IF Comp: How do y'all do it?

Judges, I mean.  (I don't know how authors do it, either, but whatever.)

38 games?  42 days, several of which are now GONE FOREVER?

I probably won't be playing many during the comp this year - I am temporarily typing impaired, and Real Life is wreaking havoc on my free time, but I salute you all.

Graphics Stuff

Cautious optimism about graphic stuff continues apace.  I'm basically thinking a top frame with a landscape made up of various sprites.  I think by layering the sprites and triggering them at different points, I can get a nice landscape that gives the player instant access to a bunch of info.  It's work, but it Fun Procrastination Work, not Maybe I Should Take Up Newt Catching as a Hobby Instead Work. 

Above is a .gif of a maple with its seasonal sprites.  Let me know what you think about the style - it's the first one completed, so there's time to turn back, but only for a narrow window.

Feelie Creation - the trees

Yeah. Trees are not quite what I want, but I am very proud of my gorge, which emerged after a lot of experimentation and pig-headed erasing.

Here's the no-trees one. Hopefully I'll find a tree style that I like, because it's sort of naked without them.
Woot.

Feelie Creation

I've spent a portion of the last month working on the game map. I've had a general layout in mind for awhile, but I'm trying to firm things up a bit so I have a clear mental picture. Feelies are nice for writers in the same way they're nice for readers - they help set the mood. Especially maps.

A lot of my time has been spent at the Fantasy Cartographer's Guild, trying to figure out how people make maps. (At least, how artistically challenged people make maps - I assume it's easier for those with artistic inclinations to begin with.) Guess what? Map making is hard. Even with tips, things look wrong more often than they look right, and many things don't look okay until you've layered them with a hundred other things.

Today I added a yellowish background to the map. It was originally parchment textured, but I wasn't feeling the texture. I think that'll be one of the last things I do, since it kind of messes with everything. But I love the saturated yellow light the background gives to the map - it's warm, and takes out some of that "LOOK! WHITE SPACE!" feeling.

I'm making the map on a very large scale - much larger than most people will want, but one that lets me get in close and do detail work if I feel like it. The farm and city are close to scale; other things are larger - the main river is not actually 150 feet across - to emphasize landmarks, or important bits of landscape. Making it all to scale just wasn't feeling right. I've tried more foresting techniques than I can shake a stick at. The one I'm liking currently isn't to scale, and it's a pain to implement, but the overall impression is one I like. Each tree is mildly silly looking, no more than one or two sponge-y clicks with a trunk silhouette, but in conglomerate . . . it's kind of foresty. (Except the conifers, which are looking sort of silly. I'm working on it.)

The nice thing is that as a sort of eclectic approach, it doesn't feel really ancient or futuristic, which is good because I want to leave that open for now.

It's not a terribly professional approach - some things are top down, some aren't, some are too big, some are carefully scaled, the color scheme is getting made up more or less on the fly - but it's a nice break from (not) programming. I'm especially proud of the color of the lake. It took me a long time to get that color.

There's still (obviously) a lot of work to do, but considering my art level, I'm pretty pleased with how it's going.

Psychic Controllers

There's a review up of a controller that works via thought patterns. Ooooh.

Now, I am a realist. I know that when Peter Molyneux predicts AI that's dynamic and awesome and changeable, he's lying through his teeth. I know when Bioware claims a dark fantasy world that it will be a generic fantasy world. I have played a virtual reality game (back in the earliest days of such things). I know that robots will not replace human beings for a long, long, long, long time if ever, and their "intelligence" is a complicated fraud. A cool fraud, but not actual intelligence.

And I know that there's got to be serious drawbacks with this thing.

Nevertheless - how awesome is that? Even better, they *claim* the device detects your emotional state (from bored to excited - nothing is said of fear, or surprise). The possibilities there are kind of staggering. I'm not about to shell out $300 for one - I assume this is a pretty crude device, and I prefer third-fourth generation devices, preferably after the price point has dropped - but it's interesting to think about programming a game where you have access to someone's emotional status. If the game could somehow sense the mingled resentment and rage when I hit a maze section, and offer me a way around it? If it could tell what elements (or at least scenarios) were emotionally satisfying (or at least not mind-rendingly boring)? That would be really cool.

Now I'd guess that this device isn't there yet, despite reports. Nevertheless, very interesting.

"Fun"

Something I was contemplating this weekend: Why would this game be fun, anyway?
I mean, I wouldn't code it if I didn't think I'd enjoy playing it at some point. But "fun" is such a weird, nebulous thing. If it's outside the mainstream, explaining why something would be fun can be a challenge. So what's the pull of playing an IF that's essentially a big farm sim?
It doesn't really have a plot as such, and certainly not a story as such, even in the extended design plan, which is the usual reason I give for playing IF.
Some things come to mind:
- Cracking the system. For someone else, who comes in from outside the game, there's a sort of pleasure in figuring out what needs to be done. I anticipate the main hurdle to be surviving the first winter - after that it'll probably get easier.
- Exploring the world. I expect the world to be relatively large, between garden, orchard, fields, pastures, buildings, and wild areas, and hope to have it change over time, which is cool.
- For genetics geeks like me, there's something kind of cool about teasing out what's inherited and trying to isolate the right gene combos to get what you want.
- There's the joy of seeing something you built over time change and grow (i.e. planting an orchard and getting fruit from it, seeing it blossom, etc.)
- There's the achievement piece - have you completed all the upgrades on the house? Put on a nice new roof?
- There's a time management piece - there's no way you can keep on top of everything. What are your priorities?
- There's sort of a curiosity/world building piece I should really work on - not that this is pure realism at all, but what would someone's options be if he/she was cut off with limited survival skills? And playing a game is more fun than actually doing it.
- Responsiveness/growth - this is sort of a world-exploration thing, but discovering what you can do. Since skills grow with practice, the player should have more opportunities to do stuff.
- And, of course, if there's anything Dwarf Fortress has taught me, it's that losing is fun. Hopefully it can be here, too, rather than infinitely frustrating.

I'm definitely concerned about the game becoming too easy after the first year. I can think of a few deus ex machina ways to slap up the difficulty level, but not many organic ways.
One thought would be to begin to introduce other survivors that need to be supported.
Another would be the increasing affect of wilderness - as the area becomes more fully abandoned, predators move in.

Either way, that's a long a way off, and definite supplementary material.