tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6162314467762792782.post1270684658937465084..comments2024-03-29T09:18:29.803-04:00Comments on The CRPG Addict: The Power Stones of Goddamned ImpossibleCRPG Addicthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01238237377918550322noreply@blogger.comBlogger77125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6162314467762792782.post-76305998157214271382022-10-26T12:18:28.983-04:002022-10-26T12:18:28.983-04:00Well-said, Ross! I believe that Jimmy Maher of The...Well-said, Ross! I believe that Jimmy Maher of The Digital Antiquarian put it like this first, but a game like DOOM can be seen as almost a more logical evolution of the adventure-game genre. You are only presented with the verbs that will accomplish results in the game, a trend that games like Maniac Mansion/Day of the Tentacle and Simon the Sorceror were already veering towards, and one that Myst would exemplify to about the largest degree possible (and the realMyst remake would, of course, add full-motion, embodied gameplay just like DOOM). As graphics and sound began to become as evocative as the textual descriptions of interactive fiction, it gave way - first to illustrated adventures, then fully-graphical adventures, and finally the aforementioned fully-embodied gameplay of DOOM.<br /><br />Dungeon Master is also worth pointing out as the "DOOM before DOOM", having a blend of real-time and tile/turn-based gameplay, and of action and puzzles. I believe it to be a lack of the latter that cause many people to be vengeful of the dearth of commercial interactive fiction and graphic adventures; I cannot begrudge them good, hand-crafted puzzles, despite how popular emergent problem solving has become in games ranging from Tetris to Minecraft to roguelikes. Games like Ad Verbum and Counterfeit Monkey are some of my favourite interactive fiction games solely due to them using the textual format to deliver clever puzzles that no other format of game could possibly present. "Voices" is another one of my favourites - the "puzzles" are naff, though luckily the game comes with a built-in walkthrough. The true genius is how you, the person behind the parser, play a role in the commands you give and the choices that you make in the course of the story, a role that most interactive fiction does not acknowledge. I won't spoil it any further - it's a short play.P-Tux7noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6162314467762792782.post-41140677347356598392022-10-24T08:37:16.279-04:002022-10-24T08:37:16.279-04:00And then From Soft incorporated the notebook into ...And then From Soft incorporated the notebook into the game.Mirnaiahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10817941432768803717noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6162314467762792782.post-37653819570521501622022-10-24T01:22:52.405-04:002022-10-24T01:22:52.405-04:00I think the commenter is defining a woman as a fem...I think the commenter is defining a woman as a female humanoid, and I think the game is using it in the same sense, or in the even more generic sense of "female sapient lifeform". Both definitions optionally have adulthood as a delineating line from "girl", as well. You've probably seen the phrases "elven woman" or "dwarven woman" before, which are generally meant to describe an adult female member of said species.<br /><br />For example, if I saw a harpy in real life and wanted to tell someone else about that, but I didn't know that there was a specific word for what it was, I would say "I saw a woman with eagle-like wings and talons".<br /><br />I think the game is trying to be evocative here, saying that you see what appears to be a humanoid female with the startling addition of wings on the altar. You don't know quite WHAT it is supposed to represent, but like when you see an image from an ancient culture whose language you cannot read in real life, you can glean from the context of it being on an altar that it is probably supposed to represent an angel or goddess.<br /><br />Even if you don't know who Nirgul is (or any of the ancient Mesopotamian civilizations that worshipped him, for that matter), if you saw the "Nirgul Tablet" portraying him adorned with a fire-red mane of hair and beard, with horns and a crown on his head and a scowl on his face, wielding a hatchet and sheathed sword, alongside a ceremonial brazier and staff, several venomous snakes and scorpions, and holding the leash of a three-headed dog with a snake for a tail, not to mention the fact that someone him important enough to carve a beautiful, partly-coloured relief of in the first place, you can probably guess that this guy is (A) very important and (B) very dangerous.P-Tux7noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6162314467762792782.post-64947252071581570882022-10-23T13:35:16.103-04:002022-10-23T13:35:16.103-04:00I was able to win, as you'll see tomorrow, so ...I was able to win, as you'll see tomorrow, so this is a bit moot, but good suggestions. The candle definitely does disappear from your inventory. As for editing, I did explore that later in regards to a different issue, but I wasn't able to figure out how to add items. Editing Color Computer 3 files is a skill that I haven't had time to develop.CRPG Addicthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01238237377918550322noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6162314467762792782.post-29353112196436513032022-10-23T13:14:03.246-04:002022-10-23T13:14:03.246-04:00Considering the era of this game, I'm wonderin...Considering the era of this game, I'm wondering how much of this punishing difficulty is connected to the standards of D&D and tabletop RPGs around this time. We're not that far away from Gygax designing punishingly unfair dungeons. These were designed under Gygax's more wargame-y view that the DM is on one side, the players are on the other, and the whole point of the game is to pit ingenuity against each other. What can the DM dream up? How can the players respond?<br /><br />And because they're not sitting around a table, there might be an expectation that the player will just sit for as long as it takes to figure it out.<br /><br />(When I run D&D now, I love to include puzzles but I always try to make sure that they have lots of clues and mechanisms for me to make sure it doesn't take more than an hour to figure out.)<br /><br />A lot of the other commenters have noted adventure games and some of the failings/challenges of that medium, but I'm not sure that the adventure game form being taken here is meant to be connected to that genre; it might be that they simply found an adventure game style easier to program.<br /><br />(I'm not saying that adventure games are inherently easier to program, but when you're trying to give a wide variety of puzzles and challenges, you might choose a form that allows you to take lots of different actions in that form than trying to incorporate them in the more simulationist style of an RPG.)<br />Jason Mehmelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10757710662254784459noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6162314467762792782.post-91423209857855943112022-10-23T12:25:26.288-04:002022-10-23T12:25:26.288-04:00Jeremy Parish has a good video on Tower of Druaga,...Jeremy Parish has a good video on Tower of Druaga, but the short version is that it was played collectively with people trading secrets they found. Some arcades had notebooks next to cabinets where people would write down what they found. dsparilnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6162314467762792782.post-717657569378877912022-10-22T23:14:57.968-04:002022-10-22T23:14:57.968-04:00It is telling that adventure games went into a dec...It is telling that adventure games went into a decline at roughly the same time that adventure game tropes started appearing in other genres as a matter of course. John Carmack famously said that plot in a video game was like plot in porn: you expect it to exist, but it's not what you're there for and you don't really care about it. But eventually we had enough technological leeway that a game didn't have to choose between one or the other, and one way of looking at it is less "adventure died in favor of other genres" as "Other genres became different structures for presenting adventure game tropes"Rosshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09703211229982182936noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6162314467762792782.post-50757743822875933102022-10-22T11:55:50.048-04:002022-10-22T11:55:50.048-04:00People also were not as eager to finish the games ...People also were not as eager to finish the games as they once were, I think. Nowadays you can spend a few minutes on google and have thousands of games to play, for free. Even if you just want text adventures you can have them all at the click of a button. This is a very different experience from someone who might buy only a few games a year. If you get a new Infocom game you probably wouldn't have wanted it to be over in 5 days. Whereas if you are doing a blog where you play all adventure games, you don't want to spend a week running around in circles making no progress.Kurisuhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00132568197501054206noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6162314467762792782.post-4355667520532059222022-10-22T11:52:47.383-04:002022-10-22T11:52:47.383-04:00One thing that might affect the design of these ea...One thing that might affect the design of these early games is that computer/video games were still pretty new, and many of them had no concept of winning or finishing the game. So I think many players would not have been as bothered by being unable to finish a game as we are now.<br /><br />1984's Tower of Druaga is another example of this phenomenon; the game is virtually impossible to finish without help. You have to do very specific things on quite a few of the levels to get items you need to win, but there are no clues at all in the game and some of the things you have to do seem next to impossible to do even by chance. And yet the game was a smash hit that had enormous influence on Japanese RPGs. I do not know why this was, or how the players at the time learned the secrets they needed.Kurisuhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00132568197501054206noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6162314467762792782.post-19343047182743724792022-10-22T09:35:39.201-04:002022-10-22T09:35:39.201-04:00It's so tiring when people bang on about adven...It's so tiring when people bang on about adventure games being "dead". I see articles about it year after year... while playing newly-released adventure games. They're no more dead than turn-based RPGs.Whinerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03211731698182417270noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6162314467762792782.post-47527446742880199602022-10-21T22:17:34.537-04:002022-10-21T22:17:34.537-04:00Cut to lengthy montage of Chester roaming outside ...Cut to lengthy montage of Chester roaming outside the Chandlers' Guild surrounded by bodies.mecha-nekohttps://www.twitter.com/mecha_nekonoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6162314467762792782.post-1762957848197713032022-10-21T19:42:37.734-04:002022-10-21T19:42:37.734-04:00internet walkthroughs and gamefaqs killed adventur...internet walkthroughs and gamefaqs killed adventures.leonelnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6162314467762792782.post-38072150193698596422022-10-21T13:27:34.002-04:002022-10-21T13:27:34.002-04:00Old Man Murray was an “edgy” gaming site that was ...Old Man Murray was an “edgy” gaming site that was almost always in bad taste yet somehow very influential. There’s literally direct references to it in some games e.g. Quake III has the site’s logo hidden in a map. I am surprised that it is still up despite essentially shutting down 20 years ago. Take it as a time capsule of what people could get away with in back them. The two main writers ended up going to Valve afterward for quite a long time with one of them going to Double Fine first to co-write Psychonauts.<br /><br />I love adventure games, but they have always been full of obtuse puzzles. Many of them can get away with it because they’re comedies so the logic has more room to stretch. The mustache puzzle isn’t bad per se, but it has a cartoony quality in a game that’s supposed to be serious. Sierra didn’t do any external playtesting until Leisure Suit Larry in 1987, and it certainly feels very erratic afterward. They’ve always felt like they were much more up to the individual whims of the main designer compared to LucasArts for example which playtested games heavily.<br /><br />Infocom games do have their fair share of obnoxious puzzles, but it’s worst in Zork I and II which were originally a single mainframe game at MIT. One of the puzzles was even an inadvertent suggestion by someone complaining about them! (tvivat gur rtt gb gur guvrs) They get better starting with Zork III, but Zork I and HGtG were the highest selling Infocom games by a wide margin so people mainly think of the BS in those instead of the fairer but less remembered games.dsparilnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6162314467762792782.post-78289329489855623172022-10-21T12:41:35.318-04:002022-10-21T12:41:35.318-04:00RPG Codex is an inclusive site that does not discr...RPG Codex is an inclusive site that does not discriminate against people with Tourette's Syndrom.POnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6162314467762792782.post-1571858378749742012022-10-21T12:26:46.988-04:002022-10-21T12:26:46.988-04:00Your words remind of "four kinds of MMO playe...Your words remind of "four kinds of MMO players" theory: some play to experience a power-fantasy, to dominate and win; some play to exercise their intelligence and reach mastery, the very real possibility to lose is important for them; some play to immerse themselves in a new world, to explore its wonders, akin to reading a book; some play to socialize and communicate...<br /><br />The needs of different kinds of players are, actually, implicitly exclusive to an extent, so balancing to accomodate, more or less, everyone, must be a delicate act by its nature.<br /><br />(I'd like, if I may, to thank you for the great games you made. They brought so much joy in my life in their time, I consider them to be in the top tier of ALL games EVER actually).Lorigulfnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6162314467762792782.post-43683921080198411212022-10-21T11:58:04.086-04:002022-10-21T11:58:04.086-04:00On the topic of difficulty balance, in addition to...On the topic of difficulty balance, in addition to a robust set of accessibility options, I think an interesting approach would be to design challenges so there's always a reliable way to advance, but there are more difficult and enticing approaches available for higher skilled players.<br /><br />One way is making the most challenging stuff optional, and counting on the completionist impulse to motivate players to give it a try. Another is to just make the reliable path a little more tedious, and lure the more skilled players to attempt higher difficult short cuts to avoid the grind.<br /><br />Ideally you end up with a way for all types of players to find their level of challenge, but never get completely stuck or frustrated.asimpkinsnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6162314467762792782.post-10908080375825510142022-10-21T11:19:26.648-04:002022-10-21T11:19:26.648-04:00It's rather silly to suggest that after decade...It's rather silly to suggest that after decades of popularity, the adventure genre was "killed" by difficult puzzles. Rather, its decline is usually attributed to rising popularity of other genres, such as FPS.<br /><br />It is true that certain specific adventure games are notorious for impossible solutions, for instance Curse of Enchantia or King's Quest V. But these are notorious precisely because MOST adventure games do not have impossible solutions. You can check out the Adventurer's Guild blog for that, they usually manage just fine without walkthroughs.Radianthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03866535042372152723noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6162314467762792782.post-72101497936103519642022-10-21T11:14:26.319-04:002022-10-21T11:14:26.319-04:00I guess its okay if Harland implies everyone who d...I guess its okay if Harland implies everyone who disagrees with him is an autist and mentally disabled. At least he didn't outright say it like on the RPGCodex, and just linked to it. Funny, I always thought that autists couldn't let things go, like people whining about some random puzzle in a 40-year-old video game on an unrelated website.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6162314467762792782.post-31988236620936886082022-10-21T10:43:49.222-04:002022-10-21T10:43:49.222-04:00They didn't get it right 99 times out of 100. ...They didn't get it right 99 times out of 100. More like 33 times out of 100. Text adventure (and graphical text adventure, like this one) games are notorious for impossible solutions. Eventually this habit killed the whole genre. I follow this other blog where they play these oldschool adventure games, and it's rare that they don't get stuck and are forced check a walkthrough. And this is with modern tools like Trizbort, lists of commonly used verbs, inspecting the machine code for text strings, etc. And when you see the solution you're like "how the heck was anyone supposed to ever think of that‽" It's not often that the conclusion is "this was a really well-done game that wasn't completely baffling." Harlandnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6162314467762792782.post-63473905711607940072022-10-21T10:34:17.770-04:002022-10-21T10:34:17.770-04:00It is just extremely difficult to objectively look...<i>It is just extremely difficult to objectively look at your chain of logic and see if somebody else is going to be able to follow it.</i><br /><br />Yes, and if you design a puzzle that's so difficult that nobody can solve it, you're incompetent at designing puzzles. And you should be smart enough to realize that. But you don't. Why? Because of the Dunning-Krueger Effect. It explains the situation perfectly.Harlandnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6162314467762792782.post-45280957939412830622022-10-21T09:43:52.027-04:002022-10-21T09:43:52.027-04:00Even in Hitchhiker's, the cruelty isn't mu...Even in Hitchhiker's, the cruelty isn't much about moon-logic. The infamous bablefish puzzle is cruel, but not illogical: every failure spells out what some part of what else you need to accomplish; the cruelty is that the process of working through it takes more attempts than you are allotted - there's several puzzles in HHGG that use the same "The text telling you that you have failed and the game is now unwinnable gives enough detail to lead you to the correct path" mechanism; the cruelty is that the failure generally comes LONG after you've passed the point of no return. The only Infocom game that I can think of as relying on the infamous sort of impressionistic "moon logic" you do, in fact, see a lot of in early games from lesser producers -the "Well, Spaghetti is sort of like a rope, so you can use pasta to climb out of a pit" sort of thing, is Nord and Bert, which, of course, is deliberately set in a moon-logic wordplay-based Far Side sort of world.Rosshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09703211229982182936noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6162314467762792782.post-2451483606490332122022-10-21T06:38:23.361-04:002022-10-21T06:38:23.361-04:00is there a way to edit your inventory and get anot...is there a way to edit your inventory and get another candle that wayksmbnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6162314467762792782.post-5168735396562223732022-10-21T03:52:52.145-04:002022-10-21T03:52:52.145-04:00This may be a dumb remark, but did you check if th...This may be a dumb remark, but did you check if the candle disappears after you've sealed the hole with wax? Could be that you only need very little wax, and so the candle remains in your inventory. (I'm probably trying to be far too generous for this game now...) Didiernoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6162314467762792782.post-58919202219794797882022-10-21T00:19:14.860-04:002022-10-21T00:19:14.860-04:00However, there's still a problem that with onl...However, there's still a problem that with only one candle in the game, there's no way to get back into the depths of the dungeon once you've left it to get a new lockpick. CRPG Addicthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01238237377918550322noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6162314467762792782.post-53375924931476434102022-10-21T00:18:32.566-04:002022-10-21T00:18:32.566-04:00I was wrong. You can get another lockpick from the...I was wrong. You can get another lockpick from the thieves outside the guild. It just takes a few tries. CRPG Addicthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01238237377918550322noreply@blogger.com