, which is a taxing taxinomy enough, but they have a habit of disappearing
entirely once shot. Or are they just not in the same place as me? Or are they
moving? I mean, where is the Small Royalist Archer? Is he dead or isn't he?
Slow down, slow down. Forget the archer and look at the wider picture. There
are Tall Archers, too, even a comely one. In fact, every turn it seems like
more warriors are turning up and I'm still asking the most basic question - can
*I* do anything? Like; please?
No, wait. If I give up trying to follow the battle, blank it out like a stream
of noise or, ahem, algorithmically generated text (honestly, a table of hit
points would be easier to read), then maybe I can start interacting instead of
purely boggling.
Right. Battle of Walcot Keep. I'm inside. Hey, if I'm a ghost, maybe I can
enter *people*!
No, can't do that.
Er.
What now?
The sturdy rebel's dead now, too. Which ones were the rebels again?
I just get the strange feeling the game is getting more out of this than I am...
WHAT? It just ended. I don't even know *why*. It just stopped.
LOOK, I CONSIDER MYSELF A FAIRLY BRIGHT GUY, BUT JUST WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON
HERE? AND WHAT, IF ANYTHING, AM I SUPPOSED TO DO ABOUT IT?
Restart. Help. Realtime. Realtime?
Oh, right. So here begins the review:
The last battle of Walcot Keep is a simulation of an EVENT, technically, but in
reality, it's a game of Warhammer played across a castle keep. Small plastic
characters, each painted with a different adjective, move across the map and
attack each other, committing bloody war in Realtime. I guess the programming
is fairly clever, but as an expo piece this demonstrates that we have a long
way yet to come before the fingers of AI break the surface of a player's
interactions with a game. Sitting back in REALTIME mode and letting the battle
unfold is entertaining, in a slackMUD kinda way, but it's not interactivity,
and, for the moment at least, text is not the medium for this kind of thing.
Plastic characters on motorised wheels moving across a model landscape - that
would be the medium. Would that be art? I may go away and ponder that. But for
now, all I want to know is why the game ended so suddenly. Oh, and work out who
Matilda is.
Mike Roberts' Reviews
The Battle of Walcot Keep
The Fire Tower
Flametop
Last Ride of the Night
Swanglass
The Battle of Walcot Keep
By Steve Breslin, Eric Eve, and Lindsey Hair
Illustrated by Michael Bechard
This piece doesn't entirely succeed as a game, but from a
technical perspective, it's impressively ambitious. The authors
state that it's not just an Art Show entry, but also a demonstration
of their NPC planning engine. This latter role is well fulfilled, as
the game has seemingly dozens of NPC's running around pursuing their
agendas. In fact, in a role reversal from the usual state of affairs
in IF, it's really only the NPC's who
can
do anything
meaningful in the game world; the player character is mostly just an
observer, unable to do much except watch events unfold.
Unfortunately, the sheer amount of detailed action produced by so
many NPC's overwhelms the text interface. The game models so much
detailed action that it would do much better to have a graphical
interface. In fact, in many ways, the game resembles an RTS (a
"real-time strategy" game, such as Starcraft or Red Alert), since
those games also have numerous NPC's pursuing goal-based agendas; the
typical graphical presentation of those games is much more efficient
at conveying this sort of detailed activity. The strength of text is
in its ability to communicate at a level removed from the details, to
capture the essence of a complex scene in a few words. What we'd
really like here is the gist of the activity, a description of what's
important
, rather than a laundry list of every character's
every move. The effect is sometimes almost comical, especially in
the big battle scenes where we get an individual accounting of each
arrow's flight and each soldier's steps. The problem is that
computers aren't capable (at least for now) of extracting the meaning
of a complex scene; it takes a human author to do that.
Hidden within all of the details, there is a story that unfolds
within the game. The player can't influence the story much, but
since there seems to be an element of randomness to the action, and
since you can walk around and observe what's going on in different
locations, the game is reasonably replayable.
This work is certainly interesting as an extreme example of
autonomous NPC programming. It also serves to illustrate some
of the problems that arise in using a text UI for such a detailed
simulation, and while it doesn't suggest any solutions, it should
prove useful as a concrete reference point for discussions and
efforts aimed at addressing these issues.
The Fire Tower
by Jacqueline A. Lott
This a nice landscape piece, simulating a hike along a real-world
mountain trail. The landscape is presented as a series of stops along
the trail, which is a great fit for the traditional IF world model.
Given that the work is a hike along a trail, it probably isn't
surprising that it's highly linear. With the exception of a couple
of culs-de-sac, it's not possible to leave the trail, and for the
most part the game won't even allow backtracking. Some players find
such rigid linearity annoying, but at least the protagonist's
motivation provides a good excuse for it in this case. Even so, the
game's relentless drive forward is occasionally a bit heavy-handed,
particularly in the couple of places where the trail branches briefly
- even though each branch point quickly recombines into the main
trail, it's a little annoying that you can't go back and find out
what was on the other branch without resorting to UNDO.
The implementation is very solid, and shows considerable attention
to detail. Even though the game can be completed by just walking
down the trail, the author clearly put a lot of effort into optional
extra activities that flesh out the simulation nicely.
The writing does a good job of evoking the mountain setting. My
only quibble is that the spatial arrangement of many of the locations
isn't made very clear in the location descriptions; I found myself
starting to type random directions, just to elicit an error message
telling me which directions I could go. Part of this comes from the
natural roughness of the terrain being modeled, I think, and from the
fact that passages between locations twist and turn (a design choice I
find annoying in most games, but which seems entirely reasonable
here); still, the descriptions could probably make the spatial layout
a little more plain.
Flametop
by David J. Malaguti
This still life is a simulation of an electric guitar. The
simulation strikes a good balance in the level of interactivity -
there's enough detail implemented that the player can feel involved
and in control, but not so much that it becomes tedious or
overwhelming. In order to play the guitar, for example, a little bit
of assembly is required - but it's all straightforward, and there's
not so much of it that it feels like a typing class. The level of
detail of the guitar's controls is likewise well balanced.
The author doesn't try to simulate playing the guitar at such a
fine grain that you have to type in your string-by-string strumming
motions or your individual notes and chords. That's good; the game
would be awfully unwieldy otherwise. Instead, control is provided
through knobs that set various electronic parameters on the guitar
and amplifier. Different combinations of parameters essentially
select different musical styles when you play the guitar.
The main activity for the player is to fiddle around with various
combinations of parameters and see what kind of music results. The
game recognizes a fairly large number of combinations, which gives
the simulation a feeling of depth.
Last Ride of the Night
by Mordechai Shinefield
This is a landscape piece with a slight twist. Instead of being a
simulation of a train ride, it's a simulation of
a simulation
of a train ride. This might sound like it would create a lot of
additional UI overhead (do we have to type "type 'look' on keyboard"
on keyboard?), but fortunately it doesn't, since the in-game
simulation is of the "holodeck" sort. At the story level, though,
it's a curious choice.
I always find framing devices like this to be distancing, since
they pull the point of view out of the main story and into the frame,
making the fictional quality of the main story explicit even within
the framing world. Sometimes that sort of distancing is exactly the
point, but in this case I'm not sure what the frame adds; its main
purpose here seems to be to wrap a little bit of story around the
setting. The thing is, the story could probably just as well have
been worked into the main setting, without the need for a frame. And
since the story occurs entirely in the frame, not in the "simulation"
part, it seems a bit tacked on, with no real relationship with the
main action. As a result, a couple of the possible endings seem a
bit out of the blue.
The writing is decent. My main complaint is that it doesn't
convey much about the player character's perspective on the setting.
At the beginning, the PC seems to have some special interest in the
simulated setting, so I'd expect his perspective to include some
amount of special commentary - either nostalgic memories about the
train, or obsessive train-nerd details and historical notes and so
on. But the descriptions are instead mostly prosaic. The
implementation is also somewhat sparse; many of the things mentioned
aren't actually implemented, and the ones that are implemented are
for the most part not very interactive. Other than the sparseness,
the implementation is fine - I didn't run into any obvious bugs or
problems, and the two NPC's are both nicely constructed.
Swanglass
by Yoon Ha Lee
I'm not quite sure what to make of this piece, because I get the
impression that the author had something more elaborate in mind than
what was finally implemented. It's suggestive of mathematical
surrealism, of the sort exemplified particularly thoroughly by
Erehwon
(which is even
mentioned by name in an author's note), but I wasn't able to find
anything deeper here than the suggestion. There's also a story - the
story of the player character's past, revealed through interaction
with the setting. The relationship between the story and the
surrealistic elements is tenuous at best, though, and this is where I
think the author must have had something more in mind that didn't
come through, at least for me.
Even though it never really jelled for me, the piece is well
written and crafted. The writing affects a minimalistic poetic style
that's starting to seem a bit overused in "serious" IF works, but the
writing here is competent enough and doesn't cross the line into
pretentiousness. The implementation is pretty solid; the only
noticeable rough spots are a few library default responses that
noticeably clash with the rest of the text, since most of the text is
so heavy on style. In the tradition of the Art Show, this game is
essentially puzzleless, so it never becomes frustrating.
Emily Short's Reviews
Flametop
Last Ride of the Night
Swanglass
The Fire Tower
The Battle of Walcot Keep
Flametop
Last year we had "Queen of Swords" by Jess Knoch, a piece about
electronic fencing equipment with a lot of wires and things to plug in.
This year, we have "Flametop", a still life about an amp and an
electric guitar, and I was initially worried that it was going to
require a similar amount of setup. Fortunately, that turned out not to
be the case: this piece lets you get started playing the guitar almost
immediately.
In some other respects "Flametop" reminded me quite a bit of "Queen of
Swords": the player is presented with some specialized equipment he may
not be familiar with and invited to play with it until he figures out
what to do. Like "Queen of Swords", "Flametop" felt educational, not
in a preachy or annoying way, but because it presented me with a
complicated real-world system I could play with until I understood its
workings.
The other obvious piece to compare is "Guitar of the Immortal Bard"
(Jason Burns, 2000), another IF Art Show entry about a guitar. The
feel and experience of the two are quite different, though: "Guitar of
the Immortal Bard" had a fantasy setting and a completely different
mode of interaction, where you chose to play specific musical styles.
"Flametop" feels more grounded in the real world, but also more
interactive. When I ran out of ideas in "Immortal Bard" I had to read
the help text to get around the guess-the-noun problems, whereas here I
can just keep fiddling with knobs.
If there's a negative aspect to this comparison, it's in the
descriptions that actually come out when I do succeed in playing
something. "Immortal Bard"'s music descriptions were fairly
accessible. The PC of "Flametop", on the other hand, is vastly more
knowledgeable about this kind of music than I am, and that creates a
bit of confusion and distance. This is a subjective call. If I *were*
more musically literate I would probably enjoy the specificity of being
told I am playing like Robbie Krieger. As it is, I don't know who
Robbie Krieger is, and the point is a little lost on me. (A minute
with Google shows that he played with the Doors, of whom, yes, I *have*
heard. Another minute with a website with background music gave me a
rough idea of what was being described. But I had to go outside the
piece to get that.)
The guitar and its accessories are all described with great love and
care. My knowledge of guitars is near zero, but I would not be
surprised if this equipment represents some kind of ideal fantasy setup
on the author's part. In particular, the description of the finish on
the body of the guitar made me wish there were some custom answers for
TOUCH -- the description seems to invite it. Even without that,
though, writing was quite strong and left me with a clear impression of
pieces of equipment that I've never seen before.
I had one UI gripe. Since the state of the various knobs on the guitar
and amplifier are so critical to what's going on -- and since it's hard
to hold them all in your head at once -- I would have appreciated
something in the status bar displaying the current settings. (I was
going to complain about this more strenuously until I found the
SETTINGS command. After that, I just typed SETTINGS over and over.
Statusline would've been better.)
In general, though, it's clear that a great deal of care went into
this, and it's fun to play with. There's a wide assortment of
different songs and song-styles to find, and I'm sure I didn't get all
of them. And the amp doesn't go to 11, but "Flametop" is charming
about that, too...
Last Ride of the Night
Playing "Last Ride" was an odd experience for me, because not only have
I taken this NJ Transit trip a number of times, I've also visited the
train simulation at the Franklin Institute with a bunch of friends
including my significant other. So there was an eerie sense of
familiarity in the setup. I'm not sure this helped, ultimately. I
just complained about not knowing what the author was talking about in
"Flametop", and now I turn around and complain about the opposite in
"Last Ride": I have a fairly vivid memory of what those NJT trains are
like, which seemed to keep imposing itself on top of the game image and
in some cases conflicting with it. So what follows may be clouded by
that subjectivity.
The about notes say that this is the author's first IF, and it has that
feel. There are a bunch of rough corners and bugs, many of which would
be caught by rigorous beta-testing or possibly by an author with more
experience editing his own work. There are a bunch of typos and a few
misused words ("extradite" for "extricate", for instance). Looking
under the seats produces a blank line. You can't talk to the
passengers while sitting down because you "can't reach" from where you
are. The conductor uses his intercom key even after you've stolen it
from him. Touching people "has no effect", in a situation where it
probably would be construed as molestation. (I've never actually
*tried* going around touching strangers on a NJ Transit train, but I'm
guessing that it wouldn't go over too well.)
In most places, though, the implementation would be fine for another
type of game, but seemed a bit shallow for an Art Show piece. Some
scenery is mentioned in fleeting descriptions but turns out not to be
there when you look at it; many things that are there can't be moved,
taken, or otherwise interfered with. The NPCs would be adequate if I
had enough other things to do, but not quite deep enough to keep me
entertained for the whole time.
On the positive side, the author put a fair amount of work into the
secondary senses: you can smell and listen to a large number of things,
for instance, and there are views through the various windows of the
train that are not all the same. Good stuff, but I wanted to be able
to pick up the pieces of trash and do things with them, manipulate my
luggage and other people's, and so on. Maybe an appropriate response
would've been for me to get arrested for theft, but I still would
rather have been allowed to try -- especially since "Last Ride" *does*
allow me to do a certain number of illicit and dangerous things. Why
those and not others?
I also had the vague feeling that "Last Ride" didn't really know what
it was about. I don't mean "didn't have a plot": "Last Ride" has more
plot than "Flametop", but I never felt any doubt about the *point* of
"Flametop", which is to enjoy fiddling around with the guitar. With
"Last Ride" it's less clear. Some aspects of "Last Ride" are
whimsical, like the business with the restroom mishap; some are serious
or even depressing. I tried really hard to get the two passengers to
communicate, on the theory that this might lift some of my PC's angst,
but if there's a way to achieve that, I couldn't find it. The endings
of the game that I did find seem to be on different levels of
seriousness and plausibility. If "Last Ride" is meant to be a pure
mood piece about loneliness and distancing, then I think some of the
goofier responses are counterproductive, and it would help if the
passengers were slightly less generic. If, on the other hand, I'm
supposed to be achieving some goals, it would help if they were better
hinted. I thought of a couple of things to try to accomplish but
wasn't able to get anywhere with them, and I wasn't sure whether that
was because they're unimplemented or because I couldn't find the right
approach.
So: a solid first experiment, but not quite as richly implemented as
I'd like an Art Show piece to be. Most of my complaints would probably
not be an issue in a more game-like piece, since there would be puzzles
and goals to move the player along.
Swanglass
The author's previous work, "Moonlit Tower" (2002), was full of lyrical
descriptions, some beautiful imagery, and references to a
not-quite-explained backstory.
"Swanglass" is similar. It does a beautiful job with the sensory
aspects encouraged by the Art Show: almost everything has smell,
flavor, and texture, as well as appearance. (Some things have several
appearances, depending on how you look at them.) There's a lovely
space to explore, and the descriptions allude to some sad past. On the
other hand, that backstory is never quite forthcoming. I was left
longing for an explanation. From the authorial notes I'm guessing that
I could read up on Swan Lake and get at least the general outline of
that plot, but it is not mostly to be found within "Swanglass" itself.
Not as far as I could find, anyway.
There's also not much statefulness in this piece: there's little you
can do (that I could find) that would change the appearance or behavior
of things. Most of the interaction that I could find was in the form
of experiencing and exploring the way objects look, feel, smell, and
evoke memory. In "Flametop" that sort of interactivity is provided by
the switches, plugs, and dials; in last year's "Friendly Foe" (Mike
Sousa) you could do all sorts of interesting things to the landscape
that dramatically altered its layout and what you were allowed to do
there. (For that matter, "Moonlit Tower" does some quite neat things
along these lines.) Even in puzzleless or art show pieces, having a
sense that you're changing the state of the world can give some shape
to the exploration. It's possible that I missed something obvious, but
if so, the help menu didn't give me any sense of what it might be.
So I enjoyed the experience of "Swanglass" and was left with some neat
mental images, but I wasn't entirely satisfied.
The Fire Tower
This is excellent. "Firetower" is an IF hike through the mountains of
Tennessee, gorgeously done.
The author mentions in her notes that this area is one of her favorite
spots, and it shows. The setting is acutely observed and described,
with responses for every sense. They're not just perfunctory
responses, either: I was left with a very clear impression of the flora
in this area, and a somewhat more fleeting idea of the fauna. The only
place I recall seeing quite such a thorough natural setting was in
"She's Got a Thing For A Spring" (Brent VanFossen, 1997), though for
whatever reason "Firetower" worked better for me than "Spring" --
possibly because, without puzzles to worry about, I was in a better
position to enjoy the natural surroundings. The meticulous
implementation applies elsewhere as well. The piece anticipates many
nonstandard actions -- I was particularly amused by the response to my
attempts to turn the signposts.
"Firetower" also gives a strong sense of continuity of space and time.
There are transitional descriptions between locations that let you know
how far you've gone, over what kind of terrain, and what you saw on the
way. When you have travelled far, considerable time elapses on your
watch. Meanwhile, the sun rises and sets in the sky; the quality of
the air changes; shadows lengthen; campers wake up, are active, and go
to bed. If you emerge from the woods late enough, you even get a
telling-off from the person who's there to pick you up. (I really
enjoyed the temporal effects; I played with them as much as my time
allowed, but I would have liked to explore even more what happened if I
was in certain places at different times of day. It would have helped
to have a WAIT UNTIL [time] command implemented.)
The PC is well-formed, too. The responses to trying to taste various
plants, for instance, or pick things that you shouldn't pick, are met
with very park-rangerly replies -- knowledgeable, but concerned with
safety and the preservation of the wildlife. But the characterization
isn't just there to preach good park behavior: the PC feels like a
specific person. She sings Stevie Nicks to herself, eats the best bits
out of her trailmix first, and doesn't panic when meeting a bear. Her
pleasant, down-to-earth attitude affects almost every descriptive
passage.
In some ways "Firetower" reminded me of "Sunset Over Savannah" (Ivan
Cockrum, 1997): there's the same sense of natural beauty and its effect
on the psychological state of the observer. If there's a weak point,
it's that "Firetower" (like "Sunset") sometimes tells me too much about
what the PC is feeling. Interestingly, these references bothered me
less as the piece went on: either they were fewer in the later
sections, or (more likely) as I developed a clear sense of the persona
of the PC I stopped trying to equate my emotions with hers.
I did encounter a few bugs. It seems to be possible for the headlamp
to be both on your head and in the pack at the same time (somehow); it
also seems that if you sit down while in the fire tower itself, you are
never able to get up again. You can jump while sitting. There are a
couple of other things like that. But the handful of weak spots can
easily be cleared up in a future release, and the majority of this
piece is polished and charming even though it covers an ambitiously
large scope for an Art Show entry. It also works quite well with the
constraints of puzzlelessness: the goal of hiking along a set path
gives the player something to do, and provides structure for the piece.
The Battle of Walcot Keep
[Side comment not actually about the game: I wish T3 weren't such a
moving target. I already had a couple of different HyperTADS versions
on my machine to handle older T3 games, but still had to ask Iain
Merrick to compile me a new version (thanks again, Iain!). It's a pity:
this kind of thing makes players less likely to play T3 games at all
because they get tired of downloading new versions of the interpreter.
I look forward to the time when there are more T3 games out there and
the platform is stabilized. For now, kudos to the authors brave enough
to experiment with it anyway.]
It's obvious that a lot of work went into "The Battle of Walcot Keep":
it lists three authors and an illustrator, and one of the first
commands I tried was "show map", which brought up a nice
professionally-drawn schematic with little sketches of the buildings in
question. Pretty classy.
Another point in its favor (from my point of view, anyway) is that it's
taking place in a specific historical setting, a battle between the
forces of Stephen and Matilda.
Then I wander into the midst of the battle itself. Good golly. It
takes a long time to process a command -- sometimes fifteen to twenty
seconds by my count, sometimes so long that I think the interpreter's
hung. It may be that this runs faster under Windows than under
HyperTADS 1.3.8 in Classic mode on a Mac, but it's obvious that a lot
of processing is going on in the background, and not very efficiently.
If it's this slow on my machine, I hate to think what it'll look like
on older OSes.
When the game does continue, there's a page of output: it appears that
every archer and swordsman has his own daemon, and they're all busily
doing their own thing. Each action is described on its own line. It's
impressive, in a way; it's also totally bewildering. So much is going
on that it's hard to get a good sense of the action in total: which
side is winning? who's going where? Much of the time I have no idea.
And sometimes the actions described are very repetitive and seemingly
insignificant. For instance, a page of output includes a paragraph of
this:
"A sturdy rebel man-at-arms cannot reach a thin royalist man-at-arms. A
sturdy rebel man-at-arms cannot reach a thin royalist man-at-arms. A
ruddy-faced rebel man-at-arms cannot reach a thin royalist man-at-arms.
A pale rebel archer cannot reach a thin royalist man-at-arms."
This kind of thing, in my opinion, is a tipoff that you need to
consolidate your prose generation ("A group of rebels shake their fists
angrily at the royalists, who are out of their reach.") or else that
you should give up on IF and write a real-time game with graphics.
To make matters worse, important bits of conversation by major NPCs are
mingled indifferently with all the lines about archers, arrows, and
swords. These are more critical parts of the narrative, so they really
ought to be presented in a way that draws attention.
Meanwhile, attempts to interfere in the action prompt responses like
this:
>
take sword
Which sword do you mean, the sword, the sword, the sword, the sword,
the sword, the sword, the sword, the sword, the sword, the sword, or
the sword?
It quickly becomes obvious that, since I'm dead, I'm not allowed to
touch anything or do anything other than watch. Very well. I proceed
into some of the other areas of the game, where there is less turmoil,
and things go a bit better. In a lot of respects this still doesn't
feel like an art show piece to me: there's a fair amount of
unimplemented scenery. There's some interesting stuff there, but this
is an Event piece, and I have the strong impression that the authors
want me to hang out and watch the battle.
Then it ends with no warning. I assume something happened with the
NPCs that caused this, or that we were on a timer, or something, but
there was no conclusion to the narrative. I was wandering around and
then suddenly I was offered the RESTART/RESTORE/CREDITS/QUIT prompt.
(It doesn't even say "*** The battle is over ***" or "*** The keep has
fallen ***" or anything like that.)
My impression (given what is said in the credits) is that this piece
uses the Reactive Agent Planner -- the best AI module currently
available to IF authors -- to create dozens of NPCs who are constantly
choosing new paths of action each turn: opening and closing doors,
wielding weapons, moving around, attacking each other, dying and
becoming deactivated. No wonder it takes so long to process a command.
But this isn't the best demo of the possibilities. What's great about
RAP is that the NPCs reassess their situation each turn: if you move an
object they need, say, they'll adjust their plans to include a step to
go get it. If the player isn't allowed to introduce any variation in
the scenario, then the author might as well have hard-coded the whole
action sequence from the outset: all the planning is going to happen
according to a predetermined chain. (Maybe there's a randomizing
element in the combat module such that individual NPCs might succeed or
fail in their attacks differently at different times, but it really
doesn't matter: from the player's point of view the intelligence of all
these creations is not really appreciable.)
RAP-driven combative NPCs are a cool idea as long as the player can
interact with them and there are only a few around at a time. Once you
get this kind of mass action going on, it may be a better idea to model
the simulation at a higher level, planning and describing the actions
of whole groups of soldiers at once.
I've played around with RAP a fair amount myself; one reason that I've
never released a game using it is that I ran into trouble with the
exact things that are issues in "Battle": slow processing and the
generation of dull, repetitive, or unidiomatic prose. The former
problem can be a little alleviated by being less ambitious about the
number of NPCs, but the latter problem is hard. I think the solution
probably involves representing all the actions that are going to occur
in a given turn as data, then running some algorithms on that data to
discard anything too ineffective to be worth reporting, cluster related
actions together into compound sentences and related sentences into
paragraphs, introduce variations of phrasing, etc. Which would be a
massive undertaking to write, frankly, even after you have a fully
functional set of RAP routines for your NPCs. I don't want to sound
discouraging because I think that, if this were done *successfully*,
the results would be mindblowing, and I hope the authors of "Battle"
will continue to work on this problem.
"Battle of Walcot Keep" is also probably the first major effort at IF
drama where all the action is done by the NPCs and the player's main
job is to choose a point of view -- like those experimental plays that
take place in multiple locations and the audience members can wander
around following whatever storyline they like. It's an interesting
idea, but I don't think "Battle" makes the experiment work: there's too
much focus on simulation and too little on narrative structure and
dramatic tension. Case in point: the totally unexpected ending.
So my verdict is that this is inventive, ambitious, and shows a great
deal of work with some promising tools, but that it doesn't really gel.
Still, I appreciated the Latin and the cheddar.
Adam Thornton's Reviews
Swanglass
The Fire Tower
Flametop
Last Ride of the Night
The Battle of Walcot Keep
Swanglass
In one phrase, "The Space Under?In?Around?Outside? the Klein Bottle."
I'm not knocking breakup-games. This seems to be a well-done one. A
strange mix between what's implemented and what isn't, though. In
something this small, you might as well go for the full-on library
replacement, and "lake" should be there. More verbs would have been
nice too. My only concern is that this is very much the same game as
"The Space Under The Window" and that one did it even better. Still, if
I'd played this one in 1997 it probably would have resulted in me
killing myself. I'd never thought of a Klein bottle as a metaphor for a
marriage before, but it really works rather well. In fact, it works so
well that, inspired by the game, I bought one of Cliff Stoll's Klein
bottles as a wedding present for friends.
The writing is a bit purple for my tastes, but it's still very well
done. Now I'm even more glad I never wrote "Flathead" since both this
and SUTWIN have handled it much more competently and less whinily than I
would have.
The Fire Tower
This is probably my favorite of the Art Show. A *whole lot* is
implemented. You can't--at least I couldn't--make your character do
anything REALLY stupid, but you can stay out too late and get the park
ranger to come for you (kids, don't try this at home. I'm in a Search
and Rescue Unit, and finding dumbasses lost in the woods when nothing is
really wrong with them, except that they're inconsiderate jackasses,
isn't much fun). It's not as buggy and itchy and painful as I generally
find hiking trips to be but maybe that's just because I'm not really all
that into the camping/hiking thing. Now that I've crossed the
Continental Divide in the Bob Marshall Wilderness, I don't have to prove
anything anymore and I can stay between nice clean sheets in
air-conditioned motel rooms, TYVM. Anyway, extremely well written, lots
and lots of detail, almost everything I thought to try was implemented.
Very, very well done. It almost makes me want to go on a hike with
Jacqueline, except that I know that the Alaskan mosquitos would carry me
away.
Flametop
Nice object, but the implementation is limited. I really enjoyed
playing with all the different settings on the guitar and amp and seeing
what effects I could get out of it, but I wanted more verbs and more
senses. I'm sure the guitar and the amp have smells--mine certainly
do--for instance. "Sit down" should have been implemented. Basically,
I think this falls into a very common first-timer trap. Everything the
author wanted you to do--which are the things you'd do playing a
guitar--is implemented, and quite well. But the more bizarre things
(smelling your guitar, say) aren't. The author basically just needs to
get some beta testers who will BLOW ON COWS.
Last Ride of the Night
I'm less enthusiastic about this one.
In part that's because I spent a lot of time riding the late-night
Jersey Transit train from NYC to Princeton Junction. I don't think the
seats are actual leather--they're nasty naugahyde, I think--the sweaty,
grimy stench of the car wasn't present, and there was no drunk who
vomited pizza on his and your shoes somewhere around Rahway. Maybe it
*is* empty riding north late at night. It never is heading south.
So maybe what I'm complaining about is that this is actually a subject I
know rather well, and I'm a lot less entranced with it than the author.
If so, that's my problem, not his. I'm also a little surprised by the
implementation. It's been almost a decade since I went south of Trenton
by rail-that-wasn't-Amtrak, but when I did, I had to change trains from
NJT in Trenton and get on the West Philly SEPTA line to 30th Street.
Maybe that really has changed...but Newark Airport being the last stop?
What happened to New York Penn? I can understand forcing the player to
get off at Newark, but does the train really stop short of NYP late at
night?
I'm really confused here. The train is supposedly running from 30th
Street Philly to Newark Airport, right? This *is* the Northeast
Corridor train. But that means, if for some reason it stops for good at
Newark Airport, that it never gets to Newark Penn, Secaucus Junction
(harrumph! new-fangled stations! Didn't have those in MY day!), or
NYP.
So where the hell is the Newark Penn stop coming from? Or am I riding
south out of NYP to the airport, in which case, why the Philly setting
at all, and where did Secaucus go? If I'm coming from the south, what
happened to Trenton, Hamilton, Princeton Jct., New Brunswick (we'll
assume we skipped Jersey Ave), Edison, Metuchen, Metropark, Rahway
(change here for the North Jersey Coast Line, and exit through one of
the first four carriages), Linden, and Elizabeth, (we'll skip North
Elizabeth too)? And how come Newark Airport has moved north of Newark
Penn?
The only way the timing makes even a little sense is if I got on the
train at Secaucus and am departing at Newark Airport. Is that supposed
to be the deal? Maybe it should have been mentioned if it were.
It also would have been easy to do a clock, and use actual times. 37
minutes late, of course, but actual times. Implement more station stops
and the right amount of time between them. Talk about the scenery
more. ("Look out window" does nothing, btw). But you can't see green
and brown on the last ride of the night--you see black when you're
between towns, and the flashes of towns going by. Not that there's not
a lot of difference in the character of the nighttime scenery between,
say, New Brunswick and Princeton Jct. and Newark Airport and Elizabeth.
If I am riding from Secaucus to the airport, there are no trees--there's
Meadowlands Toxic Swamps and that's about it. And I've *never* not had
my ticket checked on NJT, even when it's full, although you could
probably ride from New York to Newark without a ticket at rush hour and
not get caught most of the time.
I guess this is the danger of picking a topic that one of your judges is
intimately and grumpily familiar with.
Other than that, well, the Jon-and-Sara story could have gone somewhere
much more interesting, but didn't. The multiple endings based on how
you resolve it are pretty cool though. Some minor writing issues, too:
"irlfriend" and "irradiant" stick out. Don't taunt me with the missus
if I can't ask the conductor about her.
The Battle of Walcot Keep
TADS 3.04 won't run it, and I can't get 3.05 to build under Linux (SuSE
9.0 Pro). I'll keep trying. Sorry.
Chrysoula Tzavelas' Reviews
Note:
Chrysoula played the entries with her SO, and his comments are in brackets.
Doe :-)
The Battle of Walcot Keep
The Fire Tower
Flametop
Last Ride of the Night
Swanglass
The Battle of Walcot Keep
The Battle of Walcott Keep
This was interesting to watch in action, but my initial reaction was
confusion. There was so much text passing by as each actor took his action,
and it had no narrative coherency, which made it hard to follow. Eventually
I figured out that the individual actions were like ripples, and the
interesting part was figuring out which way the stream was going to flow. If
there was some way to actually effect what was going on, rather than simply
being an observer, I didn't figure it out. I think it was a useful
demonstration of the engine, but any true game built around it would require
a great deal more ability to interfere with the natural course of events to
be enjoyable. Some way to filter out the many unimportant actions would also
be good.
The Fire Tower
I thought this did an excellent job of portraying the setting I was hiking
through, with a good focus on detail. I really enjoyed the implementation of
the setting. It was a little too heavy-handed in painting my own emotional
reaction to the hike, and the framing device of assuring my ride I was fine
and just needed a day to myself ended up serving the opposite purpose: I
kept wondering what was going on. I was also frustrated with my inability to
backtrack on the walk itself to examine a few details I'd overlooked. I was
pleased with the specialized commands the writer included to support the
hiking feel, and I was really sad I couldn't interact with details of the
environment more than what was available, such as playing with the water.
[Although the directional exits felt realistic -- if I were really in that
place, the directions would be legitimate -- it was hard for me to maintain
a mental picture of where I was and where I could go. On more than one
occasion, I had to type directions at random, because the directions in the
description were not obvious enough. It might have worked better to have
the directions in the description, but map the exits of each room to
descriptive phrases ('the upper ridge trail' or something like that). Also,
while the signs were a nice touch, flat text screens didn't really convey
the intended directions of the signs.]
Flametop
This was an interesting toy, but I felt totally unconnected to it because of
how little I know about electric guitars. I sensed potential in the
combinations of the dials and strings and so forth but I just couldn't
figure out how to meaningfully get into it.
[I expect that someone who has more musical or guitar experience would find
this a very interesting simulation; based on my limited knowledge, it seemed
to have a lot of depth and complexity.]
Last Ride of the Night
I was pleased to discover this had multiple exits from the scenario; I found
three of them. I thought it did a good job of conjuring a lonely, late train
ride. However, it had implementation flaws, such as words that simply
weren't recognized (like 'leak') and an inability to actually interact with
many details of the environment rather than just observe them. This made me
sad, since it had such a great initial atmosphere.
[The 'simulation' framing device seemed unnecessary to create the atmosphere
of the train. I could have just as easily been on the actual train -- and
felt that the museum environment actually detached me from the emotional
impact. Also, the first ending suddenly and abruptly leapt to breaking up
with a heretofore unmentioned girlfriend. That really felt like it came out
of left field, though I don't doubt that the emotional impact of the
situation led meaningfully to that outcome.]
Swanglass
Hm. I don't know that I got enough out of this one. It was beautiful, but
elusive. Perhaps if I was more familiar with Swan Lake, I would not have had
this sense of a strange puzzle I simply couldn't unravel with the tools I
had to hand. There were several items in the AMUSING that I couldn't figure
out, I think because while the writing was lovely, and often unexpectedly
responsive, there was very very little to work with-- a limited selection of
nouns I could find to act upon. Still, it wasn't the job of this little
piece to make me understand its backstory, but to show me the little world
of the swanglass, and I think it did that breathtakingly.
[I always felt on the verge of discovering something interesting related to
the swanglass being a Klein bottle, but didn't know enough about Klein
bottles to find it.]
Doe's (Marnie Parker's) Reviews
The Battle of Walcot Keep
Swanglass
Last Ride of the Night
The Battle of Walcot Keep
I am not the best game player in the world. I often can't solve puzzles and get
stuck a lot.
The Battle of Walcot Keep
, however, is totally observational, so there was nothing to hang me up. But it
also didn't seem to end. I wandered the map and watched the battle, but when
the corpses were stacked up with only 3-5 soldiers left on the field, I
expected an announcement of victory. Nothing happened. There was no clear
conclusion. Or maybe there was, but I didn't see it.
I suppose this is what it set out to be, a good test of the RAP system (npc
action/movement engine). It
was
cool to be able to toggle to real time and have the npcs carry on without me
(not dependent on player commands). So, not being a war fan, I left the room
for a while hoping the battle would be won when I came back. But I came back to
a lack of closure -- see above.
The effort that went into this was ambitious and impressive, but the judges
have already mentioned some of the problems with doing massive npc actions on
this scale, such as too much text generation. Each npc has to be described
differently, so
Walcot
had: the swarthy soldier, the pale soldier, the comely soldier, the ruddy
soldier, etc. It becomes too much to keep track of. And the repetitive text
detracts from the enjoyment of watching npcs fight it out among themselves
(which I did find sort of perversely enjoyable).
On the other hand, is it
really
a good test of the RAP system? As mentioned, I am not overly of battles so I
am probably prejudiced against them, but I also find them chaotic when I read
about them. Let's face it, by their nature, battles tend to be somewhat
chaotic. The only time one makes any sense to me is when I see it in a movie.
So throw chaos together with repetitive text and
Walcot
didn't capture my interest.
I would have preferred to see RAP used in an event that had more cohesion to
begin with, where the player would have more expectations about what is going
on, like: a dance in a ballroom, a sail boat race, a football game, a music
concert, etc. Something where the parameters of the event are already fairly
well-known, so when wandering around the map and observing, the action would be
clearer. So, I feel, a non-battle event, especially a non-fantasy-battle with
the battle plan known only to the authors, would actually have demonstrated RAP
better.
Note:
Is simply observing interactive? Sure. Watching is interactive, abet a passive
form of interactivity. Also the IF Art Show sets out to explore interactivity,
not pre-define it. In
Walcot
, while the player character has very limited interactive ability, the npcs
interact with each other a great deal. So I felt it did successfully explore
interactivity. One more observation: This piece might have been helped (if it
were possible) by having different colors for each npc description.
Swanglass
Uh. Over my head, but with lovely, lyrical imagery. Many senses are coded, but
with only one room there simply wasn't enough playability for me (I would have
liked to wander around a bit). I felt that I got some of the back-story, but
only some. I wanted more. Left wanting more is not bad, it means it grabbed me,
but it also means that I ended up feeling that somehow this was not fully
realized and/or completely implemented. I think I may need my poetry more
“dumbed down” too.
Note:
Although
Swanglass
has limited player movement/taking objects ability, it also fit the guidelines
of the IF Art Show. Attempting to evoke an emotional response through writing
is
an exploration of interactivity. This approach, though, has serious pitfalls.
The trouble with aiming for emotional responses is that they are highly
subjective -- only some players will respond the way the author/artist desires
or, in fact, respond in any emotional way at all. I obviously did not.
Last Ride of the Night
I felt this was well implemented even though there many objects I wanted to
interact with and couldn't (although they all seemed to have messages why I
couldn't, ergo, it was well implemented).
Last Ride
, using a more traditional game-like approach, would probably have done better
in earlier IF Art Shows. I felt the train was atmospheric and realistic,
especially the rolling and blowing trash, but the piece unfortunately suffers
from the stopper puzzle syndrome. There is an obvious puzzle that I, as the
player, immediately focused on to the possible determent of anything else --
like I always do when a puzzle presents itself. Only this one was not easy to
solve. I asked someone who did what he did, but I could not duplicate his
success. That says to me this puzzle may hinge on an
exact
sequence of events. A common first timer mistake. Do I go in a certain
direction first, or do I go in another direction first? Do I do this first, or
do I do that first? I was never able to solve it even though I tried several
times and completely clued in about what actions should solve it.
However, this is a very creditable effort by a novice, so I offer the author
encouragement to keep on writing IF. And maybe, if he wants, to work on making
the puzzle in
Last Ride
a little easier or approachable from more directions and/or solvable with
several slightly different sequences of actions. Suggestion: Letting the
player actually interact with more objects would not only increase the
interactivity (always more satisfying to the player), but also add more red
herrings. (For instance, I found one red herring that I liked a great deal and
wouldn't have minded more. :-))
More to come…
About the Judges
J. D. - Berry
-
Artist's/Judge's Profile
(self-written)
Mike Roberts
- Created
TADS (Text Adventure Development System)
, an IF programming language and compiler. He is currently
revising (and revising and revising and revising and revising :-)) the next
exciting version of TADS, T3.
We can thank: first AGT, next TADS, and later, Inform, for
keeping IF alive and kicking today. Mike also wrote the games: "Ditch Day
Drifter," "Perdition's Flames," and "The Plant," which
placed third in the 1998 Annual IF Competition.
Jon Ingold
- Has explored both sides of interactivity -- from puzzles in his
fiendishly clever puzzlefest "Mulldoon's Legacy," to narrative-driven
IF in his
poignant science-fiction love story "My Angel," which placed sixth in
the 2000 Annual IF Competition. He is one of the most respected writers of
modern day IF, his impressive IF resume also including the 2001 Comp
winner "All Roads," and the 2002 third place winner "Till Death
Makes
a Monk-Fish Out of Me!" (w/Mike Sousa).
Emily Short
- Ms. Short appeared to erupt out of nowhere onto the IF scene with the highly
admired
"Galatea," Best of Show of the 2000 IF Art Show. It's PC/NPC
interactive conversation has not really been duplicated since, except by Emily
herself. Since then one impressive game has followed another. What else can one
say about Emily that hasn't already been said
before? What
praise can one shower on her that has not already rained on her before?
Rumored to be part of the infamous
IF cabal, some think she is also the current shinning star of IF... (Emily help
me out
here, write your own bio. :-))
Adam Thornton
- Adam Thornton was exposed to Interactive Fiction at a tender age, and
has spent the rest of his life slavering in dark corners, decapitating
truckers with a single effortless swipe (per trucker, that is), and
devouring adventurers. His essential lack of creativity is evident in
the pieces he's produced, all parodies. _Sins Against Mimesis_,
_Chicken and Egg_, _In The End II_, _Stiffy Makane: The Undiscovered
Country_, and _Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring (Atari 2600
Text Adventure Version)_ are among his works, which collectively seem to
argue for quantity over quality or, indeed, playability.
He is a dangerous man with a literary theory, and persistent rumor has
it that he is creating a Latin-language version of the Inform libraries
in order to promulgate his obscene filth to the as-yet-untapped market
of Latin text-adventure pornography deviants. If you encounter him, do
not allow him to leave your sight, and contact the authorities
immediately.
(self-written)
Chrysoula Tzavelas
- Maintainer of IF Ratings site, writer of IF game Shadows on the
Mirror. There's another IF game in the works, but first the novel and some
other creative projects need to be finished. Lives with one dog, two cats,
and fiance, has too many computers. A latecomer to IF, but a veteran
adventure gamer from age 12 on.
(self-written)
Marnie Parker (aka Doe)
- Although not a judge, just the organizer of the IF Art Show, I do usually
try to write reviews.
Artist's/Organizer's Profile
(self-written)
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