cruelty. Real cruelty. [No offense,
Andrew -- yours feels pretty real at the time.]) than I'm comfortable
with. [SPOILERS AHEAD] For example, early on in the game you pick up a
loyal sidekick named Maurice, a childlike being who follows you around
making funny comments a la Floyd. In another similarity to Floyd, Maurice
must die in order for the game to be completed. However, that's where the
similarity ends, because Maurice does not sacrifice his life to save
yours, nor does he suffer to save the world. No, you kill him to get a
pear. The game describes it this way: "You split Maurice wide open;
seconds before he expires, Maurice beckons you closer. 'Oooh,' he says,
'was that a mystical treasure?'". Then you take the pear from his dead
body and tromp off to solve the puzzle which requires it. In another
section of the game, you take your cute animal friend Chippy the chipmunk,
cover him with honey and poison and feed him to a stereotypical "Beast
guarding the door." These (and other) scenes make it apparent that the
author has not taken a thoughtful, mature approach to the implications of
his theme. That's OK -- not everything has to be thoughtful and mature.
But ZSG reached such a level of cruelty that it wasn't much fun either.
Dead bodies piled up in proportions comparable to any hack-and-slash MUD,
and even though there's a resurrection spell in the game, you can't use it
to revive Maurice, or the dozens of dead elves and villagers, or any of
the other beings killed in the game, with the exception of Chippy. The
game's ending provides the final barb -- it kills you. Not as penance for
your sins, but because you're a "mama's boy" (or girl, as the case may
be.)

To give it its due, the game does have a clever premise, a promising
start, and some good puzzles. Some of these puzzles have no particular
moral bent, but are cleverly designed (getting the scroll, getting the
key). Others in fact do have the particular ethical direction of reversing
wrongs: you give the candy back to the baby, for example. That's why it
left such a bad taste in my mouth to learn that other puzzles required
coldly slaughtering your friends for the sake of a few points. I learned
this from the walkthrough -- I had already thought of killing Maurice to
get the pear, but couldn't believe it was the right thing to do until I
heard it from the author himself. After that point, I detached from the
game, using the walkthrough to see the whole thing and make notes for this
review. It didn't get better. Zero Sum Game's gimmick is one that works
best the first time it is used -- too bad this game did such a poor job of
using it. 

Prose: The prose in ZSG is actually pretty good. It's what enabled me to
become a little affectionate about Maurice and Chippy before I had to
slaughter them. Still, much like the rest of the game, the prose is a good
tool used for the wrong purpose. It's like a beginning carpenter using the
best quality wood -- the result may look pretty, but it falls apart much
too easily.

Plot: I think this is a game that doesn't know what it wants to be about.
I considered the notion (and this is giving a *lot* of credit to the
author) that perhaps the driving idea behind the game is that there is no
escape from unethical behavior, that even in putting some things right
other ethical boundaries must necessarily be crossed. If we allow this
rather extravagant benefit of the doubt and assume that such an
examination of ethical entrapment is the game's purpose, I can only say
that it does a really poor job of it. The game's arbitrary limits force
brutal answers to trivial problems -- not a very powerful demonstration of
the concept. But I don't think the game is aiming for anything so
thought-out. Instead, its plot is a wandering mess, ending in a big "piss
off" to its player. Unsatisfying and unpleasant.

Puzzles: The puzzles represented both the best and the worst things about
ZSG. On the one hand, the first couple of puzzles I solved (the baby and
the key) were really clever and interesting, and they raised my
expectations from the already high level achieved by the game's premise.
Unfortunately, the excitement of these only intensified the letdown of
consulting the walkthrough and discovering what cold solutions were
required for the other puzzles. It's a pity that the author didn't keep a
consistent tone throughout -- I was much more disappointed than I would
have been had all the puzzles required nasty measures to solve. 

Technical:
     writing -- I only found one grammar error in the entire text, a
misplaced modifier.   
     coding -- The coding was relatively coherent, though there was one
major problem: the warning system was a complete failure. To test it, I
ate the candy, killed the merchant, and killed Maurice in the first few
turns of the game. No response. Other than that, I found no major bugs.

OVERALL: a 5.3


ZOMBIE! by Scott W. Starkey

I love the beginning of Zombie!. [SPOILERS FOR THE PROLOGUE AHEAD] In it,
you play Valerie, a junior at the local college who is enjoying a relaxing
camping trip after having finally dumped her loser boyfriend Scott. The
atmosphere of the camping trip is very well-done, from the CD player
spinning 80s hits to the various characters squabbling over how to build a
campfire. Equally well-done is the terror of learning that there is
something awful lurking in those woods, and it's coming to get you. You
run, but to no avail: you are overtaken and killed... and then the
prologue is over and you find yourself in your actual role: that of Scott,
the unlucky guy who has just been dumped by his heartless girlfriend
Valerie, ridden his motorcycle out into the country to get his mind off
the breakup, and (wouldn't you know it?) run out of gas in the remote
woods. The viewpoint shift caught me off-guard, and it worked marvelously.
I felt like I had a better insight into my character after having seen him
through the eyes of another, and vice versa for the character I played in
the prologue. Viewpoint shifts in traditional fiction can make for a
dramatic effect; interactive fiction, with its customary second person
form of address, made the shift all the more dramatic, at least this time.
It also serves perfectly to crank up the tension: one of the first things
you hear with Scott's ears is a scream -- it sounds like Valerie, but what
would she be doing out here in the woods? 

Unfortunately, after this promising beginning Zombie! stumbles badly.
[MORE SPOILERS HERE] For one thing, after taking so much time to develop
the relationship between Valerie and Scott, the game never returns to it!
I fully expected to see Valerie show up again as a zombie, to see Scott's
emotional reaction to encountering her in that state, and to find out what
happens after he rescues her from zombification. A reunion, perhaps? Well,
no. In fact, the prologue is the last we see of Valerie. Now, I usually
like it when a game proves itself less predictable than I thought it would
be, but this time I felt cheated. I wouldn't have paid so much attention
to Valerie or put so much time into learning about the relationship had I
realized that she was just a throwaway character. Doubly unfortunate is
the fact this is far from Zombie!'s only problem. There are numerous bugs
in the code, hand-in-hand (as they so often are) with an unpleasantly high
count of mechanical errors in the writing.

I kept finding myself feeling frustrated, because every time I really got
into the game, allowed myself to get interested in its tensions, a bug or
a spelling error would come along that would shatter mimesis and deflate
the emotional effect. The thing is, the game does a great job of building
that tension. It's a b-movie all the way, no deep or serious issues here,
but it's definitely got that suspenseful, creepy feeling that the best
b-movies have. (Yes, I'm aware of the irony in that phrase, so you needn't
bother pointing it out.) The sound of heavy footsteps approaching, or the
feeling of driving rain beating against a worn, gothic mansion, or the
sight of horrific creatures staring dead ahead (literally!), and similar
gothic pleasures were all very well-executed in this game, until you hit
the inevitable technical error. Still, better to have a good game with
lots of bugs than a mediocre game executed flawlessly. Bugs are easy to
fix. When Starkey fixes them, Zombie! will definitely be one to recommend. 

Prose: The prose isn't beautiful by any means, and it often shows signs of
awkward construction or phrasing. On the other hand, it does achieve many
suspenseful moments, and quite often has some very nice pieces of
description or atmosphere. I found the rain very convincing, and the eerie
outside of the mansion was also well-portrayed. In addition, the prologue
had some well-done dialogue and atmosphere, and built the tension just
right for entry into the game proper. 

Plot: The plot was a good combination of the spooky and the silly, with
the emphasis on the silly. I found it reminiscent of some of the early
LucasArts games, especially the moments with Ed the Head. The kitschy
charm of the mad scientist, his lumbering assistant, the haunted mansion,
the unholy army of the dead, etc. was great. The main disappointment I had
with the plot was the ending. It felt tacked on, as if there were more
story to tell but because the game is a competition entry the author
didn't have time to explore it. [SPOILERS AHEAD] Also, as I mentioned
above, the emphasis placed on Valerie was rather odd considering that she
never again showed up in the game. Finally, I know this is just a personal
preference, but I felt a little annoyed that in the end of the game, I
couldn't foil Dr. Maxim's nefarious scheme. I understand there's a long
tradition of apocalyptic endings in this kind of story, but this ending
didn't manage the triumphant feeling of destroying evil or the spooky
feeling of inevitable defeat.

Puzzles: I actually liked the puzzles in Zombie! quite a bit. Some of them
were a little tacked on (the measuring cups), and the overall puzzle
framework (collect the elements of a recipe) is quite shopworn by now.
However, all the puzzles, cliched as they may have been, fit very well
into the overall story, and that seamless fit makes a lot of things pretty
forgivable. If the game hadn't been plagued by bugs, its puzzles would
have come very close to achieving the goal of aiding the narrative rather
than obstructing it. 

Technical:
     writing -- There were a significant number of mechanical errors in
Zombie!'s writing. 
     coding -- The game also had quite a number of bugs. It needs at least
one round of intense playtesting before it's really ready for the world at
large. 

OVERALL: A 7.5


If you've read through all these reviews, thank you very much for your
time. I know I was horribly long-winded -- I did it because as an author I
know how valuable substantive feedback can be, and as a player with
limited time on my hands, I really appreciate a signpost or two as to
which games are the best. I hope you enjoyed them.

My sincere congratulations to all the entrants in the 1997 IF competition.
It was another banner year. Here's to the future!

Oh, by the way: Happy New Year, everyone!

Paul O'Brian                                      obrian@ucsu.colorado.edu
"I think it's important to remember that no one falls into a simple set of
labels. Even more important is to learn from your mistakes, and to fight
for the positive choice."                            -- Lindsey Buckingham



From graham@gnelson.demon.co.uk Thu Jan  8 20:00:29 MET 1998
Article: 28938 of rec.games.int-fiction
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From: Graham Nelson <graham@gnelson.demon.co.uk>
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: COMP97: Reviews?
Date: Thu, 08 Jan 1998 16:58:05 +0000 (GMT)
Organization: none
Message-ID: <ant0816051cbM+4%@gnelson.demon.co.uk>
References: <34ABDA17.D59A8C6A@ix.netcom.com> <19980101223001.RAA27204@ladder02.news.aol.com> <ant0210300b0M+4%@gnelson.demon.co.uk> <6926lg$g2j$1@lyra.csx.cam.ac.uk> 
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In article <6926lg$g2j$1@lyra.csx.cam.ac.uk>, Richard Stamp
<URL:mailto:rgs20@cam.ac.uk> wrote:
> In article <ant0210300b0M+4%@gnelson.demon.co.uk>,
> Graham Nelson  <graham@gnelson.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> >
> >But no... Plotkin's human face mask is visibly slipping... and
> >underneath, it's... the school caretaker, Mr Nelson!
> 
> Graham, did you deliberately change the format of the title page to
> throw us off the scent?  I was looking out for that trademark
> reverse-video box with a quotation inside.

It was all a reversing trick -- with my games, you normally get
a quotation on the cover and an original work inside, whereas
this time you got an original cover page and a gigantic quotation
within...

-- 
Graham Nelson | graham@gnelson.demon.co.uk | Oxford, United Kingdom



From obrianNOSPAM@colorado.edu Thu Jan  8 20:01:52 MET 1998
Article: 28941 of rec.games.int-fiction
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From: Paul O'Brian <obrian@ucsu.Colorado.EDU>
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Yet more Comp97 reviews
Date: Thu, 8 Jan 1998 11:11:40 -0700
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On Tue, 6 Jan 1998, Joe Mason wrote:

> In article <68ruas$5lsul@fido.asd.sgi.com>,
> John Francis <jfrancis@dungeon.engr.sgi.com> wrote:
> 
> (About Sunset Over Savannah)
> 
> >And you are required to be wantonly destructive ...
> 
> Oh yeah, I meant to mention this in my reply to Paul O'Brien:
> 
> Odd that he had such a problem with the toilet paper in "She's Got a Thing For
> a Spring", but not with the destructiveness in Sunset, which I thought was
> much more out of character.  Its a rare piece of IF that actually makes me
> question the ethics of the "take everything" mentality of the genre, and 
> Sunset made me question it because the world was so detailed it seemed my
> actions should have deeper consequences: yet it completely ignored the moral
> issue, and painted the character as as much of a larcenous villain as any
> adventurer that ever lived.

Hmm. You make a good point. After I read your post, I tried to examine the
reasons behind this inconsistency, and here's what I came up with:

1) I finished Spring, but didn't finish Sunset. I wrote my reviews
after having played the game in question for two hours, or until I'd
solved it (whichever came first). Consequently, there may be some actions
in Sunset which I didn't take (because I ran out of time) which would have
changed my opinion about the moral issues involved. 

2) Still, thinking back I can remember some theft and destruction in the
parts of Sunset I saw (I'm thinking about the recycle bins here). I think
that part of the reason why the theft in Spring bothered me so much was
that I was stealing from such a kind and hospitable person. Somehow
stealing the only roll of toilet paper from a nice guy who just made you
lunch feels a little different than taking the recycle bin from a public
pavilion's storage room. A puzzle in Sunset which, for example, required
me to push the old fisherman off the pier, or to steal his bucket of fish,
would have raised flags for me immediately.

3) I thought that the puzzles were one of Sunset's weaker points. As I
mentioned in my review, I only spent the last half-hour of playing time on
the puzzles, so the bulk of my impressions had been formed before I solved 
a single puzzle. I was disappointed with the glass puzzle because it
seemed unsolvable without seriously littering the beach (or seeming to,
anyway), but I was mainly solving it to see more of the game at that
point.

Still, I agree that Sunset would be a better game if its design permitted
you to find the magic and wonder in your life without criminal or
unethical actions. The same goes for Spring. It's interesting how many
things those two games have in common: realistic setting, hints of 
magic... and shaky ethical ground. 

Paul O'Brian                                      obrian@ucsu.colorado.edu
"I think it's important to remember that no one falls into a simple set of
labels. Even more important is to learn from your mistakes, and to fight
for the positive choice."                            -- Lindsey Buckingham






From mol@bartlet.df.lth.se Fri Jan  9 10:53:47 MET 1998
Article: 28987 of rec.games.int-fiction
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From: mol@bartlet.df.lth.se (Magnus Olsson)
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Personal Notes about the Competition
Date: 9 Jan 1998 10:33:07 +0100
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In article <3aht.14$9p.196628@news1.atlantic.net>,
HarryH <harryh@iu.net.idiotic.com.skip.idiotic.com> wrote:
>In article <vgUt0sRO7kZD092yn@rhein-neckar.netsurf.de>, 
>zifnab@rhein-neckar.netsurf.de says...
>[snip]
>>You're contradicting yourself. Interactive Fiction without fiction
>>isn't IF. Besides, who would you expect to play a game with puzzles but
>>without any story ? Where should the player's motivation come from ?
>
>I can systematically answer every detail, but I'm getting tired of this 
>discussion. So let me just summarize:

I must confess that I haven't played "Cask", but I'd like to jump
into the discussion anyway because it's about a subject that I've
thought a lot about.

>There are two kinds of players here.
>1. Interactive Fiction as Fiction.
>2. Interactive Fiction aka Text Adventure.

If we change definition 2. to "Interactive Fiction as a Puzzle Game"
(which I think is more or less what you mean), I'm with you, so far.

>Reading your comments makes me think that you belong to group no. 1. Well, I 
>belong to group no. 2. Just because we have different taste and preference 
>doesn't mean that we should put each other down. I'd rather help and be 
>helped than trying to destroy each other.

Amen.

>Obviously you feel very strongly about IF as Fiction. So be it. It's good to 
>have them. But I feel that the quality of puzzles degenerate into TAKE 
>X,DROP/USE X. Good stories, yes; Puzzles, no. 

But this isn't necessarily true. Have you played "So Far"? That's a game
with is excellent as fiction, *but* contains very original puzzles that
are among the best puzzles I've seen. You can play "So Far" as fiction,
and just view the puzzles as obstacles, or you can play it as a puzzle
game and ignore all the fancy prose.

The same goes for many (but not all) of the Infocom games. Take
"Hitchhiker", for example: the Babelfish puzzle is a classic. But when
I played the game, I played it as an itneractive version of the
book. I still enjoyed the puzzles, but what I liked the most was that it
made me experience the story from inside Arthur Dent's head, as it were.

Granted, since many of the "IF as fiction" authors aren't into IF for the
puzzles, they may write games that put let emphasis on puzzles, or even
try to avoid them altogether. But that's just _some_ authors.

>In the old days, text adventures aren't IF. They're just a bunch of puzzles 
>grouped together and people goes about solving them. Since the idea is to 
>make people sweat for the puzzle and not to enjoy the story, they put in 
>mazes, lousy points, unconventional ideas. Puzzles were elaborate. The 
>puzzles aren't "travelling" IF to enjoy scenery.

But the very idea of IF, *even if it's "just" IF as a puzzle game*, is
that you use a story to tie the puzzles together, right? The story can
be rudimentary, but it's still there, or it wouldn't be IF. I haven't
played "Cask", but from the reviews I read it seems as if there is a
story in the game. At least there's a plot: you have to escape from
a cellar. To do so, you have to do certain things in a certain order;
write this down and you have a story.

What this boils down to is that your argument: "'Cask' isn't a story,
so people shouldn't criticize the lethal wire puzzle for ruining the
story" is a bogus argument. *Some* people - by no means everybody -
*are* disturbed by things like that, even in an "IF as puzzle"
game. Why? Because they can't help seeing the story, and entering into
it, and being jolted by "instant death" puzzles.

Finally, a piece of advice to you and to all other new authors:

There's been a lot of criticism of *all* the contest entries. Some of
this ciriticism has been quite negative. Some has been quite nasty,
even.

I fully understand if you're feeling upset about this. Nobody can even
begin to appreciate how bad criticism feels until he or she has been
at the receiving end.

However, reacting to bad criticism with a defensive stance, and trying
to explain to the critics why they are wrong and you are right, is just
about the worst thing you can do. If you don't like the criticism, you
can either try to see things the reviewers' way, and see if you can 
do anything about the things they complain about. That's one way.
Or you can just ignore them, and say "OK, reviewer X didn't like my
game. But I still believe in what I'm doing."

But entering into debate with reviewer X and trying to convince him to
see things your way is entirely the wrong way to approach the
problem. Unless X has misunderstood something important, you're not
going to convince him, and you will not benefit an iota from it
either. 
-- 
Magnus Olsson (mol@df.lth.se, zebulon@pobox.com)
------    http://www.pobox.com/~zebulon   ------
     Not officially connected to LU or LTH.


From obrianNOSPAM@colorado.edu Fri Jan  9 11:00:18 MET 1998
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From: Paul O'Brian <obrian@ucsu.Colorado.EDU>
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: COMP 97: My reviews, part 5 -- LONG!
Date: Thu, 8 Jan 1998 13:01:56 -0700
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On Tue, 6 Jan 1998, Joe Mason wrote:
> [Re: Spring] One problem with the puzzles that you don't mention,
> though, is the endgame.

Andrew Plotkin already posted the perfect words on this, so I will simply
say: Go, Andrew!

> Sunset had more magic than Spring, though -

I didn't play all the way through Sunset (my two hours ran out), which is
what was informing my opinion.

> >[I wrote...]
> >In a gutsy choice, Cockrum centers his game around emotional transition,
> >presenting a player character whose inner state is conflicted: you're at
> >the end of your vacation (shades of Trinity), and the experience has made
> >you reassess your life, especially in relation to your mind-numbing job.
> >Is it possible that the best thing you could do is to quit, and try to set
> >your feet on another path? In pursuit of the answer to this question, you
> 
> I found the implementation of this question spoiled the rest of the game for
> me.  Its interesting that you portrayed many of the main characters of other
> games as "whiners" and seemed quite put out by that - I had no problem with
> them, but I found the main character of this game to be an EXTREME whiner.
> After every wonderful vista I experienced, I was brought down to earth with
> a tremendous flop: "The beautiful setting has left you wondering, 'Should you
> really quit?' You still need more arguments to persuade you."  This type of
> itemizing (I need to see five things, no more, no less, to persuade me to
> quit) clashed completely with the open feel of the rest of the game.

Well, yes, it's problematic to have your emotions constructed in such a
mechanical way. The thing is, interactive fiction lends itself to
concrete, mechanical constructs more than to nebulous categories like
shifting emotions. That's why I called it a gutsy choice to focus on
emotion. I know that nobody walks around thinking "If I see five exciting
things today, I'm going to completely change the course of my life," but
people on the cusp of major decisions *do* vacillate, and they *are*
influenced more than usual by their surroundings and incidental events. Or
at least I am. 

Sunset's focus on emotion worked for me, not because of its underlying
mechanical structure, but in spite of it. The whole problem with doing
away with score is that players have no idea how they're progressing in
the game, and I don't necessarily think it was a bad choice on Cockrum's
part to allow Sunset to retain some of that measuring function, even
within a story focused on emotion. I think it's especially important in a
design with a lot of parallelism, like that of Sunset. So I guess I'd
chalk it up to what each of us tends to react to the most strongly. I
responded to the emotional focus enough that I could set aside its rather
teleological design, and you responded to the design enough that the
emotional stuff didn't do it for you. Agree?

> >[I wrote...]
> >Plot: I think the game's plot is a master stroke. Sunset has as much or
> >more thematic unity as any interactive fiction game I can think of, and
> >this unity lends a sense of sweep to the plot which makes the game such a
> >powerful experience. Sunset establishes its focus from its first few
> >sentences, and from that point on every piece of the game is an
> >elaboration or variation on that conflicted, questioning theme. This
> >seamless melding of plot and design made Sunset seem like more a work of
> >art than a computer game.
> 
> As I believe I've said, I disagree totally.  I thought that the question
> put to you was completely mundane, and thus clashed with the incredible feel
> of the setting every time it was brought up, which was far too often.

I think that was the whole point. The fact that these incredible sights
clashed with your mundane existence is what's calling that existence into
question in the first place. I think that deciding whether to leave a job
can be a momentous decision -- maybe you disagree. I didn't find the
dilemma uninteresting, though -- probably because I *do* work in a mundane
job, and one of the big issues in my life right now is trying to keep the
excitement and magic in my world while I (very slowly) pursue a better
career path. (HA! My bias is out!)

I think that's also why I didn't perceive the main character as a whiner
(Hmm, although maybe now you perceive *me* as a whiner. I'll have to read
your review :)). I only remember making that comment about one PC, the one
in Aardvarkbarf, who is described at least a half-dozen times as
(literally) weeping and moaning. Sunset didn't come across the same way to
me at all. Perhaps there is something annoyingly Hamlet-like about this
person who walks around the beach seeing amazing things but still can't
decide what direction his/her life should go, but I don't think of that as
whininess. These are tough decisions to make, and the character is
reluctant (perhaps overly so) to come to a conclusion. This isn't the same
thing as constant mourning and regret for things that have already
happened. 

Paul O'Brian                                      obrian@ucsu.colorado.edu
"I think it's important to remember that no one falls into a simple set of
labels. Even more important is to learn from your mistakes, and to fight
for the positive choice."                            -- Lindsey Buckingham





From vanfossen@compuserve.com Sat Jan 10 13:25:55 MET 1998
Article: 29022 of rec.games.int-fiction
From: vanfossen@compuserve.com (Brent VanFossen)
Subject: Re: Comment on CASK
Date: Fri, 09 Jan 1998 21:48:52 GMT
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On Thu, 08 Jan 1998 12:29:02 -0400, Brad O`Donnell
<s7m6@romulus.sun.csd.unb.ca> wrote:

>HarryH wrote:
>> 
>> Most of CASK's reviews condemn the game. However, I found a good one. I'm
>> paraphrasing since I don't remember the words exactly:
>> 
>> "I'll only say this: The puzzles in this game seem to be relatively well
>> implemented. That's it. Nothing else."
>> 
>> To whoever this person is, thank you. You are the only one who has captured
>> the essence of my game. Perhaps "implemented" is an incorrect choice. If
>> those reviews are any good, I guess I botched the implementation badly.
>> "Designed" is probably a better word. 

A thought just crossed my mind, and I thought this would be a good
place to interject it.  Most people who would like to be writers never
get to see their work published.  Some, because they never even get
started; some because they never finish or make a submission.  Even
those who do complete a work may be turned down by an editor or
publisher.  That rejection letter may be nothing more than a returned
manuscript with the curt words, "No.  Sorry."  A kind and willing
editor may circle a paragraph and put a few encouraging words in the
margin, or might even take the time  to write a few sentences to say
why it was rejected.  But, oftentimes, the author is left in the dark
as to why the submission didn't make it to publication.  To say that
most writers are insecure is an understatement.

The competition is good, because (I hope I'm not wrong) EVERY entry
received a public critique.  Every author got at least a chance to
know why one or two of the player/judges liked or disliked the game.

To you, Harry, I would say that with some polishing, you would have an
interesting set of puzzles  (Heck, they're already interesting.)  Some
verbs were left off (hey, my game, too!)  Some of the descriptions,
particularly about entering and why you couldn't get back out of the
cylinder, were confusing.  That's not fatal.  With some work, your
small game could be a lot of fun.

I would encourage you, and everyone else, to take the comments as
helpful.  Most of them were meant that way, I think.  Work with the
games for a few more months.  Get someone else to play them.  And
submit a new release that we can all play again.  That's the spirit of
the competition, and we all learn something about what works and  what
doesn't.

Brent VanFossen




From obrian@ucsu.Colorado.EDU Sat Jan 10 14:16:20 MET 1998
Article: 29071 of rec.games.int-fiction
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From: Paul O'Brian <obrian@ucsu.Colorado.EDU>
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Sunset and whiners (was: My reviews, part 5)
Date: Sat, 10 Jan 1998 01:59:40 -0700
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On Fri, 9 Jan 1998, Joe Mason wrote:
> [re: Sunset]
> I think the "[confused]" (for example) on the status bar was enough of a score
> to cover it.  I would certainly have had no problem telling how the progression
> was going using it alone.  Shifting emotions *can* be done without mechanical
> constructs. (Actually, when I first read the status-line concept, I thought
> that it sounded pretty mechanical.  But it shifted often enough to seem
> flowing.)

Mm. How would you feel if Sunset was just altered so that the "score"
message doesn't show up after every epiphany? This would give the player
the option of just using the status line or of typing "score" to get more
detailed information. (Not that I have any influence over what Ivan does
to Sunset. I'm just curious.)

> [re: what I have & haven't said about competition PCs being "whiners"]
> I thought you said the same thing about the main character of Friday Afternoon,
> who spent the game repeating "I am not a nerd!" and tried to prove it to
> himself by the fact that he was going on a date.  In fact, unless I'm mistaking
> you with another reviewer, you pointed that out several times as one of the
> things which should have been taken out of the game.

Spoilers for Friday Afternoon below:
















Well, to me that's not the same thing as being whiny. The thing that
bugged me about the PC in Friday, and I realize that this is a completely
subjective and personal reaction, was the sexism. One manifestation of
this was pretty direct: one of the bulletin board messages is:

"From the management: Spare a thought for our female employees. Calendars 
of the kind you keep in your office are really out of the question. Remove
them immediately."
You smile. You've found the perfect place for the calendar. A few times,
someone from management unexpectedly entered the office, but no-one has
seen the calendar!

OK, so maybe I could read this as sticking it to the management, but I'm a
feminist, and I just didn't like being placed in the shoes of someone who
wasn't willing to "spare a thought for the female employees." I think that
the date which motivated the PC worked in a sexist way as well: the woman
in question simply functioned as a marker for the male protagonist to
demonstrate to himself and the other men in the office that he isn't a
nerd -- i.e. that he deserves recognition and respect in that social
setting. This is why I expressed disappointment with the PC in my review:
there was no reason for the sexism to be put on the player character --
the calendar scheme could have been attributed to the other people in the
office, and the date could have just been an ordinary date. You know,
"You've got to get out of here and meet Tanya! You've been sweet on her
for months, and she's finally agreed to go out with you. You don't want to
disappoint her!" This makes it seem like the PC actually likes the woman
rather than just using her to make a point to himself and his office. 

So that's why I only remembered whining about the whining of one PC -- the
one in Friday isn't a whiner, just a chauvinist. 

> [re: the character's dilemma in Sunset]
> From my point of view, the player takes control of the character at the
> beginning of the story, and from then on decides what the character thinks
> and feels.  But events from the characters past are, in a sense, separate: you
> can safely describe something that's happened in the character's past because
> there's no way to directly affect it.

Wow. I've never heard the role of IF player described in quite this way
before. It's an interesting theoretical position, especially when it comes
to games that are heavy on the narrative. Sure, in Zork this theory works
fine -- there's not much emotion to calibrate. Things get a little more
complicated with something like Trinity -- serious issues are at hand, and
the game's plot and text are quite clearly working to touch the player's
emotions. Still, even in that case, there isn't much to debate when it
comes to the character's attitudes: not many people are in favor of
nuclear devastation. Recently, though, I think a few games have come out
which challenge your theory. Ironically enough, one of the prime examples
I can think of is "In The End" -- the goal of that game felt so completely
at odds with what I was feeling as a player that it seemed to completely
defy the idea that it was up to me how the character thought and felt. I
think "Sunset" challenges the theory as well. Ultimately, it comes down to
how definitive (or how restrictive, if you like) the author has chosen to
be when defining the player character. Some of these characters are almost
completely undefined, and others are very sharply defined. Games that
stray toward the latter end of this spectrum are not going to fit your
theory of "Once the game starts, I decide how the character thinks."
Perhaps those are the games you'll least enjoy as a player. 

> By the way, I don't consider you a whiner - thanks for a thought-provoking
> discussion!

Whew, that's a relief! Same to you!

Paul O'Brian                                      obrian@ucsu.colorado.edu
"I think it's important to remember that no one falls into a simple set of
labels. Even more important is to learn from your mistakes, and to fight
for the positive choice."                            -- Lindsey Buckingham










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[Copyright 1998 by C.E. Forman blah blah blah]

C.E. Forman's very own patented, organic, naturally-flavored,
low-sodium, 99% fat-free, healthy-choice, prescription-strength
REVIEWS OF THE 1997 I-F COMPETITION ENTRIES (TM) !!!!!


This year I thought I'd try a slightly different rating system, or,
more precisely, one that explains in detail why each game got the
particular score I gave it.  This means I'll probably be focusing more
on the negative aspects of the entries, but I've tried really hard to
include something positive for each one.

I've attempted to make my scores based less on personal opinion, and
based more on overall conformance, or lack thereof, to a specific set
of preestablished, generally agreed-upon I-F conventions.  (Though I do
confess a strong personal opinion will undoubtedly slip in now and
then, and that's what the "notes to the author" section following each
score is for.)  Each entry started out with a perfect 10 points, and
lost a point for any of the following:

-1 For making me think when I'm trying to get it to run.  This includes
   games that hang the system without giving any indication that
   they're working properly, games requiring me to screw around with
   options when configuring the interpreter, and any entry that
   required downloading a bunch of stuff I didn't already have on my
   machine.  Puzzles should be *in* the game, not in getting the game
   to run.

-1 For excessive "guess the word."  Once or twice didn't hurt you, but
   a lack of effort to identify common phrasing, or missing an obvious
   synonym that I tried to use a lot probably cost you a point.

-1 For excessive typos.  The occasional finger-slip I can understand,
   but too many spelling mistakes (or any at *all* in the story's
   opening paragraphs -- C'mon, people, you must've seen the opening
   text at least 500 times!) impacted your score.

-1 For not having reasonable solutions or actions implemented.  Again,
   this is a judgment call, and I tried not to let one or two minor
   isolated incidents blow the whole thing for you.  Unless the game
   was really small, in which case I expected *all* reasonable ideas
   to produce an intelligent response, since small games aren't bogged
   down with a lot of complexities.

-1 For any bugs or crashes that made the game impossible, or hard to
   win, or just made me nervous enough about being in your programming
   hands that I found myself saving far too frequently.

-1 For poor writing, grammar, sentence structure (a *lack* of structure
   would be more appropriate).  Prose didn't have to be great writing,
   but signs of simple competence were sought.

-1 If the game had any poor construction.  This covers such ground as
   lots of padding and useless rooms, aimless back-and-forth movement,
   mazes, unfair time limits, death without warning, etc.  Things that
   are *generally* regarded as being detrimental to a game (although
   if used effectively, they may have slipped by the point deduction).

-1 For a cliched story or setting, something that's been done countless
   times before.  Or anything painfully derivative of anything else.
   *Any* D&D or Tolkien-esque fantasy automatically lost 1 here (and
   don't cry to me about it cuz you people brought that on yourselves).

-1 For a lack of "something really cool."  I admit that's pretty darn
   vague, and wide open to debate, but I was just looking for
   something, anything, that made me go, "Oh, *wow*!" or "Hey, I've
   never seen that before!"  Just something innovative, in a very
   positive way.

-1 For anything else that pissed me off.  Things not covered by the
   previous point deductions: illogical puzzles, an author having a
   snotty attitude for no apparent reason, and using an AGT version
   other than 1.83 which makes it re-print the entire room description
   when you make an invalid move (sorry, AGTers, but I absolutely
   *loathe* this!)  Anything I just plain didn't like.

Keep in mind that the above are just general descriptions.  A game with
decent but uninteresting writing could still have lost a point for the
writing category, etc.

Entries violating none of these guidelines got a 10.  Entries violating
all of them got a 1, since that's as low as it goes.

Things to keep in mind:

        * The comments that follow are just my opinions.

        * Aside from quick scans for posts about my own entry, I did
          not follow the newsgroups or the competition website during
          the time I was playing the games.  If you uploaded a fix or
          an ex-post-facto walkthrough, I missed it.  I played the
          original version, as seen in EVRYTING.ZIP.  A couple of
          authors whose games I couldn't run at all may have received a
          notice from me, giving them a chance to e-mail me a fixed
          version or provide suggestions, but I did not download any
          new versions of games, only the interpreters I needed.
 
        * As I did not read other posts, I apologize in advance if I'm
          bringing up any topics that have already outstayed their
          welcome.

        * I've been in a rotten mood lately, so in my criticism I will
          probably come across as a snotty, egotistical, mean-spirited
          jerk.  Do not mail me to tell me this, as I already know.

        * I do welcome discussion of these comments, both by authors
          and by other players, whether you agree or disagree with me
          (though there's one entry in particular I will *not* discuss).
          If you're going to post to the newsgroup, please consider
          mailing directly to me as well, lest I miss your post.

        * This set of reviews utilizes the word "piss" a lot.  If the
          word "piss" offends you, you can always do a search-and-
          replace, changing the word "piss" to another word that is
          less offensive to you than "piss."  I highly recommend
          "pee-pee," or perhaps "tinkie."

Here, then, are my votes, in the order I played them:

(BTW, notice I waited until voting was over this year.  See how easy I
am to get along with when we just plan the rules in advance instead of
trying to make up new ones fifteen minutes before the deadline?)












[Last chance to avoid spoilers...]












"Zombie!"
---------
-1 Bugs/crashes.
   Trying to open some things (such as the basement window, from
   outside) generate TADS error messages.  Also, I was pushing the
   chest around, and became confused when I pushed it east from the
   dining room and ended up back in the same location.  If I climb out
   of the laundry and go straight into the lab without examining the
   machinery, I can grab the syringe and wander around without any
   hassle from Dr. Maxim or Smedley.  This had me confused for awhile
   because I'd overlooked the machinery.  Finally, if I save the game,
   quit, and restore, the command "turn dial to [number]" does not
   work.  This last one had the unfortunate effect of getting me stuck
   until the end of the two-hour limit, so I didn't quite finish.

-1 Cliched story/setting.
   I had to sigh when I saw every mad scientist cliche in the book
   paraded right in front of me (wild hair, holed up in an old house,
   his colleagues thought he was crazy but boy he'll show them, a
   lummox for a lab assistant, beautiful woman the victim of his
   hideous experiments, test tubes and beakers ad nauseum, etc).  I
   was reminded of so many lame B-flick roles filled by the likes of
   John Carradine, Bela Lugosi and Tor Johnson.

-1 Lacking "something really cool."
   The "evil machinery" and Ed the Head were shining moments, but not
   enough to raise the game to my watermark of "I've never seen this
   before."

-1 Miscellaneous stuff that pissed me off.
   I have a problem with filling both cups from the runoff: Why can't
   I simply leave them outside so they'll fill with rainwater?  And
   how exactly do I juggle two cups of water, pouring one inside the
   other and filling them from the runoff, while holding onto an
   umbrella?  (It could be argued that I set the umbrella down to do
   it, but wouldn't extra rainwater fall into the cups and get the
   measurements off?)  Why can't I carry *anything* in the dumbwaiter?
   I mean, a fuse isn't that big at all.  This was a painfully
   transparent way of forcing objects out the window, especially since
   I can drop objects in the dumbwaiter with no apparent size
   constraints.  Comments such as the sink text ("Wow, this game's got
   everything!") detract from the atmosphere in a game of this type
   and are better left to farcical I-F.

My score for "Zombie!": 6 points out of 10.

Did I finish it?:  No, but pretty close.

Notes to the author:
--------------------
"Zombie!" started out *great*.  I loved the prologue, playing a
different character to gain more than one viewpoint.  I don't believe
I've seen this technique since the days of "Hitchhiker's Guide" and
"Demon's Tomb."

Prose was good throughout, for the most part nice and tight like the
Infocom games, not a lot of long, dull description to wade through.
The rainstorm, starting out as Charlie, was particularly effective.
I enjoyed the outdoor text far more than the text inside the house.
Let's face it, it's really hard to write good descriptions of rooms
and furniture.  I have yet to see a game that does this effectively.
On the plus side, though, at least you didn't bog down the rooms with
loads of useless furniture, as seen in last year's "Maiden of the
Moonlight."  Since you showed restraint, no points taken there.

Good atmosphere-building with the rainstorm, great scare with the
pickle jar.  Ed the Head is a terrific NPC, by the way, and I felt he
deserved a more significant role in the game than what he got.  It
would have been neat to have Ed comment on places indoors and out as I
carried him around.  Perhaps he could relate stories about his
experiences there, making him more complex than a mere informant.  Or
perhaps he could be your guide to the lab if you slide him down the
chute into the laundry.  He's been there, after all, and could warn
you about what to expect.  Just ideas.

======================================================================

"The Obscene Quest of Dr. Aardvarkbarf"
---------------------------------------
-1 "Guess the word."
   I can "hit" the time-machine panel, but I can't "break" it?!  I can
   "climb wall" and "climb down wall" and "climb ladder" but I can't
   go "up" or "down"?!  And no, I'm afraid including a list of
   recognized verbs does *not* make a limited command set with no
   alternate phrasings acceptable.  This is lazy programming, plain and
   simple.

-1 Reasonable solutions/actions not implemented.
   Lessee... blowing doors open with the dynamite, burning doors with
   the torch, blowing up the time-machine panel with the dynamite,
   breaking the window, prying the vent cover with the hammer,
   examining the water from *outside* the fountain... Did I miss any?
   You certainly did.

-1 Poor writing.
   Lots of exit lists in the room descriptions.  Also, the offices all
   look the same.  After awhile I stopped reading them and began
   typing: "X DESK. X DRAWER. OPEN DRAWER."  I'm trying desperately to
   recall even one pleasantly memorable piece of text, but I honest-to-
   God can't do it.

-1 Poor design/construction.
   Far too many useless rooms.  Far too many red herrings.  (Yes, I got
   the joke in Jellyfish's office.)  Far too much aimless traipsing
   back and forth.  (All those useless doors could've provided nice
   shortcuts.)

-1 Cliched story/setting.
   College campus.  'Nuff said.

-1 Lacking "something really cool."
   But then, I wasn't exactly straining myself to find anything.

-1 Miscellaneous stuff that pissed me off.
   Why are the rooms deserving the most protection behind the door
   whose lock is easiest to pick?  Offhand commentary provides
   absolutely no depth to the characters.  Why is my life with Dr.
   Bignose so miserable?  More details and pertinent anecdotes ought to
   be revealed.  Why doesn't Bignose lock his office to safeguard the
   time machine, if he knows I hate him?

My score for "The Obscene Quest of Dr. Aardvarkbarf": 3 out of 10.

Did I finish it?:  Yes.

Notes to the author:
--------------------
Unfortunately I thought the title was the best thing about this game.
It was mildly amusing, in a stupid kind of way, sort of the I-F
equivalent of a Jim Carrey film.  With a better parser and a cleaner
design, it might even have been an entertaining diversion.  Did you
make the whole game up as you were in the process of actually writing
it?  Cuz that's what it feels like.  Please consider giving the sequel
more plot, more direction, a specific aim at *something* concrete.

======================================================================

"She's Got a Thing for a Spring"
--------------------------------
-1 Bugs/crashes.
   I got so occupied with the rest of the wilderness that I didn't
   even venture back to the campsite until after dark.  Then I couldn't
   get the elk to move away from my tent.  This was late in my play-
   time, so it ended up preventing me from finishing, and was pretty
   frustrating to boot.

-1 Miscellaneous stuff that pissed me off.
   Just a few itty-bitty things:  Having to use long words to refer to
   things occasionally ("fireflies" works, "flies" doesn't), minor bugs
   (the berry always seems to get left behind when I move), and one
   "search" situation that felt completely unmotivated to me.  Plus
   Bob, though the best NPC I've seen all year, still repeats himself.
   Very minor stuff here, but perfection would get boring fast,
   wouldn't it?

My score for "She's Got a Thing for a Spring": 8 points out of 10.

Did I finish it?:  Not quite.

Notes to the author:
--------------------
Wonderful title, wonderful game.  I wanted to give this a 9 or 10,
really I did.  Great parser expansion and player shortcut, the ability
to type a simple topic rather than "ask [character] about [thing]."
I thought it worked beautifully.

Great *original* idea, nice prose, richly detailed game, great
characterization, lots of obvious effort put into making it all work.
I'll confess I groaned a bit when I first saw the file size, but I'm
relieved to see that the space went into making the world (and
especially Bob) more vivid, instead of loading up the game with tons
of puzzles or useless scenery.  (Although the bird book was really more
than I cared to know.  My grandma would've enjoyed it though.)
Exploring the world was acutually more intriguing than the meeting at
the spring.  Kudos for not making it all just a big inside joke between
you and your wife.

Great references to last year's competition.  Before I even got the
book from Bob, I was playing around, asking him about miscellaneous
things such as Infocom, Graham Nelson, Curses, Jigsaw, Christminster,
etc., and finally braced myself and tried Delusions.  I was astounded
(very pleasantly so) when it actually worked.

Once I finish the other entries, I will definitely go back and do this
one again.  I'm only three games in, but this looks like a very good
first-place contender.

======================================================================

"VirtuaTech"
------------
-1 Poor writing.
   Confusing.  Lends itself to abstract "what's the author thinking"
   puzzles, since the descriptions don't make the technology very
   clear.  Tries to be "The Legend Lives" in places, but doesn't even
   come close.  Some pieces of text venture into the unintentionally
   funny.  Get a load of this: "[The microphone] is wired to the red
   wire, which is wired to the radio transmitter, which isn't wired to
   anything."  But how can the transmitter not be wired to anything if
   the red wire is wired to it?  Does wiring only go one way?  If so,
   I'd far prefer the microphone to be wired to the transmitter through
   the red wire, which wires the transmitter to the microphone yet
   isn't wired to anything itself.  Follow?  And on top of all that,
   it's the *future*.  You'd think they'd have wireless stuff.
   (Wireless wire, which isn't wired to anything, cuz it's wireless!
   Hee!)

-1 Poor design/construction.
   The computer puzzles felt too abstract.  "Cosmoserve" got them
   right.  (Of course, my own "Delusions" has abstract computer puzzles
   in the endgame, but I've never claimed I liked the endgame of
   "Delusions.")

-1 Cliched story/setting.
   College dorm room.  'Nuff said.

-1 Lacking "something really cool."
   Dealing with real-life technical support ain't fun.  Dealing with
   I-F technical support ain't fun to an even greater extent.

-1 Miscellaneous stuff that pissed me off.
   Why does the (musical) keyboard work when the power is down, but not
   the computer?  Why do I have to type quotes around words when I look
   them up in the phone book?  (Is there an entry in there that
   actually reads "me"?)  Why do I use compass directions to navigate a
   hard disk?  (Damn Windows 2000!)  Why can I carry my possessions
   through the VirtuaPhone but not into the computer through the VR
   suit?  Why exactly is my door stuck (aside from the obvious answer,
   to create another puzzle in the interest of padding the game out to
   a two-hour play time)?  If everyone's so concerned about the misuse
   of broadcasting equipment, why isn't it regulated more strictly?
   Why did this game leave me with so many unanswered questions?

My score for "VirtuaTech": 5 points out of 10.

Did I finish it?:  Yes.

Notes to the author:
--------------------
If it seems to you like I'm bitching a lot above, it's because I felt
this game had a lot of promise, but didn't "live up to its potential."
I suggest you try another game in this same compu-tech genre, but with
a goal more significant than getting a stupid college paper printed.
Some sort of intrigue, or a satire piece, perhaps.  Ditch the college
environment.  It's hackneyed to the point of inducing nausea.

If this game was intended to mock the big corporations that are
responsible for supplying us with technology services but end up
botching it constantly (a shot at this year's AOL folly, perhaps?) it's
not a bad start, but I was never completely sure this was what you were
trying to accomplish.

======================================================================

"Zero Sum Game"
---------------
-1 Bugs/crashes.
   Normal gameplay is flawless, but the instant I save and then try to
   restore, the game bombs out with an error message.  TADS games in
   particular seem prone to this type of problem.  Anyone know why?

-1 Cliched story/setting.
   The game concept is original, but the fantasy setting kills a point.

-1 Miscellaneous stuff that pissed me off.
   Pretty minor, actually.  Consider using the [Enter] key in your hint
   file.  Some of us have crappy DOS editors that don't word-wrap.
   Also, TADS users, please, and I'm asking really nicely: Allow "q" as
   a synonym for "quit."  For the herbs, you might provide a hint
   (besides eating them and typing "undo") that they're lethal.
   Finally, was the gratuitous sex scene really necessary?  For me, it
   didn't gel (eww!) with the rest of the game.

My score for "Zero Sum Game": 7 points out of 10.
 
Did I finish it?:  On the last puzzle.

Notes to the author:
--------------------
Excellent satirical send-up of I-F, and treasure-quests in particular.
With all the recent discussions about moral decisions in I-F, it's
amusing to note that undoing all the damage an adventurer does can be
even more destructive than simply letting well enough alone.  Brad (or
Darlene) is an excellent NPC, taking the adventurer from Enchanter to
the extreme.  He acts *exactly* like a text adventurer, wandering
around, killing things, taking everything he comes across.  I confess I
saw a bit too much of myself mirrored in him for comfort.  This was
enough to trigger the "Oh, wow!" reaction that I was looking for.

Cute scoring gimmick, adequate puzzles for the most part.  Your NPCs
have good mobility and purpose in the game, but could stand to be more
responsive.  Nice handling of the dead-vs-living NPCs.

======================================================================

"Glowgrass"
-----------
-1 Miscellaneous stuff that pissed me off.
   "Get all."  It's an accepted standard these days, even a
   requirement.  Please implement it, instead of this "one thing at a
   time" crap.  I'd expect that from primitive AGT or a home-grown I-F
   engine, but not TADS.  Umm... I looked, but I honestly couldn't find
   much else to complain about.

My score for "Glowgrass": 9 points out of 10.

Did I finish it?:  Yes.

Notes to the author:
--------------------
Nice job of storytelling in the classic sci-fi (or whatever the hell
the "correct" term for it is) style.  Terse but vivid descriptions.
Excellent job relaying an otherworlder's impressions of human
technology.  This is what 1995's "A Night at the Museum Forever" could
have been.  Perfectly paced, with just enough mystery to keep me hooked
until the exposition of backstory near the end.  The character of Maria
is perfectly rendered, as is the bleak future you paint for humanity.
(I'm big on bleak futures, so I like that).  If I had to offer any more
criticism, I'd suggest only that you consider making it a bit more
replayable.  I don't have much incentive to go back to it.

I've played both "Hero Inc. Part One" and "Frobozz Magic Support," and
while they were both enjoyable, you've surpassed them with "Glowgrass."
Easily your best effort to date.  Well done.
======================================================================

--
C.E. Forman                                     ceforman@worldnet.att.net
Author of "Delusions", the 3rd place winner in the 1996 I-F Competition!!
Release 4 is now at: ftp://ftp.gmd.de/if-archive/games/infocom/Delusns.z5
Ye Olde Infocomme Shoppe http://netnow.micron.net/~jgoemmer/infoshop.html




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 [Arr!  I spy Spoilers off the starboard bow!]
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 "The Frenetic Five vs. Sturm und Drang"
 ---------------------------------------
 -1 "Guess the word."
    Guess the syntax, technically, but same difference.  I can't "ask
    pastiche for token," I have to say "pastiche, give me the token."
    And on and on.  For an NPC-oriented game, this is inexcusable.
 
 -1 Reasonable solutions/actions not implemented.
    Communication with the rest of my team was frustrating.  Resorts to
    default responses much too frequently.  At the very least, I should
    be able to ask them about themselves and the other characters, and
    they should provide ideas for overcoming problems.  Just because I'm
    the leader, do I have to come up with *everything?*  If we have
    super powers, why are they only useful when the author thought to
    code them for a particular situation?  Lots of blank responses,
    indicating unsatisfactory testing.
 
 -1 Lacking "something really cool."
    Good ideas, but only fair implementation.  Characters could be
    fleshed out a bit more (especially the villains, who felt generic).
 
 -1 Miscellaneous stuff that pissed me off.
    Puzzles were a bit obtuse.  Most of the time I stumbled on them by
    accident or lucky guessing.  (In particular, paying bus fare and
    crossing the tracks.)
 
 My score for "The Frenetic Five vs. Sturm und Drang": 6 out of 10.
 
 Did I finish it?:  No.
 
 Notes to the author:
 --------------------
 The humor and characters reflected the style of a Leon Lin game (as
 well as Steve Meretzky's "Superhero League of Hoboken" and cartoon
 superhero parodies such as "Freakazoid," "Earthworm Jim" and "The
 Tick"), but this one doesn't quite attain Lin's previous standards.
 (I'm not convinced he's the author, but it sure seemed like it at the
 beginning.)
 
 "Frenetic Five" (love the title, BTW) started out very ambitiously,
 with lots of things going on at once, funny responses from funny
 characters, but seems to have run out of steam after the opening.  I'm
 guessing this game was rushed to make the competition deadline.  (And I
 can sympathize with that.)  If you'll polish it up a bit, give the NPCs
 more responses and resort to the defaults less, I'd gladly play again.
 
 ======================================================================
 
 "Babel"
 -------
 -1 Reasonable solutions/actions not implemented.
    Why can't I throw acid at other metal barriers (doors, bulkheads,
    the cover of the radiation chamber) to get through them?  (Why, for
    that matter, must I use it not on the lock, but on the hinges, which
    aren't even mentioned when I examine the cabinet?  You came soooooo
    close to losing a "guess-the-word" point for that.)  Further, your
    refusal to allow the strength injection to break the locks and the
    other doors is a real cop-out.  It seems you'd coded some puzzles
    with conflicting solutions, i.e. one's solution is feasible for, and
    easier than, the solution for another puzzle, and rather than
    implement both or redesign the puzzles, you opted for a quickie
    no-can-do.  It's just like the old one-weapon-against-one-monster
    puzzles so characteristic of GAGS.  Which solution works for which
    puzzle?
 
 -1 Bugs/crashes.
    'Bout two-thirds of the way into the game, the "save" command
    started taking anywhere from 10-30 seconds per save or restore.
    Slooooooowwww... Zzzzzzz... time passes... zzzzzzz.... (drool on
    keyboard)...
 
 -1 Poor design/construction.
    Too many locked doors (though at least you had a master key, that's
    something).  Gratuitous safe puzzle (though at least you limited it
    to a one-number combination, that's something).  Too much traipsing
    back and forth in the complex.  Why create the impression of a time
    limit if you're only bluffing?  When I got the "very low power"
    messages, I saved the game and waited repeatedly to see if/when the
    timer would expire.  When I saw that it wouldn't, I happily resumed
    playing, all the tension gone.  Why does attempting to move into a
    dark room reprint the room description?  Shades of AGT games, and
    you *know* how I feel about this particular "feature" of AGT...
 
 -1 Cliched story/setting.
    In addition to all of the obvious "Delusions" rip-offs (trapped in a
    laboratory complex run by a nameless "Agency," victim of an
    experiment, discovering your identity, no way to see your reflection
    at first, liberal use of hypodermic needles) the "limits of science"
    conflict is, IMO, extremely tired.  "We should never test on
    humans... unsafe, inhuman, playing God"/"Science can't be stopped
    blah blah blah betterment of mankind."  It's all been said before.
    (For you MST3K fans: "He tampered in God's domain!")
 
 -1 Lacking "something really cool."
    Correction.  Lacking "something really cool that wasn't already done
    in 'Delusions.'"
 
 -1 Miscellaneous stuff that pissed me off.
    Big-ass plot holes in the story.  Why did I let the Jabberwocky
    (never explained) out?  I assume that was its blood on the cracked
    mirrors, when it attacked them?  If not, whose was it?  Couldn't
    have been Jonas or Alexis; I killed them outside the Complex.  And
    why wasn't my mirror broken?  And why did I bother to re-lock the
    doors to my room and Jonas's room?  ("Heh, this'll make a great
    puzzle for me to solve later, after my memory fades and I forget
    what's in these rooms!")  Aside from the calendar-tracked events
    (nice job there, BTW), none of it made any sense.  Besides, it was
    predictable.  Right from the start, I guessed I was the victim of
    some experiment and figured that, by playing through the game, I'd
    find out what it was.  Once I knew the names of the four scientists,
    I was able to guess I was one of them.  And shortly thereafter, I
    was convinced I was David.  Yep.  The new guy.  Oh so eager to
    contribute to science.  Didn't grasp the implications until it was
    too late.  All of this before I'd unlocked a single door in the
    game.  Also, why do I have to specifically *mix* the antitoxin base
    and the Telerus toxin?  I can pour both liquids into the same
    container and then take one right back out and leave the other in!
    Yep, that's real science, awright.
 
 My score for "Babel": 4 points out of 10.
 
 Did I finish it?:  Yes, barely.
 
 Notes to the author:
 --------------------
 This is not, overall, a bad game.  It's just an extremely derivative
 game that particularly irritated me by being extremely derivative of my
 own game.  You should have expected this reaction, just as Chris
 Markwyn should have foreseen criticism of his "Of Forms Unknown" last
 year.  Don't get me wrong, there were things I liked: The calendar was
 neat.  Writing was pretty decent, although I think it lost something
 from being draped across the hackneyed "pros and cons of science"
 argument.  And it does overuse the words "cold" and "dark."  And there
 are quite a few run-on sentences.  And the dialogue is a bit stiff in
 some places.
 
 Neat map design in the residential areas, with the swastika pattern
 created by the scientists' quarters and bathrooms. Was this intended to
 make a clever allusion, a statement about irresponsible scientists who
 abuse technology in their own selfish interests?  Or was it just an
 inside joke about the "Nazi" flame I buried in the text of "Delusions"?
 Again, I honestly couldn't tell, since everything *else* in the game
 seems to be pointing directly at my own work.
 
 On top of this, "Babel" flubbed all the techniques I crafted into my
 entry last year.  The timeline of events you've built through the
 calendar holds together, but details in the game, as I've already
 outlined above, make no sense.  In "Delusions," *everything* is
 accounted for.  The "achieving self-awareness" bit isn't consistent.
 Why can I recall memories from some objects but not others?  Every
 object, every room, should have stories to tell.  For that matter, why,
 if my Teleran abilities are so "advanced," as Jonas calls them, do I
 have to look in the mirror before I can recall the most significant
 details of my past?  How could my memory fade if I supposedly have
 this ability to see, over and over, what happened in the past?
 Wouldn't repeated viewing of events reinforce, rather than submerge,
 memories?
 
 The characters have no personality, no depth at all.  They're cardboard
 cutouts painted with singular motives.  Jonas: The man willing to
 pursue science at any cost.  Brett: The Bible-thumping "don't play God"
 preacher.  Alexis: She likes you, that's about it.  Even David, with
 his eager golly-gosh enthusiasm to advance technology, never mind what
 happens to him, felt flimsy.  I couldn't identify with the character.
 
 "Babel" doesn't have any neat stuff hidden in the game (that I could
 find, anyway).  Once you've finished, that's it.  No motivation to go
 back and try things differently.  "Babel" doesn't make you *think*
 about things.  There's no need to ponder what anything represents,
 since it's all spelled out for you in the detailed flashbacks.
 Everyone's motivation is cut-and-dried, no hidden agendas.  By the end,
 it's crystal-clear precisely what happened, and the story doesn't add a
 thing to the "science bad/science good" debate that I haven't already
 read over and over again in the newspaper.  It's "Delusions," watered
 down.  "Delusions for Dummies."
 
 Some people may prefer the way "Babel" handled its content over
 "Delusions."  Some people may like not having to think to figure out
 what everything represents.  Some people may enjoy solving puzzles
 instead of solving story-related problems.  Well that's fine by me.
 Go ahead and slap a big ol' 10 on this one.  Use your vote to cancel
 mine out.  Oh wait, I'm an author, so my vote doesn't count diddly-
 squat anyway.  Goddammit.
 
 Perhaps I'm mistaken.  Perhaps Ian Finley really hasn't ever played my
 game, and to him "Babel" is original, full of groundbreaking ideas.
 Unfortunately, just because you yourself haven't seen something done in
 I-F before does not mean that people aren't sick to death of it.  (An
 earlier game of mine proved this beyond a doubt.)  Next time, take a
 look at past competition entries, at the very least the higher-ranking
 ones.  See what's out there.  See what's already been done.  I learned
 this the hard way.  Seems you need to as well.
 
 [POST-REVIEW NOTE: After I sent a copy of this review to Ian Finley, he
 explained to me that the ideas in "Babel" were thought up before he had
 played "Delusions," and that, once he did, he almost decided not to
 enter "Babel" at all.  I really wish he would have let me know, as I
 might have taken "Babel" apart a bit more gently.  Maybe.  I'm honestly
 not sure.  Other authors: how would you react if someone released a
 game similar to, but not inspired by, your own, without telling you,
 even though s/he was aware of the similarities?  Would you write it off
 as great minds thinking alike, or would you feel the new author was
 saying "Hey, great ideas, but look! I thought of them too"?  This is a
 touchy subject, and I'd like to know how other authors feel about it.
 But.  Please *don't* mail me to tell me how much you enjoyed "Babel."
 Mail Ian and tell him.  If you enjoyed "Delusions," mail me.  BTW, it
 amazes me how *few* people seem to have noticed the similarities.  Is
 it that easy to forget all about a game you played last year, even
 though you liked it enough at the time to vote it into 3rd place?  Or
 are you all just ignoring me again like you did with "PtF"?  Cuz I'm
 not goin' away.  I'll just keep bitchin' louder and louder 'til
 someone SAYS something just to shut me the hell up.]
 
 'Kay, end of C.E. Forman bitch-fest.  On to the next game.
 
 ======================================================================
 
 "Travels in the Land of Erden"
 ------------------------------
 -1 Poor writing.
    Well, okay, not downright poor.  But long-winded and seldom
    particularly interesting (not unlike these reviews of mine).  It's
    better than "Path to Fortune" by a long shot, though.  Run-on
    sentences, comma faults, improper splitting of words ("in to"
    instead of "into," "thorough fare" instead of thoroughfare.
    Somebody who knows big words, mail me and tell me what the correct
    term for this type of error is.)  Plus the occasional NPC event
    embedded in a room's description, particularly with the footman in
    the castle.  Lots of little things that add up.
 
 -1 Poor construction.
    *Lots* of useless rooms filled to overflowing with *lots* of useless
    scenery.  Far, FAR too vast for a two-hour game.  Ordinarily I
    overlook this, but a 300K version 8 game?!?  The author just
    deliberately ignored the two-hour rule, not even attempting to show
    restraint.  Bigger is not better, in this competition.  (Thanks for
    the compass, though.  Without it, this would have been intolerable.)
 
 -1 Cliched story/setting.
    Fantasy world.  'Nuff said.
 
 -1 Lack of "something really cool".
    At least, I didn't get to anything before my time ran out.  Maybe
    the cool part is in the late middle-game.
 
 -1 Miscellaneous stuff that pissed me off.
    Why is the solution file in a format that not everyone can read?
    Make it ASCII next time.  Why didn't you release this *before* the
    contest, when we were all starved for a nice, long game?
 
 My score for "Travels in the Land of Erden": 5 points out of 10.
 
 Did I finish it?:  MWAH HA HA HA HA HA, oh man THAT'S a good one!
 
 Notes to the author:
 --------------------
 "Erden" brought back plenty o' bad memories of doing rooms and scenery
 on "Path to Fortune."  I'm giving you feedback here so you don't have
 to wait an entire year to learn the hard way like I did.  I'm gonna be
 blunt, so brace yourself, okay?  Ready?  Big-budget fantasy quests like
 this one are not popular.  Do not be surprised if you don't get much
 feedback.  Do not be surprised if hardly anyone plays through to the
 end.  Do not be surprised if the only mail you ever get is about how
 much someone hates fantasy games and how tired the setting is.
 
 And don't get discouraged.  You show a lot of promise as an I-F author.
 (And a female I-F author!  Didn't know they still made those.  ...If
 you *are* female, that is.  Last year's competition left me with a deep
 cynical suspicion of so-called "female" authors that I'll carry the
 rest of my life.  I'm joking, I'm joking...)  Anyway, you've obviously
 got a good grasp of Inform, and a lot of willpower to finish something
 this large.  I hope your next game will take I-F in a new direction,
 and I'm looking forward to it.  (God, is *that* a cliched sentence.)
 
 And don't put yourself down because of this.  It's unlikely you could
 have foreseen the reaction I anticipate for "Erden."  "PtF" isn't a
 very well-known game, because its cliche factor stunted any interest in
 it and forced it into obscurity.  You must not have been around to see
 the brief appearance of "PtF," so you had no way of knowing "Erden"
 would get the same reaction.  And once "Erden" fades into obscurity,
 the next big-budget fantasy author will follow the same path.  It's a
 vicious cycle.  Had I myself known that "PtF" would get the silent
 treatment, I never would have done it.  It saddens me to see someone
 else setting herself up for the exact same disappointment.
 
 God.  Seems I've done nothing but bitch in these last two reviews.
 Maybe the next one will give me something more positive to say.
 
 ======================================================================
 
 "E-Mailbox"
 -----------
 Hooboy.  AGT game.  Maybe not.
 
 -1 Making me think when trying to run it.
    Had to download AGiliTy especially for this one game.
 
 -1 Poor writing.
    Not awful, but minimalist.  I'm impatient with minimalist I-F
    writing.  (Does *that* make sense?)
 
 -1 Poor design/construction.
    Again, very little here to do.  And what there was didn't excite me
    or really make much sense.
 
 -1 Lacking "something really cool."
    Too minimalist to have cool stuff.
 
 -1 Miscellaneous stuff that pissed me off.
    I downloaded a 370K runtime package for THIS?!  Bizarre depiction of
    an e-mail program crossed with an inside Zork joke and a few teeny
    puzzles.  Mail the letter, have your system blow up, mail it again,
    open the mail you get back, that's it, all done.  Obvious quickie
    event text ("You call tech support.  They fix the problem...etc.")
    could easily have been made into a good puzzle, but it's left non-
    interactive.  Shades of "Detective."  ("You threaten the guys.  They
    tell you the killer is on the 15th floor.  You show the desk clerk
    your badge.  She gives you the master ring.")  There's barely enough
    here to call a game.  Or is this all just a big gag?  Is the author
    lampooning himself through the newbie protagonist?  "Hey, look, I've
    got e-mail!"  "Hey, look, I wrote a text adventure!"  On top of
    that, did you have to add insult to injury with the most hideous
    color scheme I've seen in a long time?
 
 My score for "E-Mailbox": 5 points out of 10.
 
 Did I finish it?:  Finished it 93 times.  (Or would have, if I'd gone
                    back and played it 92 more times after winning.)
 
 Notes to the author:
 --------------------
 Well, there isn't much else to say.  I hope, Jay, that you're not
 taking this personally.  (Feel free to dump Ye Olde Infocomme Shoppe in
 retaliation if I come across as a real jerk.)  Just have more of a game
 next time.
 
 Oh yeah, and lose the AGT.  That goes for everyone.
 
 Sighhhh... And I *swore* I wouldn't bash it this year.  Now look what
 you've gone and made me do.
 
 ======================================================================
 
 "Unholy Grail"
 --------------
 -1 Making me think when trying to run it.
    Wouldn't it be simpler for the JACL engine to choose the *current*
    directory as the default instead of some long path that obviously
    corresponds to Stuart Allen's personal structure?
 
 -1 "Guess the word."
    You lost a point here for the lack of synonyms for "inject" with the
    microscope puzzle (good puzzle, though) and for a couple of
    occurrences of "how-the-heck-would-I-think-of-that": "tip crate"
    (move, push, etc. should work), "ask concierge to page gullit," etc.
    Admittedly, I was impatient at the time.  But *still*.
 
 -1 Poor design/construction.
    I'm knocking off this point for the puzzle involving reading the
    afterglow on Lisa's screen.  If Lisa is so paranoid about me reading
    her screen, why does she stand idly by as I close the blinds, turn
    off the light and peek at the afterimages?  Everything else was
    pretty solid, but this one part just made me cringe and groan, big-
    time.
 
 -1 Miscellaneous stuff that pissed me off.
    The diving puzzle was a good idea, but wandering around looking for
    the right latitude and longitude was a real pain, especially since I
    had to wander so far out.  (Plus it's been done in "Infidel.")  The
    title doesn't seem to fit in with the game at all.  Did I miss
    something?
 
 My score for "Unholy Grail": 6 points out of 10.
 
 Did I finish it?:  No, but I'm into the endgame.
 
 Notes to the author:
 --------------------
 Neat scientific thriller/military conspiracy story.  I like.  Good use
 of an androgynous player (though I always pictured Alex as female,
 myself).  Loved the X-Files text (some of the laboratory talk was
 decidedly Scully-esque), situations and dialogue references ("The truth
 needs you, Mulder."  I mean, Alex.)  Um... that was what you intended,
 wasn't it?  Good, realistic diving and laboratory puzzles.  Just enough
 cool stuff to salvage my "something cool" point, though there wasn't
 any one thing in particular that did it.
 
 I didn't take a point off for this, but... Howzcome *every* text
 adventure scientific breakthrough has a traitor on the project team?
 It's a wonder we *ever* get any research done, with everyone stabbing
 everyone else in the back.  Note to authors: I'm gonna start taking off
 for this in the future.  (Not this year, though.)
 
 Your JACL engine is far, far better this year.  Still a mite slow, but
 I like being able to save and restore.  Verbose, undo, etc. all work
 great.  "Restore" from the after-death prompt needs to be added, as
 does ambiguity resolution, but this is about on par with Hugo, if not
 bare-bones TADS and Inform.
 
 All in all, nice effort.
 
 ======================================================================

--
C.E. Forman                                     ceforman@worldnet.att.net
Author of "Delusions", the 3rd place winner in the 1996 I-F Competition!!
Release 4 is now at: ftp://ftp.gmd.de/if-archive/games/infocom/Delusns.z5
Ye Olde Infocomme Shoppe http://netnow.micron.net/~jgoemmer/infoshop.html




From ceforman@postoffice.worldnet.att.net Sat Jan 10 19:13:18 MET 1998
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 [The Spoilers Are Out There...]
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 "Down"
 ------
 -1 Making me think when trying to run it.
    Had to download Hugo executable especially for this game.  (Can we
    package these things in the big zip file next year?)
 
 -1 Reasonable solutions/actions not implemented.
    The other passengers didn't seem very real.  Just a few more actions
    and replies (mostly they just generate blank responses) would have
    made a world of difference.
 
 -1 Bugs/crashes.
    I'm not sure what happened, but at one point I began receiving
    blank responses for every single command I typed.  Exiting to DOS,
    my COMMAND.COM perished shortly thereafter.
 
 My score for "Down": 7 points out of 10.
 
 Did I finish it?:  Yes.
 
 Notes to the author:
 --------------------
 Excellent short game.  I honestly believe it deserves a higher rating
 than I gave it, but I've come this far on my little by-the-book rating
 system so now I have to stick with it.
 
 Good "what's going on?" factor.  At first I thought I'd become lost and
 injured in the woods or something, but nothing prepared me for the
 horror of realizing the crash.  Nice shock.  Nice, stark prose.  I got
 into this game.  (Which, I suspect, is why I was disappointed with the
 characters.  I got into it a little too much, and felt a mite betrayed
 when everyone else turned out to be a cardboard prop.)  Fine use of
 special verbs, particularly "comfort."
 
 Very easily the best Hugo game to date (though there are what, four
 total?)
 
 BTW, did you notice yours is the first game to *not* lose a point for
 "miscellaneous stuff that pissed me off"?  Congratulations on not
 pissing me off.
 
 ======================================================================
 
 "Sylenius Mysterium"
 --------------------
 I know, it's my own.  But it's only fair to subject it to the same
 torment the other entries are forced to endure.  Plus it'll give me a
 chance to bitch some more, and I *can't* pass that up, now can I?
 
 -1 Making me think when trying to run it.
    Okay, not for me specifically.  It ran flawlessly for me (aside from
    the bugs in the Game Worlds, which I'll get to).  But it certainly
    seems to have made a lot of people, many of them Mac users, think.
    (Personally, I find it amusing that MaxZip turned out to be not
    quite as standard as it thought it was.)
 
 -1 Bugs/crashes.
    See my notes below.
 
 -1 Poor design/construction.
    The "Game Worlds" section is clunky and needs fine-tuning.  Why
    didn't I tack on a "to be continued"-style ending rather than rush
    myself trying to finish the whole thing?  That last week was hell.
    Besides, the "Game Worlds" are boring.  Nobody's gonna sit through
    that.  Why *did* I bother with the Game Worlds?  I expected
    everyone to see them, make a few moves, note the use of turn-based
    and real-time I-F in the same story, say "nifty," then restart and
    spend the rest of their time playing around with Ralph, Nolan and
    Margot.  That's what *I* did when I was writing it!  And it's not
    like you *had* to pound away futilely at them.  You could easily
    have restarted and tried to see the level of detail that went into
    the first part.  There's *tons* of stuff to do there, more than
    enough to fill two hours of play-time.  If you rushed through it,
    you missed out on a *lot*.  Go try again.
 
 -1 Miscellaneous stuff that pissed me off.
    I seem to have goofed with the "initial" text for Margot's New Age
    music, since it's printing the "Game Worlds" text instead (the
    "thumping backbeat" part).  It's minor, the result of a last-minute
    change, but I should've caught this.  Same with the shades bug.
    Damn classes.
 
 My score for "Sylenius Mysterium": 6 points out of 10.  (And yes, I do
 think that's fair.)
 
 Did I finish it?:  Yes, but the Game Worlds don't work, as you probably
                    noticed.  Gimme Release 2, and I'll get 'em.  If I
                    decide it's worth the effort.  You can help me
                    decide by sending commentary.
 
 Notes to the author:
 --------------------
 Oooo-KAY.  Lemme explain *why* it's an unplayable mess.  [Deep breath.]
 
 The year was 1997.  It was summer.  There were nine weeks before the
 contest deadline.  I was getting fed up with my current project and had
 shoved it roughly aside for the time being.  I'd just read Leonard
 Herman's "Phoenix: The Fall and Rise of Home Videogames," and J.C.
 Herz's "Joystick Nation," and thought, hey, how about a game that pays
 homage to the classic game systems?  Well, unfortunately, I'd also been
 screwing around with real-time, so I got this brainiac notion to tie
 classic-game nostalgia in with a late-80s platform style game, under
 the guise of a text adventure.
 
 As you can see, it didn't work.  Or rather, I ran out of time before I
 could fix it so that it did.  Or RATHER, I got so caught up in coding
 realistic NPCs for the turn-based segment that I left myself with only
 two weeks to write and debug the *entire* "Game Worlds" sequence.
 *From* *scratch*.  I wanted a realistic and cohesive "real world" to
 contrast with the game. So I expanded the characters.  I wrote entire
 little backstories for each of them.  I coded up every conceivable
 response to every topic I could think of, then added more irrelevant
 details and coded responses to *those*.  Then I thought of funny things
 that could happen if the player timed it just right, and I coded
 *those*!  By the time I was satisfied, there wasn't enough time to do
 the Game Worlds convincingly.
 
 I should have had it stop right before, or allowed a work-around so
 players could see the ending without playing the real-time part, or
 *something*.  Anyway.  Given the choice again I'd probably do it
 the same way again.  It was a diversion, something to take my mind
 off "Shelton" for a little while, nothing more.
 
 So why did I enter it this year, instead of waiting until next year?
 Well, time takes its toll on a programmer's memory.  I was afraid if I
 waited a whole year I'd look at the code again and have no grasp of
 what I was trying to do.  Especially with something as complex as this.
 (The fact it doesn't work does not change the fact it *is* complex.)
 I suppose I could have kept at it instead of putting it aside, but I
 was sick of it and just didn't feel like screwing with it any more.
 Again, it was a diversion, not a serious attempt at an award-winning
 entry.
 
 Now for the most frequently-asked question:  Why were the Game Worlds
 rendered as textual I-F rather than character graphics?  Answer: Yes,
 this was intentional, believe it or not.  We already have Tetris,
 Robots and Z-Life.  Character graphics have been *done*.  This hadn't.
 I never claimed it was a good idea, just a different one.  (But then,
 I should have remembered that the point of the competition is not to
 experiment with new techniques, but to rehash concepts that have
 already been seen before.  My mistake.)
 
 This is *not* an attempt at an excuse for entering shoddy work.
 Everyone who took points off for its bugginess was right to do so.
 I simply don't believe the entire game should be dismissed because of
 the rotten Game Worlds sequence.  The first part actually has a lot
 going for it, trivial though it may be.  I'm very pleased with coding
 such realistic characters in such a short time.  And the concept is
 noteworthy, even if the execution sucked.  (Although the "unwinnable"
 aspect does tie in nicely with my thoughts on the "unwinnable" classic
 games...)
 
 Presently I doubt I'll ever fix it.  Those of you who have any interest
 in seeing the ending can TXD the game file and poke around.  (Several
 have already done so, it seems.)  There's a nice suggested reading
 list for anyone interested in videogame history (Sylenius provides only
 a few of the niftier bits and pieces), as well as some really quite
 surprising nuances of the game you probably won't pick up on otherwise.
 
 ======================================================================
 
 "Aunt Nancy's House"
 --------------------
 -1 "Guess the word."
    Guess the noun, primarily.  It's never clear which objects are
    implemented and which are not.  Often I'd try to examine one object,
    only to have three others which also corresponded to the noun I used
    pop up, like the gophers in one of those arcade mallet games.  Too
    bad I couldn't whack stuff here, or I'd feel a lot better.  Get a
    load of this transcript:
         >open cabinet
         You open the cabinet, revealing some stuff.
         >x stuff
         Just some stuff- books, knicknacks, etc.
         >x books
         Which do you mean, the paperbacks, the programming books or the
         Dilbert books?
         >x dilbert
         Which do you mean, the Dilbert books or the Dilbert doll?
    AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHH!!!!!
    (Hey, look, I'm getting hysterical!)
 
 -1 Reasonable solutions/actions not implemented.
    Objects are barely there.  Other than examining, I can't even
    interact with at least half of 'em.  And the rest have "nothing
    special" descriptions.  Laaaaaaame!  I examine the toilet lid, and
    its description reads, "The toilet lid."  Gee, thanks, I could never
    have figured that out without your help.  I can't use the phone, the
    computer, the toilet, the sink, etc.  Containers and supporters
    behave illogically.
 
 -1 Bugs/crashes.
    Not fatal, but reeeeeeaaaaally annoying.  Pop "Star Wars" in the
    VCR, and no matter where in the house you go, you're told it's
    playing on every turn.  Also, umm, I could be mistaken here, but I
    don't think there's a way to win.
 
 -1 Poor writing.
    Lists of exits and lists of objects and descriptions of furniture
    and really short object descriptions and nothing that's any fun at
    all to read.
 
 -1 Poor design/construction.
    Wander around and look at crap.  Grand idea.  If I'd wanted that,
    I'd fork out $50 for a commercial CD-ROM and at least have some cool
    graphics to look at while I'm trudging aimlessly about.
 
 -1 Cliched story/setting.
    I'm sick of seeing people's houses.  Everywhere I look there's
    people's houses.  Why, God, WHY?!
 
 -1 Lacking "something really cool."
    There is nothing even remotely cool about this game.
 
 -1 Miscellaneous stuff that pissed me off.
    I'll save myself a lot of typing here: Everything.  Well, one thing
    I did like: Waiting 50 turns for Windows 95 to boot up.  I don't
    care what anyone says, that was funny.
 
 My score for "Aunt Nancy's House": 2 points out of 10.
 
 Did I finish it?:  I am *FINISHED* with this game.  I am so *VERY*
                    finished with this game.
 
 Notes to the author:
 --------------------
 Why did you bother to enter this?  It obviously didn't have a
 snowball's chance in hell of winning anything.  It's a coding exercise,
 for God's sake!  It's bad enough to bog down a game with useless
 scenery, but you don't even have a plot to bury under it!
 
 The well-known I-F authors (Graham Nelson, Gareth Rees, Andrew Plotkin,
 etc.) all have coding exercises, no doubt, but do you see them throwing
 theirs to the public?  No?  Why not, do you suppose?  Could it be that
 no one cares about what you did to teach yourself Inform?  Could it be
 that most coding exercises are crap, an embarrassment to the author who
 wrote them, and a waste of players' time?
 
 Write a real game, and I'll treat it like one.
 
 ======================================================================
 
 "Congratulations!"
 ------------------
 -1 "Guess the word."
    Trying to feed the baby while holding it gave me no clue that
    sitting down would help.  (Why, for that matter, can't I give the
    baby its bottle while standing up?  I've seen my sister do it
    before.  What if you're in public and there's no place to sit down?
    Do you let the kid starve?)  Given that this little puzzle is about
    20% of the game, this verb-guess is a pretty major infraction.
 
 -1 Typos.
    A few I-F and general writing conventions, if you will:
         * A blank line is preferred before each ">" prompt.  It looks
           better and it's easier to read.
         * Room names are typically capitalized, with the exception of
           articles and prepositions (unless they're the first word).
         * Asterisk-bound game-terminating "You have..." text should be
           constrained to a single line.
         * Sentences typically end with periods.  Not blanks.  Not
           commas.  Not a period and a comma together.  Just a
           period.<--Like this.
 
 -1 Poor writing.
    "This is a room.  These are the exits from the room."  "You do this.
    Baby responds this way."  No attempt at creativity whatsoever.
 
 -1 Poor design/construction.
    Everything felt like it was slapped together really fast.  Quickie
    room text and object text, with most mentioned scenery unaccounted
    for.  Very amateurish.
 
 -1 Cliched story/setting.
    AGAIN with the people's houses!  I'm gonna do one of these just to
    make fun of the cliche, I swear.
 
 -1 Lacking "something really cool."
    Although putting the baby in the blender came close.  (And gave me
    the longest, most physically painful bellylaugh I've had in a long
    time.  No point though, sorry.)
 
 -1 Miscellaneous stuff that pissed me off.
    God, I can't leave that kid alone for a second without it committing
    suicide.  It makes the game feel less charming, more weird and
    creepy and just plain not right.  So parenting involves feeding the
    kid, changing it, and putting it to bed, right?  It only needs to be
    done once, then the woman of the family is ready to crank out
    another, eh?  That's the message the winning text seems to send.
    Why am I not told if it's a boy or a girl?  Why doesn't the kid have
    a name?  Will it go through life being called Baby ("Hey, Baby,
    what's happenin'?")  Where's the other parent?  Is this really a
    devious commentary on the deterioration of the American nuclear
    family?  (If so, it was brilliant and wonderfully subtle, but I
    suspect that isn't the case.)
 
 My score for "Congratulations!": 3 points out of 10.
 
 Did I finish it?:  Yes, well within the time limit.
 
 Notes to the author:
 --------------------
 No congratulations are in order here, I'm afraid.  Your game banner has
 the serial number 970929.  Was this written the night before the
 competition deadline?  It shows.  Oh man does it show.  Taking care of
 your real-life kid must've really worn you down.  And for God's sake
 put more effort into that than you did with this game.  (Admit it, the
 blender part is the only reason it even exists, am I right?)
 
 ======================================================================
 
 "The Tempest"
 -------------
 -1 "Guess the word."
    Got my copy of the play off the shelf, struggled with the
    interactive version, got absolutely nowhere.  Gave up, turned off
    my computer, reread it instead.  Probably won't try this version
    again.
 
 -1 Reasonable solutions/actions not implemented.
    This is supposed to be *interactive* fiction.  Can't do anything the
    Bard didn't write, sheesh, gimme a break.  If I can only follow the
    play by the book, what's the point of doing a command-parser
    adaption?  I-F is about the player being in control (within
    reasonable limits, of course).  Far, *far* too rigid.
 
 -1 Poor design/construction.
    Exceptionally well-produced, but just not any fun as a game, so I'm
    taking another point off here, and you can't stop me.
 
 -1 Cliched story/setting.
    Certainly not cliched, but nevertheless an exact copy of the
    original work.  I haven't kept up with the groups, but judging by
    the number and topics of posts I've seen while trolling for Sylenius
    feedback, I'm sure this has already been discussed to death, but...
    The Competition rules clearly state: "completely original and your
    own work."  (But then, if we can't interpret what "two hours" means,
    how are we supposed to understand this?)  Graham Nelson (and I knew
    immediately that it was he) is a very talented man with a wonderful
    imagination, yet I remain steadfastly unconvinced that he wrote "The
    Tempest" all by his lonesome without help from any 16th-century
    dramatists.  Although Shakespeare is technically in the public
    domain, that doesn't give Graham or anyone else the right to copy it
    verbatim, chop up the text into room- and event-sized pieces, throw
    in a parser, a fancy title screen, a history of the play and a few
    lines of new text and attempt to pass it off as an original work of
    interactive fiction.  "Completely original and your own work" means
    "completely original and your own work."  I did not see any
    disclaimer in the rules about "Completely original and your own work
    OR in the public domain."  Why is it okay to steal Shakespeare's
    genius but not Matt Barringer's, for God's sake?  Kevin Wilson?  You
    there, bud?  Why Shakespeare but not Arthur Conan Doyle?  Show me
    the line, please.  I can't see it.
 
 -1 Lacking "something really cool."
    Plagiarism is not cool, even when it's interactive plagiarism.
 
 -1 Miscellaneous stuff that pissed me off.
    On top of all this, the game pretty much requires the original work
    at hand to determine the appropriate actions.  (And it *still*
    didn't do me much good!)  Nothing wrong with getting us to reread
    (or read) the original, but if you need the print version to play
    the interactive version, why not just curl up in your favorite chair
    and *read* the print version, without all the stop-and-start
    guesswork (which is what I ended up doing)?  In this respect,
    "Tempest" walks into the exact same hole as Infocom's "Shogun."
    What's the *point* of an interactive version?  (I've come to expect
    better from you, Graham.)
 
 My score for "The Tempest": 4 points out of 10.
 
 Did I finish it?:  Not even close.  And I doubt I ever will.
 
 Notes to the author:
 --------------------
 Walkthrough, Graham.  Walkthrough.  Or built-in hints.  *SOMETHING!*
 
 I'll admit it: I'm an idiot.  I can't even figure out what to do with
 the entire play right in front of me.  So I end up feeling like an
 idiot, and hating this game because of it.  And now I'll probably get
 bashed by the snooty "show-me-how-smart-you-are" intellectual snots
 and brainwashed Graham-worshippers for giving it a low score, which'll
 just make me hate it more.
 
 I agree with Marnie Parker (with whom I corresponded through e-mail):
 Too many intellectual games -- and these *are* still games at heart,
 regardless of what else their content might make them -- will turn off
 the masses and plunge the medium into a backwater subculture again.
 
 At any rate, don't even bother to mail me about this one.  It's already
 received far more attention than it deserves, and I'm not discussing it
 further.
 
 Sighhhh... two rotten games and one unplayable adaption.  C'mon,
 COMP97, gimme somethin' I can enjoy!
 
 ======================================================================
 
 "The Family Legacy"
 -------------------
 No rating given, as it was withdrawn.  But I would like to commend
 Marnie Parker for having the courage to stand up and say that she'd
 released it far too prematurely.  It takes courage to admit to
 something like that, particularly on a group where one's status as an
 author often seems to be measured solely by how many games one can
 crank out.  Admittedly, I've fallen into this mentality myself.
 
 I promise to play this one in full when I'm done slogging through the
 rest of the entries.
 
 ======================================================================
 
 "Coming Home"
 -------------
 -1 Typos.
    "Allison, mail me and point out the typos to me."  WHAT!?!  You
    can't even dig out your own dictionary or activate your own spell-
    checker?  I can't recall how many typos there were (to be frank, I
    barely paid attention to the text), but the inclusion of this
    statement in your notes was enough to disgust me into taking off
    a point.
 
 -1 Reasonable solutions/actions not implemented.
    I can't open the car or get in, but I can drive it.  I can't-- Aww,
    forget it!  I'm not going through this whole game and listing every
    action you didn't bother to implement.  I'd be doing your work for
    you.  And what's more, I don't care.
 
 -1 Poor writing.
    "This is a room.  This is where you can go.  This is what's here.
    Any questions?"  Every description was sheer agony.  ('Cept the ones
    that were really short, and they weren't worth typing the commands
    that made them appear.)
 
 -1 Poor design/construction.
    Why am I not informed when someone leaves the room?  Why is there no
    directional command for entering the garage?  Why do the paths curve
    around the house so much?  Ordinarily I wouldn't complain with this
    last one, but with everything else it was just really irritating.
 
 -1 Cliched story/setting.
    If I see one more house, I'll fill 50 lines with a big long ASCII
    scream.  And I'll do it, too, don't you think I won't.
 
 -1 Lacking "something really cool."
    What, no babies to put in blenders here?  You make me sick.
 
 -1 Miscellaneous stuff that pissed me off.
    Another stupid starve-to-death-in-20-moves situation.  Why doesn't
    anyone let me inside?  These puzzles are retarded.  *WHY* can't I
    open the fridge by myself?  (I can drive a car, but I can't open a
    fridge?!)  *WHY* can't I clean things by myself?  Am I a child?  If
    so, why can I drive a car?  Mom doesn't open the fridge for me if I
    drop dead right in front of her!  Everybody ignores me unless I hit
    upon the one topic they're good for.  I hate this family.  Where's
    the shotgun?
 
 My score for "Coming Home": 3 points out of 10.  (And I am being *damn*
 generous.)
 
 Did I finish it?:  Used the walkthrough as a command script, so yes.
 But I really don't care.
 
 Notes to the author:
 --------------------
 Just read the complaints for "Aunt Nancy's House," so I don't hafta
 type it all again.
 
 Okay, God, I swear on a stack of Bibles, if you make the next game a
 good one, I will never ever ever do anything bad ever again, for as
 long as I live, *ever*.  Please?
 
 ======================================================================

--
C.E. Forman                                     ceforman@worldnet.att.net
Author of "Delusions", the 3rd place winner in the 1996 I-F Competition!!
Release 4 is now at: ftp://ftp.gmd.de/if-archive/games/infocom/Delusns.z5
Ye Olde Infocomme Shoppe http://netnow.micron.net/~jgoemmer/infoshop.html




From neil@this.address.is.fake Sat Jan 10 19:14:34 MET 1998
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From: Neil Brown <neil@this.address.is.fake>
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: [IF comp 97] My turn (LONG)
Date: Sat, 10 Jan 1998 13:21:11 +0000
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At 22:39:26 on Fri, 9 Jan 1998, Russell Glasser wrote:
>THE LOST SPELLMAKER
>Score: 6
>       Okay, let me say this first of all: the scrambled title screen of The
>Lost Spellmaker is TOTALLY COOL!!!!!  What can I say, Im a sucker for
>special effects, even in a text adventure.  Neil, can I convince you to
>lend me the Inform source code of your title?

Sure; I'll email the code to you when I get the chance. Incidentally,
did anyone actually hate this effect? (Other than C E Forman, but
considering that he wrote Sylenius Mysterium I find this ironic.)

>       I do seem to remember a discussion on rec.arts.int-fiction a while
>back, in which there was a heated argument about whether one could
>include a gay or lesbian character without making it an overtly
>political statement, and I think now that it must have been Neil who
>sharply cut off some other arguments by saying "Ill show you; Ill just
>USE a gay character, and then youll see!"  Id forgotten about this
>until now.

Did I? I think I might have cut off most arguments by saying "ooooh,
you're a raving bigot!" But hey, I was having personal probs at the time
and wasn't thinking very rationally.

>       And thats all well and good, but I get the very uncharitable feeling
>think that by making his character a lesbian for the sake of proving an
>argument, Neil inadvertently DID make a political statement.

As I explained in another post, Mattie was lesbian at least three weeks
before I started that discussion (which was just to test the waters).
I'd made a joke with a pen pal once about how Dean R Koontz should
actually try to invent new characters instead of using pretty much the
same ones for all his books, and came up with a leather-obsessed priest
and a dumpy, sweet shop owning lesbian. I used the latter for Lost.
(Okay, Mattie doesn't own the sweet shop, but it's close enough.)

>       I would, however, like to point one very excellent feature of Lost
>Spellmaker besides the title screen: there is a thinly disguised parody
>of a newsgroup, possibly r.a.i-f itself, dressed up in a fantasy world
>context.  That alone makes the game well worth playing.

Argh - rumbled! I wasn't getting at r.*.i-f, though...

- NJB


From erkyrath@netcom.com Sun Jan 11 15:12:15 MET 1998
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From: erkyrath@netcom.com (Andrew Plotkin)
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Notes on C.E.Forman's notes:

--- BABEL

C.E. Forman (ceforman@postoffice.worldnet.att.net) wrote:
>  not sure.  Other authors: how would you react if someone released a
>  game similar to, but not inspired by, your own, without telling you,
>  even though s/he was aware of the similarities?  Would you write it off
>  as great minds thinking alike, or would you feel the new author was
>  saying "Hey, great ideas, but look! I thought of them too"?  This is a
>  touchy subject, and I'd like to know how other authors feel about it.

I certainly wouldn't think the other person was showing off. A great idea,
practically by definition, can be done an infinite number of different
ways. 

>  BTW, it
>  amazes me how *few* people seem to have noticed the similarities.  Is
>  it that easy to forget all about a game you played last year, even
>  though you liked it enough at the time to vote it into 3rd place?  Or
>  are you all just ignoring me again like you did with "PtF"?

I do recall noticing the similar gimmick (trying to find your lost memory 
in a lab.) But a gimmick is only a gimmick, after all. They were 
different stories.

I also recall noticing the similarity to the gimmick of "Who Goes There?" 
(creepy, monsters, identity) but that didn't lose it any points either.

If it helps, I thought "A New Day" was the game that *really* had elements
in common with "Delusions". And I harshed upon it vigorously.  ("At the
end the plot turns into 'computer program tries to leave computer and take
over the world', which, I hate to say, I am thoroughly sick of.")

>  Cuz I'm not goin' away.

I hope not.

--- ERDEN

>  "Erden" brought back plenty o' bad memories of doing rooms and scenery
>  on "Path to Fortune."  I'm giving you feedback here so you don't have
>  to wait an entire year to learn the hard way like I did.  I'm gonna be
>  blunt, so brace yourself, okay?  Ready?  Big-budget fantasy quests like
>  this one are not popular.  Do not be surprised if you don't get much
>  feedback.  Do not be surprised if hardly anyone plays through to the
>  end.  Do not be surprised if the only mail you ever get is about how
>  much someone hates fantasy games and how tired the setting is.

Well, Erden certainly did remind me of PTF (as well as Beyond Zork).

Your predictions... I recall that a lot of reviewers said they didn't
explore all of Erden (I certainly didn't.) It isn't as popular as the
popular entries. (The top 6 games in the ranking are all games that a lot
of people liked a lot. Wait, that's completely tautological... :-) Well,
you know what I mean.)

Not a lot of feedback? Well, competition games are guaranteed feedback. 
No surprise there. 

Lots of ranting about how tired the setting is? Several reviewers noted
that, usually in about one sentence. Interestingly, I didn't mention it at
all -- and you recall I was quite clear about saying that the setting of
PTF was tired and made me uninterested in the game. 

Why this inconsistency on my part?

I'm not sure. It may be random mood; it's been, what, two years? 
Different things set me off. Or maybe I take it as understood that the 
generic fantasy setting is a weakness. I don't have to rant about it any 
more. 

It may also be context. Back when PTF was released, there weren't that 
many games around. I can't remember if it was before the '95 competition 
or not. But I remember an attitude, inherited from Infocom and the 
earliest TADS/Inform games, that a game had to be worth $40. 

This is interesting. I'm just realizing it now, really. All Infocom games 
were supposed to give you your money's worth. And the Curses and the 
Unnkulia games were aimed at the same scale. (Bar UU1/2, which was more 
of a demo.) I remember the expectation that all games were intended to be 
blockbusters.

This is a *big* change since 1995. We can now look at short games and 
judge them as their own thing. We can look at games which are supposed to 
do one thing (which, to me, is the hallmark of a short story as opposed 
to a novel -- although I'm obviously not only talking about small IF 
works here.)

When you have 20+ games in a competition, you certainly don't expect them
all to be blockbusters. So Erden didn't blow my expectations the way PTF
did. One case got "Wow, a big new IF release! Oh, it doesn't interest me.
What a disappointment." The other got "35 games, and I *know* they'll
range from great to awful. Hm, this one isn't really catching my interest.
Medium score." 

I'm rambling somewhat. Sorry. I think the point is, if Erden had been 
released in '95 instead of PTF, I probably would have sent the author 
much the same kind of comments I sent you.

--- I FORGET WHERE YOU MADE THIS COMMENT

> The well-known I-F authors (Graham Nelson, Gareth Rees, Andrew Plotkin,
> etc.) all have coding exercises, no doubt,

Actually, I don't. 

--- SINS AGAINST MIMESIS

>  Oh, but just to set the record straight: Roger Giner-Sorolla's article
> was actually titled "*Crimes* Against Mimesis."

Er, yeah, deliberate title change, because of the "seven sins" tie-in, 
you know...

--- SYLENIUS

>     (Personally, I find it amusing that MaxZip turned out to be not
>     quite as standard as it thought it was.)

Hey! Hey! What's this for? MaxZip *does not* claim to be Z-Spec 1.0 
standard. It never even claimed to be Z-Spec 0.2 standard. There's a 
*reason* for this. 

I've never gone through the code and checked that it fulfilled the
standard; I deal with issues as they're reported to me. So I carefully 
leave header bytes $32 and $33 alone.

The @set_color bug is a good example of this. When ZIP was written, valid 
arguments were 1 to 9. The ZIP code (which is the core of MaxZip) checks 
this and throws an error if the arguments are out of range. A recent
(post-Infocom) change to the spec makes 0 a legal argument. I didn't 
notice it.

The @test_attr 0 and @get_prop 0 errors are yours. They did inspire me to
release XZip/MaxZip versions which display such errors, so that they're
easier to track down... 

>     Why *did* I bother with the Game Worlds?  I expected
>     everyone to see them, make a few moves, note the use of turn-based
>     and real-time I-F in the same story, say "nifty," then restart and
>     spend the rest of their time playing around with Ralph, Nolan and
>     Margot.

This is something which didn't come across well. I felt like the first 
part was an intro, even though you'd clearly put effort into it. (I 
assume everybody puts effort into the details. :-) Ya wanna know how much 
effort I put into the Scheme manual in "Lists"? That took much, much 
longer than the interpreter itself.)

>  I should have had it stop right before, or allowed a work-around so
>  players could see the ending without playing the real-time part, or
>  *something*.

Make it possible for Margot to play it for you? 

>  Now for the most frequently-asked question:  Why were the Game Worlds
>  rendered as textual I-F rather than character graphics?  Answer: Yes,
>  this was intentional, believe it or not.  We already have Tetris,
>  Robots and Z-Life.  Character graphics have been *done*.  This hadn't.
>  I never claimed it was a good idea, just a different one.

One day I'll get permission, or not worry about permission, and upload 
Icebreaker.z5. I'm afraid textual arcade games have been done too. :) 
(Although I didn't use timed input, and I used more conventional IF text 
style -- long room descriptions which describe what's visible in every 
direction.)

>  (But then,
>  I should have remembered that the point of the competition is not to
>  experiment with new techniques, but to rehash concepts that have
>  already been seen before.  My mistake.)

Troll.

--Z

-- 

"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the
borogoves..."


From rglasser@ix.netcom.com Sun Jan 11 15:15:49 MET 1998
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From: Russell Glasser <rglasser@ix.netcom.com>
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Comp97: Incoherent Blather (3/5)
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About The Tempest, C.E. Forman wrote:
> 
> I did not see any
>     disclaimer in the rules about "Completely original and your own work
>     OR in the public domain."  Why is it okay to steal Shakespeare's
>     genius but not Matt Barringer's, for God's sake?

	Congratulations, Chris, you've now managed to work in a reference in
your reviews to every piece of IF you ever wrote, and accused at least
one person of stealing from each.  The crowd applauds wildly.
	(Granted, I worked in a reference in my reviews to every game *I* ever
wrote, but that's not saying much since I only ever wrote one and have
two in progress.  Didn't mention "Wronger of Rights", my incomplete
competition entry, at all!  Oops, I just did.  Anyway, I sure never
accused people of plagiarizing Reverberations, Guido forbid!)

-- 
"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one
persists in trying to adapt the world to himself.  Therefore all
progress depends on the unreasonable man."
                -- George Bernard Shaw

Russell can be heckled at
        http://www.willynet.com/rglasser


From graham@gnelson.demon.co.uk Sun Jan 11 15:37:41 MET 1998
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From: Graham Nelson <graham@gnelson.demon.co.uk>
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: The contest _is_ for beginners
Date: Fri, 09 Jan 1998 13:55:23 +0000 (GMT)
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I've been a little concerned by some of the comments being made
about the competition (splendid though it is to see
rec.games.int-fiction being used according to charter!), along the
lines of "these entries are too dreadful, they're nothing but first
attempts at making a game, they should be censored" and so on.

I think there are two things I would like to say in response.
Firstly, the competition's main task as I see it is to get more
people involved in writing IF -- we should be celebrating the number
of "first games" that are being entered, not deprecating it.  The
competition isn't, primarily, meant to be an annual fair for the
established writers, people who can be certain that their work
will get attention at any time of the year.  The rules and
announcements should be written in a way which positively
encourages new writers to have a crack at it.

Secondly, let's ask ourselves what's wrong with having many entries,
some of them hopelessly misconceived.  Really poor games don't
waste so very much judging time.  The danger is rather that if there
are a vast number of entries (if there had been the 70 or so at one
time promised), then the "good" games may slip through the net.  Not
everybody will play everything, after all.

For this reason I'd like to see a "second round", as Linards and
others have also suggested.  Run the first round much as now, to
get down to a shortlist of, say, five; announce the five on the
shortlist, but don't publish which order they came in during the
first round.  Then allow discussion on the newsgroup about them
and hold a fresh vote a week later, in which the only candidates are
those five games, and people must rank 1,2,3,4,5 (so that there
are no problems with normalising scores).

It would also enable people in the top five who didn't actually
win to say that they'd been "short-listed", which has a good sort
of sound to it.

-- 
Graham Nelson | graham@gnelson.demon.co.uk | Oxford, United Kingdom



From femaledeer@aol.com Sun Jan 11 15:37:45 MET 1998
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Five wuld be too few. Ten or fifthteen maybe, yes, for a short list, depending
on the number of enteries.

I had another idea and although I cannot clearly conceptualize, I will run it
past everyone.

Two deadlines, one for beta-testing, one as total "cut off".

I withdrew my game because I only had one day to playtest it. I was really
working on it right up to the deadline. After someone discovered a fatal error
and I fixed it, I then replayed the game and found several other bugs that had
slipped past me. Minor bugs and one more major, that did not affect the
"winnability" of the game, but which I felt detracted seriously from game play.
So I withdrew my game, because the "beta testing" step had been essentially
skipped. I realized this when I submitted it, worried about it and then, after
replaying it, decided that it created too many flaws in my game.

A lot of games in this year's contest would have been improved with more
beta-testing. It was also what most people were complaining about in the
"poorer" entries.

So I suggest TWO deadlines -- one in which everyone has to STOP, they can no
longer work on their game. They then submit it -- maybe to a panel. It should
have been beta-tested by the author, at least, at this point. Then the panel
does primary (not extensive) beta-testing. Really buggy games are resubmitted
back to authors for basic fixes. The secondary deadline is when the contest is
OVER, no more beta-testing, no more time for fixes, that is IT.  The first
deadline could use several individual panels (not just one big one) -- maybe
each panel (volunteers) will beta-test 5-6 games each. It could also be that
individual authors could create their own "panels", but the panel will notify
the "authorities" (Whizzard and anyone else) when the game has arrived for
their preview.

In other words, there is a beta-test deadline, then the official, "contest is
over" deadline. Games which were not turned over in time for the first deadline
CANNOT make the second deadline.

I am sure there is some way to work this out, just as I am sure a lot of
authors were like me, working right up to the deadline and, as a result, their
games suffered from the lack of REAL beta-testing, just like mine did.

FD
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
FemaleDeer@aol.com       "Good breeding consists in 
concealing how much we think of ourselves and how 
little we think of the other person."             Mark Twain


From obrianNOSPAM@colorado.edu Sun Jan 11 15:38:01 MET 1998
Article: 29073 of rec.games.int-fiction
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From: Paul O'Brian <obrian@ucsu.Colorado.EDU>
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: The contest _is_ for beginners
Date: Sat, 10 Jan 1998 02:53:16 -0700
Organization: University of Colorado at Boulder
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FemaleDeer wrote: 
> In other words, there is a beta-test deadline, then the official, "contest is
> over" deadline. Games which were not turned over in time for the first deadline
> CANNOT make the second deadline.

Oooh! I haven't given it a ton of thought, but at first glance I like this
idea a lot! I see several advantages right off the bat:

1) Obviously, entries will be better tested.

2) If authors find that their games are too buggy to make the second
deadline, they may release them later, which would alleviate the
"competition flood" syndrome.

3) The number of entries in the competition would be fixed from an early
point, which might help judges & organizer(s) schedule their playing time,
set deadlines, etc. 

Of course, the disadvantages are that:

1) Such a setup might cast more doubt on the "beta-testers can vote"
issue? Perhaps some people might feel that judges would give games they've
tested an unfair advantage or disadvantage. 

2) It could cause more work for Whizzard. However, since he is such a
capable contest organizer, and moreover since it's his decision whether to
alter the rules anyway, I will trust in his ability to set firm
boundaries for himself. 

Paul O'Brian                                      obrian@ucsu.colorado.edu
"I think it's important to remember that no one falls into a simple set of
labels. Even more important is to learn from your mistakes, and to fight
for the positive choice."                            -- Lindsey Buckingham




From gkw@pobox.com Sun Jan 11 20:01:48 MET 1998
Article: 29070 of rec.games.int-fiction
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From: gkw@pobox.com (Gerry Kevin Wilson)
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: [IF-COMP97] Contest Results (sans Prize Draft)
Date: 10 Jan 1998 07:14:39 GMT
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Well, you folks obviously can't wait, and I'm still shy 6 authors (you know
who you are, you naughty authors you.) so I'll go ahead and post the prize
winning games (apologies in advance for any misspelled names and so
forth):

The Results:

  1 - The Edifice, by Lucian P. Smith
  2 - Babel, by Ian Finley                                 
  3 - Glowgrass, by Nate Cull                           
  4 - She's got a Thing for a Spring, by Brent VanFossen         
  5 - A Bear's Night Out, by David Dyte                     
  6 - Sunset Over Savannah, by Ivan Cockrum                   
  7 - Poor Zefron's Almanac, by Carl Klutzke                  
  8 - The Lost Spellmaker, by Neil Brown                    
  9 - Sins Against Mimesis, by Adam Thornton                   
 10 - A New Day, by Jonathan Fry                              
 11 - Zero Sum Game, by Cody Sandifier                          
 12 - Zombie!, by Scott W. Starkey                                
 13 - The Frenetic Five vs Sturm und Drang, by Neil deMause   
 14 - Travels in the Land of Erden, by Laura A. Knauth           
 15 - Unholy grail, by Stuart Allen                          
 16 - Friday Afternoon, by Mischa Schweitzer                      
 17 - Madame L'estrange and the Troubled Spirit, by Ian Ball and
	Marcus Young
 18 - Sylenius Mysterium, by C.E. Forman                    
 19 - Phred Phontious, the Quest for Pizza, by Michael Zey  
 20 - Down, by Kent Tessman                                  
 21 - Virtual Tech, by David Glasser                           
 22 - The Obscene Quest of Dr Auurdvarkbarf, by Gary Roggin
 23 - A Good Breakfast, by Stuart Adair                      
 24 - The Town Dragon, by David A. Cornelson                        

---
G. Kevin Wilson: Freelance Writer and Game Designer.  Resumes on demand.



From neil@this.address.is.fake Sun Jan 11 23:05:36 MET 1998
Article: 29199 of rec.games.int-fiction
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From: Neil Brown <neil@this.address.is.fake>
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: [IF comp 97] My turn (LONG)
Date: Sun, 11 Jan 1998 19:44:55 +0000
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At 12:38:31 on Sun, 11 Jan 1998, Dylan O'Donnell wrote:
>In article <kpxt$KAI$Ju0Ewvz@highmount.demon.co.uk>,
>Neil Brown  <neil@this.address.is.fake> wrote:
>>At 20:58:30 on Sat, 10 Jan 1998, Andrew Plotkin wrote:
>>>Ok, what *heck* does Sacromys Pemcoangs stand for?
>>
>>That's classified information.
>>
>>Actually, I'd rather someone else worked it out and told everyone. If no
>>one does, then I'll spill the beans some time after the next release of
>>"Lost". (That might be ages away yet - I might do a "Wedding" and
>>totally rewrite the ending.)
>
>Given the platform you work on, my bid is comp.sys.acorn.games. Am I
>correct?

Damn. I was hoping it would take slightly longer than twelve hours. :)

Plantasitoy, Silk's home town, is an anagram of 'playstation'. Magic
Weavers are meant to represent Risc PCs, which are (as far as I can
gather, seeing as I've never been able to afford one) high quality
machines with very little software. There used to be a reasonably
healthy games scene for Acorn machines, but most of the best programmers
have now moved on to other, more popular machines. (Not that I care any
longer. My poor A3000 is no longer supported by anyone, so I no longer
feel like a genuine Acorn user, something that was reinforced when I
went down to "Acorn World" in London and found that there was nothing
there of any relevance to me at all.)

Because there are no new games to talk about, the only thing to do on
c.s.a.g is to bitch and bicker.

I'm sure you can all work out the rest. :)

- NJB


From erkyrath@netcom.com Mon Jan 12 14:36:49 MET 1998
Article: 29121 of rec.games.int-fiction
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
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From: erkyrath@netcom.com (Andrew Plotkin)
Subject: Re: [IF-COMP97] Contest Results (sans Prize Draft)
Message-ID: <erkyrathEML6yt.BC0@netcom.com>
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Gerry Kevin Wilson (gkw@pobox.com) wrote:
> The Results:

>   1 - The Edifice, by Lucian P. Smith
>   2 - Babel, by Ian Finley                                 
>   3 - Glowgrass, by Nate Cull                           

By the way, all three of you are entitled to call yourselves "respected 
masters of the genre" now, just like me. 

Now you too can experience...

* people saying that your presence scares off new authors.
* people accusing you of being responsible for any anonymous game which 
is even slightly clever or off-beat.
* people telling you that you live in an ivory tower, not to mention:
* people saying that the IF audience is worshipping your incomprehensible 
games instead of playing games that are fun.

Hell, you can have *my* shares of those things. 

(Sorry about cutting that off at three people. I was intending to just
include the top-ranked entry, but then it turned out that I liked Babel
more than Edifice -- and also Ian Finley has wowed a competition with his
first game -- remind you of anyone? -- and then there's Nate Cull, who has
now come out with *three* respected games -- well, you get the idea.)

--Z

-- 

"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the
borogoves..."


From graham@gnelson.demon.co.uk Mon Jan 12 14:57:12 MET 1998
Article: 29236 of rec.games.int-fiction
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From: Graham Nelson <graham@gnelson.demon.co.uk>
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Fantasy I-F dead?
Date: Mon, 12 Jan 1998 12:56:22 +0000 (GMT)
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In article <69au6e$q2b@snews1.zippo.com>, Marshall T. Vandegrift
<URL:mailto:marsh@DONT.intrlink.SPAM.com.ME> wrote:
> I've been working on a full-length fantasy I-F game, but have been wondering 
> how well it would be received.
> 
> It seems that lately I've seen a number people calling just about *any* 
> fantasy setting cliched. While my setting is non-generic, it's definately not 
> as original as, say, So Far's.

Last year's contest was won by a straight-down-the-line fantasy
game, with magic, underground caves and kingdoms.  True, almost all
the negative things said about it related to the cliched setting,
and several judges downmarked it for not having thought of a fresh
idea.  Ask yourself -- is there any quirk you can put on it?

Boring things about fantasy settings:

  Medieval villages.  Blacksmiths, clairvoyant old women, churches.
  Swords and hit points.
  Evil wizards who must be overthrown.
  Castles and dungeons.
  Such blandness of period and style that you could be any period
  between the Iron Age and 1750.

Infocom's game "Spellbreaker" is well worth exploring as an
alternative to the above.

-- 
Graham Nelson | graham@gnelson.demon.co.uk | Oxford, United Kingdom



From tril@dominion.cba.csuohio.edu Mon Jan 12 21:13:21 MET 1998
Article: 29259 of rec.games.int-fiction
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From: tril@dominion.cba.csuohio.edu (Suzanne Skinner)
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Comp97: Incoherent Blather (2/5)
Date: 12 Jan 1998 19:50:00 GMT
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In rec.games.int-fiction C.E. Forman wrote: [a scathing review of Babel]

Okay....I don't often post here, and I'm usually careful not to post
anything inflammatory. But though I'm sure Ian is capable of defending
his own game, I can't let this pass without comment.

>     Why can't I throw acid at other metal barriers (doors, bulkheads,
>     the cover of the radiation chamber) to get through them?  (Why, for
>     that matter, must I use it not on the lock, but on the hinges, which
>     aren't even mentioned when I examine the cabinet?

Those are related questions: the acid isn't strong enough to burn through a
thick sheet of metal or a strong lock (the failure messages in the game made
this clear enough to me), whereas the hinges are described as thin and
flimsy. The fact that they weren't mentioned in the safe's description (they
ARE in the description of the safe door, btw) is a bug that I presume will
be fixed in the next release. I haven't yet played a single competition game
that didn't have its share.

>     'Bout two-thirds of the way into the game, the "save" command
>     started taking anywhere from 10-30 seconds per save or restore.

Sounds to me like you're blaming the game for a problem with your
interpreter/system. I had no such problem in either Dos or Unix
(mind you, I was probably guilty of the same with ZSG, and I
wouldn't carp on this if it were your only complaint...)

>     something).  Gratuitous safe puzzle (though at least you limited it
>     to a one-number combination, that's something).  Too much traipsing
    
How exactly was the safe puzzle "gratuitous" when it tied in with the plot
(did you touch the shelf in the safe?) ? Or is gratuitous just a word for
"a type of puzzle I don't like"?

Look...if you don't like a game, for whatever reason, you have the right
to give it a low rating. Just don't try to give contrived reasons for doing
so. Other games that you rated highly had just as many or more bugs and
peculiarities, and few of them were as ambitious as Babel. It appears
to me the real reason you gave it a "4" is the one you rant about for most
of the rest of this review.

>     In addition to all of the obvious "Delusions" rip-offs (trapped in a

Did you even think about going back and changing this after
learning that the author thought up the basic ideas BEFORE Delusions?
You are calling someone else's hard work a "rip-off" in front of the
entire newsgroup. It would be rude and mean-spirited even if you were
right about him taking his inspiration from you.

>     Big-ass plot holes in the story.  Why did I let the Jabberwocky
>     (never explained) out?  I assume that was its blood on the cracked
>     mirrors, when it attacked them?  If not, whose was it?

Hello? Did we play the same game? The Jabberwocky is a toxin, not an
animal. You know, that broken vial lying on the floor of the toxin gallery
which is mentioned prominently when you walk into the room? As for why you
broke the vial, that was explained well enough by the flashbacks.

>     Also, why do I have to specifically *mix* the antitoxin base
>     and the Telerus toxin? I can pour both liquids into the same
>     container and then take one right back out and leave the other in!

I quote, from the notes in the cabinet:

"The gist of it seems to be that the Telerus toxin and the anti-toxin
base will stay separate like oil and vinegar until thoroughly
mixed."

I'm increasingly getting the impression that you didn't give much
attention to this game, beyond what it took to fume about its
"rip-offs" from Delusions.

>  Some people may prefer the way "Babel" handled its content over
>  "Delusions."  Some people may like not having to think to figure out
>  what everything represents.  Some people may enjoy solving puzzles
>  instead of solving story-related problems.

How exactly were Babel's puzzles *not* "story-related problems"? In
my experience, that was precisely what most of them were, and this
was part of the reason I enjoyed the game.

> Well that's fine by me.
>  Go ahead and slap a big ol' 10 on this one.  Use your vote to cancel
>  mine out.  Oh wait, I'm an author, so my vote doesn't count diddly-
>  squat anyway.  Goddammit.

As a matter of fact, I did. I also gave Delusions a 10, FWIW. Cosmetic
errors in the first release aside, it's one of the best pieces of IF I've
ever played, and likewise Babel. Why can't you enjoy your own accomplishment
without slamming someone else's?

>  Unfortunately, just because you yourself haven't seen something done in
>  I-F before does not mean that people aren't sick to death of it.

Few people get "sick to death" of a genre after only a handful of
games written for it. Infact, you're the only one I've heard
claiming that Babel's design is derivative (though some find
the writing cliched, a reasonable enough objection).

I'll get to the point, and then disappear. I think you've gone to
a whole lot of trouble to find things wrong with a good game, turning
your "objective rating system" into an excuse to take off points
for peccadillos. And I think you've done so for one reason only:
you THOUGHT it was an imitation of yours. It may be a moot point,
since you weren't able to vote, but it still bothers me.

-Suzanne

-- 
http://dominion.cba.csuohio.edu/~tril/
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From jcmason@undergrad.math.uwaterloo.ca Mon Jan 12 23:28:55 MET 1998
Article: 29269 of rec.games.int-fiction
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
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From: jcmason@undergrad.math.uwaterloo.ca (Joe Mason)
Subject: Re: Comp97: Incoherent Blather (1/5)
Sender: news@undergrad.math.uwaterloo.ca (news spool owner)
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In article <69893k$brf@bgtnsc01.worldnet.att.net>,
C.E. Forman <ceforman@postoffice.worldnet.att.net> wrote:
>   (Wireless wire, which isn't wired to anything, cuz it's wireless!
>   Hee!)

"No, wooden wood is just redunant.  Wireless wire is an oxymoron."

Joe



From dns361@merle.acns.nwu.edu Tue Jan 13 09:58:37 MET 1998
Article: 29282 of rec.games.int-fiction
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From: Second April <dns361@merle.acns.nwu.edu>
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Comp97: Incoherent Blather (2/5)
Date: Mon, 12 Jan 1998 17:41:50 -0600
Organization: Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, US
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I think Suzanne was right on, but I wanted to add something...

> >  Some people may prefer the way "Babel" handled its content over
> >  "Delusions."  Some people may like not having to think to figure out
> >  what everything represents.  Some people may enjoy solving puzzles
> >  instead of solving story-related problems.

Juvenile sneers do not become you. There was plenty of plot in Babel; I
went back to glowing patches several times to replay scenes as the plot
developed. There was plenty of thought involved, and arguably just as much
character development as in Delusions. For my part, I enjoyed discovering
new parts of the game, like the animals in the gallery and the mice in the
cages. And, I'm sorry to say, while Babel was perhaps a bit more than a
two-hour game, Delusions was WAY WAY WAY too long for the format; Babel
had about the amount of story that I would consider appropriate, maybe a
little more, but I have much trouble believing that _anyone_ could get
through Delusions in two hours without relying _very_ heavily on hints.
You can insult Babel for having a simpler plot if you life, but Ian was a
whole lot closer to following the competition guidelines than you were.

> > Well that's fine by me.
> >  Go ahead and slap a big ol' 10 on this one.  Use your vote to cancel
> >  mine out.  Oh wait, I'm an author, so my vote doesn't count diddly-
> >  squat anyway.  Goddammit.

I gave Babel a 9; I didn't judge the 1996 competition, but I suspect I
would have given Delusions an 8 or a 9. I found it interesting but
frustrating--the middlegame just made me want to walk away. Why do you
seem to view people rating Babel highly as a personal attack on you?

> >  Unfortunately, just because you yourself haven't seen something done in
> >  I-F before does not mean that people aren't sick to death of it.

You act like Ian has tried to defend himself by saying that people have no
right to be "sick to death" of the genre, which he hasn't. There has not
exactly been a widespread sentiment to this effect--"stop the
abandoned-scientist-in-a-lab-with-an-experiment-gone-wrong games"--quite
rightly, because it _hasn't_ been done much and _does_ still offer
opportunity for creative adaptation. Which Babel was. Perhaps you should
have simply said "I didn't enjoy this one because I wrote Delusions and
couldn't really get into a game that trod on similar around", and,
ideally, not rated the game.

Duncan Stevens
d-stevens@nwu.edu
312-654-0280

The room is as you left it; your last touch--
A thoughtless pressure, knowing not itself
As saintly--hallows now each simple thing,
Hallows and glorifies, and glows between
The dust's gray fingers, like a shielded light.

--from "Interim," by Edna St. Vincent Millay




From dns361@merle.acns.nwu.edu Tue Jan 13 10:18:11 MET 1998
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From: Second April <dns361@merle.acns.nwu.edu>
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Comp97: Incoherent Blather (2/5)
Date: Mon, 12 Jan 1998 19:13:54 -0600
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>     close to losing a "guess-the-word" point for that.)  Further, your
>     refusal to allow the strength injection to break the locks and the
>     other doors is a real cop-out.  It seems you'd coded some puzzles
>     with conflicting solutions, i.e. one's solution is feasible for, and
>     easier than, the solution for another puzzle, and rather than
>     implement both or redesign the puzzles, you opted for a quickie
>     no-can-do.  It's just like the old one-weapon-against-one-monster
>     puzzles so characteristic of GAGS.  Which solution works for which
>     puzzle?

Oh, c'mon. I agree that there's no good reason for not allowing the door
to be broken by strength, and Ian knows it as well. But saying that the
game is like a GAGS game because of one illogicality is just dumb. There
are _no_ other instances like this in the game.

>     to a one-number combination, that's something).  Too much traipsing
>     back and forth in the complex.  Why create the impression of a time
>     limit if you're only bluffing?  When I got the "very low power"
>     messages, I saved the game and waited repeatedly to see if/when the
>     timer would expire.

When you go to those lengths to look for a plot hole, I don't think you
can really blame the author. I didn't save the game and wait 700 turns to
see if the lights would really go out; if I had, I certainly wouldn't have
blamed the author if I got bored in the process. You _certainly_ can't
complain that you "barely" finished the game.

>     In addition to all of the obvious "Delusions" rip-offs (trapped in a
>     laboratory complex run by a nameless "Agency," victim of an
>     experiment, discovering your identity, no way to see your reflection
>     at first, liberal use of hypodermic needles) the "limits of science"
>     conflict is, IMO, extremely tired.  "We should never test on
>     humans... unsafe, inhuman, playing God"/"Science can't be stopped
>     blah blah blah betterment of mankind."  It's all been said before.
>     (For you MST3K fans: "He tampered in God's domain!")

When you come down to it, there are darn few things that have _never_ been
said. But this one has not been said, to my knowledge, in any half-decent
work of IF, and a story as basic as this one--I mean, it's in the news;
read a newspaper story about cloning or multiple births, and that's what
it's really about--should by no means be outlawed.

>     Correction.  Lacking "something really cool that wasn't already done
>     in 'Delusions.'"

I echo Suzanne. How hard would it have been to edit this out once you knew
that he didn't actually steal your idea? 

>     Big-ass plot holes in the story.  Why did I let the Jabberwocky
>     (never explained) out?  I assume that was its blood on the cracked
>     mirrors, when it attacked them?  If not, whose was it?  Couldn't
>     have been Jonas or Alexis; I killed them outside the Complex.  And

It was yours. When you punch a mirror, see, there's this possibility that
you might cut your hand. Really.

>     why wasn't my mirror broken?

Someone in a psychotic rage wasn't entirely consistent? What a crummy
author Ian must be. Knock him down a point.

  And why did I bother to re-lock the
>     doors to my room and Jonas's room?  ("Heh, this'll make a great
>     puzzle for me to solve later, after my memory fades and I forget
>     what's in these rooms!")

You didn't. Jonas or Alexis did--or they happened to leave the other two
doors unlocked, depending on how you look at it. People fleeing a lab
weren't entirely consistent either! Knock it down another point.

>  On top of this, "Babel" flubbed all the techniques I crafted into my
>  entry last year.  The timeline of events you've built through the
>  calendar holds together, but details in the game, as I've already
>  outlined above, make no sense.  In "Delusions," *everything* is
>  accounted for.

Hardly. You don't notice your own stupid hands until you've seen
everything else? You don't notice the feel of your own skin? There are
absolutely no even vaguely reflective surfaces, not even the screen? Plus,
this is quite an argument here, since the premises behind the discovery of
your own identity in the two games are different--you're criticizing Babel
for its similarities to Delusions, and then criticizing Babel's plot for
not being similar to that of Delusions.
 
 The "achieving self-awareness" bit isn't consistent.
>  Why can I recall memories from some objects but not others?

A very emotionally charged moment leaves a stronger tellurgic association
with the object, maybe?

>  object, every room, should have stories to tell.  For that matter, why,
>  if my Teleran abilities are so "advanced," as Jonas calls them, do I
>  have to look in the mirror before I can recall the most significant
>  details of my past?  How could my memory fade if I supposedly have
>  this ability to see, over and over, what happened in the past?
>  Wouldn't repeated viewing of events reinforce, rather than submerge,
>  memories?

Give the guy _some_ leeway. This is an EXPERIMENT, as I recall. Is it so
improbable that a toxin with profound effects on someone's mental state
could produce loss of memory? And that seeing a reflection could bring
that memory back?

>  The characters have no personality, no depth at all.  They're cardboard
>  cutouts painted with singular motives.  Jonas: The man willing to
>  pursue science at any cost.  Brett: The Bible-thumping "don't play God"
>  preacher.  Alexis: She likes you, that's about it.  Even David, with
>  his eager golly-gosh enthusiasm to advance technology, never mind what
>  happens to him, felt flimsy.  I couldn't identify with the character.

Well, lessee now. In Delusions, we have the power-hungry woman who tries
to get rid of everyone, and two other characters with pretty much nothing
to them at all. The virus is pretty much a standard "you are in my power
mua ha ha ha" convention. Maybe, just maybe, real character development in
IF, particularly competition-length IF, isn't a realistic goal, in that it
could take up the bulk of the game. (See Bob in "Spring." A very
well-realized character, but getting to know him is, let's face it, a bit
tedious.) No, I don't know anyone like Jonas--though I do know people like
Brett--but considering you never actually encounter any of the characters,
I'd say they're pretty well done.

>  "Babel" doesn't have any neat stuff hidden in the game (that I could
>  find, anyway).  Once you've finished, that's it.  No motivation to go
>  back and try things differently.  "Babel" doesn't make you *think*
>  about things.  There's no need to ponder what anything represents,
>  since it's all spelled out for you in the detailed flashbacks.

Is the mark of a good story really that you have to puzzle things out
after it's over? By the time I was done with Delusions, I was tired of
figuring out what was VR and what was real, and I just quit and did
something else. Me, I think a good story can turn on emotional impact just
as much, and, sorry, Babel had the emotional impact that Delusions lacked.
No, it didn't have "fun stuff," but if that's a reason for rating a game
down, your priorities are weird. And insisting on symbolism is just
pretentious.

>  Everyone's motivation is cut-and-dried, no hidden agendas.  By the end,
>  it's crystal-clear precisely what happened, and the story doesn't add a
>  thing to the "science bad/science good" debate that I haven't already
>  read over and over again in the newspaper.  It's "Delusions," watered
>  down.  "Delusions for Dummies."

No, it's an entirely different game. It's a game where figuring out what
happened is the point, as seems logical if the premise is that you wake up
alone with no memory in a lab. I can't really say what the point of
Delusions was, so I won't try to guess, but I'd say it was very different,
not a richer or better-done version of Babel. It was a different story
that used some of the same plot techniques. As for "adding anything" to
the limits of science question, it's the very rare piece of IF--I haven't
seen any, but then again I haven't played So Far--that actually added
anything to any debate or idea. Many, however, tell very good stories that
illustrate certain ideas or conflicts, and that's what Babel does.

>  Perhaps I'm mistaken.  Perhaps Ian Finley really hasn't ever played my
>  game, and to him "Babel" is original, full of groundbreaking ideas.
>  Unfortunately, just because you yourself haven't seen something done in
>  I-F before does not mean that people aren't sick to death of it.  (An
>  earlier game of mine proved this beyond a doubt.)  Next time, take a
>  look at past competition entries, at the very least the higher-ranking
>  ones.  See what's out there.  See what's already been done.  I learned
>  this the hard way.  Seems you need to as well.

Terribly sorry if you're bitter that people didn't like Path to Fortune,
but that's not an excuse for criticizing Ian so harshly--and, this just
in, Andromeda Strain-style games are not _nearly_ as overdone as
Tolkienesque fantasy.

Duncan Stevens
d-stevens@nwu.edu
312-654-0280

The room is as you left it; your last touch--
A thoughtless pressure, knowing not itself
As saintly--hallows now each simple thing,
Hallows and glorifies, and glows between
The dust's gray fingers, like a shielded light.

--from "Interim," by Edna St. Vincent Millay




From lucfrench@aol.com Tue Jan 13 10:19:31 MET 1998
Article: 29314 of rec.games.int-fiction
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From: lucfrench@aol.com (LucFrench)
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: An open note to Mr. Forman 
Date: 13 Jan 1998 08:23:58 GMT
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Mr. Forman:

You seemed to be overly negitive in your reviews toward "Generic Fantasy
Games", or even just plain Fantasy, because your game, Path to Fortune, failed.

Well, I'll tell you why it failed. I played Path, and played some of the games
you knocked for being "Generic Fantasy"; ZSG was generic because that was an
intigral part of the concept.

PtF failed because, in two words:

"It sucked."

You didn't invest any energy in creating anything new; a wizard can be
interesting, a knight can be interesting, a dwarf can be interesting.

But you have to put energy into creating setting; the only original thing I saw
before I threw the thing off my hard drive was the Riddling Cat, and that was
blantently taken from Lewis Carol.

You also went for a bland plot, local boy makes good. That is EVEN MORE
"cliche" then fantasy. You can tell from the begining, from the very first ">",
what's going to happen. How many people can say that for Curses, Trinity, or
Jigsaw (or for that matter, Freefall)? (WITHOUT looking at spoilers...)

There are no cliche settings, only bland puzzles and plots.

(    /* Note the use of C style parenthesis. */
_Bear's Night Out_ is of a standard genre, namely, "the toy awakens"; think
_Toy Story_, the _Twilight Zone_ episode with the ventriloquist's dummy, and
several Jim Hensen specials. This is not to say that it is cliche.

(To take an example, "Who Goes There", aka "The Thing (from Outer Space)" (aka
the original "they look like human beings!" story). The concept has been done a
dozen times. For example: "The Day The Earth Stood Still", or "Invasion of the
Body Snatcher's", each of which (BTW), was about the era in which they were
made. ("Body Snatchers" had McCarthy overtones (although weither for or against
McCarthyism is "an excercise left to the reader"), and talked about people
hiding behind uniformity (a trend of the period). "The Day the Earth Stood
Still" was (according to some) made at the bequest of the Army, because of the
UFO panic of the period; it had overtones of the Cold War, nucular devistation,
etc. .))

(Sorry. Got WAY off track there.)
)  /* End side note */

But still, your game failed because of _THE WAY IT WAS SET UP_, not because of
anything wrong with any of the puzzles or (the real) ideas.

Fantasy requires as much effort as you put into it, my friend. You put more
effort into the game then into the backstory; once I realized that, I realized
that the game was not going to remain on my hard drive.

CASK succeded at what it set out to do. From what I've heard, your game Comp97
did not.

</rant>

Thanks
Luc French


From erkyrath@netcom.com Tue Jan 13 10:30:38 MET 1998
Article: 29302 of rec.games.int-fiction
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From: erkyrath@netcom.com (Andrew Plotkin)
Subject: Re: Fantasy I-F dead?
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Trevor Barrie (tbarrie@ibm.net) wrote:
> In article <erkyrathEMnC7K.3xp@netcom.com>,
> Andrew Plotkin <erkyrath@netcom.com> wrote:

> >Is it constructed entirely of cliches? Does it read like an AD&D 
> >campaign? Are there knights and dragons which are there only because 
> >everyone knows there are knights and dragons in places like this?

> I'm as contemptuous of xD&D as anybody, but I don't see why the second
> would necessarily be a bad thing.

When I say "reads like an AD&D campaign", I mean that you can see 
individual paragraphs from the Dungeon Master's Guide being used to 
construct the plot.

I'm thinking of a book someone gave me, one of the early Raymond Feist I 
think, and the first thing that happens is that someone invents the *spell 
scroll*, as opposed to the *memorized spell*. Or maybe it was the other way 
around. The point was, it was exactly the D&D spell mechanics.

I think I recognized specific D&D-definition spells later on, too.

This is not the way to interest me.

--Z

-- 

"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the
borogoves..."


From erkyrath@netcom.com Tue Jan 13 10:30:54 MET 1998
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From: erkyrath@netcom.com (Andrew Plotkin)
Subject: Re: Fantasy I-F dead?
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Mark J Musante (olorin@world.std.com) wrote:
> Graham Nelson (graham@gnelson.demon.co.uk) wrote:
> > Boring things about fantasy settings:
> >
> >   Medieval villages.  Blacksmiths, clairvoyant old women, churches.
> >   Swords and hit points.
> >   Evil wizards who must be overthrown.
> >   Castles and dungeons.
> >   Such blandness of period and style that you could be any period
> >   between the Iron Age and 1750.

> Aw geez.  Well, I'm about 3/4 of the way through my game; after spending
> three years to get to this point, I'm not gonna abandon it now.

Heh. Well, as I said, go for it.

> Besides, my game most defintely does not have a blacksmith.

Couldja add one? Just for me? :-)

Seriously, even lists of elements don't prove anything.

_A Game of Thrones_ (G.R.R.Martin) is a book I read last year which is --
in a sense -- generic fantasy. It doesn't have dragons, but it does have
hardy Northern bordermen, horse-riding tribesmen, scheming royalty and
pretenders to royalty, castles, dungeons, prophecies, children with wolf
companions, and -- I think -- elves. Also a dwarf. 

It is thoroughly original and powerful, and I heartily wish the author 
would get off his butt and finish the sequels. (I hear the second book is 
*almost* done.)

To give one tiny example, which is background, not even plot or 
character: the dungeons in one mountain castle are way, way up in the 
air. One wall of the cell is entirely missing; you look out on freedom, 
albeit with a half-mile drop between you and it. Admittedly you also are 
looking out into freezing mountaintop wind. And the cell floor slopes. 
Towards the drop.

After a few weeks in there, prisoners get very cooperative.

(Apologies if I screwed up any details; it's been over a year since I 
read it.)

Then there's Michael Scott Rohan's _Winter of the World_ trilogy, which
has Tolkien-like elves and dwarves... but tied weirdly into our history. 
It takes place during the Ice Age; the dwarves are dwarves, but they're
also Neanderthals. The elves are... stranger. The hero *is* a blacksmith,
but his magical weapons might be technological; at one point he's
definitely working with carbon-fiber composites. 

--Z

-- 

"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the
borogoves..."


From rglasser@ix.netcom.com Tue Jan 13 10:32:18 MET 1998
Article: 29309 of rec.games.int-fiction
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From: Russell Glasser <rglasser@ix.netcom.com>
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Fantasy I-F dead?
Date: Mon, 12 Jan 1998 23:25:59 -0800
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To what has already been said, I would like to add the following
commentary:
	A fantasy world isn't a bad thing or even a generic thing, AS LONG AS
it makes no presuppositions about things the reader already knows.
	If the first character you introduce is an elf, and the game or story
fails to describe the elf in any way because it's exactly like all elves
that fantasy readers would recognize as such, that's bad.  This applies
not only to physical characteristics, but also to race-related
personality quirks (i.e., all elves are wise and mischievous, all
dwarves are grumpy and good at evaluating precious gems, etc, etc,
BORING...)
	What I am about to say applies equally to fantasy and good science
fiction.  The world that you create has to have its own unique setting,
and more importantly, its own VERY UNIQUE rules of reality.  These rules
have to be very well defined from the beginning, to the point where the
reader is comfortable with them, and they must be METICULOUSLY
consistent throughout the series.  If your background makes no
assumptions about what the reader already knows, chances are you have
done something more creative than average.
	I am thinking in particular of a game I played by Legend, which was
reasonably good and inspired me to read the novel series, which was
incredibly good.  The game was Deathgate, the novels were written by
Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman.
	What was interesting to me about Deathgate was that it actually had
elves, dwarves, wizards, dragons, giants, and so on and so on... but it
used them in a way that no one had ever used them before.  The races
were a background to a larger world that none of the characters were
aware of; they were all uninteresting pawns in a grander scale game
played by races that were completely original and inventive.  The books
went to great pains to define characteristics of magic and races which
did not rely in any way on Tolkien or D&D.  It is because the books made
up their OWN rules that they didn't bore me in SPITE of the fantasy
setting.

-- 
"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one
persists in trying to adapt the world to himself.  Therefore all
progress depends on the unreasonable man."
                -- George Bernard Shaw

Russell can be heckled at
        http://www.willynet.com/rglasser


From dns361@merle.acns.nwu.edu Tue Jan 13 10:33:33 MET 1998
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From: Second April <dns361@merle.acns.nwu.edu>
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Subject: Re: Comp97: Incoherent Blather
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> >  (But then,
> >  I should have remembered that the point of the competition is not to
> >  experiment with new techniques, but to rehash concepts that have
> >  already been seen before.  My mistake.)

Self-pity does not become you either. There were plenty of new ideas in
this year's competition, and I'd say, on the most part, they've been
recognized and applauded. Sunset Over Savannah's emotional-state status
line, Zero Sum Game's reverse scoring, Edifice's use of allegory--and even
Tempest, flawed though it was, has been criticized more for the problems
with its implementation than for its idea. I don't think the bulk of the
criticism of Sylenius has been for the idea either, but then again, people
aren't sending me reviews. I do think that, if you're actually committed
to the idea, you should take seriously the criticisms that are coming 
in--like "it's boring in a text medium"--and think about them. Maybe
there's a way to make the idea _not_ boring. Vary the text that indicates
attacks, movement, etc.; I got tired of seeing the same "you move to the
left" messages. Make the deaths of the various creatures interesting;
different monsters don't have to die in the same way. I mean, people read
fantasy novels with long fighting sequences that aren't inherently any
more interesting than this; surely there's a way to spruce your text up.

("Already been seen before"? The grammar-critic pot calls the kettle
black.)

Duncan Stevens
d-stevens@nwu.edu
312-654-0280

The room is as you left it; your last touch--
A thoughtless pressure, knowing not itself
As saintly--hallows now each simple thing,
Hallows and glorifies, and glows between
The dust's gray fingers, like a shielded light.

--from "Interim," by Edna St. Vincent Millay




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From: mol@bartlet.df.lth.se (Magnus Olsson)
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Subject: Re: Fantasy I-F dead?
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In article <69g3v5$bps$1@news.iquest.net>,
Carl Klutzke <cklutzke@iquest.net> wrote:
>In article <34BB1707.37DE6F6B@ix.netcom.com>,
>Russell Glasser  <rglasser@ix.netcom.com> wrote:
>>	A fantasy world isn't a bad thing or even a generic thing, AS LONG AS
>>it makes no presuppositions about things the reader already knows.
>
>I never thought about it in just this way before, but I think you are
>exactly on the mark. 

I'm not so sure about that. Or rather, I think Russell's statement
makes no sense. All fiction makes that kind of presuppositions, to
some degree, especially fiction that takes place in the real world,
of course.

Come to think of it, I suspect Russel is confusing cause and effect
here: if the setting is very cliched, then the author will be able to
make presuppositions about what the reader knows. "My elves are just
like Tolkien's, and the reader will immediately recognize this, so I
can cut out a lot of exposition." But the same holds true for
realistic settings: "The cars in my game are just like real cars, so I
can presuppose that the reader knows a lot about how they work." And
that doesn't make a game about cars cliched, does it?

>You have managed to describe what it is about some
>works of fantasy that just make me want to vomit, even though it's my
>favorite genre.  It reminds me of reading the first Riftworld book by
>Raymond Feist, where they get attacked by "dark elves".  I found myself
>thinking "Oh, for crying out loud, it's the Drow, only he can't call them
>that because TSR would have his butt."

I haven't read the book in question, but were his "dark elves" obvious
clones of AD&D's Drow? Or are you implying that the concept of dark
elves originated in ADD? (It didn't: dark and light elves have existed
in Nordic folklore for centuries - the Swart Alfar and Lios Alfar of
Kay's "Fionavar Tapestry" are another example).

>Make your own setting, or use one from real history.  Don't duplicate
>someone else's fantasy world.  It's like a painting of a painting, rather
>than the painting itself.  It has no merit of its own.

I think the important point that lots of people here are missing is
that this is true for the *setting*, and for the setting only. The
rest of the game can be stunningly original, even if it's set in a
world straight out of an AD&D sourcebook.

And let's also not forget that to many readers a recognizable setting
is a *plus*. Part of the attraction of genre fiction is that you feel
at home. Of course, there is cliched genre fiction, and there is original
genre fiction. 

And all this is valid for all genres, not just for fantasy. 

Take westerns, for example. How many western movies don't seem to
take place in the very same town, with the same people riding 
past the same cliffs in the same desert?




-- 
Magnus Olsson (mol@df.lth.se, zebulon@pobox.com)
------    http://www.pobox.com/~zebulon   ------
     Not officially connected to LU or LTH.


From mol@bartlet.df.lth.se Tue Jan 13 20:47:37 MET 1998
Article: 29353 of rec.games.int-fiction
Path: news.lth.se!not-for-mail
From: mol@bartlet.df.lth.se (Magnus Olsson)
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Fantasy I-F dead?
Date: 13 Jan 1998 19:55:11 +0100
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In article <69g97i$5uv$1@nntp5.u.washington.edu>,
Mary K. Kuhner <mkkuhner@evolution.genetics.washington.edu> wrote:
>In article <69g6bu$c6r$1@bartlet.df.lth.se>,
>Magnus Olsson <mol@bartlet.df.lth.se> wrote:
>
>>Come to think of it, I suspect Russel is confusing cause and effect
>>here: if the setting is very cliched, then the author will be able to
>>make presuppositions about what the reader knows. "My elves are just
>>like Tolkien's, and the reader will immediately recognize this, so I
>>can cut out a lot of exposition." But the same holds true for
>>realistic settings: "The cars in my game are just like real cars, so I
>>can presuppose that the reader knows a lot about how they work." And
>>that doesn't make a game about cars cliched, does it?
>
>I read the same book that Russel is commenting on, and I had the
>same complaint with it.

Well, I wasn't commenting on Russel's comment on the book, but on
his general statement about not relying on presuppositions. But
I might have misunderstood it. More about that below.

>It wasn't just that the elves were Tolkein
>elves (and in fact they weren't 100%, though the resemblance was
>certainly strong, and it felt kind of icky to be able to use Tolkein
>knowledge to translate Feist's elven words).  It was that I could
>never get any kind of vivid or compelling image of what was going on,
>because the writing relied *so* heavily on presuppositions.

OK, if *that* is what Russel meant, then I can agree with him.

>I particularly remember a scene where the characters, deep underground,
>encounter a shadow of the restless dead.  This ought to be an
>interesting scene, really it should.  There is lots of room for 
>disturbing detail.  What does a shadow of the restless dead smell
>like?  What does it make you feel like to see it?  How does it look
>against its background?  ("Through its pale form he could see the
>cavern walls, but stained and somehow repellent, as if the creature's
>shadow, while not obscuring, contaminated all that it fell upon.")
>
>But Feist did none of this.  He said that they saw a wraith,
>and they were afraid of it, because they thought it would steal
>their life energy.  I forget what they did--and I really
>didn't care, because I had no engagement in the scene.  I could
>not see or hear or feel what was going on, nor was there any
>vividness in how the characters reacted.

But this is surely a problem of bad writing (not necessarily
technically bad, of course), not of the generic setting.

I agree 100% with what you're saying here (and if that's what Russel's
saying, I agree with him as well :-) ). And this is a sin often
committed by IF authors as well. Sometimes, it may be a lack of
imagination (the author can't figure out what his monsters look like,
so he just describes them as icky and scary). Sometimes, it's perhaps
just laziness or misplaced economy - a famous example is Hades in Zork I.

>I feel the same way in IF if you just tell me I see an elf, or
>a dragon, or a dwarf--or anything you want me to focus on.  (I'm not
>happy with "a car" either if it's at all important.  James Bond
>should not be driving "a car".)
>
>I am happy to be shown an elf, but I want the author to show
>me *his* elf, not simply ask me to fill in a generic one.

This, I think, is sound advice for all writing, genre or non-genre.
(But, though it may be bad writing to just give James Bond "a car"
rather than an Aston Martin Lagonda, you can still rely on the
readers' knowledge of how an ordinary car works, and limit your
description to what makes Bond's car different.)

*However*, I think we're drifting away from the real issue, which is
why generic fantasy settings are so bad.

Surely, a game can be set in a generic fantasy setting, use all the
cliches (as brilliantly parodied in Diana Wynn Jones' "Tough Guide to
Fantasyland". Lovely book. Get it.), and still have the kind of vivid
descriptions that you're asking for above, still avoid the
"presupposition of knowledge"? And what's so bad about such a game?

-- 
Magnus Olsson (mol@df.lth.se, zebulon@pobox.com)
------    http://www.pobox.com/~zebulon   ------
     Not officially connected to LU or LTH.


From obrianNOSPAM@colorado.edu Wed Jan 14 00:15:26 MET 1998
Article: 29366 of rec.games.int-fiction
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From: Paul O'Brian <obrian@ucsu.Colorado.EDU>
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: A few more words on my reviews
Date: Tue, 13 Jan 1998 14:27:29 -0700
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OK, it's been just about 2 weeks since I posted my reviews, and after
reading the discussion during that time, I feel I need to say a couple
more things:

1) I sincerely apologize to anyone whose feelings I hurt with anything
that I wrote. I believe in constructive criticism, and I believe that
criticism should focus on the game, not the author. However, in looking
back at a few of my reviews, I can see that there were times that I fell
short of those goals, especially in the last few reviews I wrote. By the
time I got to the end of those 30,000 words, I was exhausted and pushing
the deadline, but I was committed to my format by that point (3 paragraphs
plus prose/plot/puzzles/technical), and I didn't want to let it slide,
even on games that I didn't like much. I say this not by way of excuse,
but by way of explanation. Still, it was never my goal to be an
intellectual terrorist, or to direct snide remarks in place of useful
criticism. If anybody felt personally hurt by anything that I said, please
accept my apology and know it was not my intent to attack any author.

2) That being said, I still have a strong opinion about what games should
and shouldn't be entered in the competition. In several of my reviews, I
suggested that particular games should not have been entered, and I stand
by those statements. However, I'd like to explain a little more: First
off, just because I say something shouldn't have been entered does *not*
mean that I'm in favor of any kind of official censorship on the part of
the contest or its organizers. If somebody wants to enter a buggy, poorly
written mess in an open competition, I believe that person has the right.
Nonetheless, it's my opinion that until a game has been at the very least
proofed for writing errors and put through one round of beta testing and
correction, it's unlikely to be very good. I remain puzzled as to why
someone would enter a competition with something that they know doesn't
meet basic standards of competence. (OK, we're all a little affectionate
about Rybread, cf. Brad O'Donnell's "silver jumpsuit" theory. I mean aside
>from that.) It's my opinion that the best thing the contest can do is to
encourage the creation of quality IF from new authors. It's also my
opinion that until an author's piece has met a reasonable level of quality
(e.g. tested once, proofed, played through to make sure it has no fatal
bugs), that author should keep working on the game rather than just
entering it in the competition because the deadline has arrived. The
competition isn't the only time to release IF, and if you really want to
be a contestant, there's always next year. 

3) With regard to whether cliched setting can seriously detract from a
game, I'd say I'm a little biased. By far the most prevalent criticism of
my 1996 entry was that its setting was far too generic and uninteresting.
Looking back, I can say that I agree -- I just didn't put a lot of thought
into that aspect of the game. That doesn't mean that I still don't think
my game was pretty good -- just not as good as it could have been. If
you're thinking about producing a generic fantasy game, think again, but
not about the "fantasy" part... about the "generic" part. Just think about
what will set your game apart from the hordes of quasi-medieval clones
that have been done many times before in IF. Once you've started down that
road, your game will be the better for it. I know mine would have been.

I know that I probably have more that I wanted to say, but that's all I
can think of at the moment. I applaud *everyone* who entered the
competition, and I think that *everyone's* work could be improved (notice
I gave no flat-out 10s.) I think that the competition is a good thing
overall, and that it gave us many excellent works of IF this year which
may not have been produced without it. I look forward to the future works
of everyone I reviewed.

Paul O'Brian                                      obrian@ucsu.colorado.edu
"I think it's important to remember that no one falls into a simple set of
labels. Even more important is to learn from your mistakes, and to fight
for the positive choice."                            -- Lindsey Buckingham



From neild@zorg.hitchhiker.org Wed Jan 14 09:59:47 MET 1998
Article: 29378 of rec.games.int-fiction
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From: neild@zorg.hitchhiker.org (Damien Neil)
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Erden (was Re: Comp97: Incoherent Blather (2/5))
Date: Tue, 13 Jan 1998 13:44:54 -0800
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On 10 Jan 1998 17:01:28 GMT, C.E. Forman <ceforman@postoffice.worldnet.att.net>
wrote:
> "Travels in the Land of Erden"
> ------------------------------
...
> Do not be surprised if you don't get much
> feedback.  Do not be surprised if hardly anyone plays through to the
> end.  Do not be surprised if the only mail you ever get is about how
> much someone hates fantasy games and how tired the setting is.

OK, here's some feedback. :>

"Erden" suffered from exactly the same problem as "The Path to Fortune".
This problem is not the setting (although generic fantasy is...generic).
The problem is the complete lack of direction.

A cardinal rule of IF is to always give the player something to do.  It
doesn't need to be large, it doesn't need to be possible, but it does
need to be interesting.

The game which managed to do the best job of this is, in my opinion,
"Wishbringer".  The game begins, and you are handed a nice, clear task
to occupy yourself with -- deliver this letter to that house.  In the
process, you will get a first look at the geography of the world, meet
a few of the characters, and eventually find out the main goal of the
game.  Wonderful.

My attempts at playing "The Path to Fortune" went something like this:
Wander around town.  Talk to people.  Go off, find elf's house, and have
a chat.  (Nice first goal there.)  Wander around the world.  Stumble into
a fatal situation which I don't have the resources to survive yet.  Find a
puzzle which I don't have the resources to solve yet.  Become frustrated.
Quit.

I did much the same thing with "Erden", except I didn't get around to
finding any puzzles.

(I also played "The Pawn" for the first time recently -- exact same
problem.)

I've been told that "Fortune" has some really nice bits in it.  I'll never
find out, unless I just play the thing straight through with a walkthrough.
For all I know, "Erden" may have wonderful elements...but I don't intend
to spend a couple boring hours looking for them.  This is a pity.

If the author of "Erden" is reading this, and wants to continue working
on it, my advice is to add moderately explicit advice to the player on
where to go.  You don't need to solve any puzzles -- just tell me where
they are!

                        - Damien


From dmss100@york.ac.uk Wed Jan 14 21:25:07 MET 1998
Article: 29441 of rec.games.int-fiction
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From: Den of Iniquity <dmss100@york.ac.uk>
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Acid!
Date: Wed, 14 Jan 1998 18:30:52 +0000
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On 12 Jan 1998, Suzanne Skinner wrote:

>In rec.games.int-fiction C.E. Forman wrote: 
>>     Why can't I throw acid at other metal barriers (doors, bulkheads,
>>     the cover of the radiation chamber) to get through them?  (Why, for
>>     that matter, must I use it not on the lock, but on the hinges, which
>>     aren't even mentioned when I examine the cabinet?
>
>Those are related questions: the acid isn't strong enough to burn through a
>thick sheet of metal or a strong lock (the failure messages in the game made
>this clear enough to me), whereas the hinges are described as thin and
>flimsy.

This is a pet peeve of mine, so excuse me if I rant a little. Also, note
that I haven't played Babel so I'm not accusing it in particular - I'm not
aware of the exact details. [Attacking the hinges is a plausible
solution.]

As a token research chemist in the group (and certainly not the only one) 
can I ask that people try to avoid the exciting-sounding use of acids in
games as a means to open doors, destroy locks and handcuffs, etc, unless
they really know what they're talking about. I've seen several
ill-educated uses of acid in such settings (not so much in text games,
don't worry) and it's a good way to kill my 'suspension of disbelief' -
it's like someone repeatedly hitting me with a hammer on whatever part of
the skull phrenologists have labelled 'gullibility'. 

FYI, I have (as has pretty much anyone who has done the first year of
undergraduate chemistry in York) had the occasion to attempt to dissolve
steel in concentrated acid. It was one gramme of steel, completely
submersed in boiling sulphuric acid (oh, about 4-5 M which isn't
_extremely_ concentrated but _boiling_ is definitely not something you'd
want any organic matter to come into contact with). And it took getting on
for an hour (with periodic injections of conc nitric acid) to get that
little bit to 'dissolve'. Throwing virtually any acid in an open
environment (as opposed to strongly heated, pressurised environments) at a
steel door (or even thick wood) will do little more than etch it. In a
lock, you'll most likely just 'weld' the components together and make it
even harder to open. And most of them won't produce any noxious smoke in
the process either.  (Conc nitric acid will, HBr might in the right
conditions...) 

Ho hum. Rant over. There's quite a fair knowledge base sitting around
contributing to this newsgroup so if you do have an idea for something but
don't know if it would work in the real world, I'd invite you to just ask
here, and as long as it's not about liquid glass at room temperature (I
can offer some info about liquid glass at high T... :) I'm sure you'll
find someone happy to help. 

To be honest, the more realistic uses of acids in puzzles would be far
more boring - assisting the titration (analysis) of a solution, for
example, neutralising an alkali, engraving a name on a trophy, making
someone's wine taste bad - that sort of thing. 

--
Den



From vanfossen@compuserve.com Wed Jan 14 21:25:50 MET 1998
Article: 29430 of rec.games.int-fiction
From: vanfossen@compuserve.com (Brent VanFossen)
Subject: Re: [Comp98] Betatesting
Date: Wed, 14 Jan 1998 19:40:00 GMT
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On Sun, 11 Jan 1998 16:06:26 GMT, mark@sonance.demon.co.uk (Mark
Stevens) wrote:

>Here's a thought -- why not make it a condition of the competition
>that *ALL* entries are submitted anonymously? 

Well, I, for one, wouldn't have entered under that condition.  I'm
proud of the work that I do.  Of course, since I had only posted on
r.a.i-f/r.g.i-f two or three times, I was essentially anonymous
anyway.  But why deprive first-time (or veteran) authors of three
months of seeing their byline in print, so to speak?  For some, I
would guess, that's worth more than any of the donated prizes.  And,
the original entries stay in the IF Archive forever in their original
form.

I also think that most of the judges try really hard to be impartial.
Case in point:  Tempest.  By the second week of the competition,
unfortunately, most of the people who read the newsgroups had a pretty
good idea who the author was.  Even so, the game ranked 25th out of 35
entries.  Did they rate in down BECAUSE it was Graham's?  I don't
think so.  And any author who feels like his name would affect the way
the game is judged was free this year, and hopefully next, to enter
anonymously and use the redirected mail option for bug reports.

I also feel that having a prominently displayed byline on a game helps
to protect the copyright of a work.  People know that a real person is
behind that work.  It would be difficult at best to ask Whizzard to
testify under oath that there really is a list that holds the author's
true identities.  And what if that list got lost or corrupted...

Brent VanFossen


From Aq@btinternet.com Thu Jan 15 09:33:39 MET 1998
Article: 29517 of rec.games.int-fiction
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From: Aq@btinternet.com (Aquarius)
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Acid!
Date: Wed, 14 Jan 1998 23:20:54 +0000
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Den of Iniquity <dmss100@york.ac.uk> wrote:

> As a token research chemist in the group (and certainly not the only one)
> can I ask that people try to avoid the exciting-sounding use of acids in
> games as a means to open doors, destroy locks and handcuffs, etc, unless
> they really know what they're talking about. 

You could potentially have an 'eat through glass' puzzle involving HF,
though, I think.

> To be honest, the more realistic uses of acids in puzzles would be far
> more boring - assisting the titration (analysis) of a solution, for
> example, neutralising an alkali, engraving a name on a trophy, making
> someone's wine taste bad - that sort of thing. 

Blimey. I've often thought that watching for the endpoint of a titration
and saving the world from a crazed megalomaniac have much the same
emotional import and sense of urgency about them.

I have occasionally speculated about some form of hyper-acid, whose
chemical makeup is known only to film producers. :)

Seriously, though, some things in most games could no doubt be
questioned if one had particular knowledge of the area concerned. How
likely is it that you could throw a prised-up cobble at a [first?] floor
window behind some gates and break it on your first shot? I'm prepared
to bet I'd miss on the first go.

The point about the popular perception of 'acid' is well taken, I admit,
but I think this kind of suspension of disbelief is the only way to make
good puzzles. Sadly, no-one is knowledgeable on every subject, and so
most of most people's knowledge will be based around popular
[mis]conceptions of the truth. Playing to these misconceptions is
perhaps the only way to create games that can be played by everybody.

I can just imagine the complaints when someone enters a competition game
in which some kind of accurate knowledge of depolymerisation (or motor
mechanics, or fishing, or any other area of human endeavour) was
required....blah blah blah "How was I supposed to know what methyl
orange was when I found the bottle of it?"

Now I shall go away and write 'Strong alkali against weakly dissociated
acid: An Interactive Titration'. :)

Aquarius was a sort of chemist once, a long long time ago.

-- 
   o  |~> --------------------------------------------------------------
| (\._[~] aquarius@cryogen.com | AFE is not a word, it's a sentence
|~|) |~~| If cryptography is outlawed, only bfghyh sdr1ws dfr jksfib nu
------------------------------------------------------------------------


From edharel@remus.rutgers.edu Thu Jan 15 09:45:42 MET 1998
Article: 29501 of rec.games.int-fiction
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From: edharel@remus.rutgers.edu (Edan Harel)
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Comp97: Incompetent Blather (1/0)
Date: 14 Jan 1998 21:53:12 -0500
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Graham Nelson <graham@gnelson.demon.co.uk> writes:

>No, I'm with C.E. on this.  Would anyone have objected if he'd been
>awarding marks upwards from 0, and offered

>  +1  For an original, never-been-done-before setting?

>Of course not!  But that's fully equivalent to what he did do.

Well,  I would have preferred that way, as long as there were moe than
10 different possible ways to get a point.  (although the idea that
a game deserves a point *just* because it has a new and different setting
could be insulting.  Should we give, say, a poif about in the middle
of a sun a whole point, despite the fact that it's riddled with 
spelling errors, no interesting objects, and fatal bugs?!).

My main gripe with C.E.'s way of giving scores is the fact that it's 
unflexable.  I don't think that a spelling error is equal to a bug or
that a new gimmic is as important as interesting NPC's or that a game
even needs an npc to be good (or have character developement). I can
imagine a completely "unoriginal setting" game that might deserve a 10.

Besides, it's only equivalent if there are exactly ten things to gain
point vs ten things to lose a point on.

While the idea that everyone starts off with a 10 is nice, I'd rather
grant points (albeit perhaps liberaly) based on a wide range of
attributes with different values, and perhaps change the end result
slightly based on whether or not the end result "works" or doesn't.

To think that good interactive fiction lies on ten equal parts is just plain
silly.

Edan Harel

Oh, by the way, "Ruins" would have probably gotten a 5(no thinking to get it
to run, no guess the verb, no typos, no bugs, no poor writing (well, it's
not that bad ;-)), and so would the basic infocom shell, now that I think
about it.
-- 
Edan Harel	       edharel@remus.rutgers.edu	     McCormick 6201
Research Assistant	Math and Comp Sci Major		Computer Consultant
USACS Member						Math Club Secretary


From stu042@aol.com Thu Jan 15 14:32:46 MET 1998
Article: 29515 of rec.games.int-fiction
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From: stu042@aol.com (Stu042)
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: COMP97: "XYZZY"
Date: 14 Jan 1998 23:04:02 GMT
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Erk, no entry for A Good Breakfast? Did you *really* hate it *that* much?

Just for the record, it *does* recognise xyzzy, as well as frotz ("A Bear's
Night Out" is, as far as I can remember, the only other competition game to
recognise it) and Zork. Xyzzy and Zork give different responses if you have the
piracy bit set in your interpreter, too.

Stuart


From straight@email.unc.edu Thu Jan 15 17:22:41 MET 1998
Article: 29557 of rec.games.int-fiction
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From: Michael Straight <straight@email.unc.edu>
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: 24th place ain't so bad! (Competition rules ignored?)
Date: Thu, 15 Jan 1998 10:02:43 -0500
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On 14 Jan 1998, andreww wrote:

> As I said in the beginning, I wasn't trying to make trouble.  My confusion
> arose because of the example: Sherlock Holmes is no longer under copyright
> and has not been for some time.  Large numbers of pastiches appear every
> year, and very few of them bother to be polite enough to seek Dame Jean
> Conan Doyles permission, simply because they don't need it in order to
> publish.
> 
> Because of the example, I read the rule as being about more than just
> copyright, but the "moral ethics" of using the characters or places created
> by another: "All games must be entirely your own creations.", which is why
> I thought Grahams game would not be allowable since it was based on the
> Tempest (and even Shakespeare borrowed most of his plots!).

Well, I think one of the big differences is that Graham's game is not
*based* on The Tempest, it *is* The Tempest.  It's got puzzles and text
that frame the play, and some of the text is out of order, but essentially
it's a "performance" or a "reading" of Shakespeare's text.  

It's not a new adventure using Shakespeare's characters (in the tradition
of Infocom's Sherlock Holmes game), it's not a ripoff of the plot (like
Forbidden Planet), it's an attempt to do with The Tempest using Inform
what an acting troupe or a movie director does.  The success or failure of
the attempt is another question (on which I seem to be divided from most
people who've played it--I really like it), but Graham has changed the
play a lot less than some actual performances I've heard about. 

This is more a answer to your "moral ethics" question, it doesn't justify
the fact that Graham broke the "must be entirely your own creations" rule.
But since Gary accepted the game (and gave his own interpretation of the
rule, saying he only meant to avoid legal liability)

As I reread this, I also realize I've overstated things.  Graham does
incorporate some "further adventures of Shakespeare's characters" in the
case of Ariel, who, under the player's control, does things not found in
the play.  In that sense it's a lot like Tom Stoppard's "Rosencrantz and
Guildenstern are Dead" (and yes, I know I probably mispelled that, and no,
I don't care enough to go look it up before I send this) which tells a
story with those two characters taking place in the times they are off
stage in "Hamlet."  So maybe it is a little like setting a "new adventure
of Sherlock Holmes" in some unaccounted-for time in the middle of one of
Doyle's stories.  Except that the player's actions as Ariel basically
serve to further Shakespeare's original plot rather than trying to
shoehorn some new story into the play as Stoppard does with R&GaD.

Hmm.  That said, I still think Graham's game is qualitatively different
>from writing a new Sherlock Holmes mystery. 

Next Michael Straight wants to see Beowulf with Old English parser responses.
FLEOEVDETYHOEUPROEONREWMEILECSOFMOERSGTIRVAENRGEEARDSTVHIESBIITBTLHEEPSRIACYK
Ethical	Mirth Gas/"I'm chaste alright."/Magic Hitler Hats/"Hath	grace limits?"
"Irate clam thighs!"/Chili Hamster Tag/The Gilt	Charisma/"I gather this calm."



From dmss100@york.ac.uk Thu Jan 15 17:34:52 MET 1998
Article: 29552 of rec.games.int-fiction
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From: Den of Iniquity <dmss100@york.ac.uk>
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Acid! (Long, just barely on topic occasionally)
Date: Thu, 15 Jan 1998 15:23:34 +0000
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From: "Matthew T. Russotto" <russotto@wanda.vf.pond.com>

> I was under the impression that the plumbing used in making sulfuric
> acid was actually (non-stainless) steel, because sulfuric acid does
> not attack it. 

It doesn't _not_ attack it, it just takes its time about it, so the
plumbing needs replacing less often than most other choices. Glass would
be better for chemical reasons but from a mechanical point of view is less
than a wise idea - you really don't want _that_ plumbing to break. Glass-
lined metal is always a possibility but it's expensive and may suffer
badly when there are significant temperature changes (they expand/contract
at different rates).

Certainly sulphuric acid would eat through other metals faster, but then
those metals don't get used so much in constructing stuff, because people
don't want their garage doors to fizz when it rains.

> The hinges were made of flimsy aluminum, IIRC

Aluminium is a tricky chap - it's actually really quite reactive (you
can 'burn' aluminium foil rather easily - try that with a thin sheet of
steel, copper, whatever...) - but its oxide, which very rapidly coats the
surface if oxygen's in its atmosphere, is a real beggar to get to react
with anything. So aluminium gives the impression of being totally
unreactive. How it would react to an acid is really up to the acid. I
suspect most acids would have nearly as hard a time as with steel.


From: Aquarius <Aq@btinternet.com>

- You could potentially have an 'eat through glass' puzzle involving HF,
- though, I think.

But one would have to ask why you can't break the glass - perhaps it has
to be done quietly? But then you might want to scratch the glass first -
allowing you to pop out a big section without shattering anything. Really
thick glass maybe.

- Blimey. I've often thought that watching for the endpoint of a titration
- and saving the world from a crazed megalomaniac have much the same
- emotional import and sense of urgency about them.

Ah, the trick is to somehow tie these two - find out the iodine content of
a solution _in_order_to_ save the world from a crazed megalomaniac.

- I have occasionally speculated about some form of hyper-acid, whose
- chemical makeup is known only to film producers. :)

Well, there is an acid called 'magic acid', which is sulphuric acid,
hydrofluoric acid and antimony pentafluoride, I think, and then there's
just a mixture of sulphuric and hydrofluoric acids - affectionately termed
'piranha solution'. Don't try these at home, kids. You have to handle the
latter in special teflon containers (no, not your frying pan {well, maybe 
it would work}) and I'm not sure how you handle the former (apart from 
'with the greatest of care'). 

The problem with Hollywood-style cartoon acids is that a small quantity is
capable of destroying large quantities of metal (or whatever).  The really
very strong acids just do the job faster - they can't do _more_ of it.
It's an easy mistake to make. When I was younger I feared a really strong
acid would ultimately burrow through to the Earth's mantle and start a
volcanic eruption in the process. ;)

- The point about the popular perception of 'acid' is well taken, I admit,
- but I think this kind of suspension of disbelief is the only way to make
- good puzzles.

Oh I sincerely hope not! Surely one doesn't have to stretch the laws of
physics to provide real, believable, good puzzles. There are scores, maybe
hundreds of examples in the i-f archive.

There are some possibilities for acids - if you had to get rid of a metal
floor-plate (presumably over a hole), for example (so that gravity doesn't
just make the acid run off as in most other cases), and had enough acid to
cover it a couple of times over and enough time to go off and do something
else for a while, and didn't mind having to kick through the structurally
weakened (but not, please, not completely vanished) plate. And then
there's organic matter, which isn't quite so hardy, though you could be
getting into the realms of the gruesome [if only because you're unblocking
a particularly repugnant drain]. A highly volatile or gaseous
[water-soluble] acid, sprayed liberally around a room could prevent anyone
>from entering without self-contained breathing apparatus gear (see 12M
HCl below).

- I can just imagine the complaints when someone enters a competition game
- in which some kind of accurate knowledge of depolymerisation 

depolymerisation?

- (or motor mechanics, or fishing, or any other area of human endeavour)
- was required....blah blah blah "How was I supposed to know what methyl
- orange was when I found the bottle of it?"

Definitely something to avoid. It's the whole demi-john thing all over
again (well, I knew what one of them was, but I wouldn't know my
[insert some other word that I don't know here] from my elbow). Speaking
of methyl orange, acidity indicators play their own fun roles. Get some
phenolphthalein, for example. For puzzle value, you might need to know
that it's a powerful diuretic. Pop it in people's drinks and they'll
vacate the area. Don't try this at home or you'll just piss everyone off.
Or something along those lines. ;]


From: rich <rich@cstone.net>

} Having had my days of mad scientist experimentation in school however, I
} recall that most acid had a damned difficult time dissolving anything
} serious that was metallic, and of course you needed a lot of it, since
} the very fact it is reacting with the object reduces its effectiveness
} steadily. 

Exactly.

} Ah, the memories (like the one fool who would always pop the top off a
} container of 12M hydrochloric acid and recoil in terror as it began to
} react with the water in the air).

React with water in the air? React with the sensitive mucus membranes in
your nostrils more like!

I should add that although the cliched uses of cartoonesque acid are
gross, unbearable exaggerations of the real thing, cliched mad professors
really can be found in most scientific establishments. Yes, there really
are people with hair like that, yes, they have strange names, and yes,
some of them speak with strange German accents (usually the German ones, 
mind). It's just the great convoluted tubes of glassware that are nearly
impossible to find, and when you do find them (like the ones in my lab)
they're never filled with brightly coloured, bubbling liquids (unless
something has gone horribly, horribly wrong).

--
Den



From tbarrie@ibm.net Thu Jan 15 22:28:22 MET 1998
Article: 29591 of rec.games.int-fiction
From: tbarrie@ibm.net (Trevor Barrie)
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Fantasy I-F dead?
Date: 14 Jan 1998 17:38:25 -0400
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Xref: news.lth.se rec.games.int-fiction:29591

In article <69ijvt$mc3$1@news.iquest.net>,
Carl Klutzke <cklutzke@iquest.net> wrote:

>>Perhaps he didn't swipe them from AD&D, but instead swiped them from
>>the same source they swiped them from...
>
>Well, Tolkien never mentions Dark Elves, though I believe they do figure
>in Finnish legend, from which Tolkien derived much of his work.

He does, but they have pretty much nothing in common with AD&D Dark Elves.
"Dark Elves" (Moriquendi) were simply those elves who never saw the two
trees that lit the world back in the [First|Second] Age.


From dmss100@york.ac.uk Thu Jan 15 22:29:07 MET 1998
Article: 29582 of rec.games.int-fiction
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From: Den of Iniquity <dmss100@york.ac.uk>
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Acid! (Long, just barely on topic occasionally)
Date: Thu, 15 Jan 1998 19:31:20 +0000
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On Thu, 15 Jan 1998, Andy Wright wrote:

>Den of Iniquity wrote:
>> > The hinges were made of flimsy aluminum, IIRC
>> 
>> Aluminium is a tricky chap - but its oxide, which very rapidly coats the
>> surface if oxygen's in its atmosphere, is a real beggar to get to react

>Well, you could give it a good going over with emery paper first...

Whoo, you underestimate how fast it oxidises. If it wasn't so fast, giving
it a rub with emery paper would set fire to it. :)

>Then again, why not find a welding torch? You can have much more fun with
>extreme heat than with acids.

Have you ever tried to handle such a powerful tool in an adventure?
Players would either quickly become frustrated that they can't use it on
_everything_ or you'd have a hell of a lot of programming on your hands.

>In any case, would you really want to let a player run around sloshing HF
>about?  Imagine the worst undergraduates you've ever known, armed with
>HF. You could make most of the objects in the game resistant, but I fear
>for the safety of the NPCs. 

Oh dear. Oh dear oh dear. Oh dear oh dear oh dear. Oh dear oh... [etc]

[Mind you, it's a little known fact that HF is really quite a weak acid.
(Well, substantially weaker than HCl, anyway.) It's that little problem
about it being absorbed through the skin that really causes trouble.)

>> It's just the great convoluted tubes of glassware that are nearly
>> impossible to find, and when you do find them (like the ones in my lab)
>> they're never filled with brightly coloured, bubbling liquids (unless
>> something has gone horribly, horribly wrong).

>They're more usually filled with dark brown sludge, at least they were
>the last time I tried my hand at organic chemistry. You never see that in
>films - for some reason few people are impressed by a cupful of tar. 

I bet your tubes aren't as convoluted as mine. :)
The only time I ever had any liquid at all in my equipment was the time*
vacuum-pump oil got sucked back into it. Which was a real pain to clean
out.**

[I do calculations on gases. (Which sounds a lot like 'writing on the
wind' and that's the way my research seems to be going...)]

--
Den

* Oh yeah, and there was the _other_ time that happened. You'd think I'd
learn.

** But I got to wear a groovy gas mask (in order to prevent loss of
conciousness - I had to clean the equipment with ether).



From jfrancis@dungeon.engr.sgi.com Fri Jan 16 09:59:02 MET 1998
Article: 29611 of rec.games.int-fiction
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From: jfrancis@dungeon.engr.sgi.com (John Francis)
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Fantasy I-F dead?
Date: 15 Jan 1998 18:55:41 GMT
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In article <69lgks$fep@drn.zippo.com>,
Daryl McCullough <daryl@cogentex.com> wrote:
>femaledeer@aol.com says...
>
>>FD Who has been a big sci-fi fan since the age of 12. So that's over 35+ years
>>and counting...
>
>Thank you for disclosing your age. I was thinking, with all the posts
>about people being 15 and 17, that I was the only member of this forum
>who had seen this side of 40 (actually, I don't turn 40 until February).
>I was thinking that when I enter the '98 competition, I would say
>"Please be gentle with me, I'm an old man of 40".

Not the only one - I'm about the same age as FD (my birthday is in May).
I've been an SF fan for about as long, too.  But it's only in the last
five or ten years that I've become a *big* SF fan :-(
I've also been a fantasy fan for about the same amount of time - I first
read LOtR when I was 13.  Longer, actually - I guess "The XXXX Book of
Fairy Stories" counts as fantasy, and I started reading them when I was
much younger than 13.
-- 
John Francis  jfrancis@sgi.com       Silicon Graphics, Inc.
(650)933-8295                        2011 N. Shoreline Blvd. MS 43U-991
(650)933-4692 (Fax)                  Mountain View, CA   94043-1389
Unsolicited electronic mail will be subject to a $100 handling fee.


From graham@gnelson.demon.co.uk Fri Jan 16 12:29:58 MET 1998
Article: 29640 of rec.games.int-fiction
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From: Graham Nelson <graham@gnelson.demon.co.uk>
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Slow, Steady Steps to Avalon: Similar to before Curses?
Date: Fri, 16 Jan 1998 01:23:59 +0000 (GMT)
Organization: none
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In article <byzantium-1401982322360001@pppa13-new_york11-5r239.saturn.bbn.com>,
Andrew Pontious <URL:mailto:byzantium@macSPAMconnect.com> wrote:
> Avalon is in beta! Avalon is in beta!*

Again?  I remember Michael Kinyon telling me he'd been beta-testing
it when he came to dinner back in, oh, it must have been the summer
of 1994...

> I wasn't on this newsgroup, so I'm curious: was there a long waiting
> period before Curses came out? When anticipation mounted?

To put it mildly, no.  My first post to this newsgroup was the
announcement of "Curses", my second was the announcement of Inform 1
and then I sat and waited.  Two weeks later, there had been not
one single followup or response of any kind.  I was slightly put out.
Admittedly, the newsgroups were still quite new and had a lower
readership in those days, but I had thought _somebody_ might think
it worth commenting on...

I discovered that my newsfeed had been broken, and got somebody else
to post the announcements again.  "Curses" picked up players quite
quickly, because it was what then seemed a freakish novelty -- a fake
Infocom game.  It didn't really become popular until a point
a few months after, when at one stage rec.games.int-fiction became
a trading post for "Curses" hints.  (A season starved of alternative
games to play, I guess.)  Since I released about two expanded
versions, several people ended up going back to the game for a
second try, which kicked up a little more interest.  But its heyday
was over by, oh, the end of 1995.  Of course during most of 1993 to
1995, it was the only big Z-machine game freely available on the
archive.

Inform took much longer to catch on: not one single person
released an original game, of any size, which used Inform 1 to 4,
though many people were helpful in porting, bug reporting and
generally telling me that Inform was a nice idea in theory.
Not until Inform 5 did this interest begin to flower.  There are
signs that the same is happening now with Hugo, which is at last
winning friends, and good luck to it.

-- 
Graham Nelson | graham@gnelson.demon.co.uk | Oxford, United Kingdom



From graham@gnelson.demon.co.uk Fri Jan 16 12:30:20 MET 1998
Article: 29641 of rec.games.int-fiction
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From: Graham Nelson <graham@gnelson.demon.co.uk>
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: 24th place ain't so bad! (Competition rules ignored?)
Date: Fri, 16 Jan 1998 01:06:11 +0000 (GMT)
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In article <Pine.A41.3.95L.980115093716.55294A-100000@login3.isis.unc.edu>,
Michael Straight <URL:mailto:straight@email.unc.edu> wrote:
> 
> As I reread this, I also realize I've overstated things.  Graham does
> incorporate some "further adventures of Shakespeare's characters" in the
> case of Ariel, who, under the player's control, does things not found in
> the play.  In that sense it's a lot like Tom Stoppard's "Rosencrantz and
> Guildenstern are Dead" (and yes, I know I probably mispelled that, and no,
> I don't care enough to go look it up before I send this) which tells a
> story with those two characters taking place in the times they are off
> stage in "Hamlet."  So maybe it is a little like setting a "new adventure
> of Sherlock Holmes" in some unaccounted-for time in the middle of one of
> Doyle's stories.  Except that the player's actions as Ariel basically
> serve to further Shakespeare's original plot rather than trying to
> shoehorn some new story into the play as Stoppard does with R&GaD.

Just so.  I don't think that Ariel's actions are ever unsuggested
by text from the play.  I thought of the IF part of the game as
being like the choreography of the dumb-show, -- the mime, if you
like -- which might have been an adjunct to the original playtext
in a 16th-century performance.  A film version might well have
shown similar scenes.

It's because I didn't invent much that the game is not like a
standard IF game, for better or (as it turns out) worse...

-- 
Graham Nelson | graham@gnelson.demon.co.uk | Oxford, United Kingdom



From dmss100@york.ac.uk Sat Jan 17 01:19:17 MET 1998
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From: Den of Iniquity <dmss100@york.ac.uk>
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Fantasy I-F dead?
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>In article <erkyrathEMsK33.MBA@netcom.com>, Andrew Plotkin writes:
>> Magnus Olsson (mol@bartlet.df.lth.se) wrote:
>> > But (totally off-topic) does anybody know why they're called "Drow" in
>> > AD&D?
>> 
>> I'm pretty sure this is a real archaic word, like "grue".
>> It may be related to "dwarrow" or "duarough", which (again, I think) 
>> evolved into our word "dwarf". From Old English, which was back when 
>> elves and dwarves were all just the small folk, before Tolkien wrote 
>> books in which they were separate species.

Er, yeah, something like that. Our word dwarf comes from such a word with
too many vowels and originally just meant very small. Only in the 18th
century did it come to mean dwarf in the metal-smith gnome German-folklore
sense. 

Jools said:
>I believe it is another form of the word "troll", just meaning goblin or
>hobgoblin or other nasty spirit.

Funnily enough, I looked it up in my Chambers English Dictionary (a
splendid source for old words and peculiar dialect) and it listed 'drow'
(spelled exactly so) as being a word for 'troll' from the Shetland and
Orkney Isles. (For the geographically disinclined, those are little
clutches of islands up north-east from the north-east tip of Scotland, and
hence probably very Scandinavian-ly influenced.) Spot on, Jools!

--
Den



From mgs21@columbia.edu Sat Jan 17 20:32:39 MET 1998
Article: 29705 of rec.games.int-fiction
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From: "Mike Schiraldi" <mgs21@columbia.edu>
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Funny Sherbet bug
Date: Sat, 17 Jan 1998 13:37:51 -0500
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>>ASK AMILIA FOR ELEPHANT

After she hands it over, my game locks up. Makes sense that it loops
endlessly.

It gets better, though:

>ask amilia for amilia
Amilia passes over Lady Amilia, and you thank her graciously.

>l

Watling Street (in the cushioned basket)
The ancient paved road stretches for miles to the south, turning very slowly
to
the northeast along a mossy stone wall. From up here on your elephant's
wickerwork basket, you're just level with the branches of the old Imperial
hunting woods inside the wall.

Having been stuck in this cushioned basket with the Lady Amilia every day
for a
fortnight, you're just desperate to get away.

The procession of elephants shuffles on, their enormous soles slapping onto
the
flagstones with a dull, regular boom.

"Did I ever tell you all about the last Court dance, what a disaster that
was?..."

>ask amilia for ne
Amilia passes over the northeast wall, and you thank her graciously.

>ask amilia for woods
Amilia passes over the hunting woods, and you thank her graciously.

A silken boy runs up from the rear of the procession, hands you each a glass
of
sherbet and then allows himself to be caught up again before boarding the
last
carriage at the rear of the elephant-train.

>z
Time passes.

Amilia fans herself with the guide book.

At a whistle from the soldiers up ahead, the procession comes to an ungainly
halt.

Customs Post (in the cushioned basket)
As the road passes around the corner of the woods and turns east, it also
passes
a customs post. You're ten feet up, and the tasseled pennant flag flutters
down
>from the pole to curl around the basket in the light breeze.

The whole procession of elephants and carts is halted, and there is much
commotion.

>ask amilia for flag
Amilia passes over the pennant flag, and you thank her graciously.

"Don't fret," says Amilia, "we're only stopping a moment, it's just a silly
old
routine I suppose, I mean they can see we aren't smugglers or anything..."

>x flag
The pennant of the Northland Empire.

>i
You are carrying:
  a pennant flag
  a glass of sherbet
  the northeast wall
  Lady Amilia
  a fedora hat (being worn)
  a hand telescope

Amilia fans herself with the guide book.

>x northeast wall
You see nothing special about the northeast wall.

The procession runs over a small culvert bridge, which presents no problem
to
the elephants. You glance down, and can't help thinking something's wrong
somewhere.

"I'm sure I've told you about those scandalous goings-on at the Royal
Farm?..."

>ask amilia for bridge
Amilia passes over the culvert bridge, and you thank her graciously.

Just for a moment, you catch a flickering glimpse of a bird up in the higher
branches of the woods.

>ask amilia for bird
Amilia passes over the glimpse of a bird, and you thank her graciously.

"...such a wonderful experience for a young girl..."

>x bird
It's too far away to make out at all clearly, and it keeps moving.

"...just as my Mother always warned me..."

>drop bridge
The bridge is too far away.

>ask amilia for flagstones
Amilia passes over Watling Street, and you thank her graciously.

>i
You are carrying:
  Watling Street
  a glimpse of a bird
  a culvert bridge
  a pennant flag
  a glass of sherbet
  the northeast wall
  Lady Amilia
  a fedora hat (being worn)
  a hand telescope

"...they say problems come in threes..."

>x street
You see nothing special about Watling Street.




From wosamSPAMBLOCK@iastate.edu Sat Jan 17 22:27:07 MET 1998
Article: 29711 of rec.games.int-fiction
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From: wosamSPAMBLOCK@iastate.edu (M. Wesley Osam)
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: [Comp97] Originality is Overrated
Date: Sat, 17 Jan 1998 14:45:18 -0600
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In article <69e37k$qcb@drn.zippo.com>, daryl@cogentex.com (Daryl
McCullough) wrote:

> Personally, I think that originality is vastly overrated as a measure
> of the quality of a work (of IF or anything else). In particular, I'm
> talking about originality of plots, plot-devices ("gimmicks") and
> settings. While novelty in these aspects of a game are appreciated, I
> don't think that the *lack* of novelty in these areas should count
> against a game. To me, what makes most works of literature enjoyable
> is not the novelty of the plot (what is novel about the plot of
> Romeo and Juliet, or Henry IV, or the Tempest?) but the freshness of
> the work.

   True, but it should be noted that the reason Shakespeare's plays are
remembered so well is that he was a genius. An author has to work a lot
harder to make an old idea seem fresh than an original setting. If you
haven't got a new slant on the generic fantasy, or you can't infuse it with
any personal touches, you're probably better coming up with something that
hasn't been used so much.

   Look at the reaction to last year's Zorkish "The Meteor, the Stone, and
a Tall Glass of Sherbet" compared to this year's fantasy games. What did
"Meteor" have going for it that most of the fantasies this year didn't? A
detailed background. Striking imagery. Characters with believable
motivations and a strong underlying plot. I think the most important thing,
though, was that the leisurely opening was something that hadn't been seen
over and over again in IF. By the time players got to the
wandering-around-in-caves bit, they had been hooked by something new,
making the reused ideas more palatable.

>Maybe the reason that some people place so much importance
>on originality of plots is because many games (or stories, for that
>matter) have nothing going for them except novelty.

   I think it's more that some games have nothing going for them except for
the *lack* of novelty -- a familiar setting attempting to make up for a
weak game.

-- 
"Why do you look so skeptical?"        M. Wesley Osam
"Because I've seen too much."          wosam@iastate.edu
"Then why do you keep looking?
"Too much is never enough." -- Bill Griffith, "Zippy the Pinhead"


From benh57@aol.com Sun Jan 18 09:47:41 MET 1998
Article: 29737 of rec.games.int-fiction
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From: benh57@aol.com (BenH57)
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: "Losing your Grip"
Date: 18 Jan 1998 07:35:39 GMT
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(no spoilers)


>not a new "Jigsaw", it's not a new "So Far", but it's in the same
>league. Literary without being incomprehensibly high-brow,

Heh...

Cramped Office
   Shadows crowd the room, strengthened by the unlit ceiling light which is
canted at a strange angle.  A scarred mahogany desk is crammed into one corner
of the room, facing the doorway and the clock above it.  The room is small
enough that the light switch beside the door is within arms reach of the desk.

>enter shadows
I believe you have a different game in mind.

-Ben


From mann@src.dec.com Sun Jan 18 09:50:37 MET 1998
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From: mann@src.dec.com (Tim Mann)
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Funny Sherbet bug
Date: 17 Jan 1998 23:18:48 GMT
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But wait, there's more!  "Give" is fun too:

    Having been stuck in this cushioned basket with the Lady Amilia every
    day for a fortnight, you're just desperate to get away.

    The procession of elephants shuffles on, their enormous soles slapping
    onto the flagstones with a dull, regular boom.

    >ask amilia for procession
    Amilia passes over the stately procession of elephants, and you thank
    her graciously.

    >give procession to amilia
    "Super, a stately procession of elephants!"

    >ask amilia for amilia
    Amilia passes over Lady Amilia, and you thank her graciously.

    A silken boy runs up from the rear of the procession, hands you each a
    glass of sherbet and then allows himself to be caught up again before
    boarding the last carriage at the rear of the elephant-train.

    "...such a pity, don't you agree..."

    >give amilia to amilia
    "Super, Lady Amilia!"

    "...I expect somebody was sorry, really..."

    >x amilia
    You can't see any such thing.

    >z
    Time passes.

    "Did I ever tell you how the harbour was all full up last week?..."

    >x amilia
    You can't see any such thing.

She has swallowed herself up but continues to talk.

    >restart
    ...

    >ask amilia for me
    Amilia passes over yourself, and you thank her graciously.

WinFrotz then gets a stack overflow, as you might expect.

	--Tim
-- 
Tim Mann <mann@pa.dec.com>
http://www.research.digital.com/SRC/personal/Tim_Mann/


From graham@gnelson.demon.co.uk Sun Jan 18 09:50:45 MET 1998
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From: Graham Nelson <graham@gnelson.demon.co.uk>
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Funny Sherbet bug
Date: Sun, 18 Jan 1998 01:01:39 +0000 (GMT)
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In article <69qtpi$oqu$1@apakabar.cc.columbia.edu>, Mike Schiraldi
<URL:mailto:mgs21@columbia.edu> wrote:
> >ask amilia for flagstones
> Amilia passes over Watling Street, and you thank her graciously.
> 
> >i
> You are carrying:
>   Watling Street
>   a glimpse of a bird
>   a culvert bridge
>   a pennant flag
>   a glass of sherbet
>   the northeast wall
>   Lady Amilia
>   a fedora hat (being worn)
>   a hand telescope

Do we think there's any point where a bug has been _punished enough_,
ladies and gentlemen?

-- 
Graham Nelson | graham@gnelson.demon.co.uk | Oxford, United Kingdom



From mgs21@columbia.edu Sun Jan 18 09:50:57 MET 1998
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From: "Mike Schiraldi" <mgs21@columbia.edu>
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Funny Sherbet bug
Date: Sat, 17 Jan 1998 23:30:08 -0500
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>Do we think there's any point where a bug has been _punished enough_,
>ladies and gentlemen?


Not yet...

<spoiler space>




























If you use the Amilia trick to get the left ear and then pull it, it will
still be in your posession. You can then pull it at any point in the game to
return to the Customs House Bedroom. You also get one point, so you can use
this trick to get an infinite score. I'll check this out and see if it can
be used to do any other fun tricks.




From mgs21@columbia.edu Sun Jan 18 09:51:10 MET 1998
Article: 29735 of rec.games.int-fiction
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From: "Mike Schiraldi" <mgs21@columbia.edu>
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Funny Sherbet bug
Date: Sun, 18 Jan 1998 00:48:53 -0500
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More fun stuff in Sherbet
<spoiler space>





























Ask Amilia for herself and carry her with you throughout the game. You can
use her to pick up anything. For example, instead of learning jilnix, you
can
ASK AMILIA FOR SNAKE.N.DROP SNAKE.S.S and get past the snake. There's a lot
of wacky stuff that happens when you screw up the object variables. For
example, get the hook this way. Try to interact with it. It still says you
can't reach it.

Fun, fun, fun.

I'll keep you all posted.




From earendil@faeryland.TAMU-Commerce.edu Tue Jan 20 22:46:42 MET 1998
Article: 29889 of rec.games.int-fiction
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Fantasy I-F dead?
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In article <Pine.SGI.3.95L.980116172516.2984I-100000@ebor.york.ac.uk>,
Den of Iniquity  <dmss100@york.ac.uk> wrote:
    Funnily enough, I looked it up in my Chambers English Dictionary (a
    splendid source for old words and peculiar dialect) and it listed
    'drow' (spelled exactly so) as being a word for 'troll' from the
    Shetland and Orkney Isles. (For the geographically disinclined, those
    are little clutches of islands up north-east from the north-east tip
    of Scotland, and hence probably very Scandinavian-ly influenced.)

The Shetlands in fact belonged to Denmark until around the 17th century.
I think they were a wedding gift to one of the Scottish monarchs.  It's
only a little bit farther to Norway than to the Scottish mainland from
there.  

Trows are a lot like trolls, but they're not quite as nasty.  And they
play a mean fiddle.  There are a bunch of Shetland fiddle tunes that
were supposedly heard from the playing of Trows in their hidden, 
underground lairs.  

-- 
Allen Garvin                                      kisses are a better fate
---------------------------------------------     than wisdom
earendil@faeryland.tamu-commerce.edu          
http://faeryland.tamu-commerce.edu/~earendil         	      e e cummings


From mgs21@columbia.edu Wed Jan 21 16:28:53 MET 1998
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From: "Mike Schiraldi" <mgs21@columbia.edu>
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Who wrote magazines, brochures etc in Infocom packages?
Date: Wed, 21 Jan 1998 09:58:33 -0500
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>This firm was, as we all
>know,
>quite innovative, but according to my memory also quite expensive, and even
>persistent to the point that one Infocom game (I don't remember which) has
>an evil creature named after one of the persons in that firm.


That's Jeearr, named after a firm whose initials were GR. The game was one
of the Enchanter series.




From dfan@harmonixmusic.com Wed Jan 21 17:37:47 MET 1998
Article: 29934 of rec.games.int-fiction
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From: Dan Schmidt <dfan@harmonixmusic.com>
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Who wrote magazines, brochures etc in Infocom packages?
Date: 21 Jan 1998 10:53:18 -0500
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Xref: news.lth.se rec.games.int-fiction:29934

"C.E. Forman" <ceforman@postoffice.worldnet.att.net> writes:

| Fredrik Ekman <ekman@lysator.liu.se> wrote:
| >I am wondering who wrote the stuff that came with the classic Infocom
| >packages, such as the Enchanter "History of Magic" or the Leather
| >Goddesses comic-book. Was it the game authors or someone else?
| >Was there some kind of "editor" for the game packages that had the
| >over-all responsibility for art, text and extra gimmicks?
| 
| Darn good question, Frederik.  Any Imps out there who'd care to follow
| up this thread?

I work with Mike Dornbrook, so I asked him.  Here's his response:

--- Begin forwarded message

There were actually quite a few people involved in creating the package 
elements for Infocom games. The game authors (we called them "the 
implementors") were the primary writers. The first exotic package was for 
Deadline (the third game, after Zork I and II). It was created because Marc 
Blank couldn't fit all the information he wanted to include into the 80K 
game size. Marc and the ad agency, Giardini/Russel (G/R), co-created the 
police dossier which included photos, interrogation reports, lab reports 
and pills found near the body. The result was phenomenally successful, and 
Infocom decided to make all subsequent packages truly special (a big 
benefit was the reduction in piracy, which was rampant at the time).

The first 16 packages were done in collaboration with G/R. David Haskell 
was the primary copywriter for Infocom materials (ads, catalogs, package 
elements, etc.). G/R typically did the "fluffier" pieces. Infocom's game 
implementor (and one of the co-founders) Dave Lebling wrote "The History of 
Magic" in Enchanter, but G/R wrote the "True Tales of Adventure" in 
Cutthroats.

We were spending a fortune on package design ($60,000 each on average in 
1984 - just for design!), so we eventually decided to bring it in-house. I 
hired an Art Director, Carl Genatossio, a writer, a typesetting/layout 
person, and someone to manage all printing and purchasing of all the 
"feelies" in the packages. These folks (plus an occasional contractor 
during busy periods) did all the packages, hint books, New Zork Times, sell 
sheets, etc. from 1985 until the end in 1989. There were two writers during 
that time period - Elizabeth Langosy for most of it, then Marjorie Gove. 
Again there was a mix of game implementor writing and "marketing" writing. 
For instance, Steve Meretzky wrote the comic book in Leather Goddesses, but 
Elizabeth wrote the newspaper in Sherlock.

An unsung heroine of Infocom was our Production Manager, Angela Crews. She 
was responsible for acquiring the scratch-n-sniff cards, ancient Zorkmid 
coins, glow-in-the -dark stones, etc. which made the packages so 
distinctive. It was often an incredibly difficult task.

As for who oversaw all of this, again, there were many responsible. The 
Product Manager (first me, then Gayle Syska, then Rob Sears) worked with 
the Implementor and the Art Director to come up with a concept for the 
package and hammered out the details of the elements. All of these folks 
were intimately involved in the approvals, editing, tweaking, etc. which 
all of the elements underwent over a 3 to 4 month period. And many others 
(from the President, to Sales, to Testing) put in their two cents along the 
way.

I would estimate that each Infocom package had 1.5 man-years of effort 
invested in its creation.

Regards,
-Mike Dornbrook

--- End forwarded message

-- 
                 Dan Schmidt -> dfan@harmonixmusic.com, dfan@alum.mit.edu
Honest Bob & the                http://www2.thecia.net/users/dfan/
Factory-to-Dealer Incentives -> http://www2.thecia.net/users/dfan/hbob/
          Gamelan Galak Tika -> http://web.mit.edu/galak-tika/www/


From cinnamon@shell.one.net Wed Jan 21 18:02:35 MET 1998
Article: 29935 of rec.games.int-fiction
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Slow, Steady Steps to Avalon: Similar to before Curses?
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Xref: news.lth.se rec.games.int-fiction:29935

In article <6a3rhv$90d$1@thorn.cc.usm.edu>,
Joanna Marie Delaune <jdelaune@ocean.otr.usm.edu> wrote:
>Graham Nelson (graham@gnelson.demon.co.uk) wrote:
>: Inform took much longer to catch on: not one single person
>: released an original game, of any size, which used Inform 1 to 4,
>: though many people were helpful in porting, bug reporting and
>: generally telling me that Inform was a nice idea in theory.
>Golly.. that doesn't sound very encouraging.  What kept you going at it?
>Was it just because you wanted to write your own games?

...hmm. Now I feel guilty. At home on the Tandy, I've got an 80%-complete
game written using Inform 3. I was too busy at the time trying to get a
16-bit DOS version of Inform to compile cleanly enough to finish it,
however. When I found it not too long ago, I couldn't even remember how to
finish it, and the source is probably lost forever.
-- 
r. n. dominick -- cinnamon@one.net



From berrpm@aur.alcatel.com Wed Jan 21 18:28:57 MET 1998
Article: 29938 of rec.games.int-fiction
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From: berrpm@aur.alcatel.com (Patrick M. Berry)
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Can we stop bashing CE Forman please?
Date: 21 Jan 1998 15:21:48 GMT
Organization: Alcatel Network Systems, Inc Raleigh, NC
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Xref: news.lth.se rec.games.int-fiction:29938

In article <34C5C6AE.2F9E@ucla.edu>, Jonathan Petersen <enoto@ucla.edu> writes:
> Patrick M. Berry wrote:
> > 
> It's a joke. I think. Asimov really said "Any sufficiently advanced
> technology
> is indistinguishable from magic", in his book "Profiles of the Future".

No, that was Arthur C. Clarke.  You've cited Clarke's Third Law, one of the
three he set forth in "Profiles of the Future."  They are:

1. When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is 
   possible, he is almost certainly right.  When he states that something
   is impossible, he is very probably wrong.

2. The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a
   little way past them into the impossible.

3. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

"As three laws were good enough for Newton," Clarke commented, "I have
decided to stop there."

Asimov did write a corollary to Clarke's First Law (see his essay "Asimov's
Corollary" in the collection "Quasar, Quasar, Burning Bright"):

"When, however, the lay public rallies round an idea that is denounced by
distinguished but elderly scientists and supports that idea with great 
fervor and emotion -- the distinguished but elderly scientists are then,
after all, probably right."



From dns361@merle.acns.nwu.edu Thu Jan 22 18:53:05 MET 1998
Article: 29886 of rec.games.int-fiction
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From: Second April <dns361@merle.acns.nwu.edu>
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Criticisms - The old way and a possible new way
Date: Tue, 20 Jan 1998 13:48:30 -0600
Organization: Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, US
Lines: 57
Message-ID: <Pine.HPP.3.93.980120133141.21735B-100000@merle.acns.nwu.edu>
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Xref: news.lth.se rec.games.int-fiction:29886

> I propose we create a new standard for interactive fiction. In order to
> help and support each other, let's do things _better_ than others have
> done in the past. Everyone has preconceived ideas about what works and
> what their _used to_, but that isn't necessarily the _best_ solution.

Well, I think people criticize that way for a certain reason: when you
violate the expectations of the standard player, you often make a game
less enjoyable. There are good reasons for that sometimes--see "Space
Under the Window"--and a review of that game that simply said "Where are
all my commands? I hate this! Lemme out!" could fairly be considered
narrow-minded. But a lot of the "you didn't follow standard IF
conventions" criticism is simply saying that you didn't make the
concessions to player comfort that are expected in 1998. Certainly, there
are nice ways to say it and there are nasty ways to say it, but it _needs_
to be said. Ease of play is an important element in any game.

For my own part, when I criticize a game, I try not to be unnecessarily
harsh or rude; the point, I hope, isn't to show that I'm witty and clever.
But there are times when I'm a mite sarcastic about something to drive the
point home, and unless I'm told that some author has been grievously
offended, I don't intend to change that. I wrote a review of Time... for
the last edition of SPAG that was, to be honest, a little flippant now and
again, but I don't think it was unnecessarily so. (And reviews are
supposed to be read, by the general public as well as the author, and
humor of that nature is part of the style, as long as it isn't excessive.)

As for reviewing games that aren't very good, like Time..., I think it's
important to try to mention some positive things, as I tried to with that
one. But saying something like "give equal space to positive and negative"
isn't realistic and would often make the reviewer sound like a
kindergarten teacher, praising the author for doing things that are simply
required. ("You didn't mix up room and object descriptions very often and
all your directions are reversible.") A review can be almost entirely
negative without being harsh.

Incidentally, I'm writing my own reviews of the competition entries and
putting them up on at http://pubweb.nwu.edu/~dns361/cindex.html. I haven't
gotten to, how shall I say, a lot of the lesser entries yet, but they'll
be there soon (they'll also be in SPAG), but I've been critical of quite a
few entries thus far and haven't yet heard from any authors who found my
tone unnecessarily nasty. (Your day will come soon, Mr. Cornelson, and you
can judge for yourself when it does.)

Duncan Stevens
d-stevens@nwu.edu
312-654-0280

The room is as you left it; your last touch--
A thoughtless pressure, knowing not itself
As saintly--hallows now each simple thing,
Hallows and glorifies, and glows between
The dust's gray fingers, like a shielded light.

--from "Interim," by Edna St. Vincent Millay





From Abels@Stud-Mailer.Uni-Marburg.DE Fri Jan 23 18:49:53 MET 1998
Article: 30047 of rec.games.int-fiction
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From: Nele Abels-Ludwig <Abels@Stud-Mailer.Uni-Marburg.DE>
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Fantasy I-F dead?
Date: 23 Jan 1998 15:56:27 GMT
Organization: HRZ Uni Marburg
Lines: 37
Message-ID: <Pine.A41.3.96.980123165126.32166F-100000@Stud-Mailer.Uni-Marburg.DE>
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Xref: news.lth.se rec.games.int-fiction:30047

On 23 Jan 1998, FemaleDeer wrote:
[...]
> How about Beowulf in rap?

Funny that you should mention Beowulf:

             Meanehwael, baccat meaddehaele / monstaer lurccen
             Fulle few too many drincce / hie luccen for fyht.
             Den Hreorfneorhtthhwr / son of Hrwaerowthheororthwyl
             Aesccen aewful jeork / to steop outsyd
             Phud! Bashe! Crasch! Beoom! / De bigge gye
             Eallum his bon brak / byt his nose offe
             Wicced Godsylla / waeld on his asse
             Monstaer moppe fleor wyth / eallum men in halle
             Beowulf in bacceroome / fonecall bemaccen waes
             Hearen sound of ruccus / saed "Hwaet the helle?"
             Graben sheold strang / ond swich-blaed shcharp
             Stond feorth to fyht / the grimlic foe
             "Me," Godsylla saed / "Mac the minsemete."
             Heoro cwyc geten heold / with faemed half-nelson
             Ond flyng him lic frisbe / bac to fen
             Beowulf belly up / to meadehalle bar
             Saed "Ne foe beaten / mie faersom cung-fu."
             Eorderen cocca-colha / yce-cold, the reol thyng.

AFAIK it's from "Culture made Stupid" (whatever that may be)

> FD :-) Oh my, maybe I shouldn't have suggested that.

You are so right :) BTW, my wife once sung the Hildebrand-song, a
piece of old high German poetry, as blues. I was lying on the floor...

Nele
----
"Work is the curse of the drinking class."
                              (Oscar Wilde)



From zifnab@rhein-neckar.netsurf.de Fri Jan 23 18:50:01 MET 1998
Article: 30009 of rec.games.int-fiction
From: zifnab@rhein-neckar.netsurf.de (Heiko Nock)
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: The Encyclopedia Mythica
Date: Thu, 22 Jan 1998 15:34:02 +0100
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 <69gsfg$l66$1@bartlet.df.lth.se> <erkyrathEMsK33.MBA@netcom.com>
 <34c51370.0@news.tamu-commerce.edu>
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Xref: news.lth.se rec.games.int-fiction:30009

In article <34c51370.0@news.tamu-commerce.edu>, earendil@ (Allen Garvin) wrote:
>D&D completely plundered both folklore and mythologies of dozens of
>well-known and obscure cultures, jumbling them all together.  It makes
>for a campy sort of fun, all these monsters thrown together without
>their real cultural background, but it gets ridiculous after a while.

Maybe this would be a good opportunity to mention The Encyclopedia
Mythica, an encyclopedia that I found while searching for a collection
of information about fantasy creatures and magic. It contains small
informational snippets about lots of mythical creatures and characters.

It's not as verbose as I would like it to be, but it sure is better
than nothing.

It can be found at http://www.pantheon.org/mythica/

-- 
Ciao/2, Heiko.....


From rgs20@cam.ac.uk Mon Jan 26 09:24:12 MET 1998
Article: 30115 of rec.games.int-fiction
Path: news.lth.se!feed1.news.luth.se!luth.se!cam-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!cpk-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!news.bbnplanet.com!newsfeed.internetmci.com!194.72.7.126!btnet-peer!btnet!server2.netnews.ja.net!lyra.csx.cam.ac.uk!rgs20
From: rgs20@cam.ac.uk (Richard Stamp)
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Delusions comments (was: Re: Deluded Kind of Tetris (ie the game Delusions))
Date: 25 Jan 1998 21:56:15 GMT
Organization: University of Cambridge, England
Lines: 92
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In article <6abgji$3mn@bgtnsc03.worldnet.att.net>,
C.E. Forman <ceforman@postoffice.worldnet.att.net> wrote:
>
[About _Delusions_]
>If you find anything worth commenting on about it, I'd love to hear it.
>(Positive or negative.)

I assume that invitation is open to everybody.  I didn't get very far
with _Delusions_ the first time around, but I went back to it and
played through with the aid of the hints after the _Babel_ controversy.

[Spoilers coming up...]








Things I liked about _Delusions_:

The fish sim at the beginning.  An excellent prologue and a great hook
into the "who am I, really?" question that drives the game.

Actually, I'll expand that: I liked the _whole_ VR scenario.  It
continually challenged my perception of what was "real", which made
for a very interesting experience.  Even when I finally woke up
after the lab sim I wasn't convinced I was really back to reality
(a very creepy effect: the very end of the film _Event Horizon_
uses a similar device extremely powerfully).

The "achieving self-awareness" bit was intriguing, and built up the
atmosphere nicely, although I'd have liked a bit more flexibility
in the order you could examine the objects.  Finally looking in the
mirror confirmed my suspicions, rather than coming as a shock: this
is a good thing in my book -- it's more satisfying to have worked
key facts out for yourself.

The routine stuff was good (spelling, grammar, punctuation, few bugs,
etc.)  Given the number of competition entries where that wasn't
the case, it's worth noting as a plus point.


Things I didn't like about _Delusions_:

Having to replay bits of the game I'd already solved.  For example,
I figured out how to get an antidote to the drug, but I didn't get
the implant out in time: it was boring to have to play through the
antidote solution again.  Going round in circles, getting closer and
closer to the solution, can make for an excellent game (_Tube Trouble_,
or the prologue of _Christminster_) but in _Delusions_ it was done
on such a grand scale I just found it tedious.

I don't like being locked in a room and having plot spouted at me.
This happens at least twice in _Delusions_.  I'd much rather have
had the information revealed slowly or (even better) to have worked
it out for myself.  I realise this may be a touchy comment, but:
I thought _Babel_ did a good job of letting you work out the plot
ahead of time, while still revealing it all explicitly in case you
missed the clues.

I didn't think the characters were very well-developed.  Cynthia,
in particular, seemed to turn into a stock evil genius and Dr Shimada
a cardboard moral scientist.  I'd have liked more complex motivations,
a slightly less black-and-white ending.

Related to this: a point is made about the fact you need to make moral
choices in the game, and the disabling of UNDO at certain times, so I was
looking forward to some alternative endings in the style of _Tapestry_.
When the choices came, I was a bit disappointed.  There was only one
"right" option: making the "wrong" choice seemed to kill me off straight
away.  What's more, the highly-moral choice was always "correct", which
doesn't correspond too well to real life.  I really wanted to play
through a scenario where I killed the researchers as revenge for what
they'd done to me, but of course, you're just booted out of the game
if you do that.


Unfortunately I've written more negative points than positive ones,
which perhaps accurately reflects how I felt about _Delusions_:
excellent fundamental idea and some great set-piece scenes, but
considerable irritation mid-game and a weak conclusion.  :-(

But when all's said and done we voted it into third place last year,
so obviously a lot of people loved it.  :-)

Cheers,
Richard
-- 
Richard Stamp
Churchill College, Cambridge


From sothoth@xxx.usa.net Wed Jan 28 15:29:50 MET 1998
Article: 30227 of rec.games.int-fiction
From: "Gunther Schmidl" <sothoth@xxx.usa.net>
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
References: <34CEBEAD.78F@ucla.edu> <forbes-2801980727250001@msf-5.pr.mcs.net>
Subject: Re: Suspended "Impossible" mode
Date: Wed, 28 Jan 1998 14:56:53 +0100
Lines: 21
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Xref: news.lth.se rec.games.int-fiction:30227

Just for those wondering, here are some other commands the game recognizes,
but these aren't listed in Masterpieces OR the LTOI, so here goes:

arr - all robots, report
arl - all robots, location
config - set start points of robots and simulation parameters
advanced - harder game mode
impossible - extremely hard game mode  ;-)

--
+------------------------+----------------------------------------------+
+ Gunther Schmidl        + "I couldn't help it. I can resist everything +
+ Ferd.-Markl-Str. 39/16 +  except temptation"           -- Oscar Wilde +
+ A-4040 LINZ            +----------------------------------------------+
+ Tel: 0732 25 28 57     + http://gschmidl.home.ml.org - new & improved +
+------------------------+---+------------------------------------------+
+ sothoth (at) usa (dot) net + please remove the "xxx." before replying +
+----------------------------+------------------------------------------+





From jools@arnod.demon.co.uk Thu Jan 29 09:56:59 MET 1998
Article: 30252 of rec.games.int-fiction
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From: Julian Arnold <jools@arnod.demon.co.uk>
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Popular games (was Re: Question for everyone: How many people play the games you make?)
Date: Wed, 28 Jan 1998 18:18:11 +0000 (GMT)
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The most downloaded file (excluding index files, etc.) last year was:

  if-archive/games/pc/time1.zip

According to Master-Index this is:

  A Matter of Time, an introductory adventure by Michael Zerbo,
  created using ALAN version 2.5.
  Illustrated text adventure; requires SVGA and a sound card.
  Playable demo; you will have to register to complete the game.
  (the original Amiga version is in games/amiga/time?.lha)

This had 8297 hits. The next few highest were all games too:

  (Jigsaw probably had about 4000 hits)
  3870 if-archive/games/pc/softporn.zip
  3441 if-archive/games/infocom/curses.z5
  3383 if-archive/games/pc/child1.zip[1]
  3174 if-archive/games/pc/pquest.zip[2]
  3091 if-archive/games/infocom/I-0.z5

So obviously sex sells, and sex on a PC *really* sells, and large
numbers of people spell sex with a capital G. :)

But why was _A Matter of Time_ so popular? Is it incredibly good? Do
people really like sound/graphics (child1.zip has graphics too)? Have
Michael Zerbo/Thomas Nilsson been fiddling the numbers? :)

The author of _Time_ is Michael Zerbo, who has written several other
games, including _The Child Murderer_ (child1.zip), apparently for Amiga
and PC native, and ALAN.

Jools

[1]: The player is blamed for a murder that he did not commit,
     and must both flee from the authorities and find the true
     killer. This game is set in Victorian England, and includes
     digitized graphics and a simple to use parser system. This
     is the demo version of the game. Requires 386 or better,
     hard drive, and SVGA card.
     [The Amiga versions have well under 100 hits.]

[2]: Pervo Quest; loot, kill, and rape as much as you can;
     by StoereSOFT. Windows executable; needs VBRUN100.DLL,
     the Visual Basic version 1 runtime library.
-- 
"For small erections may be finished by their first architects; grand
ones, true ones, ever leave the copestone to posterity. God keep me from
ever completing anything." -- Herman Melville, "Moby Dick"



From emerick@cs.bu.edu Mon Feb  2 13:06:24 MET 1998
Article: 30339 of rec.games.int-fiction
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From: emerick@csa.bu.edu (Emerick Rogul)
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Synapse/Broderbund electronic novels; talked to Steve Hale
Date: 31 Jan 1998 15:01:52 -0500
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On 31 Jan 1998 19:03:43 GMT, "C.E. Forman" <ceforman@postoffice.worldnet.att.net> said:

: emerick@csa.bu.edu (Emerick Rogul) wrote:
:: I thought I'd heard some mumblings a while back that Broderbund might
:: be repackaging these games.  I wonder if that's still going to happen,
:: and if so, whether or not it will include the unpublished games (all
:: of this is assuming they still even exist, of course).  It'd be
:: interesting to contact someone in the know at Broderbund and see if
:: these games even show up on their radar anymore.

: I tried awhile back, and got a pretty standard-looking "these titles
: are no longer available, quit livin' in the past you freak" form letter.

Humm, I figured as much.  I sent a question to their support team just
in case there's a snowball's chance in hell, but it sounds fairly
doubtful now.

In (somewhat) brighter news, I did manage to contact Cathryn Mataga
(Synapse's founder) via e-mail and asked her a few questions about the
unpublished e-novels.  Her response was:

  "Yup, it's me.  Rights of all E-Novels fell back to the original 
   authors and programmers.  

   Ronin and House of Changes were pretty playable.  We tried to 
   pick up a publishere for these but couldn't find anyone.  I probably
   have most of the source to these -- among my billions of floppy disks.

   Deadly summer had quite a bit of work done on it, but it was still
   pretty buggy at the time it was canceled."

I was happy to hear this from her and sent her a follow-up e-mail
asking if she would ever consider publishing these games or releasing
them as shareware, etc.  This was a few days ago and I still haven't
received a response from her, so I'm assuming that it would be
impossible due to copyrights or she may simply not be interested in
investing too much time in working on them.  I'm still keeping my
fingers crossed that I do hear from her, but if not, I think I've run
out of contacts and/or ideas in regards to playing the unpublished
games, although I'm open to suggestions.

-Emerick
-- 
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Emerick Rogul         /\/  "the doctor smiles terribly.  'i am referring
emerick@cs.bu.edu     /\/   your case directly to the coroner.'"
------------------------------------- 'naked lunch', william s. burroughs


From jkimbrough@worldnet.att.net Fri Feb  6 10:04:59 MET 1998
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From: jkimbrough@worldnet.att.net (Jerry Kimbrough)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction,rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Losing your Grip (discussion) (LONG)
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On 2 Feb 1998 07:42:27 GMT, dbs@mozzarella.cs.wisc.edu (Daniel
Shiovitz) wrote:

<snip>

 
 
>  - It's entirely possible I'm missing something major here. The main
>    reason for this post (yeah, finally yetting to it with the last
>    point) is to see if someone can explain to me what's up with Terry
>    and his dad. If this fit directly into the classic model that I'd
>    assumed it did, the moral of the story would be something like
>    "ok, your dad was a bastard but you can't let it be an excuse for
>    fucking up your own life; you have to deal with it and move on"
>    And, to a certain extent, this is born out by the story.  The
>    interactions with Terry and his dad that I can think of are the
>    following: 
>     (fit 1) The head, buried in mud, which blames Terry for having
>             put it there. (assuming this is really the dad)

I don't think it's him.  The game notes that the head had a mustache;
I read through (I believe) all of the descriptions of Terry's father,
and I saw no mention of a mustache.  I assumed at first that the head
was Frankie, for some reason.  I'm still not sure who it is.

>     (fit 1) Rex was given to Terry by his dad.

Wasn't Rex *supposed* to be given to Terry, but his dad never got
around to it or something?  I thought that the description of the
appearance of Rex was something akin to "He looks like the Welsh Corgi
that your dad always promised you."

>     (fit 1) The grey man first appears, staring at Terry and then
>             vanishing. The relation of Terry's dad and the grey man
>             is, I'm positive, central to understand the relation of
>             Terry's dad and Terry, but I admit it totally eludes me. 
>             In fit 3, the grey man claims to be a messenger from
>             Terry's dad, sent to punish Terry, but Terry has a rather
>             twisted subconscious and this may not necessarily be the
>             case. Sort of. 

This is going to sound idiotic, but I think that the grey man is a
manifestation of Terry's subconscious; Terry *believes* that his
father was a bastard, until the "strings" scene.  More on that later.
 
>     (fit 5) (assuming you picked the third option) Your dad is lying
>             in a hospital bed, dying. He starts to apologize, then
>             abruptly disclaims responsibility for his actions. You
>             notice strings protruding from his wrists. If you examine
>             the strings, it turns out that the controller on the
>             other end of the strings is you; if you don't examine
>             them, your father apologizes before he fades out. From a
>             writing standpoint, this is incredibly clever the way
>             this last action can totally change the meaning of the
>             scene; but what does it mean in the big picture? I'm not
>             sure. Also, note the symmetry here: at the beginning the
>             head is saying "after all, you put me here". At the end,
>             the person on the other end of the strings is you. Are we
>             intended to take this as confirmation that _Terry_ is
>             the real villain here? Surely not! What little facts we
>             see about the dad suggest that he's not a nice guy, but
>             this closing scene seems to deny him culpability for his
>             actions. 

I read through this scene very carefully and decided that Terry was
seemingly making "peace" with his father; the strings being held by
Terry didn't signify that Terry was "controlling" his father, per se,
but that he was controlling his *memories of his father; that his
father was a bastard who forced him into things and beat him. 
To be more clear; Terry went through his life believing that his
father was a asshole who beat him, chased him, and pushed him to
things he didn't want.  Perhaps his father pushed him into things, but
at certain points in the game he shows a type of kindness.  For
example, if you wait around in your house before cutting your dad, he
hits you, then looks shocked and mortified and apologizes.  

>  - Finally, fit 4. This fit feels odd for two reasons. First, because
>    it doesn't seem to fit in with the rest of the game. As mentioned
>    before, it's the only one in which neither Terry's dad nor the grey man
>    appear. It also feels a little weird because I wasn't sure who
>    Jefrey and Marie's questions are directed to, me-the-player or Terry?
>    If Terry, many of the answers seem obvious: Terry has a dog and
>    not a cat, so which do you think he prefers? If me, where's the
>    relevance. And speaking of Jefrey and Marie, who _are_ these people?
>    What are they doing here? Why don't they appear again (or do they,
>    in another guise? Are they your _parents_? Surely not..) Why, when
>    you give answers that let Marie "win", do you end up following
>    Jefrey's path, and visa-versa? This whole fit really feels out of
>    place in the game, and I'm not sure what the relevance of anything in
>    it is.

I didn't see any point in this fit, either.  I can understand the doll
scene (which I still can't figure out, BTW), but the "crystal" fit
seems to be a simple puzzle-romp.

In the finale, Terry has a choice of rejecting his father and
destroying all memories of him; of letting his old memories of his
father remain; or of remembering his father as he really was.
Then again, I'm probably wrong.



From dbs@mozzarella.cs.wisc.edu Fri Feb  6 10:05:07 MET 1998
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From: dbs@mozzarella.cs.wisc.edu (Daniel Shiovitz)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction,rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Losing your Grip (discussion) (LONG)
Date: 4 Feb 1998 20:35:57 GMT
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[Magnus' newsfeed is down with a broken ankle (more or less), so I'm
posting this for him]

> Programming stuff:
>   - Frankie asks, "Which sphere do you mean, the pile of spheres, or
>     the light sphere?"
> 
>   I'm not quite sure if I like this or not. I think it's an "I like
>   it, but let me get used to it" sort of thing. I'm also not sure if
>   this would be better if it was a personalized message for each actor,
>   just like the "I don't know anything about that." message is
>   personalized for each actor. The way it is now makes it feel vaguely
>   like it's just a retooled parser message and not real dialogue,
>   because every NPC does it in exactly the same way. On the other
>   hand, how many different ways can you ask for disambiguation?

You may remember that we had a longish debate about this last
autumn. Several people said that they'd prefer the NPC to ask the
disambiguation questions, rather than the parser. It's nice to see
this idea implemented in practice.

I must say that I rather like it, though I'm inclined to agree with
you that it sounds a bit too much like a retooled parser message. In
this particular case it's not too disturbing, but I can imagine cases
where it could kill mimesis rather effectively (I didn't find any 
such
cases in this game, though).

Perhaps it would be better to get a reply that sounds more like real
dialogue. In some cases, where the ambiguity doesn't matter too much,
the NPC might just leap to a conclusion (for example, if there were
five identical light spheres, Frankie wouldn't have to ask you which
of them you meant).
 
>   - >ASK FRANKIE ABOUT DSADSADF
>      There is no reply.
> 
>     >DSADSADF
>      I don't know the word "dsadsadf".
> 
>     This one I'm not so sure about. It seems to me that you should be
>     consistent, one way or the other. One way to maintain consistency
>     would be "Frankie says, 'I don't know the word "dsadsadf"', but
>     you easily get into stupid situations that way.

That would be a bit of a show-stopper to me, because it would make
Frankie sound like an I-F parser :-). The best thing would probably
just be to have Frankie say "Sorry, I didn't understand that," or
something like that. I'd imagine most Inform NPC's have an appropriate
response for the "not understood" case in their Life routines...

>   - >NAME THE DOG "Rex"
> 
>   Cool. (IIRC this has been done before (Zork 0?) but I haven't played
>   whichever game it was done before in.) 

At first, I found this a bit silly, like a gimmick, but after a while
I realized that being able to name the dog makes me care more about
it. This rather simple "gimmick" actually increases my involvement in
the game a lot...

>     (er... speaking of which, the head
>     _is_ daddy dearest, isn't it? This is one of the things I'm not
>     clear on) 

An alternative interpretation is that the head is Terry himself: he's
blaming himself for screwing his life up. And I think that the fact
that it doesn't matter what you do to the buried man (kill him, try 
to
help him, or just stand and watch) is a very deliberate point.

> Story:
>   - Hmm. When I started up _Grip_ and got to the big marble building,
>     I confess my first thought was "Oh no, not _another_ game about an
>     amnesiac wandering through an archetypal setting which is actually
>     Their Own Mind." But it got better. Still, I think fit 1 is
>     clearly the weakest part of the game; this is especially
>     unfortunate since, at least IMO, the purpose of the starting area
>     of a game should be to draw the reader in and encourage them to
>     continue, not to shut them out. 


I found that the first Fit drew me in rather effectively, perhaps just
because it's very well done, or perhaps because I didn't react in the
same way as you did - I didn't think "Oh no, not another one of
those". I don't know why. Perhaps it's because it's archetypcial
rather than stereotypical, or perhaps because the plot is rather
obviously not "You're an amnesiac, try to find out who you are". OK,
the introduction mentions amnesia, but to me this is much more like
the "the real world doesn't matter" feeling of a dream than the
typical "regain your memories" puzzle of much IF.

Or perhaps it helped that I haven't played "Babel" yet :-).


But apart from this, I can agree that some of the other fits would
perhaps be a better introduction, except for two facts:

1) It wouldn't fit in the story. There's clearly a progression here,
>from the abstract to the concrete, and so on.

2) At least some of the other fits would risk turning people off even
more. Imagine if it had started with the "school" fit - the
originality police would immediately denounce it as Yet Another
College Game (tm). Similarly, the faery fit could be dismissed as
fantasy. Of course, neither of these fits *are* the standard college
or fantasy fare, far from it, but that's not immediately apparent.


Some points in your interpretation:

>      (fit 1) The grey man first appears, staring at Terry and then
>              vanishing. The relation of Terry's dad and the grey man
>              is, I'm positive, central to understand the relation of
>              Terry's dad and Terry, but I admit it totally eludes me.
>              In fit 3, the grey man claims to be a messenger from
>              Terry's dad, sent to punish Terry, but Terry has a rather
>              twisted subconscious and this may not necessarily be the
>              case. Sort of.

I have a feeling that the grey man is really Terry himself again. Or,
rather, one aspect of him - his superego, perhaps, or the destructive
side of him, or whatever.

>      (fit 3) The grey man (presumably) destroys the faerie palace and
>              imprisons the faeries. Not very nice, but then, neither
>              were the faeries.

(...)

>              - the grey man is not just taking his wrath out on Terry,
>                but also on the faeries. I'm fairly unsure what this
>                means, since the faeries seem to be anti-Terry or at
>                best neutral about him, not his friends.

Again, an alternative interpretation:

Faeries and other supernatural creatures are often interpreted as
symbols for the unconscious, especially for the primitive, irrational
parts of it. The faery fit is about Terry's relations to his own
creative aspects. Whether the grey man is an aspect of Terry himself,
or of his father, or something else, destroying the faeries means
destroying - or suppressing - a part of Terry's mind, a part that he's
trying to regain.

To me it seems like the main theme of the story is Terry's attempts
to get to grips with his own past, and regain parts of his personality that have
been suppressed for a long time. Straightening out his relationship with
his father is an important part of this; I'm not sure that it's the whole story.

> (This was not intended to be a review so much as a request for
> discussion. If it were a review, I would have made much more of an
> effort to point out the numerous things I liked about the game,
> instead of just the ones that perplexed me.

If you do decide to write a review, I'd be more than happy to publish
it in SPAG #14 (hint, hint).

Cheers,

Magnus


-- 
Magnus Olsson (mol@df.lth.se, zebulon@pobox.com)
------    http://www.pobox.com/~zebulon   ------
     Not officially connected to LU or LTH.



From michael.gentry@ey.com Fri Feb  6 10:11:54 MET 1998
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From: michael.gentry@ey.com
Subject: Re: Losing Your Grip (discussion)
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> Anyway. So I figure (hope) enough people have finished this to make a
> discussion worthwhile by now, because there's some points I'd like to
> thrash out.

All right; lets thrash. Let me begin by saying that this is one of the
best damn games Ive ever played, and is currently in my Top-Five
pantheon along with Jigsaw, So Far, Trinity and Brimstone. Its a
beautifully written, emotional and evocative piece of prose, and the
puzzles were top-notch -- original and VERY challenging, but not unfair
-- and always maintained a sense of internal consistency. My hat goes off
to you, Mr. Granade. Youve made your dad proud.

> Programming stuff:
>   - Frankie asks, "Which sphere do you mean, the pile of spheres, or
>     the light sphere?"

I didnt mind the disambiguation being embedded in the characters
dialogue; but it did bother me that there was so little disambiguation to
begin with. Another example happens in the library: "Which book do you
mean, the single book or the stack of books?" I think that once the
relevant book (or sphere, or magazine from the hospital waiting room)
appears on the scene, it should be fairly obvious which one I want to
mess with. If I want to check out the pile of spheres, Ill type PILE OF
SPHERES.

>   - >NAME THE DOG "Rex"

I liked this too. My dog was "Flash", and I tended to picture him more
often as a basset hound than a Corgie, but what the hey. I think Stephen
could have given the dog a gender-specific pronoun, though; once youre
on a first-name basis with the dog, it seems odd to keep calling it "it".
Of course, then you could wind up with a male dog named "Missy". Maybe
Frankie could turn to you after you name it and say, "Pretty dog. Is it a
boy or a girl?" with your answer determining the pronoun used thereafter.

Or maybe not.

> Puzzles:
>   - There were quite an assortment here. We had solidly story-based
>     puzzles (ie, getting the syringe or the dragonfire), puzzles that
>     were purposeless with regard to the story but got my
>     crossword-solving blood up (ie, all the puzzles in fit 4-rational
>     or the machines in fit 2-school (to a lesser extent)), and
>     regrettably a few puzzles put in just to annoy the player (getting
>     the novocaine* in fit 2-hospital) (though this sort of
>     classification is rather rough; it's possible that with more
>     solutions, this puzzle would become more intuitive).

I liked the novocaine puzzle, even though the solution was a bit
contrived. Way to go, Flash!

>   - Special notice goes to the orange crystal puzzle. Can anyone tell
>     me what the heck was going on there? I got the solution, but only
>     by accident. Later trials gave me a vague idea of what was up, but
>     I still don't really understand it.

The idea behind the orange crystal is this:

The buttons and lever allow you to "move" the orange crystal through a
series of spatial transformations. You get three "moves", and each move
must be one of three types of transformation. If, at the end of any move,
the crystal is a) not supported by a shelf or b) intersecting the same
space as the walls of the white cube, the crystal breaks and you lose the
game. The buttons allow you to select which transformation will occur at
each of the three moves, in order from left to right; the lever allows
you to execute the moves one at a time.

The transformations go as follows:

(tr) This moves the crystal x distance north, x distance west, and x
distance up, where x equals half the length of one edge of the cube. If
this puts the crystal outside the cube, or inside the cube but not on a
shelf, the crystal drops and breaks.

(rot) This moves the crystal 90 degrees clockwise along the circumference
of a horizontal circle whose center is the pole in the west wall, and
whose radius is the distance between the crystal and the pole. If the
crystal doesnt wind up safely on a shelf, it breaks as per (tr) above.

(inv) This turns the entire system inside out, whatever that entails. If
the crystal is anywhere other than the exact center of the shelf, it will
explode into fragments. However, once the crystal has been inverted, any
further transformations will cause the crystal to explode. Since the
object is to achieve three successful transformations, you have to save
this move for last.

The winning combination, then, is to place the crystal on the bottom
middle shelf, and program the buttons for (tr), (rot) and (inv), in that
order. When you pull the lever, the crystal will move north half a
cube-side, west half a cube-side, and up half a cube-side, ending up on
the northwest shelf halfway up the cube; then rotate (or, more
accurately, orbit the pole) 90 degrees, ending up on the center shelf;
then invert, freeing the crystal.

Make more sense now?

>   - The division of the game into separate fits that we go through in
>     linear order was a good idea, breaking a sizable game up into
>     managable chunks. But that's a pretty standard technique. What was
>     especially nice in _Grip_ was having the interludes in between the
>     fits. This worked _very_ nicely in the lead-in between fit 3 and fit
>     4 (calling, for the moment, the bit with Jefrey and Marie fit 4
>     and not an interlude).

The interludes were fantastic, and added an entire new dimension to the
game.

> Story:
>   - Hmm. When I started up _Grip_ and got to the big marble building,
>     I confess my first thought was "Oh no, not _another_ game about an
>     amnesiac wandering through an archetypal setting which is actually
>     Their Own Mind." But it got better. Still, I think fit 1 is
>     clearly the weakest part of the game; this is especially
>     unfortunate since, at least IMO, the purpose of the starting area
>     of a game should be to draw the reader in and encourage them to
>     continue, not to shut them out. This weakness seems to me to stem
>     from two basic problems: first, the aforementioned (fairly common*)
>     archetypal in-your-head setting, and second, the extreme
>     difficulty of the puzzles. Well. Not all that extreme, I guess,
>     but it does seem to be hard for new players to score any points
>     straightaway, which is always a discouragement to someone just
>     starting.

The puzzles are hard, but perseverance pays off. Also, the fact that its
common doesnt make the "inside-your-head" premise necessarily bad; it
only means that you have to do it in a very original way for it to come
off well. And I think Stephen accomplished this. The rooms of the white
building are some of the most powerfully evocative descriptions in the
game (I especially liked the fingernail gouges on the desk), and it
definitely sucked me in. Its very clear right from the start that
something REALLY BAD has happened, and if the head in the mud
(brilliant!) is to be believed, it may well be YOUR FAULT. No, Id say
thats definitely a hook.

>     But it seems to me games like this need a major link, not just
>     relatively small ones, and as far as I can tell the thing that's
>     intended to be that link is Terry's relationship with his father,
>     and that doesn't altogether work for me. It works well intrascene, in
>     fits 1-3, but on the whole, as an overriding skeleton for the
>     game, it doesn't work for me.

I see your point. All five fits are certainly about Terry himself; trying
to complete himself as a person after some sort of emotional trauma or
breakdown; however, they dont all have to do with Terrys relationship
with his father, which seems to be an equally important element. In fact,
the implication seems to be that this relationship is the underlying
cause of said trauma or breakdown. The first fit shouldnt necessarily
have to show this explicitly; its more of an introductory scene, and is
really only there to establish that this is a Journey Inside Your Own
Head to Repair Something That Has Gone Awry. The fourth fit, however, as
wonderful as its puzzles are, seems rather disconnected -- it's not about
Terry Hastings, or about trying to reconcile the person he was and the
person he has become and the person he wants to be, and how his estranged
father fit into all of it.

>   - It's entirely possible I'm missing something major here. The main
>     reason for this post (yeah, finally yetting to it with the last
>     point) is to see if someone can explain to me what's up with Terry
>     and his dad. If this fit directly into the classic model that I'd
>     assumed it did, the moral of the story would be something like
>     "ok, your dad was a bastard but you can't let it be an excuse for
>     fucking up your own life; you have to deal with it and move on"

I think thats the essential gist of it.

>              - I guess the grey man is _not_ intended to be identical
>                to Terry's father, else why would he speak of being
>                sent by Terry's dad and not himself? Furthermore,
>                Terry's dad appears later on, not dead yet, so by
>                destroying the grey man you don't destroy Terry's dad..
>                so who did you destroy?

Perhaps the grey man is the "boogie man" that Terry has created from the
memory of his father. Terry would like to believe that his father was
responsible for all the bad ways in which his life turned out, and it
appears that his father was, indeed, an abusive jerk, which counts for
something. But, as you said, Terry is also responsible for his own life;
over time, he has demonized his dead father so much and for so long that
his memory of his father no longer really corresponds to the person his
father really was. It has become the Grey Man, Terrys own personal demon
on whom he lays responsibility for all his fears and weaknesses.

>      (fit 5) (assuming you picked the third option) Your dad is lying
>              in a hospital bed, dying. He starts to apologize, then
>              abruptly disclaims responsibility for his actions. You
>              notice strings protruding from his wrists. If you examine
>              the strings, it turns out that the controller on the
>              other end of the strings is you; if you don't examine
>              them, your father apologizes before he fades out. From a
>              writing standpoint, this is incredibly clever the way
>              this last action can totally change the meaning of the
>              scene; but what does it mean in the big picture?

Im not sure why (since its not really borne out by the text) but I got
the distinct impression that when Terry looked up at the person pulling
Dads strings, he realized that not only was the puppetmaster him (Terry)
but that he (Terry) was also the Grey Man. This goes along with my theory
that the Grey Man is wholly a construction of Terrys subconscious (his
shadow, for all you Jungians out there).

However, I too am not sure what to make of the idea that Terry was
responsible for his fathers actions. Obviously, Terry is wrestling with
his fathers ghost -- in a figurative sense. Since its all in Terrys
head, then it stands to reason that Terry is "responsible" for his
fathers actions within the dreams -- since his father is nothing but a
construct of Terrys memories. However, its not clear if that was what
was meant, or if the implication is rather that Terry, as a child and
growing up, was himself responsible for all the bad things his father did
to him (beating him, sending him unwilling to med school, etc.). If the
ultimate meaning of the story is the latter, then Im not sure it holds
water.

Of course, it could all be a round-about metaphor to bring us back to our
first theory: that Terry must come to terms with the fact that he, not
his father, is responsible for his own life. Terry may think that his
father is manipulating him from beyond the grave, but a) its not his
father, its his own distorted memory of his father, and b) since its
Terrys memory, Terry is in control of it. As a metaphor, that would
stand up, but it would be, well... pretty round-about.

I dont know. I certainly dont think that the game falls to pieces on
any single theory; as a whole, I think the game is a great success; if
the ending has some flaws, well, so did the ending of _Huckleberry Finn_.
So does the ending of every Philip K. Dick novel ever written.

If anyone asked me, I would say that the ending could use just a touch
more explication. I would say this with strong reservations, though,
since I think one of the games great strengths is its subtlety. Still,
perhaps a clearer explanation of who or what the Grey Man really is would
help.

>   - Finally, fit 4. This fit feels odd for two reasons. First, because
>     it doesn't seem to fit in with the rest of the game. As mentioned
>     before, it's the only one in which neither Terry's dad nor the grey man
>     appear. It also feels a little weird because I wasn't sure who
>     Jefrey and Marie's questions are directed to, me-the-player or Terry?
>     If Terry, many of the answers seem obvious: Terry has a dog and
>     not a cat, so which do you think he prefers? If me, where's the
>     relevance. And speaking of Jefrey and Marie, who _are_ these people?
>     What are they doing here? Why don't they appear again (or do they,
>     in another guise? Are they your _parents_? Surely not..) Why, when
>     you give answers that let Marie "win", do you end up following
>     Jefrey's path, and visa-versa? This whole fit really feels out of
>     place in the game, and I'm not sure what the relevance of anything in
>     it is.

Jefrey and Marie represent two modes of the psyche which most people
commonly delineate as "feeling" and "thinking"; or "right-brain" and
"left-brain"; or "emotion" and "reason"; or "Dionysian" and "Apollonian",
or what have you. I think their questions are definitely directed towards
Terry -- as far as the dog/cat question goes, Jefrey (or maybe its
Marie) acknowledges the fact that it doesnt make much sense to ask a
dog-owner which he prefers, but they want to hear him say it anyway.

Jefrey and Marie are in conflict. In most healthy people, there is some
level of reconciliation or balance between the emotional and intellectual
tendencies, usually with a slight preponderance of one over the other. In
Terrys case, however, there is an imbalance which must be compensated
for. The nice part about the game is, you (the player) get to choose in
which direction the imbalance lies. If you read the questions closely,
and pay attention to the songs/books/paintings they want you to read/look
at/listen to, youll notice that each choice is steering you towards a
preference towards either an emotional, intuitive, feeling-oriented view
of things or an intellectual, rational, thinking-oriented view of things.

Take the music for an example: you are given the choice between listening
to a piece by Bach or a piece by Beethoven. Beethoven wrote grand,
sweeping, dramatic music that appealed to the emotions. (If you read your
history, youll discover that in his day, Beethoven was considered quite
the "racy" composer -- his concerts tended to get those stodgy
eighteenth-century Europeans all het up, and were a good place to take
someone if you wanted to get laid -- or whatever passed for it in those
days -- afterwards.) Bachs music, on the other hand, while undeniably
beautiful, was really more about technical skill. Counterpunctual
melodies undergoing various mathematical transformations, etc. -- Im not
really a music major, so I wont venture into any specifics. The point
is, which music you choose determines which music Terry prefers. Its a
neat way of letting the player inadvertently determine the characters
background, something like the restroom trick in Leather Goddesses of
Phobos.

Anyway, whoever gets two out of three questions answered in their favor
"wins". The questions determine which side of the brain Terry tends to
focus on more -- and therefore, which side of the brain Terry needs to
spend some time working on. If you provide an intellectual answer to all
three questions, then youve probably been neglecting the emotional
aspect of your life, and so are sentenced to spending some time with
Jefrey. Vice versa with Marie. (After the intellectual puzzles in fit 4,
Marie says, "If youd been taking care of things on this end more, you
wouldnt have had to jump through hoops for me.")

Its a really very clever fit. Unfortunately, as you said, it doesnt fit
very well with the rest of the game. Or rather, I would argue that its
so abstract and has so little to do with the major issues of Terrys
life, that it would really fit perfectly well in *any* game, and therein
lies the problem. The wonderful, mysterious themes of guilt and
redemption and reconciliation are put on hold for a few minutes, and the
player is left with pure puzzle solving. Theyre great puzzles, of
course, but if they could be integrated better with the rest of the game,
that would be nice.

Comments? Responses?

Mike Gentry -- michael.gentry@ey.com

-------------------==== Posted via Deja News ====-----------------------
      http://www.dejanews.com/     Search, Read, Post to Usenet


From patrick@syix.com Mon Feb  9 14:11:50 MET 1998
Article: 30422 of rec.games.int-fiction
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From: patrick@syix.com (Patrick Kellum)
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Zork original
Date: 7 Feb 1998 07:14:56 GMT
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In article <cbboh0krsi3.fsf@zebra.peregrine.com>, Darin Johnson was talking about:

 >Very odd.  I tried to be pretty close, and used the Dungeon Fortran
 >sources and database for almost all the text.  The variants I did have
 >were generally with vocabulary, responses to standard TADS verbs that
 >Dungeon didn't have, and changing the help, etc.  (Maybe the
 >differences are because there are different Dungeon versions, as it
 >keeps changing slightly)

Could be, there were quite a few Fortran ports between the first and your
TADS port and the first Fortran port was based on an older version of the
MDL code (about two years older then the last by my guesses).

 >Any specifics on what's different (like what should that particular
 >message regarding the bucket have been)?

I don't remember at the moment, but I do remember having trouble with the
Dungeon walkthrough when it got to the bucket.  I belive it had to do with
your TADS version not understanding "Disembark the bucket".  Nothing
major.  I'll look through my transcript of the game and see if there were
any other differences.

I am very glad you did the port, just porting from TADS to Inform is tough
enough, I can just imagine the trouble of porting from Pascal.  Good work!

Patrick
---
A Title For This Page  --  http://www.syix.com/patrick/
Bow Wow Wow Fan Page   --  http://www.syix.com/patrick/bowwowwow/
The Small Wonder Page  --  http://smallwonder.simplenet.com/
My Arcade Page         --  http://ygw.bohemianweb.com/arcade/
"I have photographs of you naked with a squirrel." - Dave Barry


From darin@usa.net.removethis Mon Feb  9 14:12:08 MET 1998
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patrick@syix.com (Patrick Kellum) writes:

> I am very glad you did the port, just porting from TADS to Inform is tough
> enough, I can just imagine the trouble of porting from Pascal.  Good work!

I ported from Fortran.  Real programmers don't use Pascal :-)

Actually doing such a porting is a lot harder than writing an original
game I think, and you learn a lot about the target environment that
you otherwise would never encounter.

Ie, with an original game, if you run will tend to write code that
matches what is natural in the game system; for instance, in TADS you
would normally use the base classes and inventory system that's
provided; one normally might not make a single change to adv.t, and
only minor changes to std.t (those are the default foundation code in
TADS).  But with Dungeon, the game itself didn't quite fit the default
environment; the inventory system is different, you can't change the
game to bypass parser bugs, etc.

-- 
Darin Johnson
darin@usa.net.removethis


From francis@pobox.co.uk Wed Feb 11 10:52:57 MET 1998
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From: francis@pobox.co.uk (Francis Irving)
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: [Review] A Matter of Time
Date: Wed, 11 Feb 1998 09:39:46 GMT
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> A Matter of Time, an introductory adventure by Michael Zerbo, created
> using ALAN version 2.5. Illustrated text adventure; requires SVGA and a
> sound card. Playable demo; you will have to register to complete the
> game. (the original Amiga version is in games/amiga/time?.lha) 

ftp://ftp.gmd.de/if-archive/games/pc/time1.zip

Time to try out the most heavily downloaded game in the IF archive...

"A Matter of Time" is another story about saving your Professor from a
land of dinosaurs, where his experimental time machine has gone slightly
awry.  The plot twist?  The Professor is also accused of murdering a
colleague over a funding war.

It's apparently written using ALAN, with calls to external programs to add
graphics and sound.  Unfortunately this means that you have to wait for
each picture to appear and disappear, and for each sound to finish, before
you can get on with the game.  And it happens every time you do "look".

So, anyone making a multimedia piece of IF, make sure the sound and
graphics are concurrent with the text.  And that you can turn them off.
(You can in time1 - by deleting or renaming viewer.exe and sbplay.exe...)

Similarly annoying was that every time you die and restart you have to sit
through the whole of the intro (including pictures) before you can even
restore again... Whatever happened to "Would you like to RESTART, RESTORE
or QUIT?".

The writing is readable in its simplicity, but needs more imagination.
The puzzles are straightforward item manipulation games which I couldn't
work out; the games unresponsiveness and shaky parser didn't encourage me
to do so. More synonyms are required; you can do "climb tree" but not
"climb vines".

Graphics are varied and made with fractal and ray-tracing programs.  This
gives them a certain lack of liveliness and inconsistency of style.  The
sounds didn't add anything much to the game, although they served well to
identify where I was.  Good sound in the background could make each area
of a landscape feel more distinct.

I didn't finish Time, but I did read through the text from the data file.
I didn't miss much.  It really is only a short work.  I don't know what
you get if you register, but from this demo I don't feel that it would be
worth doing so.

With over 17,000 downloads of Time from www.download.com, Michael Zerbo is
clearly an excellent publicist, or there is more interest in IF than we
imagine.  Perhaps people like the idea that it has sound/graphics in it,
and are put off downloading plain text adventures.

When the first quality piece of graphical IF, with an Inform/TADS standard
parser, comes out, it will be interesting to see if it fares better in the
download world.

Francis.

Home: francis@pobox.co.uk  Work: francis@ncgraphics.co.uk


From neelix@hydra.com.au Wed Feb 11 13:37:32 MET 1998
Article: 30449 of rec.games.int-fiction
From: "Angus McLaren" <neelix@hydra.com.au>
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Infocom games for free!
Date: Sun, 8 Feb 1998 14:52:18 +1100
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Xref: news.lth.se rec.games.int-fiction:30449

Yes thats right. You can play all the old infocom games for nothing if you
have a MS-DOS or Windows 95 machine buy going to

http://members.tor.shaw.wave.ca/~doewich/cpc

and

http://www.dcs.napier.ac.uk/~bsc4074/amstrad/companies/infocom/infocom.html

The first link is to download the Amstrad cpc Emulator. Do not worry as this
emulator is fully endorsed by Amstrad themselves and is legal. The second
link is where you can get the games themselves. These are also legal, see
the release notes for the emulator and ask activision if you want to.

Enjoy them...

Angus McLaren
neelix@hydra.com.au
"Where ever you go, there you are!"




From mezerbo@newshost.li.net Wed Feb 11 21:46:37 MET 1998
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From: mezerbo@newshost.li.net (Zerbo)
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Matter of Time, etc.
Date: 11 Feb 1998 20:02:56 GMT
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I've just recently noticed that there has been some mention of Matter of 
Time due to the high number of downloads it's received. Besides
the fact that I put the game on www.download.com, I have no idea
why it's been downloaded so much. 

Just read the review of Time from a previous post, and thought he was 
actually kind to the game. It's not a very good game, and I didn't handle 
the multimedia aspects too well. I originally made it a while ago during 
my 8-bit days, and used it as my first ALAN game since it was simple and 
short. 

I thought by including graphics and sounds I could somewhat increase the 
interest in IF to those users who would usually pass it by.
Maybe make a little extra money on the game, as well.
The graphics are nothing fantastic though, unless you like digitized toy 
dinosaurs.

If I had my choice, users would forget about Time1 and download what I 
consider my better ALAN game, Hollywood Murders. Again, not a work of art,
but something I would think of as at least decent. The multimedia aspects
were handled a little better, less obtrusive, (with the option of turning 
them off). I would have preferred to do something similar to the Magnetic 
Scrolls interface, with graphics and text on the same screen, but it is 
currently impossible to do in ALAN. 

For other authors out there who want to increase their downloads, I 
recommend putting their game (PC version) on www.download.com, 
www.hotfiles.com and AOL. Don't know if a good text only game will
out download a bad one with graphics/sounds, but it is worth a try.
Recently noticed a Titanic text adventure on download.com with somewhere
around 30,000 downloads. No doubt spurred on by the movie, but still good 
numbers. Also, found a small publisher for text/graphics IF, Softdisk 
publishing, who puts out a monthly subscription for Dos and Windows.
Their Dos subscription is generally geared towards 386, VGA machines,
and includes all types of software. 

They don't pay a whole lot, but it isn't too bad. Unfortunately,
I don't think they want any text only PC adventures, (at least when I 
mentioned the subject they weren't), but if you have a text game and can 
somehow include some still graphics, they might want it.

Michael


From dmss100@york.ac.uk Wed Feb 11 23:27:49 MET 1998
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From: Den of Iniquity <dmss100@york.ac.uk>
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Subject: Re: Infocom games for free!
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On Tue, 10 Feb 1998, Graham Nelson wrote:

>Zac Bir wrote
>> Y'know, I hear they reserve a special room in Hell for loop-hole
>> artists. 
>
>Well, yes, but unfortunately there's a side-exit for any cases
>in which the demon in charge hasn't filled out the paperwork
>correctly.

 Special Room, Hell

 One could go to great lengths to describe this dreadful room, with its
 numerous loop-hole artists languishing, screaming, shivering, sweating
 and the demon-in-charge, who flicks his tail frustratedly back and forth 
 while he pores over a complicated wad of paperwork. However most of your
 attention is fixed on what appears to be a portal to the west, a tiny
 ill-fitting wooden door marked 'exit'.

> W

 Maze

 You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.

 Welcome to Hell.

--
Den



From Dennis.Matheson@transquest.com Tue Feb 17 15:02:04 MET 1998
Article: 30516 of rec.games.int-fiction
From: Dennis Matheson <Dennis.Matheson@transquest.com>
Subject: Re: [Review] A Matter of Time
Date: Thu, 12 Feb 1998 06:41:06 -0600
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In article <6bt2na$gv2$1@wnnews1.netlink.net.nz>,
  stephen.griffiths@moc.govt.typo.nz (Stephen Griffiths) wrote:
>>snip<<
> Other I.F. authors with games archived at ftp.gmd.de might like to
> investigate how to get their games listed in the www.download.com
> system. It may turn out to be an excellent way to publicise the
> existence of I.F.
>
> I'd like to see some of the better freeware I.F. games listed at
> www.download.com.
>>snip<<

  Well, here is their file submission screen:

   http://www.download.com/PC/Help/Registry/0,45,0,00.html

-------------------==== Posted via Deja News ====-----------------------
      http://www.dejanews.com/     Search, Read, Post to Usenet


From munsey@cfw.com Sat Feb 21 15:10:30 MET 1998
Article: 30760 of rec.games.int-fiction
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From: munsey@cfw.com
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: The Tempest, that game, doth elude me
Date: Sat, 21 Feb 1998 00:07:46 -0600
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At first I add some space, in order ye
Not look upon what you wish not to see.















And yet a little more, lest wand'ring eyes
Should look upon a clue they might disguise.












That be enough and plenty now, methink,
To see my problem ye be on the brink.


I blow upon the ship, the storm doth start.  [1 glass]
Go east, go down; the mariners lose heart.   [2 glasses]

I check all my possessions:  Lo!  I see
A phial of oil, anointed, comes with me.
I rise; I ope the vial; I pour the oil
Upon the troubl'd waters all a-boil.
The storm doth stop!  The mar'ners go below ...
And now the ship doth nothing more!  Ah, woe!
It must needs run aground upon some isle,
Not founder in the doldrums, Coleridge-style.
And Ariel now know'th not what to do.
Is there a hint?  A nudge?  A tiny clue?

The Walking Man now exiteth, stage left.

-----== Posted via Deja News, The Leader in Internet Discussion ==-----
http://www.dejanews.com/   Now offering spam-free web-based newsreading


From erkyrath@netcom.com Sun Feb 22 10:42:44 MET 1998
Article: 30776 of rec.games.int-fiction
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
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From: erkyrath@netcom.com (Andrew Plotkin)
Subject: Grip thoughts (SPOILERS)
Message-ID: <erkyrathEor1xx.Eu@netcom.com>
Organization: Netcom On-Line Services
X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.2 PL2]
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Xref: news.lth.se rec.games.int-fiction:30776

Ok, I have finished Grip. (And sent feedback to the author :-) The 
discussion threads seem to have expired from my news server, but I went 
back in Dejanews and read over most of them.

I am in general agreement with the big stuff. First of all, I had a
kick-ass good time and I think it's one of the most impressive games of
the past many months. Very effective evocation of mood, huge gobs of
imagery and imagination. 

I decided, and then noticed that lots of people also said, that the 
fourth fit (math/verbal) wasn't really tied into the thematic structure 
of the rest of the game. The verbal scene to some extent, since it was 
about memory and the burden of past experience. But I played the math 
scene first, and it was just kind of stuck in there. It was a really fun 
thing stuck in there, mind you -- I enjoy exactly that kind of puzzle. 

OTOH, there's no reason that a game, even an introspective one, has to be
all about a single idea (Terry and father.) The scene *does* fit in in the
sense of exploring Terry's head, and aspects of personality (abstract
versus verbal, or what's annoyingly labelled "left-brain" versus
"right-brain".) I took it in that sense. But since it's the first scene 
that *doesn't* relate to the childhood/father experience, and it occurs 
fairly late in the game, it jars.

On the whole idea of multiple outcomes, or even multiple middle-sections: 
I think it's pretty clear that you *can't* predict what's going to occur
later, or even notice that you have a choice. (When playing, I (1) did not
save Buddy; (2) opened the faerie cage; (3) clenched my fist at the end.
In each case, I either didn't know there was an alternative, or I assumed
all the alternatives would be disastrous (maybe because I tried a couple
of them.))

(The largest decisions, the university/hospital split and the math/verbal
split, are exceptions: it's pretty clear that you have two paths, and you
can try both of them.)

But for most of them, you're almost certain to just pick one and go on. 
So I'm really *not* willing to say that the different outcomes cast a 
more revealing light on the game. It's not a single story where you can 
compare different views of the end; it's several stories, and the 
author shows you one of them. I liked the story I got, but people are 
talking about a scene with puppet-strings; well, that wasn't in the story 
I got, so it doesn't figure into my opinion of LYG.

I'm not being completely consistent about this. I went back and played 
all four of the large scenes (university, hospital, and then math, 
verbal.) I did this deliberately. I did both forms of Fit 2 before I 
tried to finish Fit 3; and while I "won" (hit the Epilog, anyway) after 
playing the math scene, I then went back and played the verbal scene. And 
I figure all of that into my idea of "what LYG was."

But I didn't go back and try the other options I mentioned above. (In fact
I did try a couple, but it was just too much work. I got stuck trying to
make the dolls work a second time; I couldn't figure out what invoked the
cat/dog/music series of questions as opposed to the introvert/extrovert/
painting series. I didn't get up to the ending a second time.)

Oh, and I don't see anything particularly redeeming in the father. When he
hits you, and then looks shocked and apologetic, I read that as classic
abuse behavior. It may be sincere, but he'll do it again. 

--Z

-- 

"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the
borogoves..."


From ceforman@postoffice.worldnet.att.net Sun Feb 22 11:28:59 MET 1998
Article: 30788 of rec.games.int-fiction
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From: "C.E. Forman" <ceforman@postoffice.worldnet.att.net>
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: What's wrong with Journey?
Date: 21 Feb 1998 03:15:14 GMT
Organization: BranMuffin World Conglomerate
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Xref: news.lth.se rec.games.int-fiction:30788

cklutzke@iquest.net (Carl Klutzke) wrote:
>I've always supposed that one reason why interactive fiction isn't more
>popular is because of the interface.  People frequently get tired of
>entering the wrong word, or not having their commands understood.  As a
>result, I'm puzzled by the apparent lack of success of Infocom's
>_Journey_.

I thought Journey was an interesting attempt, but it was very easy and
extremely linear.  Infocom was the industry leader of text games, but
hadn't had much experience in the RPG arena, and it shows.  Look at
BattleTech and Mines of Titan for other examples.  Quarterstaff wasn't
bad, but it was an update of an existing work by Westwood.

--
C.E. Forman                                     ceforman@worldnet.att.net
Author of "Delusions", the 3rd place winner in the 1996 I-F Competition!!
Release 4 is now at: ftp://ftp.gmd.de/if-archive/games/infocom/Delusns.z5
Ye Olde Infocomme Shoppe http://netnow.micron.net/~jgoemmer/infoshop.html




From erkyrath@netcom.com Sun Feb 22 17:39:50 MET 1998
Article: 30776 of rec.games.int-fiction
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
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From: erkyrath@netcom.com (Andrew Plotkin)
Subject: Grip thoughts (SPOILERS)
Message-ID: <erkyrathEor1xx.Eu@netcom.com>
Organization: Netcom On-Line Services
X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.2 PL2]
Date: Sat, 21 Feb 1998 22:17:56 GMT
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Xref: news.lth.se rec.games.int-fiction:30776

Ok, I have finished Grip. (And sent feedback to the author :-) The 
discussion threads seem to have expired from my news server, but I went 
back in Dejanews and read over most of them.

I am in general agreement with the big stuff. First of all, I had a
kick-ass good time and I think it's one of the most impressive games of
the past many months. Very effective evocation of mood, huge gobs of
imagery and imagination. 

I decided, and then noticed that lots of people also said, that the 
fourth fit (math/verbal) wasn't really tied into the thematic structure 
of the rest of the game. The verbal scene to some extent, since it was 
about memory and the burden of past experience. But I played the math 
scene first, and it was just kind of stuck in there. It was a really fun 
thing stuck in there, mind you -- I enjoy exactly that kind of puzzle. 

OTOH, there's no reason that a game, even an introspective one, has to be
all about a single idea (Terry and father.) The scene *does* fit in in the
sense of exploring Terry's head, and aspects of personality (abstract
versus verbal, or what's annoyingly labelled "left-brain" versus
"right-brain".) I took it in that sense. But since it's the first scene 
that *doesn't* relate to the childhood/father experience, and it occurs 
fairly late in the game, it jars.

On the whole idea of multiple outcomes, or even multiple middle-sections: 
I think it's pretty clear that you *can't* predict what's going to occur
later, or even notice that you have a choice. (When playing, I (1) did not
save Buddy; (2) opened the faerie cage; (3) clenched my fist at the end.
In each case, I either didn't know there was an alternative, or I assumed
all the alternatives would be disastrous (maybe because I tried a couple
of them.))

(The largest decisions, the university/hospital split and the math/verbal
split, are exceptions: it's pretty clear that you have two paths, and you
can try both of them.)

But for most of them, you're almost certain to just pick one and go on. 
So I'm really *not* willing to say that the different outcomes cast a 
more revealing light on the game. It's not a single story where you can 
compare different views of the end; it's several stories, and the 
author shows you one of them. I liked the story I got, but people are 
talking about a scene with puppet-strings; well, that wasn't in the story 
I got, so it doesn't figure into my opinion of LYG.

I'm not being completely consistent about this. I went back and played 
all four of the large scenes (university, hospital, and then math, 
verbal.) I did this deliberately. I did both forms of Fit 2 before I 
tried to finish Fit 3; and while I "won" (hit the Epilog, anyway) after 
playing the math scene, I then went back and played the verbal scene. And 
I figure all of that into my idea of "what LYG was."

But I didn't go back and try the other options I mentioned above. (In fact
I did try a couple, but it was just too much work. I got stuck trying to
make the dolls work a second time; I couldn't figure out what invoked the
cat/dog/music series of questions as opposed to the introvert/extrovert/
painting series. I didn't get up to the ending a second time.)

Oh, and I don't see anything particularly redeeming in the father. When he
hits you, and then looks shocked and apologetic, I read that as classic
abuse behavior. It may be sincere, but he'll do it again. 

--Z

-- 

"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the
borogoves..."


From lpsmith@rice.edu Tue Feb 24 09:43:42 MET 1998
Article: 30825 of rec.games.int-fiction
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From: lpsmith@rice.edu (Lucian Paul Smith)
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: What's wrong with Journey?
Date: 23 Feb 1998 23:22:23 GMT
Organization: Rice University, Houston, Texas
Lines: 52
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Paul Francis Gilbert (pfg@yallara.cs.rmit.EDU.AU) wrote:

: I got tripped up by this several times.. the worst was I finally got to
: almost the ending, I was at the island and I think I had to levitate, but
: didn't have enough ingredients left to do it. At that point, I gave up in
: disgust.

This is a common misconception about Journey; one that persists in the
archive walkthrough, even.


****SPOILERS for Journey Below****





















The 'lightning bolt' spell you need to cast at the very end has a variable
recipe.  You can find out what that recipe is by casting 'lightning' at
the stump as Praxis earlier in the game.  If you want to save on reagents,
you can cast 'tremor' instead, but you must cast lightning at some point
to figure out the recipe.  If you keep track of the color and coarseness
of powders mentioned as Praxis casts spells, you can figure out which
element is which reagent.  The section where you can journey on down the
tunnel if you want to get extra elements will give you the elements you
need (either three waters or two waters and an air, I think--in the former
case, you'll need a water to cast lightning, in the latter you'll need
air.)

In any event, the common lament that 'I needed air to cast lightning at
the end, but I was out' is wrong--if you're out of air, chances are you
need water, instead.

I should play this again, if only to make a better walkthrough at GMD,...

-Lucian


From s590501@tfh-berlin.de Sun Mar  1 17:31:43 MET 1998
Article: 30944 of rec.games.int-fiction
From: "Miron Schmidt" <s590501@tfh-berlin.de>
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: [Announcement] 1998 Berlin IF-Days
Date: 19 Feb 98 11:50:30 +0100
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Xref: news.lth.se rec.games.int-fiction:30944

On the first weekend of July this year, 980703 - 980705, a special event will
take place in Berlin:

        The First Completely Unofficial and Irregular
        German Interactive Fiction Meeting 1998

Presented to you by Manuel Schulz <101346.3310@compuserve.com> and myself
<miron@comports.com>; and sponsored by the Museum of Computer and Video
Games.

CE Forman will visit Berlin at that time, and we thought we might as well
make it sort of an event.

So -- those of you oversea-ers who thought of visiting this country anyway:
here's a reason. (Europeans are also invited, I'm pleased to announce.)

If you're interested, please drop us a line; preferably both of us. In case
this arouses enough interest, we'll post more details.


--
Miron Schmidt <miron@comports.com>                       PGP key on request

WATCH TV... MARRY AND REPRODUCE... OBEY... PLAY INTERACTIVE FICTION...



From s590501@tfh-berlin.de Sun Mar  1 17:31:49 MET 1998
Article: 30798 of rec.games.int-fiction
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From: "Miron Schmidt" <s590501@tfh-berlin.de>
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: [IF-Days 98] Further developments
Date: 22 Feb 98 18:30:53 +0100
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Xref: news.lth.se rec.games.int-fiction:30798

Concerning

        The First Completely Unofficial and Irregular
        German Interactive Fiction Meeting 1998 in Berlin,

presented to you by Manuel Schulz <101346.3310@compuserve.com> and myself
<miron@comports.com>; and sponsored by the Museum of Computer and Video
Games,

we have finalised the programme.

Friday, July 3, 1998
        1400    Welcome meeting at the Museum
        1600    Barbecue and party -- a surprise publication shall be
                revealed here
        0000    Introduction to the Berlin public transport system (i.e.,
                how you get home at that time)

Saturday, July 4, 1998
        1000    Breakfast at the Museum
        1200    Leisure period
        1600    Discussion about IF: we'll have at least two readings by
                Stefan Porombka and Stuart Allen -- if you have ideas for
                readings, just tell us; there's enough room for three or
                four
        2100    Real-life MUD event: tell the ifMUD residents how great an
                experience the meeting is
        0100    Recollection of the Berlin public transport system

Sunday, July 5, 1998
        1000    Breakfast at the Museum
        1200    Guided tour to the city
        1600    Official end of the Meeting; for those who want, the tour
                will carry on to the more obscure parts of Berlin
        0200    Definite end of the meeting

Those from oversea regions should bear in mind that they will possibly
encounter a jetlag -- some kind of party-killer --, so try to arrive a day
early.

We will not provide sleeping places, but we will get a list of possibilities
and try to make sure that all can stay at the same place. Those who want to
take that opportunity are required to inform us by early April.

Current list of attendants:
        Stuart Allen
        C.E. Forman
        Rene Gambke
        Bernhard Monien
        Miron Schmidt
        Peter Schoen
        Manuel Schulz

If you're interested in participating, drop us a note -- preferably both
of us.


--
Miron Schmidt <miron@comports.com>                       PGP key on request

WATCH TV... MARRY AND REPRODUCE... OBEY... PLAY INTERACTIVE FICTION...



From jcompton@typhoon.xnet.com Sun Mar  1 17:31:56 MET 1998
Article: 30885 of rec.games.int-fiction
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From: jcompton@typhoon.xnet.com (Jason Compton)
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Update on IF CD project
Date: 26 Feb 1998 18:18:22 GMT
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Xref: news.lth.se rec.games.int-fiction:30885

CU Amiga's editor has finally given me the actual assignment for the IF
feature I've been pitching for over a year.  At this point, it will be a 3
page article in the May 1998 issue.

With the help of John Francis' list of authors and CD permissions, I'll be
sending off the material for the CD.  Last time I checked it had become
pretty comprehensive, and I may simply decide to follow it verbatim.  My
guess is that I'll still include some games from unreachable authors,
because I do still feel that this should be an inclusive project--although
I'm not going to defend that violently anymore.

I'll also be putting together the cross-platform (i.e. non-Amiga) tools to
make it more worth purchasing for everyone else.  At this point, I plan to
include at least one Z-Machine and TADS (where applicable) interpreter for
each machine.  I would like to include Inform for all platforms--we'll see
if I'm given enough space.

Many '97 competition authors wanted to submit bugfixed versions of their
games.  Now would be a wonderful time to do so.

When we get a little closer I'll give everyone information on how to find
or order CU Amiga, so everyone who wants an IF CD can finally have one.

-- 
Jason Compton                                jcompton@xnet.com
Editor-in-Chief, Amiga Report Magazine       VP, Legacy Maker Inc.
http://www.cucug.org/ar/                     http://www.xnet.com/~jcompton/
Choose and renounce...                       throwing chains to the floor. 


From d91tan@rama.docs.uu.se Tue Mar  3 12:26:19 MET 1998
Article: 31002 of rec.games.int-fiction
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Who was the first to solve Colossal Cave?
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From: Torbj|rn Andersson <d91tan@rama.docs.uu.se>
Date: 03 Mar 1998 10:02:52 +0100
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Xref: news.lth.se rec.games.int-fiction:31002

"Jeremy" <Jblosser@nospam.dallas.net> wrote:

> I'm thinking it was somebody famous (probably a programmer). But the answer
> escapes my mind, and its driving me crazy!
> 
> Can anyone help out here?

It doesn't quite answer your question, but an article in Your
Computer, March 1987, said (if I transcribed it correctly) that:

     In 1977 _Adventure_ swept the ARPAnet. Willie Crowther was the
   original author but Don Woods expanded the game and released it on
   an unsuspecting network. When Adventure arrived at MIT the reaction
   was typical. Everyone spent a good deal of time doing nothing
   except trying to solve the game. It is estimated that Adventure set
   the entire computer industry back two weeks. Naturally the true
   lunatics began to think of how they could do it better. One was
   Bruce Daniels, who was the first person to get the last point, even
   though he had to examine the game with a machine language debugger
   as there was no other way to do it.

Torbjrn


From forbes@ravenna.com Tue Mar  3 18:17:08 MET 1998
Article: 31005 of rec.games.int-fiction
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From: forbes@ravenna.com (Scott Forbes)
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Who was the first to solve Colossal Cave?
Date: Tue, 03 Mar 1998 06:49:31 -0600
Organization: Lucent Technologies
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Xref: news.lth.se rec.games.int-fiction:31005

In article <uc9en0kw3ib.fsf@Rama.DoCS.UU.SE>, Torbj|rn Andersson
<d91tan@rama.docs.uu.se> wrote:

> "Jeremy" <Jblosser@nospam.dallas.net> wrote:
> 
> > I'm thinking it was somebody famous (probably a programmer). But the answer
> > escapes my mind, and its driving me crazy!
> > 
> > Can anyone help out here?
> 
> It doesn't quite answer your question, but an article in Your
> Computer, March 1987, said (if I transcribed it correctly) that:
> 
>[quote omitted]

The quote is originally from an article by Tim Anderson titled "The
History of Zork," which appeared in the Winter 1985 _The New Zork Times_. 
Tim goes on to say that Adventure had been solved (and work begun on Zork)
by May 1977.  He doesn't say who on the MIT campus solved it, however, and
he implies that other places received the game before MIT did.

I don't really remember hearing someone step forward and claim to be the
first person to solve Adventure, so it's possible that this question has
no answer (other than "Don Woods," as someone half-jokingly suggested
elsethread).

-- 
Scott Forbes            forbes@ravenna.com


From forbes@ravenna.com Wed Mar  4 17:25:42 MET 1998
Article: 31025 of rec.games.int-fiction
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From: forbes@ravenna.com (Scott Forbes)
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Who was the first to solve Colossal Cave?
Date: Wed, 04 Mar 1998 07:16:56 -0600
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In article <Pine.SOL.3.96.980303223144.28665A-100000@titan.cc.wwu.edu>,
Matthew Murray <mmurray@cc.wwu.edu> wrote:

> On Tue, 3 Mar 1998, Scott Forbes wrote:
> > "[Zork's] last (lousy) point was a tribute to the final point in the
> > original Adventure, which involved leaving a particular object in a
> > particular room for no particular reason."
> >     -- Tim Anderson, "The History of Zork," Spring 1985 _New Zork Times_
> 
>         And exactly which point was this in Zork?

Tim's only comment was "The major difference between [Adventure's Last
Lousy Point] and our version (a stamp worth One Lousy Point) is that it
would be harder to find ours without the source of the game."  An
illustration on the same page shows an ASCII rendition of a "Spelunker
Today" postage stamp, which may be a clue.

I'm fairly sure the Last Lousy Point was in the mainframe Zork only,
though, and not in any of the microcomputer Zorks.

-- 
Scott Forbes            forbes@ravenna.com


From jdsmith@shell.wco.com Thu Mar  5 13:57:27 MET 1998
Article: 31035 of rec.games.int-fiction
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From: Jesse Smith <jdsmith@shell.wco.com>
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Who was the first to solve Colossal Cave?
Date: 04 Mar 1998 01:01:47 -0800
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Matthew Murray <mmurray@cc.wwu.edu> writes:

> On Tue, 3 Mar 1998, Scott Forbes wrote:
> 
> > "[Zork's] last (lousy) point was a tribute to the final point in the
> > original Adventure, which involved leaving a particular object in a
> > particular room for no particular reason."
> >     -- Tim Anderson, "The History of Zork," Spring 1985 _New Zork Times_
> 
> 	And exactly which point was this in Zork?

The brass bauble.  The interview I read has someone asking Lebling or
Blank "Hey!  I bet you guys put in something sneaky with the
clockwork canary!", to which the implementor coughed and said
"Um... yes, of course" and then quickly scurried over to his terminal
to code up the brass bauble puzzle.

-- 
Jesse Smith
jdsmith@wco.com
http://www.wco.com/~jdsmith/
"God's in His Heaven; all's right with the world." - Robert Browning


From earendil@faeryland.TAMU-Commerce.edu Thu Mar  5 13:59:28 MET 1998
Article: 31028 of rec.games.int-fiction
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Who was the first to solve Colossal Cave?
References: <6dfo9v$5k5$1@usenet52.supernews.com> <forbes-0303982341190001@msf-5.pr.mcs.net> <Pine.SOL.3.96.980303223144.28665A-100000@titan.cc.wwu.edu> <s5mlnuq4yo4.fsf@shell.wco.com>
Reply-To: earendil@faeryland.TAMU-Commerce.edu
Organization: Gee Library, Texas A&M at Commerce
From: earendil@faeryland.tamu-commerce.edu (Allen Garvin)
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Xref: news.lth.se rec.games.int-fiction:31028

In article <s5mlnuq4yo4.fsf@shell.wco.com>,
Jesse Smith  <jdsmith@shell.wco.com> wrote:
    Matthew Murray <mmurray@cc.wwu.edu> writes:
        On Tue, 3 Mar 1998, Scott Forbes wrote:
 
              "[Zork's] last (lousy) point was a tribute to the final
              point in the original Adventure, which involved leaving a
              particular object in a particular room for no particular
              reason."
                  -- Tim Anderson, "The History of Zork," Spring 1985
                  _New Zork Times_
 
 	And exactly which point was this in Zork?

    The brass bauble.  The interview I read has someone asking Lebling or
    Blank "Hey!  I bet you guys put in something sneaky with the clockwork
    canary!", to which the implementor coughed and said "Um... yes,
    of course" and then quickly scurried over to his terminal to code
    up the brass bauble puzzle.

Spoiler from Dungeon (not that you'll ever figure it out on your own).


That's the last point(s) in Zork, but the quote actually referred to the
last point in Dungeon, where on the matchbook in FDC#3, there's the little
ad asking you to send for a free brochure so you can learn all about the
exciting careers available in paper-shuffling.

Well, then you type "send for brochure" and the next time you go to the
house, you'll find a brochure in the mailbox.  Affixed to the brochure is
the following stamp, which gives you one point:

			  +--v----v----v----v----v--+
			  |         _______         |
			  >  One   /       \     G  <
			  | Lousy /         \    U  |
			  > Point |   ___   |    E  <
			  |       |  (___)  |       |
			  >       <--)___(-->    P  <
			  |       / /     \ \    o  |
			  >      / /       \ \   s  <
			  |     |-|---------|-|  t  |
			  >     | |  \ _ /  | |  a  <
			  |     | | --(_)-- | |  g  |
			  >     | |  /| |\  | |  e  <
			  |     |-|---|_|---|-|     |
			  >      \ \__/_\__/ /      <
			  |       _/_______\_       |
			  >      |  f.m.i.c. |      <
			  |      -------------      |
			  >                         <
			  |   Donald Woods, Editor  |
			  >     Spelunker Today     <
			  |                         |
			  +--^----^----^----^----^--+

Actually, it's not necessarily the "last" point.  You can send for the
brochure at any time in the game, even the first turn.

An interesting note is that in all three commercial Zork's, there is
a command "send for", even though there is nothing you for which you
can send at any time.  This puzzle was completely removed, and didn't
again see the light of day until the beginning sequence of Sorcerer.
Thankfully, there are a few more clues at that point.




-- 
Allen Garvin                                      kisses are a better fate
---------------------------------------------     than wisdom
earendil@faeryland.tamu-commerce.edu          
http://faeryland.tamu-commerce.edu/~earendil         	      e e cummings


From tvantigh@shaw.wave.ca Thu Mar  5 14:00:14 MET 1998
Article: 31042 of rec.games.int-fiction
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Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
To: Ryan Brooks <ryan@inc.net>
Subject: Re: Old 99/4a game "Adventure"?
References: <34FDD080.7CDF8D1@inc.net>
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Ryan Brooks wrote:

> Anyone remember the old cart-based text adventure on the TI, which I
> think was called "Adventure".  It was a sort of pirate & Caribbean
> theme.   I recall it being a lot of fun...  has this been ported to
> Z-code or anything else I can run these days?

There was a cartridge called "Adventure" which was an Scott Adams
Interpreter for the TI-99/4A.  The games were available on cassette
or disk.

Another cartridge called "Return to Pirates Island" was also produced,
this was the first graphical Scott Adams game on the TI.  All the data
was stored in the catridge ROM which made it a stand alone product
only.

If you're using a PC you can find a TI-99/4A emulator called V9T9 on
the Internet.  Or purchase a program called PC99 and the virtual modules

>from CADD Electronics.  CADD has gotten a licensing agreement from
Texasm Instruments to produce all the cartrdges and programs that they
made for the TI-99/4A as PC images for their emulator.

Here's some links you can use to find it V9T9 or the CADD ordering
information:
   "http://w3.gwis.com/~polivka/994apg.html"
   "http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Acropolis/7382/tiemu.htm"



From jfrancis@dungeon.engr.sgi.com Thu Mar  5 14:07:50 MET 1998
Article: 30894 of rec.games.int-fiction
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From: jfrancis@dungeon.engr.sgi.com (John Francis)
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: let's rally to Activision!!! (?)
Date: 26 Feb 1998 22:22:41 GMT
Organization: Silicon Graphics, Inc., Mountain View, CA
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In article <Eozzs8.FqK@undergrad.math.uwaterloo.ca>,
Joe Mason <jcmason@undergrad.math.uwaterloo.ca> wrote:
>In article <19980226040400.XAA03489@ladder03.news.aol.com>,
>Ens TAW2 <enstaw2@aol.com> wrote:
>>
>>That's the one with 22 games on it, right?  At the time they released that I
>>didn't have access to a CD-ROM drive.  And for some reason they dropped it off
>>the face of the earth shortly after I read the review.  I haven't seen any
>>software store with it for a long time; perhaps it could be the area I live in.
>> I'd love to buy a rereleased bundle like Masterpieces, but it probably
>>wouldn't make it to my area in good quantity anyway.  If it's freeware, though,
>>they might put it on the Internet...  I have no trouble getting it there.
>
>32, I believe.  Try http://www.cdroms-online.com (oops!  Do I have that address
>right?)  They've stockpiled a fair amount, I believe.
>
>We have some quite good used software guys that show up here every Wednesday.
>I asked them yesterday if they had Zork Nemesis, since I figure the price
>should be down enough to be in my budget (last time I asked out of the blue,
>"Hey, do you have Masterpieces of Infocom?" they pulled it out from under the
>counter.  Don't know why they didn't have it displayed, but I was happy
>anyway.)  Anyway, I was quite annoyed to find out the only way to get it was
>for about $50, bundled with RTZ and Zork I-III.  Since I just bought Zork I-III
>from them on Masterpieces (not to mention they're free at Activision's web
>site) and I just SOLD RTZ to them last week, I really wasn't interested.
>
>Joe

It's $39 from http://www.cdaccess.com, if you just want Nemesis.  For an
extra $3 you can get the Zork Legacy Collection bundle.

That's assuming you want the full retail package.  They also have just the
CD (no manuals) for $19.  Does that fit your price bracket?
-- 
John Francis  jfrancis@sgi.com       Silicon Graphics, Inc.
(650)933-8295                        2011 N. Shoreline Blvd. MS 43U-991
(650)933-4692 (Fax)                  Mountain View, CA   94043-1389
Unsolicited electronic mail will be subject to a $100 handling fee.


From lconrad@lane.k12.or.us Thu Mar  5 14:08:02 MET 1998
Article: 30954 of rec.games.int-fiction
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From: lconrad@lane.k12.or.us (Lelah Conrad)
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Where to buy Masterpieces of Infocom
Date: Sun, 01 Mar 1998 16:02:05 GMT
Organization: Oregon Public Networking
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Xref: news.lth.se rec.games.int-fiction:30954

On Sat, 28 Feb 1998 14:33:09 -0800, ivan@NOSPAMcockrumville.com (Ivan
Cockrum) wrote:

>In article <6d4d5f$3fo11@fido.asd.sgi.com>, jfrancis@dungeon.engr.sgi.com
>(John Francis) wrote:
>
>> It's available from www.cdromsonline.com (who also have the LTOI collections)
>
>Has anyone looked at their Infocom page recently?
>
>   http://www.cdromsonline.com/infocom.htm
>
 
Yikes!  Price has gone up quite a bit there on LTO1 (51.99 listed
today!) since I purchased last year.  People would be wise to also
check at:

http://www.mrcdrom.com/

where I see it still listed for 9.99! 


ummm ... good idea to search around folks!


Lelah


From erkyrath@netcom.com Mon Mar  9 11:12:10 MET 1998
Article: 31097 of rec.games.int-fiction
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
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From: erkyrath@netcom.com (Andrew Plotkin)
Subject: Re: Spider and Web
Message-ID: <erkyrathEpEyH3.4q8@netcom.com>
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Dylan O'Donnell (dylanw@demon.net) wrote:
> In article <3500320c.0@d2o201.telia.com>,
> Ola Sverre Bauge <osb@bu.telia.no> wrote:
> [Spider and Web not-very-spoilers, but to be on the safe side...]



















> >On an entirely on-topic note, did anyone else notice the "two moons"
> >motif in Spider and Web, on the seascape sketch in the interrogator's
> >office?  Sounds familiar...

> I suspect this is a reference/homage to Guy Gavriel Kay (Tigana,
> A Song for Arbonne, etc), whose worlds in each book also each have two
> moons, but are otherwise not particularly connected (they may be the
> same, but there's nothing to prove it either way). Zarf's gone on
> record as being a Kay fan.

I'm a huge Kay fan, but I'd completely forgotten that he had two moons.

(Actually, a much stronger connection between Kay's worlds is that they
all share the myth of Fionavar (or "Finvair", etc) as a perfect or central
or original world.)

I will neither confirm nor deny that the two moons in that sketch refer to
anything. But if they did, it would be my own work. :)

The seascape sketch itself is a reference to a work not my own, but I 
don't really expect anyone to get it. Not even if I point out that 'sea 
escape' is a valid synonym for the object. 

--Z

-- 

"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the
borogoves..."


From mordacai@ix.netcom.com Wed Mar 11 14:25:08 MET 1998
Article: 31101 of rec.games.int-fiction
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From: IF <mordacai@ix.netcom.com>
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: A Short Review of "Spider and Web"
Date: Fri, 06 Mar 1998 16:06:05 -0700
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    To begin with, S&W is very probably the best game, graphic or text,
that I have played this year.  I urge everyone, no matter what your
taste in games, to play this one.  This review therefore will probably
be a bit one sided, as I can't find a single thing wrong with the piece,
but pleanty to applaud.  I assure you though that all these accolades
are sincere.  I have rarely been so impressed by any game that it has
moved me to share my opinions with others.
    First, I want to personally thank Mr. Plotkin on two counts.  One,
that the game is relatively short.  I have stayed away from playing many
games that have tantalized me (Grip, Jigsaw) because I know I don't have
the time to put into that.  While I was wary, I did plunge into S&W and
solved it after only four solid hours of playing.  That, to me, is the
ideal game length:  fufilling, but not to the extent that it absorbs
your life.  Moreover, the way it is devided made me feel better.  You
have a narrow initial field of view to begin, which relived me.  Worlds
that start off too large (Mercy seemed to strike me this way) scare me
off quickly, as they seem to require more time and thought.  The game of
course widens, but at no time did I feel overwhelmed.
    This brings me to my second personal thank-you:  The puzzles.  They
were well crafted, detailed, and completely fair.  I am not good at
solving puzzles at all, which is my one problem with computer games in
general; I always end up turning to the walkthrough and feeling guilty.
These puzzles however I solved all on my own, except for one, which I
found help for on rgif.  I'm not saying the puzzles are easy, but they
are set up in a wonderfully forgiving fashion (quite unlike what I am
used to from Mr. Plotkin).  Hard puzzles, like largeness often scare me
away from games (hence why I never finished So Far) but these drew me
in.
    On to other points then.  The writing was superb, especially the
main NPC, who was drawn with amazing clarity.  Paradoxically, the trick
of limiting PC/NPC interaction, which fits seemlessly into the story
(integration Mr. Plotkin, well done), expands hugely the character's
potential.
    And now comes the plot, the main thing I consider when I think about
a game.  This is however the hardest thing for me to comment on, without
giving something away, because the plot takes a huge turn within the
first ten moves, and continues to do so with clock-like accuracy
throughout the game.  All your questions will be answered, all the loose
ends tied up in the end (if you pay close enough attention) but be
warned the plot has more surprises up it's sleeve than any other IF
piece I can think of, and there are more red herrings than swim in the
Red Sea.  When it comes to sheer storytelling ability, Mr. Plotkin is a
master of the form, and this is his masterpiece to date.
    So, how does it compare with his other games?  Well, to begin with,
it restores the gaming conventions he removed in his earlier works, his
most "traditional" piece in certain areas, but he then goes on to screw
with other gaming conventions (cronology, PC behavior) that he's
previously left alone.  This does not upset the balance of the piece,
but instead work briliantly within the story's framework to create a new
gaming experience.  The game is much more 'fair' than his previous
works, and therefore I think more generally accessible.
    All in all, I can not praise this work enough, it is one of the real
classics of the genre.

Ian Finley
the "Oh, I'm a reviewer now" Newbie



From adam@princeton.edu Wed Mar 11 14:26:06 MET 1998
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From: adam@princeton.edu (Adam J. Thornton)
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: A Short Review of "Spider and Web"
Date: 7 Mar 1998 20:29:14 GMT
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Spoilers Below.



























I'd like to write a detailed review, and I probably will, for SPAG or
XYZZYNews or something.  But this isn't it.

Does anyone remember that thread a few months back, where someone wondered
whether _Groundhog Day_ didn't seem like IF?

Well, what Zarf has done is written _Groundhog Day_ as IF.  He made an
interesting point to me that there's a difference, in that in this one, you
have to get everything *wrong*, but the motif of "do it over and over until
you get it right" is there.  That said, it's probably the last game of its
sort in this genre.  I'm sure that C.E. Forman is going to jump in and
remind us that _Delusions_ did it first--but _Spider and Web_ was a lot
less frustrating than _Delusions_ and, I think, carried it off better.

There is one trick in _Spider and Web_ that I think and hope we will be
seeing more of.  It's not exactly brand-new, since I know it occurs at
least in _Asylum_ and _HHGTTG_, but the Unreliable Narrator is a really
cool device.  

I admit that I got to see this game a little longer than most of the rest
of you--I was an omega tester.  And I got stuck at the end, when I couldn't
find my gun.  This despite the fact that I had examined the wall over the
cabinet a little earlier.  I just couldn't figure out the ceiling panel
thing. 

The two puzzles involving the grille are the ones I expect to see
criticized as unfair--their solution is deliberately obscure and relies on
examining something that's never described.  But again, that's exactly the
point: the grilles are simply part of the background noise, and no one ever
thinks to look there.

The puzzle involving the voice transmitter is one of the finest I've ever
seen.  Incredibly subtle, yet all the clues are there.

The only other thought I want to put down right now is that it's really
cool to see an exciting Cold War spy story in which, although there's tons
of action, intrigue, hostility, and antagonism, no one gets killed or even
seriously injured.  Really.  Check it out: total body count zero.  Six
(maybe more depending on what really happened right before the
protagonist's capture) guards unconscious from stun-guns, one from
temporary neurotoxin, one officer with a nasty headache.

Interesting to contrast that with Zero Sum Game.

Adam
-- 
adam@princeton.edu    Cynical and drunk and boring someone in some dark cafe


From graham@gnelson.demon.co.uk Thu Mar 19 21:57:21 MET 1998
Article: 31570 of rec.games.int-fiction
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From: Graham Nelson <graham@gnelson.demon.co.uk>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction,rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Is INFORM Year 2000 Compliant?
Date: Thu, 19 Mar 1998 13:29:45 +0000 (GMT)
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In article <6e7a40$s7l$1@goanna.cs.rmit.edu.au>, Paul Francis Gilbert
<URL:mailto:pfg@cs.rmit.edu.au> wrote:
> > >Graham? Is the INFORM system year 2000 compatible?
> 
> >I'm not Graham, but nope it isn't.  But, it shouldn't be a prob until 2081
> >or so since no Infocom games were released ntil the early 80s.
> 
> I was taking the year 2000 question on Inform slightly different. I don't
> see any problem with having a two digit date for Inform, since it is
> after all a convention to use the serial string for storing the date as
> opposed to a requirement.
> 
> What I'm wondering is whether Inform will actually crash, or write 
> garbage digits (such as AA for example) in the year field when 2000 arrives.

The relevant Inform code is:

extern void write_serial_number(char *buffer)
{
    /*  Note that this function may require modification for "ANSI" compilers
        which do not provide the standard time functions: what is needed is
        the ability to work out today's date */

    time_t tt;  tt=time(0);
    if (serial_code_given_in_program)
        strcpy(buffer, serial_code_buffer);
    else
#ifdef TIME_UNAVAILABLE
        sprintf(buffer,"970000");
#else
        strftime(buffer,10,"%y%m%d",localtime(&tt));
#endif
}

and this will be year-2000 compliant if and only if the C
compiler's implementations of time(0) and strftime()
are year-2000 compliant.  On 31 December 1999, the serial code
will be 991231 (I am tempted to compile a special edition of
Jigsaw that night).  On 1 January 2000, it will be 000101.

-- 
Graham Nelson | graham@gnelson.demon.co.uk | Oxford, United Kingdom



From enstaw2@aol.com Fri Mar 20 13:15:36 MET 1998
Article: 31580 of rec.games.int-fiction
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From: enstaw2@aol.com (Ens TAW2)
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Opinion poll (sp)
Date: 20 Mar 1998 02:23:56 GMT
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>>1.Most text adventures have cheats (yes/no)?
>
>Yes.
>
>(Note the difference with the other replies you've been getting.)
>
>Actually, no.  But a fair number do.  For instance, Inform has a number of
>"debugging verbs" which can be compiled in. These include "purloin", which
>can
>instantly take any object in the game, "goto", which moves to any location,
>and
>"tree", which lists the entire object tree.  A fair number of authors release
>games without taking the debugging verbs out, so (for instance) they work in
>a
>lot of the Inform games from Comp97.  (You can tell if debugging is active 
>because there will be a capital D printed after the game banner.)
>
>Also, I believe in the Infocom text adventures you can still use the
>Implementors' debugging verbs.  They have weird names and usually start with
>"$" or something like that.

For those who use AGT there's some commands too, which are sometimes avalable. 
They are pretty self-explanatory.  This isn't really a spoiler; you don't have
to use these, so I'll post them for you:
Listnouns - Lists all active objects
Listcreatures - Lists all creatures; posibly hostility or friendliness too
Listrooms - Lists all locations
Movenoun {Carriage Return}
Enter noun number:
Enter room number to move to:
[ Note: Moving to room 1 automatically places in your inventory, I believe. 
Room 1000 makes you wear it.  Don't use this with something not intended to be
worn ;-)]
Movecreature: [See above]
Moveplayer: [See above]



From bradds@concentric.net Fri Mar 20 13:28:00 MET 1998
Article: 31579 of rec.games.int-fiction
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From: "Bradd W. Szonye" <bradds@concentric.net>
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Opinion poll (sp)
Date: Thu, 19 Mar 1998 20:18:57 -0500
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Brian (THE DEVIL) wrote:
> 
> Answer these questions so I can become more familiar with text and
> graphical adventures:
> 
> 1.Most text adventures have cheats (yes/no)?

Not in the way that Doom, Tomb Raider, or Civilization have cheats, but
there are some exceptions. Some games have bugs which are effectively
cheats; others have debugging commands left in; many have Easter Eggs
which aren't exactly cheats but are in the same spirit.

> 2.What text game do you like the most?

I won't pick just one, but I'll tell you about several favorites:

Zork was my first (circa 1982), and has a special place in my heart; the
same goes for The Count by Scott Adams (not the cartoonist). They aren't
the best text games, but they're good and were fantastic at the time. I
also enjoyed Enchanter, the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and
Leather Goddesses of Phobos in my youth. Recently, I picked up Nord &
Bert Couldn't Make Head or Tail of It (for the first time in years), and
it's just as entertaining as it was years ago.

My all-time favorite classic game is Zork III, partly because I loved
its puzzles and partly because it's one of the few I (nearly) solved
entirely on my own.

Among games I've played recently, my three favorites are (in order):
1. Spider and Web
2. The Edifice
3. Interstate Zero

Spider & Web is a fantastic spy game, which I enjoyed immensely even
though I read a few major spoilers before playing it. I think that says
a lot for the game: even with lots of puzzle help and a couple major
surprises given away, I still loved the game. No letdowns.

The Edifice has the best puzzles I've seen in ages. The language puzzle
deserves all the hype it gets; I can't describe the joy of learning even
a simple language from scratch, especially as a game puzzle. My only
letdown was the ending, which made it feel like you'd missed something;
I went searching for ages for the last "point." (For some reason, I
thought there were seven levels to the game, but there are only three,
and there is no fourth point.)

I-0 has a great setting and some great (if farcical) characters. As a
game, it's a bit frustrating, because you spend a lot of time just
waiting; also, you can stumble onto at least one of the "solutions"
purely by chance. I think that I-0 is a bit overhyped because of its
sexual theme, but it's still a game I'd highly recommend. My girlfriend,
who HATES games, enjoyed I-0. Her only complaints were about the
inherent limitations of text games (newbie frustration) and the general
unwillingness of strangers to help Tracy.

> 3.Which text game do you think's the worst?

Classics:

I didn't like Suspended, because I thought it was horribly unfair, and
the game mechanics are extremely awkward. If you like puzzles, it's good
(the whole game's one big puzzle), but if you like stories, pass on it.

I didn't like Zork Zero, because it was too easy, because the game had
mediocre semi-graphical elements grafted onto a mediocre plot, and
because it had on-line hints. Some people love them, but I find them FAR
too tempting. If it's a game (and not "literary" IF), I like to solve it
myself; easy-to-get hints are a detriment to me. Just personal
preference. I liked Beyond Zork even less, because it was too hard and
the "Zork jokes" grew too tiresome.

I don't like any of Infocom's mysteries, because the puzzles are either
ridiculously easy or ridiculously hard, and the NPC interaction--which
is important in this kind of game--suffers too much from the limitations
of the form.

New games:

I hated Jigsaw. I couldn't get anywhere with it (except guessing right
about what to do in Serbia). I got a walkthrough; I basically had to
follow the walkthrough to get anywhere in the game, and a lot of the
puzzles seemed like arbitrary guesswork once I saw the answers. I really
hated the ambiguous gender thing. I generally saw White as female and
Black as male, but the characterization was so inconsistent that I just
ended up confused. I also didn't like the heavy use of external
references; requiring the player to look up the Morse code for CQD is
going too far, I think (especially since I didn't have an appropriate
reference book handy). While it's nice that the game attempts to be
gender neutral and it's heavily researched and "realistic," the effect
it had on me was that (1) I couldn't get a clear picture of the main
characters, and (2) I felt like it was too much like work to play.

> 4.Which graphical adventure's the best?

I got Zork: Grand Inquisitor for my birthday, and loved it. I finished
the game far too quickly, but it was hilarious. The Infocom allusions
and Zork silliness that annoyed me in Zork Zero/Beyond Zork were just
perfect in this game. Solved it in about 16 hours without help.

I also enjoyed Zork: Nemesis quite a lot, although I needed Gamecenter's
walkthrough to get me through some of the tough spots. The mood was
excellent (when it was consistent), and the puzzles were very good. I
have only two quibbles: the Zork tie-in was thin and mostly annoying
(although I might not have bought it without the weight of the Zork
name), and the orchestra fanfare puzzle was an unfair test of mouse
dexterity.

I liked Phantasmagoria, which I've described in another article. I liked
7th Guest a bit too, even if it was just a rehash of classic puzzles
with a thin plot. (The only puzzles I didn't like in the 7th Guest were
the blob board game--which was a game, not a puzzle, and had too good of
a computer AI; my friends and I failed to win the game after days of
trying--and the maze, which was made tedious by annoying multimedia.
While 7th Guest is really just a "classic puzzle" collection disguised
beneath a thin veneer of weak plotting and slick graphics, it did evoke
a strong mood, and the puzzles were good classic puzzles.

I never really played the "classic" graphic adventures, so I can't do
them justice here. All I can say is that I didn't like the Sierra Online
series at all.

Somewhat related are RPGs; there's only one that I really liked, and
that was Ultima III. I don't want to go in depth, but that was a
wonderful game; it had a fun surprise at the end, wasn't too annoying,
and didn't try to graft on the fake plot and moral philosophy of later
Ultimas.

> 5.And which's the worst graphical adventure?

I'm tempted to put Hell: A Cyberpunk Something-or-Other here. The only
reason I don't is because it was so unmemorable. The game was promising
and had a good (if somewhat trite) story, but it still failed to hold my
interest; I never finished it. One thing I do remember: the hardest
puzzle was a game of chance that SEEMED like it had a logical "cheat"
solution but didn't; furthermore, the puzzle was a red herring (not
necessary to win) and took forever to guess at.

I'll also add Daggerfall, which is on the border between RPG and
graphical adventure game. This game had some great story elements and
great quests, but it was spoiled by too many long, winding random
dungeons that were basically impossible 3D mazes filled with nasty
monsters. The one big novel feature of this game was the
Colorforms-style inventory screen where you got to dress up your
adventurer; I spent more time buying clothes than equipment. Another
great feature was the full-stereo sound effects, that warned you not
only that baddies were coming but from which direction. Other than that,
I can't recommend much about this game.*

I haven't played many other graphical adventures, mostly because they're
too expensive given their relatively low signal-to-glitz ratio.

* Well, okay. There was ONE mini-quest that was absolutely awesome. You
got hired to carry a demon heart from one town to an alchemist in
another town--while being chased by the demon. At this point in the
game, you aren't tough enough to beat the demon. You can run a little
faster than the demon, but you don't know which shop is the alchemists.
Once you figure out what you're up against, you don't even have enough
time to save & restore. All this in real-time. My heart didn't slow down
for an hour after this.

This is probably more than you asked for, but I hope it helps!
-- 
Bradd W. Szonye
bradds@concentric.net
http://www.concentric.net/~Bradds

My reply address is correct as-is. The courtesy of providing a correct
reply address is more important to me than time spent deleting spam.


From Dennis.Matheson@transquest.com Sat Apr  4 14:19:30 MET DST 1998
Article: 32182 of rec.games.int-fiction
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From: Dennis.Matheson@transquest.com
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: TextFire demos
Date: Fri, 03 Apr 1998 17:15:01 -0600
Organization: Deja News - The Leader in Internet Discussion
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In article <6g3b22$i6q$1@flood.xnet.com>,
  jcompton@typhoon.xnet.com (Jason Compton) wrote:
>
> So I'm looking through Volker's GMD update, and come across
>
> ftp://ftp.gmd.de/if-archive/games/demos/12pack.zip
>    the TextFire 12-Pack, the first in a series of annual demonstration
>    packages by TextFire, Inc.
>
>>snip analysis of package<<

  Actually, I assumed this is an April Fools joke of some kind. As was
pointed out, it's strange that we've *never* heard of any of these people
before.  I can't run any of the TADS games (I get the message [An error has
occurred within TADS: unable to open game for reading])

  OTOH, the Inform games do run, they do exhibit a variety of styles, (and the
chessboard in Zugzwang is interesting.)

  OTOOH, the press release is a little too much; the QVC home shopping
network?  The annual Festival of Interactive Fiction in Piedmont, California?
 Signings in Europe?) Finally, InterNIC does not have a record of a "textfire"
domain being registered.

  So, I think it's a joke; but a very well done one.  Bravo someone!

-----== Posted via Deja News, The Leader in Internet Discussion ==-----
http://www.dejanews.com/   Now offering spam-free web-based newsreading


From jcompton@typhoon.xnet.com Sun Apr  5 10:14:52 MET DST 1998
Article: 32185 of rec.games.int-fiction
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From: jcompton@typhoon.xnet.com (Jason Compton)
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: TextFire demos
Date: 3 Apr 1998 18:50:42 GMT
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So I'm looking through Volker's GMD update, and come across

ftp://ftp.gmd.de/if-archive/games/demos/12pack.zip
   the TextFire 12-Pack, the first in a series of annual demonstration
   packages by TextFire, Inc.

(list of games follows)

And there's two intriguing things about the list.  First, they're all
games I've never heard of, and second, some of them appear to have
farcical names (Revenge of the Killer Surf Nazi Robot Babes from Hell,
Coma! An Interactive Action Thriller, The U.S. Men's Hockey Team Olympic
Challenge!, and so forth)

So I download it, and take a look.

A few observations:

- I haven't played all of the demos yet.  Those I have played have ranged
>from mildly amusing (Marjorie Hopkirk, Hockey, Revenge of the etc.) to
full-blown intriguing (Zugzwang) 

- These TextFire people sound like what they are--upstarts who have some
sort of hope and plan, imbued with the proper level of upstart enthusiasm,
to make IF commercially viable (if only as a sideline.)

- I've never heard of any of these people before.  I haven't fully
researched this yet but to my knowledge none of the people who have penned
a TextFire demo have any other work in the current GMD archive (no games,
no competition entries).  I also can't say I can recall reading any of
their posts on the r.?.i-f newsgroups (although, admittedly, I don't read
everything.)  This is a good thing, since it means there's at least 10 or
so other people in the world interested in writing IF.  But it is a bit
surprising: I expected to see a "recognized" author in an attempt to
promote commercial IF, or if for no other reason than the fact that
there's so many games and only so many active IF authors in the world.

- Why 16 demos in something called the 12-Pack?  Must be a tip of the hat
to the Hitchhiker's "Trilogy" or something.

- The authors each have a mini-bio, in which they explain how they got
involved with IF and TextFire.  A few mention Infocom, and one goes so far
as to condemn the Zork Trilogy as "bad."  I'm just waiting to see if any
sparks fly from this one...

- Too bad we don't have a slightly more flexible TADS interpreter on the
Amiga yet since these people seem to prefer it... (9 TADS, 1 Hugo, 6
Inform)

- I'm not sure exactly how much I'd be willing to pay to see more of games
like The U.S. Men's Hockey Team Olympic Challenge.  "Not much" leaps to
mind.  Ditto for Marjorie Hopkirk, The Inanimator (whose author has the
most unintentionally amusing bio), and, well, most of the other games.  It
would be like asking for money for Pick Up the Phone Booth and Die: I
love the game but it's not really what I'd call "marketable."  We'll just
have to see what their marketing strategy is...

I guess my conclusion would be "Bravo for more IF, it's nice to see
someone attempting to -do- something about marketing it rather than just
discussing it at length (see r.a.i-f), and I'd like to know more."

-- 
Jason Compton                                jcompton@xnet.com
Editor-in-Chief, Amiga Report Magazine       VP, Legacy Maker Inc.
http://www.cucug.org/ar/                     http://www.xnet.com/~jcompton/
Choose and renounce...                       throwing chains to the floor. 


From jcompton@typhoon.xnet.com Sun Apr  5 10:14:55 MET DST 1998
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From: jcompton@typhoon.xnet.com (Jason Compton)
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: TextFire demos
Date: 3 Apr 1998 23:38:34 GMT
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Dennis.Matheson@transquest.com wrote:
: 
:   Actually, I assumed this is an April Fools joke of some kind. As was
: pointed out, it's strange that we've *never* heard of any of these people
: before.  I can't run any of the TADS games (I get the message [An error has
: occurred within TADS: unable to open game for reading])

They run, that much I'm certain of.  (My Amiga client complaint is just
that it could be more configurable from a visual standpoint, but they are
real demos.)

I had considered that it was a joke--like I said, the names of the games
certainly did make it seem that way--but then I played them and I'm not so
sure. 

:   OTOH, the Inform games do run, they do exhibit a variety of styles, (and the
: chessboard in Zugzwang is interesting.)

That really got my attention.

:   OTOOH, the press release is a little too much; the QVC home shopping
: network?  The annual Festival of Interactive Fiction in Piedmont, California?
:  Signings in Europe?) Finally, InterNIC does not have a record of a "textfire"
: domain being registered.

They did say -first- annual, which is the sort of thing you say when
you're a zealous startup trying to get attention.  I, too, balked at QVC.

And since they didn't claim the domain was active yet I'm not sure
checking the registration proves anything... 

:   So, I think it's a joke; but a very well done one.  Bravo someone!

I haven't gotten any e-mail from perpetrators taunting me for falling for
it yet, but you may well be right.  Like I say, I was swayed back because
it looks like way too much work went into it to be a joke for the benefit
of a handful of r.?.i-f readers.  (And would you go so far as to claim to
be the niece of the author of Flowers for Algernon just to get a laugh?)

If it IS a joke, I think the congratulations are in order as much for
taking the time to write up 16 fake games as they are for coming up with
personalities for 10 fake people, and said perpetrator should try writing
games with NPCs in the future.

-- 
Jason Compton                                jcompton@xnet.com
Editor-in-Chief, Amiga Report Magazine       VP, Legacy Maker Inc.
http://www.cucug.org/ar/                     http://www.xnet.com/~jcompton/
Choose and renounce...                       throwing chains to the floor. 


From Dennis.Matheson@transquest.com Sun Apr  5 10:15:04 MET DST 1998
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From: Dennis.Matheson@transquest.com
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: TextFire demos
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In article <6g3rtq$mln$1@flood.xnet.com>,
  jcompton@typhoon.xnet.com (Jason Compton) wrote:
>
> Dennis.Matheson@transquest.com wrote:
> :
> :   Actually, I assumed this is an April Fools joke of some kind. As was
> : pointed out, it's strange that we've *never* heard of any of these people
> : before.  I can't run any of the TADS games (I get the message [An error
has
> : occurred within TADS: unable to open game for reading])
>
> They run, that much I'm certain of.  (My Amiga client complaint is just
> that it could be more configurable from a visual standpoint, but they are
> real demos.)
>

  Hmmm... I can't get them to work under WinTADS.  Maybe my ftp gliched... But
it's strange that the Inform games were ok.  Maybe I'll try downloading it
again.

> I had considered that it was a joke--like I said, the names of the games
> certainly did make it seem that way--but then I played them and I'm not so
> sure.
>

  I agree there.  I didn't expect anything to run and was surprised that they
did.

> :   OTOH, the Inform games do run, they do exhibit a variety of styles, (and
the
> : chessboard in Zugzwang is interesting.)
>
> That really got my attention.
>
> :   OTOOH, the press release is a little too much; the QVC home shopping
> : network?  The annual Festival of Interactive Fiction in Piedmont,
California?
> :  Signings in Europe?) Finally, InterNIC does not have a record of a
"textfire"
> : domain being registered.
>
> They did say -first- annual, which is the sort of thing you say when
> you're a zealous startup trying to get attention.  I, too, balked at QVC.
>
> And since they didn't claim the domain was active yet I'm not sure
> checking the registration proves anything...
>

  Points taken.  And it *is* a good name.

> :   So, I think it's a joke; but a very well done one.  Bravo someone!
>
> I haven't gotten any e-mail from perpetrators taunting me for falling for
> it yet, but you may well be right.  Like I say, I was swayed back because
> it looks like way too much work went into it to be a joke for the benefit
> of a handful of r.?.i-f readers.  (And would you go so far as to claim to
> be the niece of the author of Flowers for Algernon just to get a laugh?)
>

  If you notice I said "I *think* it's a joke". I'm not *sure* it's a joke. A
lot of work went into this (more than went into a good number of competition
entries, for example). The games displaying a variety of writing styles, which
strongly suggests several people working on it or even more effort on a single
person's part.
  It has also just occured to me that most of our writers tend to be either
Inform or TADS programmers exclusively. To do this, someone would have to have
at least a working knowledge of Inform, TADS, *and* Hugo.  Of course, several
people could have been involved, but by that point you actually have what
Textfire claims to be!
  I hadn't thought about Flowers for Algernon.  I did think that the
chessboard from Zugzwang was a bit elaborate to have developed just for a
joke.
  I'm still not convinced, but will accept the possibility that it is
legitimate. (In which case these people *really* need to pick a day other than
April 1 to announce themselves on.)

> If it IS a joke, I think the congratulations are in order as much for
> taking the time to write up 16 fake games as they are for coming up with
> personalities for 10 fake people, and said perpetrator should try writing
> games with NPCs in the future.

  Definite agreement there.

-----== Posted via Deja News, The Leader in Internet Discussion ==-----
http://www.dejanews.com/   Now offering spam-free web-based newsreading


From h0142kdd@joker.rz.hu-berlin.de Sun Apr  5 12:46:35 MET DST 1998
Article: 32183 of rec.games.int-fiction
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From: h0142kdd@joker.rz.hu-berlin.de (Paul David Doherty)
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: "count" in Zork: TUU
Date: 4 Apr 1998 10:56:03 +0200
Organization: Humboldt Universitaet Berlin
Lines: 12
Message-ID: <6g4sj3$ock@joker.rz.hu-berlin.de>
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In article <6g2567$cje$1@goanna.cs.rmit.edu.au>,
Paul Francis Gilbert <pfg@cs.rmit.edu.au> wrote:
>
>Ummm... what exactly do you mean by "count"? Do you mean as a command,
>which I've never heard of in an Infocom game

Infidel is the game where the implementors took the concept of counting
to the extreme. There you can not only do useful things like COUNT FINGERS
but also COUNT DRACULA, COUNT BASIE and so on...

-- Dave



From lucfrench@aol.com Sun Apr  5 12:47:24 MET DST 1998
Article: 32210 of rec.games.int-fiction
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From: lucfrench@aol.com (LucFrench)
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Oracularity for interactive fiction
Date: 5 Apr 1998 02:18:18 GMT
Lines: 23
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I just recieved this as a responce to a question to the Oracle...
(rec.humor.oracle is a refrence for this, I suppose)

The Internet Oracle has pondered your question deeply.
Your question was:

> xyzzyplughlagachbunyonzorkfrotzgnustoozmoosighfoobarquuxhohumzztmegazeux

And in response, thus spake the Oracle:

} > > xyzzyplughlagachbunyonzorkfrotzgnustoozmoosighfoobarquuxhohumzztmegazeux
} 
} Rock walls begin to materialize around you, but soon fade into nothingness.
} You start to hear a hollow voice, then it is cut off. A nearby oil painting
} winces. A wisp of magic flows through the air. At your service! There is
} a sudden flash of unbearably bright light, which fades to a more reasonable
} level. You don't have your spellbook. You feel prepared for Eternity.
} You let out a deep, hearty sigh. Bletch. Quuux. If you're bored, just
} say so. I don't think so!
} 
} 
} You owe the Oracle another Trinity. Or A Mind Forever Voyaging. Hell, 
} another Zork would be enough.


From jools@arnod.demon.co.uk Mon Apr  6 09:35:02 MET DST 1998
Article: 32219 of rec.games.int-fiction
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From: Julian Arnold <jools@arnod.demon.co.uk>
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: TextFire demos
Date: Sat, 4 Apr 1998 19:18:33 +0100
Organization: None, absolutely none
Message-ID: <ant0418330b0c4bn@arnod.demon.co.uk>
References: <6g3b22$i6q$1@flood.xnet.com> <6g3qhl$ul0$1@nnrp1.dejanews.com> <6g3rtq$mln$1@flood.xnet.com>
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In article <6g3rtq$mln$1@flood.xnet.com>, Jason Compton
<URL:mailto:jcompton@typhoon.xnet.com> wrote:
> I had considered that it was a joke--like I said, the names of the games
> certainly did make it seem that way--but then I played them and I'm not so
> sure. 

April Fools? If it is I'd have thought the effort of coding up 16
(admittedly very short, incomplete, demo) games far outweighs the
resulting "hilarity."

Anyway, I quite like what I've seen (I have played about half of them a
bit). An IF-based strategy/war game, as hinted at in _Bad Guys_, is
something I've often thought would be fun.

And any game that measures score in terms of "Dead Marjories" can't be
bad. :)

Still, none of the games so far have exactly been captivating.

Jools
-- 
"For small erections may be finished by their first architects; grand
ones, true ones, ever leave the copestone to posterity. God keep me from
ever completing anything." -- Herman Melville, "Moby Dick"



From jools@arnod.demon.co.uk Mon Apr  6 09:35:58 MET DST 1998
Article: 32232 of rec.games.int-fiction
From: Julian Arnold <jools@arnod.demon.co.uk>
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: TextFire demos
Date: Sun, 5 Apr 1998 23:12:41 +0100
Organization: None, absolutely none
Message-ID: <ant0522410b0c4bn@arnod.demon.co.uk>
References: <6g3b22$i6q$1@flood.xnet.com> <6g3qhl$ul0$1@nnrp1.dejanews.com> <6g3rtq$mln$1@flood.xnet.com> <ant0418330b0c4bn@arnod.demon.co.uk> <erkyrathEqyMzA.Lwt@netcom.com>
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Xref: news.lth.se rec.games.int-fiction:32232

In article <erkyrathEqyMzA.Lwt@netcom.com>, Andrew Plotkin
<URL:mailto:erkyrath@netcom.com> wrote:
> Julian Arnold (jools@arnod.demon.co.uk) wrote:
> 
> > April Fools? If it is I'd have thought the effort of coding up 16
> > (admittedly very short, incomplete, demo) games far outweighs the
> > resulting "hilarity."
> 
> Nothing's funny unless it's real. 
> 
> (My idea of a funny joke was "Lists" -- you have any idea how much time I
> put in writing the tutorial and the exercise-checking code?  But it
> wouldn't have been funny, otherwise.)

Fair and true comment. Must have been in a slightly sour mood the other
night.

Someone was bandying about names of possible perpetrators earlier--I
guess Joe Mason for the _Marjorie_ game (on the basis that he asked a
Hugo question out of the blue a few days ago).

Jools
-- 
"For small erections may be finished by their first architects; grand
ones, true ones, ever leave the copestone to posterity. God keep me from
ever completing anything." -- Herman Melville, "Moby Dick"



From tessman@remove-to-reply.interlog.com Mon Apr  6 09:37:28 MET DST 1998
Article: 32233 of rec.games.int-fiction
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From: tessman@remove-to-reply.interlog.com (Kent Tessman)
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: TextFire demos
Date: Mon, 06 Apr 98 11:30:28 GMT
Organization: The General Coffee Company Film Productions
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In article <ant0418330b0c4bn@arnod.demon.co.uk>,
   Julian Arnold <jools@arnod.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>In article <6g3rtq$mln$1@flood.xnet.com>, Jason Compton
><URL:mailto:jcompton@typhoon.xnet.com> wrote:
>> I had considered that it was a joke--like I said, the names of the games
>> certainly did make it seem that way--but then I played them and I'm not so
>> sure. 
>
>April Fools? If it is I'd have thought the effort of coding up 16
>(admittedly very short, incomplete, demo) games far outweighs the
>resulting "hilarity."

I didn't think there was much of a question.  I mean..."Coma!"?

I almost drowned in my coffee twice playing them this morning from unexpected 
chortling whilst drinking, so thanks to whoever took the time to do them.

But I'd hate to see the whole Hugo v2.5 graphics-and-sound-and-music version 
of "Marjorie".

--Kent

----------
Kent Tessman - The General Coffee Company Film Productions
http://www.geocities.com/hollywood/academy/5976/


From Dennis.Matheson@delta-air.com Mon Apr  6 09:37:44 MET DST 1998
Article: 32231 of rec.games.int-fiction
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From: Dennis.Matheson@delta-air.com
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: TextFire demos
Date: Sun, 05 Apr 1998 15:46:01 -0600
Organization: Deja News - The Leader in Internet Discussion
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In article <tinsel.891759481@jaka.ece.uiuc.edu>,
  tinsel@jaka.ece.uiuc.edu wrote:
>>snip<<
> I'm sure it's a joke, but it's a very very well done one, and
> probably that the author has already released several games.  I'd
> suspect Graham Nelson, only I dunno if TADS or Hugo runs under RiscOS.
>>snip<<

  Actually, I was suspecting Andrew Plotkin, except that a) there are games in
TADS and Hugo as well as Inform, b) he seemed somewhat annoyed by April Fools
posts in general and c) I would expect the quality of the demos to be higher
if he had done them.

-----== Posted via Deja News, The Leader in Internet Discussion ==-----
http://www.dejanews.com/   Now offering spam-free web-based newsreading


From russotto@wanda.pond.com Tue Apr  7 15:08:12 MET DST 1998
Article: 32221 of rec.games.int-fiction
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From: russotto@wanda.pond.com (Matthew T. Russotto)
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Spider & Web: Satisfying ending [SPOILERS]
Date: 5 Apr 1998 01:22:54 GMT
Organization: Ghotinet
Lines: 22
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References: <351fa135.0@alijku02.edvz.uni-linz.ac.at> <3520F989.3F0A5956@earthlink.net> <1998Apr1.103914@vaxc.cc.monash.edu.au> <35220740.20C99FF3@earthlink.net>
NNTP-Posting-Host: wanda.vf.pond.com
Summary: A belated April Fools post. Nobody reads this line anyway.
Xref: news.lth.se rec.games.int-fiction:32221

In article <35220740.20C99FF3@earthlink.net>,
Phoebe M. Fuentes <phoebef@earthlink.net> wrote:

}Did you think I was somehow personally aiming my rant at your game and
}Mimesis in particular?  I wasn't.  All I'm doing is voicing a long-held
}dissenting opinion about Infocom and the constance flow of Infocom
}references (especially concerning Zork 1 which I found excruciatingly
}boring -- I still don't understand what everybody is raving about it). 
}Is that so sacrilegious in this newsgroup?

It's just old news.  Infocom addressed this complaint in the first
issue of Zork Quest.  In an editorial signed by "The Implementors",
Infocom announced that they had basically set out all the directions
IF could possibly go.  Any future game, whether by them or someone
else, would be merely a linear combination of elements from their own
games.  This was the real reason Infocom shut down. For instance,
"Spider And Web" is a combination of "A Mind Forever Voyaging" and
"Border Zone".
-- 
Matthew T. Russotto                                russotto@pond.com
"Extremism in defense of liberty is no vice, and moderation in pursuit
of justice is no virtue." 


From weird_beard@prodigy.net Tue Apr  7 15:08:48 MET DST 1998
Article: 32223 of rec.games.int-fiction
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From: weird_beard@prodigy.net
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Spider & Web: Satisfying ending [SPOILERS]
Date: Sun, 05 Apr 1998 10:15:17 -0600
Organization: Deja News - The Leader in Internet Discussion
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In article <35220740.20C99FF3@earthlink.net>,
  "Phoebe M. Fuentes" <phoebef@earthlink.net> wrote:
>

What's with all this xyzzy stuff?? The original posting basically stated (not
an exact quote) "Suspended had a better ending." This is NOT an in-joke. This
is simply a person stating a valid opinion on how a game should end. Spider
and Web has a *very* vague ending, mostly because, *I* assume, that Zarf
wants us to decide for ourselves on how the character made a difference.

Even in Zork, how many people *really* typed xyzzy *before* they saw the
InvisiClues?

Anyways, one game were you *can* type xyzzy is during the first move of
Delusions, but you'll end up playing Tetris, which is *hardly* anything you'd
see in an Infocom game.

-----== Posted via Deja News, The Leader in Internet Discussion ==-----
http://www.dejanews.com/   Now offering spam-free web-based newsreading


From tilford@cco.caltech.edu Wed Apr  8 08:47:51 MET DST 1998
Article: 32322 of rec.games.int-fiction
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From: tilford@ralph.caltech.edu (Mark J. Tilford)
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: TextFire demos
Date: 7 Apr 1998 15:51:16 GMT
Organization: California Institute of Technology, Pasadena
Lines: 33
Message-ID: <slrn6ikiol.7n5.tilford@ralph.caltech.edu>
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On 7 Apr 1998 04:43:32 GMT, Adam J. Thornton <adam@princeton.edu> wrote:
>In article <Er0n8D.2tJ@undergrad.math.uwaterloo.ca>,
>Joe Mason <jcmason@undergrad.math.uwaterloo.ca> wrote:
>>I ahven't played them yet (I intend to), but the first name that leaps to mind
>>is Whizzard's.  We already know he's produced works in Inform and TADS (but
>>more TADS than Inform, just like in the pack), he's been producing short games
>>since he has free time with Avalon in beta (and he's mentioned wanting to
>>tackle concepts that he thought up while writing Avalon but was too busy to do
>>anything with, so he's had plenty of time to come up with this stuff) and we
>>know he has a sense of humour (hey, with all the Avalon jokes, he would HAVE
>>to!)
>
>He says it isn't him.
>
>My only remaining suspect is ddyte.
>
>I'm pretty sure it's several people.
>
>FWIW, textfire.com is not registered with InterNIC.

If you read the Readme, then you'd know that the page isn't supposed to go up
until June 30 or so, if this is real.  (But I agree with everyone else who 
thinks this is a hoax.)
>
>Adam
>-- 
>adam@princeton.edu    Cynical and drunk and boring someone in some dark cafe


-- 
-----------------------
Mark   Jeffrey  Tilford
tilford@cco.caltech.edu


From tinsel@jaka.ece.uiuc.edu Wed Apr  8 08:47:56 MET DST 1998
Article: 32305 of rec.games.int-fiction
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From: tinsel@jaka.ece.uiuc.edu (Thomas Aaron Insel)
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: TextFire demos
Date: 6 Apr 98 19:17:19 GMT
Organization: Defenestrating Illini, Urbana Illinois
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tilford@ralph.caltech.edu (Mark J. Tilford) writes:

> On 5 Apr 98 06:58:01 GMT, Thomas Aaron Insel <tinsel@jaka.ece.uiuc.edu> wrote:
> >[1] Actually, I couldn't figure out what the heck to do with Colours
> >besides walk around.

> I figured this out after a while:  Your goal is to get 'Perfect Blue',
> which means to change the aspect of all rooms to Blue.  There are objects
> you can take in two rooms, but they aren't listed in the description, and
> the only way to find them is TAKE ALL.  There's also a rival, but I
> haven't been able to interact with him/her.

Ahha.  All I'd managed is that the game seems to end a few turns after
you make your rival somehow aware of your presence.

Tom
-- 
Thomas Insel (tinsel@jaka.ece.uiuc.edu)
  "I don't want to achieve immortality through my work.  I want to achieve it
   through not dying." -- Woody Allen


From adam@princeton.edu Wed Apr  8 09:29:40 MET DST 1998
Article: 32337 of rec.games.int-fiction
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From: adam@princeton.edu (Adam J. Thornton)
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: TextFire 12-pack Reviews
Date: 8 Apr 1998 07:02:51 GMT
Organization: Princeton University
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So, here are mini-reviews of the TextFire 12-pack demo games.  And my
theory about it all.


Revenge of the Killer Surf Nazi Robot Babes From Hell:

Maybe as a competition entry, this would work.  I've seen dumber games,
though.  I might play it, but I wouldn't pay for it.

Does Alex Crowley exist?  There's no Alex Crowley at Stanford that its
whois service will give me.

Bad Guys:

Sort of Dungeon Keeper as a text game.  Not bad, something I might play,
and not necessarily a joke.  Seems very derivative of Dungeon Keeper,
actually.  But cute.

Ed Dallas.  Virus Games.  There's a E. Dallas in Petaluma, CA...proving
nothing. 

An Exploration of Color:

What the hell?  The sort of thing I'd expect from Zarf, only it wouldn't be
so straightforward and so easy to turn things various colors.
Entertaining, but it would wear thin in a real game.  Weird, interesting
Z-machine effects.  Also, not necessarily a joke.

Mal Jackson, Bournemouth Barkeep.  A Mal Jackson in Nottingham has posted
some stuff on home repair.  His address is a Nottingham academic account,
looks like.  Proving, again, nothing.

Coma!:

Oooh, cheezy.  Might make a good competition game, but I can't see it as a
full-length sorta thing.

Rachael Croft.  Not in DejaNews, for whatever that's worth.

Flowers For Algernon:

An interesting idea.  Could Deborah Keyes really be Daniel Keyes' niece?
This one just screams "Copyright Problem," and of course, you know how the
story is going to come out.  But it's a cool idea, and maybe not
necessarily a joke.  The response to "X ME" is priceless.  There _are_ 11
D. Keyeses in California, according to four11.com.  People from Piedmont
High, where Deborah teaches, are called "Hairies."  I'm not making this up,
folks.

The U.S. Men's Hockey Team Olympic Challenge!:

C'mon.  This has to be a joke.  A one-item game?  Where violence is always
the answer?  About one of our, er, less stirring national moments?  Me, I
can do $1360 of damage.

Shishi M. Hayashi?  The pie in "American Pie"?  Please.  This one's gotta
be a joke.

The Inanimator:

Uh, this is supposed to be fun?  OK, so nice Infocom references with the
lint and the gnomon, nice titillation with the condom, but...  This can't
possibly be a teaser for a real game.  Although the response for "D" when
you're the corn is cute.

Thomas "Flip" Winkler?  Hotchkiss?  Harvard?  Governess?  When he comes
into his money?  I hope for all our sakes that there's no such beast.
There is a Thomas Winkler posting, er, a want ad, to alt.homosexual, but he
seems to be German, not a Harvard silver spoon fed preppy who hasn't had a
sip of beer or a date in years.  There's also a Thomas Winkler from
Compuserve asking about taxes on futures options, which could be our man, I
guess.  Boy, I feel like I'm wasting time in a colossal fashion here.

Insomnia:

Kind of cute, in a mutated college-game kinda way.  Like Apartment F209,
almost.  Or like that game I kept starting with Arnold the Slime Mold who
lived in the sink.  I did like the contents of the fridge and the fact that
I could down a 12-pack of Jolt and a 3-liter Dew with no discomfort.

August Pelter?  Major Midwestern University?  Well, there's an A. Pelter in
Santa Barbara....

Jack's Adventures:

Well, I love the fact that the demo version is the one where the beans
aren't magic at all.  Not exactly a new premise, here, but I'm willing to
grant that it could be a game.  I'm sure I've seen not just giant
beanstalks in games before (ADVENT, anyone), but in fact the whole damn
Jack story, but whatever.

No Ben Scagels anywhere in Deja News or four11.com.

Will The Real Marjorie Hopkirk Please Stand Up?

OK, so I'm a sick bastard.  But this is really, really, really funny.  I
mean, *really* funny.  It also couldn't possibly make a full-sized game.
But I did manage to kill five Marjories.  And it's in Hugo.  Very
interesting.  Everyone knows that Kent Tessman is the only person to ever
actually write a game in Hugo, right?  Right?

Steve Parsons?  Tunbridge Wells?  Is there a real Marjorie Hopkirk in
Tunbridge Wells?  Who knows?  She doesn't come up in the Kent(!!) Index
Search System, thank God.

Once

Well, this is that damn Inform menu-based conversation system everyone
wanted, and it works in this application rather well.  Once?  Madeleine?
Is she lime-tea-flavored?  This whole thing smacks of recycled Proust
anyway.  But maybe it's just me.  I suspect this of being done by someone
who reads way too much rec.arts.int-fiction.  Very artsy, but I can easily
see it being a real game.  If it's a joke, it's way, way, way too "in."
Whoever did this, by the way, did it right, with room names in bold in the
main window and the status window reserved exclusively for conversation.
Very nice.  You know, this really, really feels like a Zarfian game.  And
the two possible endings are very, very Zarfian.  Now, I'm not saying it's
Zarf.  Maybe it's just a cute parody.  It's a weird and disturbing little
fable, anyway.  Frankly, I like it.

Robin Andrews?  Eastern Shore?  Why not?  You know, Zarf's in Maryland,
although not the Eastern Shore.  Another sly Zarfian reference?

Operate:

Oh my GOD, this is a hilarious game.  I quote:
>A little girl in the front row bellows with rage.  "The body requires
>additional plundering!  Continue!"
I don't see how it could possibly be a full-scale game, but this is
screamingly funny.

Shea Davis.  North Dakota?  A little Perry Simm action going on here?  Am I
getting intensely paranoid, or what?

Pumping!:

Uh, what?  There's, like, one command.  How could this ever be a game?
Somehow, the first time I played, I "won" it, and I still don't know how.
I haven't managed it since.

Riley Hawkins.  Whatever.  There's one in Atlanta.

A Tenuous Hold:

Well, we've seen this theme before in _Perdition's Flames_.  The "rest of
the game" might actually be interesting.

Another Riley Hawkins game.  This one at least seems to have some point.

Verb:

This is brilliant.  Absolutely brilliant.  I suspected Adam Cadre of this
one.  I have no idea how in the world ddyte got 33 points out of it.  I've
got 19 and I'm stumped.  It's an absolutely amazing _tour de force_, and,
with a hint system, I'd play it a lot.  It is one of the funniest things I
have ever seen, and I think I'm one of about six people in the world to get
it.  I mean, check this madness out: 
>>take a look at turn 
>She is the verb
"turn."  You grew up together in Old English, after she moved 
>from her old home in Latin.
This is fantastic.

D.L. Schneck, whoever you are, you kick ass.  "Relocate to California" to
join Textfire?  What a great fantasy.

Zugzwang:

Whoa.  An interactive chess problem.  Cute.  Not particularly difficult,
mind you, but very cute.  The text is lovely, and it's a really, really
clever use of the status line.  It's a pretty, er, linear demo.

Alfred Timpson.  Born in Dundee, Scotland, moved to Piedmont, CA, and then
back to Scotland?  Hobbies include trainspotting?  Somehow I suspect I'm
having my third leg pulled, if you know what I'm saying, and I think you do.

XYZZY:
Babes: "An awesome response to XYZZY is available with the full registered
version..." 
Bad Guys: "Though you do command much magical talent, this isn't the way to
use it."
Colour: "That's not a verb I recognise."
Coma: "A hollow voice says, 'Don't take me there.'"
Flowers: "I dunno that vurb."
Hockey: "I don't know the word "xyzzy".  Now get back to trashing this
dump!"
Inanimate: "I don't know the word "xyzzy"."
Insomnia: "I don't know the word "xyzzy"."
Jack: "This being Fairyland, every word is a magic word."
Marjorie: "You can't use the word "xyzzy"."
Once: "That's not a verb I recognise."
Operate: "I don't know the word "xyzzy"."
Pumping: "I don't know the word "xyzzy"."
Tenuous: "I don't know the word "xyzzy"."
Verb: "I don't know the word "xyzzy"."
Zugzwang: "That's not a verb I recognise."


So what the hell is going on here?

Four possibilities:
1) someone or several someones are lying to us about being the perpetrators
of this odd little hoax.  Possible, although I can't imagine that no one
has leaped to claim credit yet.
2) we haven't fingered the right raif regulars yet.  Unlikely, since I've
been accusing everyone and his dog.
3) there is a cabal of unknown (highly competent!) IF programmers out
there, but this is an April Fool's hoax.  A lot of work, if you ask me.
And why won't they come play with us?
4) there is a cabal, etc., and this is no hoax.  TextFire exists.

Me, I'm leaning towards 1), but I'm starting to think that 4) is a distinct
possibility.  2) just doesn't feel right, and 3) is a little weird, like
there really *is* this lost civilization, but they only exist to do old
Three Stooges sketches.

A little bird suggested to me a theory that I really, really like.  It's a
hoax, perpetrated by the Implementors.  I mean, we've seen Lebling and
Berlyn in here, and I think Mark Blank as well.  Hell, why not?  It's no
stupider a theory than many.

Weird, huh?

Adam
-- 
adam@princeton.edu    Cynical and drunk and boring someone in some dark cafe


From adam@princeton.edu Wed Apr  8 09:33:23 MET DST 1998
Article: 32336 of rec.games.int-fiction
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From: adam@princeton.edu (Adam J. Thornton)
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: TextFire demos
Date: 7 Apr 1998 22:23:27 GMT
Organization: Princeton University
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In article <slrn6ikiol.7n5.tilford@ralph.caltech.edu>,
Mark J. Tilford <tilford@cco.caltech.edu> wrote:
>If you read the Readme, then you'd know that the page isn't supposed to go up
>until June 30 or so, if this is real.  (But I agree with everyone else who 
>thinks this is a hoax.)

I read the readme.

Having read it, I almost want to go claim textfire.com just to see if
anyone whines about it later.

But not $70 worth.

You never, ever should announce a website without acquiring the domain name
first.... 

Adam
-- 
adam@princeton.edu    Cynical and drunk and boring someone in some dark cafe


From mol@bartlet.df.lth.se Wed Apr  8 16:48:07 MET DST 1998
Article: 32357 of rec.games.int-fiction
Path: news.lth.se!not-for-mail
From: mol@bartlet.df.lth.se (Magnus Olsson)
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: TextFire 12-pack Reviews
Date: 8 Apr 1998 16:46:39 +0200
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In article <6gf7er$pl2$1@cnn.Princeton.EDU>,
Adam J. Thornton <adam@princeton.edu> wrote:
> Revenge of the Killer Surf Nazi Robot Babes From Hell:
> 
> Maybe as a competition entry, this would work.  I've seen dumber games,
> though.  I might play it, but I wouldn't pay for it.

I found this quite hilarious, especially the surfer-speak, but I
wonder what the full game would look like. Something in the vein of
LGOP?

> Bad Guys:
> 
> Sort of Dungeon Keeper as a text game.  Not bad, something I might play,
> and not necessarily a joke.  Seems very derivative of Dungeon Keeper,
> actually.  But cute.

The concept of the game (making the bad guy the hero) isn't new (apart
>from Dungeon Keeper, I can think of books such as "Grunts"), but I'd
love to play the complete version of this one! I also liked the game
type crossover - a strategic war game embedded in a text adventure.

> Mal Jackson, Bournemouth Barkeep.  A Mal Jackson in Nottingham has posted
> some stuff on home repair.  His address is a Nottingham academic account,
> looks like.  Proving, again, nothing.

Hmm. You've really been diligent in trying to track down the authors,
have you?

> The Inanimator:
> 
> Uh, this is supposed to be fun?  OK, so nice Infocom references with the
> lint and the gnomon, nice titillation with the condom, but...  This can't
> possibly be a teaser for a real game.  Although the response for "D" when
> you're the corn is cute.

Well, I think you should give the author a break here: none of us
has any idea of what the full game will be like...

> Thomas "Flip" Winkler?  Hotchkiss?  Harvard?  Governess?  When he comes
> into his money?  I hope for all our sakes that there's no such beast.
> There is a Thomas Winkler posting, er, a want ad, to alt.homosexual, but he
> seems to be German, not a Harvard silver spoon fed preppy who hasn't had a
> sip of beer or a date in years.

Do I detect a certain animosity against the upper social strata here? :-)

> There's also a Thomas Winkler from
> Compuserve asking about taxes on futures options, which could be our man, I
> guess.  Boy, I feel like I'm wasting time in a colossal fashion here.

You probably are. And somehow I get the feeling that "our" Thomas
Winkler wouldn't ask about taxes; he'd have his accountants do that
for him.

> Once
> 
> Well, this is that damn Inform menu-based conversation system everyone
> wanted, and it works in this application rather well.  

I found some glitches (for example, "undo" undoes the entire
conversation, not just the last "move"), but I was a bit surprised how
smoothly it worked. Having the conversation menus in the status
window, *above* the text, felt very strange, however: I'm so used to
having my input *below* the text. I realize that this is a limitation
of the Z-machine. Perhaps it would be possible to do it the other
way round in a V6 game, where you can have more windows?

BTW, "An Exploration of Colour" would probably gain from being
implemented as a graphic V6 game.

> Operate:
> 
> Oh my GOD, this is a hilarious game.  I quote:
> >A little girl in the front row bellows with rage.  "The body requires
> >additional plundering!  Continue!"
> I don't see how it could possibly be a full-scale game, but this is
> screamingly funny.

I was very puzzled at first, because I've never seen the "real" game
on which this is based. Fortunately, I had it explained to me, after
which I agree with you.

> Verb:
> 
> This is brilliant.  Absolutely brilliant.  I suspected Adam Cadre of this
> one.  I have no idea how in the world ddyte got 33 points out of it.  I've
> got 19 and I'm stumped.  It's an absolutely amazing _tour de force_, and,
> with a hint system, I'd play it a lot.  It is one of the funniest things I
> have ever seen, and I think I'm one of about six people in the world to get
> it.  

Well, I must confess that I don't get it at all. Anybody care to help
me out?

> Zugzwang:
> 
> Whoa.  An interactive chess problem.  Cute.  Not particularly difficult,
> mind you, but very cute.  The text is lovely, and it's a really, really
> clever use of the status line.  It's a pretty, er, linear demo.

The linearity of the thing is rather striking, isn't it? Which makes
me wonder about the full game: will the other problems be as linear
as the one in the demo? The point is that for a linear (or
close-to-linear) chess problem, you can hard-code a sensible response
to every possible move the player makes, but for the overwhelming
majority of positions, there are so many possible moves that this is
utterly out of the question. 

The only solution I can think of would be to implement a complete
chess program in Inform. That would be no mean feat, but it would be
very cool indeed!

> Alfred Timpson.  Born in Dundee, Scotland, moved to Piedmont, CA, and then
> back to Scotland?  Hobbies include trainspotting?  Somehow I suspect I'm
> having my third leg pulled, if you know what I'm saying, and I think you do.

What's so strange about moving back to Scotland from California? Are
you thinking of the climate? :-) And in my experience, train spotting
is quite a common hobby in Britain, especially among the more nerdy
segment of the population.

-- 
Magnus Olsson (mol@df.lth.se, zebulon@pobox.com)
------    http://www.pobox.com/~zebulon   ------


From bradds@concentric.net Wed Apr  8 22:40:36 MET DST 1998
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From: "Bradd W. Szonye" <bradds@concentric.net>
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: TextFire 12-pack Reviews
Date: 08 Apr 1998 06:18:21 EDT
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Adam J. Thornton wrote:
> 
> 
> A little bird suggested to me a theory that I really, really like.
> It's a hoax, perpetrated by the Implementors.  I mean, we've seen
> Lebling and Berlyn in here, and I think Mark Blank as well.  Hell,
> why not?  It's no stupider a theory than many.

It did occur to me, with the recent appearance of Berlyn, that it could
be an Implementor gag. After all,

1. they wrote ZTUU "recently" (using Inform, right?)
2. at least one or two have appeared here recently
3. they definitely have the sense of humor required for the joke
4. they *are* a sort of "lost civilization," ie., theory #3
-- 
Bradd W. Szonye
bradds@concentric.net
http://www.concentric.net/~Bradds

My reply address is correct as-is. The courtesy of providing a correct
reply address is more important to me than time spent deleting spam.


From jcompton@typhoon.xnet.com Wed Apr  8 22:40:54 MET DST 1998
Article: 32359 of rec.games.int-fiction
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From: jcompton@typhoon.xnet.com (Jason Compton)
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: TextFire 12-pack Reviews
Date: 8 Apr 1998 15:24:54 GMT
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Magnus Olsson (mol@bartlet.df.lth.se) wrote:
: > Whoa.  An interactive chess problem.  Cute.  Not particularly difficult,
: > mind you, but very cute.  The text is lovely, and it's a really, really
: > clever use of the status line.  It's a pretty, er, linear demo.
: 
: The linearity of the thing is rather striking, isn't it? Which makes
: me wonder about the full game: will the other problems be as linear
: as the one in the demo? The point is that for a linear (or
: close-to-linear) chess problem, you can hard-code a sensible response
: to every possible move the player makes, but for the overwhelming
: majority of positions, there are so many possible moves that this is
: utterly out of the question. 

And it would break down into just being a computer chess game.  I'm rather
intrigued to see if there could be anything "behind the scenes"--we've
seen the life of a chess piece on the gameboard, but what about off the
board?  Perhaps a game such as this could be vignettes of the life of a
pawn, his promotion to knight and what that means to him, followed by
another key battle which the knight will decide (which you again join
towards the close of the action)...

-- 
Jason Compton                                jcompton@xnet.com
Editor-in-Chief, Amiga Report Magazine       VP, Legacy Maker Inc.
http://www.cucug.org/ar/                     http://www.xnet.com/~jcompton/
Choose and renounce...                       throwing chains to the floor. 


From adam@princeton.edu Wed Apr  8 22:40:59 MET DST 1998
Article: 32370 of rec.games.int-fiction
From: adam@princeton.edu (Adam J. Thornton)
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: TextFire 12-pack Reviews
Date: 8 Apr 1998 19:34:55 GMT
Organization: Princeton University
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In article <6ggah7$a8s$1@aludra.usc.edu>,
jweinste <jweinste@aludra.usc.edu> wrote:
>My theories as to who is to blame, in order of likelihood:
>
>1. Adam Thornton, because he's been the busiest at pointing fingers,
>thereby throwing us all off his scent.

No, I'm just pissed because I wasn't invited to play.  And my
implementation of Hungry Hungry Hippos was almost ready, too...(yes, that's
a joke; no I haven't written it, so you can't see the code).

Adam
-- 
adam@princeton.edu    Cynical and drunk and boring someone in some dark cafe


From jcompton@typhoon.xnet.com Wed Apr  8 22:41:14 MET DST 1998
Article: 32358 of rec.games.int-fiction
From: jcompton@typhoon.xnet.com (Jason Compton)
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: TextFire 12-pack Reviews
Date: 8 Apr 1998 15:20:08 GMT
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Xref: news.lth.se rec.games.int-fiction:32358

Adam J. Thornton (adam@princeton.edu) wrote:
: guess.  Boy, I feel like I'm wasting time in a colossal fashion here.

Don't worry, you've got some of us interested. :)

: 3) there is a cabal of unknown (highly competent!) IF programmers out
: there, but this is an April Fool's hoax.  A lot of work, if you ask me.
: And why won't they come play with us?
: 4) there is a cabal, etc., and this is no hoax.  TextFire exists.
: 
: Me, I'm leaning towards 1), but I'm starting to think that 4) is a distinct
: possibility.  2) just doesn't feel right, and 3) is a little weird, like
: there really *is* this lost civilization, but they only exist to do old
: Three Stooges sketches.

Yeah, the thing is, if you can accept #3, #4 isn't all that tough to
progress to.

-- 
Jason Compton                                jcompton@xnet.com
Editor-in-Chief, Amiga Report Magazine       VP, Legacy Maker Inc.
http://www.cucug.org/ar/                     http://www.xnet.com/~jcompton/
Choose and renounce...                       throwing chains to the floor. 


From Dennis.Matheson@delta-air.com Wed Apr  8 22:44:49 MET DST 1998
Article: 32369 of rec.games.int-fiction
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From: Dennis Matheson <Dennis.Matheson@delta-air.com>
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: TextFire 12-pack Reviews
Date: Wed, 08 Apr 1998 14:58:14 -0400
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Adam J. Thornton wrote:
> 
> So, here are mini-reviews of the TextFire 12-pack demo games.  And my
> theory about it all.
> 
   I was about to post my own set of reviews, so I'll play Siskel and
Ebert here
and tag my comments on after yours.

> Revenge of the Killer Surf Nazi Robot Babes From Hell:
> 
> Maybe as a competition entry, this would work.  I've seen dumber games,
> though.  I might play it, but I wouldn't pay for it.
> 

  This is a one joke game, and the joke is the title.  It's just an
introduction,
not a game, and there is no indication as to what the game would be
(making it a
fairly poor demo). The demo doesn't give you any more information than
the title
does about the game.

> Bad Guys:
> 
> Sort of Dungeon Keeper as a text game.  Not bad, something I might play,
> and not necessarily a joke.  Seems very derivative of Dungeon Keeper,
> actually.  But cute.
> 

  It is cute.  What I find the most interesting is the things it says
will be in the final edition that are not in the demo: a full NPC
conversation system, a system for controlling units in a battle, a
liquid manipulation system, a system for controlling a maze and
directing groups of NPCs through it...  I recall recent threads about
conversation systems, liquids and mazes, and there was probably one
about small unit tactics that I missed.  This one really looks like it
was done by someone who has been reading r.a/g.i-f.

> An Exploration of Color:
> 
> What the hell?  The sort of thing I'd expect from Zarf, only it wouldn't be
> so straightforward and so easy to turn things various colors.
> Entertaining, but it would wear thin in a real game.  Weird, interesting
> Z-machine effects.  Also, not necessarily a joke.
> 

  Actually, I never could figure out how to do anything in this one, and
it didn't keep my interest long enough for me to want to try.  It looks
to be a one gimmick game; what could a full version do that this one
didn't?  More would just be more of the same.  It does have an "artsy"
feel to it.

> Coma!:
> 
> Oooh, cheezy.  Might make a good competition game, but I can't see it as a
> full-length sorta thing.

  I solved this on the first move of my second try, since the "you have
died" message at the end of the demo gives a rather blatant clue.  I
can't see the full game being much more than the demo either.  It does
imply that there is a mystery you will have to solve in the full game
(after you survive hospital food), but it looks more like a gimmick than
a game to me, unless the game is vastly different from the demo.

> 
> Flowers For Algernon:
> 
> An interesting idea.  Could Deborah Keyes really be Daniel Keyes' niece?
> This one just screams "Copyright Problem," and of course, you know how the
> story is going to come out.  But it's a cool idea, and maybe not
> necessarily a joke.  The response to "X ME" is priceless.

  I don't know.  I hate to see "Algernon" reduced to "guess the
(misspelled) verb", which is what this came down to.  [Spoiler] The
whole demo consists of having to determine what to type in order to open
a door.  Somebody went to a lot of trouble modifying the libraries for
this one.

> 
> The U.S. Men's Hockey Team Olympic Challenge!:
> 
> C'mon.  This has to be a joke.  A one-item game?  Where violence is always
> the answer?  About one of our, er, less stirring national moments?  Me, I
> can do $1360 of damage.

  I only got $1280 when I played.  Another one joke game.  It looks as
if the rest of the game would basically be the same as the demo.  Also,
I notice that the start of the game says "...this time, violence *is*
the answer to this one!".  The phrase "Violence isn't the answer to this
one." is an Inform library message.  I don't remember seeing it in TADS,
but Hockey is a TADS game.  Hmmm...

> The Inanimator:
> 
> Uh, this is supposed to be fun?  OK, so nice Infocom references with the
> lint and the gnomon, nice titillation with the condom, but...  This can't
> possibly be a teaser for a real game.  Although the response for "D" when
> you're the corn is cute.
> 

   There really isn't much here.  This looks more like a parody of some
of the more "existential" games which have come out lately, but I can't
see a full game out of this.  The responses to pressing the button when
the condom and the blank is in the display are amusing.

> Insomnia:
> 
> Kind of cute, in a mutated college-game kinda way.  Like Apartment F209,
> almost.  Or like that game I kept starting with Arnold the Slime Mold who
> lived in the sink.  I did like the contents of the fridge and the fact that
> I could down a 12-pack of Jolt and a 3-liter Dew with no discomfort.

   I was most reminded of "House" from the '97 Competition.  Try hitting
the wall when in the bedroom.  Also, a framed, autographed photo of Bill
Gates?  Again, there isn't much of a game here unless the rest of the
game is different than the demo.
   This game also had the worst glitches I encountered.  You can refer
to the fridge, but not a refrigerator.  Also, you can't put anything
back in the fridge after you take it out.  OTOH, its also the only game
in the pack that gave me any points for anything I did.

> Jack's Adventures:
> 
> Well, I love the fact that the demo version is the one where the beans
> aren't magic at all.  Not exactly a new premise, here, but I'm willing to
> grant that it could be a game.  I'm sure I've seen not just giant
> beanstalks in games before (ADVENT, anyone), but in fact the whole damn
> Jack story, but whatever.

  All I can say for this one is "Huh?".  There is nothing here, really. 
All the fun parts are in the rest of the game, I suppose.  I do like the
subtitle ("On the run in fairyland with a golden goose and a magic
guitar").

> Will The Real Marjorie Hopkirk Please Stand Up?
> 
> OK, so I'm a sick bastard.  But this is really, really, really funny.  I
> mean, *really* funny.  It also couldn't possibly make a full-sized game.
> But I did manage to kill five Marjories.  And it's in Hugo.  Very
> interesting.  Everyone knows that Kent Tessman is the only person to ever
> actually write a game in Hugo, right?  Right?

  I didn't play this one, since I don't have a Hugo interpreter on my
system and the rest of the 12-pack didn't exactly convince me to run out
and find one.

> Once
> 
> Well, this is that damn Inform menu-based conversation system everyone
> wanted, and it works in this application rather well.  Once?  Madeleine?
> Is she lime-tea-flavored?  This whole thing smacks of recycled Proust
> anyway.  But maybe it's just me.  I suspect this of being done by someone
> who reads way too much rec.arts.int-fiction.  Very artsy, but I can easily
> see it being a real game.  If it's a joke, it's way, way, way too "in."
> Whoever did this, by the way, did it right, with room names in bold in the
> main window and the status window reserved exclusively for conversation.
> Very nice.  You know, this really, really feels like a Zarfian game.  And
> the two possible endings are very, very Zarfian.  Now, I'm not saying it's
> Zarf.  Maybe it's just a cute parody.  It's a weird and disturbing little
> fable, anyway.  Frankly, I like it.

  This is the first of the TextFire games that intrigued me.  It is also
the first one that doesn't feel as if it was thrown together in an
afternoon.  I like the conversational system, and would like to see it
in a larger game.  I agree that there is a very Zarfian feel to this
one.  I didn't see it as an in-joke, but maybe I haven't been around
long enough yet.  Looks like we give this one two thumbs up.

> Operate:
> 
> Oh my GOD, this is a hilarious game.  I quote:
> >A little girl in the front row bellows with rage.  "The body requires
> >additional plundering!  Continue!"
> I don't see how it could possibly be a full-scale game, but this is
> screamingly funny.

  I agree... *very* funny.  I was laughing out loud when I played it,
which is pretty bad since I was at work at the time.  There couldn't
possibly much more to this than the demo but the joke would wear thin if
it was much longer anyway.  Another one-joke game, but it works really
well.

> Pumping!:
> 
> Uh, what?  There's, like, one command.  How could this ever be a game?
> Somehow, the first time I played, I "won" it, and I still don't know how.
> I haven't managed it since.

  Somebody has read too many old Reader's Digest articles.  Another
"huh?".  I haven't won, but I haven't tried again either.

> 
> A Tenuous Hold:
> 
> Well, we've seen this theme before in _Perdition's Flames_.  The "rest of
> the game" might actually be interesting.

  Kind of intriguing, but once again the "demo" is just an introduction
which seems to have nothing to do with the rest of the game, but it's
very long for an introduction.  Most of the demo is spent hitting "z"
and waiting for something to happen.  Perhaps a good simulation of rush
hour traffic, but somewhat boring for a game.  I agree that it might be
interesting to see what the rest of the game is like, since the demo
really gives no indication of it.

> Verb:
> 
> This is brilliant.  Absolutely brilliant.  I suspected Adam Cadre of this
> one.  I have no idea how in the world ddyte got 33 points out of it.  I've
> got 19 and I'm stumped.  It's an absolutely amazing _tour de force_, and,
> with a hint system, I'd play it a lot.  It is one of the funniest things I
> have ever seen, and I think I'm one of about six people in the world to get
> it.  I mean, check this madness out:
> >>take a look at turn
> >She is the verb
> "turn."  You grew up together in Old English, after she moved
> >from her old home in Latin.
> This is fantastic.

  This is cute.  I think I managed to get 30 points.  It's an
interesting concept; how do you play a game with only one verb?  Again,
I don't know how this would work as a full length game, but the concept
is intersting.

> Zugzwang:
> 
> Whoa.  An interactive chess problem.  Cute.  Not particularly difficult,
> mind you, but very cute.  The text is lovely, and it's a really, really
> clever use of the status line.  It's a pretty, er, linear demo.

   This one is interesting, if only for the chessboard.  It's kind of
like those chess puzzles, the ones where you have to put the king in
check with only two knights and a pawn or whatever.  A chess algorithm
in Inform would be interesting, but it seems as if your opponents moves
are scripted.  I don't know if the full version would have a real chess
AI or not.  I suspect the full game would just consist of more chess
puzzles with more complicated positions.

>>snip xyzzy list and speculation about TextFire <<
> 
> Weird, huh?
> 

  Definitely.  I'm not sure what to make of all this.  Overall, the only
games I could see wanting to play the full versions of are Once and
maybe Zugzwang.  Possibly A Tenuous Hold, but since it looks like the
demo really has nothing to do with the rest of the game its hard to
tell.  Revenge..., Hockey..., and Operate look to be one joke games. 
(Operate is pretty funny, once.)  Bad Guys may be a joke too, only
because of the list of unimplemented features in the demo.  Pumping and
The Inanimator sound like a the results of a "Hey, can you make a game
where the player is a..." challenge.
  Most of the demos are very small, only one room, and in many cases the
demo ends when you leave that room.  In quite a few cases the concept
doesn't appear as if it would work much beyond the demo.  In others, the
demo doesn't seem to have anything to do with the rest of the game.  A
lot of them seem to be related to some threads which have been running
around here.

  I still *think* that all this is a hoax, although a very well done
one.  I will accept that there is a non-trivial possibility of it being
legit, but I suspect that *someone* from TextFire would have
communicated with the ng by now, if only to get our feedback on the
demos.  But, it has been an interesting diversion, no matter where it
came from.

-- 
"You can't run away forever, but there's nothing wrong
 with getting a good head start" --- Jim Steinman

Dennis Matheson --- Dennis.Matheson@delta-air.com
                --- http://home.earthlink.net/~tanstaafl


From dmss100@york.ac.uk Thu Apr  9 08:31:54 MET DST 1998
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From: Den of Iniquity <dmss100@york.ac.uk>
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: TextFire 12-pack Reviews
Date: Wed, 8 Apr 1998 14:42:30 +0100
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On 8 Apr 1998, Adam J. Thornton wrote:
>1) someone or several someones are lying to us about being the perpetrators
>of this odd little hoax.  Possible, although I can't imagine that no one
>has leaped to claim credit yet.
>2) we haven't fingered the right raif regulars yet.  Unlikely, since I've
>been accusing everyone and his dog.

I've no idea who has wreaked this jest upon us, but if I had to point a
finger I think I'd be waving it over in the general direction of the
Cardinal's team of Octopedal Silly Game writers. Who between them have
a good grasp of Tads, Inform and Hugo. And who are indeed spread about all
over the place on both sides of the Atlantic.

[What I want to know is whether Marjorie Hopkirk has any relation to Marty
'Deceased' Hopkirk?]

--
Den



From jcompton@typhoon.xnet.com Thu Apr  9 08:33:14 MET DST 1998
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From: jcompton@typhoon.xnet.com (Jason Compton)
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: TextFire 12-pack Reviews
Date: 8 Apr 1998 15:24:54 GMT
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Magnus Olsson (mol@bartlet.df.lth.se) wrote:
: > Whoa.  An interactive chess problem.  Cute.  Not particularly difficult,
: > mind you, but very cute.  The text is lovely, and it's a really, really
: > clever use of the status line.  It's a pretty, er, linear demo.
: 
: The linearity of the thing is rather striking, isn't it? Which makes
: me wonder about the full game: will the other problems be as linear
: as the one in the demo? The point is that for a linear (or
: close-to-linear) chess problem, you can hard-code a sensible response
: to every possible move the player makes, but for the overwhelming
: majority of positions, there are so many possible moves that this is
: utterly out of the question. 

And it would break down into just being a computer chess game.  I'm rather
intrigued to see if there could be anything "behind the scenes"--we've
seen the life of a chess piece on the gameboard, but what about off the
board?  Perhaps a game such as this could be vignettes of the life of a
pawn, his promotion to knight and what that means to him, followed by
another key battle which the knight will decide (which you again join
towards the close of the action)...

-- 
Jason Compton                                jcompton@xnet.com
Editor-in-Chief, Amiga Report Magazine       VP, Legacy Maker Inc.
http://www.cucug.org/ar/                     http://www.xnet.com/~jcompton/
Choose and renounce...                       throwing chains to the floor. 


From dg@bigfoot.com Thu Apr  9 08:36:12 MET DST 1998
Article: 32383 of rec.games.int-fiction
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From: "Dave G." <dg@bigfoot.com>
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: TextFire 12-pack Reviews
Date: Wed, 08 Apr 1998 23:21:13 -0400
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> Four possibilities:
<first three possibilites snipped>

> 4) there is a cabal, etc., and this is no hoax.  TextFire exists.

Not a chance.  This is clearly an April Fool's hoax, and I suspect the
perpetrators are rather surprised that it hasn't already been
universally recognized as such.  I mean, aside from a variety of
telltale clues within the bios, the inexplicable silence of the
"Textfire" company and all its authors in this thread, the fact that not
one of the authors has ever posted on r.a.i-f, and the general silliness
of the whole venture, consider the most telling fact: these games
purport to be *demos*.  You're telling me that "Pumping" is a demo?  I
can't wait to see the full release version!  Similarly, as Dennis
Matheson points out, almost all of these games are one-joke, one-concept
games; there's simply nothing more that could be done in a full
version.  What more would you expect from a full version of:

Hockey
Colours
Verb
Operate
Zugzwang

Certainly, no "expanded" version of these demos could ever exist,
because there is nothing more to do: the concept is used up already. 
Perhaps someone should be pointing fingers at the authors of "Silence of
the Lambs" and "Pick Up The Phone Booth And Die".

(Then again, who would have thought they could have made full-length
motion pictures out of so many tired one-joke Saturday Night Live
sketches?  "It's Pat: The Movie", anybody?)

Then there are a couple of games that do leave the possibility of a full
version, yet still the demo is complete, in the sense that it achieves
its initial concept.  "Coma" is an example: at the end of the demo, the
joke's over.  From that point on, the game could continue, but it would
be mundane and unrelated to the conceptually interesting demo. 
"Tenuous" falls in this category as well.

And there are the ridiculous empty promises.  "Insomnia" bills its full
version as being chock-full of sound effects.  The author of "Bad Guys"
promises that his full version will contain at least three Herculean
programming tasks that I count (the combat sim, the maze, and the
"powerful NPC conversational system"), without even a taste of any one
of these.  (Some demo.)

So, although I haven't played all of the games yet, I've yet to find one
that could possibly be construed as a demo of an actual full-length
game.  Nope, this is definitely a joke.  (Albeit an extremely clever,
well-executed, and entertaining one.  Kudos.)

What I wonder is, would the authors have been kind enough to have
secretly hidden enough information within the games/bios to determine
their true identities?  That would be an interesting challenge for a
bunch of literate, puzzle-oriented hackers, wouldn't it?

Dave


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From: jcompton@typhoon.xnet.com (Jason Compton)
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: TextFire 12-pack Reviews
Date: 9 Apr 1998 03:39:32 GMT
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Dave G. (dg@bigfoot.com) wrote:
: universally recognized as such.  I mean, aside from a variety of
: telltale clues within the bios, the inexplicable silence of the
: "Textfire" company and all its authors in this thread, the fact that not
: one of the authors has ever posted on r.a.i-f, and the general silliness
: of the whole venture, consider the most telling fact: these games

It is not unheard of for online splinter groups of niche endeavors to
exist, aware of but totally uninvolved with the main group.

: version.  What more would you expect from a full version of:
: 
: Zugzwang

Actually, it's this game alone that has me hoping TextFire IS real.  And
I'm a lousy chess player.  But something about it grabbed me, and it's
been discussed how this could be a complete game in this thread.

: Perhaps someone should be pointing fingers at the authors of "Silence of
: the Lambs" and "Pick Up The Phone Booth And Die".

Maybe.

: And there are the ridiculous empty promises.  "Insomnia" bills its full
: version as being chock-full of sound effects.  The author of "Bad Guys"

What's improbable about sound effects?

-- 
Jason Compton                                jcompton@xnet.com
Editor-in-Chief, Amiga Report Magazine       VP, Legacy Maker Inc.
http://www.cucug.org/ar/                     http://www.xnet.com/~jcompton/
Choose and renounce...                       throwing chains to the floor. 


From jools@arnod.demon.co.uk Thu Apr  9 12:09:22 MET DST 1998
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From: Julian Arnold <jools@arnod.demon.co.uk>
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: TextFire 12-pack Reviews
Date: Thu, 9 Apr 1998 00:37:25 +0100
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In article <Pine.SGI.3.95L.980408143517.10426A-100000@ebor.york.ac.uk>,
Den of Iniquity <URL:mailto:dmss100@york.ac.uk> wrote:
> I've no idea who has wreaked this jest upon us, but if I had to point a
> finger I think I'd be waving it over in the general direction of the
> Cardinal's team of Octopedal Silly Game writers. Who between them have
> a good grasp of Tads, Inform and Hugo. And who are indeed spread about all
> over the place on both sides of the Atlantic.

It's a lovely thought, but the Silly Game died a while back due to
mutual unagreement (which is neither agreement nor disagreement). Very
peaceful. It just quietly slipped away in its sleep.

> [What I want to know is whether Marjorie Hopkirk has any relation to Marty
> 'Deceased' Hopkirk?]

While I'm posting I'd better throw some more names into the hat. Um,
let's see. Bob Newell? He must have a working knowledge of the three
systems (though I agree a single author seems unlikely). I mentioned CE
Forman and Neil deMause in an email on the subject, but I haven't seen
them mentioned here yet. They've been vewy vewy quiet recently too.
Maybe?

Jools
-- 
"For small erections may be finished by their first architects; grand
ones, true ones, ever leave the copestone to posterity. God keep me from
ever completing anything." -- Herman Melville, "Moby Dick"



From jools@arnod.demon.co.uk Thu Apr  9 12:10:14 MET DST 1998
Article: 32390 of rec.games.int-fiction
Path: news.lth.se!newsfeed.sunet.se!news99.sunet.se!news01.sunet.se!newscore.univie.ac.at!news-raspail.gip.net!news-lond.gip.net!news.gsl.net!gip.net!dispose.news.demon.net!demon!news.demon.co.uk!demon!arnod.demon.co.uk!jools
From: Julian Arnold <jools@arnod.demon.co.uk>
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: TextFire 12-pack Reviews
Date: Wed, 8 Apr 1998 15:10:17 +0100
Organization: None, absolutely none
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In article <6gf7er$pl2$1@cnn.Princeton.EDU>, Adam J. Thornton
<URL:mailto:adam@princeton.edu> wrote:
> Revenge of the Killer Surf Nazi Robot Babes From Hell:
> 
> Maybe as a competition entry, this would work.  I've seen dumber games,
> though.  I might play it, but I wouldn't pay for it.
> 
> Does Alex Crowley exist?  There's no Alex Crowley at Stanford that its
> whois service will give me.

Hm, haven't tried this one for some reason, but Alex Crowley (I *think*
that was his name, certainly Crowley) was a famous British occultist in
the early-mid part of this century.

> Will The Real Marjorie Hopkirk Please Stand Up?
> 
> OK, so I'm a sick bastard.  But this is really, really, really funny.  I
> mean, *really* funny.

Yes.

> But I did manage to kill five Marjories.  And it's in Hugo.  Very
> interesting.  Everyone knows that Kent Tessman is the only person to ever
> actually write a game in Hugo, right?  Right?

Kent claims innocence. Cardinal Teulbachs is the other Hugo author, and
he's a sick bastard too. (And also, the Crowley reference brings his
effluence to mind too, as that's something I discussed with him briefly
concerning one of his would-be Inform games a loo-o-ong time ago). Mind
you I'd be surprised if he'd relearnt Inform.

Maybe this is the produce of the IF collaborator's list?

> So what the hell is going on here?
> 
> Four possibilities:
> 1) someone or several someones are lying to us about being the perpetrators
> of this odd little hoax.  Possible, although I can't imagine that no one
> has leaped to claim credit yet.
> 2) we haven't fingered the right raif regulars yet.  Unlikely, since I've
> been accusing everyone and his dog.
> 3) there is a cabal of unknown (highly competent!) IF programmers out
> there, but this is an April Fool's hoax.  A lot of work, if you ask me.
> And why won't they come play with us?
> 4) there is a cabal, etc., and this is no hoax.  TextFire exists.
> 
> Me, I'm leaning towards 1), but I'm starting to think that 4) is a distinct
> possibility.  2) just doesn't feel right, and 3) is a little weird, like
> there really *is* this lost civilization, but they only exist to do old
> Three Stooges sketches.

I plump for 1) or 2). (What a bizarre sentence.)

I'd kinda like 3), but I think it's unlikely.

4) would be good in one sense, unfortunate in another.

> A little bird suggested to me a theory that I really, really like.  It's a
> hoax, perpetrated by the Implementors.  I mean, we've seen Lebling and
> Berlyn in here, and I think Mark Blank as well.  Hell, why not?  It's no
> stupider a theory than many.

Again, I think it's unlikely. Would be cool though.

Whether it's a hoax or not, the fact that the games appear in three
different formats is much appreciated.

Jools
-- 
"For small erections may be finished by their first architects; grand
ones, true ones, ever leave the copestone to posterity. God keep me from
ever completing anything." -- Herman Melville, "Moby Dick"



From edharel@remus.rutgers.edu Thu Apr  9 12:10:36 MET DST 1998
Article: 32397 of rec.games.int-fiction
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From: edharel@remus.rutgers.edu (Edan Harel)
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: TextFire 12-pack Reviews
Date: 8 Apr 1998 21:12:54 -0400
Organization: Rutgers University LCSR
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Hmm, My guess is that there were at least 4-5 people in on it, since
there were three languages used, and as someone listed, not all the games
support 'xyzzy'.  Maybe as many as 12 or 13 people?

Also, for some reason I suspect Paul David Doherty, simply because he
disapeared from newsgroup a while back, and I think I saw a posting
by him the other day (I could be mistaken).  Also, up on my suspect
pile would be L. Ross Raszewski or C.E.Foreman.  (Actually, I haven't
seen a post by Foreman in a while either...), since they probably have 
the programming skills.  Hmm, now that I think about it, there are probably
other people that have stopped posting...  I wonder how far back this
was planned (My guess is that they started programming a month or two
ago).

-- 
Edan Harel	       edharel@remus.rutgers.edu	     McCormick 6201
Research Assistant     edharel@eden.rutgers.edu	    Math and Comp Sci Major
USACS Member	       Office: Core 423			Math Club Secretary


From serc001@cs.auckland.ac.nz Thu Apr  9 12:11:48 MET DST 1998
Article: 32387 of rec.games.int-fiction
From: serc001@students.auckland.ac.nz (Stefan Erceg)
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Hello Sailor
Date: 9 Apr 1998 04:24:46 GMT
Organization: University of Auckland
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In article <6ggalb$9jh$1@news.enterprise.net>, "Junebug"
<orpheus@enterprise.net> wrote:

> Well the Trolls nemesis in Homers book was Odysseus (sp) a well known
> sailor! To get rid of the Troll you said Hello Odyssius, hence the oft
> repeating reference to HELLO SAILOR.
> 
> Julian Fleetwood wrote in message <35287ccf.0@newshost.pcug.org.au>...
> >I was thinking about Zork recently and was wondering if anyone understood
> >what 'Hello Sailor' means or why it was used.
> >
> >Julian Fleetwood
> >
> >

The troll?  Ahhhh.  You mean the Cyclops guarding the exit to the maze. 
But you don't even need to say Odysseus to him, I prefer the other
solution (Much more appealing to the problem solving types)

BTW The only effect saying 'Hello Sailor' in Zork 1 has is invoking the
curse on yourself.  So that when you die, you aren't reincarnated
immediately, but are doomed to wander as a ghostly presence until you
repent.

Cheers, Stefan


From dmss100@york.ac.uk Mon Apr 13 23:06:35 MET DST 1998
Article: 32423 of rec.games.int-fiction
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From: Den of Iniquity <dmss100@york.ac.uk>
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: TextFire 12-pack Reviews
Date: Thu, 9 Apr 1998 13:30:10 +0100
Organization: The University of York, UK
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On Thu, 9 Apr 1998, Julian Arnold wrote:

>Den of Iniquity <URL:mailto:dmss100@york.ac.uk> wrote:
>> I've no idea who has wreaked this jest upon us, but if I had to point a
>> finger I think I'd be waving it over in the general direction of the
>> Cardinal's team of Octopedal Silly Game writers.

>It's a lovely thought, but the Silly Game died a while back due to
>mutual unagreement (which is neither agreement nor disagreement). Very
>peaceful. It just quietly slipped away in its sleep.

Bother. And I put quite a bit of effort into that. (Though not as much as
the authors, I'll grant you.) And the world will have to go without that
lovely punishment-for-violence undoable death I was looking forward to
seeing in the real thing. Still maybe it's worth dropping just to avoid
more jokes about pasties.

--
Den



From jcompton@typhoon.xnet.com Mon Apr 13 23:07:24 MET DST 1998
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From: jcompton@typhoon.xnet.com (Jason Compton)
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: TextFire 12-pack Reviews
Date: 8 Apr 1998 17:24:49 GMT
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jweinste (jweinste@aludra.usc.edu) wrote:
: 
: A possible thing to consider (maybe Adam can look into this on DejaNews):
: given that the coding would probably have required more than a little time
: and effort, is there an r.a.if regular who vanished (or, at least, posted
: much less frequently) in the days leading up to April 1, and has now
: resurfaced? Any thoughts?

Thought is that I find it very unlikely that this was a solo effort, in
part because the games are of wildly varying styles, in part because of
the deft use of three different IF languages, and in part because there
are -16- of them.

-- 
Jason Compton                                jcompton@xnet.com
Editor-in-Chief, Amiga Report Magazine       VP, Legacy Maker Inc.
http://www.cucug.org/ar/                     http://www.xnet.com/~jcompton/
Choose and renounce...                       throwing chains to the floor. 


From dmss100@york.ac.uk Mon Apr 13 23:07:39 MET DST 1998
Article: 32425 of rec.games.int-fiction
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From: Den of Iniquity <dmss100@york.ac.uk>
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: TextFire 12-pack Reviews
Date: Thu, 9 Apr 1998 13:41:33 +0100
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On 8 Apr 1998, jweinste wrote:

>My theories as to who is to blame, in order of likelihood:
>
>1. Adam Thornton, because he's been the busiest at pointing fingers,
>thereby throwing us all off his scent.
>2. Magnus Olsson, because his response to Adam was carefully worded to be
>ambiguous as to whether he realy believes that TextFire is real, and
>because of lines like the following:
>>Hmm. You've really been diligent in trying to track down the authors,
>>have you?

Yeah, and Magnus mentioned having to be told what 'Operation' was about
yet he never asked about it on these newsgroups - so who told him? The
author? Hmmmmmm. (Conspiracy theories! Cool!) And he is known to program
well in TADS and has been answering Inform questions knowledgably too...

>A possible thing to consider (maybe Adam can look into this on DejaNews):
>given that the coding would probably have required more than a little time
>and effort, is there an r.a.if regular who vanished (or, at least, posted
>much less frequently) in the days leading up to April 1, and has now
>resurfaced? Any thoughts?

It's a nice idea but such authors as Zarf and Stephen Granade have shown
that it's possible to keep up normal usenet and internet activity while
putting together great big games to a very high standard.

--
Den



From  Mon Apr 13 23:09:07 MET DST 1998
Article: 32513 of rec.games.int-fiction
From: nick@earthlink.net (Nick Holmes)
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: TextFire 12-pack Reviews
Date: 12 Apr 1998 04:09:34 GMT
Organization: ?
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Xref: news.lth.se rec.games.int-fiction:32513

In article <erkyrathEr5rvy.Ar0@netcom.com>,
Andrew Plotkin <erkyrath@netcom.com> wrote:

[snip]

> I haven't tried disassembling the damn thing, but my guess is that the 
> speed lapse is mostly from redrawing the status window. Big, ugly, and 
> lots of style changes (which can slow down redraw depending on how the 
> interpreter is written -- MaxZip works that way.)

Speaking of disassembling 12pack games, has anyone else noticed the two (at
least) TXD easter eggs in Colour yet? Are there any in other games?

For the curious, here they are:

# S107: "This class has been disabled for the demo. A special, scrambled
# version will be used for the full game, to prevent prying eyes from
# stealing our code using TXD or DisInform. This means you!"

# S153: "Hi! Mal here. I see you're looking through this code with TXD. Cool.
# (The folks at TextFire don't like that kind of thing, though - worried that
# people will rip off their code. Errr, as if...) This is my first proper IF
# release, though I knocked something up on my old Speccy a good few years
# ago, not sure if that counts... If anyone finds themselves near the
# Bournemouth area, why not pop along to the Triangle club where I work?
# Anyway, love to Jason (this one's dedicated to you!), and see ya's all
# soon!"

Seem just a little paranoid, don't they! Or just more evidence that this is
a hoax. (Who the hell is going to steal zmachine assembly code?)

Anyone ever hear of the Triangle club?

And where is S085: "Darkness, noun.  An absence of light to see by." used?

[snip]

On a more reviewish note, I rather liked this game's concept (and the
bizarre topology of the map), but the game made me do something very
unintuitive (that forced me to get TXD and look for the answer :) ) and
then became way too easy.

SPOILER:

How was I supposed to know that I could just clean the ocean with
absolutely no effort. And then I was supposed to notice the gas? The game
should really focus _some_ of your attention on it.

-nh



From jcompton@typhoon.xnet.com Mon Apr 13 23:09:31 MET DST 1998
Article: 32431 of rec.games.int-fiction
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From: jcompton@typhoon.xnet.com (Jason Compton)
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: TextFire 12-pack Reviews
Date: 9 Apr 1998 22:39:04 GMT
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Edan Harel (edharel@remus.rutgers.edu) wrote:
: 
: Actually, this game was one (of many) thing that made me positive it
: was a joke (I had actually concluded it was a joke before playing the
: games).  While the programming is impressive, each move takes a long
: time to move.  I was playing it on a 486dx100 and it was about 10 times
: slower than playing an infocom game on my (now dead) 8088.  No one
: would seriously have a game that took that long each turn, considering
: you can get a chess game that'd go a lot quicker.

While the status line does take a little time to refresh...come, come, my
Amiga's gotta be running faster than your PC playing that game.  I think
your interpreter may not be up to the task, but I could see myself rather
enjoyably playing through a few short chess puzzles.

I certainly didn't find the refresh unbearable.  Not even distressing.  I
don't think I'd want to play it on my Psion, but beyond that I think it's
fine.

-- 
Jason Compton                                jcompton@xnet.com
Editor-in-Chief, Amiga Report Magazine       VP, Legacy Maker Inc.
http://www.cucug.org/ar/                     http://www.xnet.com/~jcompton/
Choose and renounce...                       throwing chains to the floor. 


From jools@arnod.demon.co.uk Mon Apr 13 23:10:03 MET DST 1998
Article: 32471 of rec.games.int-fiction
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From: Julian Arnold <jools@arnod.demon.co.uk>
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: TextFire 12-pack Reviews
Date: Fri, 10 Apr 1998 17:25:27 +0100
Organization: None, absolutely none
Message-ID: <ant1016271cbc4bn@arnod.demon.co.uk>
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In article <Pine.SGI.3.95L.980410151645.9280B-100000@tower.york.ac.uk>,
Den of Iniquity <URL:mailto:dmss100@york.ac.uk> wrote:
> On 9 Apr 1998, jweinste wrote:
> 
> > "Alfred Timpson" sounds suspiciously like "Graham Nelson."

It does sound made up. But then so, suspiciously, does "Den of
Iniquity." Hm...

> I, like Lelah, considered the dates and times of the textfire files but
> the only conclusion I came to was that datestamps can easily be forged.
> BTW did I find that the internal compilation date of the Hugo game was
> actually the 2nd of April (or 4th Feb)? 

It's 4th February 1998.

BTW, has Graham actually denied involvement? I haven't seen any posts
>from him for a while in fact...  I'll reel off some more names:

Potential perpetrators include:
  Ian Finlay
  Lucian Smith
  3 Neils:
    Guy
    Brown
    deMause
  Andrew Pontius
  Cody Sandifer
  Gareth Rees

Jools
-- 
"For small erections may be finished by their first architects; grand
ones, true ones, ever leave the copestone to posterity. God keep me from
ever completing anything." -- Herman Melville, "Moby Dick"



From dmss100@york.ac.uk Mon Apr 13 23:10:19 MET DST 1998
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From: Den of Iniquity <dmss100@york.ac.uk>
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: TextFire 12-pack Reviews
Date: Fri, 10 Apr 1998 20:12:10 +0100
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On Fri, 10 Apr 1998, Julian Arnold wrote:

>Den of Iniquity <URL:mailto:dmss100@york.ac.uk> wrote:
>It does sound made up. But then so, suspiciously, does "Den of
>Iniquity." Hm...

Hmm, but I've made insufficient effort to disguise my name. It turns up in
a number of posts. :)

>> BTW did I find that the internal compilation date of the Hugo game was
>> actually the 2nd of April (or 4th Feb)? 
>
>It's 4th February 1998.

Thank goodness for that. So I didn't imagine it.

>BTW, has Graham actually denied involvement? I haven't seen any posts
>from him for a while in fact...  I'll reel off some more names:
>
>Potential perpetrators include:
>  Ian Finlay
>  Lucian Smith
>  3 Neils:
>    Guy
>    Brown
>    deMause
>  Andrew Pontius
>  Cody Sandifer
>  Gareth Rees

Hmm, more names to add to the list. I've not written off Jacob Solomon
Weinstein yet - author of 'Modernism', after all. And furthermore I can
think of only three people writing Hugo stuff (I know there's a fourth I
ought to remember but it's slipped my mind - oh, hang on, yes, Menichelli,
Kent, Teulbachs and...) so don't consider yourself exempt from
suspicion...  Although the Tunbridge Wells thing might have been done
deliberately to finger blame on UK people so maybe not. Or is it a double
bluff? We just don't know. :) 

And what has John Baker been up to recently (adopts the one-eyebrow-raised
position)? OrCEF, or Baggett or Cull, or, or, or...

--
Den



From jools@arnod.demon.co.uk Mon Apr 13 23:10:46 MET DST 1998
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From: Julian Arnold <jools@arnod.demon.co.uk>
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: TextFire 12-pack Reviews
Date: Sat, 11 Apr 1998 00:35:47 +0100
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In article <tinsel.892243712@jaka.ece.uiuc.edu>, Thomas Aaron Insel
<URL:mailto:tinsel@jaka.ece.uiuc.edu> wrote:
> FWIW, has anyone considered the complicity of Volker Blasius -- 
> for going along with the joke and archiving file under .../games/demos.

I briefly considered that maybe it was a Volker/David Kinder
co-production (reasoning that they got bored with updating the archive
and decided to have some fun).

> Besides, he might have access to the log files which could show from
> where the file was uploaded.

And you think he'll spoil the party and share them with us?

But then maybe he will. It'd be the kind thing to do.

> Also, it seems clear that the conspirator or conspirators read this
> group, as the new file (george.zip) addresses the lack of doman name
> registration, etc.

I got a bad archive error when I downloaded this. What is it?

Jools
-- 
"For small erections may be finished by their first architects; grand
ones, true ones, ever leave the copestone to posterity. God keep me from
ever completing anything." -- Herman Melville, "Moby Dick"



From mordacai@ix.netcom.com Mon Apr 13 23:11:03 MET DST 1998
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From: IF <mordacai@ix.netcom.com>
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: TextFire 12-pack Reviews
Date: Fri, 10 Apr 1998 21:40:03 -0600
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Julian Arnold wrote:

> In article <Pine.SGI.3.95L.980410151645.9280B-100000@tower.york.ac.uk>,
> Den of Iniquity <URL:mailto:dmss100@york.ac.uk> wrote:
> > On 9 Apr 1998, jweinste wrote:
> >
> > > "Alfred Timpson" sounds suspiciously like "Graham Nelson."
>
> It does sound made up. But then so, suspiciously, does "Den of
> Iniquity." Hm...
>
> > I, like Lelah, considered the dates and times of the textfire files but
> > the only conclusion I came to was that datestamps can easily be forged.
> > BTW did I find that the internal compilation date of the Hugo game was
> > actually the 2nd of April (or 4th Feb)?
>
> It's 4th February 1998.
>
> BTW, has Graham actually denied involvement? I haven't seen any posts
> from him for a while in fact...  I'll reel off some more names:
>
> Potential perpetrators include:
>   Ian Finlay
>

    I thank you for the compliment, but I was not among the cabal.  However,
I have heard, through an admittedly dubious source that this could be part of
something much bigger.  Consider if you will, the two most interesting and
talked about threads on this ng at the moment:  TextFire and *the upcoming
release of Avalon*.  To be saying more would betray more than I can fairly
state

    Ian Finley

>



From adam@princeton.edu Mon Apr 13 23:11:16 MET DST 1998
Article: 32478 of rec.games.int-fiction
From: adam@princeton.edu (Adam J. Thornton)
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: TextFire 12-pack Reviews
Date: 11 Apr 1998 03:52:46 GMT
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In article <352EE612.281F1E42@ix.netcom.com>,
IF  <mordacai@ix.netcom.com> wrote:
>    I thank you for the compliment, but I was not among the cabal.  However,
>I have heard, through an admittedly dubious source that this could be part of
>something much bigger.  Consider if you will, the two most interesting and
>talked about threads on this ng at the moment:  TextFire and *the upcoming
>release of Avalon*.  To be saying more would betray more than I can fairly
>state

Yeah.

But gkw denies complicity.

But I gotta say: "Camelot" announced in "George"?

And we do know that gkw has Activision contacts.

So.  Maybe there actually *is* a movement afoot to bundle a bunch of *new*
text adventures with an upcoming Activision graphical IF release?  It'd be
pretty cool.  And that, I can almost buy.  GKW and Graham Nelson make
sense, although not including Zarf (I believe his protestations of
innocence) doesn't make sense.  Jools.  Magnus.  Some combination of the
Neils.  Hmmmm.

Adam
-- 
adam@princeton.edu    Cynical and drunk and boring someone in some dark cafe


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From: fake-mail@anti-spam.address (Neil K.)
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: TextFire 12-pack Reviews
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 adam@princeton.edu (Adam J. Thornton) made reference to:

> [...]  Some combination of the
> Neils.  Hmmmm.

 Well, though I consider it quite flattering that I'm under consideration,
I must duly announce that I had nothing to do with any of the TextFire
stuff. Though ironically I am currently involved in a soon-to-be released
demo of surprising provenance.

 But regarding the TextFire games... right now, I expect that someone is
finding this endless and rather random speculation deeply amusing. :)

 - Neil K.

-- 
 t e l a  computer consulting + design   *   Vancouver, BC, Canada
      web: http://www.tela.bc.ca/tela/   *   email: tela @ tela.bc.ca


From vanfossen@compuserve.com Mon Apr 13 23:11:55 MET DST 1998
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From: vanfossen@compuserve.com (Brent VanFossen)
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: TextFire 12-pack Reviews
Date: Mon, 13 Apr 1998 04:38:54 GMT
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On 11 Apr 1998 03:52:46 GMT, adam@princeton.edu (Adam J. Thornton)
wrote:

>So.  Maybe there actually *is* a movement afoot to bundle a bunch of *new*
>text adventures with an upcoming Activision graphical IF release?  It'd be
>pretty cool.  And that, I can almost buy.  GKW and Graham Nelson make
>sense, although not including Zarf (I believe his protestations of
>innocence) doesn't make sense.  Jools.  Magnus.  Some combination of the
>Neils.  Hmmmm.

I might suggest that if you like the TextFire games, you send your
registration dollars to the IF Author of your choice.  If you end up
with a fully registered version, you guessed right, and you can let
the rest of us know.  Otherwise, that was very nice of you, thank you
very much.  Please try again <G>.

Brent VanFossen
(I'd be happy to give you my snail mail address.)


From spatula@s p a t c h.net Mon Apr 13 23:12:16 MET DST 1998
Article: 32542 of rec.games.int-fiction
From: spatula@s p a t c h.net (tv's Spatch)
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Subject: Re: TextFire 12-pack Reviews
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--shines the name, shines the name of Jason Compton: 
> Dave G. (dg@bigfoot.com) wrote:
> 
> : Perhaps someone should be pointing fingers at the authors of "Silence of
> : the Lambs" and "Pick Up The Phone Booth And Die".
> 
> Maybe.

As author of the latter, I hereby categorically deny any involvement with
the TextFire gang.  

However, with the advent of "Hockey" and its nutty current-events premise,
I am saddened to admit that I've had to cancel development on both
"Pick Up The Ken Starr Subpoena and Die" as well as the "George Michael
Park Adventure".  A one-joke game's only as good as the newsworthiness of
its inspiration, you see.

-- 
der Spatchel. spatula@s p a t c h.net. Proud to eat yummy red meat.
PUTPBAD is undergoing a facelift at http://www.spatch.net/booth. Soon!
       "And I say that holding my nose.  Deliberately." - H. Jon Benjamin


From Dennis.Matheson@delta-air.com Mon Apr 13 23:12:45 MET DST 1998
Article: 32432 of rec.games.int-fiction
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From: Dennis.Matheson@delta-air.com
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: TextFire 12-pack Reviews
Date: Thu, 09 Apr 1998 10:04:18 -0600
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In article <352C3EA8.1CA4@bigfoot.com>,
  dg@bigfoot.com wrote:
>>snip<<
> What I wonder is, would the authors have been kind enough to have
> secretly hidden enough information within the games/bios to determine
> their true identities?  That would be an interesting challenge for a
> bunch of literate, puzzle-oriented hackers, wouldn't it?
>>snip<<

  I have found a connection between two of the games... In Insomnia, if you
hit the wall you get:

   >HIT WALL
   What do you think this is, "Hockey" from the TextFire 12-Pack?
   Besides, you'd lose your deposit.

  And Hockey, in turn, contains the following line:

   "... because this time, violence *is* the answer to this one!"

which is obviously a reference to the standard Inform response "Violence isn't
the answer to this one."  Except, Hockey is written in TADS, not Inform.
(Yes, I realize that someone writing in TADS could certainly have played
Inform games and seen the response.  It just strikes me as significant,
somehow.)

  Now, Insomnia is by "August Pelter" from "a major midwestern university".
Hockey is by "Shishi M. Hayashi", apparently from California.  We have two
choices. 1) "August Pelter" was familiar with Hockey and liked it enough to
put a reference to it in his own game, or 2) "August Pelter" and "Shishi M.
Hayashi" are really the same person.

  I vote for 2.  Now, given that this is correct, then at least one of the
bios is false.  And if one is false, then why can't all of them be false?

  Has anyone else found any other references in one game to other games in the
12 Pack?

-----== Posted via Deja News, The Leader in Internet Discussion ==-----
http://www.dejanews.com/   Now offering spam-free web-based newsreading


From adam@princeton.edu Mon Apr 13 23:13:00 MET DST 1998
Article: 32426 of rec.games.int-fiction
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From: adam@princeton.edu (Adam J. Thornton)
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: TextFire 12-pack Reviews
Date: 9 Apr 1998 16:30:40 GMT
Organization: Princeton University
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In article <6gio1i$8e0$1@nnrp1.dejanews.com>,
 <Dennis.Matheson@delta-air.com> wrote:
>  I vote for 2.  Now, given that this is correct, then at least one of the
>bios is false.  And if one is false, then why can't all of them be false?

I'm pretty sure they're all false.

Especially the Hahvahd Boy.  And D.L. Schneck.

Which....

Now wait a minute.....

Jacob Solomon Weinstein, weren't you responsible for a game once where an
evil Hahvahd-educated trumpet player was the root of all evil?

You're just trying to throw us off the track by accusing me, aren't you?

Adam
-- 
adam@princeton.edu    Cynical and drunk and boring someone in some dark cafe


From bkm@pobox.com Mon Apr 13 23:13:19 MET DST 1998
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From: bkm@pobox.com (Bonnie Montgomery)
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: TextFire 12-pack Reviews
Date: Thu, 09 Apr 1998 18:59:31 -0700
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In article <6gh7nq$bb$1@remus.rutgers.edu>, edharel@remus.rutgers.edu
(Edan Harel) wrote:

> adam@princeton.edu (Adam J. Thornton) writes:
> 
> >Coma!:
> 
> >Oooh, cheezy.  Might make a good competition game, but I can't see it as a
> >full-length sorta thing.
> 
> Actually, I seem to remember once, (in jest?) someone suggested an interactive
> death, where you couldn't do anything ("You can't do that, you're dead").
> Now if I can only remember *who*...


It's been done...

If you provoke one of your brothers sufficiently, you have the opportunity
of spending part of "Firebird" dead, dead, dead in much that same way.
(There is *one* non-system verb that will work; by testers' suggestion,
the system verbs will work if you have not the patience to be dead for
several turns.)

Bonnie
bkm@pobox.com


From Dennis.Matheson@delta-air.com Mon Apr 13 23:13:57 MET DST 1998
Article: 32469 of rec.games.int-fiction
From: Dennis Matheson <Dennis.Matheson@delta-air.com>
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: TextFire 12-pack Reviews
Date: Fri, 10 Apr 1998 17:47:48 -0400
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Xref: news.lth.se rec.games.int-fiction:32469

Jason Compton wrote:
>>snip<<
> 
> ...and since it went on GMD, it's only standard practice not to bundle an
> interpreter.  (Whether it went anywhere else is questionable).
>>

   If it did, I can't find it.  I just ran "TextFire" through Alta
Vista, Excite, WebCrawler and HotBot.  No hits.  Northern Lights search
had one hit for a Java applet called "Fire Text".
   Search.com returned 26 hits; (9 of them for "Web Server Statistics
for Calchief Web Site" and 3 "...for tma Web Site", all of which were
404.)  It also returned three hits for the GamesDomain "What's New" page
(1 for 19 Jan, 2 for 20 Jan), but the page has been updated since then. 
(If anyone is interested, the URL is
www.gamesdomain.com/whatsnew/whatsnew.html).  None of the other sites
had any relevance.  Search.com seems to have a very "soft" match
algorithm; it seemed to be keying on the words "fire" and "text" near
each other on the same page.

   I then ran "TextFire" through the Usenet search on Alta Vista and
Deja News.  There was one hit on comp.sys.ibm.pc.games (where Volker
announced the upload to GMD)and a few posts on r.a.i-f.  All the
remaining posts have been here on r.g.i-f.

   With the possible exception of the GamesDomain site (which is for a
much earlier date than the 12-pack) the only appearance of the TextFire
12-pack seems to be here.  Which makes me think even more that the
perpetrators are here too.
-- 
"You can't run away forever, but there's nothing wrong
 with getting a good head start" --- Jim Steinman

Dennis Matheson --- Dennis.Matheson@delta-air.com
                --- http://home.earthlink.net/~tanstaafl


From davesilb@hooked.net Mon Apr 13 23:14:18 MET DST 1998
Article: 32402 of rec.games.int-fiction
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From: davesilb@hooked.net
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: TextFire high scores - 28 pts (*VERB spoilers* !!!???)
Date: Thu, 09 Apr 1998 03:44:09 GMT
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In article <352C2340.2917@bigfoot.com>, dg@bigfoot.com wrote:
>I'm just wondering how long I have to keep banging my head over "Verb". 
>I've gotten only 22 points, yet have heard rumours of much higher totals
>(33?).  I'm hoping that someone can let me know what the highest
>possible score is (or at least the highest anyone on r.g.i-f has
>achieved so far).  Any takers?  ;D
>
>While we're at it, I've managed $1490 damage in U.S. Hockey.  How high
>can we go here?  (After playing Verb, U.S. Hockey is a great way to vent
>your frustration.)

Here's my 28 points walkthrough.  I managed to get 29, but I forget where the 
last point came from:










(*SPOILER SPACE*)
















Take a break
Take a look at TV
Take TV
Take a look at furniture
Take a chance
Take a look at papers
Take papers
Take a look at left
Take a look at right
Take right
Take a look at crates
Take a look at rope
Take rope
Take left
Take a look at stairs
Take stairs
Take a look at stairs (you get points again!)
Take a look at table
Take a look at dresser
Take a look at bed
Take a look at verb
Turn off TV
Turn on TV
Turn table
Take a look at pillow
Turn pillow
Take stairs
Take a look at me
Take off (quits game)


From earendil@faeryland.TAMU-Commerce.edu Mon Apr 13 23:14:28 MET DST 1998
Article: 32422 of rec.games.int-fiction
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: TextFire high scores - 28 pts (*VERB spoilers* !!!???)
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In article <6ghg0o$avu$1@its.hooked.net>,  <davesilb@hooked.net> wrote:
>Here's my 28 points walkthrough.  I managed to get 29, but I forget where the 
>last point came from:

    Take a break
    Take a look at TV
    Take TV
    Take a look at furniture
    Take a chance
    Take a look at papers
    Take papers
    Take a look at left
    Take a look at right
    Take right
    Take a look at crates
    Take a look at rope
    Take rope
    Take left
    Take a look at stairs
    Take stairs
    Take a look at stairs (you get points again!)
    Take a look at table
    Take a look at dresser
    Take a look at bed
    Take a look at verb
    Turn off TV
    Turn on TV
    Turn table
    Take a look at pillow
    Turn pillow
    Take stairs
    Take a look at me
    Take off (quits game)
    
Take heart
Take the cake

I was disappointed that "take it lying down" didn't work with the bed *8-).
"turn in" would be a good way to lie down also.  You could give things away
with "turn over".  It could be a lot more clever than it actually is.  Neat
idea though.  I could enjoy a full game of this.


-- 
Allen Garvin                                      kisses are a better fate
---------------------------------------------     than wisdom
earendil@faeryland.tamu-commerce.edu          
http://faeryland.tamu-commerce.edu/~earendil         	      e e cummings


From dmss100@york.ac.uk Mon Apr 13 23:14:54 MET DST 1998
Article: 32475 of rec.games.int-fiction
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From: Den of Iniquity <dmss100@york.ac.uk>
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: TextFire high scores - 28 pts (*VERB spoilers* !!!???)
Date: Fri, 10 Apr 1998 20:13:01 +0100
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Xref: news.lth.se rec.games.int-fiction:32475

I couldn't resist having a quick go at Verb some time when I had better
things to be doing, and got 30-something points. I also found some
peculiar examples, which I'll detail after some spoiler space.

I was quite pleased to find that 'take stock' gives you your score but
doesn't award points. Likewise, 'take a turn' waits, but again doesn't
reward.

SPOILERS AHEAD!

















I notice that the game recognises the word note, but not as a verb or a
noun, so does anyone know how it is used?

I was disappointed by the large number of nouns I tried that didn't elicit
a useful response, examples including take care, take control, take
jurisdiction (well, you never know), take pride, take a seat, take aback,
take in, take over, turn turtle, and others that I can't remember. 

Take five is analagous to take a break and take a risk to take a chance.

However, you probably want to know how I got some more points; in addition
to the examples in the other posts in this thread, I also scored from

take offence (or take offense; both work)
take a look at ground

and these two oddities:

take a look at world
take a look at swing

 - both give error messages but both also score, peculiarly enough.

I got the first one after having exited by the left door and being forced
to reload. The second one came to me after I tried 'take a swing at...'
which didn't work (in case you think that my imagination got the better of
me). Does anyone have any idea how 'swing' comes into the game?

I think 'world' is counted because it's used for the non-scoring

take over the world

And with that Easter Egg I'll bid you all a happy Easter. :)

--
Den



From jools@arnod.demon.co.uk Mon Apr 13 23:15:39 MET DST 1998
Article: 32491 of rec.games.int-fiction
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From: Julian Arnold <jools@arnod.demon.co.uk>
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Textfire authors
Date: Sat, 11 Apr 1998 13:41:40 +0100
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In article <kjfair-1104980057320001@ntcs-ip38.uchicago.edu>, Kenneth Fair
<URL:mailto:kjfair@midway.uchicago.edu.REMOVEME> wrote:
> 
> I find it interesting that everyone has assumed that TextFire was done
> entirely by established authors.  Considering that the games are miniature
> sized demos, I see no reason to assume that.  Why can't one or more of 
> the games have been done by a new author?

They could. Problem is that then we couldn't theorize on possible
hoaxers. Unless it was Maurice Bletchley and Cindi Loeffler after all.

Jools
-- 
"For small erections may be finished by their first architects; grand
ones, true ones, ever leave the copestone to posterity. God keep me from
ever completing anything." -- Herman Melville, "Moby Dick"



From jcompton@typhoon.xnet.com Mon Apr 13 23:16:01 MET DST 1998
Article: 32509 of rec.games.int-fiction
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From: jcompton@typhoon.xnet.com (Jason Compton)
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Textfire authors
Date: 12 Apr 1998 04:45:34 GMT
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Kenneth Fair (kjfair@midway.uchicago.edu.REMOVEME) wrote:
: 
: I find it interesting that everyone has assumed that TextFire was done
: entirely by established authors.  Considering that the games are miniature
: sized demos, I see no reason to assume that.  Why can't one or more of 
: the games have been done by a new author?

Well, remember, the TextFire premise is that it's all -unknown- authors.

The root problem people have believing TextFire is legit is believing that
there is a group of unknown authors of sufficient skill to pull this all
off.  (And while not every demo is an absolute gem, even the likes of
Hockey does something unusual for IF)

And if you can believe that there is an unknown group of authors of
sufficient skill to pull of a HOAX of this caliber, why is it so difficult
to believe that there is an unknown group of authors of sufficient skill
to make this a real effort?  That's why people have stuck with presuming
the authors are known quantities, because once you start introducing "They
could be people we've never heard of/from", it's tougher to disbelieve the
whole TextFire premise.

-- 
Jason Compton                                jcompton@xnet.com
Editor-in-Chief, Amiga Report Magazine       VP, Legacy Maker Inc.
http://www.cucug.org/ar/                     http://www.xnet.com/~jcompton/
Choose and renounce...                       throwing chains to the floor. 


From edharel@romulus.rutgers.edu Mon Apr 13 23:17:01 MET DST 1998
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From: edharel@romulus.rutgers.edu (Edan Harel)
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Textfire authors
Date: 12 Apr 1998 17:28:44 -0400
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jcompton@typhoon.xnet.com (Jason Compton) writes:

>Kenneth Fair (kjfair@midway.uchicago.edu.REMOVEME) wrote:
>: 
>: I find it interesting that everyone has assumed that TextFire was done
>: entirely by established authors.  Considering that the games are miniature
>: sized demos, I see no reason to assume that.  Why can't one or more of 
>: the games have been done by a new author?

>Well, remember, the TextFire premise is that it's all -unknown- authors.

>The root problem people have believing TextFire is legit is believing that
>there is a group of unknown authors of sufficient skill to pull this all
>off.  (And while not every demo is an absolute gem, even the likes of
>Hockey does something unusual for IF)

No, that's only part of the reason.  Not only is it unlikely that there be
a group of unknown authors (most of which appear to be considerably farmiliar
with the language they've used), it's also unlikely that such a "company"
would take on unknown people, rather than offering better known people
first (if you were a publisher, would you try to get your book written by a 
new person or a nobody?).  
	Also, why give a slew of interesting but somewhat substandard 
(and unusual) games, rather than offering a few more serious demos.  Now, 
I can imagine most of the games, even hockey, being a full game, it is 
hard to imagine them being of enough quality to fork over money for.
	And thats not even mentioning things like QVC and an interactive
fiction convention.  had it been a booth at a computer show, I could see
that, but an interactive fiction convention?
	And, last but not least, there *isn't * that big an audience for
Text Adventures.  I could see a shareware company for making text adventures,
but a comercial company I *cannot* see.  (Which was why I believed it as I
was beginning to read the readme file.  A shareware company would be something
I could easily believe.  But QVC?)

>And if you can believe that there is an unknown group of authors of
>sufficient skill to pull of a HOAX of this caliber, why is it so difficult

Well, I think the Text fire people (and most of them probably are known
authors) just aren't showing themselves.  I looked through dejanews
briefly, and there are at least a few people who vanished around Febuary
and have either ot reappeared, or reappeared only this month.

Makes you think.  (Of what, I don't know... :))

>to believe that there is an unknown group of authors of sufficient skill
>to make this a real effort?  That's why people have stuck with presuming

"Operate!", a real effort?  It's funny.  Ha, Ha.  But there's no way it could
make a "game".
-- 
Edan Harel	       edharel@remus.rutgers.edu	     McCormick 6201
Research Assistant     edharel@eden.rutgers.edu	    Math and Comp Sci Major
USACS Member	       Office: Core 423			Math Club Secretary


From jcompton@typhoon.xnet.com Mon Apr 13 23:17:31 MET DST 1998
Article: 32558 of rec.games.int-fiction
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From: jcompton@typhoon.xnet.com (Jason Compton)
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Textfire authors
Date: 13 Apr 1998 19:33:52 GMT
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Dennis.Matheson@delta-air.com wrote:
:    Both of those helped convince me it was a hoax.  If they had said that they
: were *running* the interactive fiction convention; maybe.  But they just said
: that they would have a booth at the convention.  The impression I got was that
: the convention existed separately from TextFire.  So, now there are *two*
: groups of IF fans we have never heard of.

Granting them the benefit of the doubt on being real for a moment, the
wording in the "IF convention" passage is pretty common for tiny companies
who want to seem like small companies.  It would be like me saying "I'll
be at the First Annual Evanston Chocolate Chip Cookie Bake-Off, if you
want to join me here's the address" and then giving you my home address.

It may still be a hoax but I don't think that this wording makes that
particularly obvious.  If it's a hoax, they've done a pretty good job of
mocking the language of tiny companies.

-- 
Jason Compton                                jcompton@xnet.com
Editor-in-Chief, Amiga Report Magazine       VP, Legacy Maker Inc.
http://www.cucug.org/ar/                     http://www.xnet.com/~jcompton/
Choose and renounce...                       throwing chains to the floor. 


From spatula@s p a t c h.net Mon Apr 13 23:17:46 MET DST 1998
Article: 32541 of rec.games.int-fiction
From: spatula@s p a t c h.net (tv's Spatch)
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: TextFire demos
Date: 10 Apr 1998 16:23:00 GMT
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--shines the name, shines the name of Jason Compton: 
> 
> - I haven't played all of the demos yet.  Those I have played have ranged
> from mildly amusing (Marjorie Hopkirk, Hockey, Revenge of the etc.) to
> full-blown intriguing (Zugzwang) 

I think it's worth mentioning that at least one of the TextFire authors
probably enjoys play-by-mail chess, as "Zugzwang!" is the name of a rather
old (still well established, perhaps?) PBM chess organization.

It's always the little asides that provide the niftiest clues.

-- 
der Spatchel. spatula@s p a t c h.net. Proud to eat yummy red meat.
PUTPBAD is undergoing a facelift at http://www.spatch.net/booth. Soon!
                          "So it goes my sorry ass, Kurt." - Kevin Murphy


From dylanw@demon.net Mon Apr 13 23:17:54 MET DST 1998
Article: 32547 of rec.games.int-fiction
From: dylanw@demon.net (Dylan O'Donnell)
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: TextFire demos
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spatula@s p a t c h.net (tv's Spatch) writes:
> I think it's worth mentioning that at least one of the TextFire authors
> probably enjoys play-by-mail chess, as "Zugzwang!" is the name of a rather
> old (still well established, perhaps?) PBM chess organization.

Not necessarily. As I believe the readme said, "zugzwang" is a technical
term in chess theory (generalisable to other two-player alternate-move
games) for a situation in which the player obliged to move can only worsen 
his position by doing so. It's a pretty familiar term to students of the 
game; I think the PBM group is a red herring.

-- 
:  Dylan O'Donnell                 :  "The only thing necessary for the     :
:  Demon Internet Ltd, slave deck  :   triumph of evil is for good men to   :
:  http://www.fysh.org/~psmith/    :   do nothing."     -- Edmund Burke     :


From Dennis.Matheson@delta-air.com Mon Apr 13 23:18:13 MET DST 1998
Article: 32557 of rec.games.int-fiction
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From: Dennis Matheson <Dennis.Matheson@delta-air.com>
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: TextFire demos
Date: Mon, 13 Apr 1998 11:32:26 -0400
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Jason Compton wrote:
> 
> tv's Spatch (spatula@spatch.net) wrote:
> :
> : I think it's worth mentioning that at least one of the TextFire authors
> : probably enjoys play-by-mail chess, as "Zugzwang!" is the name of a rather
> : old (still well established, perhaps?) PBM chess organization.
> :
> : It's always the little asides that provide the niftiest clues.
> 
> I was wondering what that meant.  I assumed it was the name of some chess
> notable who you might find in one of those books of openings or something.
> 

Actually, Zugzwang is defined within the game.  If you check your
inventory, you are carrying a rule book.  Reading the book gives you a
menu which contains (among other things) the rules of chess and the
definition of Zugzwang.

   "The term zugzwang (from German, meaning "obligation to move")
    is used to describe a situation where any move a player can
    make will worsen his position. The rules force him to make a
    move, even if it means that he will lose the game."

-- 
"You can't run away forever, but there's nothing wrong
 with getting a good head start" --- Jim Steinman

Dennis Matheson --- Dennis.Matheson@delta-air.com
                --- http://home.earthlink.net/~tanstaafl


From ivan@NOSPAMcockrumville.com Mon Apr 13 23:18:43 MET DST 1998
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From: ivan@NOSPAMcockrumville.com (Ivan Cockrum)
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: TextFire Authors Unmasked!
Date: Sun, 12 Apr 1998 10:33:24 -0700
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Anybody read the "about" from tenuous.gam?  Take a gander

       ----------
       After receiving a degree in library science from Texas
       Woman's University, Riley Hawkins was directionless. 
       Eventually, like so many other Okies, Riley went west in
       search of opportunity, finally stopping in Piedmont, CA. 
       Unfortunately, Piedmont has a noticeable dearth of
       libraries; fortunately, one of the numerous branches of the
       Oakland Public Library system had a job opening.
       
       A few months later, Riley met Shea Davis when Shea was doing
       research for a game.  In an odd series of coincidences,
       Deborah Keyes attended the same PFLAG meeting Riley did, and
       Riley and Flip Winkler crossed paths at a show at Slim's. 
       Though still working at the library, Riley is now spending
       more and more time writing interactive fiction.
       ----------

Riley Hawkins?  Flip Winkler?  I think this should be clear to anyone
who's spent time on iFMUD.  Obviously, TextFire consists of some
combination of Adam Cadre, Lisa Daley, Neil deMause, and everyone's
favorite, Mathew Amster-Burton.

-- Ivan

----------------------------------------------------------------------
Ivan Cockrum       www.cockrumville.com      ivan@NOSPAMcockrumville.com
----------------------------------------------------------------------
          To reply by email, remove "NOSPAM" from the address above.


From jcompton@typhoon.xnet.com Mon Apr 13 23:18:55 MET DST 1998
Article: 32523 of rec.games.int-fiction
From: jcompton@typhoon.xnet.com (Jason Compton)
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: TextFire Authors Unmasked!
Date: 12 Apr 1998 19:02:49 GMT
Organization: XNet - The Midwest's Leading Network Service Provider - (630) 983-6064
Lines: 16
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Xref: news.lth.se rec.games.int-fiction:32523

Ivan Cockrum (ivan@NOSPAMcockrumville.com) wrote:
: Riley Hawkins?  Flip Winkler?  I think this should be clear to anyone
: who's spent time on iFMUD.  Obviously, TextFire consists of some
: combination of Adam Cadre, Lisa Daley, Neil deMause, and everyone's
: favorite, Mathew Amster-Burton.

If you're going to use the word "unmasked" I think you should offer a bit
more evidence than four names based on references those of us who
-haven'-t spent time around IFMud don't understand, two of which have
denied involvement already. 

-- 
Jason Compton                                jcompton@xnet.com
Editor-in-Chief, Amiga Report Magazine       VP, Legacy Maker Inc.
http://www.cucug.org/ar/                     http://www.xnet.com/~jcompton/
Choose and renounce...                       throwing chains to the floor. 


From tilford@cco.caltech.edu Mon Apr 13 23:19:22 MET DST 1998
Article: 32533 of rec.games.int-fiction
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From: tilford@ralph.caltech.edu (Mark J. Tilford)
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: TextFire Authors Unmasked!
Date: 13 Apr 1998 02:43:21 GMT
Organization: California Institute of Technology, Pasadena
Lines: 16
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Has anybody been making a list of which authors have been
accu^H^H^H^Hsuggested as being part of the TextFire group, and which have
denied it?  And comparing that list to who has released a game/source code
for something in TADS/Inform/Hugo?  

Also, I believe Jason Compton is involved somehow; he seems to be the only
person who supports the idea that TextFire is real; even if he didn't
program any of the games, I'm sure he knows who did.

Also, I will add that I am not involved in any way.  I made up TZZ, but
not TextFire.

-- 
-----------------------
Mark   Jeffrey  Tilford
tilford@cco.caltech.edu


From jcompton@typhoon.xnet.com Mon Apr 13 23:19:28 MET DST 1998
Article: 32537 of rec.games.int-fiction
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From: jcompton@typhoon.xnet.com (Jason Compton)
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: TextFire Authors Unmasked!
Date: 13 Apr 1998 04:53:50 GMT
Organization: XNet - The Midwest's Leading Network Service Provider - (630) 983-6064
Lines: 17
Message-ID: <6gs5ou$ii$1@flood.xnet.com>
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Mark J. Tilford (tilford@ralph.caltech.edu) wrote:
: 
: Also, I believe Jason Compton is involved somehow; he seems to be the only
: person who supports the idea that TextFire is real; even if he didn't
: program any of the games, I'm sure he knows who did.

Sooner or later someone would have to accuse me since I have been talking
about this a lot, but no, I'm not involved.  I lack the skill and
imagination, and I'm not a big fan of conspiracies either when it comes
down to it.  I wish I knew who programmed the games because then I could
stop thinking about it.

-- 
Jason Compton                                jcompton@xnet.com
Editor-in-Chief, Amiga Report Magazine       VP, Legacy Maker Inc.
http://www.cucug.org/ar/                     http://www.xnet.com/~jcompton/
Choose and renounce...                       throwing chains to the floor. 


From mordacai@ix.netcom.com Mon Apr 13 23:19:49 MET DST 1998
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From: IF <mordacai@ix.netcom.com>
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: TextFire Authors Unmasked!
Date: Sun, 12 Apr 1998 15:45:54 -0600
Organization: Netcom
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Ivan Cockrum wrote:

> Riley Hawkins?  Flip Winkler?  I think this should be clear to anyone
> who's spent time on iFMUD.  Obviously, TextFire consists of some
> combination of Adam Cadre, Lisa Daley, Neil deMause, and everyone's
> favorite, Mathew Amster-Burton.
>

    Not to ruin a very good theory and disparage the only solid clues that
have come forward so far, I'm afraid this probably isn't the case.  If my
"source" (geeze, I'm starting to sound like I'm in Spider & Web) is to be
belived, the perpetrator isn't a MUD user.  I suspect these clues are red
herrings.  What self-respecting author, wishing to keep his identity a
secret would use such an obvious device (though I have no doubt that there
are clues somewhere in the games, more deeply hidden, that are accurate
pointers).  I belive the author wanted to cast suspiscion elsewhere, which
brings me to my other point:

    I think, and some of the things my friend has said support this, that
the 12 pack is one large game, designed to be played en masse by this
newsgroup.  Consider:  the games in themselves are, generally, mildly
entertaining, and always incomplete.  If a known author were to write these
games, I'd expect them to be of higher quality *unless* they were this way
for a reason.  When I first played the games, I thought, and this was just a
random thought, of pieces of a puzzle.  Now I think I might have been on to
something, that the games, somehow, link together, and, when properly
figured out, will lead us to the author.  It's not that far fetched an
idea.  A talented programmer, a regular on this group, familiar with the way
we discuss things, might have designed this puzzle for us, in order to watch
how (and if) we'd solve it.  The clues are all there.  Based on this, the
sort of brain it would take to think of something like this and the sense of
scale to pull it off, I point the finger of blame directly at Grahm Nelson,
and maybe a small group of others to help him pull it off.  Not too many
though, because he'd want most of the group unaware of what was going on so
we could actually *play* the game.  Just something to think over.

Ian Finley



From adam@princeton.edu Tue Apr 14 00:03:34 MET DST 1998
Article: 32487 of rec.games.int-fiction
Path: news.lth.se!newsfeed.sunet.se!news99.sunet.se!news01.sunet.se!masternews.telia.net!news-feed.inet.tele.dk!bofh.vszbr.cz!cpk-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!news.bbnplanet.com!newshub.northeast.verio.net!news3.cac.psu.edu!cnn.Princeton.EDU!not-for-mail
From: adam@princeton.edu (Adam J. Thornton)
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: George
Date: 11 Apr 1998 03:46:32 GMT
Organization: Princeton University
Lines: 86
Message-ID: <6gmp2o$mdf$1@cnn.Princeton.EDU>
NNTP-Posting-Host: flagstaff.princeton.edu
X-Newsposter: trn 4.0-test56 (2 Mar 97)
Xref: news.lth.se rec.games.int-fiction:32487

This is a pretty creepy demo.  You, the schizophrenic, with George, your
better half, at the zoo, seeing things one shouldn't see.

And, of course, it's a TextFire game.

Whoever these guys are, they're funny.  Look at the upcoming releases:
TextFire SimulationPack (available July 31):
* Operate
* Pumping
* The Inanimator
* Verb
* Zugzwang

Note that Operate isn't in the HumorPack.  And that "Verb" is a simulation.
A simulation of *what*, one might ask.

But the kicker is this:
Also coming soon:
* An Exploration of Colour
* Camelot
* Dragon Island
* George
* Masta-Mind
* TextFire Golf

I thought I would wet my pants the first time I read this.

We've seen "Colour," of course.

"Camelot" is, er, clearly meant to be riding on Avalon's coattails.

"Dragon Island"?  A cross between Monkey Island and Yet Another Game With A
Damn Dragon In It, perhaps?

"George" we know.

"Masta-Mind"?  After the recent discussion (is Mastermind in Time, or
where?) on puzzle design?  I almost snarfed coffee onto my keyboard (C|N>K
for those who care) when I saw this.

And I can think of two forms for TextFire Golf.  One is a Status-Window
game along the lines of Atari VCS Golf (remember that)?  The other...

Hole 4 (at the tee)

You stand at the beginning of Hole Four, a 320-yard par-four dogleg to the
right, with a pair of sandtraps before the green and a water hazard at 175
yards. 

Your caddy is here, looking bored.

> SWING

You don't have a club!

> ASK CADDY FOR CLUB

"And what club will you be using, sir?" he asks, his bored, insolent voice
making a mockery of his politeness

> SEVEN-IRON

(to the caddy)

His left eyebrow raises fractionally and he hands you the club with a look
of bored aggrievance.

> SWING

The ball rockets off your club, hooking viciously to the left, to land with
a *ploop* in the water hazard.

Your caddy snickers.

> HIT CADDY WITH CLUB

The caddy's skull cracks satisfyingly as you pummel him to death with your
seven-iron.  Soon men in blue jackets come to lead you away.

*** You Have Not Completed The Tour ***



Adam
-- 
adam@princeton.edu    Cynical and drunk and boring someone in some dark cafe


From ecr+@andrew.cmu.edu Tue Apr 14 00:04:00 MET DST 1998
Article: 32480 of rec.games.int-fiction
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From: Evin C Robertson <ecr+@andrew.cmu.edu>
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: George
Date: Sat, 11 Apr 1998 01:42:06 -0400
Organization: Freshman, Electrical and Computer Engineering, Carnegie Mellon, Pittsburgh, PA
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Hmm... I have a suspicion this wasn't written by the same person/people
who wrote/packaged the first batch of textfire stuff.

Doing a "technical view" of the archives shows that 12pack.zip was
compressed using "maximum" compression under MSDOS, while george.zip was
compressed using "normal" compression under MacOS.  This is not
insignificant.

So this either confirms that more than one person is a member of the
Textfire hoax or somebody liked the idea and decided to grab a piece of
the pie.  I suspect the latter.  Of course, it could be someone who uses
both MSDOG and MacOS, but I doubt it.

Also, the formatting of the readme's is different in the two archives. 
Of course all of this could just be attempts to throw us off track, but
I suspect george is a spoof on a spoof.

And the game is just, well... weird.  Has anyone reached an ending other
than going over the railing to visit the bear?

Note how George ends with "You have reached one possible conclusion,"
very different than the games in 12pack, which tell you to buy the
registered version.

Of course, I'm just full of wacky theories this week, so...



From russotto@wanda.pond.com Tue Apr 14 00:04:08 MET DST 1998
Article: 32507 of rec.games.int-fiction
Path: news.lth.se!newsfeed.sunet.se!news99.sunet.se!news01.sunet.se!masternews.telia.net!news-feed.inet.tele.dk!bofh.vszbr.cz!news-xfer.netaxs.com!netaxs.com!wanda.pond.com!russotto
From: russotto@wanda.pond.com (Matthew T. Russotto)
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: George
Date: 11 Apr 1998 19:16:22 GMT
Organization: Ghotinet
Lines: 21
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In article <Up=k_iO00YUr1K9mA0@andrew.cmu.edu>,
Evin C Robertson  <ecr+@andrew.cmu.edu> wrote:
}Hmm... I have a suspicion this wasn't written by the same person/people
}who wrote/packaged the first batch of textfire stuff.
}
}Doing a "technical view" of the archives shows that 12pack.zip was
}compressed using "maximum" compression under MSDOS, while george.zip was
}compressed using "normal" compression under MacOS.  This is not
}insignificant.

Perhaps not-- but it doesn't mean it wasn't done by the original people.

[..]

}Note how George ends with "You have reached one possible conclusion,"

This pretty much tells you who the game was parodying -- and he uses MacOS.
-- 
Matthew T. Russotto                                russotto@pond.com
"Extremism in defense of liberty is no vice, and moderation in pursuit
of justice is no virtue." 


From weird_beard@prodigy.net Tue Apr 14 12:18:27 MET DST 1998
Article: 32447 of rec.games.int-fiction
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From: weird_beard@prodigy.net
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Hello Sailor
Date: Thu, 09 Apr 1998 22:48:11 -0600
Organization: Deja News - The Leader in Internet Discussion
Lines: 39
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References: <35287ccf.0@newshost.pcug.org.au> <6ggalb$9jh$1@news.enterprise.net> <serc001-0904981624440001@gl11.cs.auckland.ac.nz> <owls-0804982336560001@owls.vip.best.com> <erkyrathEr5rLD.A9v@netcom.com>
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In article <erkyrathEr5rLD.A9v@netcom.com>,
  erkyrath@netcom.com (Andrew Plotkin) wrote:
>
> JID (owls@best.com) wrote:
> > In article <serc001-0904981624440001@gl11.cs.auckland.ac.nz>,
> > serc001@cs.auckland.ac.nz wrote:
>
> > >BTW The only effect saying 'Hello Sailor' in Zork 1 has is invoking the
> > >curse on yourself.  So that when you die, you aren't reincarnated
> > >immediately, but are doomed to wander as a ghostly presence until you
> > >repent.
>
> > Uh...I thought that had something to do with praying at the altar. Does
> > "Hello Sailor" really relate?
>
> He's quite right. Praying at the altar is *how* you repent, if you're so
> foolish as to invoke the curse.
>

Actually, he's wrong. You become a spirit if you've visited the altar before
you died (which *everyone* who has found the book has done), then you pray to
get yourself back in your body. (Text Adventure Masterpieces of Infocom
hints.pdf pages 9-10) Also, in the mainframe Zork you got into the Dungeon
Master's lair by answering questions about the game, and the answer to "In
which room is the phrase 'Hello sailor' useful?" is none.

Actually the only reason for the prayer is to hide the word Odysseus.

> --Z
>
> --
>
> "And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the
> borogoves..."
>


-----== Posted via Deja News, The Leader in Internet Discussion ==-----
http://www.dejanews.com/   Now offering spam-free web-based newsreading


From Dennis.Matheson@delta-air.com Wed Apr 15 13:42:22 MET DST 1998
Article: 32614 of rec.games.int-fiction
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From: Dennis.Matheson@delta-air.com
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Textfire authors
Date: Mon, 13 Apr 1998 13:45:39 -0600
Organization: Deja News - The Leader in Internet Discussion
Lines: 35
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In article <6grbmc$8jd$1@romulus.rutgers.edu>,
  edharel@romulus.rutgers.edu (Edan Harel) wrote:

>>snip<<

> No, that's only part of the reason.  Not only is it unlikely that there be
> a group of unknown authors (most of which appear to be considerably
farmiliar
> with the language they've used), it's also unlikely that such a "company"
> would take on unknown people, rather than offering better known people
> first (if you were a publisher, would you try to get your book written by a
> new person or a nobody?).

  Actually, if you read the bios, it appears as if all of the TextFire authors
either know each other or are connected in some way.  The feel is more of a
group of friends/acquaintances with a common interest who decided to start a
company than of a company hiring programmers to do a job.

> 	And thats not even mentioning things like QVC and an interactive
> fiction convention.  had it been a booth at a computer show, I could see
> that, but an interactive fiction convention?

>>snip<<

   Both of those helped convince me it was a hoax.  If they had said that they
were *running* the interactive fiction convention; maybe.  But they just said
that they would have a booth at the convention.  The impression I got was that
the convention existed separately from TextFire.  So, now there are *two*
groups of IF fans we have never heard of.
   I still think the biggest clue is that *no one* from TextFire has *ever*
appeared on either r.a/g.i-f, either before or after the demo was posted.
They must know *we* exist.

-----== Posted via Deja News, The Leader in Internet Discussion ==-----
http://www.dejanews.com/   Now offering spam-free web-based newsreading


From spatula@s p a t c h.net Wed Apr 15 17:57:20 MET DST 1998
Article: 32615 of rec.games.int-fiction
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From: spatula@s p a t c h.net (tv's Spatch)
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: TextFire Authors Unmasked!
Date: Wed, 15 Apr 1998 04:53:05 GMT
Organization: Spatula Labs East
Lines: 23
Message-ID: <35343bff.17497755@news.ma.ultranet.com>
References: <ivan-1204981033240001@news.blarg.net> <6gr34p$ijb$2@flood.xnet.com>
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Hey, Rocky!  Watch me pull jcompton@typhoon.xnet.com (Jason Compton) out of my
hat:

>If you're going to use the word "unmasked" I think you should offer a bit
>more evidence than four names based on references those of us who
>-haven'-t spent time around IFMud don't understand, two of which have
>denied involvement already. 

The ifMUD house band is named "Sadie Hawkins", made up of Daly, Amster-Burton
and Cadre.  Moreover, Amster-Burton has professed a fetish of sorts for any
name that includes the words "Flip", "Flapjack", or "Slappy".

I personally believe the TextFire thing has gotten so out of hand that any
attempt to admit authorship after April Fools' has had to be postponed so that
all the nutty speculation and chicken-no-head-running can cease before the
authors can finally reveal themselves and have a good laugh.

At least, that's what I woulda done.


--
tv's Spatch, mstie #43790 and back to a plain sig for now. Shucks.
"We kiss, we dance, we schmooze, we carry on, we go home happy, whaddya say?"


From patrick@syix.com Wed Apr 15 17:58:10 MET DST 1998
Article: 32610 of rec.games.int-fiction
Path: news.lth.se!feed1.news.luth.se!luth.se!feed2.news.erols.com!erols!news.maxwell.syr.edu!syix.com!not-for-mail
From: patrick@syix.com (Patrick Kellum)
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: TextFire Authors Unmasked!
Date: 15 Apr 1998 10:02:32 GMT
Organization: Gothik Cherub Software
Lines: 18
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In article <6gvded$iqo$1@neko.syix.com>, Patrick Kellum was talking about:
 >
 >Patrick (I keep connecting Piedmont with Xena:WP for some reason)

I just figured it out in case anyone cares...  didn't thank so, but I'll
tell you anyway.  Piedmont was a village in the Xena episode "A Day In The
Life".

Ok, I'm through, you can all killfilter ne now :-)

Patrick 
---
A Title For This Page  --  http://www.syix.com/patrick/
Bow Wow Wow Fan Page   --  http://www.syix.com/patrick/bowwowwow/
The Small Wonder Page  --  http://smallwonder.simplenet.com/
Tales Of The Wyrm      --  http://www.syix.com/patrick/tales_of_the_wyrm.shtml
"Animal crackers in my poop." - Shirley Temple
"I have photographs of you naked with a squirrel." - Dave Barry


From spatula@s p a t c h.net Wed Apr 15 22:48:31 MET DST 1998
Article: 32615 of rec.games.int-fiction
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From: spatula@s p a t c h.net (tv's Spatch)
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: TextFire Authors Unmasked!
Date: Wed, 15 Apr 1998 04:53:05 GMT
Organization: Spatula Labs East
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Hey, Rocky!  Watch me pull jcompton@typhoon.xnet.com (Jason Compton) out of my
hat:

>If you're going to use the word "unmasked" I think you should offer a bit
>more evidence than four names based on references those of us who
>-haven'-t spent time around IFMud don't understand, two of which have
>denied involvement already. 

The ifMUD house band is named "Sadie Hawkins", made up of Daly, Amster-Burton
and Cadre.  Moreover, Amster-Burton has professed a fetish of sorts for any
name that includes the words "Flip", "Flapjack", or "Slappy".

I personally believe the TextFire thing has gotten so out of hand that any
attempt to admit authorship after April Fools' has had to be postponed so that
all the nutty speculation and chicken-no-head-running can cease before the
authors can finally reveal themselves and have a good laugh.

At least, that's what I woulda done.


--
tv's Spatch, mstie #43790 and back to a plain sig for now. Shucks.
"We kiss, we dance, we schmooze, we carry on, we go home happy, whaddya say?"


From enoto@ucla.edu Wed Apr 15 22:49:26 MET DST 1998
Article: 32579 of rec.games.int-fiction
From: Jon Petersen <enoto@ucla.edu>
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: TextFire Authors Unmasked!
Date: Tue, 14 Apr 1998 01:00:44 -0700
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Xref: news.lth.se rec.games.int-fiction:32579

IF wrote:
> When I first played the games, I thought, and this was just a
> random thought, of pieces of a puzzle.  Now I think I might have been on to
> something, that the games, somehow, link together, and, when properly
> figured out, will lead us to the author.  It's not that far fetched an
> idea.  A talented programmer, a regular on this group, familiar with the way
> we discuss things, might have designed this puzzle for us, in order to watch
> how (and if) we'd solve it.  The clues are all there.  Based on this, the
> sort of brain it would take to think of something like this and the sense of
> scale to pull it off, I point the finger of blame directly at Grahm Nelson,
> and maybe a small group of others to help him pull it off.

Now, that is an interesting idea.  Do you have any ideas about what some
of the connections might be?  Or does anyone?

I accuse: Neil Brown, in the conservatory, with the candlestick.

If this is some kind of uber-puzzle, then my mind jumps not to Graham,
but to Neil.  No specific reason, but he seems like a tricky sort.  He
did have all those anagrams in The Lost Spellmaker.  He obviously has
the goods where it comes to Inform programming.  His games have been
quirky and free-ranging, much like the "demos".  Hmm... and he did put
out a call for "beta-testers" a month back.  Now I'm concocting a wild
scenario where he tells the people that respond about his master plan,
and has a few of them whip up some games too... most of those demos
could probably have been completed in about a week of work. The only
thing I really can't figure is the Piedmont, CA connection--although
putting attention on California would be a bright way to shift the focus
onto,
say, a California boy like Adam Cadre.

Comments?

							Jon


From ddyte@vaxc.cc.monash.edu.au Thu Apr 16 10:16:52 MET DST 1998
Article: 32648 of rec.games.int-fiction
From: ddyte@vaxc.cc.monash.edu.au (David Dyte)
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: TextFire demos
Date: 8 Apr 98 08:54:28 +1000
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Xref: news.lth.se rec.games.int-fiction:32648

Adam Thornton (one of the Bruces) wrote:
> 
> My only remaining suspect is ddyte.
> 
> I'm pretty sure it's several people.
> 

My blood pumper is wronged! Baby cries! Such language from a small bear!

I deny it. I plead not guilty. I just say no. A dozen more times, no.

- David "Really, it's not me" Dyte

ps 33 points in verb- beat that!




From glasser@NOSPAMuscom.com Fri Apr 17 09:32:31 MET DST 1998
Article: 32688 of rec.games.int-fiction
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: TextFire 12-pack Reviews
From: glasser@NOSPAMuscom.com (David Glasser)
Date: Tue, 14 Apr 1998 20:44:57 -0500
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Xref: news.lth.se rec.games.int-fiction:32688

<Dennis.Matheson@delta-air.com> wrote:

>   I have found a connection between two of the games... In Insomnia, if you
> hit the wall you get:
> 
>    >HIT WALL
>    What do you think this is, "Hockey" from the TextFire 12-Pack?
>    Besides, you'd lose your deposit.
> 
>   And Hockey, in turn, contains the following line:
> 
>    "... because this time, violence *is* the answer to this one!"
> 
> which is obviously a reference to the standard Inform response "Violence isn't
> the answer to this one."  Except, Hockey is written in TADS, not Inform.
> (Yes, I realize that someone writing in TADS could certainly have played
> Inform games and seen the response.  It just strikes me as significant,
> somehow.)
> 
>   Now, Insomnia is by "August Pelter" from "a major midwestern university".
> Hockey is by "Shishi M. Hayashi", apparently from California.  We have two
> choices. 1) "August Pelter" was familiar with Hockey and liked it enough to
> put a reference to it in his own game, or 2) "August Pelter" and "Shishi M.
> Hayashi" are really the same person.
> 
>   I vote for 2.  Now, given that this is correct, then at least one of the
> bios is false.  And if one is false, then why can't all of them be false?

(Wow, this thread is big.  I'll try to give my reviews soon.)

Uh, it's (supposedly) a company.  Companies (in theory) interact
internally.  It doesn't seem particularly unlikely that TF authors
beta-tested each other's games.

And why wouldn't they just use the same bio twice?

--David Glasser
P.S. Has anyone else in this thread taken a look at george.zip on
gmd/incoming?  No IF on QVC.


glasser@NOSPAMuscom.com
Check out my new unfinished website at http://onramp.uscom.com/~glasser
It is better than my two-year-old unfinished website at
http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/6028/


From glasser@NOSPAMuscom.com Fri Apr 17 09:35:36 MET DST 1998
Article: 32690 of rec.games.int-fiction
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: TextFire 12-pack Reviews
From: glasser@NOSPAMuscom.com (David Glasser)
Date: Tue, 14 Apr 1998 20:44:20 -0500
Message-ID: <1d7hqgh.14st8p21trgzagN@usol-phl-pa-128.uscom.com>
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Xref: news.lth.se rec.games.int-fiction:32690

(Damn my newsserver!  I wondered why nobody was following up to me,
until ifMUDders told me my posts weren't coming through.  If you see a
bunch of reposts, sorry.)

Magnus Olsson <mol@bartlet.df.lth.se> wrote:

> In article <6gf7er$pl2$1@cnn.Princeton.EDU>,
> Adam J. Thornton <adam@princeton.edu> wrote:
> > Revenge of the Killer Surf Nazi Robot Babes From Hell:
> > 
> > Maybe as a competition entry, this would work.  I've seen dumber games,
> > though.  I might play it, but I wouldn't pay for it.
> 
> I found this quite hilarious, especially the surfer-speak, but I
> wonder what the full game would look like. Something in the vein of
> LGOP?

This one was weird, dude.  It might be fun surfing, man.

>SURF LEFT
>KILL BABE
>CATCH WAVE
>SURF ONTO BABE

> > Bad Guys:
> > 
> > Sort of Dungeon Keeper as a text game.  Not bad, something I might play,
> > and not necessarily a joke.  Seems very derivative of Dungeon Keeper,
> > actually.  But cute.
> 
> The concept of the game (making the bad guy the hero) isn't new (apart
> from Dungeon Keeper, I can think of books such as "Grunts"), but I'd
> love to play the complete version of this one! I also liked the game
> type crossover - a strategic war game embedded in a text adventure.

This one was cool.  At least this one is clear how to make it into a
full game.  I want to mess with mazes and stuff!

> > Once
> > 
> > Well, this is that damn Inform menu-based conversation system everyone
> > wanted, and it works in this application rather well.  
> 
> I found some glitches (for example, "undo" undoes the entire
> conversation, not just the last "move"), but I was a bit surprised how
> smoothly it worked. Having the conversation menus in the status
> window, *above* the text, felt very strange, however: I'm so used to
> having my input *below* the text. I realize that this is a limitation
> of the Z-machine. Perhaps it would be possible to do it the other
> way round in a V6 game, where you can have more windows?

Again, I liked this.  But could the plot really be expanded?  Dunno.

> BTW, "An Exploration of Colour" would probably gain from being
> implemented as a graphic V6 game.

This one I thought could *not* be full-game-ized.  Plus, it's too weird.
(Then again, I didn't like So Far much.)

> > Operate:
> > 
> > Oh my GOD, this is a hilarious game.  I quote:
> > >A little girl in the front row bellows with rage.  "The body requires
> > >additional plundering!  Continue!"
> > I don't see how it could possibly be a full-scale game, but this is
> > screamingly funny.
> 
> I was very puzzled at first, because I've never seen the "real" game
> on which this is based. Fortunately, I had it explained to me, after
> which I agree with you.

I also don't see this one as full-scale.  Maybe the "company" will
cancel it.  If there really is a company.

> > Verb:
> > 
> > This is brilliant.  Absolutely brilliant.  I suspected Adam Cadre of this
> > one.  I have no idea how in the world ddyte got 33 points out of it.  I've
> > got 19 and I'm stumped.  It's an absolutely amazing _tour de force_, and,
> > with a hint system, I'd play it a lot.  It is one of the funniest things I
> > have ever seen, and I think I'm one of about six people in the world to get
> > it.  
> 
> Well, I must confess that I don't get it at all. Anybody care to help
> me out?

This would be another good one for making full, as long as you changed
the verb every so often.

> > Zugzwang:
> > 
> > Whoa.  An interactive chess problem.  Cute.  Not particularly difficult,
> > mind you, but very cute.  The text is lovely, and it's a really, really
> > clever use of the status line.  It's a pretty, er, linear demo.
> 
> The linearity of the thing is rather striking, isn't it? Which makes
> me wonder about the full game: will the other problems be as linear
> as the one in the demo? The point is that for a linear (or
> close-to-linear) chess problem, you can hard-code a sensible response
> to every possible move the player makes, but for the overwhelming
> majority of positions, there are so many possible moves that this is
> utterly out of the question. 
> 
> The only solution I can think of would be to implement a complete
> chess program in Inform. That would be no mean feat, but it would be
> very cool indeed!

This one, I don't want a full version of.  Sure, the demo was fun, but I
could just get a cheap chess puzzles book, and there are probably dozens
of chess puzzle programs already.

I'll post yet more reviews from the root of the thread.

--David Glasser
glasser@NOSPAMuscom.com
Check out my new I-F website at http://onramp.uscom.com/~glasser
Or, for a waste of time,
http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/6028/


From glasser@NOSPAMuscom.com Fri Apr 17 09:36:02 MET DST 1998
Article: 32686 of rec.games.int-fiction
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: TextFire 12-pack Reviews
From: glasser@NOSPAMuscom.com (David Glasser)
Date: Tue, 14 Apr 1998 20:44:28 -0500
Message-ID: <1d7hqht.1nia3dfv6czbfN@usol-phl-pa-128.uscom.com>
References: <6gf7er$pl2$1@cnn.Princeton.EDU> <352BC8C6.EBF@delta-air.com>
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Xref: news.lth.se rec.games.int-fiction:32686

Dennis Matheson <Dennis.Matheson@delta-air.com> wrote:

> > Insomnia:
> > 
> > Kind of cute, in a mutated college-game kinda way.  Like Apartment F209,
> > almost.  Or like that game I kept starting with Arnold the Slime Mold who
> > lived in the sink.  I did like the contents of the fridge and the fact that
> > I could down a 12-pack of Jolt and a 3-liter Dew with no discomfort.
> 
>    I was most reminded of "House" from the '97 Competition.  Try hitting
> the wall when in the bedroom.  Also, a framed, autographed photo of Bill
> Gates?  Again, there isn't much of a game here unless the rest of the
> game is different than the demo.

Re: the Gates photo.  Do this:

>STAND

>LOOK UNDER BED

>X BILL

You'll get:

Which bill do you mean, the one-dollar bill, the DISCONNECTION NOTICE
>from the local telephone company, the hilarious duck-billed nose-mask,
the autographed glossy Bill Gates photograph, the Bill the Cat tote bag,
or yourself?

I think that's why.

--David Glasser
glasser@NOSPAMuscom.com
Check out my new I-F website at http://onramp.uscom.com/~glasser
Or, for a waste of time,
http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/6028/


From glasser@NOSPAMuscom.com Fri Apr 17 09:37:12 MET DST 1998
Article: 32691 of rec.games.int-fiction
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: TextFire 12-pack Reviews
From: glasser@NOSPAMuscom.com (David Glasser)
Date: Tue, 14 Apr 1998 20:45:05 -0500
Message-ID: <1d7hqiu.1djksxccinfdqN@usol-phl-pa-128.uscom.com>
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Xref: news.lth.se rec.games.int-fiction:32691

Adam J. Thornton <adam@princeton.edu> wrote:

> So, here are mini-reviews of the TextFire 12-pack demo games.  And my
> theory about it all.
> 
> 
> Coma!:
> 
> Oooh, cheezy.  Might make a good competition game, but I can't see it as a
> full-length sorta thing.

Agreed.

> Flowers For Algernon:
> 
> An interesting idea.  Could Deborah Keyes really be Daniel Keyes' niece?
> This one just screams "Copyright Problem," and of course, you know how the
> story is going to come out.  But it's a cool idea, and maybe not
> necessarily a joke.  The response to "X ME" is priceless.  There _are_ 11
> D. Keyeses in California, according to four11.com.  People from Piedmont
> High, where Deborah teaches, are called "Hairies."  I'm not making this up,
> folks.

I really wouldn't want to play the full version of this.  Hell, the
novel itself was a spinoff that I didn't like.  And the movie's only OK.
The short story, that's good stuff.  But interactive Algernon would fall
into the same spot as novelized Algernon did for me: too long and
boring.

> The U.S. Men's Hockey Team Olympic Challenge!:
> 
> C'mon.  This has to be a joke.  A one-item game?  Where violence is always
> the answer?  About one of our, er, less stirring national moments?  Me, I
> can do $1360 of damage.

Maybe TF is putting some jokes in with their real demos.  Only part of
this is an April Fools joke: this game!

Nah.

I'll talk about my ideas below.

> The Inanimator:
> 
> Uh, this is supposed to be fun?  OK, so nice Infocom references with the
> lint and the gnomon, nice titillation with the condom, but...  This can't
> possibly be a teaser for a real game.  Although the response for "D" when
> you're the corn is cute.
> 
> Thomas "Flip" Winkler?  Hotchkiss?  Harvard?  Governess?  When he comes
> into his money?  I hope for all our sakes that there's no such beast.
> There is a Thomas Winkler posting, er, a want ad, to alt.homosexual, but he
> seems to be German, not a Harvard silver spoon fed preppy who hasn't had a
> sip of beer or a date in years.  There's also a Thomas Winkler from
> Compuserve asking about taxes on futures options, which could be our man, I
> guess.  Boy, I feel like I'm wasting time in a colossal fashion here.

This one could be a disjointed full game.  Is the demo winnable?

> Insomnia:
> 
> Kind of cute, in a mutated college-game kinda way.  Like Apartment F209,
> almost.  Or like that game I kept starting with Arnold the Slime Mold who
> lived in the sink.  I did like the contents of the fridge and the fact that
> I could down a 12-pack of Jolt and a 3-liter Dew with no discomfort.

Ditto.

> Jack's Adventures:
> 
> Well, I love the fact that the demo version is the one where the beans
> aren't magic at all.  Not exactly a new premise, here, but I'm willing to
> grant that it could be a game.  I'm sure I've seen not just giant
> beanstalks in games before (ADVENT, anyone), but in fact the whole damn
> Jack story, but whatever.

This one is cool.

> Will The Real Marjorie Hopkirk Please Stand Up?
> 
> OK, so I'm a sick bastard.  But this is really, really, really funny.  I
> mean, *really* funny.  It also couldn't possibly make a full-sized game.
> But I did manage to kill five Marjories.  And it's in Hugo.  Very
> interesting.  Everyone knows that Kent Tessman is the only person to ever
> actually write a game in Hugo, right?  Right?

I'm a Mac user.  Maybe I'll try to install Hugo on my Linux shell
account.

> Pumping!:
> 
> Uh, what?  There's, like, one command.  How could this ever be a game?
> Somehow, the first time I played, I "won" it, and I still don't know how.
> I haven't managed it since.

How do you win?  I can't really comment, since I haven't seen the end.

> A Tenuous Hold:
> 
> Well, we've seen this theme before in _Perdition's Flames_.  The "rest of
> the game" might actually be interesting.

Annoying.

> So what the hell is going on here?
> 
> Four possibilities:
> 1) someone or several someones are lying to us about being the perpetrators
> of this odd little hoax.  Possible, although I can't imagine that no one
> has leaped to claim credit yet.

Oh, I suspect that the members of r*if are of higher moral caliber than
that.

> 2) we haven't fingered the right raif regulars yet.  Unlikely, since I've
> been accusing everyone and his dog.

Maybe.  The most likely one.

> 3) there is a cabal of unknown (highly competent!) IF programmers out
> there, but this is an April Fool's hoax.  A lot of work, if you ask me.
> And why won't they come play with us?

Well, for all we know, they don't even know about raif!  Sounds weird,
but they could have gotten into it off some shareware CD or something,
and even gone to the if-archive a bit, but never actually read the r*if
FAQs or anything.

> 4) there is a cabal, etc., and this is no hoax.  TextFire exists.

Actually, this one has almost as much chance as 2.  See 3 for some
reasons.  Me, I'm waiting until June 30th.  Y'all have seen george.zip's
readme by now, right?

> A little bird suggested to me a theory that I really, really like.  It's a
> hoax, perpetrated by the Implementors.  I mean, we've seen Lebling and
> Berlyn in here, and I think Mark Blank as well.  Hell, why not?  It's no
> stupider a theory than many.

That would be the coolest.

--David Glasser
glasser@NOSPAMuscom.com
Check out my new unfinished website at http://onramp.uscom.com/~glasser
It is better than my two-year-old unfinished website at
http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/6028/


From osb@bu.telia.no Fri Apr 17 09:59:03 MET DST 1998
Article: 32680 of rec.games.int-fiction
From: "Ola Sverre Bauge" <osb@bu.telia.no>
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
References: <1998041507581201.DAA21136@ladder03.news.aol.com>
Subject: 'My First Stupid Game' Fans Anonymous
Date: Wed, 15 Apr 1998 21:22:18 +0200
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LucFrench wrote...
>We may also have to deal with "This was almost as bad as _Coming Home_.
><shudder>" (Ullghhh. Just barely got that out without shivering...)
>
>We've only encountered one game that has any claim to being worse, and
>that's "My First Stupid Game", which at least spelled out the author's
>thinking right from the title.

You know, I actually found something in that game which appealed to me,
yet everyone seems to mention it as a game they love to hate; I found
myself liking My First Stupid Game, in a turkey B-movie sort of way.  I
just love the way it sets the scene and establishes your motives and
goals, without hesitation, right from the beginning:

Red Room

You are in the Red Room.  There are lots of Van Halen posters on the
wall, and many discarded guitar picks lie strewn about the floor.  There
is an exit to the west and a sturdy wooden door stands on the south
wall.  It smells funny in here.

  You really have to piss.

Such wonderful mundanity.  No clich save-the-world plot or wandering
around without a purpose, in this game you have to take a piss.  OK, so
the solution is downright stupid and your bladder explodes gratuitously
exiting you to DOS, but you were warned, weren't you?  Anyway, I was too
busy laughing my expansion ports off from the initial joke to notice,
and it didn't wear off until the game was over.  Maybe that was part of
it.  Heck, I even circumvigated the random bladder exploding, saving
like crazy to see the game to an end, and that's got to count for
something, surely?

I don't know, maybe I'm just disposed to tackling bad media as
self-parody.  Watched Plan 9 From Outer Space one time too many, that
sort of thing.  Or maybe it's just that my sense of humor is still quite
anally oriented, that I passed the age of 13 in body but never in mind.
Or both.  Yeah, that's probably it.

Anyway, felt like I had to step up in defense of a game I actually
liked.  Not like I'm posting just to annoy you or anything... :-)

    Ola Sverre Bauge
    osb@bu.telia.no
    http://w1.2327.telia.com/~u232700165

    "Watch lots of television, particularily game shows and soaps.  Go
to porn movies.  Ever see _Nazi Love Motel?_  They've got it on cable
here.  Just what you need."
    What the hell was he talking about?
    "Quit yelling and listen to me.  I'm letting you in on a trade
secret:  Really bad media can exorcise your semiotic ghosts.  If it
keeps the saucer people off my back, it can keep those Art Deco
futuroids off yours.  What have you got to lose?"
                    -William Gibson, "The Gernsback Continuum"




From jools@arnod.demon.co.uk Fri Apr 17 12:33:53 MET DST 1998
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From: Julian Arnold <jools@arnod.demon.co.uk>
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Two in-jokes that will last for a while
Date: Fri, 17 Apr 1998 01:41:49 +0100
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In article <35368A67.14A8D9E7@earthling.net>, Steve Bernard
<URL:mailto:sbernard@earthling.net> wrote:
> I've heard others mention this before.  If Symetry is an anagram for
> Mystery, shouldn't that relate to the game somehow?  Where exactly is
> the mystery?

How can you possibly ask that of a Rybread Celsius game, and keep a straight
face?

Jools
-- 
"For small erections may be finished by their first architects; grand
ones, true ones, ever leave the copestone to posterity. God keep me from
ever completing anything." -- Herman Melville, "Moby Dick"



From brendanp@u.washington.edu Fri Apr 17 15:30:22 MET DST 1998
Article: 32723 of rec.games.int-fiction
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From: Brendan Power <brendanp@u.washington.edu>
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: TextFire Authors Unmasked!
Date: Fri, 17 Apr 1998 05:49:55 -0700
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On Tue, 14 Apr 1998, Jon Petersen wrote:

> could probably have been completed in about a week of work. The only
> thing I really can't figure is the Piedmont, CA connection--although
> putting attention on California would be a bright way to shift the focus
> onto,
> say, a California boy like Adam Cadre.
> 
> Comments?

Having grown up in Piedmont, I can't figure out why anyone would want
anything to do with the place. Besides, isn't Adam from southern
California?  Piedmont is jelly filling within Oakland's big donut, just
east of San Francisco.

brendan



From Dennis.Matheson@delta-air.com Sat Apr 18 09:49:59 MET DST 1998
Article: 32755 of rec.games.int-fiction
From: Dennis.Matheson@delta-air.com
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: TextFire 12-pack Reviews
Date: Thu, 09 Apr 1998 17:05:40 -0600
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In article <6gj04c$kr5$1@aludra.usc.edu>,
>>snip<<
> I'm beginning to think, though, that Adam Thornton is sincere in his
> denials. So, my pool of suspects right now consists of Graham and Magnus.
>>snip<<

   Hmmm... Are any of the TextFire author's names anagrams of Graham Nelson?

-----== Posted via Deja News, The Leader in Internet Discussion ==-----
http://www.dejanews.com/   Now offering spam-free web-based newsreading


From sandifer@crmse.sdsu.edu Tue Apr 21 09:44:45 MET DST 1998
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From: sandifer@crmse.sdsu.edu (cody sandifer)
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: TextFire [masta'mind spoilers and thanks]
Date: 21 Apr 1998 02:33:39 GMT
Organization: San Diego State University
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Oh, and I wanted to thank a few specific people...

Adam Thornton for being a #1 TextFire investigator.  I think we've got a
badge waiting for you somewhere.

Jason Compton for his "George" registration.  Ok, not really.  But you're
a swell sport anyway.

Volker and David K., without whose help none of this would have been possible.

Everyone involved in the TextFire project.  Thanks again for participating.

Whizzard, Zarf, Spatch, Ian Finley, Graham Nelson, and Rybread -- who knew
all along but never spilled the beans.

And, finally, the guy at the San Diego zoo who really *did* climb over the
fence to visit the bears. (After being invited, of course.)  Hope you're
OK, man.

Cody


From sandifer@crmse.sdsu.edu Tue Apr 21 09:44:53 MET DST 1998
Article: 32864 of rec.games.int-fiction
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From: sandifer@crmse.sdsu.edu (cody sandifer)
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re:  TextFire a hoax!
Date: 20 Apr 1998 05:21:08 GMT
Organization: San Diego State University
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Ok, so it was really me and a bunch of other guys.  Thanks for being such
good sports, everyone.

Cody


From Giles.Boutel@wcc.govt.nz Wed Apr 22 11:22:02 MET DST 1998
Article: 32927 of rec.games.int-fiction
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From: "Giles Boutel" <Giles.Boutel@wcc.govt.nz>
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Which is best?
Date: 22 Apr 1998 04:44:39 GMT
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CHaiNSaW DRaGoN <Coorlim@juno.com> wrote in article
<353D264B.32B7@juno.com>...
> For both creating and playing, which is "best" (subjective, i know),
> TADS, inform, or AGT?
> 
Hi CHaiNSaW. I'm Giles Boutel, formerly DS of rgcud. You might remember me
>from such threads as 'why feminists aren't a bunch of man-hating biddies'
and 'ophidian through the dolphinarium'. I'm here to tell you about why
there is no such thing as the 'best' adventure creation system. Sure - we
all know that adventure games have been around for a while - some might say
they're going through a renaissance even as we speak, as the hobbyists turn
what used to be a commercial enterprise into an exciting free-for-all of
technological development, freedom of expression, and hilarious large scale
hoaxes played upon unsuspecting spectators. 

It would be a wonderful world if we could point to a single system and say
'There - that represents the pinnacle of Interactive Fiction creation and
playing'. Unfortunately, the person doing the pointing would probably work
for Microsoft and nobody would believe them - so instead we have a number
of options, limited only by what *you* hope to achieve. 

I'd like to show you a little video which will hopefully explain things in
easy to understand terms. It's called "The PenUltimate Question:Write or
Wrong?" and it stars Old Toby TADS in his first colour feature, the rapidly
maturing yet with wisdom beyond his years Ivan Inform, and also introduces
Leonardo diHugo - a versatile performer who's star both rises and sinks
simultaneously and whose contract has been bought out from AGT productions
after a successful career in commercials. I'd like to show you this video -
but this is usenet, so there's not a snowball's chance I'm going to do a
whole lot of ASCII flick pictures for your benefit during my coffee break.
Sorry 'bout that.

However - all of these fine performers are available for auditions.
Download a few of their recent works and decide which performance most
suits your own personal style - then, go out and join our little amateur
dramatic society, where the experienced and less so merge seamlessly
(assuming the footlights don't burst into flame) - and attempt to emulate,
if not improve upon, the feathery touches that tickled your fancy when you
took your seat in this ever expanding theatre of Interactive Fiction

This has been Giles Boutel - filling in for what would otherwise have been
a slow afternoon.

-Giles




From adam@princeton.edu Wed Apr 22 14:22:01 MET DST 1998
Article: 32893 of rec.games.int-fiction
From: adam@princeton.edu (Adam J. Thornton)
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Zork reference in The Simpsons
Date: 21 Apr 1998 16:36:04 GMT
Organization: Princeton University
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In article <353c049e.0@bandit>,
Brian Reilly <reillyb@gusun.georgetown.edu> wrote:
>I don't know...this, coupled with the Floyd reference a while back 
>makes me wonder if an IF fan is writing for The Simpsons.  I know there's a 
>Harvard connection to The Simpsons--maybe there's an MIT one too...?

Dunno about that.

But Joshua Weinstein used to be a Simpsons producer.  Maybe still is, I
dunno. 

Joshua is Jacob (of Save Princeton and Toonesia fame) Weinstein's older
brother.  So there's at least one connection.

Adam
-- 
adam@princeton.edu    Cynical and drunk and boring someone in some dark cafe


From neil@this.address.is.fake Wed Apr 22 20:32:53 MET DST 1998
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From: Neil Brown <neil@this.address.is.fake>
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: TextFire a hoax!
Date: Mon, 20 Apr 1998 20:21:41 +0100
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At 03:12:42 on Mon, 20 Apr 1998, cody sandifer wrote:
>I knew that David Baggett and Chris Foreman must have been in on it.  But
>Douglas Adams?  Who knew?!?
>
>Shame shame,
>
>Cody

[Masta'mind spoilers ahead...]






























Since we're all suddenly in the mood for confessions, I ought to put my
hand up and admit to writing two of the demos (for those who haven't won
at Masta'mind yet). Yes, I am Mal Jackson. I am Steve Parsons. And no,
Marjorie Hopkirk is not a real person, and is not based on whatshisname
and Hopkirk (deceased). I didn't intend people to think that Steve
Parsons lived in Tunbridge Wells, btw. The place seems to have got a
reputation for its residents writing into TV companies to complain about
the smallest thing, hence the comment about people not playing the game
if they live there.

I was also a bit surprised that everyone assumed an experienced Hugo
coder had written Marjorie. "It's got to be Kent!", folk have said. "Or
Jools or John or the Cardinal. No one else writes in Hugo!" Not true,
not true at all...

- NJB


From adam@princeton.edu Wed Apr 22 20:33:00 MET DST 1998
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From: adam@princeton.edu (Adam J. Thornton)
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: TextFire [masta'mind spoilers and thanks]
Date: 22 Apr 1998 00:05:50 GMT
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In article <1d7uky6.1vxatct1vg5lcoN@usol-phl-pa-028.uscom.com>,
David Glasser <glasser@NOSPAMuscom.com> wrote:
>Nah, at http://onramp.uscom.com/~glasser/badge.gif

I'm oddly touched.

And not just in the head.

Adam
-- 
adam@princeton.edu    Cynical and drunk and boring someone in some dark cafe


From earendil@faeryland.TAMU-Commerce.edu Wed Apr 22 22:14:00 MET DST 1998
Article: 32951 of rec.games.int-fiction
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: GameWarden software controls games at office
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Reply-To: earendil@faeryland.TAMU-Commerce.edu
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From: earendil@faeryland.tamu-commerce.edu (Allen Garvin)
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In article <6hjnji$7j3$1@europa.frii.com>,
J. Holder  <jholder@io.frii.com> wrote:

    Heh.  I remember, back in my neophyte days when I couldn't figure
    out how to get rogue to compile on the Sequent at school, and they
    regularly harvested processes with the name "rogue" learning about
    the vagaries of execv... ;) ;) ;)

Heh, wasn't that an old joke:

main() { execl("/usr/games/rogue", "vi thesis", 0); }

Though I preferred Moria.  I actually played it so much in the autumn of
'89 that the dungeon levels overflowed and I found myself at something 
like level -32736.  *8-)
-- 
Allen Garvin                                      kisses are a better fate
---------------------------------------------     than wisdom
earendil@faeryland.tamu-commerce.edu          
http://faeryland.tamu-commerce.edu/~earendil         	      e e cummings


From jweinste@aludra.usc.edu Wed Apr 29 14:00:32 MET DST 1998
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From: jweinste@aludra.usc.edu (jweinste)
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: [TextFire] The Authorized Official Homepage
Date: 28 Apr 1998 17:27:39 -0700
Organization: University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA
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starkey@wcic.org (Scott W. Starkey) writes:


>For your information, I've compiled a webpage to document some of the
>TextFire phenomenon.  It has plenty of fun info, insider secrets, and
>will continue to be updated as I get more stuff for it.

Great page, Scott. 

I particularly enjoyed seeing how the various participants diverted
attention from themselves without actually lying.

I, by the way, tried to do the opposite. I was miffed that nobody was
accusing me of being in on it, so I tried posting one or two
suspicious-sounding messages. Alas, only Adam Thornton and Den of Iniquity
bit.

Thanks, all, for a terrific prank!

-Jacob


From starkey@wcic.org Wed Apr 29 14:03:04 MET DST 1998
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From: starkey@wcic.org (Scott W. Starkey)
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: [TextFire] The Authorized Official Homepage
Date: Tue, 28 Apr 1998 23:15:20 GMT
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Hey there TextFire fans.

For your information, I've compiled a webpage to document some of the
TextFire phenomenon.  It has plenty of fun info, insider secrets, and
will continue to be updated as I get more stuff for it.

It's located at    http://wcic.org/~starkey/textfire.html

Have fun!
   -- Scott S.
___________________________________________________________________________
"I seem to have a natural gift                 | Scott and Cheryl Starkey 
   for playing a game which has not            | mailto://starkey@wcic.org
   yet been invented."   -- Ashleigh Brilliant | http://wcic.org/~starkey
  


From sothoth@xxx.usa.net Thu Apr 30 09:27:15 MET DST 1998
Article: 33129 of rec.games.int-fiction
From: "Gunther Schmidl" <sothoth@xxx.usa.net>
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
References: <1998042802594900.WAA14830@ladder03.news.aol.com> <35455978.4109439@news.nu-world.com>
Subject: Re: WTS: Tempest Walkthru
Date: Tue, 28 Apr 1998 10:46:40 +0200
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Xref: news.lth.se rec.games.int-fiction:33129

>>I would like to see a Tempest walkthrough.
>>
>>Is that so much to ask?
>
>Please ?
>

Here you go...
(SPOILERS)


















n. blow ship. e. d. swim e. in. get net. get flute. wear net. out. e. w. n.
n. ne. e. s. get violet. s.
Wander around in the maze until you hear the conversation.
Wander around in the maze until you find the cask.
Return to "The Island, before thy cell".
s. sing. sing. n. in. look through window. put violet in flask.
out. n. n. play flute. open phial. ne. sw. sing. s. s. e. nw. sing. se. w.
n. e. wave charm. w. s. s. enter circle. blow statue. u. n. in. out.
z. z. z. nw. z. nw. open purse. z. z. nw. z. nw. get key. in. unlock closet
door with key. open closet door. n. get all. s. out. s. n. n. e. break
charm. w. s. give rapier to prospero. give tricorn to prospero. nw. se. n.
n. ne. e. in. pour phial. climb mast. ring bell. d. out. w. w. s. s. nw.
break cask. get all from cask. give stephano to prospero. give trinculo to
prospero. give caliban to prospero.

[That's all folks!]
--
+------------------------+----------------------------------------------+
+ Gunther Schmidl        + "I want a Blorb compatible interpreter. Now. +
+ Ferd.-Markl-Str. 39/16 +  Please. Come on. Do it. Now."     -- myself +
+ A-4040 LINZ            +----------------------------------------------+
+ Tel: 0732 25 28 57     + http://gschmidl.home.ml.org - new & improved +
+------------------------+---+------------------------------------------+
+ sothoth (at) usa (dot) net + please remove the "xxx." before replying +
+----------------------------+------------------------------------------+






From tril@dominion.cba.csuohio.edu Thu Apr 30 09:35:30 MET DST 1998
Article: 33150 of rec.games.int-fiction
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From: Suzanne Skinner <tril@dominion.cba.csuohio.edu>
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: [TextFire] The Authorized Official Homepage
Date: 29 Apr 1998 04:51:48 GMT
Organization: Cleveland State University
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Scott W. Starkey <starkey@wcic.org> wrote:
> Hey there TextFire fans.

> For your information, I've compiled a webpage to document some of the
> TextFire phenomenon.  It has plenty of fun info, insider secrets, and
> will continue to be updated as I get more stuff for it.

Hello all,

I thought I'd take this chance to mention the (strictly unofficial)
TextFire pages I've just put up, starting at
http://dominion.cba.csuohio.edu/~tril/if/textfire/. These are written
>from the point of view of a chronic lurker who has enjoyed watching all
the silliness and hubbub :) Mind you, there's not much there that someone
who has been following this thread doesn't already know; it's more of
a tribute than anything, and a chance for newcomers to find out how wonky
this place can be. I've added a link to the above-mentioned site.

If anyone objects to my quoting their posts, let me know.

-Suzanne

-- 
http://dominion.cba.csuohio.edu/~tril/
-----BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK-----
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!O M-- V-- PS+@ PE@ Y+() PGP- t+ 5+ X+ R !tv(+) b++@ DI++ D--- G++ e++* h->---
r++>+++ x*?
------END GEEK CODE BLOCK------


From dmss100@york.ac.uk Fri May  1 09:01:36 MET DST 1998
Article: 33164 of rec.games.int-fiction
From: Den of Iniquity <dmss100@york.ac.uk>
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Textfire web-sites
Date: Thu, 30 Apr 1998 17:45:22 +0100
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Xref: news.lth.se rec.games.int-fiction:33164

I've had a good long read through the two unofficial text-fire sites (as
well as a quick shufty at the unofficial official one) and I have been
greatly entertained. A big thank-you to all contributors to this charming
nonsense.

Mind you, I thought this bit from Scott's timeline...

   Apr 3: Jason Compton, a firm believer in the Amiga, puts his faith in
   TextFire.

... was a touch cheeky for my Amigan tastes. Ta very much, Mr Sarky. :-7


Anyway, the question I'm pondering is how on earth anyone can top that for
an i-f related April Fool's joke. What'll we get next? Something that took
years to arrange? Perhaps Graham will admit that he's been using the
pseudonym 'Mike Roberts' since 1988. Or vice versa. Or worse. 

--
Den



From erkyrath@netcom.com Fri May  1 09:01:46 MET DST 1998
Article: 33173 of rec.games.int-fiction
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
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From: erkyrath@netcom.com (Andrew Plotkin)
Subject: Re: Textfire web-sites
Message-ID: <erkyrathEs8KCz.6I8@netcom.com>
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Den of Iniquity (dmss100@york.ac.uk) wrote:

> Anyway, the question I'm pondering is how on earth anyone can top that for
> an i-f related April Fool's joke. What'll we get next? 

An Inform game will be reviewed in the New York Times Book Review.

--Z

-- 

"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the
borogoves..."


From xxradxx@crl.com Mon May  4 14:22:35 MET DST 1998
Article: 33123 of rec.games.int-fiction
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From: A. DeLisle <xxradxx@crl.com>
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: educational IF
Date: 28 Apr 1998 00:34:21 GMT
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Julie Brandon <${julies/newsreply}$@merp.demon.co.uk> wrote, and I quote:

:JB> You might want to make that age range clearer; certainly where I come
:JB> from terms such as 'grade school age' & 'grade K-6' don't mean very
:JB> much!  *8-(

For the benefit of those not familiar with the US school system:
Normally K (Kindergarten) is for those who average age 5
Primary school varies in length, but grade 1-6 would be age 6 to 11
Junior High/Middle School/etc  would be grades 7-9; age 12-14
High School is grades 10-12 (sophomore-senior); age 14-18
Actually, I went to a Primary school that did grades K-8 (age 4-12)
Then to high school (freshman-senior) grades 9-12 (13-17)
Off to UC Berkeley at 17.  Times have changed.  


From dbs@mozzarella.cs.wisc.edu Wed May 13 14:53:43 MET DST 1998
Article: 33317 of rec.games.int-fiction
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From: dbs@mozzarella.cs.wisc.edu (Dan Shiovitz)
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Anchorhead: first impressions
Date: 9 May 1998 09:40:22 GMT
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Xref: news.lth.se rec.games.int-fiction:33317


(anchor.z8 is in the /incoming/if-archive directory currently; I
expect it'll move pretty soon)

(this contains a general overview of the game but no specific
spoilers; if you like to play a game starting with a blank slate you
may wish to play a bit first and then read this)

I don't feel like writing a formal review but here are some general
impressions of the game. Overall it is pretty good, especially for a
first game. It's quite large and fairly detailed. It uses the
Christminster style of time advancement: you have to do a certain
set of puzzles before each day will end. NPCs are so-so, but the game
doesn't rely on them very much so this doesn't become much of an
issue. It contains a number of non-original puzzles (though mostly
credited as such), and relies heavily on locked doors to keep the
player out of places until the proper time has arrived for entrance;
this is fine except that sometimes it's difficult to know when you
can't find the key because you aren't looking in the right place and
when you can't find it because you aren't supposed to go there yet. At
a few points within the game, in fact, I was wandering around
aimlessly trying to figure out what I had to do to make the day be
over (but then, I had the same problem with Christminster). The game
contains not one, but two mazes. The first is actually somewhat
excuseable and genre-appropriate. The second is totally inexcusable,
has no good in-game explanation for existing, and compounds this all
by randomly killing the player every few turns (something which
increases puzzle difficulty only for people who don't know about the
'undo' command, and annoys the rest).

Of course the most important issue for what's billed as a Lovecraftian
horror game is whether it is indeed horrific. Its success here is
somewhat mixed. I should explain I don't personally find Lovecraft
symbols especially frightening: nameless elder gods and mounds of
faceless flesh that were once your own dear puppy leave me somewhat
cold. This being the case, I wasn't especially moved by the latter
third or so of the game. The first third, being intro, wasn't very
scary either. But the middle third *scared me*. This is a rare enough
experience to make the game worth playing just for that. This third
was a nicely-balanced blend of anticipation, mood, horrifying events,
and Things Man Was Not Meant to Know.

The game was almost entirely free of serious bugs, a fine
accomplishment for a starting game. There was one somewhat serious
logical error at the end of the game if you missed a certain scene
earlier in the game, but I found no bugs that made the game
unwinnable, which is the important thing. The writing was, mm,
Lovecraftian. Very long sentences, too, which may or may not be a
genre artifact as well. Not bad though.

If you dislike horror games entirely, I'd recommend giving this one a
miss. On the other hand, if you like Lovecraft-style stuff or even if
you don't but are willing to tolerate it if there is other horror as
well, I'd recommend playing the game. A fine work, especially by a
first-time author (would that my own first effect had been so polished!)

-- 
(Dan Shiovitz) (dbs@cs.wisc.edu) (look, I have a new e-mail address)
(http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~dbs) (and a new web page also)
(the content, of course, is the same)


From erkyrath@netcom.com Wed May 13 17:32:13 MET DST 1998
Article: 33473 of rec.games.int-fiction
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
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From: erkyrath@netcom.com (Andrew Plotkin)
Subject: Re: Anchorhead - final impressions and all that gubbins
Message-ID: <erkyrathEswHvr.6Kz@netcom.com>
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Mr. Mike Wallis (phsmw@leeds.ac.uk) wrote:

> I have to say that I really enjoyed it - it took about 3 days of playing it
> in tea breaks to finish it off. Some of the puzzles I felt were interesting 
> variations on a theme, and some were as cheesy as anything - but cheese is
> good - and overall the game was good. I didn`t mind (I must be the only one, 
> here) the second maze, and I liked most of the objects you could play with; 
> however, I felt that there was a lot of redundant objects in the game that
> could have just been taken out for the sake of tidiness, and I got a feeling
> of.. inevitability once the Church had been solved. I felt as if you were
> being carried along to the conclusion, rather than trying to get there.
>
> Overall, though, I feel it was a stunning game to play. I`m just going to go
> through it again to find some of the amusing bugs ;).

As long as people are commenting, here are the comments from my final 
report to the author. 

(SPOILERS, I talk about some of the plot here, and the end puzzle)





First, I really liked Anchorhead.

Second, I was really impressed by Anchorhead. It's the most technically 
complicated Inform game I've played. That is, you've done an incredible 
job of designing a game which re-uses locations and scenery in different 
scenes. Other games of comparable size keep jumping into new locations as 
the plot progresses, so that the author doesn't have to keep 
complexifying old code. (Jigsaw, So Far, e.g.)

I was generally pleased by the writing, although the overboard flavor did 
sometimes go so far overboard that it was actually out of sight of the 
boat and washing up on the coast of Scotland. 

(I tried to work a reference to the Love Craft into that sentence, but it 
didn't work. Hey, Gene Wolfe was once asked if he'd ever slept with an 
editor in order to sell a book, or if they were all sold based purely on 
literary merit. No, he said, but he'd heard that the writer A. Merritt 
had sold a book based purely on his love-craft. The audience nearly 
killed Wolfe right there.)

Er, sorry. In particular I found myself giggling at Michael's invocation 
chant at the lighthouse. Ialdabaoloth was clearly coming to Earth in 
order to pick up some Noxzema cream.

Good pacing, good storyline, etc. Good focus, which is something I was 
worried about with such a large game. I don't like games where it's not 
clear what I'm supposed to be thinking about -- where there's such a huge 
expanse of things to do that I feel lost. This wasn't that kind of game. 
There was many things to do and many objects to play with, but at any 
time it was fairly clear which things were still impossible and which 
things were not yet relevant. The end scene (underground) is a great 
example; after about two tries I thought, ok, this is what I've been 
wearing the ring for. (Aside from the inscription, which was clearly a 
red herring. :-) Then I still couldn't play the flute, and I immediately 
added, ok, amulet too.

(Yeah, "red herring" is the wrong term. I *did* get the computer 
password. Is there a word for the first use of an object which really has 
two uses, which fools you into thinking that the object is a red herring 
for the rest of the game? Orange herring? We could build up a whole 
spectrum this way...)

[Then I went on to technical comments and bug list, etc]

--Z

-- 

"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the
borogoves..."


From mol@bartlet.df.lth.se Tue May 26 20:46:08 MET DST 1998
Article: 33738 of rec.games.int-fiction
Path: news.lth.se!not-for-mail
From: mol@bartlet.df.lth.se (Magnus Olsson)
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: [IF-COMP] Rules?
Date: 26 May 1998 14:25:19 +0200
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Xref: news.lth.se rec.games.int-fiction:33738

In article <6kd2qi$eoq$1@crux.cs.usyd.edu.au>,
Stephen Robert Norris <srn@fn.com.au> wrote:
>In article <3569BB1F.1546@cxo.com>,
>	Mike Snyder <wyndo@cxo.com> intoned:
>>> I really don't think anyone cares that you're using a programming
>>> language most professionals would be ashamed to associate themselves
>>> with, it's more you're using a fairly restrictive platform. I _could_
>>> run a DOS game, and I might, but it's going to lose you a few marks just
>>> for the hassle of having to install an emulator.
>> I suppose a good many people will mark my entry down "for the principle
>> of it." Is this fair? Absolutely not. Entries might as well be marked
>> down because somebody didn't like the title... or because the ZIP was
>> corrupted and they had to download it 2 or 3 times before they could get
>> it to work.
>
>Both entirely valid, IMHO. If the distributed program doesn't work,
>giving it 0 seems perfectly valid.

But entirely against the spirit of the rules. (I'm speaking here as
one of the people who discussed rule questions with Whizzard before
and after the first Competition, so I think I have a fair idea of the
"original" spirit of the competition).

It *should* be against the letter of the rules as well, IMNSHO, but
it's impossible to formulate the rules to exclude all such things.

So, why is it bad to give a 0 to a game that doesn't work? Well,
to begin with, it's unnecessary: a game that doesn't work at all
should not get any votes, hence be disqualified.

More importantly, suppose you make a mistake when download a specific
game, or that your Internet connection develops a glitch. Surely it's
not fair to punish the game for your (or your ISP's) mistakes?

To get back to that elusive thing, the "spirit" of the Competition
Rules, the '95 Competition was really two competitions: one for TADS
games, and one for Inform ones. No games written in other systems were
allowed to enter. This was not only perceived as unfair to authors
using other systems, but also as detrimental to the Competition as a
whole: limiting the number of allowed systems would limit the number
of entries in an entirely arbitrary way. It was thought better to
allow *any* game to enter, and to treat them on a (relatively) fair
basis.

I can't see *any* reason to discriminate against games written in a
particular language or on a particular platform (as long as those
games can gather at least 10 votes, and they fulfill the conditions of
free distributability - see the Story arp debate), be it Hugo,
QuickBasic or anuything else. Any such discrimination would only make
those authors who prefer less popular languages desert the
competition. I don't think that would be an improvement.

Of course, if people keep insisting on bending the rules to bias the
competition in one direction or the other, we might have to go back to
different categories for different authoring systems. Again, I fail to
see how this could be an improvement.


-- 
Magnus Olsson (mol@df.lth.se, zebulon@pobox.com)
------    http://www.pobox.com/~zebulon   ------


From wrenshaw@mail.auracom.com Tue Jun  2 13:18:05 MET DST 1998
Article: 33886 of rec.games.int-fiction
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From: wrenshaw@mail.auracom.com (Chris Renshaw)
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Neat stuff I just found in Zork 1
Date: Mon, 01 Jun 1998 22:07:41 GMT
Organization: Auracom
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Xref: news.lth.se rec.games.int-fiction:33886

I was playing around with Zork 1 (trying stuff, etc.) and I found the
following amusing things... forgive me if this is widely known and im
making a fool of myself =)

The real thing of interest is the last part... I DO want feedback
about that, and this isn't made up.

<PASTE>

Here begins a transcript of interaction with
ZORK I: The Great Underground Empire
Infocom interactive fiction - a fantasy story
Copyright (c) 1981, 1982, 1983, 1984, 1985, 1986 Infocom, Inc.
All rights reserved.
ZORK is a registered trademark of Infocom, Inc.
Release 52 / Serial number 871125 / Interpreter 6 Version F


>get axe
Taken.

>wait
Time passes...
The troll, disarmed, cowers in terror, pleading for his life in the
guttural tongue of the trolls.

>s
Cellar
Your sword is glowing with a faint blue glow.

>n
The Troll Room
A pathetically babbling troll is here.
Your sword has begun to glow very brightly.

>e
The troll fends you off with a menacing gesture.
The troll, disarmed, cowers in terror, pleading for his life in the
guttural
tongue of the trolls.

>give troll sword
The troll, who is not overly proud, graciously accepts the gift and,
being for the moment sated, throws it back. Fortunately, the troll has
poor control, and the sword falls to the floor. He does not look
pleased. The troll, disarmed, cowers in terror, pleading for his life
in the guttural tongue of the trolls.

>get sword
Taken.
The troll, disarmed, cowers in terror, pleading for his life in the
guttural tongue of the trolls.

>give troll axe
The troll scratches his head in confusion, then takes the axe.
The flat of the troll's axe skins across your forearm.

>kill troll
(with the sword)
The troll is battered into unconsciousness.

>get axe
Taken.

>wait
Time passes...
The troll stirs, quickly resuming a fighting stance.
The troll, disarmed, cowers in terror, pleading for his life in the
guttural tongue of the trolls.

>give troll sword
The troll, who is not overly proud, graciously accepts the gift and
eats it hungrily. Poor troll, he dies from an internal hemorrhage and
his carcass disappears in a sinister black fog.

</PASTE>

Thats's it...
Feedback on what the hell happened and so on to my email or here if
you dont want me to read it =)

-Chris



From eyvind@ah.telia.no Tue Jun  2 14:57:57 MET DST 1998
Article: 33895 of rec.games.int-fiction
Sender: eyvind@helt
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: IF written in sendmail
References: <6k9vd3$du6$1@nnrp1.dejanews.com> <356c5d59.88521180@news.ioa.com> <erkyrathEtMst5.Jp4@netcom.com> <356c7d64.96724974@news.ioa.com> <6kk5c3$6on$1@bartlet.df.lth.se> <356daa14.20210446@news.ioa.com> <erkyrathEtoq0E.4y8@netcom.com> <356ecd79.94818108@news.ioa.com> <6kmtsf$2d0@newsops.execpc.com> <Pine.A41.3.95L.980601101945.149546B-100000@login2.isis.unc.edu> <jpb3edp9lr7.fsf@ah.telia.no> <6kv8ev$dpq$1@news.xmission.com>
From: Eyvind Bernhardsen <eyvind@ah.telia.no>
Date: 02 Jun 1998 10:28:38 +0200
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Xref: news.lth.se rec.games.int-fiction:33895

Matt Kimball <mkimball@xmission.com> writes:

> Eyvind Bernhardsen <eyvind@ah.telia.no> wrote:
> : I'm sure I could write an IF game [...] using sendmail
> 
> Ooooh!  I'd pay to see that!  PostScript IF seems easy in comparision.
> (Well, I'm not sure how Andrew was planning on doing input).  Is
> sendmail.cf even Turing equivalent?

Yes.  Although I was bluffing (I'd have to spend a couple of years
reading the Bat book before I could implement IF in sendmail--but I'm
sure I could do it ;), it is Turing equivalent.  The Towers of Hanoi
problem has been solved in sendmail, IIRC.  Actually, it'd be kind of
cool; send input to a special mail address, receive text in the mail,
repeat until won.  Play-by-mail with a twist.

> I feel a new competition in the works: The First Annual IF Competition
> for Works Written in Non-Turing Equivalent Languages which Weren't
> Designed for IF.  No winner, no deadline, enter whenever you like.
> Each contestant gets my personal admiration for entering.

I'd call it "The Obfuscated IF Contest," for historical reasons.
Anyway, what would a legal entry look like?  Both PostScript and
sendmail are Turing equivalent...  Do I even want to know the answer
to that question?

> Maybe after a while I will rename it simply to the "First Annual IF
> Competition for Works Implemented with Grossly Inappropriate
> Technology" to include Turing-equivalent languages that are still
> grossly inappropriate.  This would allow an Intercal entry, for
> instance.

Intercal is Turing equivalent?  The mind positively boggles.  I would
pay, ooh, at least $1.29 for a z-machine emulator implemented in
Intercal, just for the hell of it.
-- 
Eyvind Bernhardsen


From wyndo@cxo.com Thu Jun  4 15:23:46 MET DST 1998
Article: 33921 of rec.games.int-fiction
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From: Mike Snyder <wyndo@cxo.com>
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: [IF-COMP] Rules?
Date: Wed, 03 Jun 1998 19:51:36 +0000
Organization: Prowler Productions
Lines: 58
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> To me, the issue is whether I want to actually boot up DOS/Windows or a
> dos emulator just to run a text-based program that could as well have
> been done using a portable system.  The key phrase is "text based."  To
> me the answer is a definite "no."  Obviously, you have a right to
> whatever opinion you wish to hold.

Booting a DOS diskette takes only a few seconds on most PC's. It can be
considered part of the judging time, I'm sure. Boot the PC for 1 minute,
judge the game for 59? Also, the key phrase is really "...could as well
have been done using a portable system."

I think I've determined the true spirit of the contest though -- from
the good posts and the bad (relative to my position). The contests wants
as many entries as possible. The contest wants those entries to be
judged by as many entries as possible.

I'm asserting that my entry will be something that could *not* have been
written just as well using a portable system, and these unique qualities
will be what sets it apart when it comes time to judge. To be fair, the
contest will also average your votes together. I don't know any real
numbers from previous contests, so I'll make up some as an example. If
300 judges participate, but only 30 of them are PC users and can play
and judge my game, I'm in no worse shape than I would have been if my
game had been platform independent and all 300 had judged it. If 30
people rank it a 5, it's the exact same as 300 people ranking it a 5.
Despite my original ideas to the contrary, I think the contest IS fair.

If, of the 30 people who judge my game, several of them mark down points
because I didn't write it on a platform-independent system, or mark down
points because they're playing on an emulator instead of a PC, then I
really didn't lose anything. I don't pass go, I don't collect $200, and
I don't place in the contest. However, I *DO* have a world of fun
developing my game on a platform I like, and I come out a winner no
matter what. I suppose it's like wanting to drive a low-rider with a
custom paint-job and a loud stereo... when everybody else tells you that
you should be driving a Porche. I might not win any races, but I'm sure
going to have fun. :)

The real concern, if I've gotten anything from the 100+ posts on this
subject, is that my game may very well be worthwhile, but a good portion
of people will be excluded from playing it. For this, I *am* sorry. My
only reason for entering the contest is to have fun. If I were to enter
my game in Tads or Inform or another, I can't see myself having as much
fun with this. If those were my only choices, I'd regretfully have to
decline this year and get proficient in one for next year's comp -- in
which case there would be one less entry this year and nothing would be
different. So there is no difference. I think though, that my entry
(even if platform-dependant) will be one more small sparkle on the
widening landscape of IF, which might not have been there otherwise.

In the end, I've found some great advice in even the posts I originally
felt were talking down to me or that I felt were telling me I'm crazy,
and I appreciate all the replies I've gotten in posts and in email. We
all have the same goal -- I'm just taking the scenic route in my
low-rider. I'll see you when I eventually make it to the finish line,
with a big smile on my face. :)

Mike.


From earendil@faeryland.TAMU-Commerce.edu Fri Jun  5 10:52:02 MET DST 1998
Article: 33958 of rec.games.int-fiction
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Neat stuff I just found in Zork 1
References: <6kv98a$cad@news.auaracom.net>
Reply-To: earendil@faeryland.TAMU-Commerce.edu
Organization: Gee Library, Texas A&M at Commerce
From: earendil@faeryland.tamu-commerce.edu (Allen Garvin)
NNTP-Posting-Host: faeryland.tamu-commerce.edu
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Date: 4 Jun 98 19:08:38 GMT
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Xref: news.lth.se rec.games.int-fiction:33958

In article <6kv98a$cad@news.auaracom.net>,
Chris Renshaw <wrenshaw@mail.auracom.com> wrote:
    I was playing around with Zork 1 (trying stuff, etc.) and I found
    the following amusing things... forgive me if this is widely known
    and im making a fool of myself =)

    The real thing of interest is the last part... I DO want feedback
    about that, and this isn't made up.

	*snip snip*

    > GIVE TROLL SWORD
    The troll, who is not overly proud, graciously accepts the gift and
    eats it hungrily. Poor troll, he dies from an internal hemorrhage
    and his carcass disappears in a sinister black fog.

>From the History of Zork, in an old New Zork Times:

    Dave, an old Dungeons and Dragons player, didn't like the completely
    predictable ways of killing creatures off.  In the original game,
    for example, one killed a troll by throwing a knife at him, he would
    catch the knife and gleefully eat it (like anything you threw at him),
    but hemorrhage as a result.

The hemorrhage-as-a-result-of-eating-a-pointy-weapon was taken out after
the new combat system was added, but found its way back to the game
in the later commercial versions of Zork as an alternative solution.
Checking the story files I have, it's present in release 75 and 88
(and 52 solid gold), but not in any prior versions.
-- 
Allen Garvin                                      kisses are a better fate
---------------------------------------------     than wisdom
earendil@faeryland.tamu-commerce.edu          
http://faeryland.tamu-commerce.edu/~earendil         	      e e cummings


From adamc@acpub.duke.edu Wed Jun 17 18:18:55 MET DST 1998
Article: 34238 of rec.games.int-fiction
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From: Adam Cadre <adamc@acpub.duke.edu>
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Chicken-comp games uploaded!
Date: Tue, 16 Jun 1998 16:15:16 -0400
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As those of you who read rec.arts.int-fiction know, a few weeks back I 
posted a call for very short IF games revolving around the theme of "a 
chicken crossing a road."  The first nineteen of these have been zipped 
together and uploaded to GMD; I've also created a chicken-comp web page 
at http://www.retina.net/~grignr/chicken where you can look at the list 
and even fire up most of the games by clicking on the links.

Thanks to all who participated!

  -----
 Adam Cadre, Anaheim, CA
 http://www.retina.net/~grignr


From olorin@world.std.com Tue Jun 23 17:23:30 MET DST 1998
Article: 34406 of rec.games.int-fiction
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction,rec.games.int-fiction
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From: olorin@world.std.com (Mark J Musante)
Subject: [CHICKEN-COMP] My Reviews   !* LONG *!
Message-ID: <Ev0C72.G8J@world.std.com>
Followup-To: rec.games.int-fiction
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------------
0. Greetings
------------

Hi!

--------
1. Intro
--------

This is a list of mini-reviews of all the games that were released as part
of Adam Cadre's "Chicken Competition".  The games are currently in GMD's
incoming directory but, I hope, they will be given their own directory
under /if-archive/games like the other competitions.  Until then (for
those of you who missed it), download
	ftp://ftp.gmd.de/incoming/if-archive/chicken.zip
and have a blast.

These reviews are necessarily biased.  Biased by my quirks and my point of
view.  Biased by 31 years of both dealing with and trying to escape from
the real world.  Biased by the fact that I was recently given the first
speeding ticket of my life, and I was only going 7 mph over the speed
limit.  What the hell was wrong with that cop anyway?  Oh, sure, he SAID I
was doing 76 in a 65, but I had the cruise control locked in at just over
70.  He probably did that so his cocoppers wouldn't laugh at him for being
so desperate to make his quota.

Also they're biased because one of the games is my own.

Having said that, let me now state that I liked most of the games. That
implies that I didn't care for some of them.  To those of you who got
negative reviews: really, it's okay.  I'm only one person and, fortunately
for the human race, my opinions don't matter all that much.  I'm still
glad you entered the competition; all of the people who entered showed
they had great IF skills, even if some games weren't to my liking.

To those of you who got positive reviews: boy, the rest of them sucked,
didn't they?

Please-- I'm kidding.  No offense.

----------
2. Outline
----------

The order in which the games are listed are alphabetically by the author's
initials.  Why?  Ask Adam.

-------------
2.1. Surprise
-------------

To my surprise, not all the games met the premise of the competition: A chicken
crossing a road. In some of the games, there aren't even roads.

---------------------------------
2.1.1. Too Much Time On His Hands
---------------------------------

The breakdown of the roads in the games is as follows:

East-west: 6
	Starting on south side: 4
	Starting on north side: 1
	Unspcified            : 1

North-South: 4
	Starting on west side: 1
	Starting on east side: 2
	Unspecified          : 1

No road at all: 2

Road, but no explicit direction: 6


------------
2.2. Scoring
------------

The games are rated on a scale of 1-10, with 1 indicating the worst game that
could possibly have been made in response to Adam's posting, and 10 indicating
an incredibly immaginative and enjoyable game.

My basis of ranking can be broken down as follows:

  1) Did the game entertain or amuse me?
  2) Was the writing good?
  3) Was the plot good?
  4) How faithfully did it adhere to the spirit of the competition?

I'm not commenting on spelling or grammar errors in these reviews; for longer
games, like the ones in the annual competitions, it makes sense to do so.  But
these are more like "gamelets" and I don't really see the point of being
excessivly picky.

------
3. Ado
------

And so, without further ado, here is some spoiler space:

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40

And here is a control-L character:

And here there be dragons.

========================================
3.1. "Chicken and Egg", by Adam Thornton
     Serial No. 980608
     Release 1
========================================

Filename: chkn-at.z5

Platform: Inform

Size    : 59.5k

Xyzzy   : Yes.

Road    : None.

Rating  : 10

Review  : This game is a grest send-up of Andrew Plotkin's "Spider and Web".
          Strapped to an interrogation chair, you have to answer questions or
          be put to death. Of course, if you haven't played Andrew's game, this
          one won't be quite as funny.  In any case, you know you're in for a
          good time when the credits include the line "Chicken by God."


===========================================
3.2. "The X Chicken", by David A. Cornelson
     Serial No. 980614
     Release 5
===========================================

Filename: chkn-dc.z5

Platform: Inform

Size    : 59.5k

Xyzzy   : Yes.

Road    : East-west.

Rating  : 5

Review  : A vague X-Files parody. A scar seems to flit from neck to neck, and
          it all ends in death.  I seem to have missed the point of the story,
	  I'm afraid.  And the plot as well.  The only thing mildly interesting
	  was interacting with the NPC's: straight-laced caracatures of Fox
	  Mulder and Dana Scully.  Being an X-Files fan, that appealed to me.
	  Unfortunately, the ifMUD in-joke ("mamster" written in the corn) is
	  not enough to offset the lack of plot.


============================
3.3. "Unity", by G. C. Ewing
     Serial No. (not given)
     Release (not given)
============================

Filename: chkn-ge.acd and chkn-ge.dat

Platform: Alan

Size    : 65k + 27k

Xyzzy   : No.

Road    : Yes.

Rating  : 7

Review  : The funniest part of this game is that, while the author remembered
	  to prevent someone from saying 'get phone booth', he(?) seems to have
	  forgotten 'pick up phone booth'.  And no, you don't die. :-)
	  Whereas the majority of the games in this competition made the
	  chicken crossing the road an integral part of the plot, in this game
	  it's incidental.  Once you manage to use the phonebooth properly,
	  you're thrust into a fantasy world with enterable looking-glasses,
	  transportation huts, magic wands and giant toads.  I was unable to
	  complete this game, unfortunately, being stymied by the Alan runtime.
	  Every time I restored a game all the game objects would disappear on
	  me. :-(  I really would love to play this game out, as it appeals to
	  me greatly, but I feer I've spent too much time on it already.  Also,
	  I've been anxious to to get this posted.


===================================
3.4. "CHICKEN!", by Gunther Schmidl
     Serial No. 980616
     Release 1
===================================

Filename: chkn-gs.z5

Platform: Inform

Size    : 47k

Xyzzy   : No.

Road    : East-west, starting point on south side.

Rating  : 5

Review  : This is a very short game, requiring three actions to win.  It does
          include a chicken, and it does involve crossing the road.  But that's
          about it, I'm afraid.  Its subtitle is "A Journey in Three Clucks",
	  and that's exactly what you get. The author says he wrote it in 45
	  minutes, though, so that's impressively quick work.  Dan "inky"
	  Shiovitz has called it "a triumph of minimalist chicken IF" and I
	  can't argue with that.


===========================================
3.5. "The Chicken's Dilemma", by Jason Dyer
     Serial No. (not given)
     Release (not given)
===========================================

Filename: chkn-jd.hex

Platform: Hugo

Size    : 47.5k

Xyzzy   : No.

Road    : None.

Rating  : 5

Review  : Other than the title, this game doesn't include a chicken, let alone
          a chicken crossing a road (the response to "x me" is "You don't seem
	  to be in your usual chicken state. You look indistinct, and you have
	  two arms which you know weren't there before.").  It contains a
	  straightforward logic puzzle reminiscent of Smullyan's popular works.
	  The puzzle IS a fun one to figure out. The author claims it to be
	  original, so there's a coolness factor there too.


=====================================
3.6. "POLLO Y CAMINO", by Jay Goemmer
     Serial No. 980615
     Release 1
=====================================

Filename: chkn-jg.z5

Platform: Inform

Size    : 52k

Xyzzy   : Yes.

Road    : Yes.

Rating  : 5

Review  : You're spit.  You are, in the words of the winning statement, "only
          so much saliva."  The chicken does cross the road and, for some
	  reason, a scientist examines you as you evaporate. Little point.
	  Little plot. The solution to the only puzzle is manifestly clear to
	  the most casual observer.

=========================================
3.7. "*Sisychickenphus*", by Lelah Conrad
     Serial No. (not given)
     Release 1
=========================================

Filename: chkn-lc.gam

Platform: TADS

Size    : 56k

Xyzzy   : Yes.

Road    : East-west, starting point on south side.

Rating  : 7

Review  : I was initially stymied by this game because all the NPC's seemed as
          though they were there just for show (and for the puns-for-names).
	  After some nudging, I managed to figure out the right way to interact
	  with the NPC's (there is only one way in this game). The idea is to
	  cross the road and try to see what the different chickens think about
	  the Eternal Question: "Why did the chicken cross the road."  It's
	  short, cute and amusing.  There's some odd formatting right at the
	  end (which may be a WinFrotz bug) but, other than that, it's a great
	  submission in the competition.


============================================
3.8. "Chickens of Distinction", by Liza Daly
     Serial No. 980615
     Release 1
============================================

Filename: chkn-ld.z5

Platform: Inform

Size    : 56.5k

Xyzzy   : Yes.

Road    : Yes.

Rating  : 9

Review  : A day in the life of a fast food restaurant greeter. Well, not a DAY
          so much as a few minutes. Fortunately, a bank robbery breaks up the
	  monotony of your existence and gives you an excuse to get out of your
	  chicken costume.  One thing I really liked about this was the
	  elimination of the compass directions.  The plot itself was very
	  funny, and some of the responses were good for a chuckle as well.  An
	  all-around enjoyable little game.


====================================================
3.9. "The Chicken Under The Window", by Lucian Smith
     Serial No. 980616
     Release 1
====================================================

Filename: chkn-ls.z5

Platform: Inform

Size    : 51.5k

Xyzzy   : No.

Road    : Yes.

Rating  : 8

Review  : This game is a play on Andrew Plotkin's "The Space Under The Window"
          game, a most unusual work of interactive fiction.  By typing a word
	  that appears in the narritave so far, you can either expand the story
	  or contract it.  Knowing which words will move the narritave forward
	  is a matter of guessing, which can be frustrating at times since
	  certain words will restart the story on you.  Once you get the right
	  sequence, the chicken does cross the road.  The imagry of a dancing
	  chicken passed my chuckle test quite handily.


=============================================
3.10. "Learning to Cross", by Mark J. Musante
      Serial No. 19980527
      Release 1
=============================================

Filename: chkn-mm.gam

Platform: TADS

Size    : 94.7k

Xyzzy   : Yes.

Road    : East-west, starting point on north side.

Rating  : -

Review  : The astute reader will notice that this particular game is my own.
	  It's a very long and complex game, second in size only to Greg
	  Ewing's, and that's not necessarily a good thing.  A hiker on a
	  cross-country trip, you determine that you need to stop at a local
	  farm (could you get any less immaginative for a setting here?) to get
	  some food. But then, once you manage to capture the chicken (avoiding
	  the bugs like the clever player you are), you are compelled to Cross
	  The Road(TM) and things go horribly, horribly wrong.  At this point
	  I'd like to say "wackyness ensues," but there's about as much
	  wackyness in this game as there is in a speech by Newt Gingrich.  The
	  only thing that made this game marginally better than staring at a
	  powered-off CRT was the excellent input of all my betatesters.


===============================================================
3.11. "Are you Too Chicken to Make a Deal?", by Mitchell Taylor
      Serial No. 980609
      Release 1
===============================================================

Filename: chkn-mt.z5

Platform: Inform

Size    : 54k

Xyzzy   : No.

Road    : Yes.

Rating  : 7

Review  : A sort of chicken version of the gameshow "The Price is Right".
	  Choose to play and you're presented with three roads to cross, only
	  one of which is the best.  Very short but worth a laugh.


============================================================================
3.12. "THE STORY OF MORRIS THE CHICKEN BEING HELPED BY A SQUIRREL", by Mikko
     Vuorinen
      Serial No. (not given)
      Release (not given)
============================================================================

Filename: chkn-mv.acd + chkn-mv.dat

Platform: Alan

Size    : 31k + 8k

Xyzzy   : Yes.

Road    : North-south, starting point on west side.

Rating  : 7

Review  : I always get a kick out of games whose authors add funny responses to
	  unlikely actions, and this has several clever ones.  Like most of the
	  games in this competition, it's short and amusing.  You play a
	  squirrel whose task, it seems, is to help the chicken get across the
	  road.  Not only that, but you apparently get to exact your revenge on
	  the big monsters that have been squishing your family flat for lo
	  these many years.  A fun game.


=================================
3.13. "The Landing", by N. K. Guy
      Serial No. (not given)
      Release 1
=================================

Filename: chkn-ng.gam

Platform: TADS

Size    : 104k

Xyzzy   : Yes.

Road    : North-south, starting point not specified.

Rating  : 7

Review  : There's not much more to this game than using the 'z' and 'enter'
	  keys.  Neil was only able to get the non-HTML TADS version into the
	  competition .zip file, but I'm looking forward to the multimedia
	  enhancements that the HTML version contains.  The writing is good and
	  engrosing, and the humor is very well done but, as I indicated, the
	  'game' portion of this entry seems to have gone missing.


=============================================================
3.14. "Hey, I'm Supposed to Be Free Range", by Opal O'Donnell
      Serial No. 980614
      Release 1
=============================================================

Filename: chkn-oo.z5

Platform: Inform

Size    : 48k

Xyzzy   : No.

Road    : East-west, starting point on south side.

Rating  : 7

Review  : Like most good puzzles, the one in this game requires that you think
	  "outside the box" in order to solve it. You're a chicken who crosses
	  the road daily but, due to some road construction, you discover that
	  traffic cones are blocking your way. Can you figure out how to
	  navigate them in order to find your way across?  A solidly programmed
	  entry.


==============================================
3.15. "THE LESSON OF THE CHICKEN", by R. Noyes
      Serial No. 980616
      Release 1
==============================================

Filename: chkn-rn.z5

Platform: Inform

Size    : 62k

Xyzzy   : Yes.

Road    : Yes.

Rating  : 10

Review  : This is easily the best game of the lot.  Or should I say "best of
	  the peep"?  A mild parody of G. Kevin "Whizzard" Wilson's "The Lesson
	  of the Tortoise", this game takes the concept of decapitation to new
	  heights (heh) and throws in a plethora of puns to spice it up even
	  further. If you play no other game that was entered, play this one.
	  (If you have to play two, Adam Thornton's is a very close second).


==============================
3.16. "Saied", by Robb Sherwin
      Serial No. 980608
      Release 1
==============================

Filename: chkn-rs.z5

Platform: Inform

Size    : 55.5k

Xyzzy   : Yes.

Road    : East-west, starting point on the south side.

Rating  : 6

Review  : You gotta like a game that has 'gooey splorg' in it.  And the plot is
	  certainly an interesting twist on the 'chicken crossing the road'
	  phrase.  But the excessive prose (huge chunks of it) gets in the way
	  of the game.  Actually, this is more like a very short story than a
	  work of interactive fiction, although there are two endings. There is
	  one puzzle, figuring out how to get out of bed, but there are
	  sufficient hints through the prose in order to make it an easy one.


==========================================================================
3.17. "The one about the chicken, the lion and the monkey?", by Sam Barlow
      Serial No. 980610
      Release 1
==========================================================================

Filename: chkn-sb.z5

Platform: Inform

Size    : 81.5k

Xyzzy   : Yes.

Road    : East-west, starting point on south side.

Rating  : 7

Review  : This one was quite amusing indeed, but two counterintuitive actions
	  (and one knowledge-by-death puzzle) mar it.  The plot is to somehow
	  get a pair of earrings for your girlfriend but the only vendor around
	  will only take US dollars (of which you have none).  Fortunately
	  there's some fine print that saves you.  But how the author expected
	  us to find the gutter (and, for Kunkel's sake, the final move) is a
	  mystery to me.  Fortunately there are built-in hints.


======================================
3.18. "BEHAVIOR", by William J. Shlaer
      Serial No. 980611
      Release 1
======================================

Filename: chkn-wsb.z5

Platform: Inform

Size    : 49.5k

Xyzzy   : No.

Road    : North-south, starting point on East side.

Rating  : 5

Review  : Sparse descriptions, instant death, few objects actually programmed.
	  The object here is to re-capture your chicken.  You're a grad student
	  studying the nocturnal behavior of chickens and, last night, it
	  escaped. There is some amusement value here but the sparseness of the
	  game world makes for a frustrating experience.


==================================================
3.19. "ORPINGTON", by William J. "City Boy" Shlaer
      Serial No. 980611
      Release 1
==================================================

Filename: chkn-wso.z5

Platform: Inform

Size    : 52k

Xyzzy   : No.

Road    : North-south, starting point on East side.

Rating  : 7

Review  : What an unusual experiment.  You play a chicken but, apparently,
	  your brain has forgotten how to walk.  Somehow you have to manage to
	  find the love of your life (you can play either a male or female
	  chicken, but this doesn't really affect the outcome).  The odd part
	  is having to individually command the chicken's legs, walking through
	  a farmyard & down the road.  Too much of this would be very tedious.
	  Fortunately the game is short.  Unfortunately, the game suffers from
	  its sparse descriptions and the fact that objects mentioned in those
	  descriptions are not implemented.  This makes it somewhat frustrating
	  to play.


----------
4. Summary
----------

Rated 10:
"Chicken and Egg", by Adam Thornton
"THE LESSON OF THE CHICKEN", by R. Noyes

Rated 9:
"Chickens of Distinction", by Liza Daly

Rated 8:
"The Chicken Under The Window", by Lucian Smith

Rated 7:
"Unity", by G. C. Ewing
"*Sisychickenphus*", by Lelah Conrad
"Are you Too Chicken to Make a Deal?", by Mitchell Taylor
"THE STORY OF MORRIS THE CHICKEN BEING HELPED BY A SQUIRREL", by Mikko Vuorinen
"The Landing", by N. K. Guy
"Hey, I'm Supposed to Be Free Range", by Opal O'Donnell
"The one about the chicken, the lion and the monkey?", by Sam Barlow
"ORPINGTON", by William J. "City Boy" Shlaer

Rated 6 and below:
"The X Chicken", by David A. Cornelson
"CHICKEN!", by Gunther Schmidl
"The Chicken's Dilemma", by Jason Dyer
"POLLO Y CAMINO", by Jay Goemmer
"Saied", by Robb Sherwin
"BEHAVIOR", by William J. Shlaer


------------------
4.1. Made ya look!
------------------

Oh, and yes I did leave out number 22 from the spoiler space up above.  Good
catch.


  -=- Mark -=-


From lac@nu-world.com Thu Jun 25 09:43:30 MET DST 1998
Article: 34431 of rec.games.int-fiction
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From: lac@nu-world.com (Lelah Conrad)
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: [CHICKEN-COMP] My Reviews   !* LONG *!
Date: Tue, 23 Jun 1998 22:56:24 GMT
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On Tue, 23 Jun 1998 13:59:23 GMT, olorin@world.std.com (Mark J
Musante) wrote:

 
>===========================================
>3.2. "The X Chicken", by David A. Cornelson
>     Serial No. 980614
>     Release 5
>===========================================
 <snip>
 >.  I seem to have missed the point of the story,
>	  I'm afraid.  And the plot as well.   

[Complete Spoilers Below:  the Plot]
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
I enjoyed what I thought the plot was (hey, if you're having fun
playing an IF game, does it really matter if you are understanding it
correctly?):

You and a chicken and Agents Scully and Mildew are crossing the road
in a deadpan line, back and forth.  There is all this corn at the side
of the road.  (I have no idea what the moving scar thing was about
though.) Finally, since you are getting no explanation as to why this
is going on, you enter the corn and find, ta dah, a spaceship.  The
little green men take you on board, where you discover to your horror
the skeletons of a number of famous people ;), and there are three
empty spots!  You look out the window (and yes you look down and see
the corny mamster joke, as well as note the Avalon joke in the ship)
and notice that leading the road-crossing group there is an invisible
little green man!  Repetitive road crossing is an evil plot by aliens
to capture you! (i.e., my interpretation here: no matter what you do,
aliens are after you. A ridiculous, funny belief, held by many
Americans, I fear.)
	Sure enough, when you go back to the road, you are run over by
an 18 wheeler, which is actually an alien spaceship!  (Therefore you
three end up in the empty slots, I suppose.)  This to me _was_ a plot,
ridiculous though it was.  (But my take on a competition called "the
chicken comp" was that we were _supposed_ to be ridiculous, and the
moreso the better.)

Lelah

(Besides, how can you not laugh when someone either on purpose or by
accident changes muahahahaha  into muhamuhamuha?)
 


From cagerlac@merle.acns.nwu.edu Sat Jul  4 20:02:09 MET DST 1998
Article: 34647 of rec.games.int-fiction
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From: Charles Gerlach <cagerlac@merle.acns.nwu.edu>
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: IF experiences in life.
Date: Wed, 01 Jul 1998 14:36:46 -0500
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Call me lame, but this actually happened to me last night. I
contemplated making a tiny little TADS game out of it, but 
decided against it. Too many little details for too little 
reward. This is what a transcript should look like in ideal land. 

<BEGIN TRANSCRIPT>

Basement

You are in the north room of your basement, headed to get the 
laundry from the dryer in the south room. Feeble light spills 
in from the staircase. 

There is a light here, with a pull cord. 

>pull cord

The light comes on, flooding this room and throwing light into the 
room to the south.

>s

As you let go of the cord and head for the south, the light goes
off. You pause, thinking that this isn't how the light is supposed
to work. 

>pull cord

Now that you know something is wrong with the light, you watch 
carefully as you pull the cord and release it. The light turns on,
and then goes off again. The chain isn't catching. Spiffy.

>pull cord forcefully

Brute force is often a good solution. You try pulling the cord 
firmly, quickly, and at various angles. You've probably just 
requested an ambulance in Morse code.

>s

"Enough of this." You stride to the south. And stop. Man, it is
*dark* back there. 

>i

You are carrying nothing. You have a wallet in your right pocket,
a ring of keys in your left pocket and a watch on your left wrist. 

>get keys. attach them to cord

Taken.

You carefully work the cord into the keyring. The keys aren't heavy
enough to pull the cord down on their own.

>pull cord

You pull the cord and release it ever so slowly. It feels like it's
reached equilibrium, and the light is on. You let go, carefully 
holding your breath. The light is still on.

>s

You move, and the light turns off.

>#!%^@(*(!!

Quite.

>remove watch

You take your watch off.

>put watch through keyring

You feed the band of the watch through the keyring. The play in 
the watch makes it clear that it will plummet to the floor if 
you let go. 

>fasten watch band

The watch band is clasped around the keyring.

>pull cord

You pull the cord and release it ever so slowly. It feels like 
it's reached equilibrium and the light is on. You let go, 
carefully holding your breath. The light is still on.

>s

Congratulations! With the light on, it's now relatively safe to 
go get the laundry. You do so and return to the north room of 
the basement.

>get keys.

You detach the keyring, proud of your own i-f ingenuity applied
to real life. The cord snaps back into place.

The light is still on. 

>@#!%^&#$!!!!!

Quite.

<END TRANSCRIPT>
-- 
Charles Gerlach doesn't speak for Northwestern. Surprise, surprise.


From earendil@faeryland.TAMU-Commerce.edu Sat Jul  4 20:02:40 MET DST 1998
Article: 34703 of rec.games.int-fiction
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Here's a realife transcript, I call it "Trinity II: 50 Years Later"
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Base of Tower

You out in the hot desert of White Sands Missile Range, New Mexico,
at ground zero.  In front of you is a small obelisk commemorating
the first atomic bomb detonation.  The only part of the tower left
is a piece of twisted metal about four feet high, sticking out of the
concrete foundation.

Casey and Corey are standing nearby.

Several aging hippie protesters are standing around.

There are several soldiers around, sporting M-16s.

> LOOK AT ME
You are unshaven and disheveled from the 22 hour drive to New Mexico.

The protesters start singing "Give Peace a Chance."

> INVENTORY
You have a geiger counter and a camera.

Corey moves to stand in front of the monument.

The protesters continue singing loudly and off-key.

> TAKE PICTURE OF COREY
Snap. 
  (http://faeryland.tamu-commerce.edu/~earendil/img/corey_at_ground_zero.jpg)

Two of the protestors drop to the ground and proceed to literally make love,
not war.

The soldiers stare at the couple, fingering the triggers of their guns.
  (I was too embarrassed to photograph the couple)

> USE GEIGER COUNTER
The geiger counter makes a few half-hearted clicks, but nothing like what
you expected.  The stock room of the physics department, where you work,
is apparently several times more radioactive than ground zero, judging by
your test before you left on the trip.

Two of the protesters jump forward and throw goats' blood on the monument.

Before anyone can react, several soldiers have forced them to the ground and
subdued them.

> WEST
Before you, sitting on a large truck bed, is a replica of the casing of 
Fat Man, the bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima.

Back to the east, several soldiers are literally carrying away 2 of the
protesters.

There are several tearful Japanese tourists nearby, looking reverently
at the bomb.

Lois and Ptoley are here.

Lois and Ptoley climb up on the truck, smile and wave.

There are several soldiers here.  One of them suddenly screams and jumps
backwards, seeing something black scurrying on the ground.

> TAKE PICTURE OF BOMB
Snap.
  (http://faeryland.tamu-commerce.edu/~earendil/img/lois_and_ptoley.jpg)

Your gonzo friend Casey arrives.  He pulls out his juggling balls and
proceeds to juggle five balls in front of the bomb.

Corey arrives.  He takes a picture of Casey.
  (unfortunately, I don't have a copy of it to scan in)

The soldier who screamed says to his companion, "Did you see that spider?!
It was as big as my hand!  I hate this place."  His companion snickers.

> WEST
You come to the the fence, where pictures hang every few feet around the
permiter of the site, detailing the history of the bomb.  In front of you
is a picture of the detonation.

There are several little bits of greenish-glass on the ground.

Casey arrives.

> TAKE PICTURE OF CASEY
Snap.
  (http://faeryland.tamu-commerce.edu/~earendil/img/casey.jpg)

> LOOK AT GLASS
They are bits of trinitite, glass that was fused in the initial atomic bomb
explosion.  They tend to remain reasonably radioactive after all these years,
and it is highly illegal to remove them the military base.

> TAKE TRINITITE
As you reach down to take the glass, a very large bird races out from behind a
rock. It snatches away the trinitite with its beak, zigzags through a group of
tourists and disappears to the east. If you didn't know better, you'd swear 
that bird was a roadrunner.  

"Darn it!" you curse.  


-----------------------------------------------------------

All of that is true (except maybe the roadrunner), from our road trip to the
50th anniversary of the bomb on July 16, 1995.  Actually, the whole time I was
there, I was wandering around saying things like "Wow, this ranch house is
exactly like it was in Trinity!" and "Here's where I escaped the rattlesnake"
and "Don't climb up that windmill, the ledge is unsturdy, you'll fall in the
pool!"


-- 
Allen Garvin                                      kisses are a better fate
---------------------------------------------     than wisdom
earendil@faeryland.tamu-commerce.edu          
http://faeryland.tamu-commerce.edu/~earendil         	      e e cummings


From adam@princeton.edu Mon Jul  6 02:26:40 MET DST 1998
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From: adam@princeton.edu (Adam J. Thornton)
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Executable games (was Re: [COMP 98] Judging Time Limit
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In article <uc9zpeq3ezp.fsf@Rama.DoCS.UU.SE>,
Torbj|rn Andersson  <d91tan@rama.docs.uu.se> wrote:

>has to be "Show Gun". (Hint: It's supposed to be an Infocom game.)

> SHOW GUN
(to the Kunkel)

The Kunkel sneers.  "You call that a gun?  Why, there are no more than 100
polygons that make up its surface, and when you shoot someone with it, I
bet it doesn't splatter their ray-traced brains along a surface-mapped
fully-rendered three-dimensional virtual environment."

> SHOOT KUNKEL
(with the gun)

The Kunkel screeches, grasps the widening hole in its gut, and vanishes in
a puff of greasy orange smoke.

Oh no!  Adam Cadre has just walked into the room!

>SHOW GUN
(to Adam Cadre)

"You're not going to get the same reaction from me as you would from Tracy
Valencia, you know.  So stop flirting."

Adam

-- 
adam@princeton.edu 
"There's a border to somewhere waiting, and a tank full of time." - J. Steinman


From tanstaafl@my-dejanews.com Mon Aug  3 12:32:41 MET DST 1998
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From: tanstaafl@my-dejanews.com
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Subject: Re: [ANNOUNCE] New Inform Game - The Awakening
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>>snip<<
> >
> >Additionally, I found myself not wanting to hit RETURN after "look in
> >mirror"... :)
>
> I was vaguely curious how much of this game was purposely reffing
> other games and how much was coincidence. For instance, this is kind of
> similar to Babel. And the beginning scenes are *very* reminiscent of
> Losing Your Grip.
>

  Actually, no. The mirror scene is pretty much directly taken from the
Lovecraft story "The Outsider" in which the protaganist has returned from the
dead but doesn't realize it until they see themselves in a mirror. (And which
they initially think is an archway leading to another room until they touch
it.)  As for the opening scenes; they were not a deliberate reference to
"Grip". I *did* recognize the similarity but nothing else I could come up
with seemed to fit the game as well.

> [..]
> >The holes in the portrait's eyes were cool, but I didn't quite
> >understand the purpose.  Furthermore, I didn't figure out what had
> >happened in the office room with the burned pile of (ledger?) papers and
> >the broken bottle remnants therein.
>
   Silas used the holes to keep an eye on you while you preached.

> Well, the broken bottle in the fireplace was obviously the same sort
> of trap-the-soul devices that appear later on (which you can read
> about by looking at the book behind the bookcase). I don't really know
> what happened, but my theory is that this guy was some sort of evil
> priest type who controlled a wacky cult. One of the things he did was
> steal your soul and put it in a little bottle. Eventually the
> villagers got annoyed with his zany antics, as they always do
> eventually, and did the whole pitchforks-and-torches deal and trashed
> the church and killed all the cultists except the old man, who was
> hiding in the attic (though how he got up there, I'm not sure). They
> also killed you (who had been incidentally transformed into something
> funny-looking by metaphysical resonance with the old man's evil
> deeds), but since your soul was in a bottle, you weren't really dead,
> and were able to climb out of the grave, and finally get your revenge.
> Etc.
>

  OK, I had deliberately left much of the background vague. My theory of
horror is that the effect is *much* stronger if you leave as much as possible
to the reader's imagination. (*Showing* the monster is never as effective as
*hinting at* the monster.) Unfortunately, I apparently left things *too*
vague, since the standard comment I am getting is some variation of "what the
heck is going on!". This is my fault; I was concentrating too much on the
*interactive* portion of the game and neglecting the *fiction* part. This is
the biggest lesson I have learned from the feedback I have gotten.

  Here is the actual back-story for "The Awakening" (as I had seen it).  You
and Silas had been doing research on the soul. You had found a way to achieve
immortality by removing the soul from the body and storing in another
container. Silas had gone further, he had found that once souls had been
removed from the body you could "select" which soul received the "stain" for
any actions you performed. Further, you could slowly transfer the stain on
one soul to the other. He, of course, started transferring to you.  When you
discovered this you confronted him but could not do anything; he had both
bottles and was, of course, immortal. You contacted a woman from the village,
brought her into your confidance and removed her soul. You then started
transfering the sin on your soul to hers.  Eventually you decided you could
not do this to her and released her soul. She died. You snapped and attacked
Silas; blaming him. He "killed" you and buried you in the graveyard. He put a
slab carved with an elder sign on the top of your grave to cut off your
contact with your soul so you wouldn't get up again.  A bolt of lightning
>from the storm shatters the slab and releases you. You have lost much of your
memory (since you have been decaying for some time) and only know that
something you need is in the area. This is when the game starts.

   Most of this is nowhere to be found in the game.

> >And most importantly, I don't understand why the old man didn't get
> >upset when I got the green bottle.  I mean, at that point I was only one
> >step away from hosing him, and he wasn't even concerned.
> [..]
> Well, he was crazy. Yeah, that's it.
>

  Actually, I had him doing nothing since I thought if he did it would become
too obvious that you needed to do something to the green bottle.  Silas is
the weakest point in the game (in my opinion). He *should* have been able to
convey most of the information above but he is not implemented near as well
as he should be.  Again, he's interactive, but doesn't advance the story
much.  I have learned.

   Thanks again to everyone for their feedback.

-----== Posted via Deja News, The Leader in Internet Discussion ==-----
http://www.dejanews.com/rg_mkgrp.xp   Create Your Own Free Member Forum


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Article: 35381 of rec.games.int-fiction
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From: gentry@my-dejanews.com
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: [ANNOUNCE] New Inform Game - The Awakening
Date: Wed, 29 Jul 1998 16:13:58 GMT
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In article <6pn9hm$idk$1@nnrp1.dejanews.com>,
  tanstaafl@my-dejanews.com wrote:
>
> >>snip<<
> > >
> > >Additionally, I found myself not wanting to hit RETURN after "look in
> > >mirror"... :)
> >
> > I was vaguely curious how much of this game was purposely reffing
> > other games and how much was coincidence. For instance, this is kind of
> > similar to Babel. And the beginning scenes are *very* reminiscent of
> > Losing Your Grip.
>
>   Actually, no. The mirror scene is pretty much directly taken from the
> Lovecraft story "The Outsider" in which the protaganist has returned from the
> dead but doesn't realize it until they see themselves in a mirror. (And which
> they initially think is an archway leading to another room until they touch
> it.)  As for the opening scenes; they were not a deliberate reference to
> "Grip". I *did* recognize the similarity but nothing else I could come up
> with seemed to fit the game as well.
>

Given the fact that mud [birth, rebirth], rain [baptism, redemption], mirrors
[self-discovery, self-delusion] and so forth are archetypal images that have
been used in hundreds of movies and books and so forth since humans first
started telling stories, it's really inevitable that these comparisons are
going to be made. Lovecraft decorated his stories with archtypal images of
horror and alienness, while "Grip" was about hardly anything *but*
archetypes. The beginnings of "Awakening" and "Grip", I think, are not really
derivative -- they simply belong to a certain class of images -- like the
beginning of "The Crow," or the prison-break scene in "Shawshank Redemption,"
or even the prison-break scene in "Raising Arizona" (especially with the head
sticking out of the mud).

Same goes for the "Babel" comparison. Watch the ending of "Angel Heart" -- no
mirror, specifically, but it's the same thing. A familiar image. It's not like
we all didn't see it coming.

It doesn't matter how hard you try -- you will never write anything truly new.
The trick is to write an old thing well enough to make it *unique*.


--
--M.

-----== Posted via Deja News, The Leader in Internet Discussion ==-----
http://www.dejanews.com/rg_mkgrp.xp   Create Your Own Free Member Forum


From graemecree@aol.com Mon Aug 24 13:42:07 MET DST 1998
Article: 36021 of rec.games.int-fiction
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From: graemecree@aol.com (GraemeCree)
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Loom, by Brian Moriarty
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>>I spotted a copy of this 1990 game for the MAC at a thrift store, and
wondered about it.  I collect Infocom mainly, but since Moriarty was
involved I thought I'd ask if anyone knew anything about this one?
>>

     Loom is very short, very easy, and very linear, but still worth grabbing
if you can find it.
     In Infocom terms, you might think of it as being similar to both Trinity
and Enchanter.  Your fellow members of the Weaver's Guild have disappeared, and
you have to acquire the necessary spells to set things to rights.  Only each
spell is represented by four musical notes.  You hear new spells as you go
through the game, and as your abilities increase, you acquire the abilities to
play new notes (you may actually learn a spell before you have enough notes to
use it).
     In Expert Mode you are not told what the notes are when you hear a new
spell.  You actually have to identify it by hearing and recognizing them
yourself.

     


From mmurray@cc.wwu.edu Mon Aug 24 13:42:13 MET DST 1998
Article: 36077 of rec.games.int-fiction
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From: Matthew Murray <mmurray@cc.wwu.edu>
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Loom, by Brian Moriarty
Date: Sat, 22 Aug 1998 09:17:36 -0700
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On 22 Aug 1998, GraemeCree wrote:

> >>I spotted a copy of this 1990 game for the MAC at a thrift store, and
> wondered about it.  I collect Infocom mainly, but since Moriarty was
> involved I thought I'd ask if anyone knew anything about this one?
> >>
> 
>      Loom is very short, very easy, and very linear, but still worth grabbing
> if you can find it.
>      In Infocom terms, you might think of it as being similar to both Trinity
> and Enchanter.  Your fellow members of the Weaver's Guild have disappeared, and
> you have to acquire the necessary spells to set things to rights.  Only each
> spell is represented by four musical notes.  You hear new spells as you go
> through the game, and as your abilities increase, you acquire the abilities to
> play new notes (you may actually learn a spell before you have enough notes to
> use it).
>      In Expert Mode you are not told what the notes are when you hear a new
> spell.  You actually have to identify it by hearing and recognizing them
> yourself.

	This is a very good description of the game.  Loom, despite its
being incredibly easily and almost idiot-proof, is really a
wonderfully-designed, charming game with a lot going for it.  The graphics
were gorgeous, even in 16-color EGA.  (I never played the updated CD-ROM
version, though--anyone know where to get it?)  The music was, likewise,
fantastic--some of the best music yet heard in computer games.  The best
part, it sounded great whether you had a sound card or not.  More
importantly, the story and atmosphere were absolutely engrossing from
beginning to end, and really pulled you along.  The only real problem with
the game was that it was so incredibly easy, and so very short.  Granted,
it fit on three 3.5" (double-density) disks, which was about par for the
course for the time, but even by 1989 (1988?) standards, it was still a
short game.  It truly is wonderful, though--it really is a unique game,
with many elements that it's practically impossible to find in computer
games.  Playing this game is not a mistake at all, just don't expect it to
take you very long!

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Matthew A. Murray	     |	   Over 185 computer game reviews covering
mmurray@cc.wwu.edu	     |         games from 1979 to the present!
http://www.wwu.edu/~mmurray  |     http://www.wwu.edu/~mmurray/Reviews.html
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------



From dns361@merle.acns.nwu.edu Wed Aug 26 10:30:44 MET DST 1998
Article: 36351 of rec.games.int-fiction
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From: Second April <dns361@merle.acns.nwu.edu>
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: The Magician's Nephew (was Re: Zorg sequence?)
Date: Tue, 25 Aug 1998 23:42:00 -0500
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> I remember being a little kid who read way too much.  And I distinctly
> remember forming my *own* damn opinions about books.  Opinions that have
> changed with time.  I loved the Narnia books; rereading them as an
> adolescent, I saw all the treacly Christian allegory I had missed and I
> didn't love them so much.  I adored Lloyd Alexander's Prydain novels.

I agree with you, for the most part, but this--stated here and elsewhere
in the thread--irritates me a bit. Yes, I know that Christian allegory
isn't everyone's cup of tea, and I'm not saying that you should appreciate
it if you don't. But I happen to think that the Christian-allegory
elements in the Narnia books were actually fairly well done, and I rather
doubt that you "saw all" of them in a way that enables you to judge. Did
you pick up on the Moses/Exodus story in "Horse and his Boy"? The
Revelation references in "Last Battle"? The Jonah parallels in "Silver
Chair"? The parallel to Paul in the dragon story in "Voyage of the Dawn
Treader"? No doubt you recognized the death sequence in "Lion", but how
about the analogues to Judas, Peter, Joseph of Arimathea, Mary and
Martha, the ideas about faith in the part about discovering Narnia 
through the wardrobe...there are no doubt plenty more that I haven't
discovered, and your "treacly" comment makes me suspect that I've spent
more time around the Bible than you. I also don't understand why Christian
elements in a story are "treacly"; yes, Lewis's writing is sentimental,
but he's by no means only sentimental when he's drawing Christian
parallels. If you don't like treacle, you don't like the series, Christian
angles or not.

I don't stand by the statement made elsewhere that those who didn't care
for the Christian element are bigoted, even though I suspect that they
wouldn't complain about being "hit over the head" with, say, an
environmentalist message. But I do think that the series works nicely from
a Christian perspective: it makes a lot of Bible stories accessible and
fresh for young readers in ways that just reading the text wouldn't be.
And those who threw the book down after the Stone Table sequence might
have been better served by reading on, because Lewis has some interesting
takes on a lot of things, notably the "you worshiped Tash sincerely so you
were really worshiping me" bit referred to elsewhere. He doesn't, in other
words, simply parrot a conservative Christian outlook in every instance.

> Albert Payson Terhune would doubtless nauseate me now with the
> thinly-veiled Teutonic racism I've heard his stories are--as far as I was
> concerned, they were great books about wonderful collies.  I have
> deliberately avoided rereading them now that I know they aren't.  I

I've never heard that. *puzzlement* How so? I read them a long time ago
and enjoyed them, but I honestly can't remember any paeans to Aryans.

Duncan Stevens
d-stevens@nwu.edu
773-728-9721

The room is as you left it; your last touch--
A thoughtless pressure, knowing not itself
As saintly--hallows now each simple thing,
Hallows and glorifies, and glows between
The dust's gray fingers, like a shielded light.

--from "Interim," by Edna St. Vincent Millay





From jon@eyrie.org Fri Aug 28 16:50:56 MET DST 1998
Article: 36458 of rec.games.int-fiction
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From: jon@eyrie.org (Jonathan Lennox)
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Zork Trilogy
Date: 27 Aug 1998 20:05:01 -0700
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In article <6s230p$28pce@fido.engr.sgi.com>,
John Francis <jfrancis@dungeon.engr.sgi.com> wrote:
>In article <tvy1zq3y0dp.fsf@cn1.connectnet.com>,
>Darin Johnson  <darin@usa.net.removethis> wrote:
>>That's pretty much it, except it ported to Fortran, not Pascal.
>>
>>And was the source really stolen?
>
>No.  When "The rather paranoid DEC engineer who prefers to remain anonymous"
>(but who is now known to have been Bob Supnik) was porting the game, the
>folks at MIT knew all about his copy of the sources.  They just didn't
>want the sources to get out everywhere on the net (as had happened to
>ADVENT).  I knew another person at DEC who had a regularly-updated copy of
>the sources - that was the guy who was maintaining the DECsystem 10/20 port.
>The PDP-11 executables (built from the FORTRAN port) were available to the
>user community for quite some time before the sources first showed up on
>a DECUS tape.

Are these MDL sources still in existance anywhere?  I think I heard at one
point that the version of the Zork sources the FORTRAN Dungeon was based off
of was missing a lot of the late-added puzzles.  (And the one time I played
the FORTRAN version the parser didn't really seem fully up to snuff, which
doesn't surprise me too much since I'm amazed that anyone could write an IF
parser in FORTRAN to begin with.)

As such, porting the original sources to, say, GNU Common Lisp (MDL is a
direct ancestor of CL, right?) to run on a modern machine might be seriously
entertaining.  Who holds the copyright on them?  (Any of the plausible
suspects would seem likely to give permission.)

-- 
Jon Lennox
lennox@eyrie.org


From icallaci@csupomona.edu Fri Aug 28 16:53:23 MET DST 1998
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From: icallaci@csupomona.edu (Irene Callaci)
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Zork Trilogy
Date: Wed, 26 Aug 1998 16:38:46 GMT
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I'm not certain of the entire Zork/Dungeon history, but I do know
that I played Dungeon on a PDP 1170 in the very early 1980s and
loved it. Years later, I was in a software store and noticed a
package with the words "Zork I" on it. I had no idea what "Zork"
meant, so picked up the package and turned it over to read about
it. The words on the back were:

	You are standing in an open field, west of a white
	house with a boarded front door. There is a small
	mailbox here.

(Not a direct quote, but close enough.) I remember jumping up
and down for joy. I remember all the customers and clerks looking
at me, trying to decide whether to call security or not, but I
didn't care. I had found Dungeon again!

So, yes, at one time, Dungeon was Zork or Zork was Dungeon, but
Dungeon was never Advent or Colossal Cave.

irene

On Tue, 25 Aug 1998 22:25:41 -0700, Susan_D@Zearthlink.net (Susan)
wrote:
>	I think you have something confused.  Zork was never Dungeon but
>was always Zork, though it was to large for the Trash 80 or Apple and
>that is why Infocom split it up.  The Zork Trilogy that resulted was
>never subsequently combined again by either Infocom or Activision.
>
>	Just prior to Zork was Adventure which has the famous Colossal
>Cave in it.  Perhaps Dungeon was another name used for Adventure?  One
>thing for certain is that Adventure over the years has seen a lot of
>extra development from its original version while Zork has seen none
>within the confines of I, II, and III.  I venture to guess there are a
>half dozen different versions of it (Adventure) and perhaps Dungeon
>fits in to one of these?  If Dungeon is actually its own entity I
>would certainly like someone to jar my memory with more facts about
>it.  I would love to discover an old classic that I had somehow missed
>playing and can see myself playing at least Zork I and Adventure over
>again some day - after I get caught up.  As much as I enjoy all the
>effort and adventure in something "modern" like Christminster I REALLY
>love some thing underground or alien and removed from humanity.
>
>     * Susan * Remove "Z" to fix address



From foxglove@globalserve.net Fri Aug 28 16:53:29 MET DST 1998
Article: 36378 of rec.games.int-fiction
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From: foxglove@globalserve.net (Drone)
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Zork Trilogy
Date: Wed, 26 Aug 1998 13:49:35 -0500
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In article <yabba-2508981311530001@motnt05-406.stlnet.com>,
yabba@dabba.doo (Majinski) wrote:

> Dungeon was split up into the three Zorks because home pc's didn't have
> enough memory for the whole Dungeon adventure.  As I recall, though, when
> the Zork Trilogy set came out a few years after all the Zorks did, home
> pc's did have enough memory for all three games to be combined into one
> game.  Did Infocom combine the three Zorks back together, into (basically)
> a new version of Dungeon, or was it just the three Zork games in one box?

Just the three in one box. There are some significant changes in geography
that would make recombination an interesting issue: if they had
recombined, should they have just pasted the three together, or gone back
to the original DUNGEON map (with original DUNGEON versions of certain
rooms). There's also a fair bit of material in Zork II and Zork III that
was never in the original DUNGEON, if memory serves me correctly.

Drone.


From dbs@cs.wisc.edu Fri Aug 28 16:54:07 MET DST 1998
Article: 36403 of rec.games.int-fiction
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From: dbs@cs.wisc.edu (Dan Shiovitz)
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Zork Trilogy
Date: 27 Aug 1998 01:46:48 GMT
Organization: U of Wisconsin CS Dept
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In article <1998082619100500.PAA13856@ladder01.news.aol.com>,
GraemeCree <graemecree@aol.com> wrote:
>>>But, soon after, TSR (makers of Dungeons & Dragons) heard about the name and
>threatened to sick the evil LoiOrs upon our poor programmers.
>>>
>
>     This story is absolutely true, and shouldn't be at all surprising, coming
>from the company that tried to trademark the name "Nazi."
>     I still have the evidence of that, incidentally.  It was in their Raiders
>of the Lost Ark module for the Adventures of Indiana Jones Roleplaying Game.  

Look again. It's not the word "nazi" that's trademarked, it's the
image of the nazi taken by the movie (and hence trademarked by the
movie company, not TSR). 

(see http://sac.uky.edu/~mlmorr0/faq/rgfdfaq3.html#C8)

-- 
Dan Shiovitz || dbs@cs.wisc.edu || http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~dbs 
"...Incensed by some crack he had made about modern enlightened
thought, modern enlightened thought being practically a personal buddy
of hers, Florence gave him the swift heave-ho and--much against my
will, but she seemed to wish it--became betrothed to me." - PGW, J.a.t.F.S. 



From jfrancis@dungeon.engr.sgi.com Fri Aug 28 16:56:06 MET DST 1998
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From: jfrancis@dungeon.engr.sgi.com (John Francis)
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Zork Trilogy
Date: 26 Aug 1998 22:42:33 GMT
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Xref: news.lth.se rec.games.int-fiction:36393

In article <tvy1zq3y0dp.fsf@cn1.connectnet.com>,
Darin Johnson  <darin@usa.net.removethis> wrote:
>That's pretty much it, except it ported to Fortran, not Pascal.
>
>And was the source really stolen?

No.  When "The rather paranoid DEC engineer who prefers to remain anonymous"
(but who is now known to have been Bob Supnik) was porting the game, the
folks at MIT knew all about his copy of the sources.  They just didn't
want the sources to get out everywhere on the net (as had happened to
ADVENT).  I knew another person at DEC who had a regularly-updated copy of
the sources - that was the guy who was maintaining the DECsystem 10/20 port.
The PDP-11 executables (built from the FORTRAN port) were available to the
user community for quite some time before the sources first showed up on
a DECUS tape.

The reason Bob preferred to remain anonymous was not to keep the MIT folks
off his back - it was to avoid being pestered by the PDP-11 community.
That, and to avoid explaining to his managers just what he was doing :-)
His identity wasn't really a secret - I knew all about it, and I wasn't
really anything more than another DEC employee with an IF habit.
-- 
John Francis  jfrancis@sgi.com       Silicon Graphics, Inc.
(650)933-8295                        2011 N. Shoreline Blvd. MS 43U-991
(650)933-4692 (Fax)                  Mountain View, CA   94043-1389
Hello.   My name is Darth Vader.   I am your father.   Prepare to die.


From jon@eyrie.org Fri Aug 28 17:17:34 MET DST 1998
Article: 36458 of rec.games.int-fiction
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From: jon@eyrie.org (Jonathan Lennox)
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Zork Trilogy
Date: 27 Aug 1998 20:05:01 -0700
Organization: The Eyrie
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In article <6s230p$28pce@fido.engr.sgi.com>,
John Francis <jfrancis@dungeon.engr.sgi.com> wrote:
>In article <tvy1zq3y0dp.fsf@cn1.connectnet.com>,
>Darin Johnson  <darin@usa.net.removethis> wrote:
>>That's pretty much it, except it ported to Fortran, not Pascal.
>>
>>And was the source really stolen?
>
>No.  When "The rather paranoid DEC engineer who prefers to remain anonymous"
>(but who is now known to have been Bob Supnik) was porting the game, the
>folks at MIT knew all about his copy of the sources.  They just didn't
>want the sources to get out everywhere on the net (as had happened to
>ADVENT).  I knew another person at DEC who had a regularly-updated copy of
>the sources - that was the guy who was maintaining the DECsystem 10/20 port.
>The PDP-11 executables (built from the FORTRAN port) were available to the
>user community for quite some time before the sources first showed up on
>a DECUS tape.

Are these MDL sources still in existance anywhere?  I think I heard at one
point that the version of the Zork sources the FORTRAN Dungeon was based off
of was missing a lot of the late-added puzzles.  (And the one time I played
the FORTRAN version the parser didn't really seem fully up to snuff, which
doesn't surprise me too much since I'm amazed that anyone could write an IF
parser in FORTRAN to begin with.)

As such, porting the original sources to, say, GNU Common Lisp (MDL is a
direct ancestor of CL, right?) to run on a modern machine might be seriously
entertaining.  Who holds the copyright on them?  (Any of the plausible
suspects would seem likely to give permission.)

-- 
Jon Lennox
lennox@eyrie.org


From goetz@cs.buffalo.edu Fri Aug 28 17:18:48 MET DST 1998
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From: goetz@cs.buffalo.edu (Phil Goetz)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction,rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Roberta Williams Anthology
Date: 27 Aug 1998 22:15:16 GMT
Organization: State University of New York at Buffalo/Computer Science
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In article <35e4834b.408295@nntp.ix.netcom.com>,
Daniel Phillips <philli@ix.netcom.com> wrote:
>The only place I saw the Roberta Williams Anthology was in a review.
>I'm sorry I missed out. :-(

My company has the RW anthology, but I haven't tried it, because I read an
interview with her in which she said that people should get the Roberta
Williams Anthology to see just how bad their adventure games used to be.

When I was a freshman in college, I sent out my text adventure to a bunch
of companies.  Ken Williams called and asked if they could buy the sentence
parser for a game they were writing called King's Quest.  I said no...
I was too naive to realize I could sell them non-exclusive rights
and continue to use it myself.

Oh, well.  They probably would've given me a flat fee, and then I'd
be kicking myself in the head anyway.

Phil Goetz
goetz@zoesis.com


From lac@nu-world.com Fri Aug 28 17:59:04 MET DST 1998
Article: 36475 of rec.games.int-fiction
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From: lac@nu-world.com (Lelah Conrad)
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Walkthrus/hints -- My philosophy
Date: Thu, 27 Aug 1998 23:41:22 GMT
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On Thu, 27 Aug 1998 09:55:47 GMT, marsh@nettally.com (Steven Marsh)
wrote:

 
> Fortunately
>(tee-hee), my memory is so bad that often I won't remember specifics,
>just whether or not it was winnable, fun, etc. 

I'm the same way -- I think this is why I have no qualms about using
hints/walkthroughs.  I just don't remember the solutions to puzzles,
whether I have figured them out or looked for a hint.  I wonder if
this is because generally I'm listening for the story, and the puzzles
are often just in the way.

>I recently replayed
>Timequest, for example (a wildly underrated text adventure), ...  It was
>challenging, but a blast.   

Glad you mentioned that this was a good one.  I picked up a copy at a
thrift store but it's on the big floppies (looked interesting.)  I'll
have it transfered now to little disks so I can play it.

>   But, as it is, I don't have the free time or patience I
>did when I was sixteen to reboot & try again.

You know, I'm not sure this has to do with being sixteen so much as it
does with having been there at the beginning of the personal computer
revolution, where everything was novel and the available software
seemed manageable. We were just about 30 when we got our original
Apple, and played Zork and the other early games fanatically, devoting
almost our all our free time to them, even though we had infants and
jobs.  Now, however, there are *so many* computer options that the
whole medium  just feels different -- for me, at some level, it's
overwhelming. 

Lelah
 
 


From jfrancis@dungeon.engr.sgi.com Sat Aug 29 20:39:21 MET DST 1998
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From: jfrancis@dungeon.engr.sgi.com (John Francis)
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Zork Trilogy
Date: 28 Aug 1998 17:04:49 GMT
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In article <6s56ot$7v@eyrie.org>, Jonathan Lennox <jon@eyrie.org> wrote:
>In article <6s230p$28pce@fido.engr.sgi.com>,
>John Francis <jfrancis@dungeon.engr.sgi.com> wrote:
>>In article <tvy1zq3y0dp.fsf@cn1.connectnet.com>,
>>Darin Johnson  <darin@usa.net.removethis> wrote:
>>>That's pretty much it, except it ported to Fortran, not Pascal.
>>>
>>>And was the source really stolen?
>>
>>No.  When "The rather paranoid DEC engineer who prefers to remain anonymous"
>>(but who is now known to have been Bob Supnik) was porting the game, the
>>folks at MIT knew all about his copy of the sources.  They just didn't
>>want the sources to get out everywhere on the net (as had happened to
>>ADVENT).  I knew another person at DEC who had a regularly-updated copy of
>>the sources - that was the guy who was maintaining the DECsystem 10/20 port.
>>The PDP-11 executables (built from the FORTRAN port) were available to the
>>user community for quite some time before the sources first showed up on
>>a DECUS tape.
>
>Are these MDL sources still in existance anywhere?  I think I heard at one
>point that the version of the Zork sources the FORTRAN Dungeon was based off
>of was missing a lot of the late-added puzzles.  (And the one time I played
>the FORTRAN version the parser didn't really seem fully up to snuff, which
>doesn't surprise me too much since I'm amazed that anyone could write an IF
>parser in FORTRAN to begin with.)

As has already been recounted in this newsgroup, I seem to have thrown out
the old 7-track tape containing MDL sources during my move to California.
(It was probaly unreadable, anyway - it was over fifteen years old, and had
*not* been kept in very good conditions. It was a very early version, too.)
I can assure you that the latest version of the FORTRAN sources (and the
variants derived from it) contain everything that was ever in any of the
MDL versions that I saw.  And I believe I saw all of them - certainly
many other people never saw the versions with the sooty room and the
palantiri, or the "one lousy point".  For a long time these were, indeed,
absent from the FORTRAN version.  But it was eventually revised to include
these last puzzles.

>As such, porting the original sources to, say, GNU Common Lisp (MDL is a
>direct ancestor of CL, right?) to run on a modern machine might be seriously
>entertaining.  Who holds the copyright on them?  (Any of the plausible
>suspects would seem likely to give permission.)

MDL, while somewhat Lisp-like, isn't really a direct ancestor of CL.

I'm far more interested in the port(s) to Inform - how's it coming, guys?
The TADS port is a good way to play the game, but is somehow aesthetically
less satisfying.   Infocom games should be played on a Z-code engine.

The copyright would almost certainly reside with Activision.  Infocom
negotiated the original rights in a deal with MIT, and from then on
it was part of their intellectual property.
-- 
John Francis  jfrancis@sgi.com       Silicon Graphics, Inc.
(650)933-8295                        2011 N. Shoreline Blvd. MS 43U-991
(650)933-4692 (Fax)                  Mountain View, CA   94043-1389
Hello.   My name is Darth Vader.   I am your father.   Prepare to die.


From dicks@math.ohio-state.NO.SPAM.edu Sat Aug 29 20:40:26 MET DST 1998
Article: 36495 of rec.games.int-fiction
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From: dicks@math.ohio-state.NO.SPAM.edu (Ethan Dicks)
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Zork Trilogy
Date: 28 Aug 1998 21:16:51 GMT
Organization: Department of Mathematics, The Ohio State University
Lines: 64
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In article <6s6nvh$325d6@fido.engr.sgi.com>,
John Francis <jfrancis@dungeon.engr.sgi.com> wrote:
>In article <6s56ot$7v@eyrie.org>, Jonathan Lennox <jon@eyrie.org> wrote:
>>In article <6s230p$28pce@fido.engr.sgi.com>,
>>John Francis <jfrancis@dungeon.engr.sgi.com> wrote:
>>>In article <tvy1zq3y0dp.fsf@cn1.connectnet.com>,
>>>Darin Johnson  <darin@usa.net.removethis> wrote:

>>Are these MDL sources still in existance anywhere? 

Yes, but they are not widely available.  Stu Galley told me that they were
technically copyrighted to MIT (since that's where the Imps worked when they
wrote the PDP-10 code), even though MIT did not object when Infocom was
founded.

>I can assure you that the latest version of the FORTRAN sources (and the
>variants derived from it) contain everything that was ever in any of the
>MDL versions that I saw.  And I believe I saw all of them - certainly
>many other people never saw the versions with the sooty room and the
>palantiri, or the "one lousy point".  For a long time these were, indeed,
>absent from the FORTRAN version.  But it was eventually revised to include
>these last puzzles.
>

But what's the "Dead Man" puzzle referred to in an early man page for  one
of the DUNGEON ports?

>As such, porting the original sources to, say, GNU Common Lisp (MDL is a
>>direct ancestor of CL, right?) to run on a modern machine might be seriously
>>entertaining.  Who holds the copyright on them?  (Any of the plausible
>>suspects would seem likely to give permission.)

See above.

>I'm far more interested in the port(s) to Inform - how's it coming, guys?

Slowly.  I just added the canary code this week.  I'm _almost_ ready to
release some Alpha code to shake out bugs.  The endgame is not finished,
but I'm tempted to release it for testing in that state (the mirror box
seems to work; the Dungeon Master doesn't yet exist).  What amazes me is 
that I started this port *a year ago this week* and it's not done yet.  True,
there have been weeks when no progress has been made, but some days, I got
gobs of code done.

>The TADS port is a good way to play the game, but is somehow aesthetically
>less satisfying.   Infocom games should be played on a Z-code engine.

I agree.

>The copyright would almost certainly reside with Activision.  Infocom
>negotiated the original rights in a deal with MIT, and from then on
>it was part of their intellectual property.

That's not what Stu Galley told me (he indicated that MIT was rather 
indifferent to the ownership of this particular bit of code).  The sources
I have seen (from 1979) have a copyright attribution to MIT, not that it
wasn't changed later, of course.  

-ethan
-- 
Ethan Dicks                                      http://www.infinet.com/~erd/
(dicks) at (math) . (ohio-state) . (edu)       sellto: postmaster@[127.0.0.1]

harvestbot fodder: president@whitehouse.gov fccinfo@fcc.gov root@[127.0.0.1]


From jfrancis@dungeon.engr.sgi.com Sat Aug 29 20:40:37 MET DST 1998
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From: jfrancis@dungeon.engr.sgi.com (John Francis)
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Zork Trilogy
Date: 28 Aug 1998 22:18:22 GMT
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In article <6s76o3$g3f$1@mathserv.mps.ohio-state.edu>,
Ethan Dicks <dicks@math.ohio-state.NO.SPAM.edu> wrote:

[snip, snip, snip . . .]

>But what's the "Dead Man" puzzle referred to in an early man page for  one
>of the DUNGEON ports?















      (spoiler space, for those who haven't played the full game)
















Probably "ghost mode" - what happened to you if you died.
Originally, you just died.  End of game.
Later on you got to wander around as a ghost, and had to find the
right way to turn yourself back into something more substantial.

-- 
John Francis  jfrancis@sgi.com       Silicon Graphics, Inc.
(650)933-8295                        2011 N. Shoreline Blvd. MS 43U-991
(650)933-4692 (Fax)                  Mountain View, CA   94043-1389
Hello.   My name is Darth Vader.   I am your father.   Prepare to die.


From darin@usa.net.removethis Sat Aug 29 22:24:51 MET DST 1998
Article: 36502 of rec.games.int-fiction
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Sender: darin@cn1.connectnet.com
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: full zork map?
References: <6s5ie8$hn4$1@news.nyu.edu>
From: Darin Johnson <darin@usa.net.removethis>
Message-ID: <tvybtp4pmw0.fsf@cn1.connectnet.com>
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amd0978@acf2.nyu.edu (Adam Donahue) writes:

> Does anyone know if the original, "full" Zork map is archived somewhere?
> I'm speaking of the map for the original version, before it was broken
> apart into a trilogy, with various puzzles added and removed.

See:
ftp://ftp.gmd.de/if-archive/solutions/dungeon.ps
and
ftp://ftp.gmd.de/if-archive/solutions/dung-map.zip

The first I did, and is a multi-page map, split into convenient
sections.  The second was by someone else, and is two pages designed
to be stuck together and viewed as one huge map.

Both need postscript - which *used* to be the worldwide undisputed
standard for printing, but nowdays too many people can't figure out
how to use them.  (if they're saved as images, then you can't blow
them up or shrink them, etc, without distortion; and if you save some
drawing package, then you can't view them without the appropriate
software/system)  But there are free postscript viewers available.

-- 
Darin Johnson
darin@usa.net.delete_me


From dns361@merle.acns.nwu.edu Sat Aug 29 22:27:28 MET DST 1998
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From: Second April <dns361@merle.acns.nwu.edu>
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: The Magician's Nephew (was Re: Zorg sequence?)
Date: Fri, 28 Aug 1998 10:14:00 -0500
Organization: Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, US
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> >> > The Revelation references in "Last Battle"?
> >> How about the references to Susan, who asserts her sexuality rather than 
> >> clinging to childish things and is therefore sent to hell?
> >C'mon. Susan became a shallow social butterfly, and the point of the
> >reference to her is to show that even those who have come in contact with 
> >the truth can turn away--a counterpart, I think, to the dwarves, who
> >refuse to acknowledge it at all. I also don't see why you think she was
> >sent to hell.
> 
> Because the sheep are being separated from the goats in _The Last
> Battle_--indeed, that's the *whole* point.  And she ain't a sheep.
> 
> Whether it is her assertion of her sexuality or simply her rejection of the
> truth that was offered to her is something I can't judge without rereading
> the books.
> 
> Is she sent to a place with a burning lake of fire?  Maybe not.  But Aslan
> and friends all go Somewhere Else, and what is hell if not separation from
> God? 

But it's not clear--indeed, it's deliberately made unclear--whether the
end of the "old" Narnia also means the end of the "real world", and
whether "real-worlders" can still come into the "new" Narnia. So saying
Susan is damned because she's not there is a bit of a leap.

But say it is the end of both worlds, and the sheep are being separated
>from the goats. Susan doesn't seem to be a sheep; she's quoted as saying
something like "Fancy you remembering those silly games we used to play
when we were children." The point is _not_ that clinging to childish
things is good; the point is that there are some who think they've "grown
out" of being Christian, or that their earlier devotion was an "adolescent
phase". Lewis has more to say on this in "Screwtape Letters". The
references to makeup and parties suggest that she's older and is
preoccupied with doing things that older folks do; it's a long stretch
>from there to Lewis-is-punishing-women-who-assert-their-sexuality. If the
fact that the sheep are being separated from the goats at all strikes you
as barbaric, well, Lewis and you have differences.

Duncan Stevens
d-stevens@nwu.edu
773-728-9721

The room is as you left it; your last touch--
A thoughtless pressure, knowing not itself
As saintly--hallows now each simple thing,
Hallows and glorifies, and glows between
The dust's gray fingers, like a shielded light.

--from "Interim," by Edna St. Vincent Millay




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From: Second April <dns361@merle.acns.nwu.edu>
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: The Magician's Nephew (was Re: Zorg sequence?)
Date: Fri, 28 Aug 1998 22:13:59 -0500
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On 28 Aug 1998, Doeadeer3 wrote:

> But this theme is also not at all uncommon in the Bible, the "wanton
woman". It
>  does tend to read as punishment for women who assert their sexuality
(read that
> as also asserting their independence, the two are linked). It is important to
> remember the time period things were written in and the fact that women's
> rights were nonexistent or very low (re Bible). 

Actually, to the extent there are evil women in the Bible (there aren't
many women, period), they're mostly conventional power-mongers--e.g.,
Jezebel. I'd venture to say that both men and women got punished for being
sexual, but I dunno that women got singled out. Moreover, there are some
women who were rewarded for asserting their sexuality, such as Jael and
Judith, and the New Testament has several women who were extremely sexual
(as in, prostitutes) and yet came to Christ more readily than upstanding
high society men. So I'm not quite so sure that the theme of punishing
women for asserting their sexuality is so overpowering in the Bible. 

Duncan Stevens
d-stevens@nwu.edu
773-728-9721

The room is as you left it; your last touch--
A thoughtless pressure, knowing not itself
As saintly--hallows now each simple thing,
Hallows and glorifies, and glows between
The dust's gray fingers, like a shielded light.

--from "Interim," by Edna St. Vincent Millay




From dns361@merle.acns.nwu.edu Sat Aug 29 22:30:06 MET DST 1998
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From: Second April <dns361@merle.acns.nwu.edu>
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: The Magician's Nephew (was Re: Zorg sequence?)
Date: Sat, 29 Aug 1998 10:23:04 -0500
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On 29 Aug 1998, Doeadeer3 wrote:

> >So I'm not quite so sure that the theme of punishing
> >women for asserting their sexuality is so overpowering in the Bible. 
> 
> Hmmm. Okay, I don't know the Bible well enough to argue about it intelligently
> either.  Eve. Lot's wife (I don't have a copy around to look things up).

The view that the Fall had to do with sex is a gloss that came along
relatively recently, and it's not well supported by the text. And the
little there is ("and they saw that they were naked") applies to both Adam
and Eve. Lot's wife was punished for looking back at the destruction of
Sodom; sex wasn't involved.

> I think you partially misunderstood me -- one way to "restrict" women has been
> to control their sexuality. Why? Well, way, way, back, men worried that their
> progeny might not be their own. So if they kept their wives controlled, by
> default they controlled their wombs and, ergo, their sons were more likely to
> be their sons. 

I know all this. But there's not much about it in the Bible, and most of
what's there is in the Mosaic law, which doesn't bind Christians--myself
or Lewis, specifically. The New Testament prohibitions--covering heads and
speaking in church--are now generally understood to be specific to a
particular situation (they're in Paul's letters) and not intended as
general pronouncements on women; Paul recognized women's leadership
elsewhere in his letters. 

> Does the concept, madonna/whore, ring a bell? So, as I remember it, there is a
> lot of "women must cover their heads in church" and "obey their husbands as
> lords and masters" in the Bible. The era that was in, women were viewed mainly
> as sexual, emotional creatures who had to be controlled by the more
> "reasonable" men.
> 
> Thus women were married off young, had children young, etc. A sexual single
> woman or unfaithful wife was not controlled. So a woman asserting her sexuality
> was a threat (meant she was asserting her independence, was free of male
> control). I think the madonna/whore concept IS in the Bible and I think Lewis
> could have echoed that concept. (Not saying he did, just that he could have.)

Whether a "concept" as nebulous as madonna/whore is in the Bible is a
matter of interpretation. But given that the usual form of that concept is
the assumption that women who aren't virginal are dangerous, impure, etc.,
and there are plenty of women in the Bible who fit neither category, I
don't think it's accurate to say that the Bible is terribly hung up on
women's sexuality. More to the point, the New Testament has several
examples of women that Christ accepted when others wouldn't, which
suggests a message to the folks around him: hey, you, you're obsessing
about sex and forgetting that these women are people too. As if to say
that the old customs, under which sexual women were to be avoided, gotta
go, because there's more important stuff going on that includes them just
as much as anyone. There certainly is some "obey your husbands" stuff in
there, but I wouldn't say there's a lot; it's so dwarfed by the amount of
writing on other subjects (by Paul, specifically) that it's hard to view
it as central.

I'm not saying that the Bible is in every respect a proto-feminist tract,
nor that cultural baggage regarding sexuality and women didn't get in
there. But I don't think it's true that the news in the Bible regarding
women and sex is entirely bad.

Duncan Stevens
d-stevens@nwu.edu
773-728-9721

The room is as you left it; your last touch--
A thoughtless pressure, knowing not itself
As saintly--hallows now each simple thing,
Hallows and glorifies, and glows between
The dust's gray fingers, like a shielded light.

--from "Interim," by Edna St. Vincent Millay




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Subject: Re: The Magician's Nephew (was Re: Zorg sequence?)
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Second April <dns361@merle.acns.nwu.edu> writes:

> The point is _not_ that clinging to childish
> things is good; the point is that there are some who think they've "grown
> out" of being Christian, or that their earlier devotion was an "adolescent
> phase".

Hmm, biblically, there are two views on child/adult.  First, unless we
become as children, we can't enter the kingdom of heaven.  But then,
there is "when I became a man, I put away childish things".  But they
don't really contradict each other - "become as children" may mean to
treat love and joy as more important than earning a living and all the
other things that preoccupy an adult's mind.

Note that in Narnia, when you grow up, you forget the magic.  Susan
treats Narnia as just some old game they used to play.  It seems
symbolic of adults giving up the love and joy they used to have as
children.

-- 
Darin Johnson
darin@usa.net.delete_me


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From: Second April <dns361@merle.acns.nwu.edu>
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: The Magician's Nephew (was Re: Zorg sequence?)
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On 28 Aug 1998, Jonathan Badger wrote:

> >Mmm--I don't think Middle Eastern/not us necessarily means Muslim. Lots of
> >the series is based on Bible stories, after all, and much of the Bible
> >concerns other folks who are at war with the Jews. I've read a good deal
> >of Lewis, and I really don't think that he believes Muslims are pagans or
> >worshippers of Satan. 
> 
> Well, I don't think Lewis was really meaning to be anti-Muslim (or at
> least not any more than was typical in English culture at the time of
> his writing), but the capital city of Calorum (or whatever the country
> was called) wasn't Biblically inspired but clearly inspired by the
> descriptions of medieval Baghdad in the "Arabian Nights". And didn't
> the rulers of the country have titles like "Grand Vizer", which come
> out of Arab culture?

I don't doubt that, in terms of details, the city/country of Calormen
resembles a Middle East more recent than that of the Bible. I merely think
that, whatever the setting, the worship of Tash owed much more to the Baal
religion than to Islam. Lewis wrote in Mere Christianity about the
elements of truth in other religions (while insisting, of course, that
Christianity was the only one to have the whole truth), and the
similarities between Muslim and Christian worship suggest that he would
see much he agrees with in Islam. (This is distinct from the "sincerity"
bit with the good Calormene at the end of "Last Battle.") On the whole,
Tash worship fares very poorly--it's not presented as a different take on
Aslan.

> >I saw Tash as analogous to Baal, and the story as
> >something of a conflation of Moses/Exodus and the battles between the Jews
> >and the Philistines.
> 
> I see your point, but in Christian theology the "enemy" gods of the
> Old Testament (such as Baal and Beezelbub) became identified with
> Satan. And Tash was there at Narnia's Armageddon, filling the Satan
> role there.

Oh, sure. Baal worship is often almost synonymous with Satan worship in
the Old Testament. And to the extent Narnia has a Satan, Tash is pretty
close. I was just saying that Tash has a lot more to do with Baal than
Allah (and that I don't think that, for Lewis, Allah is a false
god--merely that Muslims believe things about God that aren't right).

Duncan Stevens
d-stevens@nwu.edu
773-728-9721

The room is as you left it; your last touch--
A thoughtless pressure, knowing not itself
As saintly--hallows now each simple thing,
Hallows and glorifies, and glows between
The dust's gray fingers, like a shielded light.

--from "Interim," by Edna St. Vincent Millay





From dns361@merle.acns.nwu.edu Mon Aug 31 11:24:07 MET DST 1998
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From: Second April <dns361@merle.acns.nwu.edu>
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: The Magician's Nephew (was Re: Zorg sequence?)
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On 29 Aug 1998, Doeadeer3 wrote:

> In article <Pine.HPP.3.93.980829100457.25448A-100000@merle.acns.nwu.edu>,
> Second April <dns361@merle.acns.nwu.edu> writes:
> 
> >I'm not saying that the Bible is in every respect a proto-feminist tract,
> >nor that cultural baggage regarding sexuality and women didn't get in
> >there. But I don't think it's true that the news in the Bible regarding
> >women and sex is entirely bad.
> 
> No, Jesus was fairly nice to prostitues, wasn't he?
> 
> However, that was not my point.

And that was not mine. I said that Jesus accepted and associated with
women regardless of their pasts or occupations, which was a major slap in
the face to the authority of the day. "Fairly nice" does not describe it.

> >>The references to makeup and parties suggest that she's older and is
> >>preoccupied with doing things that older folks do; it's a long stretch
> >>from there to Lewis-is-punishing-women-who-assert-their-sexuality.
> 
> This is what I was reacting to.
> 
> Someone sent me some names & quotes:
> 
> ---------
> 
> Let us not forget Rachel and Leah (Genesis 29:15-30; 30:1-11, 31-34,
> 37-42; 31:4-5, 8-9), Miriam (Numbers 12:1-10), Michal (II Samuel 6:16,
> 20-23), Tamar (Who is told by Absalom not to take being raped 'to
> heart'!(II Samuel 13:1-20)), or Jezebel, of course (see II Kings 9:32-36
> for the interesting description of her death). 

Rachel and Leah were Jacob's two wives, by whom he had numerous children.
Asserting sexuality is simply not an issue in their story. Miriam was
punished for claiming that she had better knowledge of God's will than
Moses did; sexuality was not an issue there either. Michal was punished
for kvetching about David dancing (ironic that you bring it up, since she
seems to have been a "fun is bad" sort of girl); sex was not an issue
there either. Tamar was raped, yes, and her rapist was promptly killed;
Absalom, who rebelled against David, is hardly the Bible's voice of
reason. Tamar was not asserting her sexuality in the first place, anyway,
so there's not an issue of sexual single women being punished by sexual
violence. Jezebel, as I mentioned before, was an enemy of Israel; she was
thrown out of a window after a campaign of killing the Jews. None of these
stories are relevant.

Moreover, consider Tamar (another one) who seduced her father-in-law and
got off scot-free, or the woman taken in adultery in John 7, forgiven and
sent forth, or Pharaoh's wife, who tried to seduce Joseph and had him
thrown in prison, or Rahab, the prostitute who aided Joshua. How are these
sexual women punished?

> According to God, any man who suspects his wife of adultery must bring
> her to God's tent, where a priest will make her drink dirty water. 
> "...The water," God explains, "shall enter into her and cause bitter
> pain, and her womb shall discharge, her uterus drop, and the woman shall
> become an execration among her people."  Unless, of course, the woman is
> innocent, in which case "she shall be immune and able to conceive
> children."--Numbers 5:11-31. 

Actually, this law acts as a check on men who would otherwise kill or
brutalize first and ask questions later; requiring that such disputes be
resolved by the priest is a whole lot better than suspicion = guilt.
Seeing as the women was supposed to drink water with dust in it, which
isn't likely to make anyone miscarry, this test looks like it will pretty
much inevitably acquit. The Mosaic law did a lot to protect women from the
whims of the men in power, believe it or not.

> "If a woman does not cover her head, she should have her hair cut
> off...A man ought not to cover his head, since he is the image and glory
> of God; but the woman is the glory of man (!!).  For this reason, and
> because of the angels, the woman ought to have a sign of authority over
> her head.  Does not the very nature of things teach you that if a man
> has long hair it is a disgrace to him, but that if a woman has long hair
> it is her glory?  For long hair is given to her as a covering."--I
> Corinthians 11:3-15

Yes, I referred to this earlier, and as I said, it's largely taken as
culturally specific and disregarded now. And you edited this a little
creatively to get rid of the caution that men are no more independent of
women than women are of men, and everyone is from God. 

> "...women should be silent in churches.  For they are not permitted to
> speak, but should be subordinate, as the law also says.  If there is
> anything they desire to know, let them ask their husbands at home..."--I
> Corinthians 14:34-35

Yes, I referred to this earlier. This has what to do with asserting
sexuality again?

> "Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord.  For the husband is the
> head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church...as the church
> submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in
> everything."--Ephesians 5:22-24

Wrenched out of context to omit the much longer instruction immediately
afterwards for men to love and respect their wives as themselves. Most of
the supposedly nasty quotes in Paul's writings are similar; they're taken
as evidence of how much Paul hated women, but the original context
indicates other purposes, such as trying to promote marital harmony.
"Women, stop provoking your husbands; men, stop being mean to your wives."
Paul didn't attempt to overturn the gender roles of the society, which men
dominated. But he did try to ensure that, under the existing norms, family
life would be peaceful.

> What I was saying is that Lewis could have easily echoed sentiments like these
> and others. And that the intrepretation that Susan was punished for asserting
> her sexuality, in the framework of traditional Christianity (and Lewis's era),
> wouldn't be stretch... at all. 

Yes, but taking the few words in the novel that refer to makeup and
parties as evidence that Susan was punished for being sexual IS a stretch,
particularly since the novel documents Susan's superior attitude toward
Narnia: "Fancy you remembering those silly games we used to play when we
were children!"

Doe, if you'd just said that Lewis might have been reflecting a theme or
prejudice in European society, I wouldn't have said anything, because no
one could possibly argue that European society didn't constrain women's
sexuality. But there are no stories in the Bible that fit your model, as
far as I--and, it seems, you--can find. And references to covering heads
and being silent in churches do not a theme make. 

> (I didn't make the original comment, but I felt totally discounting it was
>wrong and  also ignores a theme that IS in the Bible. Maybe if Susan
had been a
> male character asserting his sexuality, Lewis would have had him meet
the same
> end, but somehow I doubt it. 

Why? Plenty of Biblical men sleep around and get punished for it. David
and Bathsheba, Samson and Delilah, the incestuous man in 1 Corinthians 5,
or Ammon. 

Or maybe it is about "childish things", but then
> again maybe it isn't. 

Or maybe it is. Consider:

Matthew 11:25: "I thank thee, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that thou
hast hidden these things from the wise and udnerstanding and revealed them
to babes."

Matthew 18:3-4: "Truly, I say to you, unless you turn and become like
children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Whoever humbles
himself like this child, he is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven."

Matthew 19:14: "Let the children come to me, and do not hinder them, for
to such belongs the kingdom of heaven."

Matthew 21:16: "Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings thou hast brought
perfect praise."

Mark 9:35-37: "And he sat down and called the twelve; and he said to them,
'IF any one would be first, he must be last of all and servant of all.'
And he took a child, and put him in the midst of them, and taking in his
arms, he said to them, 'Whoever receives one such child in my name
receives me, and whoever receives me, receives not me but him who sent
me.'"

Luke 18:16: "Whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child
shall not enter it."

Romans 8:15-16: "When we cry 'Abba! Father!', it is the Spirit himself
bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if
chidlren, then heirs, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ..."

Isaiah 11:6: "The wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall
lie down with the kid, and the calf and the lion and the fatling together,
and a little child shall lead them."

Considering that the relevant event is a person turning away from God (in
fantasy dress, of course), and considering that there's a very strong
Biblical theme of having to be childlike to come to God, but _nothing_
about women who were turned away because they were sexual, I think the
theme that Lewis was really drawing on is obvious. Remember also that
Susan _chose_ to turn away from Narnia; no one said "Why, you're asserting
your sexuality entirely too much; no more Narnia for you."

Bachelor or not, Lewis was not afraid of sex, and he wrote elsewhere that
Christian theology actually approves of sex. (Yes, I know that the
Catholic Church spent several centuries claiming that sex was per se
sinful, but the church and the Bible are two separate things.)

Duncan Stevens
d-stevens@nwu.edu
773-728-9721

The room is as you left it; your last touch--
A thoughtless pressure, knowing not itself
As saintly--hallows now each simple thing,
Hallows and glorifies, and glows between
The dust's gray fingers, like a shielded light.

--from "Interim," by Edna St. Vincent Millay










From lac@nu-world.com Mon Aug 31 11:49:21 MET DST 1998
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From: lac@nu-world.com (Lelah Conrad)
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Cornerstone manual, FYI
Date: Mon, 31 Aug 1998 04:16:45 GMT
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I was thrifting the other day, sorting through mounds of old computer
books this time, and uncovered a Cornerstone manual, for a buck. Such
an odd specimen of Infocom memorabilia!

Cornerstone was the "database management software" that allegedly
killed Infocom.   Here was something with the Infocom logo on that was
so clearly NOT interactive fiction.  

On the cover are the words Cornerstone : Now You're in Control.  There
is a cartoon picture of a business person (white shirt and tie)
holding a blue flag, planting it on top of a pile of letters and
numbers (in which are prominent the words "data," " files," and a very
large and clearly placed dollar sign).  An anthropomorphized cheery
computer is also helping him plant this flag.  There are mountain
peaks surrounding the pile of letters, but in the back of them,
curiously, are tall, ominous-looking clouds.

>From this latter day vantage point, it looks as though our adventurer
got just a little too ambitious for his own good, and maybe got killed
off for his hubris.  We all know how hard it is to get the computer to
help us win the game!

 I'm going to make it the right end bookend to my Infocom collection.
:)

Lelah


From graemecree@aol.com Mon Aug 31 11:50:14 MET DST 1998
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>>Cornerstone was the "database management software" that allegedly killed
Infocom.   Here was something with the Infocom logo on that was so clearly NOT
interactive fiction.  
>>

     Nobody's ever talked much about WHY Cornerstone failed.  It looks very
primitive to me, but then it's from 1985, which means not even any mouse
support.  It's not too difficult to use.  I still play with it every once in a
while.  I made a database based on all the spells in the Enchanter Trilogy et
al

>>
On the cover are the words Cornerstone : Now You're in Control.  There
is a cartoon picture of a business person (white shirt and tie) holding a blue
flag, planting it on top of a pile of letters and
numbers (in which are prominent the words "data," " files," and a very large
and clearly placed dollar sign).  An anthropomorphized cheery computer is also
helping him plant this flag.  There are mountain peaks surrounding the pile of
letters, but in the back of them,
curiously, are tall, ominous-looking clouds.
>>

     Yes, that's the OEM version.  I used to have it, but got rid of it when I
found the original Infocom version (wish I hadn't now).  The original Infocom
version has all the manuals in separate covers, and comes in a big plastic box,
which Infocom later gave away in some of their contests, calling it "The
Implementor's Lunchbox".


>>From this latter day vantage point, it looks as though our adventurer got
just a little too ambitious for his own good, and maybe got killed off for his
hubris.  We all know how hard it is to get the computer to help us win the
game!
>>

     Well, sort of.  Except that the founders of Infocom had always intended to
go into business software from the very beginning.  They marketed Zork first
because it was practically complete, and marketable.



From dns361@merle.acns.nwu.edu Mon Aug 31 12:53:35 MET DST 1998
Article: 36593 of rec.games.int-fiction
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From: Second April <dns361@merle.acns.nwu.edu>
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: The Magician's Nephew (was Re: Zorg sequence?)
Date: Mon, 31 Aug 1998 01:25:24 -0500
Organization: Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, US
Lines: 64
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On Mon, 31 Aug 1998, Steve Bernard wrote:

> Second April wrote:
> > 
> > On 29 Aug 1998, Doeadeer3 wrote:
> > 
> > > In article <Pine.HPP.3.93.980829100457.25448A-100000@merle.acns.nwu.edu>,
> > > Second April <dns361@merle.acns.nwu.edu> writes:
> > >
> > > >I'm not saying that the Bible is in every respect a proto-feminist tract,
> > > >nor that cultural baggage regarding sexuality and women didn't get in
> > > >there. But I don't think it's true that the news in the Bible regarding
> > > >women and sex is entirely bad.

Read this quote several times, then ask yourself whether it sounds like
I'm arguing that the Bible is perfect or devoid of cultural baggage
regarding the subordination of women.

> Actually, I sent these more as a few examples of the very negatively
> portrayed females in the Bible, as were the quotes, sexuality wasn't
> really on my mind, as I've been happily ignoring most of this thread
> since it began to really flare up.

Ah, so it was you. It certainly looked like someone with an entirely
different agenda had dropped in.

I don't recall volunteering for the position of Defender Of Every Word And
Phrase In The Bible. Last I checked, I was trying to point out that the
theme of women being punished for their sexuality does not actually
pervade every page of the Bible, but someone seems to have signed me up
for a different shift.

I decline the kind invitation to join a shouting match about (a) how
peachy/insulated from cultural yuckiness the Bible is for women, or (b)
literal inerrancy/infallibility. I decline because (a) I don't actually
believe in literal inerrancy, (b) I think that certain elements of the
Bible are influenced by the culture of the time, and (c) I'm a law student
with five quite time-consuming classes, a law journal membership, and a
fiancee, and I simply don't have the time to argue Biblical minutiae all
day. There seem to be lots of folks over at
soc.religion.christian.bible-study who _do_ have the time, and if you want
an argument about these nice big unresolvable things, I'm sure you'll find
it there. But me, I'm opting out. If you really want me to respond to your
other points, contact me by private e-mail and I'll consider it. But be
forewarned that, as one who takes a middle position between "every word of
the Bible is literally true" and "the Bible is icky garbage", you're
probably not going to get much out of me besides "that's a toughie" or
"well, some say..." 

Sorry to disappoint you.

Duncan Stevens
d-stevens@nwu.edu
773-728-9721

The room is as you left it; your last touch--
A thoughtless pressure, knowing not itself
As saintly--hallows now each simple thing,
Hallows and glorifies, and glows between
The dust's gray fingers, like a shielded light.

--from "Interim," by Edna St. Vincent Millay




From berrpm@aur.alcatel.com Mon Aug 31 15:56:58 MET DST 1998
Article: 36603 of rec.games.int-fiction
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From: berrpm@aur.alcatel.com (Patrick M. Berry)
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: The Magician's Nephew
Date: 31 Aug 1998 13:39:47 GMT
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In article <tvylno8po7q.fsf@cn1.connectnet.com>, Darin Johnson <darin@usa.net.removethis> writes:

> Note that in Narnia, when you grow up, you forget the magic.  Susan
> treats Narnia as just some old game they used to play.  It seems
> symbolic of adults giving up the love and joy they used to have as
> children.

You've forgotten that Peter, Lucy, Edmund, Eustace, Jill, Digory, and
Polly *don't* dismiss Narnia as a childish game, even after growing up.
They're no longer allowed to go to Narnia (and Lewis didn't do a very
good job of explaining why, did he?), but they still remember and 
cherish it.  And when Narnia needs their help, they're ready to do what 
they can.

Susan's rejection of Narnia isn't caused by growing up.  It's a result
of her rejection of her childhood and everything associated with it, 
in a misguided attempt to be more grown-up than she actually is.  It's 
not something that happened to her; it's something she chose to do to 
herself.



From sgranade@bohr.phy.duke.edu Mon Aug 31 16:23:36 MET DST 1998
Article: 36600 of rec.games.int-fiction
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From: Stephen Granade <sgranade@bohr.phy.duke.edu>
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Susan / Last Battle (was Magician's Nephew)
Date: Mon, 31 Aug 1998 09:23:11 -0400
Organization: Duke University, Durham, NC, USA
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Xref: news.lth.se rec.games.int-fiction:36600

On 31 Aug 1998, Adam Cadre wrote:

> Okay. Let's say that Lewis's motivation in separating out Susan
> from the others was, in fact, purely a function of her not being
> appropriately childlike.

I disagree with your beginning statement--more on that in a minute.

[snip]

> Susan scoffs at the other children, saying that she can't believe
> that they still cling to that childish game where there's a magical
> realm hidden in the back of the closet.  This is rather foolish of
> her, since the magical realm is real, and by rejecting it, she
> doesn't get to go to the wonderful place with the others.  Or,
> rather, it's foolish within the confines of the story.  But if
> we're supposed to carry a lesson away from the world of the story,
> into our world -- and it seems quite obvious to me that that is
> Lewis's intent -- then, as noted, things get tricky.  Because in
> one hundred percent of cases in the real world where kids pretend
> there's a magical realm hidden in the back of the closet, IT *IS*
> A CHILDISH GAME.  In the real world, THERE ARE NO MAGICAL REALMS
> IN THE BACK OF CLOSETS.

Here I cry foul. It's no fair translating Susan's response to the real
world without also translating what she's responding to. You've set up a
straw man to attack.

If you want to apply this to the real world, the question is whether
Christianity is a childish fantasy which should be discarded, as Susan
does. And that question is, in my opinion, not as easily answered as you
claim.

In general I take issue with your reading of what, in the context of
Christianity, it means to be "a sheep" or "childlike". The former I
take to be a metaphor for being willing to follow the leadership
of God; the latter, the "unlearning" required of the Christian, given that
so many of Christ's teachings fly against our nature. It is not
specifically a call to follow whomever is in charge.

I also don't believe that Lewis was condemning Susan for not being a
child; rather, I believe he was condemning Susan for turning away from
faith in Narnia, which in the real world translates into faith in
Christianity. Beyond that, I think any talk of her not being
child-like/sheep-like enough is a red herring.

At any rate, further discussion should no doubt be taken to e-mail. Please
feel free to mail me if you'd like to continue.

--
  Stephen Granade                | Interested in adventure games?
  sgranade@phy.duke.edu          | Check out
  Duke University, Physics Dept  |   http://interactfiction.miningco.com




From mol@bartlet.df.lth.se Mon Aug 31 17:22:31 MET DST 1998
Article: 36607 of rec.games.int-fiction
Path: news.lth.se!not-for-mail
From: mol@bartlet.df.lth.se (Magnus Olsson)
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Susan / Last Battle (was Magician's Nephew)
Date: 31 Aug 1998 17:21:10 +0200
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Xref: news.lth.se rec.games.int-fiction:36607

In article <6sdj0o$kn5$1@cornea.retina.net>,
Adam Cadre <grignr@cornea.retina.net> wrote:
>My apologies if this post is a duplicate, or if there's a munged version
>of this post floating around -- I'm posting through an unfamiliar client.
>
>Duncan Stevens wrote:
>> Matthew 18:3-4: "Truly, I say to you, unless you turn and become
>> like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Whoever
>> humbles himself like this child, he is the greatest in the kingdom
>> of heaven."
>
>[other similar excerpts snipped]
>
>Okay. Let's say that Lewis's motivation in separating out Susan
>from the others was, in fact, purely a function of her not being
>appropriately childlike.
>
>This is supposed to be a good thing?

I don't think it's a good thing to condemn people for not being
sufficiently childlike, or sufficiently so-and-so, and I seriously
don't think that was Lewis' point either. The way he treated Susan in
the book makes that impression on many people (judging by discussion
in rec.arts.sf.writtne, for example), but I get the distinct
impression from his other writings that his philosophy was not that
people are turned aside and rejected for doing (or failing to do)
specific things, but rather that people themselves choose to turn away
(in this case from Narnia). Not so much "Thou hast knowingly sinned,
hence thou shalt be punished", but more like "If you truly don't want
to join us, we won't force you".

Whether this philosophy works, and if a good God can allow people to
make such choices, are difficult questions and I won't even try to
answer them here. 

>A pretty good place to start in examining any given creed is: who
>benefits?  This thread has already touched on a number of variants
>of the same basic theme: people should emulate children, people
>should emulate sheep, the meek shall inherit the earth, etc etc.

I'm not very appealed by the prospect of emulating a sheep. I think
very few modern humans would be. It might have been different in
ancient Palestine, of course, but I've honestly never interpreted the
Bible as saying that anybody *should* emulate a sheep - I've always
thought of the goats vs. sheep thing as a metaphor (God separates good
people from bad like a shepherd separates sheep from goats - that
doesn't mean that the good people are *like* sheep).

But I'm very surprised that you're so negative about emulating a
child. Children have many positive qualities that adults try very hard
to suppress in themselves. (Children can also be thoroughly nasty
little bastards, so I don't think we should try too hard to emulate
them). This has absolutely nothing to do with religion, of course.


>So who benefits from people being complacent and pliable?  Who
>benefits from people accepting the hardship and oppression they
>encounter as part of some greater design?  Or to put it another
>way, who *doesn't* benefit from people rebelling against authority
>and fighting together for positive change?  The answer, of course,
>is the people who are dishing out the aforementioned hardship and
>oppression.

This is true, and various figures of authority have been using various
faiths and ideologies over and over again to this
effect. (Alternatively, not-so-meek ideologies have been used to turn
the people's aggressions at exterior enemies rather than at the
authorities).

But Jesus and the apostles weren't exactly government representatives,
but revolutionaries who died for (as the authorities perceived it)
enticing the masses to rebellion. Unless you can prove all the gospels
to be post-Constantine forgeries, of course.

>  There's no need for the wealthy and powerful to raise
>an army to force the masses to lead miserable lives in order to
>provide them with luxury if they can get the masses to believe that
>by accepting the misery in their lives they will somehow be rewarded
>after they die (and thus no longer pose a threat.)  Manufacturing
>consent in this way is much more cost-effective than acquiring
>consent by force.  And it doesn't require some great conspiracy
>on the part of the hegemonic element of society: once a few people
>believe the creed earnestly enough to proselytize, the idea will
>spread without those who benefit having to take a hand.

Fortunately, the lesson of history is that this doesn't work very
well. OK, it may work for some time, but sooner or later there will be
insurrection, "revivalist" movements, reformations, or perhaps just
ambitious troublemakers using the ideology to convince people that
they should follow *them* rather than the "lawful" authorities.

Ideology can be a powerful means of oppression, but only if it's
enforced (by the inquisition, politicial commissars, Gestapo or
whatever). Not that this has much to do with the main argument, of
course, I was just trying to inject a little hope in the general
gloom. 

>Susan scoffs at the other children, saying that she can't believe
>that they still cling to that childish game where there's a magical
>realm hidden in the back of the closet.  This is rather foolish of
>her, since the magical realm is real, and by rejecting it, she
>doesn't get to go to the wonderful place with the others.  Or,
>rather, it's foolish within the confines of the story.  But if
>we're supposed to carry a lesson away from the world of the story,
>into our world -- and it seems quite obvious to me that that is
>Lewis's intent -- then, as noted, things get tricky.  Because in
>one hundred percent of cases in the real world where kids pretend
>there's a magical realm hidden in the back of the closet, IT *IS*
>A CHILDISH GAME.  In the real world, THERE ARE NO MAGICAL REALMS
>IN THE BACK OF CLOSETS.  There just aren't.  So the lesson is moot.
>In the world where all of us readers live, SUSAN'S POSITION IS RIGHT.

I think this depends on how you view the "Narnia" books. If you see
them as an allegory (teaching - or preaching - Lewis' own brand of
Christianity to more or less unsuspecting children) then you'll of
course have to translate the "magical realm in the back of the closet"
to our world, before you try to consider Susan's reaction in
real-world terms. In that case, the story becomes that of a person
rejecting religion because of its "childishness" - a not uncommon
reaction in the real world - and Lewis' "condemnation" (or whatever it
is) of Susan becomes a statement that, to Lewis, it was wrong to
reject religion for that reason. 

But then you're arguing with Lewis the author/theologian, and you're
very definitely extratextual. You're of course perfectly entitled to
say that you don't like the Narnia books because you don't like Lewis'
ideology.

On the other hand, if you see the books as "what-if" stories, then
you'll have to keep within the text. Saying that Susan is the only
reasonable person in the book, because her reactions would be the only
reasonable ones *in the real world*, is an invalid argument, because
in her world, Narnia is very much a reality; on the contrary, she is
deluding herself. If you say that you can't suspend disbelief in a
world where Narnia is real, well then you've got a much more
fundamental problem with the books than Susan's fate, haven't you? 

>If our lives are less than ideal, clinging to a childish fantasy
>is not the answer.  The answer is to work to make the *actual*
>world a place where our lives *are* ideal.  

I agree with you here.

>And so for rejecting the route of escapism, as far as I'm concerned,
>Susan is the hero of The Last Battle.

Well, to each his own, of course. I can understand your dislike for
the ideology of the books, or of childish escapism (and, believe me, I
agree with you as regards escapism vs. actually doing something about
problems), and it happens that I find myself cheering on the villain
of a book where I don't agree with the author's idea of who's the good
guys.

But in *her* world, Susan isn't rejecting the route of escapism, she's
just behaving stupidly. (Which is perhaps a flaw of the book: if it's
so obvious that Narnia really exists, how can Susan be so convinced
that it's really just childish fantasies? If the book is to be read as
an allegory, this is where the allegory breaks down, and if it's to be
read as "what-if", then her psychologiy is a bit hard to believe).
-- 
Magnus Olsson (mol@df.lth.se, zebulon@pobox.com)
------    http://www.pobox.com/~zebulon   ------


From dns361@merle.acns.nwu.edu Mon Aug 31 20:43:51 MET DST 1998
Article: 36613 of rec.games.int-fiction
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From: Second April <dns361@merle.acns.nwu.edu>
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Susan / Last Battle (was Magician's Nephew)
Date: Mon, 31 Aug 1998 12:29:15 -0500
Organization: Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, US
Lines: 55
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Stephen and Magnus pretty much covered the field, so, very briefly:

On 31 Aug 1998, Adam Cadre wrote:

> Okay. Let's say that Lewis's motivation in separating out Susan
> from the others was, in fact, purely a function of her not being
> appropriately childlike.
> 
> This is supposed to be a good thing?
> 
> A pretty good place to start in examining any given creed is: who
> benefits?  This thread has already touched on a number of variants
> of the same basic theme: people should emulate children, people
> should emulate sheep, the meek shall inherit the earth, etc etc.
> So who benefits from people being complacent and pliable?  Who
> benefits from people accepting the hardship and oppression they
> encounter as part of some greater design?  Or to put it another
> way, who *doesn't* benefit from people rebelling against authority
> and fighting together for positive change?  The answer, of course,
> is the people who are dishing out the aforementioned hardship and
> oppression.  There's no need for the wealthy and powerful to raise
> an army to force the masses to lead miserable lives in order to
> provide them with luxury if they can get the masses to believe that
> by accepting the misery in their lives they will somehow be rewarded
> after they die (and thus no longer pose a threat.)  Manufacturing
> consent in this way is much more cost-effective than acquiring
> consent by force.  And it doesn't require some great conspiracy
> on the part of the hegemonic element of society: once a few people
> believe the creed earnestly enough to proselytize, the idea will
> spread without those who benefit having to take a hand.

You're confusing childlike obedience to God with unquestioning
acceptance of all authority, which is _not_ advocated in the Bible.
Indeed, the history of the disciples after Christ is instructive: they
construed their allegiance to God--their childlike obedience--as requiring
some very forceful resistance to the Roman Empire, resistance that got
them martyred. Did their Christianity lead them to "accept the misery in
their lives"? Not at all. Yes, of course, they were resisting the Roman
Empire because it oppressed Christians, but it's the same model as a
reformer who protests social injustice: they followed their conscience,
and their view of God's will, rather than the dictates of the day.

Duncan Stevens
d-stevens@nwu.edu
773-728-9721

The room is as you left it; your last touch--
A thoughtless pressure, knowing not itself
As saintly--hallows now each simple thing,
Hallows and glorifies, and glows between
The dust's gray fingers, like a shielded light.

--from "Interim," by Edna St. Vincent Millay




From dns361@merle.acns.nwu.edu Tue Sep  1 10:04:09 MET DST 1998
Article: 36662 of rec.games.int-fiction
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From: Duncan N Stevens <dns361@merle.acns.nwu.edu>
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Susan / Last Battle (was Magician's Nephew)
Date: Tue, 1 Sep 1998 00:54:41 -0500
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On 31 Aug 1998, Jonathan W Hendry wrote:

> Second April <dns361@merle.acns.nwu.edu> wrote:
> 
> > You're confusing childlike obedience to God with unquestioning
> > acceptance of all authority, which is _not_ advocated in the Bible.
> > Indeed, the history of the disciples after Christ is instructive: they
> > construed their allegiance to God--their childlike obedience--as requiring
> > some very forceful resistance to the Roman Empire, resistance that got
> > them martyred.
> 
> And if the government is also the seat of Christian religious power?
> Rome wasn't always pagan, and as Christians they had just as little
> patience for different points of view.
> 
> The problem is that people often confuse religious leaders with
> the deities they worship. If they are taught 'childlike obedience'
> to God, they will follow their human spiritual leaders with the same
> unquestioning obediance.

Well, actually, that depends. There's a certain church based, oh,
somewhere in Italy that actually does demand that its members obey its
leader unquestioningly, and, if I may say so, said doctrine has caused us
all a lot of grief over the centuries. But most churches don't consider
their leaders infallible, and therefore they allow for conscientious
protest by the rank and file. As it happens, I'm an Episcopalian, and I
have _never_ encountered an Anglican or Episcopalian who confused the
Archbishop of Canterbury with God, or the will of the former with the will
of the latter.

If people read and understand their Bibles, though, I don't think it's
necessarily true that they end up blindly following temporal authority
when they try to take the Bible's pronouncements on obedience seriously. A
healthy dose of skepticism about anyone's claim to be completely in tune
with God goes a long way, and that sort of skepticism is not at all
incompatible with obedience to God.

Duncan Stevens
d-stevens@nwu.edu
773-728-9721

The room is as you left it; your last touch--
A thoughtless pressure, knowing not itself
As saintly--hallows now each simple thing,
Hallows and glorifies, and glows between
The dust's gray fingers, like a shielded light.

--from "Interim," by Edna St. Vincent Millay




From Giles.Boutel@wcc.govt.nz Tue Sep  1 10:04:48 MET DST 1998
Article: 36641 of rec.games.int-fiction
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From: "Giles Boutel" <Giles.Boutel@wcc.govt.nz>
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Susan / Last Battle (was Magician's Nephew)
Date: 31 Aug 1998 23:12:39 GMT
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Adam Cadre <grignr@cornea.retina.net> wrote in article
<6sdj0o$kn5$1@cornea.retina.net>...
> In the real world, THERE ARE NO MAGICAL REALMS
> IN THE BACK OF CLOSETS.  There just aren't.  So the lesson is moot.
> In the world where all of us readers live, SUSAN'S POSITION IS RIGHT.
> If our lives are less than ideal, clinging to a childish fantasy
> is not the answer.  The answer is to work to make the *actual*
> world a place where our lives *are* ideal.  And so for rejecting
> the route of escapism, as far as I'm concerned, Susan is the hero
> of The Last Battle.

Within the confines of the story, Susan is still living within the Shadow
London - and presumably will have the chance of moving on to the 'real'
London, the one farther up and farther in, at the appropriate time. All she
has cut herself off from is the chance to see her 'reality' in another
frame of reference - a different context, if you like.

I'm reminded of the scene in _The Silver Chair_ where the marshwiggle
refuses to succumb to the (pharmaceutically enhanced) arguments of the
Queen of the underworld by saying that he'd rather believe in a world where
there is a Sun and trees etc, because it's much better than what is
currently around. His very sense of escapism is what leads him to reject
that particular status quo - which also leads to that status quo being
derailed by a more suitable alternative - regardless of whether his belief
is justified.

Rather than being a pragmatic heroine, Susan is cutting herself off from
such improving possibilities by limiting her experience - just as the Queen
would want her to had she been there. By making Susan the hero - you ally
yourself with the Queen, and thus, by direct allegory, with SATAN! For
shame :-) Escapism here isn't necessarily the avoidance of the real world
(an escape into fantasy - a belief in lies) - rather it can also be (and I
believe, in this case, it is) an enhancement of it - the ability to think
'outside the box (wardrobe?)' and thus gain a wider perspective (just as
london can still be seen in the 'new' narnia). Susan is not only denying
the existance of narnia, she is rejecting the possibilites of imagination
as a tool of perception and understanding - and that is why she loses out,
and also why the lesson isn't moot (or only applicable to christians).

-Giles


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In article <tvyk93okenj.fsf@cn1.connectnet.com>,
Darin Johnson  <darin@usa.net.removethis> wrote:
}earendil@faeryland.tamu-commerce.edu (Allen Garvin) writes:
}
}> Plus, in the unfinished Inform version of Dungeon that I gave up work on
}> long ago and passed on Patrick Kellum, there's a special command that changes
}> the directions from room to room from the default Dungeon to the directions
}> of Infocom's published Zork.
}
}Sounds interesting.  There are a few places in Dungeon where the
}directions just seem to be "wrong".  As if east/west got mixed up
}in the early maps or something.  Since the commercial Zorks seem to
}"fix" this, I wonder if the original layout might have been a bug?

IIRC (from previous discussions, not from 1sthand experience), map
simplification was a deliberate aim of the commercial Zork, but it
wasn't a bug fix -- the original directions were intentional.

-- 
Matthew T. Russotto                                russotto@pond.com
"Extremism in defense of liberty is no vice, and moderation in pursuit
of justice is no virtue." 


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From: Second April <dns361@merle.acns.nwu.edu>
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: The Magician's Nephew (was Re: Zorg sequence?)
Date: Sun, 30 Aug 1998 15:26:15 -0500
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On 29 Aug 1998, Doeadeer3 wrote:

> In article <Pine.HPP.3.93.980829100457.25448A-100000@merle.acns.nwu.edu>,
> Second April <dns361@merle.acns.nwu.edu> writes:
> 
> >I'm not saying that the Bible is in every respect a proto-feminist tract,
> >nor that cultural baggage regarding sexuality and women didn't get in
> >there. But I don't think it's true that the news in the Bible regarding
> >women and sex is entirely bad.
> 
> No, Jesus was fairly nice to prostitues, wasn't he?
> 
> However, that was not my point.

And that was not mine. I said that Jesus accepted and associated with
women regardless of their pasts or occupations, which was a major slap in
the face to the authority of the day. "Fairly nice" does not describe it.

> >>The references to makeup and parties suggest that she's older and is
> >>preoccupied with doing things that older folks do; it's a long stretch
> >>from there to Lewis-is-punishing-women-who-assert-their-sexuality.
> 
> This is what I was reacting to.
> 
> Someone sent me some names & quotes:
> 
> ---------
> 
> Let us not forget Rachel and Leah (Genesis 29:15-30; 30:1-11, 31-34,
> 37-42; 31:4-5, 8-9), Miriam (Numbers 12:1-10), Michal (II Samuel 6:16,
> 20-23), Tamar (Who is told by Absalom not to take being raped 'to
> heart'!(II Samuel 13:1-20)), or Jezebel, of course (see II Kings 9:32-36
> for the interesting description of her death). 

Rachel and Leah were Jacob's two wives, by whom he had numerous children.
Asserting sexuality is simply not an issue in their story. Miriam was
punished for claiming that she had better knowledge of God's will than
Moses did; sexuality was not an issue there either. Michal was punished
for kvetching about David dancing (ironic that you bring it up, since she
seems to have been a "fun is bad" sort of girl); sex was not an issue
there either. Tamar was raped, yes, and her rapist was promptly killed;
Absalom, who rebelled against David, is hardly the Bible's voice of
reason. Tamar was not asserting her sexuality in the first place, anyway,
so there's not an issue of sexual single women being punished by sexual
violence. Jezebel, as I mentioned before, was an enemy of Israel; she was
thrown out of a window after a campaign of killing the Jews. None of these
stories are relevant.

Moreover, consider Tamar (another one) who seduced her father-in-law and
got off scot-free, or the woman taken in adultery in John 7, forgiven and
sent forth, or Pharaoh's wife, who tried to seduce Joseph and had him
thrown in prison, or Rahab, the prostitute who aided Joshua. How are these
sexual women punished?

> According to God, any man who suspects his wife of adultery must bring
> her to God's tent, where a priest will make her drink dirty water. 
> "...The water," God explains, "shall enter into her and cause bitter
> pain, and her womb shall discharge, her uterus drop, and the woman shall
> become an execration among her people."  Unless, of course, the woman is
> innocent, in which case "she shall be immune and able to conceive
> children."--Numbers 5:11-31. 

Actually, this law acts as a check on men who would otherwise kill or
brutalize first and ask questions later; requiring that such disputes be
resolved by the priest is a whole lot better than suspicion = guilt.
Seeing as the women was supposed to drink water with dust in it, which
isn't likely to make anyone miscarry, this test looks like it will pretty
much inevitably acquit. The Mosaic law did a lot to protect women from the
whims of the men in power, believe it or not.

> "If a woman does not cover her head, she should have her hair cut
> off...A man ought not to cover his head, since he is the image and glory
> of God; but the woman is the glory of man (!!).  For this reason, and
> because of the angels, the woman ought to have a sign of authority over
> her head.  Does not the very nature of things teach you that if a man
> has long hair it is a disgrace to him, but that if a woman has long hair
> it is her glory?  For long hair is given to her as a covering."--I
> Corinthians 11:3-15

Yes, I referred to this earlier, and as I said, it's largely taken as
culturally specific and disregarded now. And you edited this a little
creatively to get rid of the caution that men are no more independent of
women than women are of men, and everyone is from God. 

> "...women should be silent in churches.  For they are not permitted to
> speak, but should be subordinate, as the law also says.  If there is
> anything they desire to know, let them ask their husbands at home..."--I
> Corinthians 14:34-35

Yes, I referred to this earlier. This has what to do with asserting
sexuality again?

> "Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord.  For the husband is the
> head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church...as the church
> submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in
> everything."--Ephesians 5:22-24

Wrenched out of context to omit the much longer instruction immediately
afterwards for men to love and respect their wives as themselves. Most of
the supposedly nasty quotes in Paul's writings are similar; they're taken
as evidence of how much Paul hated women, but the original context
indicates other purposes, such as trying to promote marital harmony.
"Women, stop provoking your husbands; men, stop being mean to your wives."
Paul didn't attempt to overturn the gender roles of the society, which men
dominated. But he did try to ensure that, under the existing norms, family
life would be peaceful.

> What I was saying is that Lewis could have easily echoed sentiments like these
> and others. And that the intrepretation that Susan was punished for asserting
> her sexuality, in the framework of traditional Christianity (and Lewis's era),
> wouldn't be stretch... at all. 

Yes, but taking the few words in the novel that refer to makeup and
parties as evidence that Susan was punished for being sexual IS a stretch,
particularly since the novel documents Susan's superior attitude toward
Narnia: "Fancy you remembering those silly games we used to play when we
were children!"

Doe, if you'd just said that Lewis might have been reflecting a theme or
prejudice in European society, I wouldn't have said anything, because no
one could possibly argue that European society didn't constrain women's
sexuality. But there are no stories in the Bible that fit your model, as
far as I--and, it seems, you--can find. And references to covering heads
and being silent in churches do not a theme make. 

> (I didn't make the original comment, but I felt totally discounting it was
>wrong and  also ignores a theme that IS in the Bible. Maybe if Susan
had been a
> male character asserting his sexuality, Lewis would have had him meet
the same
> end, but somehow I doubt it. 

Why? Plenty of Biblical men sleep around and get punished for it. David
and Bathsheba, Samson and Delilah, the incestuous man in 1 Corinthians 5,
or Ammon. 

Or maybe it is about "childish things", but then
> again maybe it isn't. 

Or maybe it is. Consider:

Matthew 11:25: "I thank thee, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that thou
hast hidden these things from the wise and udnerstanding and revealed them
to babes."

Matthew 18:3-4: "Truly, I say to you, unless you turn and become like
children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Whoever humbles
himself like this child, he is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven."

Matthew 19:14: "Let the children come to me, and do not hinder them, for
to such belongs the kingdom of heaven."

Matthew 21:16: "Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings thou hast brought
perfect praise."

Mark 9:35-37: "And he sat down and called the twelve; and he said to them,
'IF any one would be first, he must be last of all and servant of all.'
And he took a child, and put him in the midst of them, and taking in his
arms, he said to them, 'Whoever receives one such child in my name
receives me, and whoever receives me, receives not me but him who sent
me.'"

Luke 18:16: "Whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child
shall not enter it."

Romans 8:15-16: "When we cry 'Abba! Father!', it is the Spirit himself
bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if
chidlren, then heirs, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ..."

Isaiah 11:6: "The wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall
lie down with the kid, and the calf and the lion and the fatling together,
and a little child shall lead them."

Considering that the relevant event is a person turning away from God (in
fantasy dress, of course), and considering that there's a very strong
Biblical theme of having to be childlike to come to God, but _nothing_
about women who were turned away because they were sexual, I think the
theme that Lewis was really drawing on is obvious. Remember also that
Susan _chose_ to turn away from Narnia; no one said "Why, you're asserting
your sexuality entirely too much; no more Narnia for you."

Bachelor or not, Lewis was not afraid of sex, and he wrote elsewhere that
Christian theology actually approves of sex. (Yes, I know that the
Catholic Church spent several centuries claiming that sex was per se
sinful, but the church and the Bible are two separate things.)

Duncan Stevens
d-stevens@nwu.edu
773-728-9721

The room is as you left it; your last touch--
A thoughtless pressure, knowing not itself
As saintly--hallows now each simple thing,
Hallows and glorifies, and glows between
The dust's gray fingers, like a shielded light.

--from "Interim," by Edna St. Vincent Millay










From lac@nu-world.com Wed Sep  2 10:17:32 MET DST 1998
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From: lac@nu-world.com (Lelah Conrad)
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: In defence of childishness (was: Susan / Last Battle (was Magician's Nephew))
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On 1 Sep 1998 11:08:18 +0200, mol@bartlet.df.lth.se (Magnus Olsson)
wrote:

>  I'm referring to qualities such
>as sense of wonder, flexibility, willingness to learn something new,
>the ability to accept people as they are (disregarding social status, 
>skin colour or creed), creativity, imagination, guilelessness, the
>ability to show emotions openly...
>
>I believe that you can still be a mature, responsible citizen, while
>retaining these *positive* "childlike" qualities. 
 
Agreed, wholeheartedly.

Saudade the Wacky
(author of two IF filk songs and one chicken game)

"Ah, but I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now."  
Robert Zimmerman



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Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Susan / Last Battle (was Magician's Nephew)
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On Tue, 1 Sep 1998 23:18:45 -0400, Adam Cadre <adamc@acpub.duke.edu>
wrote:

>> The data reveal:  TA DA -- most people are Catholic because they LIKE being
>> Catholic.
>
>Er, isn't that begging the question just a bit?  That's a bit like saying 
>that the reason DEATHBOAT was so successful was that people liked the 
>movie.  Well, sure, but the insight afforded by such an observation is 
>somewhat lacking.  Now, start talking about WHY people like what they 
>like, and things get interesting.

Well, it may be begging the question in terms of that short post.  The
point there though was to reply to the previous poster who seems to
imply that there is an Italian pulling the strings of Catholics
worldwide, whom they blindly respond to, which is a common
anti-Catholic view. The WHY of why Catholics like being so is the
subject of the book I mentioned (I may have given the wrong title,
sorry, it is "The Catholic Myth" not "The Myth of Catholics") . 

Greeley's theory is  that maintaining a Catholic identiy has nothing
to do with negative motivational factors: 

"My central argument will be that Catholics differ from other
Americans in that their imaginations tend to be more "sacramental" (or
to use David Tracy's [theologian, also U of Chicago] word,
"analogical").  By that I mean that Catholics are more likely to
imagine God as present in the world and the world as revelatory
instead of bleak.  Much that is thought to be distinctively Catholic
results from this distinctive style of imagining -- the importance of
community, institution, and hierarchy; the emphasis on ritual and
ceremonial; the interest in the fine and lively arts; devotion to
saints, angels, holy souls, and especially the Mother of Jesus;
reverence for statues and images; the use of blessings, medals, and
prayer beads."   p.4

Anyway, it's a 300 page book discussing various studies of American
Catholics and: sex, marriage, priesthood, celibacy, feminism,
leaving/staying, and a host of other things, often centering on how
they "imagine" or view or think about the world.  Staying Catholic has
to do with liking and being captivated by this poetic/analogical
imagination *regardless* of rules, hierarchies, Curia, etc. (which are
often ignored by the rank and file.  This is what gets conservative
Catholics so irked -- they would love everybody to toe the line, not
make waves, obey authority, etc.  It is actually an ancient tension
that goes back throughout the history of the church, -- nothing new
here. Poetic vision is hard to corral...)

Lelah






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Article: 36706 of rec.games.int-fiction
From: lac@nu-world.com (Lelah Conrad)
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Susan / Last Battle (was Magician's Nephew)
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On 31 Aug 1998 03:23:04 -0400, grignr@cornea.retina.net (Adam Cadre)
wrote: 
> In the real world, THERE ARE NO MAGICAL REALMS
>IN THE BACK OF CLOSETS.  There just aren't.  

The magical realm is hidden in the human heart. It is there that we
have visions and experiences of both mysterious closets AND oppressed
peoples to be liberated.  (In fact,  the experience of the mysterious
often leads to fresh attempts at liberation.)

What it is it about a child that is so unique?   Iit is hard not to be
beguiled and even enchanted by the openness with which a young child
meets the world.  This openness (vulnerability, perhaps) leads to a
joy in everyday existence that many of us lose over time.  Even the
older children I work with have often become quite cynical, and
closed.  I think that it is this closedness in Susan's attitude (she
thought she knew the truth, now) that Lewis was getting at.

Lelah

"When the finger points at the moon, the fool looks at the finger."
Japanese proverb


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From: lac@nu-world.com (Lelah Conrad)
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Cornerstone manual, FYI
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On 1 Sep 1998 18:31:12 GMT, lordmanc@aol.com (LordManc) wrote:

>I would concur that GraemeCree had this to say:
>
><<     Nobody's ever talked much about WHY Cornerstone failed. ....
>
>I'm not rocket scientist, but if I had to guess, I'd say most of it had to do
>with the $499 initial price. .

Actually, the original invoice was inside the copy I bought, which was
for $99.95.  Also, there is a quote on the back of the manual from
InfoWorld, which states, "It's difficult to imagine more features in a
$99.95 product", so I think the invoice is correct.

Lelah


From lordmanc@aol.com Wed Sep  2 13:45:15 MET DST 1998
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From: lordmanc@aol.com (LordManc)
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Cornerstone manual, FYI
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First it was  lac@nu-world.com (Lelan Conrad) who stated:

<<Actually, the original invoice was inside the copy I <<bought, which was for
$99.95.  Also, there is a quote on <<the back of the manual from InfoWorld,
which states, <<"It's difficult to magine more features in a $99.95 <<product",
so I think the invoice is correct.


When it was released in January 1985, it originally sold for $495 (I
accidentally said $499.) It flopped, sold next to nothing, nearly bankrupted
Infocom--despite enjoying success with Wishbringer and A Mind Forever Voyaging
at the same time--and Infocom had to start firing people, something they didn't
do in the 6 years since they had set up. A year later, the price became $99.95
in a last ditch effort to sell it (and I believe it was repackaged as well),
but it didn't help. Infocom became the property of Activision that year. The
manual might have been more spot-on to say "It's difficult to imagine more
disasters in a $99.95 product."


And then doeadeer3@aol.com (Doeadeer3) added:

<<I think I read somewhere (FAQ sheet on Infocom, <<maybe) that is was partly
the company's investment in <<Cornerstone. In other words, to bring it out they
<<overextended themselves. When it didn't immediately <<take off (and didn't do
that well in general) then their <<finances were in trouble. They had relied
too heavily <<on profits not yet made. 

<<So I am not sure that it was Cornerstone itself that was <<the problem, but
the business decisions behind it.


That's it exactly. As I remember reading somewhere, the entire business
department ended up laid off, thanks to this. I find it hard to believe that
anyone could invest enough to warrant a $495 retail price for database
software, but then that's just me. 

Then again, Sierra's Time Zone has to be the most expensive game ever put onto
the market ($99.95) and that supposedly was simply because it took a year to
finish. The staff who worked on it was as small as those who worked on the
other Sierra hi-res adventures of the day, the game was programmed exactly the
same with no technological advancements in parser, graphics or anything. The
only difference? It was 5 disks longer. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I recall
Time Zone selling quite well, nonsense price and all.  Must have been some
hype. 

 This was of course in the days when Scott Adams rushed out 3 adventures a year
and basically all adventure games looked like they took no longer more than a
month to create. (If the especially primitive ones took longer, that is really
sad!)

 It would seem ridiculous to price a game like that now because it took a year
to make...these days, virtually all games do. 

Rod


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From: geo@snarksoft.com (George Mealer)
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Neuromancer for the PC?
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In article <6sjjca$avr$1@flood.xnet.com>, jcompton@xnet.com says...
> Papanele <papanele@aol.com> wrote:
> : Can someone give a description of Neuromancer & why it's so good?
> 
> Neuromancer is a graphical adventure.  The control system is vaguely
> reminiscent of familiar LucasArts/Sierra games but has its own unique
> flair.  The game is based on the William Gibson novel mainly for backdrop,
> not in terms of plot.
> 
> You start the game without any clear idea what's going on, and it's fun to
> dig through the game's BBS system (one of the most clever bits in the
> game) to find out more about the world around you.  A lot of the game is
> spent breaking into computers, first by hunting around for passwords and
> later through "cyberspace" in what could loosely be described as an arcade
> fashion.  It's just...neat.
> 
> 

Don't forget the nifty Devo soundtrack...sounded great on the C64, but I 
understand it didn't come over to the PC too well.  Was there an Amiga 
version?  I can only imagine what it would have sounded like there...

Geo
-- 
George Mealer
geo@snarksoft.com

"Let your mind wander and never come back." -- Skyclad


From mol@bartlet.df.lth.se Thu Sep  3 18:58:40 MET DST 1998
Article: 36808 of rec.games.int-fiction
Path: news.lth.se!not-for-mail
From: mol@bartlet.df.lth.se (Magnus Olsson)
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Susan / Last Battle (was Magician's Nephew)
Date: 3 Sep 1998 18:57:44 +0200
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In article <6sm0gm$8vt$1@copland.udel.edu>,
Jon A Conrad <conrad@copland.udel.edu> wrote:
>Magnus Olsson <mol@bartlet.df.lth.se> wrote:
>
>>>The Christian attraction towards child-like behavior relates to a general
>>>acceptance [by] children of what their parents believe -- the 
>>>pre-adolescent
>>>euphoria of parental similarity.  Many opponents of religion interpret this
>>>thusly:  forcing religion upon a child too immature to judge its own truths.
>
>>Well, I can appreciate that Adam and other see it this way *in this
>>context*. I just don't associate Lewis with that kind of brainwashing
>>myself, 
>
>But isn't that exactly what the Narnia books are for?  

Not at all. I can't really see how Lewis is *forcing* his ideas on
poor innocent children - what I had in mind when I wrote about
brainwashing was things like Iraqi schoolchildren being turned into
slogan-chanting little "Soldiers of God", convinced that the highest
good in this world is to blow themselves to pieces with a bomb at an
American embassy. (Note: this is not intended as a slur against
Islam. Some Muslims practice this form of child abuse today, but
Christians and atheists are just as good at it.)


>That's exactly my
>problem with them -- that a religious message is being smuggled inside a
>fantasy tale, to children too young to know what they're getting.  If
>children are Christians because that's what they truly believe, great; but
>it should be for some better reason than "I don't want to be like those
>dwarfs who were mean to Aslan."

Well, do you honestly believe that children too young (or inexperienced)
to recognize these ideas as Christian, would accept the ideas if they
aren't told of their origin, but reject them if there was a big notice
on the irst page of the book saying "WARNING - CHRISTIAN IDEAS INSIDE"?

I don't really think you can trick anybody into converting to a religion
in this way. You could possibly make children more sympathetic to Christian
beliefs by making them read _Narnia_, but I find it hard to believe that
it would make them go join a sect or something, and if it would, explicitly
labelling the ideas of Christian probably wouldn't deter them.

One of Lewis' motives when writing "Narnia" was probably to spread his
ideas, to influence young minds if you like (and lots and lots of
children's authors of very varying faiths and ideologies do just this
- remember that for hundreds of years, the primary purpose of
children's books was to turn the children into good citizens with a
certain set of ideals, including things such as tolerance,
open-mindedness and independence of thought). But he's not selling a
package deal.

Of course, you may disapprove of the ideas he's putting forth. You may
think that your children shouldn't be influenced by those ideas
(religious issues aside, there are things such as the racist
undertones pointed out by Adam Cadre). But in that case, isn't it the
duty of any parent who wants to control the ideas their children are
exposed to to check - or censor, if you like - the books they read?

Finally: If we take your ideas to heart, shouldn't any children's books
advocating the ideals of liberty, egality and brotherhood bear a large,
red stamp "Dangerour revolutionary ideas inside"? We wouldn't want our
children to be brainwashed into communists, would we? 

-- 
Magnus Olsson (mol@df.lth.se, zebulon@pobox.com)
------    http://www.pobox.com/~zebulon   ------


From mol@bartlet.df.lth.se Thu Sep  3 23:17:40 MET DST 1998
Article: 36818 of rec.games.int-fiction
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From: mol@bartlet.df.lth.se (Magnus Olsson)
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Susan / Last Battle (was Magician's Nephew)
Date: 3 Sep 1998 22:01:00 +0200
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In article <6smp3d$3h5jl@fido.engr.sgi.com>,
John Francis <jfrancis@dungeon.engr.sgi.com> wrote:
>In article <Pine.HPP.3.93.980903122407.11833A-100000@merle.acns.nwu.edu>,
>Duncan N Stevens  <dns361@merle.acns.nwu.edu> wrote:
>>I suppose the Narnia books could have an influence in this regard, but
>>surely you don't think faith on this basis could be real. A child isn't
>>likely to actually change his or her belief system because of a fantasy
>>book; most children do have _some_ grasp on the difference between fantasy
>>and reality. And even if a child started going to church because of
>>something he/she's read in the Narnia books, it's a long way from there to
>>actually being a Christian.
>
>I disagree.  All children start going to church because of something they
>are taught by people in a position of trust.  Printed material (especially
>if provided by those same people) has an automatic kind of authority, and
>I don't see how faith developed on the basis of what you read is any less
>real than that developed on the basis of what you are taught.
>
>Children don't become Christians (or Muslims, or Buddhists, or ...) based
>on their own experiences - they do what they are taught to do.  Books are
>a part of that teaching.  Books that surreptitiously deliver their message
>in the guise of entertainment are an insidious part of the whole thing.

I partly agree - a book could very well make a child start going to
church, or want to join a religion, just as it might make it want to
join the army, or become an astronaut, or why not a scientific
"crusader" against superstition.

However, I think it's a fairly large step from this to actually
*realizing* that ambition - this kind of "childish" ambitions often
don't last very long, especially when they aren't reinforced by
anything outside the book that started it all. (Of course, if reading
Lewis causes a child to start going to church, he or she may very well
be influenced further by what is said in the church, and so on).

But should we really condemn all children's literature that causes its
readers to want to do something or become something? Should we forbid
our children to read, watch TV or go to the movies? Should we just aim
at turning our children into perfect copies of ourselves, with exactly
the same beliefs, values and prejudices as ourselves - or, even worse,
no beliefs or values at all - and then suddenly turn them loose when
they turn 18, expecting them to form their own opinions?  Isn't that
worse "brainwashing" than any book could ever be guilty of?

Besides, I don't remember the "Narnia" books as being really as
authoritative as you seem to be implying. Where in the books does it
say "Thou shalt join the nearest Christian church and adhere to its
doctrines"? 

And the original argument was that the Narnia books were especially
insiduous, because the Christian elements are disguised. This last
twist in the argument is turning it into a circle: how can the Narnia
books be so authoritative, more or less forcing the poor innocent
children into the evil clutches of the Church, when Christianity isn't
even mentioned? You can't have it both ways...
-- 
Magnus Olsson (mol@df.lth.se, zebulon@pobox.com)
------    http://www.pobox.com/~zebulon   ------


From lpsmith@rice.edu Fri Sep  4 09:13:30 MET DST 1998
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From: lpsmith@rice.edu (Lucian Paul Smith)
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Susan / Last Battle
Date: 4 Sep 1998 05:12:03 GMT
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Adam Cadre (adamc@acpub.duke.edu) wrote:
: I wrote:
: > >>But if
: > >>we're supposed to carry a lesson away from the world of the story,
: > >>into our world -- and it seems quite obvious to me that that is
: > >>Lewis's intent -- then, as noted, things get tricky.  Because in
: > >>one hundred percent of cases in the real world where kids pretend
: > >>there's a magical realm hidden in the back of the closet, IT *IS*
: > >>A CHILDISH GAME.  In the real world, THERE ARE NO MAGICAL REALMS
: > >>IN THE BACK OF CLOSETS.  There just aren't.  So the lesson is moot.
: > >>In the world where all of us readers live, SUSAN'S POSITION IS RIGHT.

: R. McCall wrote: 
: > Insert argument regarding consistency in modifying context.

: A number of people have called me on this.  And yes, I was aware of the 
: fact that I didn't say what Narnia translates to in our world, which 
: Susan is, in my view, a hero for rejecting.  Why'd I leave that part 
: out?  Because you're all smart enough to fill in the blank, and I figured 
: the post was incendiary enough as it was.  I wanted to do what I could to 
: make my point without causing the newsgroup to burst into flame.

I'm sorry, Adam, but I'm not going to let you off the hook this easily.
If this was indeed your point, it seems a rather (ahem) childish way of
going about it.  Because, you see, while it may be easy to get away with
saying "THERE ARE NO MAGICAL REALMS IN THE BACK OF CLOSETS.  There just
aren't," you are far less likely to be able to get away with saying "THERE
IS NO GOD.  There just isn't."  It's not a very forcible argument.  Of
course, this may not be the place for an in-depth analysis of the subject
(it's not like philosophers have been waiting for the invention of Usenet
just to answer this question).  However, I think it would have been more
honest for you to have said something like, "Given the postulate that
there is no God, Susan is the hero of The Last Battle."

But even *given* that postulate, I *still* disagree with you.  I think the
ideas and ideals the followers of Aslan held are worthy ideas, and worthy
ideals, even in a lonely world untouched by divinity.  Perhaps even
*especially* in a lonely world untouched by divinity.  The type of person
Susan had become was someone "...interested in nothing except nylons and
lipstick and invitations."  "Grown up indeed," says one of the characters
about her.  "I wish she *would* grow up."  Surely we can do better than
that?

Perhaps all arguments about religion boil down to a declaration of
postulates.  If so, I'll state mine, as you have yours, and perhaps that
will be the end of it.  "THERE IS A GOD AND HE LOVES YOU.  He just does."

-Lucian Smith


From dns361@merle.acns.nwu.edu Fri Sep  4 09:19:43 MET DST 1998
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From: Duncan N Stevens <dns361@merle.acns.nwu.edu>
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Susan / Last Battle (was Magician's Nephew)
Date: Thu, 3 Sep 1998 20:31:50 -0500
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On 3 Sep 1998, John Francis wrote:

> >I suppose the Narnia books could have an influence in this regard, but
> >surely you don't think faith on this basis could be real. A child isn't
> >likely to actually change his or her belief system because of a fantasy
> >book; most children do have _some_ grasp on the difference between fantasy
> >and reality. And even if a child started going to church because of
> >something he/she's read in the Narnia books, it's a long way from there to
> >actually being a Christian.
> 
> I disagree.  All children start going to church because of something they
> are taught by people in a position of trust.  Printed material (especially
> if provided by those same people) has an automatic kind of authority, and
> I don't see how faith developed on the basis of what you read is any less
> real than that developed on the basis of what you are taught.

It isn't, necessarily, but neither is real if there hasn't been a concrete
_internal_ commitment, which is entirely voluntary and is an entirely
different experience from either reading something or listening to someone
preach. I might be inspired to go to church because of something I read,
but that has only a tangential relationship to actually being a Christian.
As such, Lewis's books didn't "make" anyone Christian, nor could they
have. 

Maybe it's just that I see becoming a Christian as a more significant
emotional step than you do, but I can't really get a handle on anyone
actually becoming a Christian for shallow or silly reasons like "not
wanting to be like those dwarves." I suppose someone could start going to
church for that reason, but, as a matter of fact, I don't think "go to
church" is a particularly strong theme in the Narnia books, in that there
_is_ no church. Most of the values preached are pretty unexceptionable:
loyalty, honesty and such. Perhaps you don't like the idea of the Narnia
books somehow inspiring someone to go to a church, which sets off a chain
that ends in becoming a Christian. (Admittedly, the idea doesn't terrify
me, but I have my own biases.) I happen to think that the chain is long
enough that it's not really accurate to say that the first event caused
the last.

> Children don't become Christians (or Muslims, or Buddhists, or ...) based
> on their own experiences - they do what they are taught to do.  Books are
> a part of that teaching.  Books that surreptitiously deliver their message
> in the guise of entertainment are an insidious part of the whole thing.

The analogy between a parent saying "now, Johnny, we're going to church"
and "now we're going to pray" and a book saying so is _really_ strained,
in that a child can close a book and throw it away when he doesn't like
it. And I suspect that any child who was brought up in a religious faith
can tell you that his parents' restraining hand had a lot to do with his
going to religious services and otherwise following the rules of the
faith. (The point is that actually becoming a Christian, IMHO, involves 
doing and accepting things you wouldn't necessarily like ordinarily,
and also involves a good deal of sacrifice. It's not likely to happen,
at least not in any way that sticks, when a child reads a book.) The
Narnia books don't really do much from a didactic standpoint besides give
a kid some food for thought.

Duncan Stevens
d-stevens@nwu.edu
773-728-9721

The room is as you left it; your last touch--
A thoughtless pressure, knowing not itself
As saintly--hallows now each simple thing,
Hallows and glorifies, and glows between
The dust's gray fingers, like a shielded light.

--from "Interim," by Edna St. Vincent Millay




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From: lac@nu-world.com (Lelah Conrad)
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Susan / Last Battle (was Magician's Nephew)
Date: Fri, 04 Sep 1998 02:02:49 GMT
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On 3 Sep 1998 19:02:05 GMT, jfrancis@dungeon.engr.sgi.com (John
Francis) wrote:

> Printed material (especially
>if provided by those same people) has an automatic kind of authority, and
>I don't see how faith developed on the basis of what you read is any less
>real than that developed on the basis of what you are taught.

That reading influences behavior is the focus of bibliotherapy (a sort
of subspecialty within both librarianship and education). People
(children *and* adults) are encouraged to read particular books in
order to change or broaden their outlook.  (This is also  why so many
people worry about kids reading such books as "Heather Has Two
Mommies" -- they believe that there will be a large influence on
behavior.)

However, bibliotherapy is not generally thought to be *highly*
effective. Reasons that I think reading a book is less influential
than, say, participating in a religious service or being taught
religion include:

1) gifted and/or extensive readers (probably many of you, even as
children) experience a full spectrum of viewpoints, so  learn to weigh
and balance what they read by their developing judgment (this is of
course the ideal).  They thus are not good candidates for
proselytization.

2)  less competent/less avid readers are unlikely to pick up the
nuanced allegorical similarities between, say,  Christian mythology
and Narnian mythology.  I think I can say this pretty confidently,
since I work with lots of these types of readers -- they have some
difficulty just reading the story as a story, if you will.  That Aslan
is kindly (and that they *like* him) may be apparent to them, but that
is as far as they go.  [For example, I read L'Engle's  (another
Christian analogist) "A Wrinkle in Time" with some reading-challenged
middle schoolers a couple of years ago (um, I know, I know, *what* was
I thinking -- what a difficult book!) and all of the religious stuff
went right past them.  In fact, IIRC, that book has more explicit
religious statements than the Narnia books.] Thus these kids are also
not very good candidates for proselytization.

>Children don't become Christians (or Muslims, or Buddhists, or ...) based
>on their own experiences - they do what they are taught to do.  

Reaching kids before the age of 7 or so is the key.  Kids are mostly
influenced by what they've been taught, and what they've experienced,
by that point.  A general outlook is fairly set by then, though of
course people can and do change.  As the Jesuits were rumored to have
said (a paraphrase), "Give me a boy till the age of 7, and I'll give
you the man".  

>Books are
>a part of that teaching.  Books that surreptitiously deliver their message
>in the guise of entertainment are an insidious part of the whole thing.

As I pointed out above, I believe books in and of themselves are much
less influential than adult modeled behavior.  So you probably don't
need to worry about insidious messages.  The bright kids will
question,  and read on, (and on, and on) and the others won't get much
of their belief structure from reading.
 

Lelah

(Please don't construe anything I've said to mean that I don't think
older kids can be influenced -- it's just harder later to change
fundamental outlook.)


From mol@bartlet.df.lth.se Fri Sep  4 20:38:06 MET DST 1998
Article: 36882 of rec.games.int-fiction
Path: news.lth.se!not-for-mail
From: mol@bartlet.df.lth.se (Magnus Olsson)
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Susan / Last Battle (was Magician's Nephew)
Date: 4 Sep 1998 20:00:16 +0200
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In article <1998090416533700.MAA20116@ladder01.news.aol.com>,
Doeadeer3 <doeadeer3@aol.com> wrote:
>In article <tvyk93kyjxh.fsf@cn1.connectnet.com>, Darin Johnson
><darin@usa.net.removethis> writes:
>
>>For people that object to subversive Christian doctrine in Narnia
>>books, there is another group of people that object to the
>>good-witch/bad-witch doctrine in the Oz books, and so forth.  And yes,
>>you *will* find people that feel that the Oz books are subtle
>>enticements away from Christianity.  Of course, people will say
>>balderdash, that's not what the Oz books are at all; but on the other
>>hand you can argue that proselytism is not what Narnia is either.
>>They're merely books written from a Christian perspective.
>
>If one honestly felt that way, then they should certainly tell their child the
>Oz books are about witchcraft. However, we have already establish that Baum's
>only agenda was to write fantasy books.We have also already established that
>Lewis' agenda was to write fantasy books AND "teach" Christian
>ideas/principles. So they aren't exactly comparable.

The problem with this view is that books can "teach" ideas even if the
author didn't put them there.

To use Lewis as an example again, Adam Cadre pointed out that there
are racist undertones in "The Horse and his Boy". I'm sure Lewis
didn't intend to teach racism (rather, "orientalism" was an accepted
literary theme at the time), but a parent who doesn't object to his
books on religious grounds may still don't want his/her children to
read a book with racist tendencies.

And, similarly, especially during the "red" seventies many Swedish parents
were wary of their children being too influenced by Disney comics and
the values put forward therein. And I've seen a very serious book by some
South American author where he "exposed" the great American conspiracy
to turn innocent Latin American children into pro-American imperialist 
lackeys, by brainwashing them with Disney comics. I kid ye not.

Personally, I think that while it may be OK for parents to forbid
their children to read certain books or watch certain movies (such as
porn or extremely violent ones), in general it's far better to do as
you suggest:

>I see no harm in telling children the truth. "These are fantasy books AND one
>man's view of Christianity." Then they can read or not. 


>From all this discussion one would assume that the Christian theme in the
>Narnia books is COMPLETELY hidden, that was and is not my impression. 

If it had been completely hidden, there wouldn't have been any cause
for concern, would there? 

But I have a suspicion that Lewis didn't intend to "hide" the message:
he wanted his readers to understand the message, perhaps with the aid
of their parents. That so many children don't was maybe a
miscalculation on his part.

>and within the context of Christianity, the separation
>of the sheep from the goats is a fundamentalist idea and not universally
>accepted by all Christians.

I'm not sure it was even accepted by Lewis himself, at least not in the
sense of a Final Judgement where God arbitrarily sends some people to
eternal punishment, while others go to paradise. From others of Lewis'
writings, I get the impression that he thought the "goats" aren't 
refused admittance to heaven; they are the ones who don't want to go there.
Like Susan.

P.S. I finally got the allusion in "Doeadeer" - "Do - a deer, a female
deer" is a line in the song "Do re mi", isn't it?

-- 
Magnus Olsson (mol@df.lth.se, zebulon@pobox.com)
------    http://www.pobox.com/~zebulon   ------


From earendil@faeryland.TAMU-Commerce.edu Fri Sep  4 20:38:37 MET DST 1998
Article: 36874 of rec.games.int-fiction
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Susan / Last Battle (was Magician's Nephew)
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Reply-To: earendil@faeryland.TAMU-Commerce.edu
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From: earendil@faeryland.tamu-commerce.edu (Allen Garvin)
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Xref: news.lth.se rec.games.int-fiction:36874

    John Francis <jfrancis@dungeon.engr.sgi.com> wrote:

    Children don't become Christians (or Muslims, or Buddhists, or
    ...) based on their own experiences - they do what they are taught
    to do.  Books are a part of that teaching.  Books that surreptitiously
    deliver their message in the guise of entertainment are an insidious
    part of the whole thing.

Here's an editorial written by Jane Yolen, in response to a church in the
midwest which burned her book "Briar Rose" a couple years ago, for presenting
homosexual and non-Christian (read: Jewish) viewpoints.  This book, by the
way, is a retelling of the well-known fairy tale, set during the holocaust.

    The pastor and his flock who set the book on fire had taken the book
    from the library along with two other books. Then, using a hibachi,
    barbecued my book and its companions one September day.

    The minister and his congregants were engaging in an old pastime,
    trying to burn ideas with which they disagreed. The three books
    had only one thing in common, homosexuality. My book has a gay
    character, an old Polish man who had once been a reluctant hero in
    the underground, an escapee from the pink triangle camps.

    One woman at the burning commented that a young adult reading my
    book would get the urge to go to a gay bar. I expect she thought
    the pink triangle camps had water sports and dances.

...

    The question is: who has the right to decide what your children or
    my children read? Who has the right to dictate my own adult choices?

    When I was growing up, my parents allowed me to read whatever I wanted
    to. My taste ran to fairy tales and lugubrious Russian novels. I
    found a copy of Thomas Mann's Joseph in Egypt in their bookshelves -
    two volumes - and read it when I was 10.

    I finished The Complete Sherlock Holmes on the night of my 12th
    birthday. I also read The Bobbsey Twins, every Albert Terhune dog
    story and Walter Farley horse story that had been written. Nancy Drew
    mysteries, and comic books. I was an omnivore when it came to books. I
    am still an omnivorous reader, though my tastes have fined down some,
    and none of what I read made me an ax murderer, a bigot, a homosexual,
    Or a Christian. But they did make me aware of all of those. And more.

    A single book may change you, may change the world it is true. Look at
    Rachel Carson's The Silent Spring. Look at Hitler's Mein Kampf. But
    a lot of other factors need to be present as well. And burning these
    books will not burn the ideas of the time. The best books are about
    truth. They do not preach, but they do make us see the world anew.
    They make us question our easy assumptions. And the book burners
    hate that.


-- 
Allen Garvin                                      I think I'll
---------------------------------------------     Let the mystery be
earendil@faeryland.tamu-commerce.edu          
http://faeryland.tamu-commerce.edu/~earendil         	    Iris Dement


From graemecree@aol.com Sat Sep  5 10:20:06 MET DST 1998
Article: 36899 of rec.games.int-fiction
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From: graemecree@aol.com (GraemeCree)
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Narnia Books
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     Okay, I dug them out of the closet.  They are:

1) Return to Deathwater
2) The Sorceress and the Book of Spells
3) Leap of the Lion
4) The Lost Crowns of Cair Paravel
5) Return of the White Witch

     The notice on the title pages say:

     Copyright 1988 EPISCOPAL RADIO-TV FOUNDATION, Inc.
Narnia Solo Games(TM) and all characters and places therein are trademark
properties of EPISCOPAL RADIO-TV FOUNDATION, INC.

Produced and distributed under an exclusive worldwide license by Iron Crown
Enterprises, Inc......


     Iron Crown definitely had _a_ license to put out the books, but it may be
true, as somebody said, that the license allowed only games and not novels, and
that these crossed over the line.
     No direct reference to the Lewis Estate, unless the Episcopal Radio-TV
Foundation is another name for them.



From dns361@merle.acns.nwu.edu Sat Sep  5 10:24:38 MET DST 1998
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From: Duncan N Stevens <dns361@merle.acns.nwu.edu>
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Subject: Re: Susan / Last Battle
Date: Fri, 4 Sep 1998 21:25:49 -0500
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On Fri, 4 Sep 1998, Adam Cadre wrote:

> And just as little kids don't choose their mother tongue, they don't
> choose their worldview.  On the other hand, just as you can trace
> the development of a language, you can trace the development of a
> belief system. For instance, you may believe the postulate "There
> is one god, and that god loves us" because your upbringing molded
> you into the type of person who believes that.  And the people who
> brought you up may have molded you into the type of person who
> believes that because they were brought up to believe that too, and
> so forth.  But if you go back far enough, you begin to see things
> change.  The "God loves you" bit, for instance, is commonly mentioned
> as the chief development of the New Testament -- that the NT changed
> the vengeful OT God into a loving one.  The "There is one god" part
> is also a change: the early bits of the Bible clearly do not promote
> monotheism but rather monolatry -- there ARE other gods (Baal, for
> instance) but only Yahweh is to be worshipped.  So the "postulate"
> you mention may be the starting point of your argument, but it's not
> a starting point in and of itself: it's the product of thousand of
> years of evolution.  By examining that evolution, and our various
> assumptions, we *can* go beyond a declaration of postulates.

That one can deconstruct a postulate doesn't make it invalid. Anything can
be deconstructed; academic exercises don't necessarily have anything to do
with truth. In the case of belief in God, yes, it represents a change in
emphasis from earlier times. So? It's not so hard to say that the OT
emphasized judgment (though the terms you put it in are a bit sweeping).
One merely needs to say that a new event changed our picture of God; it
doesn't mean God actually changed. The postulate has a background, but
that's no reason to scoff at it.

> If we translate "magical realms in the back of closets" as "direct
> revelatory experience of the type of god posited by Lewis" then,
> yes, in one hundred percent of cases I'm aware of where people have
> claimed such, the claim either could not be verified or turned out
> to be a product of chicanery or mental illness.  

"Chicanery or mental illness"? That, if you'll forgive me, represents a
rather small chunk of the entire world history of people who've had
contact with a divine presence that could be considered similar to the
Christian God. As for the other category--what are you looking for,
fingerprints? DNA testing? Why _should_ a transcendent God leave empirical
verification of any one revelation to anyone? (You ask: why shouldn't He?
John 20:29, "Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe", is the
short answer. A longer one is beyond the scope of this post.)

Yes, this is the
> type of thing that's difficult, perhaps impossible, to verify.  On
> the other hand, so are magical realms in the back of closets.  Now,
> if I were to claim that, yes, I regularly visit a magical realm in
> the back of my closet, imagine how you'd evaluate this statement.
> There's no way you could prove that it's not true -- even if you
> were to fly out here and carefully examine my closet, I could just
> say "it doesn't work for you, only me" and you'd have wasted a lot
> of money on airfare.  But no matter how big a Narnia fan you might
> be, you wouldn't believe me.  Because you know that that's not how
> life works.  And though I scarcely think that anything I say is ever
> going to tempt anyone into apostasy, I hope that you can see how
> similar these two claims are to a skeptic.

Sure. You've shown very nicely the role of faith in becoming a
Christian; in a sense, the series ended where it began, since "Lion"
started with all the other children refusing to acknowledge that there 
could be such a thing as magical realsm in the back of closets.
Kierkegaard referred to it as the "leap" and argued that it could not
be arrived at any other way. But, I'm sorry to say, your logic on Susan
still needs some help, in terms of the way you switched contexts and
declared her the hero.

Duncan Stevens
d-stevens@nwu.edu
773-728-9721

The room is as you left it; your last touch--
A thoughtless pressure, knowing not itself
As saintly--hallows now each simple thing,
Hallows and glorifies, and glows between
The dust's gray fingers, like a shielded light.

--from "Interim," by Edna St. Vincent Millay




From adamc@acpub.duke.edu Sat Sep  5 10:25:59 MET DST 1998
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From: Adam Cadre <adamc@acpub.duke.edu>
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Susan / Last Battle
Date: Sat, 5 Sep 1998 02:42:07 -0400
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Duncan Stevens wrote:
> That one can deconstruct a postulate doesn't make it invalid.

Oh, but I wasn't trying to invalidate the postulate; I was simply making 
the point that we can go beyond stating our postulates and then parting 
ways.  As it turns out, Lucian agrees -- I'm under the impression that he 
was presenting a proposition for consideration, not endorsing it.  I 
certainly wasn't "scoffing" at it.  (Not in that paragraph, anyway.)

> You've shown very nicely the role of faith in becoming a Christian;
> [...] Kierkegaard referred to it as the "leap" and argued that it 
> could not be arrived at any other way.

Yes, but the fact that the practice of believing something with no 
evidence -- and you brought up Kierkegaard, so I'll mention that 
Kierkegaard said that any faith that did not recognize not just that 
there is no evidence, but that the entire proposition is impossible and 
absurd, is not true faith -- has a name in no way makes it any less 
preposterous to the skeptic.  Which illustrates exactly how far apart the 
worldviews at work in this discussion are: to the believer, lack of faith 
is perhaps the worst of all possible character flaws; to the skeptic, 
faith itself is an utterly bizarre logical fault, even a sort of mental 
illness.

> But, I'm sorry to say, your logic on Susan still needs some help, in 
> terms of the way you switched contexts and declared her the hero.

I hope my other reply to Lucian's post supplied that help: my Susan and 
your Susan probably aren't the same person.  Of course, if you still feel 
the logic is lacking, you could always take it on faith...

  -----
 Adam Cadre, Anaheim, CA
 http://www.retina.net/~grignr


From adamc@acpub.duke.edu Sat Sep  5 10:27:30 MET DST 1998
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From: Adam Cadre <adamc@acpub.duke.edu>
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Fictional characters (was Susan / Last Battle)
Date: Fri, 4 Sep 1998 19:18:34 -0400
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Xref: news.lth.se rec.games.int-fiction:36897

There are two quite different topics I want to touch on in replying
to this post, so I'm going to split it up into two different threads.
This other is about religion; this one is about the nature of
fictional characters.

Lucian Paul Smith wrote:
> The type of person Susan had become was someone "...interested in
> nothing except nylons and lipstick and invitations."  "Grown up
> indeed," says one of the characters about her.  "I wish she
> *would* grow up."  Surely we can do better than that?

Imagine you heard something like that in real life.  I mention
someone is passing, you ask, "Susan? Who's that?", and I say, "Oh,
she's someone I know -- only interested in makeup and parties.
Really immature."  What would your opinion of her be?

That depends on your opinion of me.  If in the past you've found
me to be at least a passable judge of character, you may decide that
this "Susan" isn't someone you're all that anxious to meet.  On the
other hand, you may have overheard me telling someone else, "Oh,
Lucian Smith?  Man, what a talentless hack.  Did you play that
Edifice game?  Awful!"  In which case the fact that someone whose
opinion you value as little as mine dislikes Susan may leave you
inclined to think more highly of her than ever.  (Note to people
who may not know my actual opinion of Lucian's game: I can get away
with being insulting here because in real life, I gave Edifice a 10.
It's terrific.  Play it.)

By the time I reached that passage in THE LAST BATTLE, I'd already
read Lewis's views on secular coeducation in THE SILVER CHAIR.  I'd
discovered the way he cast dark-skinned people with names like mine
in A HORSE AND HIS BOY.  So when I did reach that passage, and Lewis,
speaking through the characters he endorsed, dissed Susan in this way,
all it did was raise my opinion of her.  I didn't trust him to tell
the whole story; I suspected that if Susan got the chance to defend
herself, she'd say something like, "Hey!  I'm not a shallow social
butterfly -- is that what my brothers and sister said about me?
They're always doing that!  I go to a couple of parties and suddenly
to them I'm some sort of vapid floozy.  Talk about exaggerating
things."

Now, some might accuse me of going outside the text here, but that's
a necessary part of the way we interact with narratives.  We fill in
the blanks.  Rarely will you encounter a book that specifies that
the characters don't fly off into space every time they take a step
thanks to the law of gravity: we assume that the physics in a story
are the same as in life unless we're told otherwise.  The same is
true for the people we encounter in narratives.  Except in the most
postmodern fiction, we treat characters not as constructs but as
people.  We start to develop hypotheses about how they might act in
a given situation, speculate as to what their favorite colors are,
assume that the houses they live in have bathrooms even if they don't
come up in the story we're reading.  Even in static fiction, the
writer and the reader create the world of the story together.  So if
we're reading a story featuring a savage native who lives to serve
some white guy who's washed up on shore (cf. ROBINSON CRUSOE), and
the writer expects us to believe that this might be happening on
*our* planet, with *humans*, we might say, "Well, no -- that's not
how life works.  The native isn't 'savage' -- the protagonist (and
the author) simply don't understand his culture.  And he isn't
serving the white guy out of an inborn sense of his own inferiority:
he's motivated by fear of reprisal." (cf. FOE, FRIDAY).

If Lewis intends for us to think of Susan as a person, then he runs
the risk that the reader will disagree with his slant on her.  And I
don't think she's as bad as her creator makes her out to be.

  -----
 Adam Cadre, Anaheim, CA
 http://www.retina.net/~grignr


From erkyrath@netcom.com Sat Sep  5 10:28:19 MET DST 1998
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From: erkyrath@netcom.com (Andrew Plotkin)
Subject: Re: Susan / Last Battle (was Magician's Nephew)
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Doeadeer3 (doeadeer3@aol.com) wrote:

> If one honestly felt that way, then they should certainly tell their child the
> Oz books are about witchcraft. However, we have already establish that Baum's
> only agenda was to write fantasy books.We have also already established that
> Lewis' agenda was to write fantasy books AND "teach" Christian
> ideas/principles. So they aren't exactly comparable.

I think they're exactly comparable. (And I don't agree with the statements
that you think we've established.) There is no extra didactic dimension
to the Narnia books that's lacking in the Oz books. Both have moral
aspects to the story, which are (of course) reflections of the beliefs of
the authors. Lewis's writing uses more more direct symbolism, but this is
a question of the styles of the two authors.

> I see no harm in telling children the truth. "These are fantasy books AND one
> man's view of Christianity."

If you say that, but don't give a similar statement about the Oz books
("this is one man's view of the nature of courage, steadfastness,
brains, etc") then I think you're prejudicing the issue in a way which is
pretty unfair to the stories. Or to the kids, however you want to look at
it.

You say "kids aren't dumb." Realize that, when I read your message, I
wanted to respond "but kids aren't dumb!" 

--Z

-- 

"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the
borogoves..."


From erkyrath@netcom.com Sat Sep  5 10:29:51 MET DST 1998
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From: erkyrath@netcom.com (Andrew Plotkin)
Subject: Re: Susan / Last Battle (was Magician's Nephew)
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Doeadeer3 (doeadeer3@aol.com) wrote:
> In article <erkyrathEyrx27.CL6@netcom.com>, erkyrath@netcom.com (Andrew
> Plotkin) writes:

> >If you say that, but don't give a similar statement about the Oz books
> >("this is one man's view of the nature of courage, steadfastness,
> >brains, etc") then I think you're prejudicing the issue in a way which is
> >pretty unfair to the stories. Or to the kids, however you want to look at
> >it.

> Lewis was very deliberately TRYING to present Christian ideals

I think all fantasy tries to present ideals; it's one of my definitions of
fantasy. (An idiosyncratic and not-well-verbalized definition, yes.) _The Wizard
of Oz_ certainly does.

> if he succeeded
> or not seems to open to debate 
> [...]
> But there has never been
> any suggestion that Baum was promoting one particular religious belief over
> another.

I didn't say religious, though. I don't particularly distinguish between religious
beliefs/ideals and nonreligious ones. (As you might expect from an atheist.) The
historical antecedents of a belief are interesting when discussing it, but it's
not a qualitative distinction.

For the record: I completely missed the Christian connection when I first read the
Narnia books. But I liked the stories. They obviously didn't do a very good job of
indoctrinating me with Christianity, but I still like the stories -- although I
have to work to suppress the layers of anti-organized-religion reflex that I've
acquired *since* first reading the books.

Many themes from the books still strike me as true. "Safe? Aslan's not safe. He's
*good*, but not safe." That's one I've become vey fond of these last few years,
and I was surprised (upon re-encountering Narnia) to find that it was there long
before Duane. I can't remember if I liked it as much back then, though.

> Anyway, I would never
> argue against a parent discussing ANY literature the child reads with that
> child.

I agree entirely.
 
--Z

> I maybe for "religious freedom" (in some people's views, a good thing, in some,
> a bad thing), but no one said I wasn't crafty.

Ah, but wich craft?

--Z













> Doe      doeadeer3@aol.com       (formerly known as FemaleDeer)
> ****************************************************************************
> "In all matters of opinion, our adversaries are insane."  Mark Twain
-- 

"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the
borogoves..."


From adam@princeton.edu Sat Sep  5 10:30:45 MET DST 1998
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From: adam@princeton.edu (Adam J. Thornton)
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Susan / Last Battle (was Magician's Nephew)
Date: 4 Sep 1998 23:17:38 GMT
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In article <1998090421522100.RAA27638@ladder03.news.aol.com>,
Doeadeer3 <doeadeer3@aol.com> wrote:
>"indoctrinated" without their consent or knowledge). But there has never been
>any suggestion that Baum was promoting one particular religious belief over
>another.

Au contraire.  Why, look at Chapter 2 of _Ozma Of Oz_.  Dorothy has just
eaten from the lunch-boxes she found growing on the trees (an obvious
allusion to the Tree of Knowledge of Good And Evil).  The following
exchange takes place between Billina, the talking yellow hen, and Dorothy.

***

"A lunch isn't zactly breakfast," she said to Billina, who sat beside
her curiously watching.  "But when one is hungry one can eat even
supper in the morning, and not complain."

"I hope your lunch-box was perfectly ripe," observed the yellow hen,
in a anxious tone.  "So much sickness is caused by eating green things."

"Oh, I'm sure it was ripe," declared Dorothy, "all, that is, 'cept the
pickle, and a pickle just HAS to be green, Billina.  But everything
tasted perfectly splendid, and I'd rather have it than a church
picnic.  And now I think I'll pick a dinner-pail, to have when I get
hungry again, and then we'll start out and 'splore the country, and
see where we are."

[text from the Gutenberg Project's e-text of _Ozma_]

****

Apples--well--some apples--are green.  And it is this "sickness", the
literal and metaphorical sickness of Original Sin, that is mankind's fall
in Christianity and Judaism.

Yet Dorothy would *rather* have her Lunchbox of the Knowledge of Good And
Evil than "a church picnic."  What does this mean?

Well, as is plain to any fool--as plain as the fact that Oz is actually a
populist allegory--this means that Baum is, in one broad stroke,
*rejecting* the notion of Original Sin and, in fact, condemning
Christianity itself.  He is clearly arguing for the rejection of a doctrine
that states us to be "conceived in sin and born in corruption," preferring,
as is obvious, to regard children and by extension a childlike sense of
wonder as sinless, unspoiled, in a state of grace, and further arguing that
knowledge is not, in and of itself, corruption.

Let us further recall that in _The Tin Woodman of Oz_ we are told that the
Winkies, over whom Nick Chopper rules, have but one law: "Behave Yourself."
Compare this with the famous Thelemite doctrine "Do As Thou Wilt
Shall be the Whole Of The Law."  Was Baum a closet Crowleyite?  Perhaps
beyond an anti-Christian, was he even a...dare I say it...SATANIST?

The evidence is clear.  It's all there in the text, if you just know how to
look. 

And if there's anyone reading this who thinks that I'm serious--he or she
needs to be seeking professional help, not reading r*if.

Adam
-- 
adam@princeton.edu 
"There's a border to somewhere waiting, and a tank full of time." - J. Steinman


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From: lac@nu-world.com (Lelah Conrad)
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Susan / Last Battle (was Magician's Nephew)
Date: Sat, 05 Sep 1998 00:44:54 GMT
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On 04 Sep 1998 21:52:21 GMT, doeadeer3@aol.com (Doeadeer3) wrote:


>Well, you know, it is a good idea to discuss ALL the things one's child reads
>or sees (t.v./movies) with them. I doubt most parents have the time, but they
>do present the opportunity for "values clarification". Anyway, I would never
>argue against a parent discussing ANY literature the child reads with that
>child. I really wonder about that "Goose Bump" series for instance, what is the
>point of that? Children like to be scared? (Yes, a lot do, I guess.) If I had a
>child and he/she was reading that series I would really want to discuss it with
>them.
 
IMHO (just my values, not necessarily yours) Narnia is better reading
for a kid than *any* of the Goose Bumps books.  The latter play into
the "gory creepy sort of sadistic-type violence" focus of a lot of our
media.  I realize that some kids (and adults!) love this stuff
(purchase of these books for schools and libraries has been very
controversial in libraries and schools -- talk about flame wars).  I
don't care if kids read them, but I'll not buy them with my limited
book funds -- I'll try to get them to read other things under my
influence.   For some kids, though, nothing will suffice but a Goose
Bump story.

Realistically (I raised two kids, both in college now) it is very hard
for parents to find the time to read and discuss what their kids are
reading with them.  Some kids read *tons* of books.  Parents can keep
an eye on the general nature of what their kids are reading though,
and provide them with opportunities for varied choices. And, if a kid
is reading and passing around, say, bomb-making books ala Kip Kinkel
(out local high school shooter), a concerned parent needs to get
involved.

Lelah


From dns361@merle.acns.nwu.edu Sat Sep  5 10:32:08 MET DST 1998
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From: Duncan N Stevens <dns361@merle.acns.nwu.edu>
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Susan / Last Battle (was Magician's Nephew)
Date: Fri, 4 Sep 1998 21:07:31 -0500
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On 4 Sep 1998, Doeadeer3 wrote:

> In article <erkyrathEyrx27.CL6@netcom.com>, erkyrath@netcom.com (Andrew
> Plotkin) writes:
> 
> >If you say that, but don't give a similar statement about the Oz books
> >("this is one man's view of the nature of courage, steadfastness,
> >brains, etc") then I think you're prejudicing the issue in a way which is
> >pretty unfair to the stories. Or to the kids, however you want to look at
> >it.
> 
> Lewis was very deliberately TRYING to present Christian ideals, if he
succeeded
> or not seems to open to debate (i.e., in the fact that it seems to go
over some
> children's heads and because some people here who read them as children
are now
> seeming to resent the implication that they missed the message or were
somehow
> "indoctrinated" without their consent or knowledge). But there has
never been
> any suggestion that Baum was promoting one particular religious belief
over another.

No one said there was, and you speak very confidently about what Lewis was
trying to do for someone who hasn't read the books. Might the fact that
lots of people didn't get the themes at all be evidence that Lewis was not
actually trying to preach? I.e., mightn't there be a difference between
including Christian allegory and preaching at the reader? Why are you so
sure that Lewis failed, rather than succeeded in telling some good stories
that happen to have some Christian analogues that adults will pick up and
children might happen upon years later?

> point of that? Children like to be scared? (Yes, a lot do, I guess.)
If I had a
> child and he/she was reading that series I would really want to discuss
it with
> them.

Of course. I would want to do the same, though I suspect our discussions
would sound a little different. (No, no, with my child, not yours.) But I
wouldn't necessarily put a warning label on the front of the book unless
there was something in it that I thought might upset him/her, e.g.
excessive violence or sex.

> I maybe for "religious freedom" (in some people's views, a good thing,
in some,
> a bad thing), but no one said I wasn't crafty.

Not to start a whole new argument, but _no one_ here, as far as I can
tell, thinks religious freedom is a bad thing.

Duncan Stevens
d-stevens@nwu.edu
773-728-9721

The room is as you left it; your last touch--
A thoughtless pressure, knowing not itself
As saintly--hallows now each simple thing,
Hallows and glorifies, and glows between
The dust's gray fingers, like a shielded light.

--from "Interim," by Edna St. Vincent Millay




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From: Duncan N Stevens <dns361@merle.acns.nwu.edu>
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Susan / Last Battle (was Magician's Nephew)
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> Right on. Although I hope the forward to the Narnia books explains what they
> are.

No, it sure doesn't. And in that they aren't anything in particular that
can be adequately explained without reading them, as this whole argument
suggests, I doubt any foreword could.

> I will admit, I fudged a bit earlier. I never read the Narnia books as a child
> because my parents told me what they were. They had decided, as parents, they
> didn't want to indoctrinate their children with any particular religious
> beliefs. We were allowed to choose whether to attend Sunday school (at the
> church my mother attended or elsewhere) or not. We were encouraged to make up
> our own minds about religion and God. I have always appreciated that decision,
> throughout my whole life. 
> 
> I did try however, to read some C. S. Lewis books later as a teenager (I forget
> specifically which ones) and could not get into them, they were so poorly
> written.
> 
> I, personally, wouldn't want a child to read those books unless they knew what
> they were. It sounds like they contain some very fundamentalist Christian
> viewpoints.

Nope, they sure don't. In particular, the passage where Aslan tells the
Calormene that he was really serving Aslan because he served Tash
faithfully would have any _real_ fundamentalist throwing down the book in
horror. And as was mentioned elsewhere, sheep/goats references--not, of
course, that there ARE any in the Narnia books, because Susan is NOT
damned and CHOSE OF HER OWN ACCORD to ditch Narnia (ahem)--are far from
specific to fundamentalists, unless you define the vast majority of
Christians as fundamenatlists.

 Ones that some of the posters here might not see as fundamentalist
> because they agree with their own.

Am I really barred from having an opinion on Lewis's views because I share
some of them?

 But to me and quite a few others, they would
> be seen that way. My mother, the acknowledged Christian in my family of
origin,
> found them that way and therefore in conflict with her own take on
Christ and
> Christianity. I suspect that a lot of Christian parents might feel that
way and
> non-Christian parents could additional concerns. Children are
impressionable
> and easily indoctrinated. 

Actually, I disagree, certainly with reference to anything as complicated
as Christianity. If you're in a position of authority relative to the
child, you might get him/her repeating a catchphrase, but actually
"indoctrinating" in any substantive way? Believing the Christian gospel
and acting on it? You need something a whole lot more authoritative,
acting much more directly on the child, than a book.

So even children should know if they are reading
> something with propaganda (religious or otherwise) in it. Once the author's
> viewpoint is explained, then they can read or not.

Or, if you trust your child's intelligence and curiosity, you can let them
read and think about things for themselves.

Duncan Stevens
d-stevens@nwu.edu
773-728-9721

The room is as you left it; your last touch--
A thoughtless pressure, knowing not itself
As saintly--hallows now each simple thing,
Hallows and glorifies, and glows between
The dust's gray fingers, like a shielded light.

--from "Interim," by Edna St. Vincent Millay




From mccall@erols.com Sat Sep  5 10:39:17 MET DST 1998
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From: mccall@erols.com (TenthStone)
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Susan / Last Battle (was Magician's Nephew)
Date: Sat, 05 Sep 1998 01:29:54 GMT
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mol@bartlet.df.lth.se (Magnus Olsson) caused this to appear in our collective minds on 3 Sep 1998 10:52:01 +0200:

>In article <35edd33f.18402895@news.erols.com>,
>TenthStone <mccall@erols.com> wrote:
>>The Christian attraction towards child-like behavior relates to a general
>>acceptance of childrend of what their parents believe -- the pre-adolescent
>>euphoria of parental similarity.  Many opponents of religion interpret this
>>thusly:  forcing religion upon a child too immature to judge its own truths.
>
>Well, I can appreciate that Adam and other see it this way *in this
>context*. I just don't associate Lewis with that kind of brainwashing
>myself, so my associations to "being like a child" went in other
>directions - see my post "In defence of childishness".

I have.  It raises some good points.

But there are pitfalls to being as a child.  It's not just so much a point in one's life,
as a point in one's development.  It won't extend forever.

Which doesn't mean we should all join the rat race.  I, for one, plan on being
rich enough by twenty-five so that I can have the time to enjoy the rest of my life.
It's probably not going to happen, but that sentiment is likely the only true roadblock.

>>I don't believe Jesus himself, however, ever meant this argument at all:  he
>>intends that faith must cornerstone our lives and should be accepted as if it
>>were provable beyond all doubt.
>
>If I may speculate, I think you should go one step farther than that:
>accepting somethin like a child would doesn't mean accepting it as if it
>were provable beyond all doubt, but accepting it without the need for proof.

Point taken.

>Min dyou, I'm *not* talking about "accept this without asking for
>proof because <insert figure of authority here> says so", but "accept
>this because you've seen it with your own eyes". And yes, I see the
>objections to this way of reasoning; no need to clobber me over the
>head with them.

How about "Accept this because there is no other way to believe it"?

>>>>So who benefits from people being complacent and pliable?  Who
>>>>benefits from people accepting the hardship and oppression they
>>>>encounter as part of some greater design?  Or to put it another
>>>>way, who *doesn't* benefit from people rebelling against authority
>>>>and fighting together for positive change?  The answer, of course,
>>>>is the people who are dishing out the aforementioned hardship and
>>>>oppression.
>>>
>>>This is true, and various figures of authority have been using various
>>>faiths and ideologies over and over again to this
>>>effect. (Alternatively, not-so-meek ideologies have been used to turn
>>>the people's aggressions at exterior enemies rather than at the
>>>authorities).
>>
>>Are authorities not exterior enemies, then?
>
>By definition they aren't: I meant exterior enemies in the eyes of the
>authorities. (When an oppressor talks about turning the discontent of
>the people against external enemies, he certainly doesn't include
>himself amongst them).

Ah... I'm thinking personal-self and you're thinking group-self.

>>No ideology favors turning
>>against a "brother";  at least, none of which I know.
>
>The worst perversions of "divide and conquer" do just that; but of
>course the first step is redefining "brother" into an "internal
>enemy". See what is happening in ex-Yugoslavia...

Exactly.  They're no longer brothers.  And divide-and-conquer typically
doesn't pertain to the dividing/conquering group, does it?

>I'm not sure whether you're agreeing or disagreeing with me here, but
>I certainly didn't mean to imply that Jesus was a political
>revolutionary (though some of his followers were). But he and his
>followers were nevertheless seen as a deadly threat, both to the local
>authorities and (later, when Christianity had started to spread) to
>the Roman Empire itself. 

We agree.

>So although many later oppressors may have tried to use Christianity
>to keep the masses placated, the authorities at the time certainly
>didn't see Jesus or the apostles as their allies.

Because the emperor was rather weak at the time, wasn't he?  I can't
recall his name...

The Roman system certainly didn't do much for the common people,
though.  I would say that systems which enhance the differences between
people tend to fare better (by that statement, you can determine for yourself
how cynical I am), and when a group is exploited by another, it can feel nice
to know that your life-long enemies are doomed to eternal suffering.

Of course, I'm not so sure Jesus's teaching itself supports the idea of Hell.
It appears more that this was a later embellishment, an attempt to answer
the question "Well, the worthy people go to god's house:  but where do the rest
go?"

-----------

The inperturbable TenthStone
tenthstone@hotmail.com          mccall@erols.com        mccallr@gsgis.k12.va.us


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From: Duncan N Stevens <dns361@merle.acns.nwu.edu>
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Susan / Last Battle (was Magician's Nephew)
Date: Fri, 4 Sep 1998 22:50:02 -0500
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On Sat, 5 Sep 1998, TenthStone wrote:

> The Roman system certainly didn't do much for the common people,
> though.  I would say that systems which enhance the differences between
> people tend to fare better (by that statement, you can determine for yourself
> how cynical I am), and when a group is exploited by another, it can feel nice
> to know that your life-long enemies are doomed to eternal suffering.
> 
> Of course, I'm not so sure Jesus's teaching itself supports the idea of Hell.
> It appears more that this was a later embellishment, an attempt to answer
> the question "Well, the worthy people go to god's house:  but where do the rest
> go?"

Actually, the gospel of Matthew has plenty of references to Hell, usually
referred to as "the outer darkness." Also in Matthew is that sheep/goats
passage, which certainly supports the idea ("eternal punishment" and
"eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels"). Matthew 23:15
actually refers to "a child of hell," though admittedly I dunno what the
Greek word was that's getting translated there.

Of course, some folks argue that the gospels themselves are full of folks
trying to impute things that Jesus didn't say, but once you start down
that road, IMHO, you may as well give up. There's no meaningful way to
separate the wheat from the chaff, once you start claiming that certain
passages aren't legit.

> 
> -----------
> 
> The inperturbable TenthStone
> tenthstone@hotmail.com          mccall@erols.com        mccallr@gsgis.k12.va.us
> 
> 

Duncan Stevens
d-stevens@nwu.edu
773-728-9721

The room is as you left it; your last touch--
A thoughtless pressure, knowing not itself
As saintly--hallows now each simple thing,
Hallows and glorifies, and glows between
The dust's gray fingers, like a shielded light.

--from "Interim," by Edna St. Vincent Millay




From doeadeer3@aol.com Sat Sep  5 12:09:38 MET DST 1998
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From: doeadeer3@aol.com (Doeadeer3)
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Susan / Last Battle (was Magician's Nephew)
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In article <erkyrathEyrx27.CL6@netcom.com>, erkyrath@netcom.com (Andrew
Plotkin) writes:

>If you say that, but don't give a similar statement about the Oz books
>("this is one man's view of the nature of courage, steadfastness,
>brains, etc") then I think you're prejudicing the issue in a way which is
>pretty unfair to the stories. Or to the kids, however you want to look at
>it.

Lewis was very deliberately TRYING to present Christian ideals, if he succeeded
or not seems to open to debate (i.e., in the fact that it seems to go over some
children's heads and because some people here who read them as children are now
seeming to resent the implication that they missed the message or were somehow
"indoctrinated" without their consent or knowledge). But there has never been
any suggestion that Baum was promoting one particular religious belief over
another.

>You say "kids aren't dumb." Realize that, when I read your message, I
>wanted to respond "but kids aren't dumb!" 

Well, you know, it is a good idea to discuss ALL the things one's child reads
or sees (t.v./movies) with them. I doubt most parents have the time, but they
do present the opportunity for "values clarification". Anyway, I would never
argue against a parent discussing ANY literature the child reads with that
child. I really wonder about that "Goose Bump" series for instance, what is the
point of that? Children like to be scared? (Yes, a lot do, I guess.) If I had a
child and he/she was reading that series I would really want to discuss it with
them.

No, Z, you aren't dumb, obviously. And not as a child, either.

>From:	mol@bartlet.df.lth.se (Magnus Olsson)
>Date:	4 Sep 1998 20:00:16 +0200

>P.S. I finally got the allusion in "Doeadeer" - "Do - a deer, a female
>deer" is a line in the song "Do re mi", isn't it?

Yep. Means I have my own theme music when I enter on-line chat rooms. Usually
sooner or later someone realizes that and starts singing the song.

I maybe for "religious freedom" (in some people's views, a good thing, in some,
a bad thing), but no one said I wasn't crafty.

Doe :-)  "Which brings us back to doe!" (It always comes back to dough.)














Doe      doeadeer3@aol.com       (formerly known as FemaleDeer)
****************************************************************************
"In all matters of opinion, our adversaries are insane."  Mark Twain


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Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Susan / Last Battle
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On Fri, 4 Sep 1998 21:25:49 -0500, Duncan N Stevens
<dns361@merle.acns.nwu.edu> wrote:
 
>Sure. You've shown very nicely the role of faith in becoming a
>Christian; ...  

yes, but

>Kierkegaard referred to it as the "leap" and argued that it could not
>be arrived at any other way.  

Well, Kierkegaard was the epitome of the gloomy, existentialist,
dialectical type of Christian apologetics.  He may have inherited his
depressive nature, but at any rate, if I want to read scary stories, I
read him.  (He was Danish Lutheran, from a pietistic background.)

In the Catholic worldview (a cheerier orientation), faith is more of
an organic development over time, seen to ebb and flow with the life
cycle, and is not so much the leaping act of a solitary heroic
individual (Kierkegaard always strikes me this way).  A Catholic
approach to faith tends to be humanistic, combing an appreciation of
the revelatory aspects of nature with tradition, with history, and is
essentially only realized within the community of believers.
Catholicism tends to be anti-individualistic, communitarian. It posits
human growth and development in faith over time, and never pinpoints a
"leap" moment.

This of course has its good and its bad aspects!  :)

Lelah 

I want to be a fanatic!  Rats...




From giles.boutel@wcc.govt.nz Mon Sep  7 12:35:38 MET DST 1998
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From: "Giles Boutel" <giles.boutel@wcc.govt.nz>
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Susan / Last Battle
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Patrick M. Berry <berrpm@aur.alcatel.com> wrote in article
<6sp9ar$kbr$1@aurwww.aur.alcatel.com>...

> 
> But the books aren't *overtly* about Christianity, only symbolically. 
There
> is no mention of Christianity in them at all.  And one need not pay
attention
> to the allegory at all.  The books can simply be taken at face value, and
I
> imagine a lot of children do so.  Is Aslan a Jesus-figure, or is he just
a 
> big lion?  It depends on your point of view.  The elements of the Narnia 
> books *correspond* to elements of Christianity, but it wouldn't be
correct to 
> say that they are one and the same.

While I think that it would be a brave person who would try and deny Aslan
was Jesus (I know he comes darn close to admitting it outright, I just
can't remember if the name Jesus was explicitly mentioned) I think I should
also point out, in agreement with your 'not one and the same' line, that
there are some people around who would say that that retelling his story
with witches, dwarves and stone tables etc was about as blasphemous, not to
mention occult, as you can get. 

On the other hand (or maybe not) - I reread the Narnia books many many many
times and have never felt the slightest inclination towards christianity.
As someone else pointed out - most of the moral messages are your basic
'here's how to get along with other people, here's a good role model with
fine qualities, here's an unpleasant person that needs a bit of work, but
see he makes it in the end etc' bits that are pretty much standard issue in
KidLit (and anything that can help yoof feel good about themselves is fine
by my reckoning). The fact that the series is so memorable to many here
says much for its quality as a work for children, and for the quality of
its presentation of those ideas. Narnia has excited far more imagination
than religious tendencies in me, and I'd be willing to bet for others as
well. It should need no other raison d'etre.

I have no opinion of Lewis' motives for writing the work, I can only judge
its effect on me. Fantasy draws on many sources (Tolkein and the Eddas, for
example - anyone accusing him of Norse Proselytising :-) but the
translation by Lewis of those original elements into other, sometimes
unrecognisable forms makes it more than 'mere christianity' (in both senses
of the term).

-Giles



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Subject: Re: Susan / Last Battle
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Weird Beard <weird_beard@prodigy.net> wrote in article
<6svk7q$a6r2$1@newssvr04-int.news.prodigy.com>...
> 
> Giles Boutel wrote in message
> <01bdd9f1$3206e3e0$67330a0a@wc034319.wcc.govt.nz>...
> >While I think that it would be a brave person who would try and deny
Aslan
> >was Jesus (I know he comes darn close to admitting it outright, I just
> >can't remember if the name Jesus was explicitly mentioned) I think I
should
> >also point out, in agreement with your 'not one and the same' line, that
> >there are some people around who would say that that retelling his story
> >with witches, dwarves and stone tables etc was about as blasphemous, not
to
> >mention occult, as you can get.
> 
> Why? The witches are both presented as being evil, and both die at the
hands
> of the "good guys."

Nah - its the same witch all the time - ol' Jadis of Charn (iirc)...but
anyhow

> Dwarves are mythical creatures, but if you got a concordance, you would
find
> referances to unicorns and dragons in the Bible. As for stone tables,
it's
> made perfectly clear that Alsan's power is greater.

I never said it was a rational thing to believe. But I had friends at
school who weren't allowed to own the book because recrafting the tale of
Jesus outside of the biblical version of events (let alone as an animal, as
animals don't have souls) was blasphemy. There are some strange people out
there.

BTW - to tie this whole thread back to what it originally came from, I
found an interesting quote from Mr Lewis regarding the proper order for the
books. From the CS Lewis faq at http://cslewis.drzeus.net/

A case can be made for both orders. Lewis himself came down in favour of
the chronological order, which is why Douglas Gresham (Lewis' stepson)
recommended it. In a letter written in 1957 to an American boy named
Laurence, Lewis wrote the following:

'I think I agree with your order {i.e. chronological} for reading the books
more than with your mother's. The series was not planned beforehand as she
thinks. When I wrote The Lion I did not know I was going to write any more.
Then I wrote P. Caspian as a sequel and still didn't think there would be
any more, and when I had done The Voyage I felt quite sure it would be the
last. But I found as I was wrong. So perhaps it does not matter very much
in which order anyone read them. I'm not even sure that all the others were
written in the same order in which they were published.'

-Giles


From dns361@merle.acns.nwu.edu Wed Sep  9 09:50:13 MET DST 1998
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From: Duncan N Stevens <dns361@merle.acns.nwu.edu>
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Susan / Last Battle (was Magician's Nephew)
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On 8 Sep 1998, Adam J. Thornton wrote:

> recent translation of the Nag Hammadi texts glued in at the back?  The
> (barf) Living Bible?

*laugh* My sentiments exactly.

> An attempt was made in 324 to rigorously define the minimal set of what
> a Christian had to believe to be a Christian.  I refer, of course, to the
> Nicene (Nicean?  Can't remember the spelling) Creed; however, hammering out
> the creed was an intensely political process and the final product
> necessarily reflected some bishops' theologies at the expense of others.

Nicene. In fact, via the inclusion of the "filioque" ("We believe in the
Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life, who proceeds from the Father and
the Son"), it eventually led to the split between the Roman Catholic and
Eastern Orthodox churches, since the latter didn't accept that the Spirit
proceeds from the Son.

> If *I* were pressed to give a capsule definition of the minimal belief it
> takes to be a Christian, I'd probably fall back on something like "I
> believe that Jesus was the Son of God.  He died to redeem humanity's--and,
> specifically, *my*--sins."[1]

Actually, that would pretty much do it for many Protestant denominations,
though some would require a belief in Christ's coming again as well, I
suppose. But you raise a good point, in that, if you _don't_ have the
above, no one will call you a Christian.

(Well, no, that's not true. It pains me somewhat to admit that my own
Episcopal Church has until very recently harbored a bishop who didn't
believe in the Resurrection, though I should also say that he came to this
opinion during his tenure and it's an awful pain to kick out a sitting
bishop. But I'd also say that quite a few Episcopalians regard that
situation--a bishop who doesn't share the core beliefs of the church--as 
absurd and unacceptable.)

Duncan Stevens
d-stevens@nwu.edu
773-728-9721

The room is as you left it; your last touch--
A thoughtless pressure, knowing not itself
As saintly--hallows now each simple thing,
Hallows and glorifies, and glows between
The dust's gray fingers, like a shielded light.

--from "Interim," by Edna St. Vincent Millay




From marsh@nettally.com Wed Sep  9 10:53:16 MET DST 1998
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From: marsh@nettally.com (Steven Marsh)
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Infocom Bugs:  Extreme Embarrassment
Date: Tue, 08 Sep 1998 02:25:52 GMT
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On Thu, 03 Sep 1998 13:30:11 -0500, foxglove@globalserve.net (Drone)
wrote:
	<snip>

>What is the value of knowing exactly how to reproduce every single bug in
>every single Infocom release?
>
	That's a possible slippery slope right there.  "Because
there's an interest" is a fine starting point.  Not unlike the lists
that detail the differences between the various Shakesperean Folios.
Or the varying translations (or footnotes thereof) of the Bible.
People keep buying 'em.  And reading 'em.  And talking about 'em.
Now, I'm not saying that Infocom has the same import of, say, the
Bible or King Lear.  But there -is- still an interest.
	There's the amusement angle: getting a glacier to do your
bidding in Zork II is kinda funny.
	There's the educational angle: any prospective IF writers can
look to see what even the masters missed.  (For example, the recently
discovered instantanious sleep timing troubles from Planetfall.)
	There's the public service angle.  The bug in Quarterstaff,
for example, threatens to make the whole game available.
	There's the FAQ angle.  By having a single known source of
these, it keeps folks from posting to the IF newsgroups:  "Hey!
Anyone else notice if you put item A in item B, then item B in item A,
the whole thing goes blooie?"
	If I needed to pick a single one, though, it'd probably have
to be for historical reasons.  Infocom prided itself on creating a
fully realized universe, and they succeeded more than most other game
companies (even the biggies like Magnetic Scrolls, IMO).  But every
once in a while, something fell through the cracks.  In that way,
Graham's pages aren't unlike the Nitpicker's Guide to Star Trek, or
pointing out how Luke Skywalker says, "Carrie!",  referring to the
actress rather than the character.
	In short, it is as valuless, yet irreplaceable, as all trivia.

Steven Marsh
marsh@nettally.com
	Keep your wise on the ode and your wands upon the heal.


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>>What is the value of knowing exactly how to reproduce every single bug in
every single Infocom release?
>>

     The value is kind of a cross between trivia, humour, and cheating.
     Love of trivia is hard to explain, but it's hardly unique to Infocom
gaming.  This is just a very specialized type of it.
     Humour?  Some of the bugs are just plain funny.  When you can detach your
hand to put on Ford's satchel, or get Arthur to say "You can't see any
invisible knight here," or 
     Cheating?  Well, that's a bit strong, but bugs can be a definite play-aid.
 If you can take all the spells in Sorcerer at the beginning of the game, or
open the trapdoor in Zork 1 from the inside at the beginning, or use the rug in
Beyond Zork to enter blocked areas, then you can either get through the game
faster, or do things that the designers never intended, like take the GOLMAC
spell out of the mine and play with it in other places.

     As far as the bit about needing to know which version of the game it's in,
and how it's different in different versions, that's just a courtesy to people
who read about it.  Most people don't have every version of every Infocom game,
they've usually just got one.  And they don't want to play halfway through a
game to look at a funny bug, only to find that it isn't in their copy of the
game.  They'd rather know that before they start.



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From: Duncan N Stevens <dns361@merle.acns.nwu.edu>
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Susan / Last Battle (was Magician's Nephew)
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On 10 Sep 1998, Adam J. Thornton wrote:

> >I certainly hope I would, but, er, clearly John Shelby Spong doesn't feel
> >that way. He was part of the Jesus Seminar, a gaggle of, mostly, academics
> >who got together to proclaim that the "historical Jesus" was really
> >something other than what they called the "Christ of faith"; they did this
> >by going through the Gospels and declaring that certain things were
> >legitimate and others weren't. What they came out with didn't make much
> >sense, of course (Jesus was supposedly a political revolutionary/wandering
> >mystic/crank/Gnostic/healer/Essene, we learn).
> 
> Well, any of these taken alone--and some combinations--would be a
> defensible historical position.

Barely, particularly the Essene (an obscure eschatological sect of
Judaism). What I was saying, and perhaps didn't make clear, is that
different members of the Jesus Seminar have all posited different ideas
about who Jesus "really" was--most of them by flipping through the
Gospels, taking a verse here and there and throwing aside lots and lots
and lots of stuff that doesn't agree with the argument. Another popular
approach is to use the extracanonical writings, all of which are dated
_much_ later than the canonical Gospels, many of which are fairly
ridiculous, and claim that they're more accurate. Why? Er, um, well, no
one reads them any more, so they must have been suppressed by the early
Church, so they must be more on the mark.

You think I'm exaggerating. I'm not. One of the "criteria" (not that they
followed them in any systematic way) for authenticity that the Jesus
Seminar used was "does it clash with the teachings of the early church".
If it does, you see, then Jesus must have really said it, but if it
doesn't, clearly the church just made it up and attributed it to Jesus.
The seminar folks went through the Gospels _voting_ on what they thought
was authentic (with color-coded beads--red was authentic, pink less so,
gray probably not, black no way), and produced a version of the Gospels
that purported to be a definitive statement. Needless to say, they've been
met mostly with derision--well-deserved, in my opinion.

The point is that just about all Christian scholars agree that the Gospels
were written as theological works, not eyewitness accounts. If Jesus was,
in fact, some political rabble-rouser that people thought was something
more (but was not), it's unlikely to come across from the Gospels,
because the Gospel writers clearly believed nothing of the kind. The
Gospels drew on a large store of oral history, and each Gospel selected
certain elements of the history for emphasis. (I'm leaving out the role of
divine inspiration here not because I don't care for/believe in it, but
because scholars can't account for it and therefore discount it.) Saying
that you've found the "real" historical Jesus in the Gospels, and claiming
that it's someone other than the Messiah, the crucified and risen Son of
God, is absurd because that's what the writers were obviously trying to
convey. I suppose it fits nicely with the postmodern appraoch to texts,
under which the reader knows better (or, at least, just as well) than the
author what's "really" going on. But it doesn't fit at all well with
common sense.

  But, er, all of that's pretty irrelevant
> the whether or not you believe Jesus to be the Saviour (at least, I don't
> see any _a priori_ reason you can't believe Jesus to have been some (I'm
> not sure about all, particularly since I don't know how compatible
> "political revolutionary," "Gnostic," and "Essene" are), which, if you
> *don't*, then what are you doing being a bishop?  But I guess that's what
> the rest of the Episcopal Church was asking too.

No, not as such. A Christian can certainly believe that Jesus had an
ill-documented career as a political revolutionary, and many believe that
that had something to do with the crucifixion. (That is, some folks
believe that the Gospel accounts attribute the impetus behind his death to
the Jews, when 'twas really the Roman authorities, out of dislike for the
Jews. I don't buy it--the Jewish writings at the time are quite emphatic
that Jesus falsely claimed to be the Messiah--but some say it.) But when
it gets into "Jesus was a political revolutionary, and that's it, and all
this extra stuff is just silly", and when you say, as Spong does, that the
Resurrection was a dream Peter had, well, it's time to find a new line of
work.

Duncan Stevens
d-stevens@nwu.edu
773-728-9721

The room is as you left it; your last touch--
A thoughtless pressure, knowing not itself
As saintly--hallows now each simple thing,
Hallows and glorifies, and glows between
The dust's gray fingers, like a shielded light.

--from "Interim," by Edna St. Vincent Millay




From straight@email.unc.edu Thu Sep 10 18:56:24 MET DST 1998
Article: 37144 of rec.games.int-fiction
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From: Michael Straight <straight@email.unc.edu>
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Susan / Last Battle (was Magician's Nephew)
Date: Thu, 10 Sep 1998 10:45:51 -0400
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On Tue, 8 Sep 1998, Andrew Plotkin wrote:

> That's a pretty rude statement to them. Watch it. (This is the linguistic
> point that *I* just tripped over -- most people associate "fantasy" with
> "not true", for some reason.)
> 
> (My definition might better be phrased as "things more true than real
> life", although that's a simplification. Does this explain why I was
> *not* denigrating religious people when I said I pretend that religion is 
> the same thing as fantasy?)

Lewis has a great essay (the title of which escapes me) in which he says
that myths (by which I *think* he means something very similar to what you
mean by fantasy) are "good dreams" that God gives humanity, and that the
life of Jesus -- God becoming a man, dying for the world, coming back to
life, etc. -- was an "incarnation" of those myths.  God became man and
myth became tangible.  

That's one of the reasons all the mythological characters appear in
Narnia.  Lewis believed (or at least hoped) that all the best of
humanity's mythological dreams would someday, not "come true" since they
are already true if they are good myths, but be made--'tangible' is the
best word I can think of.

SMTIRCAHIAGEHLT



From berrpm@aur.alcatel.com Fri Sep 11 17:24:44 MET DST 1998
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From: berrpm@aur.alcatel.com (Patrick M. Berry)
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Susan / Last Battle
Date: 11 Sep 1998 13:33:21 GMT
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In article <6suti6$5t2$1@copland.udel.edu>, conrad@copland.udel.edu (Jon A Conrad) writes:
> Patrick M. Berry <berrpm@aur.alcatel.com> wrote:
> 
> >But the books aren't *overtly* about Christianity, only symbolically.  There
> >is no mention of Christianity in them at all.  And one need not pay attention
> >to the allegory at all.  The books can simply be taken at face value, and I
> >imagine a lot of children do so.  
> 
> - The lion being a Lamb in the epilogue to one book, which leads to
> nothing in the story.
> - Aslan saying "you will know me in your own world by another name" (we're
> not told what).
> - The remark (by Polly?) in the last book to the effect that "In our world
> too, once a Stable was larger than the whole world outside it."  Quite the
> conversational non sequitur unless one already knows what she's talking
> about.

You're right; those are definitely allusions to Christian doctrine.  But
they're very much the exception in a series that has little to say about
real-world religion.  (For example, I don't recall anything being said
about whether the Pevensies attend church, or what the children's own
religious beliefs are.)

I don't claim to know what Lewis had in mind with these allusions, but
they strike me as being similar to the topical references in Disney movies,
which are usually aimed at the adults in the audience rather than the
children.  It does seem to me, though, that if Lewis's intent was to 
indoctrinate children with his own beliefs, he goes about it in a rather
feeble and ineffective manner.

> All these instances are saying "See, boys and girls? This nice story
> proves that what you're hearing in Sunday School is really true."

"Proves" is too strong a word.  Everyone who reads the Narnia books 
presumably knows that they are fiction, made up out of whole cloth by
an author.  You can write fiction that says whatever you want.  But 
doing so doesn't prove anything.

However, the Narnia books certainly dovetail well with orthodox Christian
beliefs, so the books might serve to reinforce previously existing
religious views.  I doubt that "Touched by an Angel" has made believers
out of any atheists, but people who were already religious seem to find
spiritual nourishment in it.  Perhaps Lewis was simply trying to write
a sort of "Chicken Soup for the Soul". 



From thornley@visi.com Fri Sep 11 17:25:34 MET DST 1998
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Subject: Re: Susan / Last Battle (was Magician's Nephew)
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From: thornley@visi.com (David Thornley)
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In article <6t9cgj$fvn$1@bartlet.df.lth.se>,
Magnus Olsson <mol@bartlet.df.lth.se> wrote:
>In article <Pine.HPP.3.93.980910121854.20208A-100000@merle.acns.nwu.edu>,
>Duncan N Stevens  <dns361@merle.acns.nwu.edu> wrote:
>>I think you mean Pascal's wager, specifically:
>>
>And of course Pascal left out one case, which really invalidates the
>whole reasoning:
>
>If God (or Gods) exists, and Christianity is *false*, then you're possibly
>in major trouble if you *do* live as a Christian during your life.
>
Not that I have any idea of what this has to do with IF, but:

When I read some of Pascal's writings, I noticed that he had this
firm belief that atheism made sense, and his particular brand of
Catholicism made sense, and nothing else did.  Apparently, Judaism,
Islam, Protestantism (or was it just heresy back then?), and so on
are supposed to be obviously wrong.

I quit partway through the Pensees because I was getting depressed
by them, so I never did find out whether he ever actually gave a
reason for this.

Oh, OK:

You are standing in front of a golden gate.  An angel, presumably
St. Peter, is standing in front of it.
>OPEN GATE
You can't get past St. Peter.
>PETER, OPEN GATE
St. Peter looks at you and says it's his job to let only the worthy
in, so he needs to find if you're worthy.

St. Peter asks "Did you keep the herring festival holy?"
>ASK PETER ABOUT HERRING FESTIVAL
St. Peter replies, "My personal favorite, but it got forgotten about
with all the death and resurrection hubbub."

St. Peter asks "Do you, and did you, believe in God?"
>PETER, YES
St. Peter replies, "That's good.  Always glad to hear that answer."

St. Peter asks "Why did you believe in God?  This is an important one."
>


Fill in the rest as you wish.


--
David H. Thornley                        | These opinions are mine.  I
david@thornley.net                       | do give them freely to those
http://www.thornley.net/~thornley/david/ | who run too slowly.       O-


From mccall@erols.com Sat Sep 12 16:22:56 MET DST 1998
Article: 37198 of rec.games.int-fiction
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From: mccall@erols.com (TenthStone)
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Susan / Last Battle (was Magician's Nephew)
Date: Sat, 12 Sep 1998 03:10:00 GMT
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anson@efortress.com (Anson Turner) caused this to appear in our collective
minds on Fri, 11 Sep 1998 17:05:13 -0500:

>In article
><Pine.SOL.3.91.980911132848.13357A-100000@godzilla2.acpub.duke.edu>, Adam
>Cadre <adamc@acpub.duke.edu> wrote:
>
>:> Would we believe Bill Clinton if he said he was a Republican?
>:
>:You mean he isn't?

After your frenetic graduation a year or so ago from graduate school
(University of Virginia, Constitutional Law), you began your youthful
dream of politics as an aide to a U.S. Senator, a senior Republican
named John Warner.  Brash, idealistic, romantic, you rushed to an
ispiring vision of selflessly making the world a better place.

Then came the scandals, and disaster.  The day of misfortune has finally
come, as Warner's chief of staff sends you to the White House.  "It's
only to deliver a message," you tell yourself uselessly:  as a young
woman about to entire such a nest of depravity, it's hard not to let the
anxiety creep in somewhere.

"I go there, I give the packet to Cal Thomas, and I get out."

West Wing Hall
	Several packs of secret service agents roam around here, sniffing
out assassins and troublemakers.  Pillars line the east and west walls,
standing tall between the multitude of doors.  A sense of forebodance
stretches towards you from the northern door, and you wish you'd worn
a longer skirt.

 >Examine the doors.
You gaze at the doors, hoping desperately for a sign bearing the word
"Thomas".  Anywhere.  But Cal's just a clerk for some cabinet official
who should be at the White House about this time.  Bernie could have
been more helpful with this.  Didn't he know about the situation here?

One of the doors, to the east, is a bathroom.

A rustling sound comes from the door to the north.

 >Look at the northern door.
A plaque near the obtrusive door reads "Oval Office."  It has been cracked
open slightly.

 >Go east.
The bathroom is locked, and you embarress yourself in the attempt.

An accented, eerily recognizable voice can be heard in the northern
office, although you can't make out the words:  "I ...ll ...fume."

 >Close northern door.
A glance from an agent shows you who's boss around here.

The northern door begins to swing open.

 >Exit.
You whirl towards the exit, beating a swift pace into the lobby.

Forum
	An ornately decorated marble chamber looks out through magnificent
windows upon the gardens of state.  To the north is a hall of doors.  Down
is the entrance to the White House.  A sign says "Library" near a western
portal.

The geography of the White House seems all wrong from what you remember
of your eighth grade class trip.

A figure in black whose face you can't make out emerges from the
now-opened door, far to the north.

 >Go west.
You walk through the gaping door to the west, and find yourself in a
pitch-dark room.  There are no visible exits besides the door to the
east..  No clues on light.  Only... a faint sound of breathing, muffled
by a wall.

Shoes squeaking, Black enters the forum to the east.

 >Hide!
You edge along the east wall until you find a corner in the northeast,
where you tuck your legs in as far as they can and hope your white
blouse isn't too obvious.

Black sticks his head through the door, and then removes it -- but his
shoes remain silent.

The breathing intensifies.  It's coming from somewhere near.

 >Look around.
Your eyes gradually grow accustomed to the light.   You see nothing
except the stream of light from the west door, and a table very close by.

You wonder at the misfortune that brought you here:  why did I have to
graduate Magna Cum Laude?  Why did I have to pursue politics instead of
working sixty hour weeks in some private sweatshop?  Why?

Black is still there.

 >Inspect table.
You discreetly, patiently look under the table, which is all you can see
without standing up.  There are several thousand binders of the sort your
office uses for important files.

The breathing suddenly gets very loud, and then subsides completely.

Black fidgets, walks north some, and pauses.  There are sounds of
conversation.

 >Search the binders.
You slowly shift through the binders as noiselessly as possible.  One
binder you recognise as an important Republican Party financial report
that you weren't allowed to read before.

You catch a bit of the conversation:  "But I ... per...."

Black seems to be growing forceful.

 >Get the report. Inventory.
Taken.

Black takes control of the conversation, and his tone shifts to
conspiratorial.

You are carrying a Republican Party Financial Report, a packet of
papers, and a near-empty bottle of perfume.

Black, with another person, walks north into the Oval Office.  The
breathing is now reapparent.

 >Open the bottle and throw it.
Opened.

The breathing grows significantly louder -- it's almost right behind you.

You stop breathing, and heave the bottle across the room.  Perfume
leaks out onto the marble floor;  the bottle doesn't break.

A secret door opens right next to you, and you continue to hold your
breath.  An overweight figure -- definitely not Black -- strides
confidently across the room, towards the leaking perfume, breathing
very heavily.

 >Go east.
You steal from the room before the heavyset figure discovers the
bottle.  The corridor is almost empty -- glancing at your watch,
you realise an hour has passed -- and Cal is certainly gone for the day.
Curses.

[Your score has increased by one point.]

-----------

The inperturbable TenthStone
tenthstone@hotmail.com          mccall@erols.com        mccallr@gsgis.k12.va.us


From lac@nu-world.com Sun Sep 13 11:09:22 MET DST 1998
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From: lac@nu-world.com (Lelah Conrad)
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Susan / Last Battle (was Magician's Nephew)
Date: Sun, 13 Sep 1998 05:34:59 GMT
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On Sun, 13 Sep 1998 02:30:38 GMT, mccall@erols.com (TenthStone) wrote:

 
>....  Martin Luther King didn't
>found or even lead the civil rights movement -- but his death gave it
>a moral imperative that made other viewpoints far more difficult to
>defend.  

Um, excuse me?  Didn't "lead"?  Can't agree there!  Where were you
when he was leading the march in Birmingham, writing from jail, or
delivering his famous speech in the capitol mall?  (Not born, perhaps.
:)

>Gandhi didn't lead religiously at all. 

Yes he did.  

I lived and studied in India during college -- one of my profs was
Joan Bondurant, who wrote the book _Conquest of Violence: The Gandhian
Philosophy of Conflict_, considered by many to be one of the best
books on this topic.  His invention and practice of the nonviolent
tactic satyagraha, which literally means (sanskrit) "grasping at (in
the sense of holding onto) truth",  was founded on principles of the
Hindu religion, especially the concept of *ahimsa*, nonviolence.
Though the movement was political, it was also quite religious. (Like
all good saints, he offended both the political/nonreligious people of
his time, as well as the religious right in Hinduism, who suspected
him of changing the religion.)  BTW, although Gandhi remained Hindu,
he stated he was quite taken with the Sermon on the Mount as a young
man.  He was interested particularly in the plight of the untouchable
caste, and found a rationale in Christian teaching to oppose it.
Gandhi was a good Hindu seeker of truth, and plumbed all the religious
teachings of the world for insight and wisdom.

>Jesus's contemporary
>effect had little to do with religion and much to do with political
>revolution (counter his philosophy or no).  

There are always those who believe he (or his followers) was/were
politically motivated, versus those who see the message as
religious/spiritual.  That he saw himself as strongly within the
Jewish religious tradition primarily is widely accepted in theological
circles.  His contemporary effect (a religious effect) began a process
within Judaism that only some time later developed into a split
between the "Christian" Jews and other groups.

>Moses was a political leader
>who, depending on your viewpoint, may or may not have been lucky enough
>to speak directly to god, but who established a firm code of law on
>a set of religious principles.
 
I too always think of Moses as more political than religious,
Charleton Heston notwithstanding :) but then again, Judaism has often
been an extremely political religion, not separating the spheres
neatly the way the Christian west has tried to (since the reformation
anyway) into church and state.

Lelah

Hindu/Catholic 


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From: lac@nu-world.com (Lelah Conrad)
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Susan / Last Battle (was Magician's Nephew)
Date: Sun, 13 Sep 1998 04:37:06 GMT
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On Sat, 12 Sep 1998 12:16:48 -0500, Duncan N Stevens
<dns361@merle.acns.nwu.edu> wrote:

>... I would also draw a distinction between
>religions, which are in essence human institutions, and the truths they
>represent or purport to represent. 

"When the finger points at the moon, the fool looks at the finger."  A
favorite Japanese proverb of mine.

>The best expression of this was
>Dietrich Bonhoeffer's "religionless Christianity", which sought to get rid
>of the sense that an individual has to filter his experience through the
>Church: the idea was that the "established" nature of the Christian church
>works against it, makes its adherents complacent, etc. Implicit in all
>this is that any religion, including Christianity, is capable of screwing 
>up its practice even if its beliefs are sound; even given that the
>revelation that they claim is, in fact, true, the religious themselves
>might not necessarily have the right idea. I suspect Lelah won't go along
>with this, since Bonhoeffer was _very_ Lutheran and Lelah is fairly
>Catholic, but I thought I'd mention it.

Oh, no, I agree with you.  Bonhoeffer was a bit of a "Zen Lutheran",
in my way of classing things.  He (and saint-people in other religious
traditions often do the same) essentially transcended the structure he
worked within ( in his case the Lutheran worldview) with his life.

The Catholic Church has always recognized that there are heroes and
saints who accomplish this. Its genius is its humaneness in trying  to
create intelligible structures for ordinary folk, structures that
encompass their lives and allow them to take a slower and lifelong
journey to the kind of sainthood that Bonhoeffer and others so
radically demonstrate by putting their lives on the line. (For those
of you out of the loop, Bonhoeffer was a member of a group of
Christians in Germany who finally decided to assassinate Hitler, and
were executed for it.  Two of his most famous works are "Letters and
Papers from Prison" and "Cost of Discipleship". )   Again, he's too
much of a heroic for me, a la Kierkegaard. Although I admire this
intense approach, I'm just fundamentally a humanist, appreciative of
the little moments, gentle epiphanies and slow processes of growth in
life.

Lelah

"The Catholic religious experience is sacramental: it encounters God
in the events, objects, and persons of every day.  The Catholic
imagination is analogical: it pictures God as being similar to these
events, objects, and persons.  The Catholic religious story is comic:
it believes in happy ends in which grace routs both evil and
injustice. The Catholic religous community is organic: it is based on
a dense network of local relationships that consititute the matrix of
everyday life." Andrew Greeley & Mary Greeley Durkin in _How To Save
the Catholic Church_.

[very idealistic, I know, yet something to try to live out. :) ] 
 
 


From ross_presser@NOSPAMimtek.com Tue Sep 29 21:27:24 MET DST 1998
Article: 37623 of rec.games.int-fiction
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From: ross_presser@NOSPAMimtek.com (Ross Presser)
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: WUMPUS
Message-ID: <3611332b.80457571@news.giganews.com>
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Xref: news.lth.se rec.games.int-fiction:37623

On 29 Sep 1998 18:12:18 +0200, mol@bartlet.df.lth.se (Magnus Olsson)
wrote:

>In article <erkyrathF01ro3.7t0@netcom.com>,
>Andrew Plotkin <erkyrath@netcom.com> wrote:
>>Ittai Golde (ittay@ubique.co.il.delthis) wrote:
>>> >>.... (startrek ?) --> Wumpus -> Adventure -> * AdventureLand -> Zork ->...
>>> >>
>>> >>* Will Rogue / Hack/ Nethack fit in here somewhere?
>>> >
>>> >Depends on what you mean with the arrows. Does "X --> Y" mean "X
>>> >predates Y in time" or "Y is a direct descendant of X" or "Y was
>>> >inspired by X"?
>>
>>> I mean inspired by, yes.
>>
>>I don't think the line was anywhere near as direct. Zork and Adventureland
>>(the Scott Adams game, right) were *both* inspired by Adventure; I doubt
>>Wumpus or Star Trek had much influence on any of the early IF. 
>>
>>(Except for geek in-jokes, of course. Zork originally described its
>>vampire bat as "a reject from Wumpus".)
>
>Well, I think ADVENT *may* have been inspired by WUMPUS, since WUMPUS
>was (AFAIK) the first game where you move between rooms on a map that
>is represented as a directed graph (as opposed to moving around on a
>coordinate grid - there might have been games of that type earlier).
>
>I don't think Zork was inspired by Adventureland. Isn't Zork several
>years older than the Scott Adams games?
>
>Rogue (which is the predecessor of Hack, Nethack and a bunch of similar
>games) takes quite a different approach to dungeon simulation than
>does ADVENT, and I have no idea about possible sources of inspiration
>here. All versions of Hack that I've played use the word "Zorkmid" as
>a unit of currency, but I don't know if that was in the original Rogue.

It wasn't.  In the original Rogue, coins were just called "gold
pieces", and since there were no shops, they had little importance.




remove NOSPAM to reply by email


From erkyrath@netcom.com Tue Oct  6 22:38:15 MET DST 1998
Article: 37834 of rec.games.int-fiction
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
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From: erkyrath@netcom.com (Andrew Plotkin)
Subject: Re: Dungeon 3.2, f2c
Message-ID: <erkyrathF0EyoH.27t@netcom.com>
Organization: ICGNetcom
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Xref: news.lth.se rec.games.int-fiction:37834

Magnus Olsson (mol@bartlet.df.lth.se) wrote:
> In article <erkyrathF09Jpx.Itv@netcom.com>,
> Andrew Plotkin <erkyrath@netcom.com> wrote:
> >I've got working C source now! I had a brief problem with segfaults (as
> >you know if my previous message did appear), but it was just a typo
> >implementing rnd().
> >
> >Now I want to see if I can clean up the source a *little*...

> The Fortran or the C sources? 

C. 

> Good luck in the latter case - the
> output from f2c really is the output of the next-to-last pass of a
> compiler, so it isn't really intended for human consumption...

Oh, from a coding standpoint it's a horrible crock -- it's all gotos. But
I was able to move a lot of the common definitions to a header file, for
example. That kind of cleaning up. 

I'm now working on changing the Fortran I/O calls to stdio.h (instead of
the glue implemented in the f2c library, which I don't want to include.)
That's nearly done, although there's going to be a lot of testing.

Then, when I know it works, I'll change all the stdio to Glk. :)

> Will you post the code to the IF-archive when you're finished?

Sure. Link with the Glk stdio library, and it'll be a usable C/stdio.h
source tree. (There's no status line anyway, so you're not losing
anything.) Plus it'll make good Mac and curses.h versions. 

--Z

-- 

"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the
borogoves..."


From erkyrath@netcom.com Wed Oct  7 10:39:07 MET DST 1998
Article: 37834 of rec.games.int-fiction
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
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From: erkyrath@netcom.com (Andrew Plotkin)
Subject: Re: Dungeon 3.2, f2c
Message-ID: <erkyrathF0EyoH.27t@netcom.com>
Organization: ICGNetcom
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Magnus Olsson (mol@bartlet.df.lth.se) wrote:
> In article <erkyrathF09Jpx.Itv@netcom.com>,
> Andrew Plotkin <erkyrath@netcom.com> wrote:
> >I've got working C source now! I had a brief problem with segfaults (as
> >you know if my previous message did appear), but it was just a typo
> >implementing rnd().
> >
> >Now I want to see if I can clean up the source a *little*...

> The Fortran or the C sources? 

C. 

> Good luck in the latter case - the
> output from f2c really is the output of the next-to-last pass of a
> compiler, so it isn't really intended for human consumption...

Oh, from a coding standpoint it's a horrible crock -- it's all gotos. But
I was able to move a lot of the common definitions to a header file, for
example. That kind of cleaning up. 

I'm now working on changing the Fortran I/O calls to stdio.h (instead of
the glue implemented in the f2c library, which I don't want to include.)
That's nearly done, although there's going to be a lot of testing.

Then, when I know it works, I'll change all the stdio to Glk. :)

> Will you post the code to the IF-archive when you're finished?

Sure. Link with the Glk stdio library, and it'll be a usable C/stdio.h
source tree. (There's no status line anyway, so you're not losing
anything.) Plus it'll make good Mac and curses.h versions. 

--Z

-- 

"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the
borogoves..."


From darin@usa.net.removethis Sun Oct 11 09:30:57 MET DST 1998
Article: 37886 of rec.games.int-fiction
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Subject: Re: Interesting Idea For Zorks I-III
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mccall@erols.com (TenthStone) writes:

> The problem is, whenever I get close to finishing Dungeon,
> the run-time MDL interpreter for the z-machine emulator
> executing in the Intercal run-time for C++ keeps returning
> that there's a syntax error.  But when I load the built-in
> text editor for the TI-82 emulator for MS-DOS, running
> in the x-windows emulation for Perl, I can't seem to find
> what I'm doing wrong.
> 
> Can anyone help me?

I think you're using the EBCDIC version of Intercal, which doesn't
deal with the upper half of DOS ASCII.  However, your TI-82 editor
will use some of those characters, which are out of range of the
translation tables.  Thus your parentheses are being converted to
brackets internally.  If you run kadb and start looking at the in core
file buffers, you should be able to fill in that half of the table
manually.

-- 
Darin Johnson
darin@usa.net.delete_me


From adam@princeton.edu Tue Oct 27 00:03:55 MET 1998
Article: 38414 of rec.games.int-fiction
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From: adam@princeton.edu (Adam J. Thornton)
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: [Announce] Once and Future Ships
Date: 24 Oct 1998 23:28:38 GMT
Organization: Princeton University
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And, for what it's worth, let's *really*, *really*, *really* not forget
Whizzard.

In fact, for the purposes of *this* argument, let's forget that he's the
author of _Once and Future_.

Let's instead remember that he's the guy who made Activision sit up and
take notice that IF wasn't really quite dead--I think it was largely his
doing that three of the Comp95 games ended up on Masterpieces.  It was
certainly his doing that the Masterpieces documentation got done as
thoroughly as it did, and remember who wrote the code for _ZTUU_.

Adam
-- 
adam@princeton.edu 
"There's a border to somewhere waiting, and a tank full of time." - J. Steinman


From dcornelson@placet.com Tue Oct 27 07:56:19 MET 1998
Article: 38298 of rec.games.int-fiction
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From: "David A. Cornelson" <dcornelson@placet.com>
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: [Announce] Once and Future Ships
Date: Sat, 24 Oct 1998 02:32:38 -0500
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CMP wrote in message <3630e135.0@news.bendnet.com>...
>Cascade Mountain officially serves notice that quality interactive fiction
>has returned in Once and Future, five years in the making and the product
of
>the meeting of two legendary minds--author Kevin Wilson, credited by many
as
>the catalyst of the rebirth of interactive fiction, and publisher Michael
>Berlyn, whose classic Infocom adventures set the standard by which computer
>games must ultimately be judged.


...and there are many others that have help the resurgence of Interactive
Fiction....

Mike Roberts: Creator and _maintainer_ of the TADS development system upon
which OaF was written. Once a licensed product, it has become freeware, and
is a very popular system with a new HTML-TADS version out as well.

Graham Nelson: Creator of The Z-Machine compiler, Inform, which seems to be
the most popular system currently in use and also author of some excellent
IF.

Andrew Plotkin: For pushing Interactive Fiction into less of a 'game' genre
and more of a 'prose' genre. This was significant because one of the reasons
IF had become stagnant was we had all gotten tired of mazes and treasure
hunts. It also showed that IF has a place on bookshelves, not just games
shelves.

The maintainers of FTP.GMD.DE, the IF-Archive.

The newsgroups rec.games.int-fiction and rec.arts.int-fiction.

The internet.

Jarb




From adam@princeton.edu Tue Oct 27 16:32:00 MET 1998
Article: 38269 of rec.games.int-fiction
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From: adam@princeton.edu (Adam J. Thornton)
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Done with the Comp 98 games
Date: 22 Oct 1998 04:57:09 GMT
Organization: Princeton University
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In article <19981021202712.21940.00001627@ngol01.aol.com>,
Doeadeer3 <doeadeer3@aol.com> wrote:
>In article <bhines-2110981711070001@lax-ts1-h1-40-186.ispmodems.net>,
>bhines@san.rr.com (Ben) writes:
>>Ok, this I take issue with. "unfairly downrated" because you didnt like
>>it? huh? To me, my comp ratings are a reflection of what I think of the
>>game, as a whole. If a game is written and coded *perfectly*, but I
>>dislike the story a lot, I feel I am perfectly justified in giving the
>>game a 5.
>I agree. We can't help but bring all of ourselves, our likes and dislikes to
>the rating process. But this is fair, because some of us may have very good
>taste.

The game was better coded than some that got a 6, and yet I'm giving it a
3, because I found the story so bitter and repugnant.  The author even
warned me in the intro that I probably wouldn't like the game if I didn't
want to experience <X>.  He was right: I didn't want to experience it, and
I didn't like the game.  I didn't get very far in the game, and then I
scratched my head in puzzlement, decided I wasn't having fun, and dumped it
with TXD.

Having done so and read all the game's prose, I came to the conclusion
that, in fact, the game was what I thought it was and I really found it
distasteful.  However, I didn't find it *disturbingly* distasteful, just
drearily so.  The difference (for me) between _Delusions_--which had its
icky moments, but really, on the whole, *worked*--and _In The End_, which,
as far as I'm concerned, *didn't*.  There was another game this year that
had some creepy moments, but it *really, really* worked for me.  After
getting through it, man oh man did I ever feel frosty.  Alas, the game I
gave the 3 to...did not make me feel frosty.  Nor did it make me feel
steamed.  I just didn't like it and didn't find any reason I wanted to play
it.  If I'd found bits of the prose that either surprised me or really made
me think--there was at least one game this year that did both--I could have
found something that salvaged it.  But I didn't.

The reason I'm agonizing over downrating it is that a) I was warned, and b)
it seems technically competent.  And somehow it seems like those two ought
to get it more than 3 out of 10; the reason I disliked it so intensely
probably has more to do with me than with the game.

Adam

-- 
adam@princeton.edu 
"There's a border to somewhere waiting, and a tank full of time." - J. Steinman


From dmss100@york.ac.uk Tue Oct 27 17:09:55 MET 1998
Article: 38479 of rec.games.int-fiction
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From: Den of Iniquity <dmss100@york.ac.uk>
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Beginners (was: done with Comp98)
Date: Tue, 27 Oct 1998 15:01:21 +0000
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On Sun, 25 Oct 1998, Andrew Plotkin wrote:
>Some people do enter pseudonymously. It doesn't always help. (Graham
>Nelson entered pseudonymously last year, and a lot of us twigged
>immediately -- his style is distinctive.)

There was also the fact that all the game authors found out immediately in
an administrative error. 

>I've never felt there was any real bias towards "established" IF authors,
>which is the usual reason anonymity is proposed, so I've never thought
>there was much reason to stress it. Are you bringing it up for some other
>reason?

Well I think it's clear that "established" IF authors have no advantage
over beginners except in experience; in fact it looks like the established
authors are less interested in the competition for the sake of winning -
last year Zarf and Graham both submitted entries which were pretty much
guaranteed not to place highly.

I've said it before and I think it's worth saying it again. Part of the
joy of the text-fire hoax was guessing 'whodunit'. Anonymity in the annual
competition would at least give us something to ponder over during the
voting period. A first-time entrant could feel rightly proud if someone
attributed his work to Zarf or Graham, for examples. (Likewise, Zarf and
Graham might take a look and indignantly insist that You've *got* to be
joking. Imagine the fun. We could have _proper_ flame-wars.)

But that's the only good reason for it, IMO.

-- 
Den



From erkyrath@netcom.com Tue Oct 27 17:10:45 MET 1998
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From: erkyrath@netcom.com (Andrew Plotkin)
Subject: Re: Beginners (was: done with Comp98)
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HarryH (harryh@iu.net.idiotic.com.skip.idiotic.com) wrote:

> It's not very fair to the author if someone from outside the target
> audience (let's take, for example, action games crowd) criticize the
> game just because it's not to their liking (shoot-em-up).
>
> IF works are right now uncategorized. You don't know what kind of games
> you're playing until you play them. A warning upfront is an attempt to
> categorize. If you freely ignore those warnings, you're to blame, not
> the author.

And then:

> My post simply says that the entries should be categorized (i.e. drama,
> tragedy, horror, romance, sci-fi), and let the judges pick and choose 
> accordingly. The audience that we have here is predominantly
> scifi/fantasy audience. Let's expand that audience a little bit more.

I have always been *vehemently* opposed to any kind of categorization in
the competition. 

One, you can't agree on categories. Even if you allow works to be in more
than one category, people invent new categories every year. So you're
always judging -- or rather, pre-judging -- this year's works by last
year's categories. This doesn't help. 

Second, you can't agree on what works go in what categories. There is *no*
widely-accepted distinction between science fiction and fantasy. (There
are lots of definitions, but no single one is held by, for example, even
half the readers of rec.arts.sf.written.) (A group which, *by necessity*,
discusses both sci-fi and fantasy works.)

Third, why should people go in with (as I said) pre-judgements? Under the
current system, you start every game with a totally blank slate of
opinion. (Ok, "starting" includes reading the title, to be technical.)
Everything after that is based on what the author communicates through the
game. I *like* that system. 

Fourth, if you want to stop playing a work because you despise its genre,
and you feel you can't rate it honestly, that's already legitimate. The
rules say you should rate as many games as you can, giving them an equal
chance. If you feel you can't give a game an equal change, and you can't
honestly rate it, then don't. So the solution you propose is really
already available.

Fifth, or rather in summary of all the above: The current rating system is
absolutely as direct and open-ended as it can be. "How good is it?"
Everybody has a different definition. Therefore, the competition is a
microcosm of how a game would really be accepted, if it were just uploaded
to GMD.DE without comment. In that sense, it's *meaningless* for a vote to
be unfair. Target audience is part of the competition, as is title, genre,
spelling, and anything else that might possibly affect a player's opinion
of "how good is it?"

--Z

-- 

"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the
borogoves..."


From adamc@acpub.duke.edu Tue Oct 27 17:11:27 MET 1998
Article: 38382 of rec.games.int-fiction
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From: Adam Cadre <adamc@acpub.duke.edu>
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Beginners (was: done with Comp98)
Date: Sun, 25 Oct 1998 14:51:41 -0500
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Lelah Conrad wrote:
> I disagree.  I would still like to see a first time competitor's
> category.  It is done in other kinds of competitions.  If you didn't
> want to enter in that category, you wouldn't have to.  I don't think a
> newcomer's category is condescending at all.  I've had great fun
> entering my roses in rose shows in the novice categories, and have won
> some ribbons.  It didn't bother me in the least that I couldn't/didn't
> compete with the big guys.  

As long as we're discussing this, I might as well bring up the other 
issue that generally rears its figurative head whenever this topic is 
broached: sure, newcomers who want to play with the big kids would be 
welcome to enter the main comp, but how do you decide who gets to enter 
the beginners' comp?  Would only first games count?  If so, you wouldn't 
qualify, since your chicken-comp game would make you a seasoned veteran.  
First time entering the contest then?  This would open the pool to, say, 
Kevin Wilson: he may have written half a dozen games, including one of 
the biggest to come down the pike in many a moon, but he's never been a 
comp entrant.  You might then say that Kevin would never make such a 
choice, but there are others for whom the question of which comp to enter 
might not be so clear-cut.  And then we have the aftermath to consider: 
the results have been released, and the winner of the beginners' contest 
is deluged with messages like, "You should've entered the main comp -- 
you would've won that one too!" while one of the less fortunate finishers 
in the main comp might be muttering, "Eeeagh! I came in last! Should've 
entered the beginners' comp."

There is, of course, another solution if you're a beginner who wants to 
avoid the slings and arrows of cruel comp judges: release your game at 
some other time.  You might not win a jar of Ass-Kickin' Peanuts, but the 
chances of receiving vicious comments such as I am wont to give to the 
comp games I don't like are quite slim: for the most part, the only 
people who take the time to write about non-comp games are those with 
either positive comments or genuinely constructive criticism.  And if you 
find yourself with a surprise hit on your hands and wish you'd saved your 
game for a venue in which you might stand to be rewarded: hey, that's 
what the Xyzzies are for.

  -----
 Adam Cadre, Anaheim, CA
 http://www.retina.net/~grignr


From erkyrath@netcom.com Wed Oct 28 18:44:00 MET 1998
Article: 38505 of rec.games.int-fiction
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From: erkyrath@netcom.com (Andrew Plotkin)
Subject: Re: [Announce] Once and Future Ships
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Emerick Rogul (emerick@csa.bu.edu) wrote:
> Tom Alaerts writes:

> :: Once and Future is available exclusively through Cascade Mountain
> :: Publishing. To order, visit their website at
> :: http://www.cascadepublishing.com or use their toll-free order line,
> :: 800-981-6889. $29.95 plus shipping & handling.

> : I am tempted,  but $29.95 for one text adventure? More than the almost
> : complete infocom collection? Even if it's the long-awaited Avalon? Even if
> : it includes infocom-like gimmicks? Even if there are many excellent pieces
> : of IF on gmd for downloading?  I don't know...

> But this is comparable to the prices of new Infocom text adventures when
> they were sold ten years ago (actually, it's probably slightly
> cheaper).  That's pretty good -- zero inflation for 10 years.  And
> yes, the Infocom Masterpieces sells for the same price, but an Adobe
> Acrobat document of the "goodies" doesn't hold a candle to the real
> thing.

The whole question of what to charge for software -- particularly game
software -- drives stable, rational hackers into gibbering fits.

Think it's a classic Econ-101 monotonic curve, where increasing the price
smoothly decreases the unit sales, and vice versa? Ha. Ha ha. Too high
makes you look greedy, but too low makes you look like crap -- not worth
the player's time. You're compared to other games of the same genre -- or,
depending on your marketing, compared to the price of books, or movies, or
CDs. 

This, of course, is a simplistic analysis; I'm not taking into account the
different market segments. (Gamers? People who were gamers in the 80s?
People with computers who don't buy modern commercial games? Fantasy novel
readers?) And I don't know anything about how Cascade is marketing this,
or who they're marketing to. So I have *no* idea if $30 is the right
price.

--Z



-- 

"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the
borogoves..."


From lpsmith@rice.edu Thu Oct 29 12:22:29 MET 1998
Article: 38564 of rec.games.int-fiction
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From: lpsmith@rice.edu (Lucian Paul Smith)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction,rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Useful Classifications
Date: 28 Oct 1998 23:25:48 GMT
Organization: Rice University, Houston, Texas
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The talk about tagging games with genres/blurbs/whatever got me thinking
about useful ways to classify games.  We have Zarf's 'cruelness' scale
which can tell us how much you'll have to back up and redo sections of the
game.  This could be quite useful to know before you begin (although, of
course, it can be fun to discover this for yourself.)  Quoting from one of
his posts about it (http://x13.dejanews.com/getdoc.xp?AN=170708419):

-------------
Merciful: You only ever need one save file, and that only if you want to
turn the computer off and go to sleep. You never need to restore to an
earlier game.

Polite: You only need one save game, because if you do something fatally
wrong, it's blatantly obvious and you'll *know* better than to
save afterwards.

Tough: There are things you can do which you'll have to save before
doing. But you'll think "Ah, I'd better save before I do this."

Nasty: There are things you can do which you'll have to save before
doing. After you do one, you'll think "Oh, bugger, I should have saved."

Cruel: You think "I should have saved back in the third room. Now I'll
have to start over."
-------------

Inky (ahem: Dan Shiovitz) started me thinking about another scale, this
one for how 'puzzle-less' the game was.  He came up with 1-3, and I filled
out the rest:

1:  If you hit 'Z' repeatedly, you will beat the game.
2:  If you do the obvious thing, you will beat the game.
3:  There are puzzles, but they are all seamlessly integrated into the
      plot.
4:  There are puzzles that only tangentially related to the plot.
5:  There are puzzles, and there might be a plot, but never the twain
      shall meet.

Are there other things you might want to know before playing a game?
PC identity, perhaps?  That doesn't easily fit to a single scale, perhaps
because there are different forces involved:

The amount to which the PC is defined by the game (generic to fully
individualized)

The amount to which the player can bring their own characteristics to the
PC (from none at all to complete immersion; gender would be a typical
example of this)

The amount to which the game responds differently to different aspects of
the PC's definition, on both of the two previous scales.

Any others?  Comments on the above?

-Lucian


From marsh@nettally.com Sat Oct 31 14:55:35 MET 1998
Article: 38641 of rec.games.int-fiction
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From: marsh@nettally.com (Steven Marsh)
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Troll Buffet
Date: Fri, 30 Oct 1998 21:07:51 GMT
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<snip>

I am -so- disappointed.  By the header, I had visions of a Trollish
version of Jimmy Buffet... y'know, with songs like:

Cheeseburger and Battle Axe
GUEville
Brown-eyed Grue
Why Don't We Get Drunk (and Chew)

<sigh>  Oh, well... perhaps we'll have another IF MP3 floating around
here before too long. :b

(Oh, and the original poster was right: don't feed trolls.)

Steven Marsh
marsh@nettally.com
Who wonders if any of the British IFers are going to get this.


From gkw@pobox.com Wed Nov  4 16:31:49 MET 1998
Article: 38696 of rec.games.int-fiction
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From: gkw@pobox.com (Gerry Kevin Wilson)
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: [OaF] >ask merlin about spirits.  Not a spoiler.
Date: 3 Nov 1998 16:15:43 GMT
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Hmm, there seems to be an aggravating little bug in the game which prevents
you from getting the following info, so I'm posting it here. Love those bugs.

I must've forgotten a 'place-holder' noun. In any event, here is the omitted
text.  When you combine this with the info in the manual, you should be
able to use Excalibur to its fullest potential.

--------

>ask merlin about spirits

"You can command the sword to summon the ghost of either Launcelot
or Galahad to serve you for a time."

----
G. Kevin Wilson: Freelance Writer and Game Designer.  Resumes on demand.




From graemecree@aol.com Sat Nov  7 10:28:46 MET 1998
Article: 38754 of rec.games.int-fiction
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From: graemecree@aol.com (GraemeCree)
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Infocom Meets Dark Shadows
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Xref: news.lth.se rec.games.int-fiction:38754

     This might amuse a few people.  We run an Online Role-playing game based
on the old ABC Gothic Horror Soap Opera, Dark Shadows.  In a story we did a
couple of months ago, one of my characters in the story was the witch
Angelique.  When I was assigned a couple of solo scenes in which to cast
spells, I naturally thought of taking spells right out of Infocom's Enchanter
Trilogy, and I thought people here might be interested in seeing these scenes. 
Except for the KIREMIL spell, each one mentioned comes straight out of one of
the games or documentation (one even comes from Robin Bailey's Infocom
novelization of Enchanter, and another from Zork:  Grand Inquisitor).

     For a little background, the sim is like an RPG, but without dice or
random elements.  A script outline is passed out to everyone beforehand,
listing characters for each scene, and a general description of what is
supposed to happen.  Each scene has a time limit, and everyone ad-libs their
dialogue based on the script outline.  There's a website for the sim itself at
http://members.aol.com/elkabong86/dssim/ and one focusing in depth on one of
the stories we did (a Dark Shadows/Scooby Doo crossover) at
http://members.aol.com/quentncree/scooby/ if anyone wants to download a
complete story to get a better idea of how it works.

     As for Dark Shadows itself, probably a lot of people remember it. 
Barnabas Collins was cursed in 1795 to live as a vampire, eventually chained
into his coffin, and released by a graverobber in 1967 when the story took
place.  They did several stories based on time travel, and also two based on
something they called Parallel Time (basically an alternate universe).  They
would open a door in the abandoned wing of the house and find a gateway to an
alternate dimension where their own counterparts lived, albeit with slightly
different personalities and relationships to each other.  A lot of our
storylines are based on Parallel Time, since there is no need to have a direct
relation to stories shown on TV, and we can alter the characters personalities,
jobs, or relationships however we see fit.

     In this story, A Seaview to a Kill, I was playing two characters:  Burke
Devlin, a brooding hero from the early episodes played by Mitchell Ryan (who
currently plays Edward Montgomery on Dharma & Greg), and Angelique, aka
Cassandra, the witch who had put the vampire curse on Barnabas Collins in 1795.
 In the original show, she had come to the present, kept alive by a magic
portrait, married Roger Collins, to ingratiate herself with the present day
family, and wreak mischief on Barnabas.  As a Parallel Time story, we threw in
a few wrinkles to differentiate it from the TV version.  In ours,
Angelique/Cassandra actually gradually lost interest in Barnabas (who was
actually something of a prat in the show anyway) over the course of the story
and came to prefer Roger, who was supposed to be only a pawn in the game.


     In this first scene, from episode 2, Cassandra has just returned, and
discovered Barnabas trying to romance the ingenue governess Victoria Winters
and remake her in the image of Josette Collins, his 18th century fling. 
Cassandra, wanting Barnabas to suffer the pain of rejection from her, tries to
cast a love spell on her to make her interested in one of two other people. 
Enter Infocom, and one Chevaux brand spell book to the rescue.

   Vikkie Gee:      ~~~ EPISODE 2, ACT 1, BEGIN SCENE 4~~~
   GraemeCree:   CASSANDRA:  (Flipping through spell book, looking at spells)
   GraemeCree:   CASSANDRA:  REZROV - open even locked or enchanted objects
   GraemeCree:   CASSANDRA:  FROTZ - cause object to give off light
   GraemeCree:   CASSANDRA:  TANSEY - predict weather with 50% accuracy
   GraemeCree:   CASSANDRA:  Hmph!
   GraemeCree:   CASSANDRA:  BOZBAR - eradicate lice infestation in ospreys
   GraemeCree:   CASSANDRA:  Ah, here it is!
   GraemeCree:   CASSANDRA:  (chanting)  Foolish Miss Winters, make your
choize...
   GraemeCree:   CASSANDRA:  Burke or Peter, one of these boyz.
   GraemeCree:   CASSANDRA:  For one of these two, you will be fallin'z...
   GraemeCree:   CASSANDRA:  Anyone but Barnabas Collinz.
   GraemeCree:   CASSANDRA:  One of these two, you'll really like.  But
Barnabas you'll tell to take a hike.
   GraemeCree:   CASSANDRA:  (grimaces)
   GraemeCree:   CASSANDRA:  (thinks)  Ugh!  The worst part about magic is the
impromptu "poetry".
   GraemeCree:   CASSANDRA:  (satisfied)  Hmph!  Miss Winters will now fall
wildly in love; and with someone, who will treat her much better than Barnabas
would (not that I care about that).
   GraemeCree:   CASSANDRA:  Barnabas will get his comeuppance, and know the
pain he inflicted on me.
   GraemeCree:   CASSANDRA:  (feeling misunderstood)  To think that I should do
her a FAVOUR after the way she reacted to me earlier.
   Vikkie Gee:     ~~~ END ACT 1~~~


     Moving right along, in episode 4, vampire hunters are hot on Barnabas'
trail.  Since Cassandra only wants to make his life miserable, not see him
killed, she casts a spell to protect him.  Unfortunately, it doesn't work quite
as planned, and there's no Infocom Tech Support line to make it right.

   Vikkie Gee:     ~~~EPISODE 4, ACT 1, BEGIN SCENE 3~~~
   GraemeCree:   CASSANDRA:  (gazes away from her magic mirror)
   GraemeCree:   CASSANDRA:  (sigh)  Barnabas is in trouble again, and as usual
I must get him out of it...
   GraemeCree:   CASSANDRA:  (flipping pages)  I really MUST get around to
organizing my spell book some day.
   GraemeCree:   CASSANDRA:  Or at least alphabetizing it.
   GraemeCree:   CASSANDRA:  (reading) "GNUSTO - write a magic spell into a
spell book."  No....
   GraemeCree:   CASSANDRA:  "BLORB - safely protect a small object as though
in a strong box."  No, that one isn't necessarily safe on living things.
   GraemeCree:   CASSANDRA:  "FWEEP - cause caster to turn into a bat." 
(giggle)
   GraemeCree:   CASSANDRA:  "CLEESH - change a creature into a small
amphibian." (smiles as if remembering)
   GraemeCree:   CASSANDRA:  Honestly, there's so much FLUFF in here!
   GraemeCree:   CASSANDRA:  "DRILBO - strip a floor of yellowed wax."
   GraemeCree:   CASSANDRA:  "NERZO - balance checkbook."
   GraemeCree:   CASSANDRA:  "CONBAK - build strong bodies 12 different ways."
   GraemeCree:   CASSANDRA:  (rips that page out of the book)
   GraemeCree:   CASSANDRA:  Hmmm!  "GASPAR - provide for your own
resurrection."
   GraemeCree:   CASSANDRA:  (using her best study habits, Cassandra learns the
Gaspar spell)
   GraemeCree:   CASSANDRA:  May come in handy, but we're still not any nearer
protecting Barnabas.
   GraemeCree:   CASSANDRA:  Eureka!
   GraemeCree:   CASSANDRA:  "KIREMIL - cast spells without the use of poetry."
   GraemeCree:   CASSANDRA:  (Cassandra casts the Kiremil spell on herself)
   GraemeCree:   CASSANDRA:  "GOLMAC - travel temporally."  Wouldn't Mr.
Bradford be interested in this?
   GraemeCree:   CASSANDRA:  "MELBOR - Protect magic users from harm by evil
beings."  Hmmmmm.....
   GraemeCree:   CASSANDRA:  The Sheriff and his men may not qualify as "evil
beings".  These spells can be unpredictable at times.
   GraemeCree:   CASSANDRA:  I CAN'T risk anything going wrong!  I must keep
looking.
   GraemeCree:   CASSANDRA:  "GIZGUM - predict visits by relatives."  This one
is a keeper!
   GraemeCree:   CASSANDRA:  "GUNCHO - banish the victim to another plane of
existence."
   GraemeCree:   CASSANDRA:  (smirks)  These two together could be VERY useful.
   GraemeCree:   CASSANDRA:  "OZMOO - survive unnatural death."  Hmmmmm.
   GraemeCree:   CASSANDRA:  That MIGHT work...  But wait!
   GraemeCree:   CASSANDRA:  YES!  This one here!  Protect being from lethal
attack by creating a diversion!
   GraemeCree:   CASSANDRA:  Effective and safe!  (Angelique casts this spell)
   GraemeCree:   CASSANDRA:  (sits back with a satisfied smile on her face)
   Vikkie Gee:     ~~~END SCENE 3, BEGIN SCENE 4~~~


     Whoops!  The "diversion" that the spell caused was the near-lethal
wounding of Roger by the Sheriff's men.  Told you those spells were
unpredictable.  The bedside vigil in the hospital shows hope fading, and since
there is no healing spell as such in the Enchanter Trilogy, she improvises one
using a unique combination of existing spells.  Naturally, it fails miserably,
so she relies on using one old spell in a new way.  Bingo, success!  There's
even a footnote in the tradition of Hitchhiker's Guide and Stationfall.  She
should get a merit badge for this!

   Vikkie Gee:   ~~~ EPISODE 6, ACT 1, BEGIN SCENE 2~~~
   MagdaRom:     ROGER: (still in a coma)
   GraemeCree:   CASSANDRA:  (feverishly flips through spell book)
   GraemeCree:   CASSANDRA:  (glances over at Roger, whose condition looks
pretty bad)
   GraemeCree:   CASSANDRA:  Blast!  There's not a single healing spell in the
entire book!
   GraemeCree:   CASSANDRA:  (to herself)  Sigh.  I haven't had occasion to do
much healing until now.
   GraemeCree:   CASSANDRA:  (flips pages, and concocts an idea)
   GraemeCree:   CASSANDRA:  BAYALA - bodily deformation.
   GraemeCree:   CASSANDRA:  YONK - augment the power of certain spells.
   GraemeCree:   CASSANDRA:  BOOZNIK - Reverse spells in spellbook.
   GraemeCree:   CASSANDRA:  (Using her best study habits, Cassandra memorizes
the Yonk spell)
   GraemeCree:   CASSANDRA:  (Using her best study habits, Cassandra memorizes
the Booznik spell twice)
   GraemeCree:   CASSANDRA:  (Cassandra casts the Booznik spell on her
spellbook, reversing the effects of every spell)
   GraemeCree:   CASSANDRA:  (Cassandra casts the (un-Boozniked) Yonk spell on
the Alayab (Bayala backwards) spell)
   GraemeCree:   CASSANDRA:  This MUST work! Bodily deformation becomes bodily
restoration, with extra power.
   GraemeCree:   CASSANDRA:  (Cassandra casts the Yonked Alayab spell on Roger.
The words of the spell glow brightly for a moment).
   GraemeCree:   CASSANDRA:  (crushed)  It hasn't WORKED!  His nose looks a
little better, but it hasn't healed him!
   GraemeCree:   CASSANDRA:  (Casts the 2nd Booznik spell on the book to
restore spells to normal function)
   GraemeCree:   CASSANDRA:  Sigh!  (feeling completely defeated, knowing that
Roger won't last much longer)
   GraemeCree:   CASSANDRA:  WAIT!  (glances at open book and spies the Gaspar
spell that she had memorized in episode 4)
   GraemeCree:   CASSANDRA:  GASPAR - provide for your own resurrection.
   GraemeCree:   CASSANDRA:  It might work!  It HAS to work!
   GraemeCree:   CASSANDRA:  (Cassandra gently takes Roger's hand in hers and
casts the Gaspar spell on both of them)
   GraemeCree:   CASSANDRA:  (Looking around cautiously, Cassandra withdraws a
hidden dagger from her bodice)
   GraemeCree:   CASSANDRA:  (Walking slowly to the bed, Angelique holds the
naked point of the blade poised over Roger's heart)
   GraemeCree:   CASSANDRA:  (Cassandra closes her eyes.  Her lips move
slightly. With anyone else, one might almost think she was praying)
   GraemeCree:   CASSANDRA:  (pause)
   GraemeCree:   CASSANDRA:  (With a jerk, Cassandra plunges the point of the
blade into Roger's heart)
   GraemeCree:   CASSANDRA:  (Roger noisily expires).
   GraemeCree:   CASSANDRA:  (Cassandra watches, visibly trembling)
   Vikkie Gee:   <<< 2 minute warning>>>
   GraemeCree:   CASSANDRA:  (A blue and very expensive looking glow surrounds
both Cassandra and Roger)
   GraemeCree:   CASSANDRA:  (Roger begins breathing again!)
   GraemeCree:   CASSANDRA:  It worked!  IT WORKED!!
   GraemeCree:   CASSANDRA:  (Collapses into a nearby chair, completely drained
>from the tension)
   GraemeCree:   CASSANDRA:  (to herself) The spell has brought him back to
life, and with stable life signs!
   MagdaRom:     ROGER:  ::groggy:: My wife....where is Cassandra?
   GraemeCree:   FOOTNOTE 1:  "It became necessary to destroy the village in
order to save it."  (Attributed to an unnamed sergeant in Vietnam)
   GraemeCree:   CASSANDRA:  Roger?  ROGER, darling!!
   MagdaRom:     ROGER:  Cassandra, is that you, darling?
   Vikkie Gee:   <<< 1 minute warning>>>
   MagdaRom:     ROGER:  Oh, darling, I couldn't bear to leave you...
   GraemeCree:   CASSANDRA:  Roger, don't try to move.
   GraemeCree:   CASSANDRA:  It's all right.  It's all RIGHT!  You're not going
anywhere.
   MagdaRom:     ROGER:  Where am I?
   GraemeCree:   CASSANDRA:  You're in the hospital, dear.
   GraemeCree:   CASSANDRA:  You had a bit of an accident, but it's going to be
all right.
   MagdaRom:     ROGER:  ::weakly:: I would be dead if it weren't for you...
   MagdaRom:     ROGER:  All I could think of was you, dear...
   GraemeCree:   CASSANDRA:  (embarrassed)  Me?  Why, I'm no doctor.  It's Dr.
Lang who's been taking such good care of you.
   Vikkie Gee:   ~~~ END SCENE 2, BEGIN SCENE 3~~~




From Avrom_Faderman@email.msn.com Mon Nov 16 10:03:50 MET 1998
Article: 38844 of rec.games.int-fiction
From: "Avrom Faderman" <Avrom_Faderman@email.msn.com>
Subject: Once and Future Impressions (no spoilers)
Date: Sun, 15 Nov 1998 18:12:34 -0500
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Hi all,

OK, I've finished OaF, and thought I'd send out my basic impressions of it.
I'll try to avoid spoilers;  I don't think I need them.

Overall, a very satisfying game.  The one way in which it's really unique,
to my knowledge, is the scope.  This game is *big*.  It's long, varied, with
lots of interesting stuff to do and see.

The attempts at artistry are mixed but overall work.  The relatively terse
room descriptions are not a problem.  GKW's writing style is clear and
evocative enough that even in a few lines, you get pretty vivid impressions
of the magical world through which you're traveling.  The "cut" scenes work
a bit less well.  I'm not sure how I feel about Frank editorializing at me
(like he does with the Straw Man).  I know he's a definite,
non-stand-in-for-the-player character, but it seems to me that some of the
stories would be a lot more interesting and subtle if the morals were left
implicit.

The puzzles, though generally a bit easy, are *clever*.  My praise
especially for the third level of the Mountain King and for the entire raven
sequence.

I've written to Mike Berlyn directly about the following (I wasn't sure
whether to contact him or GKW, but he said he'd forward appropriate things
to Whizzard).  The game's single biggest flaw, as it stands, is one that's
fortunately pretty easy to fix (compared to, say, bad design at least):  It
still has a lot of bugs.  Not many compared to the average, sure, but a lot
considering that it's a commercial release game.

Fortunately, most of the bugs aren't serious.  I only encountered one that,
if you run into it, makes it impossible to complete the game.  And none of
them seemed to make it too *easy* to complete the game (a la butterfly bug
in Beyond Zork).  Most just involved jarring missing responses or weird
side-effects of actions (there's an "object-disappearing" bug that I asked
about in another post, but it doesn't affect anything, fortunately).  And
the last couple are very minor and easily removable plot inconsistencies--a
bit of the game contradicts a bit of the packaging, and something you can do
in the game will make a bit of the "you have one" cut scene inexplicable.

But overall, this is a very good game, well worth the money and its status
(IIAC) as the first fully commercial post-Infocom all-text game.

Avrom Faderman





From Avrom_Faderman@email.msn.com Mon Nov 16 10:04:51 MET 1998
Article: 38852 of rec.games.int-fiction
From: "Avrom Faderman" <Avrom_Faderman@email.msn.com>
References: <unqWs1OE#GA.211@upnetnews05> <owls-1511981931480001@owls.vip.best.com>
Subject: Re: Beyond Zork bug? (Spoilers)
Date: Mon, 16 Nov 1998 00:13:51 -0500
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JID wrote in message ...
>In article <unqWs1OE#GA.211@upnetnews05>, "Avrom Faderman"
><Avrom_Faderman@email.msn.com> wrote:
>
>>And none of
>>them seemed to make it too *easy* to complete the game (a la butterfly bug
>>in Beyond Zork).
>
>Eh? What's this? I must have missed the discussion of this BZ bug, but I'd
>like to know what it's all about.


I think it was fixed in later releases.  But anyway, in the one I bought....





























You can sell the butterfly (not the caterpillar) to one of the old women,
getting 2 zorkmids for it.  Wait a few turns, and it will flutter back out
of the case into your possession, whereupon you can sell it again!

What's worse, when you sell any object, BZ doubles its price (the shopkeeper
lies and claims it's new).  When you buy it back, BZ halves its price again.
But since you never buy back the butterfly, the halving never takes place.
So the next time you sell it, you'll get 4 zorkmids.  The next time you'll
get 8, then 16, then 32, then 64....

This makes solving the idol puzzle completely unnecessary, since you can
easily get enough money to buy whatever you could possibly want.

Avrom





From obrian@ucsu.Colorado.EDU Mon Nov 16 17:21:41 MET 1998
Article: 38855 of rec.games.int-fiction
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From: Paul O'Brian <obrian@ucsu.Colorado.EDU>
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: [Comp 98] My reviews, part 1 -- LONG!
Date: Mon, 16 Nov 1998 08:46:59 -0700
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Following are my reviews for the 1998 competition games. A few words about
these reviews:

1) I was a beta tester for "Mother Loose", and consequently didn't rate or
review that game. For the record, I liked it quite a bit.

2) These reviews are also indexed on my web page at
http://ucsu.colorado.edu/~obrian/IF.htm

3) Per a request from last year, I'm posting my reviews in the order I
played the games (and thus in the order I wrote the reviews.) They are
filed alphabetically on my web page if you find this random ordering too
aggravating. 

4) As usual, I've refined my ratings to a 0.1 point accuracy for a little
finer calibration. For my votes I rounded to the nearest integer, rounding
up on .5. 

5) As always, these reviews are meant as substantive feedback, not as
sniping or backbiting. If the tone of anything I have written comes across
as unhelpful, I apologize. I believe that honest criticism is salutary to
any art form, but I also believe in constructive criticism, and I've tried
to find some positive aspects to every work I review. I'm also quite open
to discussing the content of these reviews either in the newsgroup or over
private email. If you are an author, please take these reviews as an
honest evaluation of the current work so that the next work will be
better. And write again!

Now, on with the reviews! This post contains reviews for:

I DIDN'T KNOW YOU COULD YODEL
ACID WHIPLASH
IN THE SPOTLIGHT
FIFTEEN
DOWNTOWN TOKYO. PRESENT DAY.

==========================================================

I DIDN'T KNOW YOU COULD YODEL by Michael R. Eisenman and Andrew J.
Indovina

If you enjoyed Dan McPherson's My First Stupid Game, you're sure to love I
Didn't Know You Could Yodel. Yodel is much larger and better programmed
than My First Stupid Game, but the writing and the puzzles are at about
the same level. For example, McPherson's game featured a time limit
imposed by the need to pee -- in Yodel, unhappy bowels are the feature
attraction. However, where the former ended once you had relieved yourself
(onto a picture of Barney the dinosaur, no less), the latter is just
beginning. Flushing a toilet is the gateway to sprawling vistas of strange
riddles, terse descriptions (interspersed with broad cut-scenes), and
mostly-nonsenical plot developments. I'm generally not a big fan of the
kind of "Dumb and Dumber" humor with which Yodel is permeated. In
addition, I found the first puzzle both irritating and illogical. (A key
falls off a bookshelf, but it's not on the floor! Where is it? In the next
room! Why? Who knows?) Consequently, I gave up and started using the
walkthrough about 15 minutes into the game. I'm happy to say, however,
that I'm not altogether sorry that I did. 

For one thing, let's give credit where it's due: the authors have
programmed a text-adventure engine in (according to them) a combination of
Modula-2, C, C++, Garbano, and (Intel x86) Assembler, and their simulation
of the Infocom interface is not half bad; they even included a free
implementation of Hangman. Unfortunately, in the era of Inform, TADS, and
Hugo, "not half bad" is really not that great. The engine is missing a
number of conveniences, among them the "X" abbreviation for "EXAMINE", a
"VERBOSE" mode, and the "OOPS" verb; I think these conveniences should
basically be considered de rigueur for any modern text game. Moreover,
while the game was relatively bug-free, the ones I did encounter were
doozies: at one point the game crashed completely when attempting to go
into Hangman mode, and at another point the "key found" flag was
apparently not reset on a restore, making the game unsolvable. Still,
despite these flaws, I salute anyone with the energy and the skills to
code, from scratch, an Infocom-clone with Yodel's level of sophistication.
Also, the program had a couple of touches that I thought were pretty cool
-- at several points during the game, an inset sub-window popped up which
presented a parallel narrative thread ("Meanwhile, back at the ranch...").
This technique worked quite well, and I think it has a lot of potential
for expanding the narrative range, and breaking the limitations of the
second-person POV, to which IF usually limits itself. The gimmick was also
used at the end of the game to provide a fairly enjoyable epilogue
describing the eventual fate of every character you met along the way, a
la Animal House. Finally, I did enjoy the free Hangman game, though its
puzzles and its insertion into the game were just about as illogical as
everything else in Yodel.

Which brings us to the plot. I won't give away too much about the plot in
Yodel, mainly because I didn't really understand what little plot there
was. All I'll say is this: don't expect anything to make any sense. There
are several moments in the game that I found quite funny, but they are
swamped by long stretches of bizarre, inexplicable, or adolescent japes. I
would be very surprised if anyone (outside, perhaps, of the authors'
circle of friends) is able to solve the game without a walkthrough. Many
of the riddles (and yes, there are many many of them) left me baffled,
even after I knew the solution. Moreover, the abrubt, patchwork nature of
the game gave me the impression that in several situations only one action
would do, and how anyone would guess that action is beyond me. By the way,
if you're offended by descriptions of "swimsuit babes acting out your
wildest fantasy" or borderline-racist, stereotypcial depictions of Indians
(Native Americans, not Bengalis), then Yodel is probably not the game for
you. If, on the other hand, you're in the mood for something lowbrow, then
grab a walkthrough -- Yodel is not entirely without its rewards. 

Rating: 4.0


ACID WHIPLASH by Anonymous (a.k.a. RYBREAD CELSIUS CAN'T FIND A DICTIONARY
by Rybread Celsius and Cody Sandifer)

	"This is terribly, terribly unfair. I'm really sorry. But I just 
	started laughing hysterically, and it's not what the author
 	intended. In the middle of an intense ending sequence, I read the line:

	'My blood pumper is wronged!'

	I just lost it. It's a very 'Eye of Argon' sort of line."
			-- Andrew Plotkin, reviewing "Symetry", 1/1/98

	"It takes guts to do *anything* wearing a silver jumpsuit.
		My point:
	I bet Rybread wears *two* silver jumpsuits while he writes IF."
				-- Brad O'Donnell, 1/6/98

I hope my title line isn't too big a spoiler. I guess I can't feel too
guilty about giving away something that's revealed in the first 3 seconds
of the game. Anyway, it would be impossible to talk about this game
without talking about Rybread Celsius. Yes, Rybread Celsius. The man, the
myth, the legend. There are those who have called him "A BONA FIDE
CERTIFIED GENIUS" [1]. There are those who have called him "the worst
writer in interactive fiction today" [2]. There are even those who have
called him "an adaptive-learning AI" [3]. Whatever the truth behind the
smokescreen, opinion is clearly divided on the Celsius oeuvre. He appears
to have an enthusiastic cult following who look at his works and see the
stamp of genius, paralleled by another group who look at those selfsame
works and see only barely coherent English and buggy code. I have always
counted myself among the latter. Works like Symetry and Punkirita Quest
set my English-major teeth on edge. I have never met a Rybread game that
I've liked, or even halfway understood. But Acid Whiplash is different.

First of all, I need to say that I'm going to call it Acid Whiplash, for
several reasons:
	1) I'm not sure what the game's real name is supposed to be.
	2) The other name, while it may be (is!) perfectly true, is just
too long to write out.
	3) Acid Whiplash is just such a *perfect* name for this game. I've
never dropped acid myself, but I'm guessing that this game is about the
closest text game equivalent I will ever play, at least until my next
Rybread game. The world spins crazily about, featuring (among other
settings) a room shaped like a burning credit card (???), nightmarish
recastings of Curses and Jigsaw, and your own transformation into a car
dashboard. Scene changes happen with absolutely no warning, and any sense
of emerging narrative is dashed and jolted about, hard enough and abruptly
enough to, well, to give you a severe case of mental whiplash. Sounds like
a typical Celsius game so far, right? But here's the best part: stumbling
through these hallucinogenic sequences leads you through a multi-part
interview between Cody Sandifer and Celsius himself, an interview which
had me laughing out loud over and over. Sandifer is hilarious, striking
the pose of the intensely sincere reviewer, taking each deranged Celsius
word as gospel, and in the process manages actually to illuminate some of
the interesting corners of his subject, and subject matter. And Rybread
is... Rybread, no more or less than ever. Perhaps being changed into a
dashboard while listening makes the whole thing funnier -- I'm not sure. 

As usual, my regular categories don't apply. Plot, puzzles, writing --
forget about it. Acid Whiplash has no real interaction or story in any
meaningful sense. (There is, however, one very funny scene where we learn
that Rybread is in fact the evil twin of a well-known IF author). If
you're looking for a plot, or even something vaguely coherent, you ought
to know that you're looking in the wrong place. But if you aren't familiar
with the Way of the Rybread, or even if you are, I recommend giving Acid
Whiplash a look. It might shed some light on what all these crazy people
are talking about... but don't expect to understand the *next* Celsius
game.

[1] Brock Kevin Nambo

[2] Me. (Nothing personal.)

[3] Adam Thornton

Rating: 5.2 (This is by *far* the highest rating I've ever given to
Rybread. In fact, I think it beats his past 3 ratings from me put
together!)


IN THE SPOTLIGHT by John Byrd

Well, this one certainly didn't break the two-hour rule. In fact, I
finished it in around eight minutes. The game consists of one puzzle, and
that's all. The puzzle is clever, and relatively well-clued, and maybe I
just got lucky in figuring it out as quickly as I did. Still, I can't
imagine spending more than a half hour at this game -- there just aren't
that many objects, so the number of combinations is similarly small. The
author tells us that the puzzle is one he read about in Science magazine
in the early 80's. That makes sense, since the answer relies on some
intuitive physics knowledge, and the puzzle is fairly satisfying to solve.
I'm not sure if the red herrings were included in the magazine version,
but even if they were they didn't distract me too much from doing the
right thing.

In The Spotlight is sort of the opposite of the famous (or infamous)
"puzzleless IF" -- it's nothing *but* a puzzle. "Storyless IF." Actually,
I could see a game like this being pretty entertaining, even educational,
if it strung several of these sort of situations together. Gareth Rees'
The Magic Toyshop from the 1995 competition was a bit like this, though it
was more oriented towards games than puzzles, and its solutions often
involved "thinking outside the box" of the game (also known as cheating in
some circles.) What I'm envisioning is somewhat different. I know that
there's a tradition of "thought puzzles" like the one in Spotlight, a
tradition that's been around since before the advent of IF. I remember
reading them as a kid, or working through them in various classes as
mental exercises. Perhaps IF authors would do well to look to this
tradition for innovative puzzles which break the usual "lock-and-key"
mold. Of course, a great many of those puzzle situations (including the
one in this game) are somewhat contrived, but the same thing could be said
about a large percentage of IF puzzles, including many of the best. I
think I'd really enjoy a game like that -- sort of an interactive version
of the "Fun and Games" column in the old print version of Omni magazine (I
think that was the column's name. Someone will correct me if I'm wrong, no
doubt.)

In the Spotlight isn't that game, though. It's one lone puzzle, and thus a
little difficult to rate. On the one hand, the writing and coding are both
quite good; I found neither bugs nor English errors anywhere in the game.
Then again, this level of excellence was sustained for a remarkably short
time. Consequently, I can't rate the game very highly -- there's just not
enough there. (On the plus side, if all the rest of the competition games
are this length, I just might finish them all before the deadline!)

Rating: 5.1


FIFTEEN by Ricardo Dague

Is there a genie at work? No sooner did I wish (in my review of In the
Spotlight) for a "storyless" game which strung together a number of logic
puzzles, than along comes Fifteen. Fifteen takes its name from the
traditional slide puzzle, with fifteen tiles arranged in a 4 x 4 grid,
with the sixteenth spot left empty for tiles to move into. Fifteen also
includes an odd-even puzzle (similar to the sentient stones in
Spellbreaker) and a more traditional IF puzzle of rescuing a cat from a
tree. All the puzzles are quite well-implemented, and the slide puzzle is
done especially well; its interface allows for commands which string a
number of moves together quickly and easily. This was much appreciated. In
fact, Fifteen is almost the sort of thing I was musing about enjoying in
my previous review.

Still, I finished the game feeling like I ought to be more careful what I
wish for. See, Spotlight was "storyless IF" in the sense that there was
really no plot, just a puzzle. However, what little prose there was in the
game was richly written, and often funny. Contrast this with Fifteen,
which (according to its author) takes its cue from Scott Adams'
Adventureland. Adams' games are models of brevity, and Fifteen is just as
terse, if not more. Here's a typical room description: "Kitchen: Exits are
south, east and north."  Now that's brief. Don't get me wrong -- I
recognize the nostalgia value of such an atmosphere, especially if you
were raised on Scott Adams' adventures, but it's just not my cup of tea. I
like to have at least a *little* feeling of immersion in my IF rather than
unadorned puzzles. I find it very telling that even though Fifteen
includes many more rooms and several more puzzles than Spotlight, the
Inform file for Fifteen is actually 8K *smaller* than the Inform file for
Spotlight. Fifteen is basically raw puzzles; it's all the way over at the
extreme end of the puzzle to story spectrum, and that's too far for my
taste.

Nonetheless, Fifteen is clearly quite well-done, for what it is. I found
no bugs in the code, and what little prose there is is error-free. The
puzzles, as I said, are implemented well, and the author's ability to make
me feel like I'm playing a Scott Adams game is nothing short of
remarkable. But Fifteen is still not that all-puzzle game that I'm looking
for -- it's too spare and empty, and because of this it fails to create
the interest needed to sustain its intense puzzle-orientation.

Rating: 6.2


DOWNTOWN TOKYO. PRESENT DAY. by "Digby McWiggle"

Another very short (TextFire-length) game, Tokyo was originally intended
for submission to Adam Cadre's Chicken-Comp, but the author didn't finish
it in time. All the better for us, because the game is funny and
entertaining, and still finds a little time to be innovative as well. With
a game this short, it's hard not to give away plot spoilers in any
extended discussion, but I'll try to be as discreet as I can. I'll only
say as much as this: Tokyo is a very funny spoof on a beloved Japanese
film genre (and it's not martial arts movies), one which often features
the city of Tokyo (or the rubble thereof) as a setting. Considering this
was originally intended to be a Chicken-Comp game, you can probably
imagine how it works. There are several reasons why Tokyo is fun, not the
least of which is the writing. Random description "events", while having
no effect on the main storyline, give the chaotic scenes an antic charm,
and the depictions of movie cliches should bring a knowing smile to the
face of any film buff. 

One interesting experiment in Tokyo is its use of a split PC. In other
words, the player actually controls the actions of two characters, both a
rather anonymous individual watching a movie and the hero of that movie.
This is an imaginative idea, and it sometimes works very well. At its
best, Tokyo evokes the kind of split consciousness that actually happens
while watching a movie. We are present, in the theater, there with the
plush seats, the popcorn, and the people around us. But once we become
immersed in the movie, we are inside of it as well. We forget about the
theater and become part of the story, at least until the baby behind us
starts crying, or the teenagers in the front make a wisecrack. However,
the game is not always at its best. The split focus creates some confusion
as to how commands will be interpreted -- you can never be sure whether
your command will be executed by the viewer or the hero. This generally
doesn't cause a problem, but it might have worked better if the
transitions were smooth and complete, and the only interruptions happened
outside of the player's control. In addition, the standard library has
been mostly unmodified, so that its messages remain mostly in the second
person voice. When that's the voice of the entire game, this is not a
problem, but Tokyo asks second person POV to take on the special duty of
signalling that the viewer, rather than the hero, is reacting.
Consequently, messages like "You can't see any such thing" (rather than
"Our hero can't see any such thing") can create a little confusion. 

Finally, I can't review Tokyo without mentioning its graphics. No, it's
not a z6 game, but Tokyo has some surprises up its sleeve. Finding them
provides some of the funniest moments of the game. Tokyo does a great many
things well, and is one of the better short-short games I've played.
Again, it's a bit disappointing when a game this enjoyable ends so soon --
I think this concept had quite a bit more mileage in it than was used by
the author. Still, I enjoyed it while it lasted -- it won't entertain you
as long as the average summer blockbuster movie, but it will probably
entertain you more. 

Rating: 7.9


Paul O'Brian
obrian@colorado.edu
http://ucsu.colorado.edu/~obrian



From dbs@cs.wisc.edu Mon Nov 16 17:21:41 MET 1998
Article: 38856 of rec.games.int-fiction
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From: dbs@cs.wisc.edu (Dan Shiovitz)
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Comp 98 Reviews
Date: 16 Nov 1998 15:51:26 GMT
Organization: U of Wisconsin CS Dept
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I think it's safe to start this off. For those of you who don't
frequent ifMUD, my reviews are up at
http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~dbs/comp98.html 
(For those of you who do, they're still up there, but you knew about
it already.)

-- 
Dan Shiovitz || dbs@cs.wisc.edu || http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~dbs 
"...Incensed by some crack he had made about modern enlightened
thought, modern enlightened thought being practically a personal buddy
of hers, Florence gave him the swift heave-ho and--much against my
will, but she seemed to wish it--became betrothed to me." - PGW, J.a.t.F.S. 


From obrian@ucsu.Colorado.EDU Mon Nov 16 17:21:42 MET 1998
Article: 38857 of rec.games.int-fiction
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From: Paul O'Brian <obrian@ucsu.Colorado.EDU>
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: [Comp 98] My reviews, part 2 -- LONG!
Date: Mon, 16 Nov 1998 08:52:21 -0700
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This posting contains reviews for the following games:

WHERE EVIL DWELLS
FOUR IN ONE
INFORMATORY
THE COMMUTE
PERSISTENCE OF MEMORY

========================================================

WHERE EVIL DWELLS by Paul Johnson and Steve Owens

Where Evil Dwells is subtitled "A Creative Differences Production", and
the billing is apt. This is a story that doesn't know what it wants to be.
It starts out in Gritty Detective mode: you're a grizzled private eye,
brought to a creepy house by the tale of distressed young girl. However,
once you get into the house and roll up one of the rugs, you are
confronted by dust bunnies who "glare accusingly at you." Say what? This
is not a metaphor. The dust bunnies are implemented as actual, animate
creatures. Oh, OK, so this will be a supernatural twist on detective
adventures. But wait. In another room, you find a series of collector's
plates depicting "scenes from Samuel Beckett's lesser known children's
play 'Waiting for Godot to Finish Up in the Bathroom So I Can Go.'" Well,
that's just plain silly. When this picture is combined with the article
you find on "getting ectoplasmic residue stains out of linen", Evil starts
to look like a Ghostbusters-style comedy with, uh, detective influence
and, er, maybe a strong inclination towards silliness. But perhaps not,
because once you get into the forest, you might find yourself in a "broken
and bloodied heap" facing an "impossibly large behemoth", shivering while
"true horror sets in as it leands [sic] its malefic head through the gap,
its eyes fixed intently on you." Wow, horror. You don't expect broken and
bloodied heaps in Ghostbusters-style comedies. That's what the whole game
is like. Its tone staggers drunkenly from one room to the next, sometimes
>from one *response* to the next. Some rare works can actually pull this
off, bringing all the disparity together into a harmonious whole. Where
Evil Dwells is not one of those works. Instead, the differences undermine
each other, and every time a solid tone gets established for the story it
is promptly squashed by whatever comes next.

There are other inconsistencies in the game as well. Some parts of the
prose are quite good, bringing across the tone of the moment with
well-chosen diction and rhythm. Others fail to even follow the basic rules
of spelling and grammar. Some parts of the game were marred by repetition;
I read the phrase "none-too-comfortable, circa 1970 sedan" so many times
I've been able to recite it from memory since the first five minutes of
the game. Other parts combined evocative desciption with unintentionally
funny misplaced modifiers: "Too emotionally broken up, and half in shock,
you were able to get little else from the girl..." Pull yourself together,
detective-man! The coding was the same. Some aspects of it were quite
strong. For example, I'm not positive but I think that pronouns were
redirected in a fairly complex way, so that the last noun mentioned in
your inventory would be "it" after an "inventory" command, and a similar
effect was acheived in room descriptions. On the other hand, basic
attribute omission on some items allowed me to do things like carry a
canopy bed around. Yes, I am a strong detective.

Dissonances aside, Where Evil Dwells has several things to recommend. I
could just say "the good parts are good," but that's not specific enough.
The game is just the right size for a competition game -- I finished it in
almost exactly two hours. One or two of the puzzles are pretty
far-fetched, and I'm certain I never would have solved one in particular
without consulting the walkthrough, but some of the puzzles are creative
and well-clued. Some good design choices were made, though again, some bad
ones as well. For instance, there is a highly annoying random event that
sometimes steals things from you, but finding out that those things are
recoverable took much of the sting out of this problem. Overall I'd say
that Where Evil Dwells is a pretty muddled piece of work, but in its best
moments it shows great promise of what it could have been. I look forward
to the future productions of these authors, once they improve their
proofreading skills and get their "creative differences" resolved.

Rating: 7.4


FOUR IN ONE by J. Robinson Wheeler

Playing Four In One, I was in an unusual, unprecedented (for me)
situation: I was playing a game of which I had already read a complete,
winning transcript. Not a walkthrough, but a transcript of commands and
game responses. It seems that the author submitted this transcript to
Stephen Granade's IF Fan Fest, an informal quasi-competition held at
Granade's Mining Company web page. If I had known this transcript was also
going to be a competition game, I wouldn't have read it, because I hate
spoilers. But I didn't know that, so I read it, and it made playing the
game a very strange experience -- the whole thing gave me a very strong
sense of deja vu. Now, granted, the transcript isn't an exact one. You
can't follow that transcript and hope to win the game, because the
commands are not all perfectly duplicated, and there are some other
differences between the two as well. However, they have a *lot* in common.
Now, the funny thing about this is that when I initially read the Four in
One transcript, my thought was "It's a funny idea, but it would be far too
difficult to actually turn into a game." Well, I have been proved wrong. 

The idea behind the game is that you're a film director in the heyday of
the Marx brothers, and you're directing them in their first picture for
MGM. Or at least, you're trying to direct them. Apparently, keeping all
the Marxes in one room, getting along, and working productively is
somewhat akin to herding cats. Consequently, you're forced into the
position of chasing after them, collecting them one by one, and forcing
them to follow you around to their (and your) considerable annoyance. Even
once you've got them all on the set and rehearsed, there's no guarantee
that one or more of them won't go bolting off to make a phone call, hang
out at the catering table, or read a book. What's worse, you have only two
hours to get a good take on a crucial scene, or you and the picture will
both be canned. The transcript makes this into a hilarious situation,
showing the Marx brothers at their zaniest even when the cameras aren't
rolling. In fact, *all* the comedy takes place when the cameras aren't
rolling. This is the kind of thing that I didn't think an IF game would be
able to pull off, but Four in One is the living proof. It's not as funny
as the transcript, but it works, especially in places like Chico's
dressing room, where more and more people keep entering, pushing you
inexorably to the back wall like the first entrant in a
phone-booth-stuffing competition. Scenes like this can be irritating as
well, and the game sometimes steps across the fine line between funny
aggravation and just plain aggravating aggravation. However, with the
exception of one internal TADS error that I found, the technical details
of the writing and coding are executed superbly, and this goes a long way
towards smoothing out any annoyances. 

The place where the game's technical proficiency shines the most is in its
characters. Four In One is a the most character-intensive piece of IF I've
ever played. Almost every location has one or more characters in it at all
times, and these characters are as fully implemented as they need to be.
The gaffer, for example, is not terribly talkative -- ask him about the
movie and he'll say "A job's a job," but ask him about the lights and he
has an opinion, as he should. Every character has responses about the
things they should know about, though if you spend much time in
conversations with them you will run afoul of the game's time limit. The
Marx brothers can tell you about each other, the movie, MGM (Groucho says,
"MGM stands for 'more godless movies.'"), and anything else they ought to
know about. Four in One does an outstanding job juggling all these
characters, giving them just the appropriate depth of implementation so
that the game really rewards replay. After I had solved the game, I went
back and just chatted with the various characters, and was delighted with
the extent to which they are implemented. The author's research is quite
apparent in these moments, and it makes a big difference. Four In One
taught me things about the Marx Brothers that I had never known before,
and made me want to go out and rent A Night at the Opera again. That's
entertainment.

Rating: 8.7


INFORMATORY by William J. Shlaer

Every year I've been writing reviews for the IF competition, I've seen
several games which are their authors' first attempt at learning Inform.
These usually aren't the better games -- I find that most of the really
good Inform games in the competition are not the first pieces of code ever
hacked together by their authors. Informatory, however, gives a twist to
this tendency -- it is the author's first attempt to *teach* Inform.
Rather than replicating its author's apartment or dorm room, Informatory
instead replicates a number of familiar scenes and objects from various
canonical IF games, and allows its player to peek at their source code in
order to give some insight as to how Inform could be used to create them.
It does this through a handy device known as the "Codex Helmet" --
whenever the player character wears this helmet, source code for all
objects becomes visible. Of course, a couple of elementary puzzles must be
overcome in order to gain access to this miracle of technology, but hints
are provided for those puzzles. Once the Helmet is acquired, Informatory
presents a new kind of puzzle: to progress in the game, you must decipher
the Inform source code of its objects so that you may use their special
properties to your advantage. 

For me, this kind of puzzle worked well, because it relied on information
I had already acquired through working on my own Inform creations.
However, for someone who did not know Inform and wasn't particularly
interested in investing much time to learn it, I think those puzzles would
be a major nuisance. In fact, if you're not intersted in learning Inform,
my advice would be to give this game a pass. Its interests are much more
in helping novices to learn Inform in a fairly fun and ingenious way than
to provide a fun gaming experience for everyone. This is a perfectly
acceptable goal, but it makes Informatory more educational software than
entertainment software. The game invokes the genie from Andrew Plotkin's
Lists and Lists, and the reference is quite apt -- that game also didn't
much care about entertaining, instead giving the focus to its own
(remarkable) z-machine implementation of Scheme. Informatory didn't feel
quite as oppressive as Lists to me, probably because I'm already familiar
with Inform, an advantage I sadly lacked when it came to Scheme. However,
the two share a common theme: they are not so much games as teaching
tools, and if you're not interested in learning, the tool isn't for you. 

Having thus limited its audience, Informatory does its task rather well, I
think. The author bills it a "not-very-interactive tutorial," and I think
he's only half-right on both counts. Depending on how you define the term
"interactive", I think Informatory is quite interactive indeed. It's
probably the only game I've ever seen that actually assigns outside
reading to its players so that they have a better chance at the puzzles.
This obviously doesn't work in the competition context, but someone might
find it a little useful when used as a tool in its own right, especially
if that person is already in the process of learning Inform. Furthermore,
Informatory's source-code-oriented puzzles are *much* more interactive
than the typical tutorial style of "announce the concept, show the
concept, now you try it." Now, this is a double-edged sword too: sometimes
the lack of guidance can really be rather frustrating. I sometimes found
myself wishing for the genie from Lists to keep hanging around, giving me
clues when I needed them. Consequently, I didn't find Informatory to be
"not-very-interactive", but I didn't really find it to be a "tutorial"
either. Instead of teaching Inform piece-by-piece, it assigns reading in
the Designer's Manual, and in fact those assignments are only reachable
after solving a number of source code puzzles. Informatory therfore isn't
much of a teacher, but it's a good quiz for those who are already
learning. As a competition game, it's no great shakes: at its best, it's
about as much fun as taking a really interesting test. However, I can see
it becoming one useful tool for people who are beginning to get their feet
wet in the sea of Inform.

Rating: 6.8


THE COMMUTE by Kevin Copeland

Imagine if this was your day: You start out in your kitchen, where you
drink your coffee and eat your toast. Then you try to figure out the
layout of your two-room house (the two rooms are a kitchen and a hallway).
All the while you're experiencing one epiphany after another about how
much you love your life, except for having to go to work. Then you get
your motorcycle helmet (which you think of as a "helmut") and your keys
and head off to your important meeting on your motorcycle. Unfortunately,
you get a flat tire almost immediately. Then you wait around while your
hands get busy and fix the flat, a process which takes 30 seconds (I think
you worked in an Indy 500 pit crew before you got your office job.) Then
you get another flat tire, which you fix in an amazing 14 seconds. You get
8 more flat tires in the space of 6 minutes. Then you decide to make up
for lost time by driving "just above the speed limit," and wouldn't you
know, you get pulled over. The cop notices that you don't have your
wallet, and kindly sends you home to fetch it. The drive home takes 7
seconds, and you drive your motorcycle through the house, because you have
no idea how to get off of it. You haven't a clue where your wallet is, and
when you try to get it, you think to yourself "I may not need that. I may,
in fact, have it already." So you drive back out of the house and onto the
road, but the same cop finds you, and sends you back home again, because
you of course *do* need your wallet and *don't* have it already. But
something about your hallway just makes you think otherwise. So back you
go, and the cop pulls you over 5 more times before you decide to point
your bike at an embankment and end your "leisurely drive" by smashing into
the concrete at 98 miles an hour. OK, so maybe that last part doesn't
happen, but you sure wish it could. 

This is the experience simulated by The Commute, an incredibly frustrating
DOS game. The first difficulty I had was with the interface, which looks
like a traditional parser, but isn't. A typical interaction with it goes
something like this: 

 What shall I do? > get all

 I'm sorry, I don't quite understand (my mind is elsewhere).

 What shall I do? > x flowers

 I'm sorry, I don't quite understand (my mind is elsewhere).

 What shall I do? > eat

 I'm sorry, I don't quite understand (my mind is elsewhere).

It goes on, but you get the idea. Traditional commands, abbreviations, and
disambiguation are replaced by the same markedly unhelpful error message.
What's worse, sometimes it pretends to understand things it doesn't. For
example, in the Hall you can say "GET KEYS AND HELMUT" (yes, the game
forces you to misspell the word "helmet",) and the parser will respond
"Yes, I'll need these." Fair enough. But when you get out to your bike and
try to "WEAR HELMUT", it says "I'm sorry, I don't have that here." Turns
out the parser only pretended to put it in your inventory -- all you
really picked up were the keys. Other times, it seems to willfully
misunderstand you. My favorite example is when I typed "GET OFF BIKE" and
Commute responded "I'm assuming you want me to get on the bike. OK, I'm
on!" The game is full to brimming with this kind of frustrating stuff --
it's clear that the lack of an interactive fiction tool like Inform or
TADS really hurt this game, much more than it hurt the other DOS game in
the competition, I Didn't Know You Could Yodel. 

OK, so it had a lousy parser. This can be overcome, right? What I couldn't
overcome, at least without a walkthrough, was the "road from hell", where
every few seconds you either get pulled over or get a flat tire. At first,
this was very frustrating. Then it just became funny. The point of the
game seems to be that going to work sucks. This is a point on which I
didn't need much convincing, but if I got pulled over 6 times and got 8
flat tires on the way to work, I would be thinking that LIFE sucks, work
or no work. Especially since all I get at home is a partner who keeps
urging me to get out of the house, which I don't mind doing since I can't
even go back to bed, seeing as how I don't have one. Finally I consulted
the walkthrough and found out how to get past the road from hell. Turns
out some rather non-intuitive commands are necessary. For example, not to
spoil it or anything, but the command to find your wallet is "HUG
DAUGHTER." Why didn't I think of that? Unfortunately, even with those
gentle nudges (OK, violent shoves), I got to work and couldn't open the
gate because I didn't have a parking pass, even though the pass was in the
wallet I had with me. Once I figured out that I just couldn't see the pass
because the only place I know how to look in a wallet is in a hallway, I
deleted the game. My life has sucked much less ever since. 

Rating: 2.0


PERSISTENCE OF MEMORY by Anonymous

NOTE: Because of the nature of Persistence of Memory, it's difficult to
talk about it without revealing a key secret. Therefore, be warned that
any and all of the following review could be considered a spoiler.

Memory is a new twist on the one-room game. The setting is war; could be
Korea, could be Vietnam, but it's never really specified, and it doesn't
really matter. It's a war in a foreign land, with villages, dense foliage,
helicopters, rifles, and land mines. Especially land mines. In the first
move of the game, you step on one, and realize that if you remove your
weight from it, it will explode. Thus the potential paths which the game
appears to have at its outset are reduced to one: wait. This restriction
of freedom is a recurring theme in Memory. In incident after incident, the
scope of action contracts until it becomes clear that there is only one
action which will lead to your survival. Sometimes these actions are
rather horrifying, but the game demands them if you wish to finish. I have
mixed feelings about this kind of forcible plotting. On the one hand, it
makes for an extremely linear game, and it curtails interactivity quite
dramatically. This obstruction seems to fly in the face of the
conventional wisdom about IF -- it violates one of the Players' Rights in
Graham Nelson's Craft of Adventure: "To have reasonable freedom of
action." In Nelson's words, "After a while the player begins to feel that
the designer has tied him to a chair in order to shout the plot at him."
On the other hand, I also think that interactive fiction can be a very
good medium for conveying a sense of futility or entrapment. Because IF by
its nature seems to require at least to a certain degree freedom of
movement and action, and because it also creates a sense of immersion in
the story's world, when a piece of IF chooses to violate that perceived
requirement the player's sense of identification with the trapped
character can be very strong indeed. Something about the frustration of
having so few actions available to me which would not result in death made
the equation of my situation with the character's feel more intense than
it would have were I just reading a story about this character.

Because of the game's premise, you don't seek out the puzzles; the puzzles
come to you. And each puzzle must be solved if the character is to
survive. Luckily, all of the puzzles make sense and have intuitive
solutions, though in some of them it's not clear what the deadly moment is
until it arrives, and sometimes I found myself resorting to a
save-and-restore strategy in order to defeat a puzzle's time limit. I
don't think I could have solved the game straight through, because some
puzzles had rather unexpected and uncomfortable solutions. This is where I
found myself ill at ease with the game's lack of interactivity -- there's
a fine line between identifying with a trapped character versus simply
feeling trapped into an action because the designer allows you no other
choice, even though more options might have been available in reality.
It's hard to explain without revealing more spoilers than I already have,
but some pieces of the plot felt rather forced, as though only one
solution was provided because only that solution would create the game
scenario desired by the designer. However, the choices worked in the end,
and I found I only needed to look at the hints once, and in retrospect I
think I probably could have avoided that had I spent more time on the
puzzle that was stumping me. 

The writing could get a little histrionic at times. Some descriptions
tiptoed along the line between what works and what doesn't. For example,
the mud around your feet is described as "torpid", a word which usually
refers to a sluggish mental state. I suppose the mud's thickness and
viscosity could be compared to slow mental processes, but it's a stretch.
There weren't too many moments like this -- for the most part the prose
did a fine job of conveying the situation, and in fact sometimes was quite
good indeed. The description of the hairs rising on the back of your neck
as you try to conceal yourself from enemy soldiers was chilling and
engrossing. I found no technical errors in the writing, nor in the code.
Overall, Memory does a very good job with an unusual choice of subject
matter, and when it was over I felt not triumph, but relief. I suspect
this is what the game intended.

Rating: 8.3


Paul O'Brian
obrian@colorado.edu
http://ucsu.colorado.edu/~obrian



From obrian@ucsu.Colorado.EDU Mon Nov 16 17:21:42 MET 1998
Article: 38858 of rec.games.int-fiction
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From: Paul O'Brian <obrian@ucsu.Colorado.EDU>
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: [Comp 98] My reviews, part 3 -- LONG!
Date: Mon, 16 Nov 1998 08:56:58 -0700
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This post contains reviews for the following games:

CC
RESEARCH DIG
TRAPPED IN A ONE-ROOM DILLY
SPACE STATION
HUMAN RESOURCES STORIES
LITTLE BLUE MEN

========================================================

CC by Mikko Vuorinen

CC is a dreamlike piece of work that starts out in a void and moves into a
desert. Its landscape remains spare, and the meaning is never clarified at
any point in the game. Things never make all that much sense, and even
after the ending "revelation" I never felt like I had any more
understanding of the game than I started out with. The author is aware of
this, and says in the text included with the game "You probably won't
understand what the game is about, but that's all right... I just wanted
to write something that doesn't make much sense." Mission accomplished.
Actually, that probably sounds like I hated the game, which I didn't at
all. CC is rather evocative, and although I couldn't begin to offer an
interpretation of what it means, it wasn't an unpleasant experience to
wander through the game's strange desert artifacts. It also included an
equally mysterious NPC who, when asked about almost anything in the game,
would make some vague reply along the lines of "You must discover the
answer to that mystery on your own." Not very helpful, but that fits in
with the tone of the game.

I wasn't as wild about the puzzles. The text file and the walkthrough both
make the point that the game is so easy nobody should need a hint, but I
didn't find that to be the case. True, in some of the puzzles the most
obvious action was the one that was required. However, that wasn't true
every time. There was a real guess-the-verb puzzle towards the middle of
the game, where several obvious answers didn't work, and the correct
answer worked in such a way as to make it very unclear why the others
didn't. I don't think I would have gotten anywhere on this puzzle without
the walkthrough. There was another puzzle on which I used the walkthrough,
but in retrospect, it's probably one I could have figured out for myself.
Unfortunately, I went to the walkthrough much more quickly than I would
have had I not had the earlier guess-the-verb experience. I think there's
a lesson for game designers in this: if some of your puzzles are poor,
their effect is not limited to themselves. Instead, they make the player
less willing to expend effort to unravel later puzzles, even if those
puzzles are good ones. With every poor puzzle, you reduce the player's
faith that later puzzles won't be equally poor. In a short game, this can
mean that even one guess-the-verb puzzle is enough to send players to the
walkthrough for the rest of the game, if they even bother to finish it at
all. 

The prose wasn't bad, although for me it did have a few moments of
dissonance that I chalk up to cultural differences. For example, there are
some footprints in the desert, but the game calls them "footsteps." I've
always thought of footsteps as something you hear, so even though it
wasn't difficult to figure out from the context what the game meant, it
jarred a little. However, I found no outright errors in the writing, and
the coding was equally error-free. As in so many of the games in this
year's competition, this game was quite short, so the error-free
conditions are only sustained for a very short time, but that's alright.
I'd much rather play an error-free short game than a problem-ridden long
one. CC is slight, and rather confusing, but it has its good points too.
If these trends continue, Mikko Vuorinen's next competition game might be
one to remember.

Rating: 7.1


RESEARCH DIG by Chris Armitage

Research Dig has pieces of a good story, inexpertly handled so that they
don't reach their full potential. In fact, the experience of the game was
a bit like a real research dig -- you have to mine through some errors,
cliches, and unclear writing, but you can come away with some pretty good
pieces. So let me first focus on the positive. The game has an intriguing
premise -- you are a beginning archaeology student, sent on a minor dig on
behalf of your research center to an old abbey where the groundskeeper has
uncovered "something old." When you arrive, you meet the groundskeeper's
daughter, who whispers to you that the old piece belongs "to the Little
People," who live underground. (Exactly how little these Little People are
remains in question, but I'll get to that in a bit.) From this interesting
start the game lays out a sensible map which delivers mystery and magic in
reasonable proportions, never so much that it seems like a simple dungeon
crawl or D&D knockoff. The writing can be rather atmospheric in several
sections and some of the design contributes to this feeling, such as some
important red herrings which lead nowhere but help to flesh out the game
world. Overall, Research Dig feels like it was written by a beginner, but
a beginner with good ideas and a passion for interactive fiction.

That being said, it's also important to note that the game has a number of
problems as well. Though the map was logical, it also felt quite a bit
cliched, with underground tunnels, spooky crypts, mysterious rune-encarved
stones, etc. There wasn't anything that felt very unique once the game got
to this point, and it felt like a game with a lot of potential had
devolved into another ho-hum underground excursion. In addition, the
writing suffered at several points from basic proofreading errors.
Spelling and grammar mistakes were not legion, but there were enough of
them to be seriously distracting, especially since they sometimes turned
up in places that would be read over and over again. For example, from the
beginning of the game you find that you have a "referance book" in your
inventory. After 10 times reading the misspelled word, my patience started
to wear thin. It's the kind of error that could have been avoided so
easily, I have a hard time understanding why it's there. The same is true
for some key coding errors, like the key whose short name is "a key
labelled 'Shed'." The problem with a short name like this is that Inform
already provides articles for objects, so in the inventory the key is
listed as "an a key labelled 'Shed'." Compounding the problem, there are
two keys with this same error. The glitch is all the more aggravating
because it comes up almost every time the game tries to refer to the keys.
My favorite example: "Which do you mean, the a key labelled 'Shed" or the
a key labelled 'Conservatory'?" 

These mistakes were small, but sometimes small mistakes can make a big
difference, and this game had the perfect example. However, before you
read it, I should warn you that in order to explain my example, I have to
spoil part of the endgame. Read on if you so choose. OK, so at one point
you find an urn in the groundskeeper's house with a piece missing. Then
later on you find a rune-encarved "slab of stone, about 2' square." That's
two feet square. That's way too big to be a piece of an urn. However, at
the end of the game, you find out that it *is* in fact the missing piece
of the urn. Meanwhile, you see the groundskeeper defeated by "a small
person, you guess at about 3" high." That's three inches high. That's
mighty small! However, by this time you begin to suspect that the game
confused its notations, and is using ' for inches and " for feet. This may
seem like a minor error, but it changes the meaning of the things it
affects so completely that it ruins any possibility of building the
mystery. There's something to be learned here: in some ways writing (I
mean creative writing) and programming aren't so far apart. Just as a
missing semicolon can cause you no end of misery during compilation, so
can a very small change completely deflate your story. Also, in both
disciplines the semantic and syntactic errors are easiest to find, and
your work is unacceptable until it is free of these. Logic errors are more
difficult to detect, and take much more sweat to ferret out. Unfortunately
for would-be writers, there is no automatic proofreading service for
fiction that provides the error-checking of a good compiler. You have to
do it yourself.

Rating: 6.2


TRAPPED IN A ONE-ROOM DILLY by Laura A. Knauth

OK, probably the first thing I should confess is that I'm not hip enough
to know what a "dilly" is. My handy dictionary suggests that it means
"something remarkable of its kind" -- their example is "a dilly of a
movie." Somehow I don't think that's what's meant here. So, judging from
context, I'm going to assume that "dilly" means "relatively enjoyable
puzzle game with good coding and writing, but a few guess-the-verb
problems and sometimes not enough synonyms implemented." If this is what
dilly really means, then Trapped In A One-Room Dilly has the most accurate
title of any game in the 1998 competition. Like many others in this year's
competition, Dilly is very puzzle-oriented. Perhaps what we're seeing this
year is a bit of a backlash against the periodically swelling outcries for
"puzzleless IF." If backlash it is, I don't think that's entirely a bad
thing. Sometimes because literature has so much more cultural capital than
puzzles, we can get into a mindset which tries to shun puzzles in favor of
an elusive brand of literary merit. Don't get me wrong -- I myself am much
more interested in IF for its literary qualities than its puzzles, but I
also think it's important to remember that (for some of us, anyway) there
is also a pleasure in puzzle-solving, the "crossword" part of IF as
opposed to the "narrative" part. I believe that interactive fiction can
cover a very wide spectrum indeed, but that there will always be a place
for puzzle-oriented IF on that spectrum, and I'll probably always enjoy a
really well-done puzzle game. 

Dilly is the closest I've seen yet in this competition to that lofty
standard, but before I talk about the things it does right, I have to take
one step back and talk about a game from last year. The author of Dilly
entered a game in last year's competition called Travels in the Land of
Erden. Ironically, these two games could not be more different. Erden was
a sprawling, gigantic game with an enormous map, any number of subplots,
and a generally broad scope. When reviewing that game, I wrote about the
benefits of focus, and suggested that "if the author had concentrated her
energies on a game perhaps a quarter of the size of this one, she would
have had time for much more extensive proofing and beta-testing, and the
result might have been a tight, polished gem rather than the rough and
gangly work she submitted." Well, when I'm right, I'm right. Dilly
benefits enormously from having a much tighter focus than Erden. The game
narrows its scope to (as you might have guessed from the title) one room,
and the room is a really *interesting* room, full of enough gadgets and
gewgaws to keep me busy for two hours. At no time in Dilly did I lack for
something to figure out, look at, or do. The game crams about 10 puzzles
into this one room, but it didn't feel particularly strained to me. In
fact, Dilly makes a sly gibe about its lack of plot by including a
bookshelf full of books whose plots are plausible explanations for your
situation (Intelligence testing, alien abduction, the bomb shelter of a
wealthy wacko, etc). The puzzles are generally creative and fun, and all
of the coding and writing is technically proficient.

Well, almost all. The only times I ran into trouble with Dilly were when I
was close enough to the solution of a puzzle that I should have received
some slight confirmation, but the game didn't provide it. For example, at
one point in the game something is ticking and vibrating. If you listen
closely to this object, you can hear it ticking. However, if you touch it
"you feel nothing unusual." This is one of those instances where after I
found out what was happening, I felt cheated. If I'm that close, I want at
least a little nudge. In another instance, I had more of a guess-the-verb
problem -- the game wants you to tie two things together with a rope, as
in "TIE FROG TO LOG." (That's not really what you're tying, but I'm trying
to avoid the spoiler here.) However, if you first "TIE ROPE TO LOG" you
get a message along the lines of "That's useless." If I had tried "TIE
ROPE TO FROG" first, the game would have picked up on what I meant to do,
but I didn't make that lucky guess. I don't like to be put in the position
of making lucky guesses. Nonetheless, these are relatively minor problems,
easy to fix. They didn't stop me from enjoying my time in the one-room...
whatever it was. 

Rating: 8.5


SPACE STATION by David Ledgard

Several years ago, Graham Nelson released a piece of work he modestly
referred to as a "parsing exercise." This exercise really was a short
game, a competition-sized game before there was a competition. It included
the spell system from Enchanter, and several good puzzles. In fact, it was
very loosely based on the sample transcript included in Infocom's original
distribution of Enchanter. This game was called Balances, and it was a big
hit with the IF community. It's probably the most-played "exercise" in the
IF Archive. It also spurred a discussion, which reoccurs from time to
time, about what fun it would be to create games based on the sample
transcripts from various Infocom games. Now, David Ledgard has been the
first person to turn that notion into a reality. He took the sample
transcript from Planetfall and (apparently with the permission of
Activision) implemented it in Inform, also extending it a bit so that it
would comprise a full, winnable game (the transcript ends with the
player's death.) Where Balances only took a couple of ideas from the
Enchanter transcript, Space Station lifts the Planetfall transcript almost
verbatim. Unfortunately, the results are a little mixed.

The transcript itself is great reading. It's funny, interesting, and
well-written. Consequently, the pieces of Space Station that are copied
straight from the transcript are also funny, interesting, and
well-written. This is not something for which the author can really take
credit, though I'm certain it was a fair amount of work to do all the
transcribing and implementing. Ultimately this section of the game
occupies a rather shadowy realm of authorship, its text written by an
Infocommie (one presumes Steve Meretzky), and its code *implied* by the
written text, but the final code of Space Station was written by someone
else, and while he certainly implemented it in the spirit of the
transcript he also (of necessity, or from an enterprising spirit) added
quite a bit of his own. The seams between the two parts of the game are
sometimes all too visible. For example, a scene outside the space
station's window is described (in part) thus: "Through the large
observation window, you see the milky way. Where the stars are scattered
thinly, and the cold of space seeps in." When I read that, I thought
"Surely Meretzky didn't write that sentence fragment!" I was right -- he
didn't. It was a part of the game's "extensions", and the grammatical
error grated quite harshly against the polished, accomplished prose in
other parts of the game. Sometimes the problem was just as bad when the
game *didn't* extend itself -- it was quite jarring to try a legitimate
(included in the room description) direction and run into the terse reply
"Unimplemented!" On the other hand, there were some very funny moments in
Space Station, moments that I was sure were a part of the transcript but
in fact were part of the extensions as well. It was an extra treat to find
out that those parts weren't authored by Infocom. The problem is that once
any seams at all showed, the split between the transcript and the rest of
the game was constantly on my mind, and grammar and spelling errors (of
which the game has a few) felt all the more glaring because of it. 

This is a cautionary tale for anyone who decides to implement one of the
Infocom transcripts. The transcripts themselves are generally excellent,
as they should be from a professional company which had the important task
of explaining interactive fiction to a novice public. They are
well-written and entertaining, with good settings and clever puzzles. To
implement one of these transcripts so that it becomes a good game in its
own right, you need a few things. You need to be able to write so well
that nobody will be able to tell where the transcript prose stops and
yours starts. You need to be able to make your sections of the game as
entertaining as the transcript section. You need to be able to extend the
setting of the transcript rationally, without introducing a foreign tone
or feel. You need to be able to come up with puzzles that are consistent
with those in the transcript, and are done as logically as the pre-written
ones. If you can do all that, then absolutely write a transcript-based
game (assuming you can secure Activision's permission, of course). Then
again, if you can do all that, why waste your talent on adapting
transcripts? 

Rating: 6.4


HUMAN RESOURCES STORIES by Harry M. Hardjono

I have to confess, I'm a little afraid to write this review. So let me
just start out by saying Harry, I'm sure you're a wonderful person. I'll
bet you have lots of friends, a loving family, and are kind to small
animals. I'm sure you're not violent, or if you are violent, your violence
is directed only at inanimate objects. Please accept anything in this
review as purely constructive criticism, and remember that reviews are
about the game, not about the game's author. If anything I say offends
you, I will gladly retract it. Please don't hurt me. 

OK, that being said, here's what I thought of Human Resources Stories: I
thought it was the most unrepentantly bitter, angry, and unsettling game
I've ever played. I started to get a hint of this in the game's readme
file, in which the author proclaims "I am not a lemming," as though he has
been accused of thoughtlessly following the crowd, and feels obliged to
defend himself. He goes on to say that he will probably suffer for the
small size of his game, and that he has "pointed out (much to the chagrin
of a lot of people) that judges are discriminatory toward size." OK, so
far I'd seen some defensiveness, a predilection to believe that the
competition judges (basically any random r*if readers who bother to send
in votes) don't judge fairly, and the suggestion that when he has pointed
out this "fact", he has been shouted down. My guard was up. And a good
thing too, because after I read the intro (which casts you as an
interviewee for various high-tech companies, all of which take pride in
"paying the best, brightest, most talented people in the industry
sub-average salary"), I read the credits. These thank various helpers, and
at the end: "other raif denizen: Except for some obviously rude, stupid
people who think they are _so great_." Um, wow. That's some real anger
there. Or at least, that's how I took it. Gee, I hope I'm not one of those
"obviously rude, stupid people." I'd hate to be rude and stupid, much less
obviously so. I wonder who these people are. I certainly wouldn't want to
be the one to point out that flaming raif in the credits of your game and
using a singular noun when you intend a plural isn't exactly polite and
intelligent. I don't mean that in a hostile way, really. Just gently
pointing out the irony I felt at that moment. If necessary, please reread
my first paragraph. Anyway, once I got over the credits, I decided to type
"XYZZY" for fun, since the readme file specifically mentions the author's
bafflement at why modern IF games still include it. That's when I got the
biggest shock yet. The response to XYZZY is a long, long, *long* diatribe.
It probably has more words than the rest of the game and the readme file
combined. It starts out as an interview scenario, the question advanced
being "How do you work?" This question becomes the jumping-off point for a
highly detailed rant about how this poor programmer got the blame for
every bad thing in the company, is working on weekends with no pay, has
had the project timeframe reduced by 75%, meanwhile the manager is off to
Hawaii, and finally this programmer, who is a good person and a fine
worker (and an excellent programmer who would write outstanding code
except for it's impossible to do so under such oppressive conditions)
pulls the whole thing together so that it works for the end users, only to
have the whole process start over again. By the end of this, I was sitting
there reading with my jaw hanging open, just in shock. Let me say that if
I were interviewing someone and got this answer, not only would I never
call the person back (in the game's words, "The phone never ring."), but I
would be beefing up security and thinking about investing in a bulletproof
vest, and phoning the interviewee's current and former employers to
suggest that they do the same. The level of anger and bitterness there is
just incredible. By this point, I had completely forgotten the original
question, so I typed "RESTART." The game's response? "That's not how life
works." Same response to "QUIT", which was my next inclination. And I
thought *Zarf* was cruel! Certainly it's true that you *can't* do these
things in real life (well, you can quit. See "In The End"), but disabling
these basic commands made for a hell of an inconvenience when I actually
did want to restart the game.

Perhaps "game" is too strong a word anyway. When I finally did get to it
(by shutting down the whole interpreter then re-running it), I found that
it wasn't a game exactly. It's advertised as a choose-your-own-adventure
type of game, but beyond the initial prose there's really no story, no
advancing narrative whatsoever. Instead, HRS asks you a series of multiple
choice questions, as if it were interviewing you for a programming job. At
the end, you either get the brush-off ("The phone never ring."), or you
get the job with a series of letter grades for technical, teamwork, and
leadership criteria, along with a salary. The best I did was an A, A+, and
A+, with a salary of... $20,000. Now, I work as a programmer, for a state
university no less, and I didn't find that to be my experience of a
starting salary. I have to wonder if the anger I saw in other sections of
the game might be biasing its results... just a bit. To be fair, the game
does not reward you for being a bootlick. If you give the typical "What
you think an exploitive company would want to hear" answers, you will get
"The phone never ring" pretty fast. However, the set of answers I gave for
my highest score still indicated some pretty brutal expectations on behalf
of the hiring company. And this, the game would like me to belieive, in
the face of the biggest high-tech labor scarcity in... well, ever. Aside
>from whether HRS reflects "real life" or not, it's not much of a game.
It's more like a test than a game, and more like a rant than a test. I
can't really say I found it fun, though it certainly did provoke a strong
reaction from me. I guess that in all honesty, I'd have to say that I
really disliked being subjected to both the rant and the test. The game
makes me glad I'm not looking for a job right now, but it makes me even
more glad that I'm not looking for an employee. But that's just me.
Nothing personal. Please don't hurt me. 

Rating: 2.5 (I hope I've explained myself well enough to demonstrate that
the length of HRS had very little to do with my rating. I, uh, am not a
lemming.)


LITTLE BLUE MEN by Michael S. Gentry

WARNING: Because Little Blue Men uses obscenities in its text, that
language will also appear in this review.

Well, the first thing I have to say is that starting Little Blue Men right
after finishing Human Resources Stories was quite mind-bending. The game
starts with a character who is sitting at his desk thinking of his job as
"another day in the trenches," looking at his corner as his "own little
slice of the shit pie those sons of bitches call an office." I had this
sudden vision of IF authors as angry loners, driven by their misanthropy
and lack of social skills into highly solitary hobbies like writing and
programming, friendless misfits who hate their jobs, hate their lives, and
generally hate people, and who write supposedly entertaining games that
are really about how much the world sucks. Luckily, the vision passed as
the game underwent a curious transformation. First of all, the game's
disclaimer assured me that "at its most fundamental level, this game is
about learning to love yourself." OK, maybe we're not loving anybody else
yet, but loving yourself is at least a little positive. Next, I entered a
few commands, the first ones that came to mind, really, and... won the
game. Or did I? My final message said "*** You have learned to love
yourself ***", which is what I was told the game was about. So I won,
right? In 10 moves? I wondered how in the heck a game whose .z5 file was
171K could end up being so short. I wondered, in the game's words, "What
the hell...?!"

It turns out that although LBM may be about learning to love yourself, if
you do the things that help you reach that goal too quickly you end up
missing the entire story. That story consists of scheming ways to kill or
otherwise waylay your co-workers, destroy the things that aggravate you,
discover the secrets hidden behind the bland office walls, and figure out
just who or *what* your boss, "that bastard Biedermeyer", really is. In
short, it consists of getting an unpleasant character to do unsavory
things, in service of a plot that grows more and more metaphorical and
surreal as you progress through it. When I finally got to the end, I
wasn't sure that I was any more satisified with the "real" ending than the
one I got to in 10 moves. In his postscript, the author tells us that he
wants the story's structure to help us question to help us analyze some of
our assumptions about IF. For one thing, we should think about what really
is the most "optimal" ending of the game, and whether it's worth it to
actually play through a game if it's possible to reach a positive ending
at the beginning, and/or if the motivations of the character are twisted
and repugnant? Now, these are not new ideas. Andrew Plotkin's A Change In
The Weather offers a similar situation at its outset -- if you rejoin the
picnic, you end up having fun after all, but you also miss the story. To
go back earlier, Michael Berlyn used a related technique in Infidel by
making the main character a shallow, exploitive greedhead who probably
deserves a desert demise, then asking you to solve puzzles and find
treasure on his behalf. Little Blue Men, though, makes these propositions
starker than ever before by making its main character thoroughly repulsive
and an optimal ending immediately reachable. 

Now, my answer to this question in its abstract form is that responses
will vary depending on the player. Some people probably have no interest
in playing a repulsive character, and so will just delete the game. Others
might be driven by curiosity to complete the game even though they find
the experience unpleasant. Still others will view it as a chance to get a
glimpse into abnormal psychology, or to have some fun playing a villainous
character. In this way, playing such a game is akin to watching a movie
like Natural Born Killers, or reading a book like In Cold Blood -- it may
be very well-done, but it's not everybody's cup of tea, and that's fine.
Consequently, I guess I don't view the question as all that interesting,
maybe because any assumption I might have had about IF characters having
to be good was eliminated as soon as I finished Infidel (in 1986). But
even though I feel this way, LBM still didn't work for me, not because of
its main character but because of its choices of setting, imagery, and
metaphor. The game invokes the movie Jacob's Ladder a couple of times,
which is a movie I loved. That film was by turns profound, chilling, and
inspiring. LBM only achieves glimpses of these things, and I think the
reason is because I found its imagery muddled and incoherent. The game is
obviously taking place on some metaphorical level, but it was never at all
clear to me what the metaphors were supposed to be representing, and as
they stack up it only becomes more confusing. In addition, there was
basically no connection with reality, which left the game's symbols
floating unanchored. Some flashback scenes, some glimpses of reality,
*some* type of explanation for the heaven/hell dichotomy the game presents
would have gone a long way toward connecting its symbolism with something
more meaningful than just other symbols. There's a lot to like about this
game. It is written well, and although it doesn't achieve an overall arc,
it does contain moments which can be quite moving or frightening.
Technically I could find very little for which to fault it, both in its
writing and its coding. Its puzzles may have had some unpleasant content,
but they were clever and engaging, and generally quite well integrated
with the storyline. But for me, it did not succeed as a work of art.
Nonetheless, I respect it for being an ambitious but flawed experiment --
I'll take that over competent repetition any day.

Rating: 6.3


Paul O'Brian
obrian@colorado.edu
http://ucsu.colorado.edu/~obrian



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This post contains reviews for the following games:

THE ARRIVAL
MUSE: AN AUTUMN ROMANCE
THE RITUAL OF PURIFICATION
PHOTOPIA
LIGHTIANIA

============================================================

THE ARRIVAL by Samantha Clark

The Arrival is the first HTML-TADS game I've ever played, certainly the
first competition game ever to include pictures and sound. I was quite
curious as to how these elements would be handled, and maybe even a little
apprehensive. I wasn't sure that a lone hobbyist could create visual and
musical elements that wouldn't detract from a game more than they added to
it. But Arrival dispelled those fears, handling both pictures and sound
brilliantly. The game's ingenious strategy is to cast an 8-year-old as its
main character, which makes the fact that most of the graphics are really
just crayon drawings not only acceptable, but completely appropriate. Just
for good measure, the game chooses "Attack of the B-Movie Cliches" as its
theme and subtitle, thereby making the cheese factor of the special
effects (which is pretty high) actually enhance the game rather than
embarrass it. The pictures are delightful -- the crayon drawings evoke a
great sense of childhood and wonder while continuing the humorous feel of
the whole game. The spaceship (two pie plates taped together) and the
aliens (in the author's words "the finest crayons and modelling clay $2.83
could buy") are a scream -- I laughed out loud every time I saw them. The
game also includes a couple of very well-done non-crayon graphics, one an
excellent faux movie poster and the other a dead-on parody of a web page,
both of which I found very funny. The sounds, though sparse, are equally
good -- the sound of the alien spaceship crash-landing startled the heck
out of me. I'm not used to my text adventures making noise! But a moment
later I was laughing, because the noise was just so fittingly silly.

However, all the funny pictures and sounds in the world couldn't make
Arrival a good game if it wasn't, at its core, a well-written text
adventure. Luckily for us, it is. The game is full of cleverly written,
funny moments, and has layers of detail I didn't even recognize until I
read the postscript of amusing things to do. The aliens, who bicker like a
couple of married retirees touring the U.S. in their motor home, are great
characters. Each is given a distinct personality, and in fact a distinct
typeface, the green alien speaking in green text while the purple alien
has text to match as well. If you hang around the aliens you will hear
quite a bit of funny dialogue, and if you manage to switch their universal
translator from archaic into modern mode, you can hear all the same
dialogue, just as funny, rewritten into valley-speak. The game has lots of
detail which doesn't figure in the main plot but creates a wonderfully
silly atmosphere and provides lots of jokes. For example, on board the
ship is an examination room, where by flipping switches, pulling levers,
or turning knobs you can cause all sorts of machinery to pop from the
walls and perform its function on the gleaming metal table, everything
>from laser beams to buzz saws to Saran Wrap. In addition, Arrival is one
of the better games I've seen this year at unexpectedly understanding
input and giving snarky responses to strange commands, which has been one
of my favorite things about text adventures ever since I first played
Zork. Even if you can't (or don't want to) run the HTML part of HTML TADS,
it would still be well worth your time to seek out The Arrival.

However, don't be afraid to rely on hints. I had played for an hour and
hadn't scored a single point when I took my first look at them. Now, once
I got some hints I determined that the puzzles did in fact make perfect
sense -- they weren't of the "read the author's mind" variety and I would
probably have come to solve them on my own. Perhaps the presence of
pictures, sound, and hyperlinks threw me out of my IF mindset enough that
I was struggling more than I should have with the puzzles. That's probably
a part of it, but I think another factor was that all the details in the
game ended up becoming a big pile of red herrings for me. There are quite
a few items and places which have no real use beyond being jokes, and I
found it quite easy to get sidetracked into trying to solve puzzles that
didn't exist. It's not that I don't think those pieces should be in the
game; I actually find it refreshing to play a game where not every item is
part of a key or a lock, and even as it caused me to spin my wheels in
terms of game progress, it helped me ferret out a lot of the little jokes
hidden under the surface of various game items. However, if you're the
kind of player who gets easily frustrated when your score doesn't steadily
increase, don't be afraid to rely on a hint here and there. Just remember
to replay the game after you're done so that you can see what you missed.
Besides, that pie-plate spaceship is worth a second look.

Rating: 9.6


MUSE: AN AUTUMN ROMANCE by Christopher Huang 

I've been sitting here for 10 minutes trying to find the right words to
begin a review of Muse, but I can't seem to come up with anything that
speaks as eloquently as the game's own prose. Muse is the most gorgeously
written piece of IF in the competition -- I've still got several games
left to play, but I would be very surprised if any of them even equalled
Muse's marvelous skill with words, let alone surpassed it. The game is
like the IF version of a Merchant-Ivory movie: quiet setting, stellar
production values, highly character-oriented, and deeply, deeply felt.
It's been a long time since I've been as moved by a piece of IF as I was
by the "optimal" ending of Muse -- even some of the less satisfying
endings are crafted so well that in themselves they can be quite
emotional. The game takes place in a French village in 1886, as viewed
through the eyes of Rev. Stephen Dawson, a 59-year-old clergyman from
Barchester, England. It is not a typical IF setting, and Dawson is hardly
the typical IF hero, but Muse is far from a typical game. It is a story,
one of the most successful pieces of interactive fiction I've seen for
pulling off the *fiction* as much as the interactivity. Its characters
feel real, including its main character; it is the story of Rev. Dawson's
own struggle for acceptance of himself and his role in life, of his
journey past regret and into contentment. Through its masterful writing,
excellent coding, and some clever techniques, Muse creates a story of
someone else's emotional transformation, made all the more affecting by
our direction of that character's actions.

One way in which the game accomplishes its goal is to eschew the
traditional second person, present tense IF voice, settling instead on a
first person past tense narration. A typical exchange looks somewhat like
this:

>I
I had on my person the following items:
  my pocket New Testament

>READ BIBLE
I practically knew its contents by heart.

>GET TRUNK
Oh, but the trunk was heavy! I managed to lift it just high enough for the
purpose of moving it around, but I was getting far too old for this sort
of thing.

At first, I was surprised how little a difference this made to me. The
game still felt quite natural, which I think is another testament to its
writing. On reflection, however, I think that the changes did make a
difference. By choosing a first person voice, Muse sidesteps all of the
controversy surrounding assigning emotion to the player character. In
fact, the game is *constantly* ascribing emotions to the PC, but it never
grates because the first person POV assumes this role quite naturally.
Having a game say things like "you practically know its contents by heart"
or "you are getting far too old for this sort of thing" would cause much
more dissonance for me, especially as the game moved into its deeper
emotional registers. The past tense achieves a similar sort of distancing
>from the player, as well as heightening the "period" effect, not that the
game needs it. Muse evokes the Victorian feel extremely well, and the
spell is never broken by any piece of writing, any detail of setting, or
any development of character.

There's only one problem. One part of Muse's realistic, natural approach
is that events go on without you if you aren't in the right place at the
right time. On my first run through the game, I was off doing
text-adventurely things like examining all the objects, trying to talk to
various characters about dozens of different subjects (an effect which the
game also pulls off remarkably well -- its coding is quite deep in some
areas) and exploring the landscape. Even though the game was giving me
gentle nudges to check into the inn, I didn't do so, because for one thing
I couldn't find it right away, and for another thing I was having too much
fun exploring the very rich world of the game. As a result, one of the
major plot points happened without me, putting me into a situation where,
as far as I can determine, the optimal ending was unreachable. What's
worse, I didn't *know* I couldn't reach the best ending; because it was my
first time through, I didn't realize I had missed anything I could have
participated in anyway. I ended up wandering around, quite frustrated with
my inability to cause the story to progress. When I finally looked at the
hints, it became clear to me that I had failed to perform an important
task, and that as a result the happiest ending had been closed to me. Now,
this is of course very realistic -- we miss things all the time that could
change our lives significantly, and we never know that we've missed them
-- but I don't think it's the best design for a game, even a game so
story-oriented as Muse. The loss was affecting in its own way, especially
when I replayed it after completing the game with the happiest ending, but
I didn't like it that I had "lost" without having any way of knowing I had
done so. I don't think it had to be that way -- I can certainly envision
how the game might have at least pushed (or strongly nudged) me into a
less optimal ending, so that I might realize more quickly that I had
missed something, or perhaps the game could even have left the optimal
path open even when the plot point had been missed. I would have loved the
chance to complete such an incredible story my first time through, without
having to resort to hints. 

Rating: 9.3


THE RITUAL OF PURIFICATION by Sable

The feeling I got while playing Ritual reminded me of nothing so much as
those old Dr. Strange comics from the 60's, back when the master of
mysticism was drawn by Steve Ditko, himself a master of the bizarre. The
game is full of strange, hallucinatory images: a road that melts into
nothing, an arch with marble carvings on one side and black decay on the
other side, exploding and melting universes. The whole thing made me feel
like I was immersed in a Ditko landscape, and the fact that the main
character is a spellcaster on an astral voyage didn't hurt either. Of
course, some of the scenes in Ritual could never have taken place in a
60's comic -- at least, not one that adhered to the Comics Code Authority.
There's nothing really outrageous, but there are scenes of sexuality, drug
use, and gore that you'd never see Dr. Strange experiencing. I'm not
suggesting that the game is some sort of Dr. Strange ripoff, or that Ditko
was an insipiration for Ritual -- that's just what it reminded me of.
However, one source of inspiration for the game was clearly some of the
more obscure poetry of Edgar Allan Poe. At the completion of almost every
puzzle, the game throws a box quote from Poe, usually one which has some
relation to the obstacle just overcome. These quotes are well-chosen,
digging deep into the Poe archives and highlighting how much he inherited
>from William Blake, as well as how much he prefigured H.P. Lovecraft. At
its best, most deranged or sublime moments, the game evokes the weird,
dark mysticism shared by all these creators. On the whole, the effect is
very trippy, and a fair amount of fun. 

Unfortunately, there are some false notes as well. From time to time a
character will say or do something fairly anachronistic, which tends to
break the spell pretty thoroughly. In fact, at one point you can get a
character to whip out a bong and start taking hits from it, which brings
the whole elevated plane of symbolism and wonder divebombing back to
earth. The effect is not so much of Alice in Wonderland's "hookah-smoking
caterpillar", but more of Jeff Spicoli in Fast Times at Ridgemont High. It
just doesn't fit. There are also a few times when the game seems to slip
into cliches or "AD&Disms" -- one beast is described as "biting easily
through a set of plate mail", and some of the spells feel suspiciously
close to ones I remember from 7th grade basement role-playing sessions. In
addition, the game has a number of grammar and spelling errors, usually
minor problems like missing punctuation or vowel mistakes, but again they
break the spell. Finally, and worst of all, there's a bug in the game
which causes it to not respond at all if a certain action is taken sooner
than the game expects it. There's nothing that ruins immersion quite so
much as when a game just doesn't respond to a command in any way. Well,
maybe not *nothing* -- crashing the interpreter would probably ruin
immersion more, but because of the lack of response problem I ended up
turning to the hints, only to find that I had in fact given the right
command to solve the puzzle -- I just gave it a little too soon.

The game suffers a bit from the "unconnected symbols" syndrome --
sometimes it feels like all of these dreamlike images are just images,
with no meaning or substance attached to them. However, the game manages
to pull them together somewhat through its title, intro, and ending -- the
bizarre symbols with which the game is littered are all loosely connected
through a theme of purification, of facing inner demons and the pain & joy
of life in order to become a better person. It didn't entirely work for me
-- some of the symbolism seemed arbitrary or cliched to my mind -- but I
think it was a good beginning. I would really like to play a game with
this kind of tone which had freed itself from shopworn images and RPG
leftovers. Something with imagery like the more arresting parts of Ritual,
but which really cohered to make a powerful statement on some aspect of
the human condition, could really take advantage of IF's immersive
capability to create a remarkable work of art. Ritual isn't it, but I hope
it becomes the jumping-off point for someone (the author perhaps?) to
create something like it but better: no writing errors, no cliches, no
anachronisms, no bugs -- just the Ditko universes exploding and melting
all around us, with meaning.

Rating:  6.9


PHOTOPIA by Opal O'Donnell

If there was a prize for "competition game most mentioned on the
newsgroups before the deadline had passed," Photopia would win hands down.
Everyone was quite courteous about it, spoiler warnings and rot13 and all
that, but there was a marked impatience to talk about this game, recommend
it to other people, make it the test case in any number of arguments.
There is a reason behind this impatience: Photopia is an amazing piece of
work. It's also very hard to talk about without giving spoilers away, so
please forgive me if I'm a little vague in my language. One of the most
brilliant aspects of of the game is its plotting. It has what Adam Cadre,
in an unrelated discussion, called a Priest plot, named for writer
Christopher Priest. I don't know if this is a term that Adam just made up,
but it's a useful term nonetheless. It refers to a plot which just gives
you fragments, seemingly unrelated to each other, which coalesce at (or
towards) the end of the story. When the fragments come together, and you
figure out how they relate to one another, the result can often be
surprising or revelatory. When they came together in Photopia, I found the
revelation quite devastating. I won't say too much more about this, except
to say that it wasn't until the end of Photopia that I realized what a
truly incredible, powerful story it is. It's the kind of thing where when
you've played it all the way through once, you can then replay it and all
the pieces fall into place, everything interlocking from the beginning in
a way you can't understand until the end. I think that this is the game
that opens new frontiers of replayability in interactive fiction -- I
needed to play through Photopia twice in order to see all the text again,
knowing what I knew after the end of the game. 

Actually, I hesitate to call Photopia a game, but not because it failed to
live up to a standard of interactivity. It's just so patently clear that
Photopia is not interested in puzzles, or score, or some battle of wits
between author and player. Photopia is interested in telling a story, and
it succeeds magnificently on this count. Unfortunately this deprives me of
the use of the word "game" in describing it -- perhaps I'll just call it a
work. In any case, it's a work that anyone who is interested in puzzleless
IF should try. At no point was I even close to getting stuck in Photopia,
because the obvious action is almost always the right one -- or else there
is no right action and fated events occur with heavy inevitability. Oddly
enough, this creates a strange contradiction. I was on ifMUD looking for a
word to describe the plot of this work (I couldn't think of the phrase
"Priest plot") and someone said, jokingly, "linear." But actually, that's
true. Despite the fact that it's completely fragmented, and despite the
fact that it jumps around in time, space, and perspective, Photopia is a
linear composition. There's only one way to go through it, and the player
has little or no power to make it deviate from its predestined course. I
think the reason that this didn't bother me, that in fact I *liked* it, is
precisely because Photopia isn't a game. Because it is a story, the
emphasis is taken away from a teleological model, where the player tries
to steer for the best outcome. Instead, you're really just along for the
ride, and the ride is one not to be missed.

Now, this is not to say that Photopia may as well have been a short story
rather than interactive fiction. In fact, it takes advantage of the
capabilities of the medium in some very inventive and almost unprecedented
ways. One of the foremost of these is its use of color -- each section of
the game (oops, there's that word again. Make that "the work") is
presented in a preset color, and these colors also play a part in the
Priest plot. I understood their function by the end of the piece, and once
I understood, I knew exactly why they were there and how much they
enhanced the storytelling. Unfortunately I found the colored text a little
hard to read at times, especially the darker colors on a black background,
but I wouldn't go back and play it in blue and white. The colors, like
everything else in Photopia, worked beautifully, adding artfully to the
overall impact of the story. The work is interactive in other important
ways as well. In fact, in many aspects Photopia is a metanarrative about
the medium of interactive fiction itself. Again, it wasn't until the end
of the story that I understood why it *had* to be told as interactive
fiction. And again, to explain the reason would be too much of a spoiler.
I have so much more I want to talk about with Photopia, but I can't talk
about it until you've played it. Go and play it, and then we'll talk. I
promise, you'll understand why everyone has been so impatient. You'll
understand why I loved it, and why I think it's one of the best pieces of
interactive fiction ever to be submitted to the competition.

Rating: 9.9

LIGHTIANIA by Gustav Bodell, Valbo

After most of the reviews were submitted for the 1997 competition, there
was the usual firestorm of controversy about what an IF review should do.
Every time the subject of criticism comes up, there is a certain segment
which asserts the idea that criticism should never be too negative, that
it should nurture the developing author rather than blast the substandard
game, and that reviewers shouldn't treat their subjects as they would a
professionally produced movie or book, but rather as the amateur product
of an amateur author, and make generous allowances for any problems in the
work. Now, I don't subscribe wholeheartedly to these notions -- I actually
think that honest criticism of a work's flaws is the best way to make sure
that author's next work (or even the next revision of the current work)
will be free from those flaws, creating better interactive fiction for
everyone. However, I do believe in constructive criticism, and I certainly
don't want to discourage anybody from writing IF, no matter how
problematic their previous creations may have been. Some of the reviews
for the 1997 competition were significantly harsher than mine, and I think
(or at least I hope) that they were the primary spur for the subsequent
criticism controversy. However, looking over my reviews from that year, I
had a bit of a guilt attack, and posted a message apologizing for anyone's
feelings I might have hurt with my reviews, and assuring all authors that
reviews are not personal rejections, but rather that they are about the
work itself and that no one should be discouraged from further writing by
a negative review. I also promised myself that I would try to have a
lighter touch in my 1998 reviews.

Therefore, I tread lightly. But some reviews are harder than others to
write. This is one of the tough ones. Lightiania is a very deeply troubled
game, which will take a lot of work before I can really consider it a
quality piece of interactive fiction. Therefore, in the spirit of
constructive criticism, here are some of the things that would really
improve Lightiania. First on the list has to be correct English spelling
and grammar. The mechanics of the writing in this game are just abysmal --
the nature of the errors lead me to suspect that perhaps English isn't the
writer's first language, which would certainly make the problems
understandable. I've taken some Spanish classes, but if I tried to write a
text adventure in Spanish, you can be certain that the result would be
nigh-unintelligible to a native speaker. However, due to my lack of
ability I would recognize the need for a proofreader. This is the step
that hasn't been taken in Lightiania. As a result, the language is so
mangled that it sometimes doesn't even make sense. A sample sentence: "You
get VERY supprised [sic] when you, after a smaller blackout, [no mention
of blackouts before this point. Is this electricity, or drinking, or
what?] realises [sic] that is [sic] is in fact a quite big space craft
that has crashed in the middle of the meadow." The first step to take, and
one that would improve the game a lot, is major, major proofreading.

The next thing that needs to happen is that some very basic design points
need to be changed. Right now, Lightiania is a very simple game, with
really only one puzzle, and virtually no plot. The plot (such as it is) is
this: You are an inventor, and a flying saucer has crashed a few miles
away from your house. You try to get this ship flying again. Why does it
matter that you're an inventor? Where are the aliens? Why would you try to
get the ship flying before finding the aliens? What does "Lightiania" mean
in the first place? These questions, and many others, go unanswered in the
game. What's worse, the game's one puzzle is virtually unsolvable without
a walkthrough. It requires you to find a piece of a lock-and-key mechanism
by LOOKing UNDER a piece of scenery. No problem, right? Well, the problem
is this: that piece of scenery is never mentioned in the game. Until the
walkthrough told me to "LOOK UNDER WARDROBE" (not the real solution, but
analagous), I had no idea there was a wardrobe in the room. These are very
serious problems. Many would be fixed by a good proofreader, or beta
tester, or (dare I dream it?) both. I'm not saying these things to be
harsh, and I definitely believe that someone with the imagination and
enthusiasm displayed in this game should write again. But please, please:
don't release it until it's in English and it makes sense.

Rating: 1.1


Paul O'Brian
obrian@colorado.edu
http://ucsu.colorado.edu/~obrian



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Subject: [Comp 98] My reviews, part 5 -- LONG!
Date: Mon, 16 Nov 1998 09:02:10 -0700
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This post contains reviews for the following games:

CATTUS ATROX
PURPLE
ENLIGHTENMENT: A ONE-ROOM ABSURDITY
THE CITY
THE PLANT

=========================================================

CATTUS ATROX by David A. Cornelson

Cattus Atrox begins with a warning. The warning says this: "This work of
IF contains strong language, violence, and sexual descriptions. It is not
intended for children or anyone with a distaste for such things." In my
opinion, this warning does not tell the whole truth. I'd like to replace
it with this warning: "This work of IF contains strong language, violence,
and sexual descriptions. It also contains no plot, no characterization,
and no puzzles to speak of. It consists of horrifying situations with no
apparent logic behind them, graphic descriptions of gratuitous violence,
and incident after incident that is unsolvable without prior knowledge
(i.e. save-and-restore "puzzles".) Its world is only fully implemented
enough to serve these goals. In a winning session, you will beat an animal
to death, watch 3 people be literally torn apart, and strangle a friendly
housecat. If you like slasher movies, this is the IF game for you. It is
not intended for children or anyone with a distaste for such things." See,
here's the thing: I really don't mind strong language, violence, or sexual
descriptions when they're in the service of a *story* that makes *sense.*
The "strong language, violence, and sexual descriptions" tag could be
equally attached to Bride of Chucky and The Color Purple. As you might
have guessed from what I've written so far, this game is on the Chucky end
of that continuum.

Now, it may well be that there are people with a taste for such things. I
don't really know who these people are, but I've been on the Internet long
enough to know that it's a big, wide, crazy world out there. But I'm not
one of those people. I really hated the experience of playing Cattus
Atrox, which, by the way, is another game whose title makes no sense even
after you've completed a winning session. I'm not saying that means it
shouldn't have been written, but I am saying that when I rate a game on
how much I enjoyed playing it, this game will not score highly. Here's the
situation: you play a regular person who, for no apparent reason, is
suddenly pursued by a psycho. Then you find out your friends are all in
league with the psycho, and also want to kill you. If this feels like a
spoiler, don't worry -- you won't solve the game without knowing this fact
in advance. Now, this is a scary situation, right? One of the game's goals
had to be to create a feeling of suspense, dread, and horror, and it
succeeds on all counts. While being chased by the psycho, I felt dread.
While running around a maze (yes, maze) of fog-shrouded streets, never
knowing when the psycho would loom from the mists, I felt dread. When I
was injured by the psycho, I felt horror. All this lasted for about 15
minutes. Then I began to feel annoyance. The questions in my mind were:
"What is the *point* of all this?" and "Is this all happening for no
reason?" The answers are: I don't think there is one, and yes. That's all
the story there is to the game. It's like one of those nightmares where
everyone is out to get you and your actions don't make much difference. If
you've had a nightmare like this, you know how this feels. Maybe it's a
feeling you'd like to have while you're awake as well. Not me.

Now, don't get me wrong. It is possible to win the game, though not
without doing and experiencing some really awful things, including one
that is a part of the winning message. I don't know how this game could be
won on the first time through, since several situations require knowledge
you can only get after you've lost, but it can be won. It is also, as far
as I could determine, fairly free of writing and coding errors. But there
are a number of problems with the game that don't have anything to do with
mechanics, or with violence, sex, and cursing. I think I've already
mentioned that the plot doesn't make much sense. Also, there's this: lots
of things aren't implemented, simply because there is only ever one
solution available to any given problem. The street is covered with cars,
but you can't set off any alarms on them because the game doesn't
recognize the word "car". The streets are full of houses, but you can't go
into any of them, because the game tells you that you can't see any such
thing. There's one particular location in which you need to examine the
street, but in all the other locations the street is "not something you
need to refer to in the course of this game." The story is so bare that
the player character doesn't know basic things, like where his house is or
how to find a store, police station, or any sort of help. The PC has no
other friends to call for help besides the psychos. There is no
explanation as to who the PC's psycho friends are, why he trusted them, or
why he's in the situation in the first place. There is no explanation as
to why the psychos choose the PC to kill. The game is good at one thing,
and that is producing fear and disgust. Unfortunately, unrelieved fear and
disgust, without any reason behind them, aren't my idea of fun.

Rating: 3.2


PURPLE by Stefan Blixt

The world is ending. It's not immediately apaprent at first, because you
and your brother are living out on the remote island of Lino Kapo, quite
isolated from the political troubles of your future Earth(?), whose
nations have names like "the Kollagio Antarktika" and "the Oceanic
Republic." But listen to the TV. (The nations have morphed so much that
people are living in places like Antarctica, but we still get our
information from the TV. Some things never change.) Political battles
between the nations have led to the use of the deadly K-bomb, which
releases, unsurprisingly, deadly K-radiation! (Where are you when we need
you, Lane Mastodon?) This radiation turns the sky a disturbing purple, and
threatens to choke out humanity in its menacing clouds. (By the way, the
color of the sky is the meaning behind the game's title. Hallelujah, a
title that makes a little sense!) Lucky for you, your brother is a bit of
a tinkerer, and has come up with this device called a Phoenix Nest, into
which you can climb and sleep away the death of the world in suspended
animation. The Nest wakes you up when the levels of K-radiation have
dropped enough for humans to be safe. So in you climb, as the world ends,
to await its rebirth and greet it with your own. Now, I know I've made a
bit of sport with the plot here, but details aside I *like* this premise.
It has a drama and immediacy to it, it creates a perfectly plausible
reason for the world to be basically deserted, as it so often is in IF,
and it gives the author a blank slate onto which a compelling alternate
world can be drawn. Not to mention the fact that the mysterious
"K-radiation" can be an excuse for almost any biological oddity you care
to dream up.

The good news is that from this imaginative premise, Purple takes several
very creative steps. The flora and fauna of the post-apocalyptic world are
pleasingly exotic and interesting. The landscape is convincingly changed,
and the language used to describe the new reality can be quite vivid. The
bad news is that these good ideas are very poorly implemented. Let's start
with the writing. Purple isn't exactly riddled with errors in the same way
that, say, Lightiania was. However, there are enough mechanical (spelling
& grammar) problems to be a serious irritant. Many of these problems
aren't exactly errors, but rather awkward turns of phrase that make the
game harder to read. Purple's descriptions often sound as if they were
translated from another language into English, by a somewhat inexpert
translator. The awkwardness throws off the rhythm of the game's prose, and
I found myself frequently reading text more than once in order to figure
out what it was saying. Then there are those sentences that really don't
make sense, like this one: "Urging to cover your eyes from the bright
light, you still can't move a finger." I think that what this means is
that you have the urge to cover your eyes, but you can't because you're
paralyzed. I figured this out, but it took a minute, and for that minute I
was thrown out of the story; in a text adventure, where prose is all there
is, being thrown out of the narrative like this is problematic. Add a few
outright spelling and grammar errors, and the game starts to feel more
like work than fun.

Compounding this problem are some trouble spots in the code. There were
several instances of disambiguation troubles, almost enough to make me
feel like I was playing a TADS game. Scenes like this were not uncommon:

>X CEILING
Which do you mean, the up, the ceiling or the hole?

>HOLE
Which do you mean, the ceiling or the hole?

>CEILING
Which do you mean, the ceiling or the hole?

To make matters worse, I also came across several run-time errors of the
flavor "** Run-time error: [Name of object] (object number 211)  has no
property <number 0> to read **," and in fact once crashed WinFrotz
altogether with a "No Such Property" error. Besides these basic errors in
the code, there were also a number of problems with the way objects were
implemented. For instance, you have half of a tool that you have to
complete by improvising the other half, and putting one piece into the
other. Unfortunately, unless you choose the right piece to insert, you are
told that the other half "can't contain things." I also had trouble with a
number of the puzzles, and was unable to figure them out without a
walkthrough, but I can't tell if that's because of the stumbling English
and buggy code, or the difficulty of the puzzles, or just my own
denseness. On balance, I'd say that Purple is a very rough version of what
could become a good IF vignette. After it's undergone a few vigorous
rounds of beta-testing, you might want to give it a try.

Rating: 4.1


ENLIGHTENMENT: A ONE ROOM ABSURDITY by Taro Ogawa

What is it with all the one-room games this year? There must be some kind
of movement happening in the collective IF unconscious which says "Plot?
Who needs it? Give me one room, and as long as it's got one or more
puzzles in it, I'm happy." Well, sometimes I'm happy too. And, more or
less, this is one of those times. Despite its title, Enlightenment has
very little to do with gaining awareness or understanding Zen koans. To
say what it *does* have to do with would probably be a bit too much of a
spoiler, but it involves deliberately placing yourself in a situation that
most text adventurers would avoid at all costs. Because of this, it took
me a little while to actually catch on to how the game is supposed to work
-- I just couldn't believe that deliberately placing myself in danger was
the right path. It is, though, and getting there is all the fun. Like last
year's Zero Sum Game, Enlightenment puts the PC at the *end* of an
adventure of dizzying proportions. Unlike Zero Sum Game, Enlightenment
isn't really an unwinding of the PC's accomplishments -- you get to keep
your score, and even increase it. You've already overcome dozens of
obstacles, collected lots of treasures, and scored 240 points out of 250;
now there's just the little matter of getting past a canonical troll
bridge and scurrying out of the caverns with your loot. But how? In the
game's words: 

	If only you hadn't used your Frobozz Magic Napalm on that ice
		wall... 
	If only you hadn't used your TrolKil (*Tm) to map that maze... 
	If only you hadn't sold your Frobozz Magic Tinning Kit.
	If only you hadn't cooked and eaten those three Billy Goats
		Gruff... 
	... or that bear ...

	If ONLY you'd checked the bloody bridge on your way in.

This brief excerpt is representative of the writing in the game: it is
both a very funny parody of the Zork tradition as well as an enthusiastic
participation in that tradtion. In fact, as you can see from the above
quote, the game actually features some familiar parts of the Zork
universe, such as Frobozz Magic products, rat-ants, and even certain
slavering lurkers in dark corners. Activision apparently granted
permission for this usage, as they did for David Ledgard in his adaptation
of the Planetfall sample transcript for his game Space Station.
Activision's willingness to grant permissions for such usage, as well as
their donation of prizes to the competition and their sometime inclusion
of hobbyist IF on commercial products, is great news for a fan community
like ours -- their support of IF means that more people will devote their
time to it, resulting (hopefully) in more and more good games.
Enlightenment is one of the good ones, and one of its best features is its
writing. Another way in which it is unlike Zero Sum Game is that it
doesn't take an extreme or harsh tone. Instead, the writing is almost
always quite funny in both its comments on text adventure cliches (the
FULL score listing is a scream) and its usage of them. The game is
littered with footnotes, which themselves are often littered with
footnotes. Sly allusions and in-jokes abound, but they're never what the
game depends on, so if you don't catch them, you're not missing anything
important. Of all the one-room games I've seen this year, Enlightenment is
definitely the best-written. 

It even includes some fun outside documentation in the form of the HTML
edition of the latest issue of Spelunker Today: "The magazine for
explorers and adventurers." This kind of mood-building file has been
included with a few competition games this year, and Enlightenment's
extras are definitely the best of the bunch. The writing in the faux
magazine is just as good as the writing in the game, and the graphics look
sharp and professional. I like these little extras -- they really do help
set the mood of a game -- and they definitely add to the fun of
Enlightenment. The one problem I had with this game was that, although the
writing is funny and clever, it is sometimes not precise enough to convey
the exact nature of a puzzle or its solution. In a heavily puzzle-oriented
game like Enlightenment, this can be a major setback. For example, at one
point in the game you're called upon to cut something, but it won't work
to use your sword on it. You must find something else to cut with. Well,
there is something else, but that object is never described as having a
sharp edge. This is one of those puzzles that made me glad I looked at the
hints -- the only way I would have ever gotten it is by brute force, and
that's no fun anyway. In another instance, a part of the setting is
described in such a confusing way that I still don't quite understand what
it is supposed to look like. Part of the difficulty, I think, is that the
game features a gate, with metal spikes at its bottom set into the stone
floor. Now, this made me think of bars, like you might see on a
portcullis. However, as far as I can determine the game actually means a
solid wall, with spikes at the bottom, which I wouldn't describe as a
gate. This kind of imprecision is a real problem when the objects so
imprecisely described have to be acted upon in precise ways in order to
solve puzzles. So I used the hints for a number of the puzzles, and I
don't mind that I did, because I wouldn't have solved them on my own
anyway. But imprecision aside, I'm still glad I used them, because it
enabled me to play all the way through Enlightenment, and the trip out of
that one room was well worth taking.

Rating: 8.6


THE CITY by Sam Barlow

The City gave me a very strong sense of deja vu. So many parts are
hauntingly familiar. Here's the story: You wake up, not knowing who you
are, where you are, or why you are wherever you are. Sound familiar yet?
If not, here's more: You seem to be trapped in a surreal and inescapable
institution. (This institution is called "The City", hence the name of the
game. Yes, that's right. It's not about an actual city.). Does this ring
any bells? OK, here's more: your situation is iterative, bringing you back
to the same point over and over again. No? Well, how about this: at one
point during the game, when you give a command that goes against the
narrative's wishes, the parser replies, in bold letters: "That's not how
you remember it." This should *definitely* sound familiar to anyone who's
played the latest Zarf offering. Plotwise, it's as if somebody chopped up
Mikko Vuorinen's "Leaves" (another escape-from-the-institution game whose
name had only tenuous relation to its contents), added two tablespoons of
Andrew Plotkin's "Spider and Web", garnished with a sauce of Greg Ewing's
"Don't Be Late", threw in a pinch of Ian Finley's "Babel", put the mixture
into a crust made from tiny pieces of various other text adventures,
stirred, baked for 45 minutes at 350 degrees, and served it up for this
year's competition. Now, I'm not entirely convinced this is a bad thing. I
think that lots of great works of art, interactive fiction and otherwise,
are really just inspired melanges of things that had come before, so I'm
not particularly opposed to such derivation on principle. For me, though,
some of the derivative aspects of The City didn't work particularly well.
This was especially true for the "Spider and Web" stuff -- I felt that the
game crossed the line between homage and rip-off, heading the wrong
direction. In addition, the convention of waking up with no idea of who
you are or where you are, despite how well suited it is to IF, is starting
to feel very tired to me. Perhaps I'm just jaded, or burnt-out, but when I
saw the beginning I said "Oh, not another one of *these*!". 

Now, this is not to say that the entire *game* was derivative. The plot
certainly didn't break any new ground, but certain aspects of the
interface were imaginative and innovative. The City does away with status
line and score, not to mention save and restore. Abandoning the first two
precepts did lend the game a greater sense of rawness, of the interactive
experience being immediate and unmediated by any artificial tracking
devices. The absence of save and restore, on the other hand, was a pain in
the neck. See, as much as IF might want to emulate real life, it's never
really going to be real life. Consequently, there will be times when I
only have 15 minutes to play a game and want to at least get a start into
it. Or when a fire alarm goes off and I have to shut things down. Or when
my wife wants to go to sleep, and I need to turn off my computer (which is
in our bedroom.) You get the idea. At those times, I want to preserve the
progress I've made. I don't want to have to start from scratch, and I
don't care *how* short the game is, I don't want to waste my time typing
in a rapid series of commands to get to where I was when I had to leave
the game last time. Especially since with my memory, I'm likely to forget
one or two crucial actions which will then oblige me to start over
*again*. Here is the lesson for game authors: please do not disable
interface conveniences in the name of realism. It will not win admiration
>from your players, at least not from this one. 

One innovation I *did* like in The City was its expansion of the typical
IF question format. The game allowed not only the typical ASK and SHOW
constructions, but also questions (both to the parser and to other
players) like "Why am I here?", "Where am I?", or "Who are you?" Now, it
didn't allow question marks, which made the whole thing look a bit strange
syntactically, but I found it did have a pretty good record of responding
realistically to reasonable questions. I can imagine how much work must
have gone into this feature, and I think it really made a difference -- I
felt much freer to question NPCs in a much more lifelike way. Even when I
bumped into the limits of this realism (with questions like "what is going
on here?") I still felt outside of the bounds of traditional IF.
Unfortunately, the energy that went into this innovative question system
must have been leached out of other technical parts of the game. There
were a number of bugs in the game, including one that rendered the game
completely unwinnable, forcing me to, you guessed it: restart. Since I
couldn't save, and since the bug happened about 2/3 of the way through the
game, I had to completely restart and type in all the commands that had
brought me to that point -- you can be certain I was grinding my teeth the
whole time. In a non-competition game I almost certainly would not have
bothered, choosing not to finish rather than to waste my time in such a
manner. If anybody needs *another* reason not to disable save and restore,
it's this: when bugs in your code force the player to go backwards, that
player will not appreciate having to back all the way up to the beginning.
In addition to the bugs in the game's coding, there were also a number of
mechanical errors with its writing as well. These were not egregious, but
they were there, and wore on what little patience remained after the bugs,
the disabled conveniences, and the ultimately frustrating nature of the
plot itself. I think the question system from The City is a valuable tool
that could be well-used elsewhere (though I'd appreciate the ability to
punctuate my questions with question marks). I would be very happy to see
that system integrated into a game with an original plot, working code,
and error-free English.

Rating: 5.5


THE PLANT by Michael J. Roberts

You know, by the time I get finished writing these reviews, I'm pretty
tired. It takes a lot of energy to put out twenty or thirty thousand words
about competition entries, and even though my reviews are shorter than
last year's, and there are fewer games involved, they were also written in
a much more compressed judging period, so my exhaustion level is about the
same. However, every year I've been reviewing the competition games I've
gotten a little reward in the final game of the batch. In 1996, I was
playing the games in order of filename, so the last game I played was
Tapestry, an excellent piece of work by Dan Ravipinto which ended up
taking second in the competition as a whole. Last year I let Lucian
Smith's Comp97 order my choices randomly, and ironically the last game on
the list ended up being Smith's own The Edifice. And true to form, that
was another excellent game to finish on, and it ended up winning all the
marbles in the 1997 comp. So it was with both trepidation and eagerness
that I broached the final game of this year's batch, The Plant. When I saw
it was by Michael J. Roberts, the legendary implementor of both TADS and
HTML-TADS, my anticipation was increased even further. I've never played
one of Roberts' games, having been an Inform initiate when I started
programming, and having entered the IF scene just shortly before Roberts'
departure. And after this buildup, I'm pleased to say that the Plant
completely lives up to my mini-tradition of grand finales. It was a great
game to end the competition with -- the reward I was hoping for, so that
this review wouldn't be too hard to write. 

Probably the thing I liked the most about The Plant was its puzzles. I
know there were several other games this year that were focused on
puzzles, and some of the puzzles in those games were excellent. However, I
liked The Plant's puzzles better precisely *because* the game wasn't
focused on puzzles. Instead, its puzzles were very well integrated into
its story, so solving the puzzles really propelled the narrative. It's
much more interesting to solve a puzzle when it opens the door to the next
piece of the story, rather than being just one of a roomful of puzzles
that you have to solve to escape that room. The Plant was probably the
only game in this year's competition to give me a feeling similar to what
I have when I play Infocom games. I love that feeling of uncovering an
exciting story by cleverly putting pieces together, using items in
unexpected ways, or doing the right thing at just the right time. And the
game's story is definitely an exciting one. It begins as you are stranded
on an abandoned side-road with your boss, marooned by his unreliable car.
It's up to you to find a phone or a service station and get moving again,
but when you go looking you may find more than you bargained for. I won't
give too much away about the secrets that are eventually revealed, but the
game definitely packs plenty of surprises. The pacing is excellent -- I
only felt completely stuck once. I turned to the walkthrough to solve the
problem, just because I wanted to finish as much of the game as I could in
the two-hour time limit, but if you're playing The Plant for the first
time, let me urge you *not* to check the walkthrough unless you're
completely stuck. All the puzzles are completely logical, none of them
require reading the designer's mind, and many of them are quite satisfying
to solve, requiring several steps or clever combinations of objects, or
both.

Now, the story itself does have some flaws. There are some parts that felt
quite implausible to me, and from time to time the fact that your boss
follows you around in your travels doing the same two or three things all
the time starts to feel a little artificial. In addition, there are one or
two minor spelling errors in the game. Outside of this, the plotting and
writing are quite good. The Plant's prose often conveyed a very vivid
sense of the visual. I drive by a plant like this about twice a month, and
the game's descriptions of it, how its completely industrial and
utilitarian networks of pipes and lights can seem almost like an abstract
fairyland when glimpsed from afar, are right on the mark. I could really
visualize most of the places in the game, and the mental pictures the
game's text creates are quite dramatic and compelling. In addition, the
game uses a few small touches here and there which utilize the power of
HTML TADS. No pictures or sound, but a few well-placed hyperlinks in the
help text and one or two spots with specially formatted text really make
the game look sharp, and add to the very visual quality of the prose. If
you sometimes start to feel a little impatient with all the growing that
the medium of interactive fiction is doing, and long for a good
old-fashioned Infocom-style thrill ride, check out The Plant. I think it
may be just what you're looking for. 

Rating: 9.0


Paul O'Brian
obrian@colorado.edu
http://ucsu.colorado.edu/~obrian



From erkyrath@netcom.com Mon Nov 16 21:04:40 MET 1998
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Dan Shiovitz (dbs@cs.wisc.edu) wrote:
> I think it's safe to start this off.

Works for me. Here goes.

-----------

Now hear this:

My scoring system is very simple: I ask myself "How much did I enjoy
playing this game?" There is no question of whether a game deserves to
win, or whether my scoring is biased. If I enjoyed it, points. If I
didn't enjoy it, no points. Any particular aspects of the game (writing,
puzzles, characters, spelling, bugs) are included in the overall score
only -- and exactly -- to the extent that they affected my enjoyment.

Also, I played all the games as they were uploaded at the contest
beginning. I ignored later releases of games *and* walkthroughs and
hints. Sorry; there is a deadline, and meeting it is part of the contest
conditions.

I played every TADS and Inform game. If this seems unfair to Hugo and
Alan, so be it; I play games at home, and at home I have Macs. A
comfortable play environment is part of the game, as it were. (Note that
I make no apology for being unfair to PC executables.)

The scores are normalized, so that I give a 10 to the game I enjoyed the
most and a 1 to the games I enjoyed the least. As in past years, I wound
up grouping them into the good, the bad, and the ugly -- more
specifically, the good (9-8), the pretty good (7-5), the not-so-good
(4-3), and the ugly (2-1). The score of 10 is reserved for my single
favorite.

Here are the scores. I've added "+" for some finer distinctions, and
even finer distinctions can be seen in the exact ordering of
equal-scoring games. Of course, when I mailed in my votes, I dropped the
"+" marks and ordering didn't count. But the distinctions are there.

10: Photopia
9: Little Blue Men
8+: The Plant
8: Enlightenment
7+: Arrival
7: Downtown Tokyo. Present Day.
7: Informatory
6: The Ritual of Purification
5+: Mother Loose
5: Research Dig
5: The City
4+: Trapped in a One-Room Dilly
4+: Where Evil Dwells
4: Four in One
3+: Purple
3+: Lightiania
3: Muse: An Autumn Romance
3: In the Spotlight
3: Cattus Atrox
2+: Acid Whiplash
2: Spacestation
1: Fifteen
1: Human Resources Stories

As you see, the balance worked out well. There were four games that were
clearly in the lead, four that I could shift to the bottom, and the rest
split between "pretty good" and "not that good".

Now, my comments. Hear this also: these are neither reviews nor
explanations of my votes. These are brief comments on what I thought was
good or bad about each game. Sometimes I spend more time on the good;
sometimes on the bad. It's whatever caught my interest. You may consider
me to be speaking to the author -- describing bits which can be
improved, or which made the game for me, or which ruined it. I may
comment on the worst thing about a good game, or the best thing about a
bad game. So don't expect the tenor of my comments to match the score I
give.

It is not my job to be encouraging or polite. If you want to hear
pleasant lies about your game, please read somebody else's post.

The comments are given in the order that I played the games. You may
notice a slight trend; the last few games got pretty low scores, and I
make some comments like "I don't have much patience" and "I'm not in the
mood". Is *that* unfair? It's not entirely clear. I do want to judge
each game on its own merits. And my enthusiasm did decline from its
initial feverish pitch as time went on. And I didn't use Comp98 to
determine my playing order.

On the other hand, I took a one-move peek at every game in advance; and
I tended to play them in the order that they caught my interest. So the
order was, to some extent, based on a snap judgement of the opening
scene, which *is* part of the merit of the game. And there was a lot of
randomness anyway -- it was hardly a deterministic process. So I decided
to let the scores stand. (Besides, the fourth-to-last game I played got
an 8+ score, so I couldn't have been *that* prejudiced.) 

------------

Trapped in a One-Room Dilly
by Laura A. Knauth

The premise is, indeed, that you're in a dilly of a one-room puzzle box.
A very puzzle-box like game; you're presented with random objects, with
no particular rhyme or rationale. When you play with them right, you're
presented with more objects.

This was fun for about two-thirds of the game. I even enjoyed the
toggling-lights puzzle -- partially because it was at least a little
variant from the usual, and partially because this was the first game I
played. (If I see another one, there may be trouble.)

But, as you can tell from my faint praise, it got old. Two-thirds
through would have been a good time for some hints early in the game to
come together -- foreshadowing -- or something. Cast things in a new
light. This didn't particularly happen. 

I wound up going to the hints for the last several puzzles. Some things
were said only in one place, or not emphasized, and I never followed up
on them. A few actions were rather unobvious as well. I wasn't engaged
enough to examine everything three times looking for inconsistencies.
Sorry. I *did* enjoy the game, honest. But a puzzle box has to be
astonishingly evil and twisted to hold my attention for a full game.

The implementation was somewhat sparse. The kind of thing where when you
type "sit", you sit down for a second and then stand up again -- a
message, rather than full implementation. This is legitimate, of course,
but it's more common in realistic sequences where the game wants to keep
you directed within a large range of real-world actions. I don't think
it fits in with a puzzle-mechanism game, where you want to try to
manipulate everything. 

On the other hand, I liked the response to "jump". Heh.

------------

The Ritual of Purification
by Sable

This game goes straight for the surreal side. It's entirely abstract;
the story is dream-quest for purification, and everything that happens
is part of that dream logic. You encounter a sequence of tiny scenes,
each with some allegorical action to perform.

This works quite well, in spite of -- or more likely because of -- its
simplicity. There aren't many things to do (no objects, just a handful
of spells that you come across) so I didn't get stuck trying to find
actions, even when the action was a little obscure. It really is
feasible to try everything, in other words.

The spelling is shaky and the language is rather goofy and overblown. (I
felt like I was reading amateur death metal lyrics. The author quoted
Poe in the section epigrams, and it's so hard to stand next to Poe...)
But the idea got across anyway.

I'm sort of ambivalent about the story... on one hand, I like the idea
of this self-contained vision, with no frame of "the real world". On
another hand, there isn't quite enough forward momentum in the
beginning. The first part of the game is going down a checklist,
effectively. The spells you pick up figure in the second half, which has
a reasonably solid progression.

A few other characters, mostly single-action IF mannequins. There is one
which I enjoyed interacting with, though. 

------------

Acid Whiplash (or: Rybread Celsius Can't Find a Dictionary)
by Rybread Celsius and Cody Sandifer

Ok, I'm laughing. I'm laughing hard.

I am truly impressed. I would not have believed that a functional
program could be so completely chaotic. I have no idea how to get
through most of the game; fortunately, this didn't stop me.

Of course you can't *do* anything with it.

------------

Research Dig
by Chris Armitage

There's a pacing problem here. I felt like I was, er, hit over the head
with an ending when I least expected it.

You're sent out with little explanation to find some mysterious artifact
someone dug up. That's it. As you explore, you find a small part of a
strange underground realm... only, as I said, the game ends just when I
thought it was starting to go somewhere.

There's a storyline, but it only shows up in fragments at the beginning
and end. Mind you, this wouldn't be so disappointing if the game
*hadn't* started to go somewhere. It does, really. There's stuff
underground; enough to hint that interesting things are happening. Then
they don't. Oh well.

The implementation is careless (missing rtrue statements, inconsistent
capitalization in room names, object names which include the article --
"a a key"). These are all fixable with a bit more Inform experience.

By the way, one complaint which is not specific to this game: if you're
writing an Inform game, *do not* put linebreaks or extra lines of text
in your "Constant Story" line! That constant should contain only the
name of your game as a string, nothing else. Why? Because the
verbose/brief verbs print the Story constant followed by "...is now in
verbose mode." Or whatever. It looks really silly if there are extra
linebreaks there.

------------

Enlightenment
By Taro Ogawa

Now this is a one-room game. Ok, not a perfect one. But with this much
attention to detail, I'll forgive much.

The gimmick is reminiscent of "Zero Sum Game": you've just finished a
long dungeon crawl. Now there's just one damn troll between you and the
exit. 

The pre-history of the game is the funniest part, as it shows up in
various offhand comments... try "places", "objects", or "full score". Or
the false hints. Brilliant. Brilliant, I say.

Anyway, I won't give away the schtick, but you have to get rid of all
your previously-acquired stuff to win. (Very reminiscent of "ZSG", yes,
but it's really an entirely different gag. Don't get all hepped up about
the resemblance.)

Now, as to the game itself, I had a lot of trouble playing it. There are
lots and lots of things to fiddle with, which is good, but I actually
underestimated just how much you can fiddle. I suppose I shouldn't
complain (since I had the opposite problem with "Dilly") but I did have
to hit the hints a lot. But not all the time. Plenty of things I got
myself. Ok.

Anyway, I'll forgive hard puzzles for the cleverness.

One quibble... The line "noli illegitimati carborundum" is "don't let
the bastards *wear* you down." Wear down. Like carborundum sandpaper.
It's not a very good joke, but there it is. Don't screw it up.

Note: opcode errors.

Also, whenever you look or take inventory, the pronouns are all reset.
There's a library option to not do this. It is my tireless mission to
make every single Inform author use it. I'm sure you're already tired of
hearing about it. But it's particularly bad this time, because when you
take inventory, "it" is set to "the breach of copyright" -- damn
confusing.

------------

Spacestation 
by David Ledgard

This is a cute idea -- implementing one of Infocom's sample transcripts
as a game. Unfortunately, there's no more to "Spacestation" than that.
The original transcript had no more point to it than a punchline about
sudden death; this game lets you win, but doesn't add a point. Most of
the colorful text is from the transcript.

The author says "I would have liked the game to be a lot more complex
but ran out of time." That about sums it up. This could be really nifty
if the author extends the game with the same charm and style as its
source had.

------------

Human Resources Stories 
by Harry M. Hardjono

Type "egg". The author has done an excellent job of summarizing the
game's shortcomings. I have nothing to add.

------------

Informatory
by William J. Shlaer

This is really, really strange. (He said.)

I *think* it's an absurdist look at the world of IF authorship. The
theme is "Learning Inform". As such, it's full of references to Graham
Nelson, earlier Inform games, Infocom, the Inform Designer's Manual, my
"Lists and Lists", and so on. The author does a good job of slipping in
sly digs. Maybe the barbs about Inform design cut a little *too* deep...
well, who am I to say. :)

There isn't really a coherent thread to this game, but this is more than
compensated for by the crazy ideas the author has thrown in. Let me be
clear: the hint system is *the best hint system ever*. My head hasn't
hurt this much since I played the old Apple 2 game "The Prisoner". No,
this isn't as good as that. "The Prisoner" kept the lunacy up much
longer. But this thing rings the bell but good a couple of times. For a
start, it comes close to being the Quine Sentence of Inform. If you
don't know what I mean, just try it.

No story -- sure, it's all scenery and metatextual gags -- but so what?
I liked it.

------------

Little Blue Men
by Michael S. Gentry

I am well pleased. The author apologizes for the "rushed and uneven
mixture of gonzo humor and surreal horror", but I think he's
underselling himself. Such things have always been complementary. (Look
at "The Lurking Horror".)

So, you're in your office, doing your work, and you're trying to stay
cool. If I say another thing about the plot it'll be too much. It goes
on from there, that's all.

Now, the author also comments hopefully about the ending, which some
might see as a bit of a drag. He wants to talk about the motivation of
the protagonist as contrasted with the motivation of the player. I'd say
it's simpler than that; some stories are a downer, that's all. It's a
good ending because it makes you go "Gnaaaaah!" It does that very well.
The only other ending I can think of involves being promoted, if you see
what I mean, and that wouldn't be quite as visceral. So let it stand.

------------

Fifteen
by Ricardo Dague

Er, well. This is about as bare-bones as a game can get. It's supposed
to be modelled after the Scott Adams games, but Adams somehow managed to
cram some juice into his three-word sentence fragments. Here, every room
description is of the form "Exits are south, east and north", and it's
not in aid of any particular gimmick.

There are only three puzzles, of which one is (surprise) the fifteen
puzzle. I'm afraid whatever tolerance I had for Old Standards was
exhausted after the light-toggler in "Dilly"; fortunately, the author
provides a cheat. The second puzzle (a kitten up a tree) is reasonable.
The third is a good puzzle idea, except it's built in a maze. The maze
is exactly as interesting to look at as the rest of the game. It's easy
to map, but come on.

This isn't a disaster. It's about two good ideas from some
not-yet-written game, and they don't stand up on their own. On the other
hand, it didn't get boring either; the extreme brevity slid me through
to the end before I threw it against a wall. That may not sound like
much praise :-) but I mean it: when there are only three bits, and two
of them work ok, that's above average.

But room descriptions are still considered good.

------------

In The Spotlight
by John W. Byrd

This is an unapologetic one-puzzler. Unfortunately, I've seen the puzzle
before. Another Old Classic.

There are a lot of nice touches in the writing; particularly the help
text, and the description of the (very simple) scenery around you. I bet
I can distinguish the ideas the author came up with at age 13 from the
ones he added for this Inform version.

The implementation, even more unfortunately, isn't very good; as I've
said, a puzzle-box game needs rich mechanics. Saying that "push string"
doesn't work unless you're holding it is the sort of non-physical
restriction that can't work in a game like this. And there's no clue in
the initial description that the strings are *hanging from the ceiling*,
even though this is the whole point of the game. 

For that matter, the entire physical basis of the game is questionable.
A very long string, dangling from far overhead, doesn't restrict your
movement when you're holding on to it. The angle is too small to pull it
out of reach. The standard description of this problem is two strings
hanging from a *room* ceiling, nearly their own length apart.

Basically, lots of points for the idea, I still like the no-context
presentation, but it's undermined by technicalities.

------------

Lightiania
by Gustav Bodel

This is very short and mostly obscured by the author's difficulty with
English. You find a crashed UFO. You want to get it working. There are
about three stages to this, of which one is obvious and two are
insufficiently clued. The atmosphere doesn't work, because the writing
just isn't up to it. There's some charactarization of the protagonist,
but it's all background.

I try to be encouraging about these things. This isn't mind-numbingly
awful, in the manner of the mind-numbingly awful IF games we all know
and make fun of. It just doesn't do much.

------------

Arrival
by Samantha Clark

Continuing the swarm of flying saucers in this competition -- okay, the
second, but who's counting? --

This one was a joy to read. The four NPCs (two aliens and two parents)
cheerfully play off stereotypes, with enough zing to keep me chuckling
through the storyline. (Help, I'm trapped in a sea of ReviewerLang. Er,
sorry. It was a lot of fun, though.)

The puzzles are satisfactory, although somehow I didn't click with
several of them, so I wound up relying heavily on hints. In particular,
the problem of getting Mom and Dad out of the way seemed totally opaque.
It relies on doing one thing which has no effect for several turns; and
then another which I accidentally did at the very start of the game,
making things unwinnable (with an instant game-over when I entered the
living room, in fact.) I could probably have gotten this with a great
deal of experimentation, but I wasn't inspired to experiment. Similarly,
in another room I missed a hiding place, which left me no obvious way to
proceed. I'm hesitant to say these are the game's fault, but nonetheless
they didn't work out for me.

In spite of this, I solved the last few puzzles myself (the ones I *did*
experiment with) and bought the game to, as they say, a satisfactory
conclusion.

------------

Cattus Atrox
by David A. Cornelson

This is a (non-supernatural) horror storyline. Unfortunately, it's not
very horrific. To explain why, I'm going to go into more detail about
the storyline than most of these reviews, so skip the rest if you
dislike spoilers.

It begins with a station wagon pacing you on a dark, foggy night. This
is a good start, actually; the thing creeps alongside you as you walk
home, betraying no sign of what's inside. It lets you get nearly all the
way, too.

Then it stops, blocking you from your house, and... a man and six lions
get out. This is my first problem; in fact, my first two problems. I
don't think you can *get* six lions in a station wagon without a
blender. Ok, that's a quibble. But the lions just aren't very scary.
Maybe our culture has desensitized us with "noble hunter" images, but
even so, when you look around and the game says "...You also see a lion,
a lioness, and four lion cubs," it's not doing enough to get the mood
across.

So you spend some time running from lions. This picks up the pace again,
as you wander around a claustrophobic maze of streets. (Although there
are some odd hitches -- for example, until you take your first step away
>from the car, you can wait as long as you want with no response from the
lions or their owner.)

So you finally get in contact with someone who will help. You go back to
a friend's house... and then the game pretty much ends. The place of
safety turns out to be the lions' den, pardon me for grounding my own
metaphor, and you're drugged. (Without even the grace of typing "drink
liquid" yourself; the game just tells you you've done it.) You can't
move.

So you spend the last twenty moves typing "wait" and watching some
people be gratuitously exhibitionistic and then kill you. I must regard
this as a failure of pacing. There isn't much explanation, either,
except that for a hint that you were... hard to work with at the office?

It's hard to avoid comparing this with the Laurell Hamilton "Anita
Blake" novels, which have included some hellishly charged scenes of sex,
violence, and leopards. (Were-leopards, in fact.) Those worked because
of the prose, the clear evocation of the emotional currents *behind* the
events, and the fact that Anita wasn't a passive victim. (Was, in fact,
active enough to eventually make mincemeat of the were-leopard and
anyone else that annoyed her. I realize that Cattus Atrox was never
intended to have a happy ending. But it should have an *involving*
ending; that's the strength of interactive fiction, we generally agree.)

------------

Where Evil Dwells
By Paul Johnson & Steve Owens

Another horror format, this one classically Lovecraftian. Rather
overbearingly Lovecraftian, really; while I know this was developed
independently from _Anchorhead_, one can't avoid thinking that it's been
done now. There's only so much you can do with hooded cultists. Garlic
sauce, roasted red peppers, it's all the same in the end.

The tone of the game is effective, however, despite its familiarity.
Lights going out, things being snatched behind your back, and tendrils
in the dark. 

There's an uncomfortable current of silliness which doesn't really fit
in. Yes, I said gonzo humor and horror go well together, but it's horror
bubbling up under satire that I was thinking above, not Gilligan's
Island jokes in a haunted house. It can probably be made to work, but
it'll take a lot more fine-tuning.

The other problem is the implementation, which is sparse to the point of
being hostile. A lot more of the world should be examinable,
particularly since your character is a private investigator and ought to
be poking into things. Instead, most of the things mentioned in room
descriptions are absent, which gives a certain
airbrushed-against-a-backdrop-darkly feeling to the whole affair. The
puzzle design is rough as well; I used the hints a lot, and then I
bypassed a puzzle near the end without even noticing it was there.

------------

Downtown Tokyo, Present Day
Digby McWiggle

Short and sweet, or possibly one should say "short and silly." You watch
/ direct the hero of a Japanese monster movie, as he gets the monster
and the girl in two brief scenes. Not difficult, but the clever writing
carries the game.

One interesting note is the split-level narrative. You're in a movie
theater, watching the protagonist perform. (And this whole situation is
described by a not-entirely-invisible narrator, who talks, for example,
about "our hero". So we actually have first, second, *and* third-person
narration going on here -- heh.) I like the effect, but it's probably
good that it's such a short game; the gimmick would get old fast. 

(And yes, I still feel that it's more distancing than the "standard"
second-person IF narration. Particularly in the first scene, where you
don't have much real control over the hero's actions.)

Plus, it's got illustrations. What more can a gamer need?

------------

Photopia
by Opal O'Donnell

This, I think, will do.

I'm not even sure how to describe it; the story has a whole tangle of
threads, marching backwards to tie into a painfully precise knot at the
beginning. I keep going back to try different things, to see what
*might* connect -- in case it does.

We have -- no, I shouldn't even list the subjects of discourse. Works
better as a surprise. I was pleased that "IF authorship" was in there,
though. :)

(Footnote: dammit, I just realized: the "bug" I thought I found early in
the game is in fact deliberate. The game has now rated a bout of vicious
swearing in addition to the three kow-tows I gave it during play.)

The plot is quite tightly constrained; you can't go far wrong. Choices
tend to be alternate ways of getting to the next scene, rather than
divergences in the plot. Even the puzzles provide solutions for
themselves if you don't look for any. This works just fine, since the
point of the game is the narrative. (I'm a little surprised at how well
the optional-puzzle thing works -- but then this didn't happen to me
much when I was playing. I ran into it when I was going back to try
things.)

The scenes are supposed to be differentiated by color, but I played in
MaxZip (which doesn't support that) and there were display bugs when I
tried it in Zip Infinity. I'm not terribly enthused by the gimmick; yes,
it adds atmosphere, but the color combinations are harder to read than
my preferred text setup. (The purple-on-black combo would drive me nuts
if there was more than a page or two of it.)

Zarf says "three kow-tows and a bout of swearing."

------------

Mother Loose
by Irene Callaci

One guess what the motif is. However, the fairy-tale schtick didn't
satisfy me for some reason. The sequence of in-jokes was funny, but it
wasn't... revelatory. I don't know. The ending schtick didn't satisfy me
either. (I won't spoil it here, but it's not a myth I ever subscribed
to, and it doesn't do much for me.) 

I also spent a lot of the game frustrated, because the puzzles are
mostly obscure. This is one of those games where you absolutely have to
examine, look under, and search absolutely everything; and the Unnkulia
flashback is out of sorts with the for-children style. I spent a lot of
time in the hints, discovering the things I should have looked at.

I prefer a game to be more forthcoming about focus -- the art of
directing my attention to where you want it. Hm. I should write an essay
about this.

Also, the puzzle implementation was ragged enough to be annoying. Some
things don't work until the author wants them to work.

On the other hand (so, did I improve this review by saving the good
comments for last?) the writing is rich and well-suited to the mood; the
author has put in plenty of effort to make a responsive environment. Not
just game objects, either. The parser often delegates one of the NPCs in
the vicinity to make comments to you, which I thought was great. And so
on.

------------

The City

Ok, short and surreal. Nice start, but it suffered in comparison to [1]
"Little Blue Men" (same surreal, more intricate wrapping); [2] "Erase,
Rewind, Play" (a story by John M. Ford, not IF, but it kicked my butt
anyway); and [3] my ability to find concealed objects, which seems to be
nil tonight. 

Having to use the walkthrough for this game pretty much ruins the point.
Oh well. I wish I could objectively tell you how I would have liked if I
hadn't played LBM first.

------------

The Plant
by Michael J. Roberts

This is a great game in the classic form: exploring, playing with
machines, triumphant ending. It's set present-day, and either
conspiracy-theory SF or mainstream, depending on how seriously you take
that worldview. :) On a stormy night, you and your nerd-ufo-nut-boss
stumble across an industrial plant, whose inhabitants seem to have
stolen a shipment of Mysterious Technology. Your boss insists that you
investigate...

The game is solid in about every respect. The puzzles are interesting,
and reasonably well integrated. Once you grant a plant-ful (plus a
warehouse or two) of wacky machines, the rest is easy; and most of it
involves real-world, intuitively meaningful physics. There was a certain
feeling that the puzzles dominated, in the sense that absolutely
everything in the game was related to one puzzle or another. Not out of
place, although a few things were a bit strained, but you knew you were
going to get back to every object before the end.

I solved everything without checking the walkthrough, although with a
couple of nudges from the boss, the walking hint-nudger. (He gives
suggestions when you seem to be stuck. I'm not sure of the code behind
this, but it seems to work, because I never got a hint when I *wasn't*
stuck.)

The player is skillfully guided through the plot. You witness expository
scenes as you explore, always in the distance (so you can't interfere)
and perfectly believable as things that would be happening around the
plant. (The map and plot are carefully shaped to each other to make this
work. Some puzzles also become solvable only after you've seen certain
scenes, keeping the plot synched up, and this is also well-integrated.)
Complicated puzzle-solutions don't have to be repeated, as there's
usually a way back once you've gotten to an area. In fact, the last time
I saw this kind of broad yet well-guided exploration game, I was
praising _Riven_. Kudos.

(Footnote: In describing "Mother Loose", I used the term "Unnkulian" to
describe a game where you have to look behind, under, and through
everything without motivation or focus. Obviously that *doesn't*
describe this game. Don't mind me, I rarely keep grudges for more than
ten years. :)

The underlying storyline is reasonable; no surprises, but good pacing up
to a climactic scene. Clever foreshadowing (mmm, stormy night.) The
writing is okay, though maybe a bit mechanical also -- the descriptions
were fine, but the hundred-foot-high rooms didn't feel any larger than
the ventilation ducts, if you see what I mean. It wasn't a big problem;
the dark stormy road was vivid enough.

No characters as such. Your boss is essentially static, tagging around
behind you and emitting a small range of meaningless actions, with just
a few flashes of actually being interesting. There's a dog, who's fine
as far as dogs go, which isn't that far. Heh.

------------

Purple
by Stefan Blixt

Maybe I don't have much patience at this late date, but I couldn't get
anywhere on this without working step-by-step from the walkthrough, and
even then I couldn't finish it. Badly bugged, and the puzzles don't make
much sense to me either.

The descriptions are good. I like the sense of an alternate, or future,
history; unknown politics followed by a desolate world full of obscure
(albeit mostly purple) rules. On the other hand, the English isn't very
good, which isn't the author's fault but still interferes.

Weirdly, the NPCs feel pretty good, even through the general weakness of
the programming. They move around and do stuff and react to their
environment.

------------

Four in One
by J. Robinson Wheeler

I give up. This game may be a brilliant evocation of a man being driven
out of his mind with frustration by disgruntled Marx brothers. I'm
unable to appreciate it, because I was driven out of my mind.

Yes, the NPCs are copious and they recite the appropriate in-character
dialogue. Yes, it's frighteningly well-researched. But I couldn't make
anything *happen*. By luck, as far as I could tell, I got one take
started. ("Boom in shot!") Then I spent the rest of the game following
Harpo around.

The problem is, even with all this work, the characters react pretty
mechanically. Chico won't follow you unless the other three are; Groucho
probably won't unless two are; Zeppo usually follows you; and that means
you have to chase Harpo. Which does't work. If there are more subtleties
in the behavior than that, I couldn't predict them enough to exploit
them. So I couldn't win.

------------

Muse
by Christopher Huang

What a pity I'm in no mood to appreciate this. Well, I haven't been
since the interactive fiction competition started up, so that's nothing
new.

I didn't bother finishing this game. I got a bit stuck very early, went
into the hints, and read through them all in lieu of playing. So I know
more or less how it goes, but not how it gets there.

I can, however, comment on technical issues. The prose is excellent, of
course. The choice of first-person, past-tense narrative... I'm glad
someone finally did it, because now I can say that I've tried it and I
don't like the effect. I've always felt it would be distancing, and it
*was* distancing. 

This is *not* the problem of being told what I'm feeling; I *like* that
technique when it appears in a standard second-person-present game. It's
purely a syntactic problem. If there was a game switch to flip all the
syntax around, I would have used it, and the problem would have gone
away. Unfortunately, while such syntax-changing is trivial from the
writer's point of view, it's a pain in the butt to actually type in all
the changes. As I'm sure the author knows from having done it once.

The human-interaction problem was reasonably deftly avoided, if I read
the hints aright, but not entirely gone. One puzzle amounted to a
guess-the-verb problem, simply because a perfectly sensible request
didn't fit into the ask-tell-order model of most IF. It's hard to think
of answers when you don't know the range of possible actions. That was
only in one place, however, and the rest looked like it would have been
fairly solvable.

------------

--Z

-- 

"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the
borogoves..."


From katsaris@otenet.gr Tue Nov 17 10:01:20 MET 1998
Article: 38878 of rec.games.int-fiction
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From: "Aris Katsaris" <katsaris@otenet.gr>
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Cattus Atrox (was [Comp 98] My reviews, part 5 )
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Paul O'Brian wrote in message ...
>This post contains reviews for the following games:
>
>CATTUS ATROX by David A. Cornelson
>
>While being chased by the psycho, I felt dread.
>While running around a maze (yes, maze) of fog-shrouded streets, never
>knowing when the psycho would loom from the mists, I felt dread. When I
>was injured by the psycho, I felt horror. All this lasted for about 15
>minutes. Then I began to feel annoyance.

I agree: annoyance was the major feeling here. I did feel dread in the
beginning but this turned to annoyance extrememely quickly. To explain
further:

****Careful: *Very* extensive spoilers below for Cattus Atrox ****






**** Spoilers below ****








**** Spoilers below ****






**** End of spoilerspace ****




When I first noticed the car following me, my first thought was to go back
to my friend's house. The game didn't allow me to do this.

When the car stopped, my first thought was to flee. The game didn't allow me
to do this.

When I was being chased my first thought was to knock at random doors. The
game didn't allow me to do this.

When I called Susan, my first thought was to tell her to drive me to my
home, or to the police. The game didn't allow me to do this.

When she fell into a contradiction about phoning to Scott, who never answers
the phone, I wasn't allowed to be suspicious of them.

When Scott was being mysterious about their friend coming, I wasn't allowed
to be suspicious of him.

When the carpet, and the hangings all had lions I wasn't allowed to be
suspicious.

When the pictures showed Carl, I wasn't allowed to be suspicious.

When Carl's car is clearly seen through the windows, I wasn't allowed to be
suspicious.

When I'm given the glass, I'm not given any course of action other than to
drink it, something I would never do under the same circumstances.

I'm not allowed to do anything reasonable. I *am* allowed though to have him
journey through the sewer for no reason whatsoever.

In short I wasn't allowed to do anything that I wanted to do, and was given
no reason for it whatsoever. I couldn't care for the character enough, and I
couldn't even control him. He's not as much a NPC as the other characters,
and he's so unsympathetic and undefined that I couldn't care for him, while
I have cared for NPC characters in other games.

I gave it a 3 for the feeling of dread, which however didn't manage to
prevail over the feeling of annoyance.

Aris Katsaris




From markwync@xmission.xmission.com Tue Nov 17 13:42:45 MET 1998
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All right, since I actually wrote up short reviews this year, I figure I
might as well post 'em.  Disclaimer: I wrote these immediately after
playing the game in question for the most part, so none of them are
terribly in depth, and they tend towards the impressionistic rather than
the detailed.  Anything that might be found offensive in them was randomly
inserted by autonomous AI's, not by me.  I may post more in-depth reviews
of certain games later, but for the moment, this is it.

Well, here goes.  In the order I played them:

LIGHTIANIA (Score: 3)

A short game, relatively inoffensive, and apparently written by a non-native
English speaker, since there were a number of awkward phrasings.  A flying
saucer crashes near your house, and you have to go fix it.  A few puzzles,
none of note, but none overly difficult.  Though I am getting really sick
of having to look under/behind/around/etc. objects to find keys/cards/etc.
There were far too many puzzles in the competition this year that relied
on this sort of thing.

THE ARRIVAL (Score: 6)

Another game where a flying saucer lands nearby, this was redeemed by humor
and a couple of clever puzzles.  The problem with THE ARRIVAL, though, is not
that there is anything wrong with it--it is well programmed and humorous--but
that there is nothing outstanding about it.  Nothing about the game made me
say, "Wow, that was neat," or presented a new twist on an old standby.
Perfectly competent, but in the end, not memorable.

THE COMMUTE (Score: 3)

One of two games written without a pre-existing authoring system.  I have to
confess that I did not finish playing THE COMMUTE.  The parser was irritating
and the subject matter was uninteresting to me.  While I don't insist that
every game look just like an Infocom game, I would hope that a new interface
would present some new advantages, and I simply found THE COMMUTE to be
difficult to play.

THE RITUAL OF PURIFICATION (Score: 5)

A game heavy on symbolism and metaphysics.  The problem with RITUAL is that
there is no underlying sense of structure beneath the metaphysics.  Instead
we get a jumble of mythological creatures, clotted prose, and magic burying a
few rather easy puzzles.  Perhaps the game is too short to develop a really
systematic metaphysical structure, but some sense of organization might
have helped improve this game.

WHERE EVIL DWELLS (Score: 4)

A poor man's LURKING HORROR or ANCHORHEAD, this game is a mishmash of horror
cliches.  It starts out as a hardboiled detective story but quickly falls
apart into a series of find-the-key puzzles.  Many of the objects mentioned
are not implemented, and there are a number of typos and dropped periods. The
attempts at humor do not mesh with the attempts at horror, leaving a confused
impression in the player.

HUMAN RESOURCE STORIES (Score: 2)

This was difficult to score.  It succeeds on its own terms, I suppose, but I
felt I had to judge it as a game, and as a game, it fails.  It is a series
of multiple choice questions designed to judge the player's qualifications
for a programmer position.  The only game-like element is seeing how good
a salary and grade one can get after the test is over.  It might be useful
for a human-resource department, but as a game it is a failure.

FIFTEEN (Score: 3)

A not-very-interesting homage to Scott Adam's ADVENTURELAND, it seems to
have been built around an implementation of the classic "15" puzzle in
Inform.  One of the puzzles is a decent variant on the "moving-rocks" puzzle
>from SPELLBREAKER, but the rest are unexciting.  In all, not very exciting.

ENLIGHTENMENT (Score: 6)

A clever game, in which you are an adventurer trying to get out of a Zork-like
cave after plundering treasure, slaying monsters, and so forth.  All that
blocks you from leaving is a troll...  The game's main conceit (hidden in
the title) is good, and the puzzles are in general clever, though a couple
seemed less than inspired.  As an example of the recent spate of games that
function as revisionist versions of classics like ZORK and ADVENTURE, such
as ZERO-SUM GAME and SHERBET, this game is a competent and mostly
enjoyable addition to this trend.

CATTUS ATROX (Score: 6)

One of the more original games of the competition, I did not manage to reach
the better endings that seem to exist (at least from a txd dump of the z-code.)
But it gets points for originality from me.  It's not giving away too much to
reveal the basic story, which involves a man named Karl, his pet pride of
lions, and a lot of foggy streets...CATTUS ATROX creates, at times, a real
atmosphere of suspense and dread, and the NPCs, though not extremely fleshed
out or interactive, are certainly memorable.  Especially the lions.  The
problem with the game, however, is that it doesn't do much with its originality.
It sets up a situation and then fails to explore it very far.  It is above-
average in originality, but without anything of significance beyond mere
originality. (Note: after I wrote the above, I did manage to reach what I
guess is the "optimum" ending, using the walkthrough that was provided
after the start of the comeptition.  But this didn't significantly change
my opinion of the game.)

TRAPPED IN A ONE-ROOM DILLY (Score: 5)

Another of the story-less games of the competition, this is nothing but an
exercise to see if a game could be written entirely in one room.  Yes, it can.
The room is filled with puzzles, some better than others.  None of them were
truly outstanding, and none terribly original.  The replay value is nil, and
so the value of the game is entirely dependent on how much you enjoy this
sort of thing.  I was reminded of Gareth Rees's MAGIC TOYSHOP from the first
competition, which I thought had better puzzles.  Myself, I do not really
enjoy solving puzzles for puzzles's sake, so this game felt like more of a
chore than recreation.

IN THE SPOTLIGHT (Score: 3)

Even shorter than DILLY, this is again a one-room game, only this has only
one puzzle.  Since I'd seen it before, it was remarkably easy to solve, and
so I did not get a whole lot from SPOTLIGHT.  I gave it a 3 for the creative
methods of suicide included in the game.

INFORMATORY (Score: 5)

Apparently a learning-Inform exercise for the author, this game is a odd
combination of bits of Zork, Adventure, and the Inform Designer's Manual.
Not really a game, as such, but more like the Museum of Inform.  There is
an interesting solution to most of the puzzles that I found to be the best
part of the game.  INFORMATORY is one of those entries (like Andrew Plotkin's
LISTS AND LISTS) that is hard to score; I gave it a 5, since it is below-
average as a game but above-average on its own terms.

THE CITY (Score: 6)

An above-average experiment, this is a surreal little game vaguely reminiscent
of the TV show "The Prisoner," or the short story "The Squirrel Cage" by
Thomas Disch.  It has some rather effective technical tricks and actually
has a thematic structure that supports these tricks.  Quite succesful at
creating a consistent atmosphere, it doesn't pursue the implications of
its setting very far, but is still refreshingly different and tries to avoid
treading over the same old ground.  It does fall into a recent group of
games, notably C.E. Forman's DELUSIONS and Andrew Plotkin's SPIDER AND WEB,
that use the same basic technique of repetition.  THE CITY is not as good
or as deep (in terms of gameplay) as either of those games, but it uses the
technique to reasonable ends.

PHOTOPIA (Score: 9)

Coming down firmly on the "story" side of the puzzle/story dichotomy (which
is, of course, a false one), PHOTOPIA tells one of the best stories of the
competition.  This is a piece of i-f that succeeds in nearly every way,
using the limitations and conventions of the genre as strengths, and telling
a story with actual real people in it.  The various threads of the narrative,
told by several different characters, mesh together beautifully.  The few
puzzles that exist are easily solved, and even this ease fits into the
story of the game.  The colored text is not just a gimmick, but I think
succeeds in enhancing the story.  PHOTOPIA is one of the best games I've
played recently, not just in the competition.  This is the type of fiction
that points the way to the future of i-f, using the strengths of the medium
to tell a story that could not be told in another form.

DOWNTOWN TOKYO. PRESENT DAY. (Score: 6)

A clever game, originally intended for the infamous Chicken Competition
sponsored by Adam Cadre, but short enough for the competition.  There's not
a whole lot to it, but it cleverly parodies a certain genre of movie
and is humorous enough to get an above-average score.  It is also told
as if the player were watching the action on a movie screen, which is
an interesting technique.

SPACESTATION (Score: 3)

A game reconstructed from the Infocom transcript that accompanied PLANETFALL,
so this isn't technically an original game.  The puzzles are fairly simple
and I solved the game without any hints.  The author promises to expand the
game with new puzzles later, but at the moment, this is nothing special.

LITTLE BLUE MEN (Score: 9)

At first I thought, Oh God, another trapped in the boring office game.  I've
worked in offices.  I don't want to play games about them.  But the character
seemed interesting, so I kept playing...and damn, this was actually a good
game!  Quirky, vaguely horrific, and the postscript at the end asked some
questions that I hope will actually turn up in discussion on raif after the
competition is over (Michael, enjoy those peanuts!)  This is a game that, like
several other competition games, had an original idea, but unlike the
majority of the games, LITTLE BLUE MEN actually did something with that idea.
Plus it had a big ol' heaping serving of ambiguity, which always gets points
with me.  Oh yeah, and the puzzles were good, too.  It made me think some
after I was done, and most games don't do that.

ACID WHIPLASH (Score: 2)

All right.  I'll admit it.  Rybread Celsius does nothing for me.  The typos
and misspellings, the crazed logic, the insane plots, it all just drives
me up the wall.  The game has no point, it isn't funny, and the only reason
I didn't give it a lower score is that I hate to give anything a one.

--Chris Markwyn


From rraszews@hotmail.com Tue Nov 17 14:35:12 MET 1998
Article: 38896 of rec.games.int-fiction
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From: L. Ross Raszewski <rraszews@hotmail.com>
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: -comp98- Brief reviews
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Well, what with everyone else posting reviews and all, I thought I'd throw my
hat into the ring.

Please keep in mind that none of these are meant as personal attacks
(although there were some games that made me want to personally attack the
author), and I think ALL of you should keep writing (though some of you may
want to reevaluate your IF philosophy first)

These ratings are in the order comp98 gavethe games to me, which is not
nessecareily the order in which I played them.

And before you ask, no, I didn't add a point for including my name in the
credits. At least not consciously.  Though it didn't hurt.

oh, if you didn't include hints or a walkthrough, I tended to give up as soon
as I got stuck. If you didn't, and I still rated you high, take it as high
praise.

I reserve the right to consider the documentation, graphics, etc when rating
the games.

Most of these reviews will tend to be short, since I didn't bother to do an
in-depth analasys of many of them, and therefore won't do the discredit of
selling short those I didn't examine as closely.

Enlightenment : 7 A fine game, for a one-room dilly based around a single
puzzle. I was pleasantly surprised at how fast I worked out the point -- I'm
usually not so good at those things. Some of it was a little
over-complicated, but in a baroque, old-school sort of way.

Mother Loose: 8 This was just plain fun. Again, some of the puzzles were
overly complicated, and the NPCs could perhaps have been better, but it was
still a fun trip.

The Plant: 7 If I had been some other reviewer, I'd have complained at having
to download a newer tads runtime to play the game. I might even have
complained at not being able to play in console mode because I couldn't find
the dos interpreter.  But I won't. What I will complain about is the bugs.
Following the transcript pretty closely, I found that several times, some of
the triggers just would not go off. Nonetheless, I liked the plot and story,
however contrived.

Little Blue Men: 2
Boring, hard to follow, and the grammar got in the way. Not to mention that I
just don't like office games very much. Sorry.

The Commute: 2 2 is about the lowest rating I'll give out for negligence; I
have to really hate your game on principle to rate lower. I don't know if the
commute got better or not; the parser was so amazingly bad, synonyms so
sparse, and interaction so nonextant that I ran out of patience fairly early.
Also, "helmet" is misspelled (while you may have noticed that my own spelling
may be a little nonstandard, I would NEVER release a game that had not gone
through a spellchecker and some betatesters who know how to spell better than
I do. Sorry Ryebread)

Where Evil Dwells: 6 I don't know if this is a spoof or not. The author tries
so hard to be Lovdcraftian that the results are a little laughable. The
player, a private investigator of some sort apparantly "just happens" to have
a wide knowledge of the arcane and black arts. Also, due to a small bug, it's
not nessecary to detach the prototypical curs'd book from the table, as you
can just take the table with you wherever you like.  Sort of fun, though, and
I liked the device of the journal (a favorite device of my own). Too many
keys

Downtown Tokyo, Present Day: 7 I liked it, though I think this is the sort of
thing you can only pull off once. I'd have liked it more if it hadn't been so
short.

Arrival: 5
Some people would use arrival as an example of why IF shouldn't have graphics.
Since it was a spoof, I'll forgive it. As a spoof, I didn't like it as much as
Tokyo, and as sci-fi, I didn't like it as much as Plant.  It had some good
moments, but when you're writing a game around the cliches of -bad- movies,
you've set yourself out for a difficult task.

Human Resource Stories: 1 Wish I could have rated it lower. Common commands
were disabled for no better reason than to inconvenience the player. The CYOA
interface could have been used well, but wasn't. In fact, this wasn't a work
of interactive fiction, but some sort of quiz. No narrative, no story, no
plot. Not even any real interactivity. Couple that with some self-rightetous
prattling by the author, who seems convinced that the IF community at large
is focussed entirely on fantasy (when, last I checked, high fantasy was just
about the last thing anyone praised around here), and that his own work is
somehow "reality based".  Absolute rubbish. Worse than cask even. And, quite
frankly, it was too long by about tenfold. Gee, why can't some people get it
through their heads that the comp is about SHORT games? But, i didn't rate it
1 for the interface, or for the length. HRS committed the one sin which I
can't forgive: it was NO FUN WHATSOEVER. The phone never ring.

Trapped in a One-Room Dilly: 7
I had to fireup jzip to play this, which meant I only got to undo one layer
deep, which wasn't a crippling problem,. but it did make things harder for me.
Also, I just plain LIKE using frotz more. Otherwise, it was a nice game, and I
liked it.

Research Dig: 3 Wasn't much fun. some of the nessecary actions seemed a
little pointless, and some of the scenery wasn't as fleshed out as it should
have been. Exactly what the conflict is, and the nature of your villain
remains ambiguous. Feels like a good game, cut short due to budget
limitations.

Four-in-One: 6 Silly, happy-go-lucky fun. Nonetheless, not much better than
the noninteractive transcript

Acid Whiplash: 2 Disorienting, disjointed. An interview thinly veiled as a
game. It did have all of the whimsey characteristic of Ryebread's work,

CC: 1
No fun. Verbs and nouns sorely lacking. The title character made little if any
sense, nor did the entire game. Lots of wandering around, and "stumbling" into
the story, what little sotry there is.

Fifteen: 3
A puzzle thinly veiled as a game. Somewhat buggy. Very dull.

Lightiania: 4
I just couldn't get into it, though I can't fault it for anything

Persistance of Memory: 5
Reasonable. Some of the grammar gets sticky.

Photopia: 10 Absolutely magnificent. I wasn't thrilled with the main
character's fate, since a more pleasant one could have been inserted without
damaging the narrative irreparably. Sorry, I'm a sucker for a happy ending.

Spacestation: 4
Um... any game that tells me something is uniplemented smacks of sloppy
programming. The game was a little embriotic, which is expectable, being based
on a transcript

The Ritual of Purification: 7
Very strange. I didn't really "get" most of it, but the prose was quite good.

Purple: 2
Couldn't get into this one either. Sorry.

I didn't know you could yodel: 1
Positively inane. Parser that makes the CYOA games we used to write on the
programmable calculators look advanced. Ludicrous plot, and a bathroom puzzle.

Cattus Atrox: 3
It had some good moments, but it just did not make any sense. Not making any
sense is just about the second worst thing a game can do in my book. It has a
lot of potential, but it would need a lot more backstory to flesh it out.

In the Spotlight: 1
Short, bizarre. Unlike some of the other low rated games, I hold no malice
toward the game, but there simply wasn't enough there to rate

Informatory: 8 Neat idea. Vaguely reminiscent of Lists and Lists, though with
a more interesting setting. On the minus side, it lacks the "real"
compiler/interpreter of the older game. It ends up being a fun game, which I
hope is of educational value

Muse: An Autumn Romance: 9
Good. I actually felt that the scope was too broad and too deep for the comp,
and I feel bad that I didn't pay it the attention I probably would have if I
hadn't just played 26 oter games, several very bad.

The City: 4 Any game which disables standard verbs for my
inconvenience^H^H^H^H^H^H^H mimesis is bound to bother me. Any author who
curses the fact that he can't disable interpreter-driven undo will bother me.
Any game which says "THe player will", is bound to make me say "oh no it
won't!"  But, as I've said, the interface will never get you below a 2.  The
story wasn't bad, and it WAS a neat experience. If the author hadn't gone
disabling save and restore, or told me I would enjoy it, I'd have probably
rated it higher.


-----------== Posted via Deja News, The Discussion Network ==----------
http://www.dejanews.com/       Search, Read, Discuss, or Start Your Own    


From olorin@world.std.com Tue Nov 17 14:41:14 MET 1998
Article: 38922 of rec.games.int-fiction
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From: olorin@world.std.com (Mark J Musante)
Subject: [Comp98] Mark Musante's Reviews
Message-ID: <F2JvuL.H88@world.std.com>
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In a word: blargh.

In two words: I suck.  In three words: I totally suck.

In five words: Well, you get the idea.

I actually managed to review 19 games this year, but I wasn't able to
get any of my ratings in to ct by the deadline.  To all the authors 
out there: I'm sorry.  And embarrassed.  It won't happen again, I
promise.

That being said, I have placed all my reviews on the following
web page:
	http://www.ministryofpeace.com/if/comp1998/


  -=- Mark -=-


From wheeler@jump.net Tue Nov 17 14:41:57 MET 1998
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From: "J. Robinson Wheeler" <wheeler@jump.net>
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: [Comp 98] Reviews
Date: Tue, 17 Nov 1998 04:32:54 -0600
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Ben wrote:

> 13: "Four in One"               3

> xyzzy: "nothing seems to happen."

If Harpo's in the room, it gives a different message.  Basically, xyzzy
toggles his ability to talk so that you can ask him questions.  Why? 
Just for fun, I suppose.

Well, it helps a little. Asking Harpo about Zeppo, for instance, and
vice-versa, gives some information about managing his behavior.


-- 
J. Robinson Wheeler
wheeler@jump.net            http://www.jump.net/~wheeler/jrw/home.html


From howie_wang@nospam.hotmail.com Tue Nov 17 14:42:21 MET 1998
Article: 38921 of rec.games.int-fiction
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From: "Howie Wang" <howie_wang@nospam.hotmail.com>
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Photopia influences?  -- probable spoilers
Date: Tue, 17 Nov 1998 00:32:35 -0800
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Like many of you out there, I was completely drawn in by Photopia.
People have mentioned precedents (like Priest and I think someone
mentioned Pulp Fiction) for the non-linear narrative style used in
Photopia.  A movie that reminds me a lot of Photopia is Atom
Egoyan's The Sweet Hereafter.  Egoyan favors a very cryptic form
of story-telling.  He presents brief glimpses of images that are intercut
and expanded throughout the film; by the end of the film, the initially
puzzling images form a clear picture of the events that shape the
characters.

The Sweet Hereafter deals with the aftermath of a horrible
school bus accident in a small town.  The central character in
the film is a young teenage babysitter like Photopia's alley.
I think The Sweet Hereafter especially reminds me of Photopia
because of several key motifs:
  -- the non-linear narrative
  -- the key figure of the early adolescent girl
  -- the tragic death of a young person
  -- a father's recollection of his child's previous near-death experience
  -- the use of a bedtime story as a central metaphor

Has anyone else seen this movie, and had similar impressions?
Both this film and Photopia just struck me as so stark, beautiful,
and tragic.

Howie





From wheeler@jump.net Tue Nov 17 14:42:31 MET 1998
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From: "J. Robinson Wheeler" <wheeler@jump.net>
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Photopia influences?  -- probable spoilers
Date: Tue, 17 Nov 1998 04:38:23 -0600
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Howie Wang wrote:

> The Sweet Hereafter deals with the aftermath of a horrible
> school bus accident in a small town.  The central character in
> the film is a young teenage babysitter like Photopia's alley.
> I think The Sweet Hereafter especially reminds me of Photopia
> because of several key motifs:
>   -- the non-linear narrative
>   -- the key figure of the early adolescent girl
>   -- the tragic death of a young person
>   -- a father's recollection of his child's previous near-death experience
>   -- the use of a bedtime story as a central metaphor
> 
> Has anyone else seen this movie, and had similar impressions?
> Both this film and Photopia just struck me as so stark, beautiful,
> and tragic.

I can think of one notable person who's seen The Sweet Hereafter
(and loved it above all other films):  the prizewinning author of 
Photopia.  Quite sharply observed, Mr. Wang.

-- 
J. Robinson Wheeler
wheeler@jump.net            http://www.jump.net/~wheeler/jrw/home.html


From wosam@avalonSPAMBLOCK.net Tue Nov 17 15:25:11 MET 1998
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From: wosam@avalonSPAMBLOCK.net (M. Wesley Osam)
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Not that you cared: My Comp98 Remarks (Really Long)
Date: Tue, 17 Nov 1998 06:58:56 -0600
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Now that this year's competition has passed, I thought I'd write
up my opinions of the games. Why? God knows. It's not like anyone
cares.

Incidentally, there are spoilers here, so if you haven't played
all the games be careful.

--

First off, I'd just like to say that this year's competition was
a tremendous improvement on last year's. Last year, the
competition had a surprisingly large number of entries from
people who didn't seem to realize that they needed to put their
best work forward. Many games had obvious bugs. Many were plagued
by poor spelling and grammar. Some of them were strings of genre
cliches, with little original thought.

Apparently people learned from last year, because there wasn't a
single game that seemed less than competent to me. A couple could
have used some proofreading, sure. But it looks like some genuine
care was put into each game, even the ones I didn't think were
all that great. As a player, I'd like to thank this year's
authors for that.

A graph, just for the hell of it:

10: ##
 9: #
 8: #
 7: ###
 6: ####
 5: #####
 4: ##
 3: ##
 2: #
 1: ##

One note: I'm comparing these games to each other rather than to
all IF in existance, so there are probably some games out there
that are better than the tens, and some that are worse than the
ones.

One other note: I don't mention the authors by name, because I
want to just focus on the games themselves. It might make the
occasional critical remark more palatable.

--

On to the specific games:

Muse: An Autumn Romance: 9 out of 10.

I was pretty lucky that the front end gave me this game first
this year. Last year, the fist game I tried was "Aunt Nancy's
House," which I was able to play for only about thirty seconds
before growing bored. I think that first impression colored my
perceptions of that year's competition, making it seem a bit less
interesting than it was. Granted, there were an amazing number of
genuinely awful games, but I don't think I would have been quite
as disappointed by Comp97 if my first game had been "The Edifice"
or "Sunset Over Savannah."

That's why I was so pleased with "Muse." No painfully obvious
bugs. No unimaginative Dungeons-and-Dragons fantasy world. No
meaningless, boring meandering through everyday events. No bad
writing. "Muse" is a solid, well-written character study of a
sort we haven't seen too often in this medium.

We learn a lot about Stephen Dawson in the course of the game.
He's sort of a more lovable J. Alfred Prufrock--a man who's never
been in love, never had any great passions in his life, but who
is a kind and decent individual nonetheless. It feels like this
brief encounter with two initially depressed young people is the
most signifigant thing to happen in his life, and the end was
genuinely affecting--a bit sad, but also optimistic. I came away
>from "Muse" with a good feeling about the competition this year.
And I wasn't disappointed.

Four in One: 5 out of 10.

I was impressed with this one when I started, but it got old
rather quickly.

First, the good points: The setting is great, and so is the
concept. The idea seems to have been to create a "Kissing the
Buddha's Feet" nuthouse-type game. The inclusion of the Marx
Brothers was a really neat idea, and it's obvious the author put
quite a bit of research into the game (always a good idea, no
matter what you're writing about).

However, I found "Four in One" more frustrating than funny. There
really seems to be only one puzzle here--how to get all the
character in the same place at the same time. And it's not a very
interesting puzzle, partly because the characters--who seem
intended to be the focus of the game--are so dull. Descriptions
are mostly limited to one line explaining the character's job,
and few characters seem to have more than a perfunctory
personality. The dialogue sometimes seems wooden; for example,
when asked about the Marx brothers, Scotty answers in
biographical notes rather than any normal human conversational
form. It felt less like dealing with a studio full of eccentric
individuals than like pushing around a studio full of puzzle
pieces.

This wouldn't be so bad if the author had included a walkthrough
so that I could skip over this bit, but he seemed to feel that
one was not necessary. The only hint included was for later in
the game, when everyone was finally on the set. As a result, I
gave up on "Four in One" without seeing the end.

The Arrival: 7 out of 10.

"The Arrival" is apparently the first HTML TADS game, and this
fact initially resulted in some annoyance. Currently, HTML TADS
is only playable under Windows. Despite this, the author did not
include an alternate format for the pictures to allow players to
view them on other systems. I think this would have been a good
idea, even though the pictures would not have been integrated
into the game. It's possible that the same problem holds true for
the sounds, which were not included in the COMP98 file, but which
were instead placed on a website. I'll never know, though,
because I never managed to download them. (And I'm not using an
out-of-date computer or modem.)

After all that, it turned out that the pictures and sounds
weren't necessary parts of the game after all, which makes me
wonder why they were there.

Once I was past these problems, "The Arrival" actually turned out
to be a pretty funny game. The two incompetent aliens were
hilarious; they brought to mind the aliens who show up in the
Halloween episodes of "The Simpsons," or the Stupid Rat Creatures
>from the comic book _Bone_. Unfortunately, towards the end of the
game they turned into valley girls for no readily apparent
reason; it almost seems like the game went through some revisions
that were never completed properly. Up until that point, though,
they're the funniest thing in this year's competition.

One minor complaint: The hint system confused the hell out of me.
I couldn't tell how to get back to the game at first, and I
frequently found myself exiting the system with no idea how I had
done it.

Mother Loose: 6 out of 10.

"Mother Loose" was quite nice, especially considering that many
of the ideas apparently came from a six-year-old. Humpty Dumpty
was especially well done.

The ending was a little too saccharine for me. This probably
isn't really my kind of story, so I won't comment much.

One problem: What was the deal with Mary's house? Apparently she
wanted to hear a knock-knock joke, but there were no clues as to
what, specifically, she was looking for, and the hint system was
no help at all.

Human Resources Stories: 3 out of 10.

"Human Resources Stories" is an extremely odd entry. I can't
quite figure out what the author was trying to do. It initially
seems to be intended as some sort of novelty program based around
office humor. However, it wasn't particularly funny. Granted,
most "office humor" isn't at all funny. (The Dilbert wannabes of
the world have a lot to answer for.) But "HRS" doesn't even seem
intended to be humorous. Once you've gotten into the actual test,
it appears to be a serious attempt at employee evaluation, which
is a weird thing to enter in an interactive fiction competition.
And it's aimed at a specialized audience; most of the people
playing it are unlikely to be able to answer the first two
questions.

Despite the fact that I was basically guessing the answers to a
few questions, and had to restart several times, I quickly got
all the way to the end. There just isn't much to this program.
It's one of those "play it once and toss it off your hard drive"
novelties, like SimStapler.

In fact, the most notable and interesting parts of this entry
have nothing to do with the main game. One of these parts is a
long rant about an incompetent manager at the author's workplace
which pops up if you type "xyzzy." The other is the Read Me file,
in which the author states, "I believe that I do this project to
get beyond ordinary thinking." He also claims that some of the
questions require "profound thinking," and says that "If
everybody is busy doing story IF, I'd do puzzle IF," as though
that's somehow iconoclastic. I can't decide whether he's joking.

Incidentally, I think this is the same guy who did "Cask" last
year. If so, his writing has vastly improved.

Lightiania: 3 out of 10.

I get the impression that English is this author's second
language. He *really* needed someone to proofread this thing. Not
only are there quite a few spelling errors, but the vocabulary is
rather eccentric. The ladder leading up to the spacecraft is
sometimes called a "bridge." The protagonist sits on a
"thinking-stub." A control panel is "square-formed." The hull of
the spacecraft needs to be "intact, and not embossed." The book
explaining the spacecraft's mode of travel is incomprehensible.
And examining the devices in your house produces this memorable
passage:

   These devices do a lot of things.  Clean your stove and fridge 
   (but not under your bed though.  Some turn toasts, others make
   futuristic noises and look cool.  The meaning is not allways 
   that they should be usefull, but they are fun to build. Okay?

The plot is that you're some sort of brilliant inventor, and when
a spaceship lands on your thinking-stub, you decide to fix it and
fly off into space. You live in a house with one big room, lit by
a reddish-orange lamp, and an attic. Your toilet is out in the
back yard. (What do the neighbors think of this? The most
disappointing part of the game is that we never find out.) You
keep a radiator crated up in your attic. On this radiator you
store old gum which you sometimes chew months later, if you
happen to need it to fix an alien spacecraft.

There didn't seem to be any notable bugs in this game. Everything
other than the writing worked smoothly. I actually enjoyed it a
lot more than my rating seems to indicate, but not always
necessarily for the reasons the author intended.

Enlightenment: 6 out of 10.

When I saw this was yet another Zork knockoff, I was convinced
that it was going to be hideously bad. I was wrong.

The reason "Enlightenment" worked is that it wasn't a straight
pastiche (which would have had to be utterly brilliant to work).
It was a simple, one-room in-joke that cleverly reversed one of
the conventions of the old "some guy wandering around in a cave"
games.

That said, an in-joke can't really compete with a real game,
which is why this score isn't higher. But it's a really, really
good in-joke, which manages to conjure up a convincing
trapped-in-a-cave-by-a-troll atmosphere.

Little Blue Men: 10 out of 10.

Wow.

I'm not sure what to say about "Little Blue Men," because it's
always easiest for me to pin down what I didn't like about a
work; the things that make me react positively are always more
nebulous and harder to pin down. And there was virtually nothing
I disliked about this game.

This game did a great job of establishing its central character.
Although he (I'm pretty sure he was a he even though I can't
recall any definitive indicators as to his gender, which shows
how strong my mental image of him was) is marvellously well
defined, the game never feels like it is trying to shove the
characterization down the throat of the player. You're free to do
whatever you want, and the central character's personality can
develop in different directions as a result. (Except at the very
end; I'll get to that in a minute.) In the longest story, you
develop your supressed rage into a kind of brutal, psychotic
cunning, but you can also come to terms with your situation, or
self-destruct, or retreat into a drug-induced stupor. And there's
actually no one best path; two people could come to the same
ending and disagree about whether they'd "won."

"Little Blue Men" is the most unsettling IF game I've seen. At
first it looks like it's going to be something along the lines of
"Dilbert goes bananas," but the setting develops into something
rather frightening. I think this is the best horror-genre IF
written to date. Although the author is apparently ambivalent
about the final scene of the longest path, I think it's quite
appropriate. It reminds me of a rather dark Phillip K. Dick
novel. One complaint I have about it is that you aren't allowed
to attack the naked fat guy; this action would have provided an
additional alternate ending, which would suggest that the central
figure has become trapped in an infinite loop of violence.

The author provides a postscript with some questions about IF
conventions that came up while he was working on the game. It
should be interesting to see if any discussion about them picks
up.

[Irrelevant tangent alert.]

One question in particular intrigued me. The author asks whether
the goals of the player's character need necessarily coincide
with the goals of the player. I've been wondering about how a
game might handle a character who was actively opposed to the
player directing him/her. Perhaps the character might
deliberately misinterpret the commands given to him whenever
possible. I don't know what to do with this idea, and I'll
never use it, but if anyone else wants to take it, feel free.

Research Dig: 4 out of 10.

"Research Dig" is a competent work, but falls short due to
vagueness and a lack of interactivity.

This game is a story about an archaeology student who is sent to
look into an archaeological find in a graveyard. This could be
the basis for an interesting story. In "Research Dig," however,
most of this story occurs during the two long text pieces at the
beginning and end of the game. All the central character does to
move the plot along is unlock a shed, pry open a crypt, and pull
a stone out of a wall. There are a couple of places where you
deduce things--that a dig site has been tampered with, and that a
symbol on the floor of a large hall represents some sort of vague
evil power--but you don't have to work for this information, and
no explaination is given as to how you know these things. Once
you have the stone, a trip back to the graveyard results in a
text section in which you are hit on the head with a hammer, only
to be rescued by a deus ex machina in the form of an extremely
precocious eight-year-old girl named Louise.

Louise is a lot smarter than your character. She can see the
invisible dwarves who show up at the end for no apparent reason.
She also knows how to circumvent a child-proof barrier of the
sort that is put across stairways to keep young children out,
which completely baffles your character. For some reason, you
can't even step over it. I wasted several minutes on this thing.

The background to the story is quite vague. Apparently it
involves invisible dwarves, the four classical elements, rune
stones, and an evil plot hatched by your contact at the
graveyard, but how these things fit together is unclear. Louise
promises to explain it all at the end, saying that it's "a long
story," but the game ends before she gets the chance.

Very few of the objects mentioned in the game are implemented. If
it doesn't have a paragraph to itself, you can assume it's not
there. I know how easy it is to forget about these things--I left
out far too many pieces of scenery in an early version of a game
I recently started working on again--but the level of vagueness
in "Research Dig" is a little too high for what ought to be a
finished game. The things that do exist seem perfunctory; the
most notable example is the handbook, which you can look things
up in but which seems not to contain any information on anything.

On the plus side, this game didn't seem to have any bugs, and the
writing was reasonably competent with only a few slips. But it
needs a little more work before it will be genuinely interesting.

Purple: 6 out of 10.

"Purple" is an interesting post-apocalyptic scenario. The first
moments outside of the "phoenix nest" are disorienting; the
author manages to give the future world a convincingly alien
atmosphere.

A couple of times during the game I ran into "read the author's
mind" moments. I wasn't entirely sure how I was supposed to know
that I needed to get rid of everything, including clothes, to use
the nest. Later on, I was completely baffled by the action
necessary to revive Karl. If there were any clues provided as to
why this was supposed to work, they went right over my head.

Karl's personality was skillfully conveyed in the room
descriptions and the observations of the central character. Karl
himself probably needed a little more work. He should have been
blocked from entering the tunnels you dig late in the game; on
two occasions I managed to lose him down there. Also, he
shouldn't be able to decide to wander off on his own after being
told to follow the player.

The end seemed to imply that the author is planning a sequel. I'm
looking forward to it.

Cattus Atrox: 4 out of 10.

"Cattus Atrox" looked like it was going to be pretty interesting
at first. Unfortunately, there's nothing to do but run from Karl
and his lions through a maze of practically identical streets and
eventually get eaten. At least if there is, I couldn't find it.
Some hints would be nice.

Very few objects are implemented, and the characters are
extremely limited. Karl and Susan (who you can call on the phone,
although she doesn't seem interested in talking) have no reaction
to almost anything you say or do, although it seems like Karl is
more interactive than he actually is because he has several
random generic responses.

Karl, of course, is a completely different Karl from the one who
appears in "Purple." Well, I hope he is. It was kind of weird
playing these two games back to back, what with the two Karls and
all.

[Note: Later on, the author uploaded a walkthrough to the
if-archive. The rest of these remarks were written after using
the walkthrough to see the entire game.]

Okay. I've just played through "Cattus Atrox," and I have a
question.

How was I supposed to guess that there was a sewer grating I
could get into?

Also, how was I supposed to know that I could "ASK SUSAN FOR
HELP" when "SUSAN, HELP" resulted in a message saying she had
better things to do? Actually, that's two questions. Sorry.

This is a pretty bad case of "guess what I'm thinking," and I
haven't really been moved to reconsider my rating.

Interestingly enough, Karl had some extra lines this time that I
hadn't seen previously. Do they only come up if you do exactly
what the author expects you to do?

I wasn't as impressed by the full story as I was with the
beginning. It seemed like it was horrific for the sake of being
horrific, with no underlying meaning or purpose.

Downtown Tokyo. Present Day.: 7 out of 10.

Short, but with plenty of amusement value. Fooling around with
helicopters is fun. And what other game allows you to drop zoo
animals on Tokyo?

I liked controlling two characters at the same time. I'd like to
see some more experimentation with this concept.

In the Spotlight: 2 out of 10.

A bit pointless. "In the Spotlight" isn't a story, just a puzzle.
And the puzzle apparently isn't even original.

According to the credits, this is a port of a game the author
first programmed back in the early eighties. I would have
preferred to see something new.

Informatory: 6 out of 10.

An Inform tutorial. The helmet that reveals the source code
behind various objects was a neat idea, and a much more
interesting way of demonstrating a programming language than the
methods used in "Lists and Lists." Then again, "Lists" didn't
require the player to follow along in a textbook, while
"Informatory" is designed to be used in conjunction with the
Designer's Manual, so I suppose there are tradeoffs. Good idea,
in any case.

Photopia: 10 out of 10.

"Photopia" is one of the most intriguing games in this year's
competition. It's the story of the life and death of a teenaged
girl, seen from the viewpoints of a number of different people in
her life. But there's something interestingly ambiguous going on
under the surface.

Between the scenes from Alley's life, we listen in on the bedtime
story she tells to her young friend Wendy on the last night of
her life. (The story scenes are enhanced by their presentation as
colored text on a black background; it's surprising how much this
simple trick adds to the game. Another neat trick: The story fits
seamlessly into the game because it works just like interactive
fiction, with Wendy supplying her actions and Alley describing
the results in second person.) It eventually turns out that
aspects of the story may be more than they seem; the inspiration
for Alley's tale is the strange series of dreams she's been
having lately.

The dreams involve a Queen who looks an awful lot like Alley. She
rules over lands that she claims to have dreamed of as a child,
but which are now dead. She also tells Alley that she remembers
their conversation "from the other direction"...

Is Alley recieving a premonition of her death? A foretaste of
some cruel afterlife? "Photopia" lets this remain mysterious.
What seems more certain is that the dreams are metaphorical. From
what we see of her, Alley seems to show a great deal of promise.
Her death in a car crash caused by two drunken frat boys kills
her dreams and aspirations. There is, however, a hopeful note
within the story. There's a suggestion that Alley has awoken the
same kind of curiosity and inquisativeness in Wendy that her
father tried to instill in her. Perhaps Alley's influence will
one day inspire Wendy to do the great things that she now can't.
There's another parallel here in the bedtime story, in which
Wendy manages to make something grow in the Queen's dead world.

It should be noted that this game doesn't seem to be interactive
in the sense that most IF is, with multiple possible endings. You
can change the details of events, but the major outcome will
always be the same. Rather, the interactivity comes from the fact
that you take the part of the people in her life, making the
situation more immediate. Unlike, say, "In the End" (a similarly
structured game in which you would always come to the same ending
but the path could differ) the technique works here, mostly
because "Photopia" is a better story.

Part of the bedtime story--namely, the maze--was a bit unfair. At
this point, there was no indication that it was possible to fly.
Still, it seems like a small complaint considering the quality of
the game, and at least there was a hint available.

Where Evil Dwells: 5 out of 10.

"Where Evil Dwells" didn't provoke much of a reaction from me,
either positive or negative. The author did a pretty good job of
creating a horror scenario. The journals worked really well.

The atmosphere was harmed by the humorous bits that were grafted
on to the game. Sometimes humor can help to enhance horror or
suspense by providing contrast. Here, it just undercut the
effect.

Again, there were a number of unimplemented objects in this game.
It looks like objects that aren't there are this year's biggest
problem.

Spacestation: 1 out of 10.

An implementation of a dull sample transcript from an Infocom
game. It looks like the author got permission and everything, but
I still have to ask: Why was this entered in the competition?

It doesn't bother me that someone is adapting old Infocom sample
transcripts. It also wouldn't bother me if someone submitted a
game based around something long out of copyright, if they
brought plenty of their own ideas to the work. It does bother me
that this was entered in a competition. Personally, I have an
Inform port of "Space Aliens Laughed at my Cardigan" sitting on
my hard drive, but you don't see me submitting it.

Trapped in a One-Room Dilly: 5 out of 10.

The programming was excellent, but the game itself seemed a bit
pointless. What I'd really like to see from this author is
something like "Erden," her entry last year, done with more focus
and a stronger story.

The colors proved to be a problem for me when I tried playing
this game on a color-supporting interpreter. For some reason, the
text was white on a white background. Fortunately, MaxZip doesn't
support color, so I could play it either way.

Acid Whiplash: 5 out of 10.

A game which investigates the eternal mystery that is Rybread
Celsius. He's still a mystery, because the "walkthru" command
didn't work. Or maybe it wasn't supposed to work. I don't know.
Anyway, I couldn't figure out how to finish the game.

Usually I hate crappy games, and if this was any other author I'd
suggest that "Acid Whiplash" should never have been entered. But
this is Rybread. He does crappy so well, and so entertainingly.
And he does it on purpose, too, which is a lot harder than doing
it by accident. Just remember kids: Rybread is a professional.
Don't try this at home yourselves!

There were a lot of unimplemented objects again, which was a
shame, because with more objects the game could have been even
weirder. Oh well.

The Ritual of Purification: 8 out of 10.

I have to admit that I don't entirely know what this one was
about. Still, whatever it was seemed pretty cathartic for the
central character. The writing was good, and I didn't encounter
any bugs. I enjoyed it.

Fifteen: 1 out of 10.

Hoo boy. I hardly know what to say about this one. I'd like to
say at least something nice, but the only thing I can think of is
that it was competent, and there weren't any bugs.

I'd say that the writing was bad, but that's not strictly true,
because there was no writing. Each location is simly a name, like
"Kitchen" or "Alley," and a list of exits. There are practically
no objects. The few objects that exist have practically nothing
special about them. The most interesting object is the TV, which
you can turn on to see a soap opera. The minimal descriptions are
ocasionally incoherent. Of the kitten, for example, the game has
this to say: "She's wearing SILVER collar!"

There is one character, named Charlie. He barely exists.

There is no plot. All you do is wander around, occasionally
picking up an object, solving a puzzle, or unlocking a door.
After you've picked up all the "treasures," you set them on your
kitchen table to win.

It was only about thirty seconds before the unrelenting tedium of
"Fifteen" sent me running to the walkthrough, which I used to
finish the game.

Oh, and there's a maze.

The Plant: 7 out of 10.

This is an amusing, clever, and well-written game. Unfortunately,
for whatever reason, I can't think of anything in particular I
want to say about it. It's not that I think it's bad, or that it
doesn't deserve attention. It's very good. I'm just drawing a
blank.

The City: 5 out of 10.

First of all, I would like to say this: Disabling the "SAVE"
command is a bad idea. It doesn't matter what you're trying to
do. It doesn't make your game more realistic. It doesn't make it
more artistic. It doesn't turn your game into an "experience."
It's just annoying. In the world of non-interactive fiction,
there are these things called "bookmarks." Using a bookmark, you
can put a book down for a while and come back to the same place
without having to read it all over again from the start. Why
shouldn't IF have a similar feature?

That said, much of "The City" is pretty good. I found the creepy,
sterile, surreal environment compelling, and the trick with the
videotapes was unnerving. The characters, though enigmatic, were
vivid.

I was ultimately a little disappointed with the ending, however.
It seemed like nothing meaningful had happened. Andrew Plotkin's
"So Far," another surrealist game, is a good comparison; although
the events in "So Far" are never really explained, it leaves the
player with the feeling that something has been resolved for the
viewpoint character, and that some emotional development has
occurred. I didn't get that feeling from "The City;" it just
seemed to stop in the middle of nowhere. I'd like to see another
release of this game with a SAVE function and more substance.

--

Well, that's it. Anyone still awake?

-- 
Wesley Osam             "I'm sorry. I thought you were all timeless
wosam@avalon.net         beings of unlimited evil, and I'd come here 
                         to defeat you."
http://www.avalon.net/~wosam        --Lawrence Miles, _Alien Bodies_


From doeadeer3@aol.com Tue Nov 17 21:43:16 MET 1998
Article: 38959 of rec.games.int-fiction
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From: doeadeer3@aol.com (Doeadeer3)
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In article <72s78s$uav$1@nnrp1.dejanews.com>, hollebon@my-dejanews.com writes:

>An even bigger problem though was what happened after the chase, the mess
>that happens at Scott's house. The revelation that these were just three
random
>psychpaths was very unsatisfying. You need the player to set up some targets
>before you start shooting at them.
>
>In all, I think your original inspiration was much more powerful.
>The chase followed by being devoured, all the while learning something
>your dark side could have been very effective.

I would argree wholeheartedly with that. 

If you look, David, I think you will find my review kinder than some, I did
feel you were trying to create a nightmarish mood (which makes sense now that I
know it was inspired by a dream.) And I felt you succeeded to some extent.

But having these three people suddenly turn out to be psychopaths with no
build-up, background or explanation was pushing that nightmare mood over the
line into far-out drug-induced hallucination. (Although that is probably how
the victims of serial killers feel, they usually have no way of knowing before
hand.) 

Still, in a game it simply didn't work.

I really resented having to drink that drink, having to be paralyzed while they
talked about me. I wouldn't have chosen those actions. By then I was suspicious
of Susan. (How come she was so chummy with Scott? When Scott couldn't get her
number and I could? How come she felt so free to walk into the kitchen? etc.
etc.)

>The game requires very long waits at key points which do nothing but suck the
>life out of the narrative. 

So I agree with that too. (And commented on it, differently, in my review.)

If it's a nightmare it should move along rapidly with the player feeling they
can't control it. But that doesn't mean the player shouldn't be able to move or
do anything. In nightmares my heart is pounding, I am panicked and panic
usually means I am in flight, in ACTION (trying everything I can).

The pacing of Tokyo was more what you wanted.

If you had stuck to the lions and running you could have coded more for various
paths/actions the player might take (such as going between the cars). You could
still have worked in Karl's nasty singing and, thus, revealed more of the plot.

If you were going to include human hunters, then I really, really needed an
explanation. Why? Why were they doing it to me? How come they had gotten away
with it? How come I hadn't heard about lion-mauled victims scattered throughout
the city? Etc.

Doe :-)





Doe      doeadeer3@aol.com       (formerly known as FemaleDeer)
****************************************************************************
"In all matters of opinion, our adversaries are insane."  Mark Twain


From glasser@DELETEuscom.com Wed Nov 18 10:53:40 MET 1998
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It was a year of "Light".  It was a year of Wow (how many reviewers
didn't use that word?).  It was a year of VirtuaTech-inspired one-room
games.  It was a year of nearly unguessed pseudonyms.  It was a year of
games which ruled.  It was a good year.

I didn't play all the games.  I wish I did.  But I didn't.  I also
didn't review them all, due to time.  I do have lengthy reviews of some,
though.

Here is my summary of the games, in the style of raif Luminary
FemaleDeer:

Wow (dessert and whipped cream, in order of enjoyment): Arrival,
Photopia, Muse (I betatested it), Little Blue Men, The Plant.

Great (dessert, but no whipped cream, in no particular order): Acid
Whiplash/Rybread Celsius Can't Find a Dictionary, The Ritual of
Purification, Enlightenment, The City.

Something good (frothy, like whipped cream without the dessert):
Informatory (I betad it), Trapped in a One-Room Dilly, Where Evil
Dwells.

Not my cup of dessert: HRS, Fifteen (I betad it), Cattus Atrox.  (There
was *something* good in Cattus and Fifteen, but not quite enough for
whipped cream.)

And now, to the reviews.

---------------------------------------------------------------

Photopia: 9
not by Opal O'Donnell

I must say that the first few paragraphs made me think, "Oh, bud, we're
like in for, like, F@!#ing LIVING game about gettin' it on wit' p00r
riting!"

But, luckily, I wasn't.

(By the way, here are my opinions about the color thingy. I agree with
the author that the full point of the game would have been lost without
the color, and that at the least the color names were required.  I
played it on Zip Infinity for the Mac (which, unlike MaxZip, which I use
normally, supports colors).  I noticed that restoring and undoing didn't
make the colors what they should be; I'll give non-Opal the benefit of
the doubt and assume that this was my interpreter's fault.  The colors
sometimes made reading annoying, but I got used to it.  I found the
black background to be great, though the colored foreground wasn't as
effective to me.  And my colorblindness didn't affect it.  Yay.)

As I was saying, I was expecting a game about gettin' it on.  And then I
saw this adventure about a girl on Mars.  And then this girl nearly
drowns.  And some guy almost dies.  And then this Wendy girl can fly.

And then it starts to make sense.  (OK, it probably made sense to other
people beforehand, but quickness was never my best attribute.)

By the end of the game, I'm left with two feelings: "Wow" and sadness
that this wonderful girl died.  Not to mention hate for those guys at
the beginning that I thought I was going to be identifying with, and a
bit of confusion as to exactly what was going on with the dreams and the
Queen.

Or was it all a dream that happened to a newborn?  We'll never know.
(That is, assuming that my interpreter didn't just end this game early.)

Plot: Great.  It is detailed, but understandable (though some replay is
required to fully figure out what is going on).  It is moving, too.  I
felt quite sad about Alley's fate.  (The most confusing part was when I
thought that the car crash had Wendy in the back and it somehow made her
grow wings.  Thankfully, that was not the case.)  There is something
about this plot that makes it very suited for IF.

Puzzles: Simple, but I'm not smart enough for hard ones anyway. The maze
was great.

Writing: Again, great.  I especially liked how non-Opal made the various
parts clearly different.  One thing I especially liked was the various
("bla bla" means foobar) comments.  I thought at first that it was one
of those smart-aleck author things, but eventually figured out what it
was.  Good stuff.

Characters: I felt strongly about all the characters, even small ones
like Jon.  The limiting of conversation to a list was good, as it made
me understand the characters better (PULL THE FUCK OVER, for example).

Technical: I did find one case where I got a "[BUG]" message.  (This is
the bug that non-Opal posted about.)  And not all scenery objects
existed to be looked at.  However, whenever an object *did* exist, it
handled all reasonable actions well.  Lacked VILE 0 ERRORS FROM HELL!
Yay!

All in all, very good.

Award: Best Game for Improving One's Vocabulary

Quotes: "Awesome," Alley says.  "Where does the gallium come from?"

Funny how it always comes back to pants.

---------------------------------------------------------------

Acid Whiplash/Rybread Celsius Can't Find a Dictionary: 7
by Anonymous/Rybread Celsius and Cody Sandifer

Um.

Yeah.

The programming and writing (mechanics, that is) sucked.

I'll give them the benefit of the doubt that that was on purpose.

It was interesting.

There were puzzles.

Play it yourself.

Cody writes Inform?

Oh, Cody!  I do not know whether I shall be able to say "any game by
Cody Sandifer" when somebody asks for good IF suggestions anymore.

There was some deeper meaning, though, and I liked it.

Yeah.

Plot: Exists.

Puzzles: Exist (I think).

Writing: Interesting.  Horrible mechanics.

Characters: Don't exist, really.  Well, except Rybread and Cody.

Technical: Terrible.  (Though probably on purpose.) And it included VILE
0 ERRORS FROM HELL!

Muppets: Mousily mentioned.

All in all, very odd.

Award: Best Game for Decreasing One's Vocabulary

Quotes: 

>x barrels
Try as you might, you can't find a single barrel. Just powder kegs.

>x kegs
Try as you might, you can't find a single barrel. Just barrels.

---------------------------------------------------------------

Where Evil Dwells: 5
by Paul Johnson & Steve Owens

This could have been an excellent horror game.  This could have been an
excellent horror spoof.  Too bad the authors couldn't seem to decide
which one they were aiming for.

There were many bugs and technical annoyances (more than Acid, even!).
Writing contained quite a few mechanics errors.  And the mood kept being
broken by random pieces of humor in the middle of pure terror.

Plot: The plot left many questions.  Was the Bad Guy (who seemed to
disappear, unless he was the Cult Leader) planning this Evil the whole
time, or only once he saw the book?  Where is Elizabeth? If she returned
home, that makes no sense.  If not, you'd think this detective would do
something for this little girl, like find her a place to stay.  What was
the Black Thingy?  I mean, it wasn't the gibbering horror, because that
wasn't there until the end.  But what in the world was it, then?

Puzzles: Decent.  They don't accept enough synonyms, and are a bit
buggy, but they tend to work.  The box opening puzzle was especially
nice.  The imp puzzle was not very good; I personally *never* drop items
unless somebody is holding a gun up to my head and yelling "DROP THE
BOTTLE!" (in fact, an adventure I wrote in BASIC a while back didn't
even have a DROP command, and it was based on somebody else's game that
did).

Writing: Poor mechanics, mixed between horror and comedy without a
reason.

Characters: The professor is not implemented too well, and it isn't
clear why he's crazy.  With the exception of the cultists and the Black
Thingy, there aren't any other characters.

Technical: Many small annoying bugs.  Not enough synonyms.  Had some
VILE 0 ERRORS FROM HELL!

Muppets: Beerily steined.

All in all, very mixed.

Award: Worst Attempt at Mixing Genres

Quotes: Peering behind the rack, you can make out a large mass of
blackness that seems to writhe about of its own accord. You catch the
glint of a red-rimmed pair of eyes, perhaps the size of dimes, and a
high-pitched voice say in a hushed yell, "It's the Feds!  Get under
cover!"

---------------------------------------------------------------

The Plant: 8
by Michael J. Roberts

Yay!  MJR has written another game!  Perdition's Flames has always been
one of my favorite pieces of IF, and so I greatly looked forward to The
Plant.

Playing it was a mixed experience, but in general a good one.

Plot: There certainly was a plot.  It was quite complex, even. However,
I never fully understood it until the end, and Ending Exposition Man was
very annoying and artificial.

The one thing that confused me was this: are we in Blottnya? I mean,
there's a Blottnyan car, a Blottnyan textbook, and a Blottnyan dog.
However, Ending Exposition Man makes it quite clear that we are in the
USA.

Puzzles: Felt like your standard MJR puzzles.  Though many of them
required head-scratching, they all made sense once you figured it out
(or went to the walkthrough).  Nice and varied: a few mechanical
puzzles, a few "use random object" puzzles, a character puzzle or two.

Writing: Great.  No mechanical errors whatsoever.  It gave me the
feeling of "oh gosh and golly we're climbing towers on hoses!" I liked
it.

Characters: This was rather poor.  The dog was great, certainly.
However, your boss, who is (somewhat annoyingly) with you for the entire
game, is not particularly fleshed out.  The only other interactable
characters that I can think of are the cardboard foreman and Ending
Exposition Man, who basically walks up to you and tells you his life
story.  Sure.

Technical: You don't really expect the author of the language to make
technical errors, and he didn't.  The use of HTML features worked very
well.  There were some buggy things (errors of types 1001 and 1002);
however, they only showed up on the alpha Mac HTML-TADS and not on
MaxTADS, so I'll blame it on Iain.

All in all, flawed but fun.

Award: Best Game for Improving One's Conspiracy

Quotes: "We have for many years known that the government is incapable
of putting this technology to proper use, and that we must take control
of it for the good of mankind.  Unfortunately, even our resources have
proven insufficient to correct this problem, at least until now.  When
we learned that the crash artifacts were to be relocated to a new
facility, we saw our chance to intervene, taking what is rightfully and
morally ours."

---------------------------------------------------------------

The City: 6
by Sam Barlow

I enjoyed this game.  It was fun, though confusing.

It was short, yes.  But that's not neccessarily bad.  It had a confusing
plot (I'm not sure if I understand it now), yes. But the part I
understood was interesting.

Most notably, it went against several traditions in IF. No location
names, and no statusline, but these were a choice of style.  No undo,
save, or restore, but I would argue that one of the puzzles would have
been *more* difficult had undo been allowed.  (It also said no
brief/verbose, but those commands worked.  Odd.)

Plot: The plot wasn't very clear: something with an asylum, maybe, and
definitely some Big Brother.  It was interesting, though.

Puzzles: The main puzzle was really good.  I think that the decision not
to allow 'undo' was good; I wouldn't have solved that puzzle if I had
kept going back.  After that, there aren't really any other puzzles.

Writing: OK.  Though it does show some atmosphere, it is riddled with
spelling and grammar errors.  The frequent underlining was accidently
extended to punctuation and whitespace.

Characters: There are some characters, but I didn't really get the sense
of who they were.  There is barely any interaction. Maybe this is on
purpose.  Maybe not.

Technical: Had VILE 0 ERRORS FROM HELL.  The syntax for pulling the cord
was weird.  However, the video was very well done.

All in all, very druggy.

Award: Best Game for Sleeping

Quotes: "Only one thing left to do: Vote."

---------------------------------------------------------------

Yay competition!

-- 
David Glasser glasser@NOSPAMuscom.com http://onramp.uscom.com/~glasser
DGlasser @ ifMUD : fovea.retina.net 4000 (webpage fovea.retina.net:4001)
Sadie Hawkins, official band of David Glasser: http://sadie.retina.net
"We take our icons very seriously in this class."


From straight@email.unc.edu Wed Nov 18 10:57:58 MET 1998
Article: 38982 of rec.games.int-fiction
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From: Michael Straight <straight@email.unc.edu>
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: [Comp98] More praise for the good stuff (1 of 2)
Date: Tue, 17 Nov 1998 17:03:51 -0500
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Looking over the competition reviews so far, I don't think I have much in
the way of criticism to add (besides a few details that I e-mailed to
the authors), but I have some words of appreciation for some things I
haven't seen anyone mention yet.

This post contains blatant spoilers for Arrival, and Photopia.

ARRIVAL

I thought Arrival was a great example of the right way to use graphics in
a work of IF.  Someone else expressed disappointment that the graphics
were not "needed" to play the game and went on to wonder why they were
there in the first place.   

Well, first and foremost, they were fun.  The crayon drawings, the pie-pan
spaceship, the play-doh aliens, the webpage (did you catch that the
reason for the "webpage" was that was what the computer thought was the
most appropriate way to translate information for an eight-year-old?), all
were well-produced, fun to look at, and fit the context of the game.  The
weird juxtaposition of "computer graphics" that were crayon drawings was
entertaining all by itself.

But more importantly, the graphics were the sort of pictures that could
not have easily been replaced with text.  I can't think of how you could
have written a description of the spaceship that would have captured how
the kid saw (imagined?) it while at the same time saying to the player,
"It's really just a pie-pan."  (Camelot, anyone?)   The pictures not only
evoked B-movie special effects, but also the Calvin and Hobbes trick where
the boy sees spaceships and aliens but the parents see pie-pans and
play-doh.

Finally, I can't think of any work of IF that has made me laugh so much. 
I guess this is much more subjective, but I thought the antics of the
aliens, especially their comments about the atlas and their attempts to
open the pill bottle, were hilarious. And there were tons of little jokes
everywhere.  The response when you try to take the alien's pills still
makes me laugh.  I feel like after watching a really funny movie and you
keep saying to your friends, "Remember this?  Remember that?  Bwahahah!"

PHOTOPIA

Several people have mentioned Adam's great use of "guiding" you in
situations that appear open-ended, but I don't think anyone's yet
commented on the one that really freaked me out.

I was driving Alley home and talking to her about how much my daughter
liked her, when suddenly, in the middle of the conversation, I realized,
"Oh no, we're going to crash!  Maybe I have the opportunity to change what
will happen!"  I typed "STOP" and instantly was hit by the other car.  I
had this awful feeling of being just barely too late.  

Of course I quickly realized that it must have been coded to crash at
whatever intersection I tried to stop, but for a moment at least it really
seemed like things could have been different, if only I had been paying
more attention.  For me, it was the most emotionally charged moment of the
competition.  

The dream about the queen was a nifty gimmick too.  It's a dream, so you
can't control your actions!  

Some people don't seem to have caught that the reason for the definitions
("definitions" means telling you what a word means) is that Alley is
explaining elements of the story to Wendy that she was too young to
understand. When I read them the first time, I took them to have an
ironic, Kurt Vonnegutish tone ("Collateral damage" means we killed
                                                              \|/ 
innocent civilians.  The people responsible looked like this: -*- ) and
                                                              /|\
enjoyed them that way, and then when I realized what they really were
about, I liked them even more.

IF is the ideal medium for this story.  You could theoretically write a
short story in which every page is written from a different point of view,
but I don't think the reader would be able to enter each character's
viewpoint as easily, and that's really the heart of Photopia:  getting a
sense of what Alley's loss will mean to all these people.

I thought the ending while sad was also very hopeful.  I was grateful for
the chance to hug and kiss baby Alley and just look at her a moment before
turning out the light, because I knew what would happen to her.  It really
made me think about what will become of my twin girls when they are born
in February (I hope they won't come too early!) and reminded me not to
ever take them for granted.  I know that sounds dreadfully sappy, but it's
true.

(See next post for comments about "Muse")

SMTIRCAHIAGEHLT



From lpsmith@rice.edu Wed Nov 18 10:58:19 MET 1998
Article: 38992 of rec.games.int-fiction
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From: lpsmith@rice.edu (Lucian Paul Smith)
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: [Comp98] More praise for the good stuff (1 of 2)
Date: 18 Nov 1998 01:32:41 GMT
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Michael Straight (straight@email.unc.edu) wrote:

: I was driving Alley home and talking to her about how much my daughter
: liked her, when suddenly, in the middle of the conversation, I realized,
: "Oh no, we're going to crash!  Maybe I have the opportunity to change what
: will happen!"  I typed "STOP" and instantly was hit by the other car.  I
: had this awful feeling of being just barely too late.  

Yes!  This is what I was talking about when I mentioned the 'magicians
choice' in my review.  Exactly after you exhaust your conversation
options, and maybe examine one or two things, you get the 'enter the
intersection' text.  My theory is that unless you really haven't been
paying attention, you will then type 'STOP'.  And of course, it won't
work.  Suckers, all of us.  I loved it.

-Lucian


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Subject: Enlightenment (was Re: Comp 98 Reviews)
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Here be Spoilers































In article <ORiwWipE#GA.323@upnetnews03>, "Avrom Faderman"
<Avrom_Faderman@email.msn.com> wrote:
> Enlightenment: 7
> 
> Zero-Sum Game meets Zork:  A Troll's Eye View.  Very nice.  Cute, funny,
A confession: I haven't played ZSG yet, but I plan to, and I played Z:ATEV
in mid-October. The actual idea is a spin-off from something I designed
where I listed a bunch of ways to get past a troll "(this would have been
back in 1995 or 1996) ... In the original, there were a large number of
solutions, including
shutting your lights off, letting the troll get acclimatised to the dark,
and then turning your light back on, blinding it. The Grue^H^H^H*** idea
came in January of this year, and I started coding it to teach myself
Inform in April.

> few obscure ones annoyed me (another poster wrote about the trouble they had
> with the "gate" being opaque;  I had the same problem).
Possibly a language issue ... A gate doesn't necessarily have railings or
pickets. At any rate, I'll revise some desc in my next release to
disambiguate this. [It wasn't a problem that any tester had, for some
reason]

> WARNING:  This was such a pleasant little game, I'm very worried that
> someone will try to make a full-length game using effectively the same
> concept.  Please don't.  This idea was cute for *just about* as long as this
> game lasted;  it would *not* be cute for a 15-hour gameplay game.
Heh ... sounds like purgatory.

> Oh, and I don't quite understand--*how* did you get in without "checking the
> bridge"?
Adventurer strolls down the tunnel, over the bridge, unlocks the gate.
lifts it open (ala a garage door - It's counterbalanced) and walks
through. Troll thinks "s/he'll be back." 

--OH.


