Hi Dark, Ah, yes. The infamous Emily Short. Her games absolutely rule. I love her if adventures.
Anyway, I think there is another solution to your problem of "guess the verb" and it would be just to provide a commands.txt file with the game so if you really get stuck with a puzzle, can't get passed something, you can look up the command to type. Plus there is the possibility of adding them to the hints system. I think there are probably work arounds for some of those problems like that. As for combat if games really are lacking on that end of things. However, I did discover that Adrift, Inform, etc do allow you to declare integer variables so it certainly is possible to add stats such as health, stamina, speed, etc. Not as good as a full blown programming language like C++, but it certainly provides some flexability in declaring stats, number of items, etc. Still like you I find the battle systems pretty primative all things considered. Something else that is lacking is randomly setting up levels and things like that before the game starts. It could be something small like you walk into your office and need to speak to your secratary in order to get some important piece of mail required to solve a puzzle element somewhere in the game. When you examine her one game she might be waring a blue blouse with white lace on the sleaves, a white cotton skirt, and blue pumps, and in the next game she might be waring a white shirt, dark gray jacket, dark gray skirt, and brown sandles. This really doesn't effect the game play, but it does make things different from game to game. The if game toolkits I've played with this weekend don't seam to have that degree of flexability in randomly selecting stuff. On 2/20/11, dark <[email protected]> wrote: > Hi Tom. > > Well that is true reguarding the carelessness of developers, but even in > games which had a very good review score I often found myself frustrated by > guess the verb puzles like that, which is the reason for my concern. > > Certainly though I've seen menue driven conversations where you choose from > a list of responses what your character says and these have very well driven > some of my favourite games like Emily short's game Pytho's mask (one I > highly recommend actually tom), and the earth and sky series. > > Also, i do wonder how successful a standard if language would be for > handling such things as hitpoint tracking and combat, particuloarly if you > want to insert such things as learnable combat techniques spells, treasure > which boosts stats and the like. > > Some implementations of combat I've sen in if games, ---- such as in > shaddowland has proved rather buggy and randomized, particularly when for > instance, the enemy attacks you when you mistype a command or try a command > the game doesn't recognized (most frustrating for someone like me who tends > to try of different actions in combat than just the standard attack attack > attack). > > Beware the Grue! > > Dark. > > > --- > Gamers mailing list __ [email protected] > If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to > [email protected]. > You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at > http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. > All messages are archived and can be searched and read at > http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]. > If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, > please send E-mail to [email protected]. > --- Gamers mailing list __ [email protected] If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to [email protected]. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to [email protected].
