#5: Reality Check

[ShannonA]

Article #5 in the series is now available. It's called "Reality Check" and can be found at http://www.skotos.net/articles/. Here's a quick snippet:

"I talked about this briefly in my third article, on objects. When people are confronted with objects in an interactive fiction game, they tend to pick them up – no matter who they might belong to or what other reason there might be for just leaving the object alone. We actually encountered this anew this week. The sorceress discovered that a pillar of scrolls was missing from her amphitheatre The sorceress, one of the most feared personas in the game, was ripped off. What kind of reality is that?"

Comments, questions, and discussion welcome, as always.

Shannon

[Buggy]

Originally posted by ShannonA:
"I talked about this briefly in my third article, on objects. When people are confronted with objects in an interactive fiction game, they tend to pick them up – no matter who they might belong to or what other reason there might be for just leaving the object alone. We actually encountered this anew this week. The sorceress discovered that a pillar of scrolls was missing from her amphitheatre The sorceress, one of the most feared personas in the game, was ripped off. What kind of reality is that?"
Shannon

It's all the fault of those damn single player adventure games which reward kleptomania and murder. One of the cardinal rules of a single player computer adventure game is "pick up everything that isn't nailed down." You have to because you never know what that scroll or doorstop or astrolabe is going to be useful for the twisted puzzle the designer has seen fit to inflict upon you.

I was actually discussing this with another game designer and he mentioned the solution he was using was encumberance. The player was limited in what he could carry. Skotos may want to think about that.

As for the sorceress... If she's so powerful then she should make an example of the theif and turn him into a toad for a while or something. (Man, I wish I could play your games...)

Buggy

[Seidl]

Originally posted by Buggy:

As for the sorceress... If she's so powerful then she should make an example of the theif and turn him into a toad for a while or something. (Man, I wish I could play your games...)

Buggy

Dare I ask why you can't? I'd be interested in working with anyone having technical issues with the client (like firewalls, etc) to get them playing.

-=- Matt aka. Martel

[ShannonA]

Originally posted by Buggy:

I was actually discussing this with another game designer and he mentioned the solution he was using was encumberance. The player was limited in what he could carry. Skotos may want to think about that.

We've got encumbrance in, but in all honesty people can carry a lot. A slightly more intricate system that we need to put in at some point is how much you can actually HOLD, meaning that if you're carrying around five onions, twelve rolls, and fifteen wedges of white cheese... then most of those have to go in bags, knapsacks, etc.

(Man, I wish I could play your games...)

Like Matt, we'd like to know what is continuing to keep you out of our games. We figure that if you're running Netscape 4.7+ on the mac or IE 5+ on the PC or a new browser on a UNIX system and if you have Java enabled (for the mac) or ActiveX enable (for the PC) and if you aren't blocking cookies and if you're not behind a firewall then (whew!) things should work.

Trying to figure out what might be keeping a specific system from running a certain piece of software can be horrendous... but if there's any large things we're missing, we want to know.

(Over in the Castle Marrach Bugs, of course http://www.skotos.net/ubb/wink.gif

Shannon

[Buggy]

I've actually posted my woes to the Castle Marrach bugs pages. I'll e-mail Matt and see what can be done.

Buggy

[ShannonA]

Originally posted by Buggy:
I've actually posted my woes to the Castle Marrach bugs pages. I'll e-mail Matt and see what can be done.

Buggy

Buggy,

It looks like your woes may have been due to a problem with some passwords that was recently corrected. Try and log in again and see if things have been repaired...

Shannon