Silicon Dreams

Name: Dracula’s Underground Crypt
Author: Alex Whitington
Review Date: 21 Oct 2008
Parser: Z-Code
Availability: IFComp 2008 Entrant
URL: http://www.ifcomp.org/
Version: Competition Version

Plot: 3/10 – An attempt was made, but it wasn’t very long or overly complicated.
Atmosphere: 2/10 – Tried to be quite funny but ended up falling flat.
Writing:  5/10 – Not much to say either way.
Game play:  2/10 – Attempts to be open ended.  Hard to say whether he managed it or not.
Characters:  4/10 – Professor was somewhat interesting.  Main character was amusingly stupid.
Puzzles: 3/10 – A bit of a pain, but internally consistent.  Lost points for a guess-the-verb.
Overall:  4/10 – A good effort marred by obvious bugs and so-so humour.

—–
Full Review (Warning: Spoilers)
—

First up, there is obviously some sort of story behind a google account name eggheadcheesybird.  I always enjoy odd usernames, well done.   In some ways however, that was the funniest part of this evening.

The professor was characterised very well and was quite unlikeable as was no doubt intended.  I particularly enjoyed the diary, it put everything into perspective.  I didn’t find a way to kill the professor unfortunately, I was hoping i’d be able to throw the flesh eating bookworms at him (also mildly amusing), but it would let me.  Or stake him.

There were a few bugs.  The biggest one was that the professor kept talking and moving and doing things when he was in a different room than the character, and you could lift the pillow and search things whilst the professor was sitting on it.

There was a walkthrough built in that was nearly less than useless.  I needed it to get to the underground chamber, given that the statues didnt seem to be mentioned in descriptions anywhere, but even knowing what I had to do in there (get a rubbing of the coffin lid) it still led to a painful guess the verb puzzle in which my character beat himself to death several times with charcoal and paper.

The ressurection pages combined with the coffin message suggest you can resserect the female vampire and yet dripping blood in the urn fails to work and I was completely unable to find any of the interesting endings.  On the whole, an interesting try marred by poor execution and overambitiousness.  It may have been better to ignore the open ended idea and at least implement -one- full path that was interesting. 

I didn’t feel much urge to replay it, open ended or not.

Four out of Ten.

Name: Cry Wolf
Author: Clare Parker
Review Date: 13 Oct 2008
Parser: Glulx
Availability: IFComp 2008 Entrant
URL: http://www.ifcomp.org/
Version: Competition Version

Plot: 7/10 – Started cliche, but the middle was quiet original and entertaining.
Atmosphere: 4/10 – House and town was generic anywhereville.  The expected tense tone only lasted the first night, the rest was interesting, but not overly atmospheric.
Writing:  5/10 – Writing was not great in parts, particularly in the beginning, but got much better into the end game.
Game play:  5/10 – Good noun implementation for the most part, interesting actions and interactions.
Characters:  6/10 – Andrew and Marissa were quite well defined and interesting.  Main char was watery and whiney.
Puzzles: 5/10 – I’ve never before played a game where you actually perform an operation on a dog.
Overall:  6/10 – There is quality story here that could do with a bit more of a polish, but has a lot to offer.

—–
Full Review (Warning: Spoilers)
—

This is the first of the games i’ve tried so far this competition that I can truly say I enjoyed, wholeheartedly.  It wasn’t perfect, or anything even close – it caught me in a bit of a picky mood i’m afraid.  In anycase, I was irritated right from the start by the intro which really dropped the ball as far as writing quality goes.  It was terse when it should have been setting the scene.  I found this particularly odd given the attention shown to detail – like a reasonable covert art submission which is something you don’t often see in ifcomp games.  I think this may have been an oversight as it got far smoother later in the game.

Good attention was paid to the environment, which is something I always look for early on in a game.  Searching the early rooms in the game just about every noun was implemented with something.  Not always perfectly, some things that stick out are you can open and search the dresser without getting out of bed, if you take Celia’s clothes out you can examing the dresser and see it overflowing with your clothes, then search it and be told it is empty.  Also, if you have searched the room and taken celia’s clothes (or even merely opened the dresser) then you cannot take your own clothes and get dressed, something that can be quite confusing.  One other thing about the first room, I think far too many things in the room directly mention Celia and how she’s gone now.  Sure its backstory and goes to state of mind, and obviously he misses her very much, but it belaboured the point a bit I feel.  By the time the character crawled out of bed I was well and truly sick of Celia and thought he was probably lucky to be rid of her.

A few other small things stand out.  At one point attempting to read a book points out that it’s too late, rather than points out that there is a giant wolf on you porch making that ill-advised.  Also, lets be honest.  How dense does the main character have to be – it’s a full moon, it’s a wolf in the middle of town who you splint, and you wake up with a naked woman in your bed, with splint, and…. what? Not even the inkling, crazy as it is?

That leads into the operation scene and the following interactions where the main character is told about Merissa being a werewolf which further points to the immeasurable denseness of the main character.  There are almost shades of Lovecraft in this story as the character’s mind is described and being close to snapping – a very Lovecraftian twist that but unfortunately inexpertly described.  When the operation is complete and the babies are described, definately the highlight of the game and quite original, and the main character’s perspective… shifts… this is quite well written.  However the panic he experiences when talking to Marissa and she claims to be a werewolf was unrealistic, flat and inappropriate.  Lovecraftian panic and madness is brought on by -seeing- things, experiencing things impossible and beyond the norm.  Not simply being told things, it’s easy to laugh off and disbelieve simple words.  Not to mention that the idea of her being a werewolf shouldn’t have been quite -that- much of a shock really, not after the moon, the split, the half-wolf-half-human puppies.  It’s not like there wasn’t warning that something strange was coming up now was it.

The ending was fairly obvious in the lead up and I must admit I played towards being furry at the finish.  I didn’t go back for any of the other endings, but it tied up the plot nicely and the character interactions were interesting.  I’ve always liked character conversations driving plot branches as a gameplay mechanic, but as i’ve mentioned before i’ve always preferred story to puzzles.

On the whole a decent little game that, with a little polish, could be quite recommendable.  Well done Clare.

I’ve noticed a trend over the years, that seems particularly prominent this year, and that is of people who eschew the various virtual machine systems in favour of creating their own game complete with parser/interpreter all wrapped up in an exe and ready to go.

I can see the appeal behind this myself.  I’m a professional programmer and I wouldn’t have gotten into the industry if I didn’t love to tinker with software and play about with different algorithms.  I’ve written small parsers and compilers as well at different points, and always loved genetic art algorithms and other strange and not particularly useful quirks of software.

That said, if you want to mess about with parsers and such feel free, there’s no-where written that you have to use Inform, Tads, Adrift or any of the others to write a game. 

You might want to reconsider releasing them in the IFComp however. 

For a start, lets examine the motivations behind it.  If all you want to do is play about, there’s no need to release them at all.  This is unlikely, because everyone who has created something, regardless of the initial reason, is likely to want some sort of feedback.  If you do it to the newsgroup, outside of the competition itself, I think you are likely to receive a warmer reception.

These custom-built packages, to me, say nothing greater than “look at me, I’m so fantastic I can build a parser”.  I’ve never yet seen one that, in flexibility and power, match up to Tads or Inform, or even come close to their stability, and they can only run on the platform they are compiled on – unlike the popular virtualised game files which will run anywhere there is an interpreter, which is to say everywhere.

All of that says to me – utter waste of time.  You have reinvented the wheel, made it square, limited the places in which it can work, and then put it on a silver platter and sit back awaiting accolades that you really don’t deserve.  I don’t even bother playing them anymore.

There is no reason, nor any justification, for a return to the parser-embedded-in-the-game format for interactive fiction.  No-one wants or needs it.  That’s not to say there’s no room for competitors to the incumbent formats but if that is your goal you need to meet them on their own ground, match their stability and feature-set and surpass it – a lofty objective.

There are also serious downsides to rolling your own system; the dangers presented if things should go wrong.  This rant has been prompted, in quite a few ways, by what I read on this thread:

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=32&t=464&start=0

Emilian, one of the codes who decided the best way to go was to roll his own solution, is attempting to release an upgrade to his game whilst the competition is still going.  This is, of course, seriously against the rules and he got quite belligerant when he was told this – and with good reason.  In his mind he has not edited the game itself, he has fixed a bug in his interpreter, and packed it with a different packer.

Unfortunately i’d say he is mistaken on the first point.  If you write your own parser and interpreter and release it as one big package then the interpreter is part of the game!  You cannot make the same distinction to your own work, that between parser and game file, that is attributed to the widely available frameworks simply because that is the way you programmed them.  They are being distributed as a single package, no one already has “coolXXX interpreter” installed seperately and they are not downloading the game as a bytecode seperately.  For all intents and purposes, the two are one and the same.

The second issue is even more disturbing and perhaps the biggest indictment against the vanity that seems prevalent in these reinventing the wheel attempts – Emelian didn’t mention it until it became clear that people were not very open to the idea of installing a new version mid-contest but it appears that the packer he used to compress the size of the executeable was called “MEW”, which it turns out may have the unfortunate habit of adding trojans to anything packed with it.

I can understand why Emilian might not want to come out and say anyone who has downloaded the competition pack and installed his game might now be infected with a virus that he has sent out.  It’s not likely to do your reputation or goodwill any favours, and in a small community like this that is really the only currency available. 

He is showing naivity with his comments though “It’s your risk! Don’t blame me afterwards!”.  Don’t be foolish Emilian, simply saying that will not make it so.  People trust the IFComp and rightly so, and your actions have brought that into danger now.  It is not anyone’s fault but your own that you used that packer and that you felt the inexplicable urge to create your own system rather than use one of the well known, and presumeably virus free, alternatives like the majority of the other contestants.

You felt the need to be different to the others; and in this you have certainly succeeded.  Caveat Emptor does not apply and personally, I think you should be warning people far louder than you seem to be right now.

In closing.  Unless you think you can do a better job than Inform, Tads, Adrift and the others, rolling your own parser seems little more than vanity.  If you do do it, purely for the fun, thats fine – but be very very careful and don’t expect to be lauded as a genius.  It was new tech thirty years ago, not today.