Re: Instant Death


8 Mar 1995 11:06:00 GMT

ceforma@rs6000.cmp.ilstu.edu (Christopher E. Forman) writes:

>Neil K. Guy (neilg@kits.sfu.ca) wrote:
>: Over the past few weeks I've downloaded three or four free or
>: shareware games from ftp.gmd.de. And have been very disappointed by
>: all of them. Why? Because all of them killed my character without any
>: real warning after a handful of turns.

>Could you be a bit more specific, even if it means including spoiler
>warnings?

>: Am I the only one old-fashioned enough to find this damned tiresome
>: and rather rude on the part of the author? I really wish that more
>: people would read Graham Nelson's excellent list of game suggestions
>: in his bill of rights... dropping dead of starvation after 2 minutes
>: or being frozen to death or mauled by a monster after stepping through
>: a doorway isn't my idea of fun.

>As for food, I've attempted a somewhat different approach in my game. Your
>character starts out with a pack of supplies and automatically eats whenever
>he gets hungry (provided he's not in a life-or-death situation at the time).

I've gotten to the stage now where I can't help thinking that Shareware
adventure games which begin with the player half-starved and then have lots
of inedible or lethal food lying around (Busted and Save Princeton come to
mind) are in fact using this as a shareware cripple - they say "register to
get help" - what they don't mention is that without the help, you'll never
find the food, and be severely limited as to how you can play. I don't mind
lightly crippled Shareware, but if this is true, it's ridiculous.
And - for evidence - the game Starship Columbus (ADVSYS) had a large
warning message that came up as soon as you found the item of food necessary
to play properly - "If you play beyond this point, you must register." Well,
by that point, I didn't want to.

--
Mark Green, CS Undergrad, Reading, UK                Standard Disclaimers apply
  Finger my account@laurel.rdg.ac.uk for G-Code and PGP 2.3 Public Key Block 
     "Sometimes after an electrical storm, I can see in five dimensions.."