A Fictionally Interactive Oddity…

…Or, why the death of the text-adventure has been greatly exaggerated.

What is a text adventure?

There are those that would dismiss text-adventures as gaming-dinosaurs that rightfully died out decades ago.
And to be fair I suppose it is now possible that a generation has grown up without ever seeing, let alone playing, the genre.

Or perhaps you only know them as their latter-life nom-de-plume of ‘Interactive Fiction:’ a name that a lot of purists loathe with a passion, and although I wouldn't place myself firmly in that camp, I must admit that I do prefer the name ‘Text-Adventure.’

So what is it? Well, it’s essentially a story-based text only puzzle game, where you communicate with the computer by typing in common-language phrases and the computer responds. This response may be based on any number of conditions, not least of which may be your location, items you are carrying, objects or characters that share your location, things you may or may not have already done, or how you have actually phrased your commands.  And if all that sounds confusing and dull, you may be half-right. Confusing – undoubtedly, but dull? Like anything else that entirely depends on the player. There are people, like me, who began playing text-adventures in the early to mid-eighties, and still occasionally find something interesting in them now. But there is also a dedicated core of people still playing old and new text-adventures, and there is no shortage of new interactive fiction being written. So the text-adventure is still very much alive and not an extinct dinosaur medium at all. Hopefully this blog will go some ways to showing you the how, why, and where’s of this…

When is a TV not a TV?

...When It's a Vectrex.

Welcome to the wonderful world of the Vectrex. The worlds one and only vector graphics bases console. 

Now you may think you have seen vector graphics on everything from old home-computers right up to modern day browser based games. 

But the chances are you really haven't. What you probably have seen are line-based games made up of pixels, on a CRT rastascan or LCD matrix based screen.

Ah, you say, but all computer graphics are made out of pixels. Well no actually, vector systems displays aren't, and only a handful of Arcade cabinet games from the eighties, and the Vectrex console; by Milton Bradley, no less; have truly been capable of proper vector graphics.

The Revolution Has Been Televised...

My grandparents remembered a time before television. My parent talked about a time where only one or two houses in their street had a TV... Black and white of course, with a whole three stations. I myself remember the hype when a forth station was added to this lineup only to be followed, some years later,  by a fifth. By this time our family TV was a whopping 28" and in colour with almost twice as much stations as it used to have, and not only that... I could also plug my VIC-20 computer into it and actually play games on there as well. Surely we were now truly living in modern times...

Oh how long ago that seems. Now here I sit in front of our modest 42" flat screen HD digital TV watching SKY and wondering if theres anything more interesting on NetFlics or LoveFilm, whilst typing this into one of our three tablet devices, and checking for e-mails and tweets on my smart phone. But if my teenage self could suddenly jump from then to now all this would be secondary, amazing, astounding, but secondary... Because underneath the TV sits a PS3. And there's an Xbox 360 and a PC in the bedroom, and what would I think when I switched ether of these, now aging, devices on - well, what would I think after wiping the drool away from my gaping mouth, that is?

Will iOs7 be the straw that broke Apple’s back?

Has the mighty Apple finally managed to slightly annoy its, traditionally very loyal, core user-base?

You may think their products are overpriced. You may get annoyed at their unnecessarily non-standard connectors, or become frustrated with their closed operating system and insular software licencing policies. But if you do then you probably aren't an ‘Appleite’ and definitely not on their target customer base.

Was the latest iOs7 upgrading a step too far for too many established users?

Apple has prepared a very successful business model through their plug-and-play approach to their systems, and I can see the appeal of these types of product to their target audience, who are for the most part, average non-technical consumers. But this time Apple appears to have missed the mark with the look of their new desktop. And in line with Apples own policy, the ‘look,’ along with simple no-fuss functionality, has always been one of the most important selling points.

Yes there were teething problems with the new operating system, then to be fair most new operating system have these, but this time a significant portion of the established user base seems to have taken a general dislike to the fundamental look and approach of the new desktop. Has Apple pulled a ‘Windows 8’ and pushed their vision of a modern desktop upon a consumer base that doesn't want it? A quick Google search would seem to support this hypothesis…

Different format, same game…

Or, when did competing systems start to run the same software?

If, like me, you are old enough to remember the 8Bit console and home-computer era  you will no doubt remember the slew of arcade game conversions, which steadily began to appear for practically every known 8Bit format. 

These various implementations were often rather interesting to say the least...

Some were remarkably good, others simply awful, but they all had their own very unique take on their parent game. 

This was largely due to the limitations and eccentricities of the various, and varied, hardware platforms of the time. But a not inconsequential part of the success, or failure, of these conversions was also down to the programming teams responsible for re-writing the parent, arcade cabinet, game for the home hardware.

 Both conversions and original games produced for multiple platforms during the 8, 16, and to a certain extent the 32Bit era were often all very different in their look, feel and playability. I'm not saying this was a good or bad thing, it’s just a fact. Sometimes the games shone on a particular platform, other times all the versions were equally as good or bad as each other. But they were invariably distinct, with the platform running the game being clearly obvious: except perhaps between a hand full of 8Bit Atari and Commodore 64 titles, but there are generally always some exceptions to most rules.

  There was a time when the PC lagged  behind its 8Bit contemporaries.     

Show me the money…

… Or why are so many Indie start-ups asking for crowd-funding?

Do you recognise the four games on the left? Well, a lot of people will, and all of them are independently produced  games, what are commonly referred to as 'Indi-Games.' 

But there are many levels of 'Indi' game makers... 

As you may or may not know, I've been dabbling in the wonderful world of no-budget PC indie games lately, and one thing I very quickly noticed was the amount of  individual start-up programmers and small two-to-three man teams that are now asking for up-front funds from crowd-funding projects like Kick-starter. Then they usually complain bitterly that nobody is giving them any money for their brilliant idea…

Well, not to be harsh or anything, but why should they? And more to the point why ‘exactly’ do you need it?

I've looked at quite a few projects, many of which seem to be nothing but an idea, and can’t for the life of me see where these asked for thousands would be going. Generally their case isn't helped much by the complete lack of explanation over where the money will be spent, and I have seen some very well laid out Kick-starter projects that explained exactly where, and when, each penny of the money would go.

To be honest I can't see that many of these projects are any more ambitious than some of my own. And I don’t need any money to develop those, just the will, a half-way decent computer, my brain, and some time… Although you’d be surprised how difficult it could sometimes be to get those things together in the same room and talking to each other.

Should story based action games be difficult?

So I’ve been playing some relatively modern and mainstream games lately, and it’s obvious they are all very-much story based and designed to be completed.

The thing is some parts of some of these games seem to unnecessarily bog-down the progression by being harder than the vast majority of the game.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I like arcade games with a high difficulty curve, but these are action games, designed to be completed within a certain time-frame.  I think the problem occurs when you get a boss stage or level that seems to grind the game by forcing you to play through it again and again before you can progress the story, or when a certain part of a level is suddenly and unexpectedly hard. If you aren’t used to hard game-play it soon becomes infuriating rather than challenging, chiefly because it is holding you up from progressing in the all-important story.

I know some people have complained about mainstream gaming becoming increasingly easier and designed to be completed (the walk-through game, as some have called it) but if it is a story based game I want to be able to hack/slash or shoot my way through that story without coming up against an inappropriately placed hard grind – whether it be a boss or a particularly difficult part within a level. I can see how this could be interpreted as bad level design.

I don’t think the idea of a ‘walk-through game’ is inherently bad. Surely it’s the experience that matters most, and these games are generally designed to take a set number of hours to complete. So any sticking point is just that, a point where you are stuck and unable to perform the main goal of progressing through the story.