Hi there,

I've released a newer developmental version of my game for people to try and hopefully give me some feedback. You can get it from the wiki page.

The game is definitely starting to take shape, but still lacks a lot of features such as the ability to use objects. Also, as I said before, location descriptions and other messages in the game require to be rewritten.

Kind regards,

Francis.

Francis,

Sorry it's taken me so long to provide feedback. I was off-line for a week, and then this week has been manic as well, plus this site has needed some tweaking behind the scenes as well.

Anyway ...

• The colours on the introduction screen look great, but I actually feel like there's too much colour within the game itself. In the second location, I examined the wall and it resulted in six lines printed on the screen, in five different colours. Bleugh.
  
  
• Sort of related, I think the Visible Exits line is quite ummm ... cheap. I've seen it used before, but I think it's a bit of a cop-out - a good description should make it clear what the exits are without relying on being that explicit. If you really want to make it obvious, you could change the colour of direction names within the description. Ditto for objects that the player can manipulate. Not that I really think either is necessary, tho - I like to play an adventure like I'm reading a book. Too much colour (nothing wrong with plain white on black!), going round in circles over an illogical puzzle and also playing guess the vocabulary of the interpreter are the three things most likely to destroy the illusion for me.
  
  
• Spacing / Indentation. Hmm. I can't tell whether I think there's an excessive number of blank lines / indent spaces. It seems like there might be a lot, but then it might look worse without any. Not sure. Probably doesn't need two blank lines before the command prompt, tho.
  
  
• Command prompt - I personally can't stand the "What now?" type question prompt. I may be an old-timer, but I would far rather just have a friendly neighbourhood >.
  
  
• I didn't need to open the front door?
  
  
• Playing guess the vocabulary trying to OPEN POCKET(S), EXAMINE POCKET(S), EXAMINE BULGE etc. Can I get whatever's in the pocket?
  
  
• No abbreviations yet. Typing SCREWDRIVER and BATHROOM CLEANER every time is a PITA.

I got the JAR, SCREWDRIVER, TORCH, BATHROOM CLEANER and some BATTERIES. I can't work out what to do (if anything) with the coat, the light switch in the bedroom wardrobe or the breeze along the stairs.

I've stopped there as it's quite late and I don't know how far this demo is meant to go - let me know if I should be trying to explore more.

Sam.

It's nice to see a little padding in the game now. I concur with Peter, possibly too many different colours. As you've obviously designed it with some flexibility it would be a shame to lose it, perhaps a configuration program allowing you to set colours as you wish, with some sample location text etc. to show the user how it would look.

Personally I quite like the colour as I feel this breaks up the various sections of text (description, visible exits, etc.) and it is more interesting for the eye to look at.

I'll add an option to allow the coloured text to be switched off.


I'm the opposite, as I prefer the visible exits,etc. to be shown.

Part of the criticism for the original Amiga version was that it wasn't always obvious what objects you could manipulate, e.g. the wall at the front door was originally only mentioned in the location text. I guess you could put that down to poor location descriptions though.


I think that the spaces probably seem worse because of the sparse descriptions. I'll have a look at it.


No, I'm not too keen on the "What now?" prompts myself. I guess I was just following a tradition there, but I can change it.




The front door was deliberately left open so that you could come in and have a look about. You cannot manipulate objects yet in these versions so if I had closed the door you wouldn't be able to get in.

However, there are other locations which you do not currently have access to.


Again, you cannot manipulate objects yet so you cannot search the coat. Once you can manipulate objects then you will be able to discover what's inside.


Yeah, I've still to do that.


The light switch is a bit of a red herring, but it should be clearer once I have got the 'use object' system up and running.

You can't actually do anything with the breeze, but it is there as a clue to something else.



No, you've pretty much done everything that can be done in this version. If you refer to the wiki page it should give you a good idea of the vocabulary the game currently understands and what can and cannot be done.

Thank you for all the feedback and food for thought!

Kind regards,

Francis.

That should be pretty easy to knock up. I'll do that when I get a chance.

Thanks!

Kind regards,

Francis.