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As an entry into the IF Comp 02, I created my first real work of interactive fiction. What follows below is the story of its creation, with a special section at the end for what other people have said about it. Keep in mind that this was written while I was writing the game, and so a lot of it will spoil the game for someone who hasn't played it. It also goes into actual coding problems at times, which may or may not interest someone unfamiliar with the Inform coding language. There are three parts to the "Making Of" story: Author's Journal Author's Journal(Some entries in this journal have been deleted, as they pertain to other works in progress.) 5/1/02 -- General Notes on Game Design Good features: multiple endings, varied and amusing deaths, concise and to-the-point descriptions with atmosphere as needed, kooky items/NPCs (like vampire, squid, chicken, bartender), interesting street/hallway descriptions, puzzles. Game design tips: 1. Parser--synonyms, flexibility, options, hints, "undo", F1,2. Other: Historical anachronisms, self-reflexivity (awareness of the game) Imagine "use" as your only verb. Make the object do that thing! (to avoid guess-the-verb syndrome and to make puzzles more logical). 5/16/02 - Having the skeletons of the games in place, hint menu in place, one room per game just to start out in, I now begin thinking seriously about what kinds of games these shall be, and try to cement the ideas by writing them down. "Cute Name here" will be a fun, funny, light-hearted, puzzle heavy game with lots of funny items, references, "the Obligatory Maze," -- think wise-cracking medieval toaster salesman who makes jokes about the parser. Treasure hunt or other collection game. Traditional pregame, middle game (with sectors), and endgame format. Maybe. Of course even here, not all is as it seems.... General Notes: Need to consider other names for each. Start thinking of puzzles for the fun game. Animals should be involved (funny items include: squid, flowered towel, potting soil, toasters, etc.) Possible puzzles: the well with a key clearly in the bottom of the pool, when really that is just the reflection and the key is on the ceiling (I love that one!) Train to carry dead spirits on (or bus) -- the PC must ride it somewhere after arguing with the driver about something. Possibly a circus scene, or someone stuck in traffic. Great puzzle could involve math tidbits, another fencing: be sure not to create puzzles that require knowledge of the subject without a way for the PC to learn that subject! Think also of the Babel fish puzzle, with obstacles that only become apparent when you overcome the previous. Not much coding done today: some small changes to differentiate the two games somewhat. Also started a brief map and starting room for the FunGame, tried to code Tookie, the pet that PC leaves on surface. It could easily be changed in the future. 5/24/02 - Notes on game design. FunGame will break as many [of the above rules] as I find interesting. I hope to have a ton of amusing ways to die, a few different paths if not a whole bunch of different endings, a pretty linear story (if I can even come up with a story), random puzzles, random objects, self-awareness (medieval toaster salesman who makes jokes about the parser!), and forget the laws of physics! But I will keep it fair, reward along the way, curve the puzzle difficulty, develop a great hints menu, and make more than one solution to the puzzles (except maybe the first one). The bulk of the writing here will be on the object and room descriptions, the hints system, and coding up all the puzzles. That reminds me, maybe a fun thing to do this afternoon will be to start the Obligatory Maze. Why not? <g> Hints should be funny! 6/5/02 -- Loss of all files up to this point. This design notes file was saved, but I didn't get either of my works in progress, nor did I get any of the modified libraries I'd been using. Sigh. That makes me very, very sad. It also brings painfully home the need for multiple copies and backups. In any case, I have been making a few notes on paper for Fungame, including a rough map. The four segments will be like the four seasons, and the doors and their matching keys will be a clever clue to this fact -- i.e., the "fall" key will be described as "dropping," and the "summer" key will have little plus signs on it. The fall section will have the math puzzles, the summer will have the fencer, etc. I have it all on paper. But I'm really sad about not having my works. I could have sworn those were the first things I rescued off of my about-to-die hard drive. I'm going to take a look at all of my floppies to see if maybe, just maybe, I had a different one in the drive than I thought and I really did rescue the things. It'd be worth it, if I still have them. Oh, and I have a quote for the beginning of Fun: ["Distill life down and you'll come up with three basic things: places to go, things to do, and stuff to carry."] I think that works well. 7/18/02 -- Gr. That's all I have to say. I have come up with a new idea for a game, and I'm going to work on that. The idea is: a newbie goes to her first fencing tournament. The point is not to win so much as it is to learn everything you can learn, to have a good time, and to go to lunch at a nice restaurant in D.C. However, this means the work on my other two game ideas has come screechingly to a halt. Reading over the last entry, I see that at that point I thought I had lost the works in progress. Not so. I did indeed save them onto floppy disk. So I've been thinking. The idea for [other Work In Progress] is an excellent one, although it would indeed be difficult to do well. And with the kids here for the summer, my wisdom teeth being pulled out in a matter of weeks, my role as Game Master for the D&D group, and the women's 4-miler fast approaching, not to mention the budding IF Review Site I've been trying to put together on StrangeBreezes.com, I think I just won't have the time to put in what that sort of concept needs. However, I think I just may decide to enter it in the Spring Comp. The intentions phase of the Spring Comp starts September 30, and I would really love to have a high-quality piece of IF in the Spring Comp. Sigh! But what about this fall? Should I go ahead and write up the Fun Game, complete with random puzzles and not-quite-wacky-enough wackiness? Or should I try to code up the fencing "game," with its focus on a single sport that not a whole lot of people are necessarily going to be interested in? Or should those two be the two that I enter? Hm... back to the time issue again. I've got two months and ten days to code *something,* not counting time for testing and revision. Ergh. I have on my list of things to do today: "Make schedule for IF Game." I intend to do that, it's just a question of what game do I need to make a schedule *for*? Well, then again, both games (Fencing and Fungame) have a very minimum of coding already done and a basic idea of plot. Did I mention my cool idea of having the ruins in Fungame be an alien spaceship, only the aliens are like giant cats and they stole my dog to use in some experiment/take back to their planet/whatever? Then the idea becomes go and find my dog, not just go explore this area. And maybe they set up these puzzles and keys and stuff to test my intelligence, or maybe it's me that they want, or then again, maybe I'm a dog-type species and Tookie is more like a pet human! And we don't find that out until the end. Then again, that's a plot twist that might be unnecessary in such a wacky premise. But if I intend to have the Fencing ever become a game in its own right, I need to leave the giant alien fencing cat out of Fungame <f>. Taking out the "obligatory maze." Considering appropriate level of self-reference. There are basically six puzzles in the whole Fungame. First, the key(s). Then each of the four doors has a puzzle area behind it: ideas for these are math questions, mixing up lemonade (cliche?), fencing (which we're removing), and dropping things through holes (can only break <thing> from proper height). Last but not least, we have a final puzzle, be that bring the four stones together or defeating the cats or just plain old rescuing Tookie. (Idea: include the Player's Bill of Rights by Graham Nelson in the info section.) So, a schedule for Fungame:
Whew. So that's the idea. Some other thoughts: Libraries are over done. However, we will need at least one text for the math problem. Somehow we have to convince the player that they will not actually be required to do any math to solve the puzzle; we must imply that all it takes is paper and pencil and the math textbook. That should be the only writing implement in the game for simplicity's sake. We are also still missing some basic element to tie all of these sections together and into some sort of endgame. Oh, and I don't have hints anywhere in that schedule. Hm. Well, hints are easy and I like doing hint systems, so hopefully that will all fall into place. It would help though, if I had the framework in place (I do) and all the non-game-related stuff already done. So I'll do that this week. 7/19/02 -- Many changes today in Fungame. Even worked on hints. Rewrote intro, made VERBOSE the default mode, worked on adding Graham Nelson's Player Bill of Rights to the help section. Worked on getting the corridor rooms to print a "the passage curves" message a la Change in the Weather. Thought: need more things than just the six main puzzles. One of the four sections I would like to have as a big multi-step single puzzle, as in Babel Fish or building the trap in Soft Food. Created the keys. Working on doors. I will force the player to specify which key to use, although hints are given; however, I will try to alleviate some of this by automatically opening doors when they want to go through, and after they have figured out which key to use, automatically using the right key from then on. Don't forget doors have to be lockable and open/closeable from both sides. Use the door from Ruins as the example. 7/23/02 -- Whew. All sorts of stuff done over the weekend and yesterday. I mean, all sorts of stuff. Here are my debugging notes as I was working yesterday:
So, what have I done? Good grief, it seems like an awful lot, but really I just have the same rooms and doors that I did before. Let's get a quick rundown of things I've been working on and changing, from top to bottom of the code. I changed the score system to a tasks-based one, implementing the first two tasks (of a tentative ten): finding out that the keys are really on the ceiling, and getting the keys from the ceiling. I had already set up many replacement default responses, but Carl suggested this weekend that I set up several different responses to the same command, so I have implemented that for Pray and will be working on others. I also changed the default mode to VERBOSE and cut out the SUPERBRIEF mode completely, with appropriate responses (including changing the NORMAL command). Set up the well object for real this time: proper description (which hints to look in) and a decent (but not perfect) Search so that we can at least see the keys (except when they're not there). My problem now is, when something else is in the well, I want the player to see it (like the leash), so I want the Search routine to return false. However, when nothing else is in the well, I get the message about the keys (reflection) and then "The well is empty." (Sigh.) Anyhow, I changed the way the key_image in the well and added the full description of the water weird (which only surprises us once). Now the well is a bottomless pit for objects. I hope to implement a clorox bleach tablet or something that will take care of the beast in the future, although I would have to change a lot of the code on the well. Right now I have the water weird only implemented through text; he is not his own object (sigh). I also figured out how to prevent the player from doing anything with the real keys when he is standing on the floor (yay!). And I added a signal so that we know whether or not the player has seen the real keys, to aid in appropriate messages for X KEYS IN WELL. I already had the Noises object to print random stuff when the player is in the central well: this weekend I made it impossible to interact with (just in case--it already had no name). Oh, and since the description of the Central Well mentions arches, I implemented the arches as a small prop so that people could look at them. I decided to have things dropped from the top of the ladder fall to the ground below, but I can't get it to work (even using the scene from Heidi as an example! Gr!). I think it was last Friday that I implemented the keys themselves and their odd properties. Each one is odd in some way, except for the dropping key, which doesn't feel strange. Only its name is odd. Also put in two of the four doors and REWROTE THE LOCK AND UNLOCK verbs. Sigh! I did use a slice or three of code from the verb library, but the point was that I wanted the player to be able to unlock the doors without worrying about taking the keys off the ring. The keys can stay on the ring. I now have it implemented perfectly, as long as there are no other doors in the whole freaking game. Sigh again! But it works now, and it even adds the "(with the icicle key)" just like I wanted. So I'm happy. I have been beating myself senseless trying to figure out how to make the tunnels print the message about curving around, ONLY when the player goes from one part of the circular tunnel to another. It isn't working. Added climb code for the ladder, made the u_obj in Central Well go to climb the ladder if it is set up. Added the broken leash for the player to start with. Sketched out the routines for PrintTaskName and PrintRank (very unsatisfactory for now). That's about it for the weekend. Dozens of small changes in addition to all that. I have saved a copy of the code as it stands today as fungame020723.text for posterity. I don't know how some people write games in just a few short weeks -- I am going to be hard pressed to do the rest of the game by September 30! Much less get any testing and debugging done. Well, that's why I'm working on it now. I am in the middle of trying to think up some more puzzles, since I am rather short on interesting ideas. Maybe the fencing thing wouldn't be so bad after all, although it would mean lots of new verbs and a manual. I think I'll concentrate on the Southern section next, as I actually have an idea for what I want to do with it (although I do need to come up with the math questions!). Southern section has a bowling lane & ball, holes in the floor with glass cases on levels 1 and 2 (level 1's containing the math book that can be used to effortlessly solve the word problems), and the NPCs guarding the doors that lead to the room with the statue. Property called invent: to do something in the inventory list. For example,
Object thing "cool thing"
with ...
invent [;
if (inventory_stage == 1)
"This replaces all text that would have appeared.";
if (inventory_stage == 2)
", whereas this merely adds itself to the text.";
];
Idea: the four gems that tie the sections together will be a class. Don't know what I'll do with that yet, but I think it sounds cool. 7/25/02 -- Actually got some things accomplished today, with some serious help from the DM4! Woo-hoo! The mechanism for the doors is now perfected: you can walk in the direction and it will try the door. If the door is closed, it will open automatically. If the door is locked, and you have a key, it will try a key that it hasn't tried before. It remembers which door unlocks with which key so you don't have to do it again. When you go to lock a door, it automatically closes it if necessary, and uses the same key you needed to unlock it. And the text that appears when you walk around the circular tunnel appears at the correct times! And climb ladder will do all the intermediary steps for you; and take ladder will close it for you... It's a good day. But no progress made on anything else <g>. Oh, and I laid out the switch statement for the library responses so that it goes down the list in sequential order, but the last one is repeated after the list is exhausted. Checking the schedule... My next goal is:
I have rewritten the intro some, and implemented the four doors. The key puzzle could use another subtle hint, and I still need get key with <noun>. Plus it would be nice if "look in well" listed its contents. And some changes need done at TopOfLadder (like seeing the well, the key_image, and the ladder); and the water weird needs to be its own object so we can check and see if its there (so everything works after it is defeated by the bleach tablet). Brain flash: for the pencil and paper, I should be able to copy some code from the Toyshop example game! Not that the player needs it to win, I just think it would be cool. Also, going to have to be really nice with verbs for the math puzzle. Like "write problem on paper" should solve it, and "solve problem" will just check to make sure you have the paper and pencil then solve it, etc. Gonna go try it. 7/30/02 -- Bowling today. ALL day. Sigh. 8/1/02 -- Nothing yesterday. Finishing the bowling program (which I currently have as a separate .inf) and going to incorporate it today. It's really too good to not do something kewl in the game, but why would the player need to bowl? Just for style points? Nah, I think it's just got to be there for the ball. The bartender is sort of a similar thing: a repository of information, but no real use except to serve drinks. P.S. the bowling was a pain but I like how it turned out! Needs some tweaking to figure out how many pins get knocked down... maybe I should do it as a percentage of pins remaining... like most of the time you get 70-80% of what's left, so that strikes and spares are both rare. Kewl idea. Need to refresh my memory of how to make sure we return an integer. Having trouble with the trickier aspects of keeping score... maybe Carl can help me with the scoring algorithm later on. Sigh! 8/5/02 -- Sigh, sigh, sigh. Did I say sigh? Sigh. Not much work done in several days... no advancement on bowling score algorithm... Personal life in an uproar... Where was I supposed to be as of this weekend?
Hm. Well, I still need to finish the key puzzle including "get with," and I haven't done much at all with the framework for two more sections. This is a pain. My main holdup at this point is that I have no good ideas for puzzles for the other section. Yes, I know puzzles should arise naturally from the plot, blah, blah, but my whole point is to have just a fun puzzle-oriented game. After all, the point is that aliens are testing your brain. I really shouldn't waste so much time on the bowling part of it, but to me that's fun. Or at least, it would be fun to play if it worked better. The problem with the bowling now is that the pins knocked down in the first ball after a spare or the first two balls after a strike *aren't added to the appropriate frame_score*. Instead they are just added to the total score and forgotten about. Hm. It seems it would be simple (but painstaking) to do this the brute-force way; I should be able to come up with something. But I need to focus on some other aspects first! I've also been slowed down by the fact that I don't want to create a whole bunch of empty rooms that do nothing but connect, and they would have names like N_Room1 and stuff. That sucks, because it's way too hard to go back and change it throughout the code later. Then again, maybe it would kickstart me on my way to actually FINISHING this game. Sigh. I think I'll bite the bullet and go with some of my initial (if lame) ideas for puzzles. At least it would be better than stealing puzzles from other games. Hm, I wonder what the player is supposed to do with the gems once he collects them all? Oh, last Friday I did do some changes in file structure: I made FunHints a separate file so I would quit looking at them every time I opened Fungame.inf. Now those 1000 lines of code are out of the way. It was a good decision. I may, by the end of all of this, separate all sorts of things into separate files so that the fungame.inf is nothing but includes and constant declarations, plus Initialise(). Sigh. Why do I sigh? Did I mention my personal life is in an uproar? Okay, so I did get to add Gus in today, although not in full drink-serving capacity. 8/13/02 -- Some work done over the 3-day weekend, mostly on the south section. For some reason, the holes will move objects to the icicle key and I can't figure out why. I think it's some problem in the declaration of RoomBelow. But, I did add the rooms for the entire south section with their connections, and made a few other small changes and updates in other object definitions. Slow going indeed when the deadline is so close. (Oh, doing "get ... with" was surprisingly simple, except when you try to "take ... with".) Signed up to be an author in the IF Comp. http://authors.if.comp is the place for filling in info about the game. Problem: I need a title. Desparately. That is my task for today. Also would really like to fix the bowling scoring mechanism. And, last but not least, I need to put in all the other PCs that block entrances to the Display Rooms (or whatever I'm going to use) and come up with stuff to go in all the other rooms in the game! Room descriptions, aie! 8/13 cont'd. Ideas for a name: There's always the boring "Space Alien Cats Stole my Pet" or "Subject 11-A", but how about something with Tookie in it? Like: Ai, Tookie! or Alas, My Tookie! That's kind of funny. "Tookie Pop." Rethinking the schedule: according to the official IF Comp website, the deadline for games to be finished is September 27. So, between that and my lack of progress up to this point, I need a new schedule of authoring. Here goes:
Whew. So a lot to do this week, it seems, which sucks for me because I'll have three weeks without real work in September, but the game cannot wait that long. I need to sketch the basics out so that in September I'll be able to flesh things out without messing up the functionality of them too much. In the meantime I'd really like to know why MyHole keeps moving things into the icicle key... 8/14/02 -- Mwahaha! I have solved the hole problem. I made them doors--it's ideal for what I want them to do. Move things from one room to another, one-way! I don't allow the player to enter, and react_before a "d" to make it <<enter self>>. Perfect. Sooo. Also added fake ladder and fake well at TopOfLadder, preliminary only. Also expanded the ladder code to catch any "d"s from anywhere when you're on the ladder, not to mention "get down." Ha! All games should do that. How about "Tookie's Song" for a title? Vaguely weird and disturbing, while still pretending to be normal and even sentimental? Is it funny at all? I hate titles. I thought of something else: so far, I have no ways at all for the player to die. That's not necessarily bad, but it isn't really what I set out to do. Maybe when I have time, I will go back through and add things like the following: >PUT KEYS IN WELL A one-move loss. This allows people to UNDO (maybe) but I would still print the warning the first time that says, You're not sure you want to do that (this is your final warning), sort of thing. 8/15/02 -- Some work done yesterday and today. Today I added serving drinks to Gus' repetoire. It's buggy but okay. Got rid of my ceiling objects altogether. Made all the code part of the room's code, as in before[; Examine: if (noun==u_obj) {previous code}], etc. It works exactly the same and is much cleaner, but most importantly, I don't get this: >X CEILING Now all I have to do is get it to work with the well, so I don't get (the stone well) all the time. Sigh! Oh, yesterday I worked on the bowling thing a lot, mostly the Frame_Scores array (since that was what the problem was :-). Still not right. Changed the ABOUT text a bit, named the game TOOKiE'S SONG, started the walkthrough. 8/16/02 -- Look at http://www.firthworks.com/roger/informfaq/aa.html#10 for getting rid of the "(which is closed)" stuff. Idea: have a global variable called LastRoom to hold the last place the player was. Before Go: LastRoom = Self (whether it works or not). After: go: if noun = w_obj && LastRoom == NorthSide or SouthSide, print "The tunnel curves as you walk, circling the central chamber." 8/28/02 -- Over the looong weekend (okay, the past week) I've mostly worked on the bowling code, but I did make a good bit of progress with it. Imported the bowling stuff to Fungame.inf and made a new file called BowlCode.h to "Include" in Fungame. Since I had everything working but the last frame display (and the scoring, ftm), I decided to "hard code" the last frame so that you get three strikes. Some call it "cheating." I call it "more fun." It was Carl's idea. Also added some verbs and grammar at Carl's request after he couldn't bowl. I just remembered a dream I had about the game. The North section in my dream was some sort of line for something, like a checkout line at Blockbuster that curved around, so that each "location" was part of the line and you had to move around and wait. I don't think that will be usable in any way, but it's weird that I had a dream to explain all of the empty rooms in that northern section. Sigh! Doing well with the bowling thing. Finished the code for the player's bowling completely. Now we add the NPC and the bigger scoreboard. Fred, the bowling alien cat, and a mysterious drug that can be added to a beer to make him bowl crappy. Hopefully I'll get to work on all of this tomorrow in the van on the way to Roanoke. 8/29/02 -- Some objects added in the kitchen for the creation of soup in the microwave. Upstairs, there will be one cold alien and one warm alien, and to get past either you have to bring them the appropriate foodstuff. The one that's cold will take either coffee or the instant soup, and the one that's hot will take either a cold lemonade or something else. Still thinking about alternate solutions. So I added that and the code for Fred's bowling, depending on whether or not he's been poisoned. I don't remember what the other way to subdue Fred was. You could slip a drug into a beer and give him that, and that will do it, or... I know I had thought of something but I can't remember any more. Also added the random generator startup code. Still having problems with the coffee, powder, mugs, water, filling, etc. Also had to take out the code for the Beverage class that intercepted a "drink" command with no object. I wanted to have it interpret just plain old "drink" by drinking everything that you're holding. I'm having trouble. 9/4/02 -- Notes from Jen's transcript (Yay!): implement carving and carvings on the stone well; all for now. Sigh. Redesign south section to simplify map: too many unnecessary rooms. Add NPC class called "Guard" with "allow_to_pass" or something. Also, just realized that "x keys in well" did not say that they were swaying. 9/5/02 -- Looking at notes: from 20 July: Perhaps your hand passes through the illusion just before the weird jumps out. Could describe them as hanging from a peg. Need "look up answer" in textbook. Some work today on the south section, eliminating rooms. 9/6/02 -- Limited work today on formatting of source code and the bowl code. That might be way more trouble than it's worth, but I hate to abandon it completely now. Perhaps I should just follow a script. How many times is a person likely to bowl? I could just keep them from any marks: that would make it simple. Maybe. It's worth a shot. Fred would still always beat them when he's not drugged, and always lose when he was. Let's save the old system and give it a shot. 9/8/02 -- Working on a lot of different things at once here. Trying to figure out how PrintRank decides if Achieved(x) is true or not so that I can use it in my end game stuff, with the cats passing judgment on the PC. Also implementing the mug as its own object instead of a beverage -- it just didn't have anything in common with the other beverages. Also implementing "hit...with" so that you can try to hit the glass case with things, or NPCs. I think I will have an alternate solution for Fred be to knock him out with the bowling ball. Or maybe that is too simple, and people will try that and miss all the beauty of the drug puzzle <g>. Also finishing and adjusting stuff with the soup puzzle, and need to make the NPCs in the east section so that there is actually a puzzle to solve. Other: yesterday I changed the bowling code so that the PC will never get a mark, only open frames (except for the final frame). I figured what the hell, at least that works. Also, rearranged the south section (was that just yesterday)? Things are tough today because we are at a dual fencing tournament, where Carl is fencing in the morning and I am fencing in the afternoon. But I got a little bit done (SOUP!) on the way up, and hopefully I will get some stuff done while he is fencing. The microwave needs work. Also need a daemon for ... I forgot. That's why I wanted to jot all this down real quick. Sigh. Okay, I'm working on the "Achieved" problem first. Of course, Carl *would* be fencing on the one strip I can't see from where I'm set up. Oh well. Maybe I won't get as much done as I had hoped. Oh yeah, that was the other thing I'm supposed to be working on. I started the day out with adding those little comments between rooms, for transition purposes. Need to be sure to do that with the whole south section, some of the east section, and all of the tunnel sections. Be sure to remember the spaces. Copied several files to root directory of "IF Stuff" so that I could compile from DOS. Remember to re-copy when compiling for the final time. 9/24/02 -- My God. I'm a wreck. I've changed so many things since the last time I wrote anything about my progress, and I have so many more things to do. Recently I've been working on the hints and general instructions. Also I need to make sure the walkthrough is in good shape. Good grief, do you realize that the blurb for my game says NO UNWINNABLE STATE? What if there is one? Gak! I'm not ready. I've also been recently adding a bunch of descriptions and, especially, INVENT properties, a la Roger Firth's WriteList.h. Which reminds me, I really need to work on other parts of the hints, like the credits and stuff. You know, all I want out of this whole thing is for someone to say, ~I liked it.~ Sheesh, I'm quoting with ~s. Okay, so for someone to say "I liked it," and someone else to say, "It's not that bad!" and, one more thing, I would really like an average rating of 5 or higher. That's it. I think that's manageable since the game is winnable, even if there are freaking PROGRAMMING ERRORS that pop up on Jennifer's transcript for what seems like NO GOOD REASON. Okay, breathing, breathing. So, Carl played the beginning part and helped me with some great input, and some MAJOR problem notifications. Jenn has been indispensable as my only real beta-tester. Sigh. She likes the doors, though. At least the doors are working 100% correctly. I'll always have the doors. Aside: I was right the other day when I was looking for a quarterback with amazing precision to use in a figure of speech and came up with Kurt Warner. His rating as a passing quarterback is 101.something right now, and Steve Young's is set at 96.something. The problem is, Warner's has been coming down over the course of the season and Young doesn't play anymore, so Young is the natural choice for a figure of speech. I have hope in Warner yet, though. Okay, as a break and a little bit of a relaxer, I'm going to go write some more of the non-hint hint menu, like credits. The general instructions can wait a bit, because I don't expect a lot of people to use them. Sigh, at least I hope not. This thing is crazy. Does every author feel like this at the beginning of the Comp? 9/24/02 Cont'd. 9/25/02 -- Okay, things going pretty well. Carl is testing the hint system tonight for me. I am typing credits. I added an Amusing property which only shows up when you win, and on the regular hint menu too. Wow, was it easy. Writing the General Instructions is not so easy, but I'm going ahead with it. It's only 7:45 p.m.; I have at least 5 hours before I have to be asleep. So here goes! Where are all my notes about things that need to be done, anyway? I guess what I really need to work on are room descriptions and extending other descriptions. I got the paper to work when you "solve problem" (although for some bizarre reason, "write down problem" doesn't work). But I am happy. I am drinking Dr. Pepper and I am happy. I think it makes a difference that tonight there is baseball on, and last night there was not. Damn hotel TVs, they get HBO but not the sports! Who cares about HBO! I want to see the Angels win, and finally get into the postseason!! 9/25/02 Cont'd. I have finished with the hints, and the credits, and the walkthrough. I am now moving to the couch (yes, unplugged) to write descriptions. Hope the Yanks give me some inspiration as they slaughter Tampa Bay. Also do "hit with" on the glass case, special for bowling ball, and let the coffee be a solution for Hank (although he'll still say that Gus doesn't serve coffee). Will need to rewrite some stuff. Actually, that's too much of a pain in the ass. I know alternate solutions are all the rage, but I really need to focus right now. So what if I didn't end up with as many alternate solutions as I might have? Perhaps they will come with a post-comp release. Also, think seriously about the squid. And the textbook: right now LookUp is buggy. Dirt needs to be its own object. AttackWith: done. Textbook: got Consult working, although I don't have many topics, and not a lot of time. Maybe look something up online later. Have I mentioned I will actually be glad when my game is turned in? At least I can do some other things for a while. Get back to my life, you know. Yanks tie it up at 3 runs apiece. Would it really be that hard to make Hank accept coffee? Yes, it would. Whoa, weird movie on. It sucked me away from baseball for five minutes already. I hope I get some coding done. Very weird. AAHH!! I'm hooked. Good grief, what was that?! I'll never get anything done now. AAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!! Freak me out. I need to change the channel now, before it's too late. Okay, I changed it. It scared me. I hate when that happens. Okay, I changed it back <g>. What the HELL is going on? I have to go look this movie up online. This will also get me away from the TV for a bit. Back to work on the dirt. (It's a really good movie, btw.) Hours later: Okay, it was a good movie but I want to rent it with Carl to see all of it. Damn, I'm getting tired. I'm on my last soda. I did the dirt, though. Still need to do some work on the squid and transcribe the scenic items I wrote yesterday while I was in class. And Carl told me about two GREAT typos -- the whole description of the Forest was whacked! Thank goodness I gave it to him to look over! He also reminded me about laying the ladder over the chasm, and he doesn't like the fact that the hint section gives bad suggestions. Hm, I said, maybe I'll change that. Nothing but NL games on. Have you noticed how much more than usual I've been typing in this file? It's like I'm procrastinating or putting off the work on the actual game. I compiled earlier without Debug on: got a filesize of 176K. Yikes. 9/26/02 -- Mwa, ha. Small, self-satisfied chuckling. I just had an "Ohhh" math moment, where I figured out why I thought I had done something wrong even though I hadn't. Mwaha. I love when that happens! This is what is great about math! Tonight soccer is on. I love soccer. So much better than baseball! Besides, the Angels clinched their playoff berth last night. With soccer, I don't even care who's playing; I just like to watch the game. Ah! As far as coding goes, this afternoon I added "PlaceOver" so that you could say "place ladder across chasm" and have it not work. Great idea, Carl! I am working on the tank and Aquarium, as well as the Endgame and touching up some descriptions. I don't plan on being up until 2 am, and I DO intend to upload tonight! Beat the rush, ya know? Besides, I looked through for my magic symbol ??? that flagged things to be changed and there were only three. Just three. The endgame, the tank as a new item, and the description of the Basement. There you go. So as soon as I finish those and look through again for things like "Description of path here," I'm going to pop some popcorn and take a bit of a break. Yay me! 9/26/02, cont'd. (11:30 p.m. -ish) 9/27/02, 12:22 a.m. 1:29 a.m. 1:39 a.m. 1:55 a.m. 1:56 a.m. 2:12 a.m. 9/27/02 (6:35 p.m.) Well. Here I am at the airport, finally. I don't have any connection to the internet, so I can't look anything up on the web, or check the authors page at ifcomp.org, or read the newsgroups. Speaking of which, it's been really quiet on the newsgroups the last few days, or is that just me? I wonder if it's always that way right before the deadline. If so, it's too bad: the distraction would have been quite welcome at times in the last few days. Across the way from where I sit at gate 37, there are about seventy people in line at the Burger King. Sad, but true. All I can do now with my game is play it. I have the tookie.z5 comp entry version, and I'm going to put that along with all the files I created for it in a special folder under myworks. That, and I could start cleaning up the code (spacing and comments only) so that I can show it to someone else. Maybe Jen will want to see it. Oh, I can play her office game! That will be fun! Also, I could try to figure out what on earth happened with TextPad that made me unable to compile and open with my special hotkeys. That actually sounds like work, though, so maybe I'll save that for last. I'm not entirely sure if I want to enter the Spring Comp -- this one was a lot of work, and I only have five months to write the one for the Spring (were I to enter). On the other hand, I have a killer idea and it would be nice to showcase two different sides of my writing/game style so close together in time. Plus maybe Jen will enter. I should be sure to tell her about the opening for announcing intent. So: playing Jen's game, rearranging files, and cleaning up the code. Oh, and today I wrote down some very basic statistical "predictions" for the quality of games in the comp. Basically, I think that it would make sense for my scores of the games to be distributed like a "bell curve." If you hold off the score of 10 for the one game you believe to be the winner, then the rest of it falls like this:
Of course, this is all highly questionable, mostly since we have years of previous Comps and statistical analyses which I have never bothered to look at. And, this does not predict what most people will vote, only what I believe my opinion of the group of games might be. I'm really excited by this whole thing! I can't wait until the games are ready to be downloaded and the judging period begins! I hope people DO talk about the games on RGIF, even if the authors can't, because it would be SO great to read! I plan on playing all of them, of course. I should have lots of time <g>. Oh, big yawn. I'll be major sleepy on the plane. I'm going to go play Jen's proto-game now. [End of pre-comp development] Reviews and Responses During the CompI won't mention anyone's name here, but if anyone recognizes their comments and wants them removed, just let me know. The responses have been edited to remove filler, fluff, and stuff I didn't want to say out loud :-), and to avoid repetition. First response (the day after the official release of games!):
"See row of icicles text" was a reminder to me of how to describe the row of leaves. Unfortunately, I didn't add my "???" signal, so when I searched for "???" the night I turned the game in, that section got completely skipped. Also, I'd never had Frotz 2002, and my WinFrotz always printed in fixed-width font. D'oh. The next response was also nice: Just wanted to say "nice job" on your game. You have a light touch with words and I found the setting charming indeed. I love bowling! :) For the bowling score, may I recommend "font off" before printing? The score prints fine in courier, but I was using something else at the time. Also, a whole game can be rather a lot when it's IF. Indeed. I am planning on cutting it down to a single command to play an entire game, as some others suggested.
D'oh. It's not actually a big, but unfortunately for me, it looks just like one. Hitting the case with the ball would not have solved the problem, but it was supposed to give a helpful message. My mistake was using "noun" instead of "second" in the before routine for the case in the "attack with" action. And the numbers... never occurred to me. Note to self: one beta-tester is insufficient (no offense at all to Jen, it's just plain truth). Another response:
Ah... there was a special response waiting to be seen (that doesn't say you need more mass), but due to my coding error, it could never be seen. Good point about the diamond, though. And as for the title... I'm a bit embarrassed. I thought everyone used all caps for titles. The next response had some very nice things to say about the voice of the game, and then some fixes:
Wow, the earthworm is still in the player's inventory? That's bad. And some very good points are made about the puzzles. Now we're getting to some responses with similar bug reports, so these may seem short:
Next, before I got too pleased with myself, came this response:
Some very good, very valid points in that one. I had no idea about what the game looks like in MaxZip, for example. And I didn't realize that I'd left the working title "Fungame" in ANYWHERE. Sigh! Some good points from the next response:
Next:
Then we have a nice, long response with lots of good suggestions, many of which have been snipped:
"Frenetic" is a favorite word of mine. One last response from during the judging period:
<blink> You can go up and down from the Autumn Display Room? I'll definitely have to look into that for now. The whole south section was originally designed with a more extensive map; and you certainly USED to be able to go up and down from the Autumn Display Room... apparently I never took those connections out. And here are some links to other people's websites with reviews of Comp 02, and therefore of Tookie's Song: Emily Short: http://emshort.home.mindspring.com/Comp2002Reviews.html Demian Katz: http://www.gamebooks.org/comp02.htm Dan Shiovitz: http://www.drizzle.com/~dans/if/comp02.html J. Robinson Wheeler: http://raddial.com/if/reviews/index.html David Welbourn: http://webhome.idirect.com/~dswxyz/comp02reviews.html Paul O'Brian: http://ucsu.colorado.edu/~obrian/IF.htm#02list Andrew Plotkin: http://www.eblong.com/zarf/gamerev/comp02.html For my edited snippets, of these and others from the r.g.i.f newsgroup, see this separate Tookie page. Fixes Made to the GameComing soon.
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