This a longer game than I’ve seen so far in this comp, and I’m enjoying it, but I’m going to put it aside for a while because of having to type lots (and lots) of very long Japanese names of things. I love logic puzzles and will solve this one eventually, but I’m typed out right now. My arthritis is a little cranky right now and it’s doing me in.
Alternately, if there’s a shortcut to all the typing names of drinks and clothing and vegetables and people and such, Garry, please let me know. I think when I come back to it I’ll create a text document that I can put next to the game and C&P names of things from.
Other than that, I can tell you right now that this is another solid Warrigal game-- well-implemented, informative, and with a good-sized map.
Hopefully I’ll be able to return with a more solid review of this by the end of the comp.
For any beginner Adventuron authors passing by, here’s a way to avoid this:
Details
Add the following code block to your game file…
themes {
my_theme : theme {
system_messages {
you_see_nothing_special = You see nothing special.
you_see_nothing_special_2 = You can't see or interact with that.
}
}
}
…and change the wording of the messages if you like.
Totally agree it should be different by default though.
It’s hard to express how delightful this game is. It’s a one-word parser, which was a little awkward for me at first but which I got used to quickly and which my arthritis was happy about. It reminds me a great deal of The Phantom Tollbooth, which if you have never read, you should read immediately. This has the same ridiculously earnest, sweet, number-y and word-y types of characters, although it is its own thing. The puzzles are great (some easy, some a little harder) and the writing is spot-on. I would absolutely recommend playing this with a kid. The presentation is great and it’s user-friendly, although parser players will have to let go of some preconceived ideas about commands.
Helpful tip: the directions you can go in are in the upper left corner, not the area descriptions, so look for that.
Very kind, thank you. I struggled with how to make the game as accessible as possible to a parser-experienced audience, and kids at the same time. Kids don’t have 30+ years of adventure game experience, so I watched that carefully during beta phase.
But mostly, thank you very much for playing my silly little game.
I think you were very successful here. I can’t imagine the person of any age this wouldn’t appeal to. I can see this being a really fun thing for adults and kids to do together, and it might spark more interest in IF for youngsters.
I particularly was impressed with how it handled the single word parser. By giving a preview of what the command would be understood as, it avoids the random fumbling feeling that could otherwise have arisen.
Hi @alyshkalia and @AmandaB ! I’m the developer of The English Restaurant, thanks for trying it out! For @alyshkalia I think what I failed to do well was describe that the engine is designed for full interactive sentences.
So, instead of:
Host: Hello!
How can I help you today?
?:table
Host: How many in your party?
?:2
Host: Perfect! Please come right this way. The host shows you to a wooden table with a checkered tablecloth. A minute goes by, then your waiter arrives.
Waiter: Hi there!
Waiter: What can I get you?
?:x me
you could do something like:
Host: Hello! How can I help you today?
?:Hi! I’d like a table
Hello!
Host: How many in your party?
?:just us
Host: Perfect! Please come right this way. The host shows you to a wooden table with a checkered tablecloth. A minute goes by, then your waiter arrives.
Waiter: Hi there!
Waiter: What can I get you?
?:do you have menus?
Waiter: Oh, I forgot to give you the menu! I’ll get you one right away.
Waiter: Oh, I forgot to give Johnny the menu! I’ll get Johnny one right away.
Waiter: Can I get you anything besides a menu for you and a menu for Johnny?
I’d love it if you’d try it again and try to say to the game what you’d actually say in a restaurant.
@AmandaB, I think you were aware of that ahead of time and tried a little more natural English. I do think you found some gaps in the vocabulary that I need to fix. The game definitely does know the word “vegetarian” but I realize now that it doesn’t recognize that saying “My son is a vegetarian” really means “could you tell me about the vegetarian options?”
Here is a script that shows using the word “vegetarian” in some different ways:
?:do you have vegetarian menu items?
Waiter: Ah, I forgot to tell you about our specials. Today we have tomato soup, green salad, and smoked pork.
Waiter: Can I get you anything besides a menu for you and a menu for Johnny?
?:Do you have vegetarian things?
soup
salad
Waiter: Can I get you anything besides a menu for you and a menu for Johnny?
?:do you have anything vegetarian?
soup
salad
Waiter: Can I get you anything besides a menu for you and a menu for Johnny?
?:do you have vegetarian food?
soup
salad
Waiter: Can I get you anything besides a menu for you and a menu for Johnny?
@AmandaB “Vegetables” is definitely missing, but it is mainly because I don’t think you’d use it in the real scenario since you’d never really say simply “vegetables” to a waiter. I guess you could say “Do you have any dishes with only vegetables in them?” but it seems unlikely and most people would just say “Do you have vegetarian food?”.
A big part of the challenge I’ve had with these games is setting the scene and building the UI properly so that players speak (via typing) naturally. Clearly I’m still not there! One thing I’ve found is that if people use a speech interface it works much better. You could simulate that by looking at what you typed and say “would I actually say that to a waiter”? I suspect you’d be more successful.
I’d love it if you’d give it another try with that approach and see if it works out better.
Another problem I’ve had (like all IF authors, I’d imagine), is not having gaps in the vocabulary. I apologize for that!
This is one of my biggest problems, too, and I imagine you’re right that it bedevils all IF authors. Sometimes I’m amazed at the synonyms I overlook implementing.
When I’ve gotten through all the games, I’ll definitely have another look.
I couldn’t play it. The install instructions say, “Download it, extract all, then run tpc_withGraphics” but I don’t see an option to “extract all” when I click on it. And that’s the extent of what I am willing to do to play a game. Perhaps someone will chime in with the way to do this, but I am not going to jump through any hoops at all.
We have a number of new authors in the comp, so I want to repeat my PSAs here for their benefit.
1.) It doesn’t matter how awesome your game is if it’s not easy to play. Almost no one is going to take the time to figure it out, even if you think it’s easy. You can get tons of tech help here on these forums to help make it playable online. I myself had a terrible time figuring this out and smart people here helped me. But the way to get more people to play is either to have it supported by a known and trusted interpreter (Gargoyle, Spatterlight, Frankendrift, etc) or to play online. MAKE IT EASY TO PLAY. Please and thank you.
2.) Testing. Everyone (with the possible exception of Autumn Chen, who apparently can whip out killer viral games without help) should go through at least 2 rounds of play testing with (in my opinion) 5 or 6 testers. Some of my games have been through 4-5 rounds, and I guarantee you they still should have had more. Finishing a draft with luxurious amounts of time is the way to do this, so that you and your testers aren’t under the gun. If you miss the deadline for the upcoming comp, there will be another comp in a couple of months. Ask for testers here, and if you’ve asked at a bad time (like at the beginning of IFComp), try again at a better time. Test other people’s games so that you’re part of the testing ecosystem, and you’ll find a lot of good will when you need a tester. Also, testing other people’s games is really helpful for being an author-- you start to realize the things that can go wrong and to prevent them in your own work. Please do this, folks. Everyone (except Autumn) has to do it as a courtesy to their players and to put their best foot forward in a competition.
I’ll be returning to Garry’s game and will have a review of that out as soon as I can.
I’ve just finished ‘19 Once’ in case you want to give it another go. It feels like a choice-based game that’s been converted to a parser-based format, so the commands are pretty obscure.
In essence, you start on your laptop and you have to go N, S, E or W to select one of the chat rooms. From that point on, you can move to another chat room, THINK ABOUT <character> if you’re in that character’s chat room or ASK ABOUT <topic> if you’ve discovered that topic. I’ll leave the rest for you to discover.
I just started ‘Beef, Beans, Grief, Greens’. Man, is this weird. I haven’t played one of Andrew’s rhyming games before (this is his 8th), so this is a new experience for me.
As best as I can work out, each “clue” consists of two words. The two words don’t rhyme, but both words start with the same sound, like ‘b’ for ‘bed’, or ‘bl’ for ‘bled’ or ‘br’ for ‘bread’. You need to find another two words where each word rhymes with the two words in the clue, but both words have the same starting sound and that starting sound is different to the one in the clue.
So, taking the ‘rayed rug’ in the starting room as an example, you could try ‘glade glug’ or ‘slayed slug’. (These are not the answers, by the way, but Andrew has cleverly recognised that these words abide by the rhyming rules and has an appropriate response.)
Your example of LEAVE REEVE didn’t work because they have different starting sounds ‘L’ and ‘R’. LEAVE rhymes with the first word (REEVE), but REEVE doesn’t rhyme with the second word (ROW). You would need two words like LEAVE LOW or WEAVE WOE or something like that. (I haven’t tried these yet, so I don’t know if they work.)
I’ve found the first two items on the list. Now I’m going to see if I can get out of the cottage and find some more. On the surface, this looks like a treasure hunt. We shall see.
My problem is that I get distracted by other perfect rhymes, Like LEAVE REEVE, and then I have that “Wait, what was I supposed to be doing?” moment and then I get distracted again and then I’m lawnmowering through the alphabet and getting distracted by something else. I just cannot get myself to follow directions in rhyming. It’s kind of frustrating since I’m really, extremely good at other kinds of word games.
Don’t forget you can also use the Leet Learner to help finding out if you are close to a solution if it becomes too hard. English is not my native language, and sometimes the Leet Learner could point me in the right direction if I was close to an answer.
OK, here’s a new comment on 19 Once by 19once (no handle)
So I swear this has been updated since I looked at it last. Now it’s got directions that tell you what to do, and the names of the people you can interact with have bolded first initials (N, S, E, W). If that was there on my first try, shoot me now.
You are chatting with 4 old friends online, trying to convince them to go see a movie with you. You’re all 19, which is an age that feels so far away from me that I got wistful. I was a real asshole at 19, though, so it’s good that it’s far away.
Anyway, you can talk about topics that come up as you cycle through the four screens, and think about the friends, and there’s a LOG command that I’m not sure does anything. My experience with online chatting is about 5 minutes worth with a few people on this forum, so maybe everyone else knows what LOG is.
I definitely got a sense of these people and their relationships, which are both so similar and so different than how mine were back in 1990. You talk to each friend, you get new topics to discuss, and you use the topics to try and convince each one to come, learning a little more about them and their backstory each time. It felt a little lawnmower-y to me, working through each topic with each person as the only gameplay, but I still had a good time because of the writing and the relationships.
What they mean is 1. download the .zip file. 2. unzip the .zip file (extract it) and 3. run the file. Just as you would expect for a file which is downloaded as a .zip. I guess the author considered this step self-explanatory as it’s a pretty ubiquitous way of sharing files, but I think you’re right that authors should assume as little as possible when it comes to making their games playable.
On Windows, you just right click the file in the folder and select “Extract all”.
