Lunar Base 1

After some consideration and plot changes since the initial concept, I am now discarding the "working title" of the new sci-fi interactive fiction game and settling on naming it after one of the main locations within it. I felt that using the word "stranded" within the title has not only has been done before with other games, but also it encroached on the plot itself a bit much. Why assume that the player will even be stranded at all?

Originally I stated that I probably wouldn't enter the game into any sort of competition. I later had second thoughts after really getting into the development of the game and it becoming more than a short experiment. The game itself though is still quite short compared to the time investment needed for playing Hallow Eve to completion, too short for Spring Thing 2012, which I missed the deadline of putting in intent to enter anyway. Perhaps it will be entered into the next IFcomp if it is well received by the beta-testers. Lunar Base 1 should be sent out to beta testers within the next couple of weeks! If you are interesting in being a beta tester, please leave a comment or contact me through my website.

I would also like to thank everyone that gave me input on my last blog discussing the colors of the moon. It helped me feel a lot more comfortable with the words I put down in my descriptions.

What Color is the Moon?

Making a new sci-fi game on the moon was something at first I thought would be fairly simple. I would only need a few rooms to simulate landing on the moon and walking into a base there. I would only need one or two NPCs. Of course, I was wrong. Timing and inventory issues are still a time-sucking hurdle to get over for my second IF. Trying to make the game very detailed, yet not annoying while reflecting those details is also a new practice for me.

As long as I can remember, the moon and outer space in general has always fascinated me. Growing up, I was intrigued by books on space and had the experience of going to Space Camp in Alabama when I was 11. At that point I started asking questions and wondering about things that I couldn't understand then. Some persist to this day, and it's always a relief to resolve them in my mind. However, I still have a question that persists as I write this game:

What color is lunar soil?

This isn't a question you can merely type into Google and get a definitive answer. In the 1960s before the manned Apollo missions, there were encyclopedias saying that the moon's soil was high in silica and other materials which would give it a slight orange appearance. Apollo camera footage makes it appear grey. I've seen many, many NASA slides of lunar rocks and soil. Usually the soil is consistently grey, yet I've seen different colors in some rock samples. I've posted a couple to show the general contrast.

Apollo 14 rock

Also, how would the light photon physics of sunlight affect the appearance of the soil? I'm thinking that if the soil itself has a lot of reflective materials in it that it would sort of glow slightly like snow at night during a full moon. Even if it were grey this could happen, much like concrete dust.

Apollo 17 rock

With the stars issue, I'm fairly certain that the light of the sun would drown out visuals of any other stars, though Earth and Venus should be visible. What really bothers me is the color, even though it will only be visible to the players in their heads after reading my description.

Hopefully I can decide on all of this soon. The story and puzzles of the game are completely planned. At least those are already laid out and for certain.

End of Year Update

It's been a while since I've taken some time to post here, so I figured that I would get one more up before the end of the year. This blog is 2 months shy of being a full year old now and I hope to keep with it for some time to come.

2011 has been a fairly interesting year. I completed my first interactive fiction and entered it into Spring Thing, completed a much more polished version of that and released it to my website, and also began 2 new projects. I've become a lot more comfortable with Inform7 which I started learned a bit over a year ago. I do hope to learn more about other IF programming languages in the future though.. TADS, Adrift, Hugo, and Quest. So far I've only tinkered around a bit in Quest. Playing games written in the other three, I've noticed interesting different aspects to each.

I haven't quite decided on the final title of my recent science-fiction IF, but I can say that it's coming together quickly now. The story itself, the table of events so to speak, and the puzzle are all pretty much complete. I just need to spend a few more hours coding it all in I7 and playing around with it before releasing a test version. The source code of this project is much neater and easier to work with than the extremely long (albeit and also sloppy) source code that became Hallow Eve. This is due to having less than 5 total rooms, few characters, and less free range random problem-solving. It's also a short game in general.

The "interactive dreaming" game should be taken off the backburner around late February. The length of delay for the release of it will be dependent on how soon I can get out and take a few more photographs I need for the game. If it's well received, it may become part of a series. As of now I'm unsure how long it will be. It looks like I could get a lot of use out of the puzzle and travel framework if that's what I wanted to do, however it's still completely untested by anyone but me.

If anyone would like to test the science-fiction game beta that should be done in three to four weeks, leave me a comment or something and I'll shoot you a copy. See you next year!

IF Comp 2011

Here are a few short reviews for the IFcomp games I've played this far. Some mild spoilers may be present.




BLIND

This game was an interesting premise to me. In it you actually play a blind person. While I myself am not blind, I did have an eye injury some years back that left me temporarily blinded for a few days. During those few days I learned to do quite a few things differently to compensate. I wondered if that painful experience would come in handy playing this. Also, I do hope to read a review by someone who has played this game who has been blind all or most of their life. I would be interested in that perspective of their experience playing it.

Sometimes I'm allowed to 'look' at some objects though, which tells me that looking wasn't completely eliminated (but probably is useless). Then I find that using 'f' does not always print all of the room contents, so I turn on verbose mode. Also, 'look' and 'f' produces different texts, which is kind of confusing. I think the author should have done a bit more to remove any references to sight. Right off the bat my movement and progress is very constricted. I needed a couple of hints at the beginning of the game to get out of the first room.

Bah, I think I'm stuck again. A hint tells me to set up a trap basically, though I don't have any real strategic reason for doing this yet in my mind unless I'm going to camp out in this room.  As far as puzzles go, I'm more of a "let's just play around until I have to deal with something" kind of player. Doing another feel around the room once the trap is set returns a strange bit of text. I don't think something should seem to be somewhere if I actually put it there myself.

This game has a lot of items (and benches in one room). There are also has inventory limits. I came across quite a few scenery things noted in the room summaries that should have produced some sort of text. However, I was able to look past these flaws because I found the setting to be interesting. In the garage, if you type "open door" there is no "garage" option, while "open garage door" returns that the door is locked.

This game apparently has many endings. I think I probably saw the weakest one. Hmm. Now I am interested in playing this game again with no hints, though I don't think I'll get around to that until there's a new version.

4/10

CALM

"A game of postapocalyptic relaxation" it's called. Sounds like Fallout. The first screen has a difficulty setting. I chose normal. I started out in a run-down supermarket, checking things out while scavenging a few items. My first mission is to find someone, anyone to talk to. After figuring out how to break out of my refuge, I set out into the world. Exits all seem to be clearly marked thus far.

My exploration stroll didn't last long. Soon a pack of dogs was stalking me. I tried to hit the dogs with a pole I found laying around, but somehow the pole "bounces of the pack of dogs" so I had to restore and find a different solution. After restoring, I do my best to avoid the dogs because I'm still unsure how to deal with them. Of course, eventually they find me. I eat something to reduce my stress level a bit.. but the growling dogs increase my stress to the limit. Game over again. This game could probably benefit from either a numerical amount of your current stress level to be added to the status bar, or some sort of graphical meter. The "mood" label isn't informative enough to me. Please include more understanding for your nouns as well.

Then I find a way to deal with the dogs, but only temporarily. I get stressed out again and lose. I'm a little annoyed now. For now I'm putting this aside, and will save a rating for if and when I complete it.

N/A

PLAYING GAMES

After a short introduction, the game starts quickly. The first few puzzles were easy yet fun to solve. Then, I get to a series of of puzzles. The short one isn't too bad. Then I get to the medium one. The error sound drives me nuts as I move the O around a few times, and I give up on this one too.

N/A

SANTALAND

Honestly, I was hoping this game took place in Santa Land theme park. Some of my family has been there a few times, though I have never been. I've only seen the pictures. At any rate, I did like the general premise and plot of the game. The environment was pretty well fleshed out. The only thing was that I just couldn't really get into the puzzles, so I resorted to the walkthrough. Perhaps I'll return to this game when the Christmas theme of the puzzles interests me more one holiday season.

6/10

LAST DAY OF SUMMER

Argh, give me some exits listings here. Don't just make me try random moves to see if I will advance. The story seems ok so far, even if it moves along a bit too quickly. I run into an NPC with a suspicious name, "greengrocer". I guess the author doesn't know the printed name trick yet.  I attempt to talk to him, and I'm told that "I don't need to converse in this story." That's kind of a let-down. Just when I don't know what to do, a "wait" followed by a "look" advances the story. It's hard to get too peeved about that sort of pacing issue when previous versions of my own first game suffered from extremely bad pacing. Short game and I didn't care for the puzzles.

3/10

COLD IRON

I'm moving along looking for something, when I find something else. Everything important in the game with some importance can be read about in a book of fairy tales that you carry along with you. Not a lot of "guess the verb" stuff happening here. This game was very short and there really isn't a lot to it. I easily completed it in about 20 minutes without a walk-through. That being said, there's not a lot wrong with it either.

5/10

SHIP OF WHIMSY

Writing style seems a little odd. I'm forced to use the names of the parts of the ship to move around instead of compass directions. After playing about ten minutes I think I have a pretty good idea of what my first task will be. Nothing I try seems to get anything done, so I turn to the walk-through only to find that it isn't a walk-through at all. It's the full text of his source. Immediately quit playing.

N/A

THE BINARY

This web-based game was easy to get into despite it's weird and random environment. I'm not sure how I feel about the interaction system, as it feels like I'm just clicking on random hyperlinks without putting a lot of thought into things to keep the story moving along. However, I find quick that there is just a little more to it. If I just randomly click things, the story ends up looping around and repeating. I end up looking at the hints after a while and a couple of the required actions to make the game progress have me scratching my head as to why the player would even think to do something.

Couldn't finish this either. Even following the hints. I think a major drawback to this game is the very strict time constraint.

N/A

Hallow Eve 2.0 Released

It's finally done! Just in time for a bit of Halloween fun, the final version (2.0) of Hallow Eve has been released. 

You can play the game and see all the extras on my website here. Note that this page will have a couple of minor edits added this evening.

Also, I'm told the IF Wiki entry for the game should be updated fairly soon.

Enjoy and have a Happy Halloween!

Hallow Eve 2.0 Almost Ready For Testing

(From Vault of Horror #15 - 1950)

Today I will be bringing down all of the Halloween decorations from my attic, so I thought it would be fitting to blog about my holiday-themed IF. I will be sharing the current build of the Hallow Eve with a few play-testers around the night of the 15th. If they have time to give the game an hour or two worth of testing within about a week and a half, I should be able to have the finishing touches done by October 31st. 

In the meantime while they are doing the testing, I hope to complete a couple of other additions to the game. This should include slightly improved cover art, better general instructions, and maybe a hint menu for those that don't want to look at the walk-through. I will also include a map of all 46 rooms. I would like to not only include a scan of the development map I made on graph paper, but if I have time I will also make a fancier version that would make a good print-out. I had wished to include these things in the original release of Hallow Eve I submitted to Spring Thing 2011, but I was a brand new IF author at the time and really had no realistic concept of what I could achieve and polish before my deadline was up. The source code also needs a bit cleaning up if I am going to release it. It's bad enough that I find it a bit embarrassing now that I know more about programming with Inform7. The main thing is that the current state of the code is still quite sloppy.

I'm currently about 90% done with this revision. I just need to spend a little more time checking the timing of events and adding my fixes. With the new version, I am trying to address just about every issue that reviewers picked out in the Spring Thing entry. Hallow Eve 2.0 still starts off a bit slow. However, some time-jumps have been put in place and now a huge chunk of the time waiting for things to happen near the beginning of the game is "on the rails". This means that the game will move along regardless of player action for a bit, while the player enjoys a situation similar to a haunted trail.

If anyone else has interest in testing the current build of the game sometime after this Saturday night, shoot me an email to jizaboz (at) hotmail.com as soon as you have a chance and I will put you on a mailing list. To anyone else reading this who is looking around for some Halloween-themed interactive fiction to play but isn't interested in testing, I encourage you to try the work of other authors already released and to wait for version 2.0 of Hallow Eve. It should be a more enjoyable experience than 1.0. That is... unless you hate Friday the 13th movies.