I don’t think it should be a problem. (I’d prefer that anyone who decides to double-dip maintains at least a plausible vestige of pseudonymity, but I’m not too stressed about it.)
I’ll try to write something, I don’t know if I’ll finish.
Pardon my ignorance, but is the SpeedIF part just the close deadline or is there a limit to how much time worth of work you should put into your game (like a 2-hour limit)?
Either way, I think I’m going to attempt to write something. Say, by saying that am I adding to this thread’s velocity or its mass?
I am using the term very loosely. Put in whatever effort you want between now and May 9th.
If something arrives after May 9th, I won’t kick it out either. 
My entry is coming! It’s just that I had lots of beta tester feedback arrive yesterday and today, and it’s all good stuff, so I want to address as much of it as I can before posting.
Done! Or at least as done as I’m going to be today.
My argument is (A) that variation in time scale is easier to pull off with an explicitly branching world model and (B) that a big disadvantage for traditional parsers is that they’re harder to marry to such a backend. An Earth Turning Slowly tries to fight this incompatibility, first by limiting verbs to a choice few, second by restricting (via autocompletion) verbs’ objects. Autocompletion also lets it include one-off objects that wouldn’t fit so well in the traditional parser paradigm.
Unfortunately, the way the story went, the variation in time isn’t so drastic as some of the examples I read about in the last Theory Club transcript. But I still think the idea is worth considering.
EDIT: see here for the more up-to-date competition entry.
One beta tester ran into formatting problems, including a total loss of non-ASCII punctuation, which I haven’t tracked down yet. If you have similar issues, you might try a different browser.
Yay!
Here’s my thing. It’s just a sketch, but hopefully it gives the idea. (Blatantly inspired by a movie I just saw.)
eblong.com/zarf/ftp/only-noodles.ulx
eblong.com/zarf/glulx/quixe/quix … oodles.ulx
Heh. I kept thinking of “Jobs for Antioch” when I played your game, Zarf. The treatment of time goes out the window, but the treatment of space is pretty much the same. Much like “The Adventures of the President of the United States”.
I always enjoy games like this.
zarf’s game got me thinking.
- US do really bomb too much;
- this game has opened my mind to a lot of new ideas. New to me, at least: I end up with always the same set of stories, so far…
- zarf is cool. I loved the atmosphere and the writing.
Anyway: with the right idea in mind, anything can actually work. I don’t know how much one can expand the thought behind Only Noodles, but it’s impressive. During NightFloyd I didn’t even come close to such a solution.
That’s zarf being zarf. Whenever I review a game of his I can’t praise his writing enough.
EDIT - Hmmm, I only reviewed “Dual Transform”. That’s odd. I could have sworn I’d reviewed Delightful Wallpaper. Well, I probably had nothing to add to the other reviews.
I don’t want to neglect Maeja’s entry, but it’s a ShuffleComp entry so let’s hold that discussion until Monday. (I just played through it.)
If I were expanding “Only Noodles” into a complete game, I would
- Have the locations change over the years. (Pittsburgh mentions “gentrifying”. I would mention the Apple Store moving in down the block in 2004.) (That happened to me, by the way.)
- Make the ending heavily dependent on your choices of hobby. If you garden a lot, you wind up as the nucleus of a farming community. If you become a guitar legend, youth gangs form around your music and cause an early collapse of law and order. I don’t know what swing dancing leads to.
- Force you to move around in Los Angeles when global warming floods the lower regions.
While we wait for the ShuffleComp games to appear, it’s time for PracticeClub2!
Saturday’s chat on the subject of “Structures in Choice-based Games”: emshort.wordpress.com/if-discuss … tructures/
Go forth and do an experiment based on those ideas. Post links here. Due date is May 31st. (I don’t want to wait a month, that’s too long. And it gives some room for followup.)
My entry, Ceteris Paribus. I ran out of time for writing (I need it for a last burst of Shufflecomp reviewing), so you get placeholder text [emote]:([/emote].
Edit: Looks like .zip attachments aren’t allowed anymore. Link. Might not work for a bit; Google Drive keeps telling me that its servers encountered an error.
I totally missed that deadline, and I didn’t write anything. But fortunately I have this prototype from several months ago! It didn’t play well in testing, so I dropped it. But it’s choice-based and it’s got a wacky structure, so maybe it counts.
Quite belatedly…
My Shufflecomp entry “Monkey and Bear” also had some work aforethought into trying to model time in an interesting way, per the same Theoryclub as Maeja tackled. But I didn’t want to fess up until it was over.
Per that Theoryclub, my Shufflecomp entry “Tea and Toast” uses Variable Time Control, which from the intro text was pretty rare. But I don’t know that it otherwise does much with the concerns of that discussion. Basically, I used it to speed up player actions so there would be enough time to do stuff before an in-game alarm clock went off, to make looking and examining go extra fast, and to make waiting take more time in case the player was waiting for the water to boil or the toast to pop.
Huh, must be something about the planetary scale that goes well with nonstandard choice structures.
Out of curiosity, what were the objections in test? It seemed to play just fine for me.
Dang, now I really wish I’d gotten to these two before the deadline.
Testers were divided into people who didn’t figure out the slide interface at all (on iOS), and people who got through the story by randomly trying possibilities rather than reading the text.
As usual, I’m impressed with how extensively you can expand Undum. I guess it takes really good knowledge of Javascript.
I really wished there were more than 3 text displays for each stat. When there’s only effectively, what, 4-5? only having 3 written out gets annoying, as it means you can’t tell whether “collapsed” or “insufficient” means “you will die next turn” or “you’re nearly stabilized”. Adverbs could work here.
I kept wishing there were a few more ways to interact with this, though.
Admittedly [spoiler]I only unlocked three new events: water conservation, biofuels, and the purple spiral whose name I can’t remember.
Although I just finished the game (succeeded lifeboat in any case) and never reached the purple spot this time, anyway.
But I never figured out what exactly led to the unlocking of new world positions: was it purely tech events? The societal leanings, of consumerism and xenophobia, seem like they could have had more effect; I never really noticed any.
And, to make sure I understand cryostasis: it makes the sleeping body ignore event results, and on awakening both bodies jump to the event at which the awakened body was put in stasis, right? But the newly awakened body takes on all stats of the other at that point, so the only real effect is A) rewind time along the event clock and B) the constantly awake body may have a slightly different population value now. (Also if it had been frozen too long, society may fragment, but again I never saw any effect from that.) Was that copying of stats intentional? I feel it could be a much more interesting (in the Dwarf Fortress sense) simulation if both bodies could progress independently.[/spoiler]
Also, I think I found a bug: [spoiler]I successfully landed the lifeboat despite the planet being cryofrozen, while the text had suggested it couldn’t have even been launched in that state.
My last log: [rant]CETERIS PARIBUS
War. Heavy casualties. Agriculture stalls. Environment damaged. Economy benefits. Treaty signed. Peace. Wartime robotics lie unused.
Population booms. Consumerism takes hold. Economy burdened. Resources stretched. Population interested in expanding habitable regions.
Outbreak and pandemic. Economy stalls. Population loss. More resources per capita. Population interested in reprogramming human immune systems.
Surplus robotics used for agriculture. Environmental damage. Water consumption spikes. Population interested in renewable energy.
Consumerism on downswing. Scientists develop mass cryostasis. New understanding of microbiology may lead to better biofuels. Surplus robotics aid scientific advances, bolster economy at cost of agriculture and environment.
Moon enters cryostasis. Focus on environment. Green policies slow economy. Environmental benefit could have been greater with more robotics. Consumerist attitude drives conflict over resources, undermines water stewardship initiatives.
War. Heavy casualties. Agriculture stalls. Environment damaged. Economy benefits. Treaty signed. Peace. Wartime robotics lie unused.
Moon wakes from cryostasis. Society shifts.
Surplus robotics used to improve environment. Green policies slow economy. Similar efforts begun to restore water supplies.
Water conservation program in place. Agricultural downturn due to irrigation limits.
War. Heavy casualties. Agriculture stalls. Environment damaged. Economy benefits. Treaty signed. Peace. Wartime robotics lie unused.
Population booms. Consumerism takes hold. Economy burdened. Resources stretched. Population interested in expanding habitable regions.
Outbreak and pandemic. Economy stalls. Population loss. More resources per capita. Population interested in reprogramming human immune systems.
Surplus robotics used for agriculture. Environmental damage. Water consumption spikes. Population interested in renewable energy.
Planet enters cryostasis. Consumerism on downswing. Scientists develop advanced biofuels. New understanding of microchemistry may lead to nanorobotics. Surplus robotics aid scientific advances, bolster economy at cost of agriculture and environment.
Focus on environment. Green policies slow economy. Environmental benefit could have been greater with more robotics. Consumerist attitude drives conflict over resources, undermines water stewardship initiatives.
Planet wakes from cryostasis. Society shifts.
Energy consumption favors the biofuel market.
Moon enters cryostasis. Scientists develop nanorobotics. New understanding of chemical-processing codes may lead to mass desalination. Scientific advances bolster economy at cost of agriculture and environment. Economic benefit could have been greater with more robotics.
Focus on environment. Green policies slow economy. Environmental benefit could have been greater with more robotics. Similar efforts begun to restore water supplies.
Water conservation program in place. Agricultural downturn due to irrigation limits.
Moon wakes from cryostasis. Society shifts.
Planet enters cryostasis. Scientists develop mass desalination. New understanding of environmental transformatives may lead to terraforming and geoengineering. Scientific advances bolster economy at cost of agriculture and environment. Economic benefit could have been greater with more robotics.
Focus on environment. Green policies slow economy. Environmental benefit could have been greater with more robotics. Similar efforts begun to restore water supplies.
Mass desalination turns oceans into freshwater sources. Oceans suffer from unbridled consumption.
Planet wakes from cryostasis. Society shifts.
Moon enters cryostasis. Scientists develop geoengineering. New understanding of biospheres and energy distribution may lead to interstellar travel. Scientific advances bolster economy at cost of agriculture and environment. Economic benefit could have been greater with more robotics.
Focus on environment. Green policies slow economy. Environmental benefit could have been greater with more robotics. Similar efforts begun to restore water supplies.
Moon wakes from cryostasis. Society shifts.
Planet enters cryostasis. Scientists develop interstellar-capable generation ship. Launch of generation ship delayed while planet in cryostasis. Scientific advances bolster economy at cost of agriculture and environment. Economic benefit could have been greater with more robotics.
Forced rationing and new environmentalism stabilize society aboard lifeboat.
Lifeboat arrives at habitable planet. New chapter in history.[/rant][/spoiler]
Phew, finally got internet access. A new version, addressing everything except more modes of interaction, uploaded in the original post. You found more bugs, perhaps, than you realized. (This is what I get for putting out a game without beta testing.)
Stats were not copied, but averaged, which was not very clear. I’ve changed them to run separately and retuned the puzzles, and they’re consequently more interesting.
Thanks, Chris, as always, for the great feedback!