Not a question, just a bit of a lament:
I’ve created a bunch of interesting objects, and written the code so they behave the way they’re supposed to when the player does the “right” thing with them (that is, when he uses them in the way which will move the story forward and eventually lead to a “winning” ending). Now the time has come to deal with all the other things the player might try with each object. And since each object can be in a number of different states (each representing a particular permutation of all of the various things that can change about the object throughout the course of a game) the possibilities add up.
No big deal – the number of permutations is not at the totally unmanageable level, and coding the necessary responses is pretty straightforward. The problem is, I’m starting to get lazy. I’m starting to think of reasons to prevent a particular object from getting into a particular state, just so I don’t have to deal with writing responses for every action for that object in that state.
I know it’s a mistake. I know the game will suffer for it. I know what I should do. But I can’t seem to get up the energy to do it.
The other approach would be to move on to something else for now (like working out plotting problems or creating additional interesting objects) and try to convince myself that I’ll come back later to fill in all the missing responses. The problem is, I’m not quite gullible enough to buy that (if any of you believe it, I’ve got a bridge going to Brooklyn that you might be interested in).
Ah, well.
Robert Rothman