Another possibility is to do what Gareth did in Christminster, and have
some external mechanism that tells time roughly, that only advances in
response to specific actions on the part of player. (I have to confess
that I haven't played UnderTow more than a few moves, and so I don't know
if it would apply.)
A similar method is also used in the only two Infocom "mystery" games
that I really liked--Ballyhoo and Sherlock. I put "mystery" in quotes because
these two were really puzzle-solving games with a mystery theme, not
real mysteries.
(Yes, I know that time passes in Sherlock for each move--but certain
events don't take place until you've solved certain puzzles.)
>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.
>I'm going to run into a limit at some point. The length of this game made
>me reach that limit much faster. And what is "that much interaction" to
>you is not what is "that much interaction" is to me.
I think how harsh and valid a criticism it is depends on what you mean by
"worth making." I think that writing anything is worth doing, because you
learn from doing it. But I think that, as a strategy for winning the
contest, cutting back on NPCs makes a great deal of sense. It's worth
noting that the winning entries in each category used NPCs only
minimally, and that the straightforwardness of Magnus's game was a
deliberate choice on his part.
With hindsight, I think that both you and I might have benefitted from
making a similar choice. The main criticism levelled against Toonesia
(and I think it's a very valid one) is that the NPCs ought to be fuller
than they are. It might have been a better strategy for me to write a
game that didn't require complicted NPCs this year, and put off Toonesia
until next year's contest, when I'll have more time to write.
This doesn't mean that, as writers, you and I have failed--or even
produced anything other than good, enjoyable games. It just means that,
as contest entrants, we might have benefitted from a different strategy.
-Jacob Weinstein