space_st.z5 is based on the example transcript that came with Infocom's
Planetfall Interactive Text Adventure. This is listed in space_st.wlk, don't
look at it until you've completed the game. I tried to to make the game as
close to the transcript as possible, but couldn't duplicate it exactly
because Inform gives different responses, and there were a few errors in the
original transcript, plus extra features I added to make the game more
playable. I had to invent responses for things you try that are not given in
the transcript. I would say it is about 85% accurate.
There are new rooms including hall_k, with rooms fore and aft of it, and
a room below hall_n. There are only five problems to solve at the moment,
since I didn't have time to code and test any more. I would like to thank
all the playtesters for spotting a lot of spelling mistakes and errors, and
providing new interesting responses for the game.
I would have liked the game to be a lot more complex but ran out of time,
hopefully I will be able to write an improved version for next year. I don't
think I've done a bad job, as I knew virtually nothing about Inform until
about 2 months ago, I had been writing this game in Pascal but it became to
complicated, especially as it wasn't object orientated. The project
originally began as an assignment at Polytechnic, written in Modula-2 (much
like Pascal), all I managed to do then was implement the map, and status
line. It did help through as many of the concepts were familiar, some things
can only be done one way, and I just reinvented them. There must be thousands
of people who have tried writing adventure games. I seem to recall a quote
from someone at Infocom, "at one time everyone and his granny was writing
text adventure parsers", my advice, forget it, it's too complicated for one
person, use Inform or one of the other languages. They have a steep learning
curve, but once learnt can do just about anything, with a bit of hacking.
Then get some play testers to find bugs, and give you some new ideas. Simple!
I hope this game encourages other writers to write new science fiction
interactive fiction games, as there don't seem to be many about. I actually
find text adventures more fun than graphic adventures, maybe that's because
they were the only complex games about when I was younger. But graphic
adventures are very annoying, if you don't point the arrow in exactly the
right place it doesn't work. I made the problems fairly simple because if
they're too complicated you just have to look up the answer, and once you've
looked up one answer you tend to look them all up. It's a lot more fun
solving the whole game yourself, Planetfall's the only game I ever solved
without help. The internet has spoiled adventure games as you can always find a site with
clues to any game now.
