>But then the game is in a sort of limbo. I wanted a feel of
>claustrophobia, and the time limit helped produce that. In addition, the
>player still *feels* time passing. Night may not fall, but if you play
>the game until, say, 300 turns have passed, would you not be surprised
>that the Coast Guard hadn't shown up yet?
Maybe, maybe not. If I'm making progress, then no; if I'm
just wandering around looking for something to do, then yeah,
it'll seem like a long time.
And, of course, if you must include a time limit, it should be a
reasonably long one. I wasn't paying attention to the game clock,
but it _felt_ like on the order of five minutes or so before the
explosion. If the time limit had rougly coincided with the 2-hour
time limit of the contest, I wouldn't have any complaint.
>You're right, that does sound harsh. You're basically saying that my
>attempt was not worth making because I wasn't going to be able to model
>a huge amount of actions/reactions among NPCs. That's true of *any*
>game.
True, but some genres are more demanding than others. For example,
Zebulon and Tube both got along fine with only one NPC worth
mentioning.
>Taking your advice, I should never attempt anything I won't be able to
>produce perfectly.
Ummm, yeah, that's pretty much my attitude. Probably has a lot to do
with why I've never got around to writing anything myself. Don't worry,
my therapist is working on it.:)
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Trevor Barrie tbarrie@upei.ca "It's a great big universe,
87 Kennedy Drive OR and we're all really puny;
West Royalty, PEI tbarrie@cycor.ca we're just tiny little specks
C1E 1X7 CANADA (902) 628-6845 about the size of Mickey Rooney."
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