This is truly awful and I hate it so much 
Hey! there’s always next time! (maybe probably, it was so fun I want to do it again)
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Oh yes, the meta-snarky “too clever for its own good” attitude.
(Yes, I know that’s kind of my brand…)
I’ve seen this work and be funny in certain games (like Temple of NO) but if it’s sincere and not tongue in cheek it’s just bad.
I’ve seen this in a game that gives a choice like “go to the castle” “go to the mountain” and since the mountain content isn’t written yet you get these annoying “Are you sure you don’t want to go to the castle?” Yes/No" and then if you resist it just says “You change your mind and go to the castle.”
Best practice: if you’re releasing a demo with missing content, either temporarily remove choices to unbuilt content, or clearly signpost the missing route out-of-world for the player instead of pretending the content is there and having your parser/author voice snark and make fun of the player for not making the “right” choice.
(This would have worked very well in my bad game; I also missed a trick!)
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Bookmarked! Thank you! I’m colorblind and it sometimes causes me trouble in Twine games and I worry about doing the same to others as I know not all visual issues are the same as mine. This is a really useful resource I didn’t know existed. 
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Would an option to turn audio and images on/off at the beginning be adequate? Assuming, of course, that the game was written in a way to make the text standalone?
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What’s funnier than it being only seconds long is the delayed realization that you’re also implying it to be a game. Which… fair enough.
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That reminds me: I have a barely rational dislike for when large areas are modelled as multiple rooms. I feel like I’m going to miss out on some corner.
Clearly I can handle it as Counterfeit Monkey practically starts out with such an area (after the tutorial alley).
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This is one thing I miss from AXMA 6 - the UI always contained sound controls. It didn’t adjust volume, but you could shut off sound for the entire game, and there was also a “mute” button which stopped any currently playing sounds if you needed to answer the telephone, but it resumed at the next sound cue in the game.
Unfortunately no built-in way to not display images. In almost all systems, including inline images in parser, it requires an authorial choice presented at the beginning “Do you want images?” and a variable that gets checked before the image to display or not display.
One other possible way to do this in choice is not have images display in the main prose-stream but ask the user if they want to see the picture in a choice that links to a separate passage with a “back” button.
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Actually these things are supported at the interpreter level. Spatterlight has graphics and sound toggles in its prefs. Gargoyle has them, too, they’re in that horrible preference text file. I’m on a Mac so can’t check Glulxe/Wingit right now but I’m guessing they probably do, as the spec supports it.
It is excellent for each game to have its own options for AV media, but for games that don’t, or players who never want to see or hear yada, check your interpreter preferences/settings. There may be checkboxes.
…Of course, a game has to be able to tolerate not being able to support its own sound or graphics if they’re deactivated, or it could error or crash. The easiest ways of making sounds or graphics in Inform all have their own guardrails anyway, but we’re an amateur community, so any additional programming sanity/safety checks on this kind of thing aren’t second nature to most here.
-Wade
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Hey, I like that preferences text file. I wish Spatterlight has it too, I am never sure with GUI preference settings if something will work the way I intended it. 
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Good point. If you don’t want sound in a parser game, you can choose an interpreter that doesn’t support it! This has always been a push and pull for media and styling in parser games; part of the utility of a standalone interpreter is the player gets to set defaults and preferences that usually cannot be overridden by the author. @mathbrush brilliantly managed to work sound support into Bisquixe browser-based games. So it might be an audiophile situation: someone who just wants to play the game as presented can play instantly online and someone who wants full control and the ‘analog hiss’ of pure text will do the work to secure technology that gives them that control of the experience.
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14 posts were split to a new topic: Color Schemes/Readability
Well, I’ve mentioned Cow V: The Great Egg Quest before. It has no puzzles and no real story, you just navigate around a bit and take eggs from one place to another. If you can find something worse than that, congratulations.
My pet peeves in IF are:
- no substance in either gameplay or story
- too many meaningless choices
- choices that seem more significant than they are
- choices that seem unimportant but lead to instant game over
- overcomplicated and repetitive puzzles
- blank slate MCs (I know, many people like them but for me they are boring)
I also wish there were more games with fast travel options. Navigating through the same rooms all the time is a pain. But I understand that it would not work in all games and that there are other solutions.
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Do you mean in what the result leads to, or the intended effect on the reader being less than it should be? Charm Cochran’s The RGB Cycle plays with this really well.
On the other hand, you also have The Trolley Problem Problem, which isn’t my favourite game by a long shot, but it’s fascinating. Play in an incognito browser then reload so you can get both options.
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I meant choices that have little to no impact on the story despite being presented as super important. Maybe it could work in moderation in a nihilistic story or a story about a catastrophic thinker that blows little things out of proportion.
SIM (Sara is Missing) is one game with this problem. Especially the ending choice comes with a lot of tension but afterwards there are only minor dialogue changes. The game addresses the lack of agency but it still rings hollow. The sequels (Simulacra series) are a lot better in this regard (and in lots of other ways too).
That trolley problem thingy was an interesting one. I think it’s about the uncertainty of life. But I think the choice did have an impact, just a different one that one might expect. There’s no way to win, but the player gets to think about how “common sense” can fail us. Wow, that’s a lot of words about such a simple piece.
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Where do I start…
- Assuming that the player is an idiot. No examples. I still play these games, but only once.
- Assuming that the player is a genius. Any game by Jonathan Partington qualifies. I’m sometimes in the mood for a challenge of wits, but this can be a put-off if I’m not.
- Shoehorning classic, tired, well-known puzzles. I can name at least six games that have the “goat, cabbage and wolf” puzzle. Please don’t do this. If you plan on including puzzles but can’t design interesting ones, find someone who can.
- Inconsistent geography just for teh lulz. If my map is going to look like a knot done by Popeye, there better be a good, in-game reason.
- Authors who go “now read my mind and picture this scene exactly as I am picturing it despite my poor language skills.”
- Poor language skills.
- Typos and misspellings, unless really outrageous, because then I’ll assume it’s done on purpose for artistic purposes.
- Mistaking difficulty for “let’s try to tire the players so they give up”. They will.
- A clear expectation for the player to be emotionally invested in the story without a minimal effort to drive such investment.
- Jumping maturity: trying advanced writing techniques (unreliable narrators, nonlinear time skipping, subverting common conventions) without having mastered basic writing techniques. This goes for any literary work, in fact.
- Not enough interactivity. Attention to the I is as important as attention to the F. If I fancied being put on rails, I’d read a book.
- Repeating things over and over.
- Repeating things over and over.
- Repeating things over and over.
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Funnily enough, I just made designs and plans for a medium (1-2 hour game) based on Towers of Hanoi. 
Yeah, that one in particular was my joke on "choices that have too much impact on the world.
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If that is the point of the whole game, then it’s different: you might be onto something there.
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Thanks, that is relevant for my IF writing. I was indeed considering integrating classic puzzles. But you are right, they are already known by many players.
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Fox, chicken, sack of corn is waaaaay better.
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The only thing that is a ‘hard pass’ for me is if the writing is so terrible that I cannot be bothered to play the game. This is almost always accompanied with a poorly implemented parser, but I will forgive the latter, if the writing is at least competent.
I don’t require Shakespeare, but I do at least require sentence structures that are vaguely grammatically correct and most importantly, sensical. And of course, it needs to be about something, unless you’re so good at nothing you can rival Jerry Seinfeld. I also will forgive a few spelling mistakes, but if there’s a lot that’s another sign of just not caring enough to test the game or run the text through a spell checker.
Of course, certain subjects I might pass on, if I’m just playing for fun. If I’m playing for a comp goal (like, trying to play all the games in a comp or x% of them, randomly determined), then I will attempt to play even subjects or themes I do not care for, as long as I can understand the writing, and it’s not mind-numbingly mundane.
I try to judge comp-games based on my own special brew of criteria, rather than rating based on my personal preferences. I do factor in my preferences, but it’s only part of the criteria. I don’t run around giving out lots of 1’s or 2’s, but I do expect visible effort for 3’s, and you do have to tickle my fancy for 4’s or 5’s (this contrived example is IFDB-5-star style, but obviously every comp might have their own scales or suggested rating systems, which I would acquiesce to).
Oh, one other thing that does irritate me is if the author uses a format not supported by commonly found interpreters and requires me to install something, but then their effort was minimal. This pretty much only applies to comp games, because unless it’s highly recommended by someone I trust, I’m not making that effort outside of a comp.
In my opinion, a IF works comp is not the place to showcase a new IF authoring tool or even a homebrewed private one. At least, not without a compelling game to showcase as well. Show off why you needed that custom system, and I’ll rate you high (if it runs on my hardware). Please don’t enter to a comp until you have the system AND the “Curses” of your authoring tool. Admittedly, the first version of Curses needed polish, but it was still compelling, especially in 1993. It obviously wasn’t just tossed together in a weekend as an after-thought for Inform 1.
End of rant mode. I kind of feel cathartic. Oh, right, that’s what threads like this are for. Oh look, it’s time for coffee.
-virtuadept
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