InsideADRIFT ISSN 1743-0577
1
Issue 17 July 2004
Contents
News and announcements.
1. Main news (Mystery steers
OARS in new direction)
1. Competition news
(Summer Minicomp; 3 Hour
Game Competition; IF Art Comp;
Intro Comp)
2. Forum news.
Regular features
2. Editorial
2. Drifters birthdays
3. Events diary
2. Drifters toolbox: Ad-aware
Standard Edition
6. ADRIFT recent releases
6. Interview: Mystery
Articles
4.
The (big) idea by KF
: Will there
ever be a successful ADRIFT
collaborative project.
3. “Storytelling In ADRIFT” by
Daniel Hiebert (Tech)
8.
Failed game intro: none!
Reviews
9. The Hobbit & Tower of Despair
(for Spectrum); “A day at the
office” by David Whyld (Reviewed
by Erik)
Reference
17. Manual: Synonyms
Issue Details: July 2004
Issue 17 (Vol 2 no 8)
Editor KF
Issue 18 due out 31 Jul 04
News and announcements
Mystery steers O.A.R.S. in new direction
Mystery has spent a lot of her time lately working on a revival of
NickyDude’s old Online ADRIFT Reference site (O.A.R.S). After
spending a bit of time on a standard type of website, she has now
begun to work on a website based within a message board.
The new site has the advantage of being fairly straightforward to
create as the structure of the board is already there (although it
has been modelled to give a fun adventure style to it). I hope this
style works as I had something to do with the decision and am
working on a similar development for the InsideADRIFT site.
One of the major pluses of working like this is that users can
become part of the community and can easily add their
comments on the site and their own contributions. To take a look
at the impressive amount of information that is already available,
go to
http://home.gcn.cx/mystery
Competition news roundup
InsideADRIFT Summer Minicomp 2004
Although the competition judging is still several weeks away, I
hope that the early announcement of the competition format has
stimulated people to think about their entries.
The Three-Hour Game Competition
This basically follows the rules of the previous one-hour
competitions, but this time, you must make your game in THREE
HOURS or less (give or take ten minutes). Brief planning on
paper is allowed - writing it in over three hours then copying it into
the Generator in two minutes is not; Game must be made in
three hours or less; A minimum of two entries is required;
Entries can be made with either v3.90 or v4; Anyone can donate
a prize!; You may enter as many entries as you wish.
The deadline for entries is 30th June 2004. Entries must be sent
to
driftersmonthly@hotmail.com
InsideADRIFT Issue 17 July 2004
2
Editorial
My thanks to those DavidW,
Mystery, Tech and Erik, who
have contributed to this
newsletter. I had thought
InsideADRIFT would be a little
bit thin this issue, but there
support has produced another
bumper issue.
Is it me or has it been a really
quiet period in the ADRIFT
world.
I don’t think it is me, there has
been very little activity in the
community. Game releases
have been minimal, although
hopefully work is going on for
the various competitions to
conclude in the next few
months.
Contact
Send any suggestions,
requests or comments
concerning InsideADRIFT to
editor@insideadrift.org.uk
Find the newsletter at:
http://www.insideadrift.org.uk/
InsideADRIFT merchandise
You can now purchase an
exciting InsideADRIFT mug,
if you so desire.
The store is really not fully
operational, if you are
interested look at
www.cafepress.com/insideadrift
Wider IF community events
IF Art Show 2004
Results of the various sections is as follows: Best of Show: Fire Tower
- Jacqueline A. Lott; Best of Still Life: Flametop - Dave Malaguti; Best
of Landscape: Swanglass - Yoon Ha Lee; Honorable Mention: The
Battle of Walcot Keep - Steve Breslin
You can download the entries and read the judges comments from:
http://members.aol.com/iffyart/
Third IntroComp
The IntroComp is an IF competition where the aim is to write the start of
a new work of interactive fiction. The entries, which can range from a
title up to a full game, must be in by the 18
th
of July this year, the catch
being that to claim your prize a complete version must be release within
one year.
For complete details of the competition you should go to
http://www.xyzzynews.com/introcomp/
Forum news
Another not overly exciting period on the forum, though there was one
of our little spats over moderation of the Adventures pages,
Drifters toolbox
Ad-aware Standard Edition reviewed by KF
This is a piece of software that we should all have and use
regularly to help or Internet connected computers run smoothly.
Here I am just referring to the freeware version, but there are also
Pro and Plus versions that you can purchase.
InsideADRIFT Issue 17 July 2004
3
Drifters birthdays
July 2004
2 30otsix (34)
8 syke39 (32)
9 The Mad Monk (15); mammoth
(36)
15 Tonyg (16)
17 Mel S (18)
18 ejl0007 (30)
22 nick (20); driftingon (24)
29 jonrock (51)
Events Diary
May 15, 2004
InsideADRIFT Issue 16 out
today
The May/June Issue of
InsideADRIFT should be out
today.
22-29 August 2004
InsideADRIFT Summer
Minicomp 2004
There will be a Summer Minicomp
in August. Entries in 22 Aug,
judging ending 29 Aug.
So what does it do. It is a program that, when run, scans your
registry and any specified drives for any of those lovely programs
put on your computer to help the advertisers (normally without
telling you).
When you run it you will be asked if you want to check for
updates, say yes and it will normally download a new reference
file that knows about the latest sneakware.
I suspect most people will find at least 30 objects that Adaware
doesn’t like. These can be quarantined in an archive, just to
ensure there is nothing essential, then they can be removed
completely.
It would be a wise move for everyone to have a piece of software
like this around, it really is an eye opener when you see how
much it spots.
For more information, and to download Ad-Aware, go to the Lavasoft
site at http://www.lavasoft.de/
“Storytelling In ADRIFT” by Daniel Hiebert (Tech)
[The opinions in this article are those only of the author and not
necessarily of Campbell Wild (ADRIFT Author), Ken Franklin
(InsideADRIFT Editor) or anybody else in the world!]
Like a few other authors on the ADRIFT forums, I've started quite
a few more pieces of IF than I've finished. Of the couple of
pieces that I have released, I've received a few pieces of
precious feedback. Most of the critical feedback received has
been that my games have been "too hard". Many times this is
attributed to "guess-the-verb" problems and "guess-what's-in-
the-author's-mind" problems. "Guess-the-verb" problems can be
overcome with judicious use of synonyms, beta-testing and a
comprehensive task structure. Other authors have put forth their
best ideas on the "guess-the- verb" subject. What hasn't
always been talked about is how to overcome the "guess-what's-
in-the-author's mind" issue. Now, if it is your intention to be
obscure; then so be it. That's your authoring prerogative. Surely
there is someone out there that will enjoy your point of view.
However, if you find yourself producing game after game where
players continually result to your walkthrough, then you might
want to rethink your writing strategy.
Object puzzles often lend themselves to present a solution to the
player spontaneously. Experienced players get into the habit of
picking up and toting around everything not nailed down. They
do this in the off-chance that when a puzzle presents itself, they
will see a connection between what needs to be done and what
InsideADRIFT Issue 17 July 2004
4
The (big) idea by KF
Will there ever be a
successful ADRIFT
collaborative project.
Over the years there have
been many efforts at
bringing the strengths of
Drifters together to
collaborate on a game
project. The most
successful has probably
been the current pass
around, at least that seems
to have some life in it.
The trouble with
collaboration over distance
online is that there is no real
incentive to push on, and it
is easier to do some work
on a personal project. It
gives no real sense of
working together, as it tends
to be a loose grouping
rather than a team. Indeed
a big problem can come
where people do not
understand their role in the
team and waste effort in
someone else’s area.
In the modern games world
team working tends to have
leaders, writers, artists and
musicians, with a tightly
written specification, and a
clear knowledge of what
each is doing. DavidW did
start work on a project with
this more organized
approach in mind, but as
normally happens inertia
dragged it down.
I suspect that the fact that
most got into ADRIFT as a
role each object can be used in to solve the puzzle. If a
connection doesn't present itself, players will often attempt use of
each object in some logical way against the puzzle. There are
many tried and true copied examples of puzzles that IF players
understand how to solve. Authors do a great service to provide
at least subtle hints in the response of these actions. Many
authors do. This is a great way to guide but not push the player
towards the right answer(s).
Situational, plot or character-driven puzzles often don't present
the same natural method of trial-by-error discovery of the
answer. It is important as authors that we cover character
interaction tasks such as, "talk to <character>", "ask <character>
about <character /object /subject>"and "give/show <character>
the <object>". Given the character's knowledge, new information
can be presented to the player. Again, this can be done subtly in
order to guide the player to the answer.
Additionally, IF players are not always inclined to initially
understand that the game will be advanced by talking to a
character. Often the character might need to be written such that
the character actually prompts the player periodically to interact
with them. Default responses to movement and/or general
actions might need to remind the player what is at stake and
suggest what the player might need to do next to resolve the
current crisis/puzzle.
Finally, if your game tells a story more often than requires a
player to solve a puzzle, do not overdue the stories' detail.
Descriptive detail is really informative if you back up every noun
in your descriptions with a static object. However, the detail that
I am talking about here is story detail. Only require those tasks
that advance the plot of the story. Don't require the player to
perform every minor task in your story to keep it going. If every
minor task is required, then several issues could arise. The first
is that the flow of the story is too slow for the player. Performing
each minor task becomes annoying to the player who already
has envisioned the end result of his next three commands.
Many players may have an idea how to solve the bigger
puzzle/situation facing them. However, they may not have the
knowledge or insight on how to perform each minor step in order
to get there.
Second, Story detail has the power to complicate the
programming of your game. An example of this is a situation
where your player is an off-duty fire fighter first on the scene
responding to calls of help against a fire that just started.
If you require the player to talk to a character standing outside
the burning building to learn that there is a possible victim lost
InsideADRIFT Issue 17 July 2004
5
way of putting their own
ideas into an IF world
means that collaboration
isn’t a real practicality. Even
if you are good at the
graphical side of things, few
will be happy to concentrate
on the art at the expense of
writing themselves.
inside, then you've set yourself up for complications. Now add
the fact that the player has the ability to enter a call for support
from the local fire department. However, they won't arrive for
several turns. Now the player decides to enter the building to
rescue the victim on his/her own. In this situation, you may find
yourself programming multiple tasks in order to cover the cases
where the player waits for the on-duty firemen, where the
firemen show up while the player is in the burning building, or
even that the firemen show up of their own accord but the player
still doesn't know about the victim! After all, why would a silent
character outside a burning building set off any additional alerts
to the player.
Rethinking how important each command is to the plot and flow
of the story is the answer. In the case above, ensure that the
player is greeted excitedly by the character and told the
important information about the victim. This cuts down the
number of optional ways that the story can play out. Making the
secondary decision that the firemen always arrive some number
of turns after the player enters the building cuts back even more
plot branches that you may have to program for.
Another alternative to this last suggestion is to write a premature
ending to the game that cuts the player completely out of the loop
when the firefighters arrive. Couple this ending with the
undesirable outcome that the fire fighters could not reach the
victim in time and watch how fast your player jumps into the
burning building on the very next play of the game. Overuse of
this suggestion; however, can lead to the player feeling like
he/she is killed every few turns for no reason.
Critical thinkers to this approach will rightly point out that
rethinking how important each command is and incorporating
some commands automatically into player actions might lead to
more games that "run on rails". To this I say, I didn't say you
have to do this for all situations in your game. Just some of the
situations that might unnecessarily complicate your story writing
need to be changed. Nearly anything is possible in ADRIFT. It is
just a question of how long it takes you to do it and how good you
are at covering all eventualities. An author sometimes reorders,
edits and deletes scenes to improve flow and prevent confusion
in his stories. Why don't we as ADRIFT authors use the same
techniques.
InsideADRIFT Issue 17 July 2004
6
ADRIFT recent
releases
This will hopefully be a new
regular feature, bringing you
the details of recently
released games, as
described by their authors
on release. The details listed
here are as posted on the
ADRIFT adventures page on
Campbell’s site.
The Curse of Dragon Shrine
(dragonshriner43.zip 479 Kb)
By Mystery, released 10-06-04
With the weight of two worlds on
your shoulders, will you become a
hero, or just another victim of the
Curse of Dragon Shrine. *
Contains Mutimedia *
Shards Of Memory
(shardsofmemory.taf 116 Kb)
By Davidw, released 02-05-04
You awak en with no memory of
who you are or where you are yet
slowly but surely your story will
unfold. An ancient evil has
returned to the world and only
YOU have the power to stand in
its way... [winner of the ADRIFT
Spring C omp 2004] [genre: dark
fantas y]
From the Demos Page
Tracking Device
(workingtrackingdevice.taf 1
Kb) B y Mystery, released 21-
06-04
This is a demonstration of a
tracking device using a
transmitter and receiver. When all
restriction are met, it will still give
a false reading the first time
around. You can get around this
by a simple mention of a random
malfunction of the device.
Interview: Mystery questioned by KF
Mystery, I thought with all that has happened over the past year, it
was high time to interview you again.
Q1. Currently you are extremely busy both online and offline, how
are things going with the music lessons for your sons. Are you
regretting including drums in the project yet.
I don’t think they had a clue that it would actually take lots of
practice, hard work, commitment, and more practice. For now,
they are continuing with the basics, but enjoy their free time with
it more. During their free time they both have taken a liking to the
drums and are listening closely to their favorite music and trying
to learn by listening. I was a little shocked to discover they were
actually picking it up rather quickly.
I don’t regret for a second getting drums. They must have a
natural knack for it because they both can actually play a few
different beats rather than just making obnoxious noise. They are
having a great time with it, which makes me very, very happy.
Q2. O.A.R.S. has proved to be a massive project for you. Has it
been harder than you were expecting. The new integrated forum
format was something we discussed at the time, is it working out
as you had hoped.
Now I really know how NickyDude felt doing this, and have to
give him loads of credit, because without him O.A.R.S. wouldn’t
be possible. It has been a massive project, and at times very
overwhelming. I can’t even begin to tell you how much time and
frustration that has gone into getting O.A.R.S. off the ground
again. After being halfway through coding O.A.R.S. in HTML, the
forum format was a God send. It has spared me the hassle of
having to code everything by hand and is very organized. I
thought it would be best to do it this way because it would allow
ADRIFT users to share with one another the things they learn,
neat tricks, and distribute technical demonstrations of techniques.
I thought it would be more interactive.
I am hoping that people will make contributions as well as use it
as a resource. Lack of contributions is the main reason O.A.R.S.
went offline in the first place. I was hoping that people will
contribute this time, but am trying to realistic enough to know that
if they don’t, I will have build it up by myself. It wasn’t meant as a
replacement to the ADRIFT forum and site, but rather a one stop
resource. It is also very handy to have alternative downloading
locations in case one of the sites went down.
InsideADRIFT Issue 17 July 2004
7
Battle Zone III compendium
(battlezone3.zip 10 Kb) By
Funky Monkey, released 08-06-
04
Battle zone 3 compendium
features 3 games though this is
only the demo. This features 2
games, Soviets and Americans!
ENJOY!
Room Group NPC Walk
(npcgroupwalk.taf 0 Kb) B y
Mystery, released 02-06-04
This is a small demo that
demonstrates how to get a
character to move to a random
group of rooms for a specified
amount of turns.
Q3. Your role as fount of all testing knowledge in the ADRIFT role
has landed you (in it) as main tester of the new releases of
ADRIFT. Do you believe that the need is for more testers to cover
all aspects of game testing or does a methodical approcah cover
them better. With that in mind, how is work on the testing lab
project going.
I don’t know if I’m a main tester. I think there are others that test it
too and definitely deserve credit. I would love it if there were
more testers. It would certainly take some of the work load off.
Testing is a very thorough process. Sometimes you can go days
without finding any problems, then you can get three or four in a
row and can't figure out what the problem is. You get quite
frustrated when you’ve spent hours, days, or weeks trying to
solve an issue, just to find out you made a simple mistake. I think
more testers would cut down on things like that and we could
help each other verify problems when they arise, and double
check to make sure it isn't something we created ourselves.
As you know I have started again on a file to test ADRIFT. The
problems with testing areas individually is that they don’t have a
chance to interact with other aspects of ADRIFT, as it would if it
were a complete game. So I am trying to do a complete game
that tests everything possible that can be tested in one sitting.
For some things, they will just have to be tested separately. You
also run into problems while creating a testing file in game form.
When one thing doesn’t work right, it affects several other areas
as well, regarding maintaining a plot and how you may have
intended on testing certain events, tasks, and character walks. It
can be extremely stressful and frustrating while very fun and
exciting at the same time. But when a bug does come up, it can
halt your progress completely until it is fixed. Then the testing
starts all over again.
Q4. Despite your lament about not writing games much, you have
still managed to create entries for most competitions we have
held. In conversation recently you talked about not writing games
for a while, but suggested you really wanted to do some more
graphical work
.
I feel terrible about entering small, rushed pieces of work, that I
normally wouldn’t even consider releasing. To be honest, I
usually do it because I hope that it will encourage more
participation from other users, (Or certain people just ask so
nicely for a contribution and I just don't want to disappoint
anyone.) I just don’t have the time to spend on writing games
while taking on O.A.R.S. and beta-testing. I do sometimes do it
because I just need a break from everything else, but the work
InsideADRIFT Issue 17 July 2004
8
Failed game intros
Nothing for you this issue, I
can’t share all of my game
ideas with you!
Do you have a game that has hit
the rails, but you would like to
share with the community. If so,
send it in to me.
never turns out good. It is rushed, unpolished, an my favorite
critics have a field day with it. I’d be lying if I said I haven’t
thought about quitting testing, tossing O.A.R.S. out, and just
focus on writing. But something tells me there would be
something else that would get in my way.
Graphics are something that I have always enjoyed. Even before
ADRIFT. I find it much more rewarding to create something
visual. I have seriously considered creating graphical libraries for
ADRIFT. This too would take a considerable amount of time, and
would also keep me from writing. (It almost sounds like I’m
making excuses). Truthfully, I love making my own graphics
using a variety of imaging programs and 3d utilities. To me, it
doesn’t matter if other people think they are good or not. I enjoy
it, and will continue to enjoy it even if nobody were to ever see my
work.
Q5. If you could wave a magic wand, and bring five
improvements to ADRIFT and the ADRIFT community, what
would they be.
For me, that is an easy question. First, I would want all areas of
ADRIFT to have drag and drop reordering. Especially with NPC
Conversation subjects that rely on specific topic ordering. I think
having a built in help, like most Windows programs, would be a
must- even if it does boost the program file a bit, I think the
benefits would outweigh the file-size. Being able to create stand
alone games would be a huge leap, that I think we all want.
Conversation Trees or an overhaul of the conversation system to
allow multiple responses based on tasks, events, object states,
and other aspects- and allowing an NPC to initiate a
conversation. And last, since I can only pick five, would be to
allow full HTML capabilities for text formatting, links, images,
sound to be inserted wherever the author specified.
Q6. Actually, as I know how busy you are with other things, I
won't ask you about new games projects as I normally would. I'll
just ask if you have anything for the future that you would like to
mention.
Nope. Talking about them openly doesn’t make them a reality.
Besides, you already know about all the games I have...and have
not finished. I think I could give Mile a run for his money on
projects on the shelf.
Many thanks for answering my numpty questions for the
newsletter, Ken.
You’re very welcome. I hope I wasn’t too boring.
InsideADRIFT Issue 17 July 2004
9
Game reviews
Last month Jason Guest concluded his reminiscences of the
adventure games of yesteryear. In keeping with that spirit David
Whyld has provided a couple of reviews of games for the old
Sinclair Spectrum computer of the 1980s.
The Hobbit
(For Sinclair Spectrum)reviewed by David Whyld
“The Hobbit” – available from
http://www.worldofspectrum.org/infoseek.cgi.regexp=^Hobbit%2c
+The$&pub=^Melbourne+House$
The storyline of the “The Hobbit” is based only loosely on the
novel of the same name by J. R. R. Tolkien. Gandalf and Thorin
act as your companions (you play the part of Bilbo the hobbit) but
none of the other dwarves show up. A fair few of the locations
from the book have made it into the game, although a number
haven’t. There is also a different ending in the game: here the
emphasis is on finding the dragon’s treasure and getting home in
one piece. There is no big battle between the dwarves and the
goblins – probably just as well because big battles are a hard
thing to handle well in a text adventure. The gold ring shows up in
the goblin caverns but isn’t necessary to the completion of the
game, although having it with you makes things considerably
easier.
Back in the days when interactive fiction (or text adventures as
they were known as in those days of yore) sold in vast quantities
and it was actually possible to make a living out of writing them,
“The Hobbit” was king. It was a very detailed game packed with
puzzles (some incredibly hard and quite a few incredibly unfair)
and featured several of the characters – Gandalf and Thorin in
particular – from the book. It regularly made an appearance in
text adventure fans lists of their top ten games and was light
years ahead of its competition in terms of complexity. In fact, it’d
be a difficult game to produce in ADRIFT today, some 20+ years
after it first came out.
So what *is* so good about it.
On the face of things, “The Hobbit” seems dated. Several
locations come with graphics that were considered reasonable at
the time yet these days are the sort of thing that a pre-teenager
with a Paint application on his computer could improve on in the
space of five minutes. It lacks several things that have become
standard in interactive fiction these days: no repeatable
InsideADRIFT Issue 17 July 2004
10
commands by pressing the Up arrow key; examine cannot be
abbreviated as “x”; no way of scrolling back up the screen to see
what you typed a while ago; very little in the way of descriptive
text (the game originally came out on the ZX Spectrum and had
to fit inside its limited memory of 48KB so descriptive text had to
be sacrificed in order to get the full game inside the size restraints
– a common problem with games from that era). Multiple
commands on a single line are possible though, something few
text adventures at the time could manage.
But bad points aside, what about the good points.
For one of the first times in a text adventure, the NPCs have a
mind of their own. Thorin and Gandalf will wander back and forth,
often completely independent of the player’s actions. They will
pick items up, wander off with them, open and close doors, etc.
Thorin will even pick fights with goblins he encounters as well as
occasionally sitting down and singing about gold (as every good
dwarf does).
It’s possible to order the NPCs around as well, although they
don’t always do what you want. Thorin, in particular, will often
ignore what you say unless you have the persistence to keep
repeating yourself. I was in two minds about this as a feature. On
one hand it’s a nice touch as there's no reason to assume free-
thinking NPCs will obey your every utterance. On the other hand,
it’s a pain typing in the same command three or four times. The
NPCs can be ordered to do pretty any task the PC himself can do
(open and close doors, pick up and drop items, fight enemies,
etc) but as they often ignore you, it’s generally easier to just do
them yourself.
Intelligent NPCs are one of the best things in “The Hobbit”,
although they can also be aggravating. I once had to open the
main door of my house four times because Thorin, for reasons
best known to him, kept closing it. At another time, Gandalf took
the map I was trying to get Elrond to examine and dropped it
somewhere. Where. I don’t know. I never did find it and this
rendered the game unfinishable. There is only one place in the
game – the goblins’ dungeon – where the aid of another NPC is
vital. In this case it’s Thorin but Thorin, due to his habit of
wandering off from time to time, may not with you when you
reach the dungeon and you might need to wait for an age for him
to show up. Worse still, he might never show up. As said before,
Thorin will start fights with goblins when he encounters them and
it’s perfectly possible for him to take on too many and get himself
killed. If this happens before you’ve escaped from the dungeon…
well, you're finished.
InsideADRIFT Issue 17 July 2004
11
The game also boasts a combat system, although one that is
often awkward and confusing to use. Encounters with the same
enemies can lead to the PC dying whereas at other times he will
breeze through them without a scratch. Combat generally
includes all the NPCs in the current area, so pick a fight with one
goblin and all the others will join in. It’s also possible for combats
to last several turns and for other combatants to show up in the
meantime, meaning that fighting a single goblin could actually
lead to a fight with half a dozen of them.
Bugs. Whether there are bugs in “The Hobbit” depend pretty
much on your definition of just what a bug is. For certain, there
are more than a few instances that seem like bugs but which
could equally be the game designers deciding to throw comedy
elements into the mix. For example: hunger plays a large part in
the game. Go for too long without eating and you die. Logical, but
a pain when you find yourself a long way from food and without
the time to get back. There is also the added problem that there
are only a limited amount of food items in the game, so take too
long and you will exhaust what food there is and starve. The only
exception to this is the elf Elrond who will give you food if you
wait with him for long enough. Of course, the problem which
arises is that Elrond is in a set location near the start of the game
and it’s quite an inconvenience to come close to the end and then
have to return to the start to pick up some more food. Which is
where one of the bugs creeps in. The game allows you to carry
around other characters and Elrond is one you can carry, thus
exploiting the game system into allowing him to give you food
every few moves. Food problem solved. Is this a bug or just
something the game designers included to see i