| ___. .___ _ ___. | |
| / _| | \ / \ / ._| | |
| \ \ | o_/ | | | |_. | |
| .\ \ | | | o | | | | | |
| The |___/ociety for the |_|romotion of |_|_|dventure \___|ames. | |
| ISSUE #48 | |
| Edited by Jimmy Maher (maher SP@G grandecom.net) | |
| May 2, 2007 | |
| SPAG Website: http://www.sparkynet.com/spag | |
| SPAG #48 is copyright (c) 2007 by Jimmy Maher. | |
| Authors of reviews and articles retain the rights to their contributions. | |
| All email addresses are spamblocked -- replace the name of our magazine | |
| with the traditional 'at' sign. | |
| ARTICLES IN THIS ISSUE ---------------------------------------------------- | |
| Editorial | |
| IF News | |
| A History of Russian IF by Sergey Minin | |
| INTERVIEWS IN THIS ISSUE -------------------------------------------------- | |
| Andrey Grankin | |
| Victor Koryanov | |
| Akela | |
| Eugene Tugolukov | |
| Evgeny Bychkov | |
| Yuri Pavlenko | |
| ZombX | |
| REVIEWS IN THIS ISSUE ----------------------------------------------------- | |
| The Ebb and the Flow of the Tide | |
| The Elysium Enigma | |
| The Traveling Swordsman | |
| SPECIFICS | |
| ========= | |
| The Elysium Enigma | |
| EDITORIAL------------------------------------------------------------------ | |
| Late last year Scott Rettberg of the Electronic Literature Organization was kind | |
| enough to send me a CD containing the ELO's Collection #1. I wanted to make a | |
| serious effort to explore the CD, but with the Competition then wrapping up | |
| followed by the holiday season, I didn't get to it until quite recently. Having | |
| finally done so, I thought I would pass along a few thoughts here for those | |
| interested in branching out a bit to explore other forms of computer-based | |
| writing. | |
| IF fans will be happy to hear that our work gets considerable attention in the | |
| collection, to the tune of five complete games. Represented are All Roads by | |
| Jon Ingold; Whom the Telling Changed by Aaron Reed; Savoir Faire and Galatea by | |
| Emily Short; and Bad Machine by Dan Shiovitz. It's hard to take exception with | |
| any of these choices, and this exposure for IF alongside so many works of | |
| "serious" electronic literature certainly can't be a bad thing. | |
| But what of the rest of the collection? Well, it's a bit overwhelming, to start | |
| with. No fewer than 55 other works are present here, of widely varying | |
| approaches, and, perhaps inevitably, I found it a bit of a mixed bag. Some of | |
| this displays the postmodern aesthetic in full flower, and that is just not my | |
| bag. | |
| Some of the more painful examples: | |
| Kenneth Goldsmith gives us "an unedited document of every word I spoke during | |
| the week of April 15-21, 1996," through which I learned that Kenneth drinks a | |
| lot of coffee and talks a lot in a way that often manages to be vapid and | |
| pretentious at the same time. Textual voyeurs may be delighted, I suppose. I'm | |
| not sure what the rest of us are supposed to get out of it. | |
| Then we have the inevitable Michael Joyce hypertext fiction. The selection | |
| here, Twelve Blue, has come into my life several times in the past. After | |
| literally years of study, I still can't figure out just how the interface is | |
| actually supposed to work. Perhaps Joyce is the anti-Apple of the computer | |
| world, or maybe my feverish clicking around the screen in search of something | |
| that will lead to more lines of overwrought prose is some sort of commentary on | |
| the state of postmodern life. Lines like this sound like extracts from one of | |
| the annual tortured emo-kid Competition entries: "Follow me? What choice do we | |
| have but love, what season after?" | |
| There are a lot of even easier targets here, including several examples of texts | |
| that randomly recombine letters and words into sequences that usually result in | |
| gibberish but occasionally stumble into a recognizable word or two, thus | |
| illustrating... something. The fundamental instability and subjectivity of | |
| meaning, I suppose, or something similarly high-flown. It just looks like | |
| jumbles of random letters to me. | |
| So it's all pretentious claptrap, right? Well, no, not at all. As I said, it's | |
| a mixed bag, and there was much here that I liked quite a lot, stuff that got | |
| beyond this obsession with surface textuality to actually say something to me. | |
| One of my favorites was a modest little piece called Like Stars in a Clear Night | |
| Sky by Sharif Ezzat. It opens with a voice speaking in Arabic -- subtitled in | |
| English -- introducing me to some of the stories it would like to tell me | |
| against a panorama of a night sky. Then I can click on various stars to hear | |
| associated vignettes written in the style of the Arabian nights. The stories it | |
| tells are surprisingly compelling, and the piece moved me for reasons I can't | |
| quite describe. It also made me realize again what a lovely language Arabic can | |
| be to listen to. The whole can't be reduced to a single descriptive sentence | |
| describing the author's clever gimmick... and that's the point, really. This one | |
| has soul. | |
| Another great one is Urbanalities by "babel and escha." Garish animations fly | |
| by accompanied by some great tunes, and phrases appear that are (oh no!) | |
| randomly formed, but with enough reason to make superficial sense. So you get | |
| things like, "I think the unemployed hatter, he has weapons of mass | |
| destruction," which I find unaccountably hilarious. The whole thing reminded me | |
| of wandering amidst the bustle of a city, receiving snatches of dialogue out of | |
| context along with a kaleidoscope of colors, images, music. | |
| In Cruising by Ingrid Ankerson and Megan Sapnara a wonderful little poem about | |
| the time-worn small-town teenage American practice of cruising on a Saturday | |
| night is spoken aloud, and spoken in character at that, while a jumble of | |
| evocative images tumbles by. I just wish there were more of it, as it starts to | |
| loop all too quickly. | |
| Maybe the funnest piece of the bunch is Nio by Jim Andrews, which lets the | |
| reader construct little musical pieces of her own by combining sound samples on | |
| the fly. The program is clever enough to make it just about impossible to make | |
| anything that sounds really BAD, although I gave it my best try. This one will | |
| put a smile on anyone's face. Strange that its author elsewhere indulges in the | |
| dreaded random text combination game. | |
| And so, while much of this collection carries an aesthetic approach and | |
| worldview that does little for me, about a third of it made me sit up and take | |
| notice, and at least a few pieces I found delightful, even moving. The curators | |
| of the collection said they wanted to capture the full range of electronic | |
| writing, and I think they have succeeded. You can check it out for yourself at | |
| http://collection.eliterature.org/1. Click the About link at the bottom of that | |
| page for information on requesting a hardcopy of the whole thing on CD-ROM. I | |
| will be happy to accept commentaries on the collection as a whole or even | |
| reviews of individual pieces, if you care to write them and send them to me. | |
| Actually, I would like anything from you, folks. The bulk of this issue is a | |
| the second part of an ongoing series about non-English IF. It consists of a | |
| number of interviews conducted and translated by Valentine Kopteltsev with | |
| members of the Russian IF community, and I must say I think it's some very | |
| fascinating stuff. Other than that, we've also got a great SPAG Specifics piece | |
| by Valentine, who has really gone above and beyond this time, and another review | |
| from the ever-reliable Mike Harris. I wrote a couple of reviews for games that | |
| I've replayed recently and thought really deserved coverage, and... that's it. | |
| I don't want this to permanently become the Jimmy and Valentine show any more | |
| than you do. So please, think about helping us out and getting next issue's | |
| review total back up to where it was for the last few issues before this one. | |
| SPAG is yours, after all. I just put it together each month. I received a lot | |
| of positive feedback about the larger size of recent issues. It's up to all of | |
| you whether that trend continues. | |
| IF NEWS ------------------------------------------------------------------- | |
| 2006 XYZZY AWARDS | |
| The following games received recognition for representing the cream of the IF | |
| crop of 2006. | |
| Best Game: The Elysium Enigma by Eric Eve | |
| Best Writing: Delightful Wallpaper by Andrew Plotkin | |
| Best Story: The Traveling Swordsman by Mike Snyder | |
| Best Setting: Floatpoint by Emily Short | |
| Best Puzzles: Delightful Wallpaper by Andrew Plotkin | |
| Best NPCs: Floatpoint by Emily Short | |
| Best Individual Puzzle: navigating the mansion in Delightful Wallpaper | |
| Best Individual NPC: Leena in The Elysium Enigma | |
| Best PC: Delightful Wallpaper by Andrew Plotkin | |
| Best Use of Medium: The Baron by Victor Gijsbers | |
| I can't complain about any of these selections. Congratulations to all the | |
| authors!. The following is a link to a transcript of the awards ceremony which | |
| took place on the IF MUD. | |
| http://www.xyzzynews.com/2006xyzzyawards.txt | |
| SPRING THING 2007 | |
| Greg Boettcher's annual contest for longer, hopefully more polished games than | |
| those usually seen in the fall Comp has come and gone. There were four entries | |
| this year, with Fate by Victor Gijsbers winning top honors (and making it two | |
| Spring Thing wins in a row for Victor). All of the games were quite well | |
| received, so see the contest website for the full standings and to download the | |
| entrants. | |
| http://www.springthing.net/2007 | |
| IF ART SHOW 2007 | |
| After a three-year hiatus, Marnie Parker will be running another Art Show this | |
| year. Deadline for entries is May 18. See the contest website for more rules | |
| and information. | |
| http://members.aol.com/iffyart | |
| GHOST TOWN REDUX | |
| Greg Boettcher is running a unique competition for games that are a "remake or | |
| adaptation" of the old Scott Adams game Ghost Town. You should get your entries | |
| to Greg by July 30. | |
| http://www.gregboettcher.com/games/sagtr.htm | |
| INNOVATION COMP | |
| David Fisher is running a competition for transcripts illustrating things we | |
| can't do in IF today, but would like to be able to do. Yes, I know, it sounds | |
| strange, but it's a neat idea actually. You won't have time to prepare an entry | |
| if you are reading about it for the first time here, as the deadline is April | |
| 30, but you can read the transcripts and judge. | |
| http://www.ifwiki.org/index.php/Innovation_Comp | |
| SECOND PERSON | |
| The MIT Press has recently released the best book on interactive narrative ever | |
| printed. Really, seriously, it's that good. IF gets quite a bit of attention, | |
| with articles from Steve Meretzky on Planetfall, Emily Short on Savoir Faire, | |
| and Nick Montfort on understanding the role of the PC in IF. Also included are | |
| a nice little article on Andrew Plotkin's Shade and even a non-IF-related | |
| article from SPAG founder cum boardgame designer Kevin Wilson. That's all good | |
| stuff, but I found the wealth of articles on tabletop role-playing, a form I had | |
| completely lost touch with since my days of playing Dungeons and Dragons in high | |
| school, even more stimulating. It caused me to start looking at RPGs again and | |
| to realize some great work is being done in this area. I think we could learn a | |
| lot from them. And then there's great, extended articles on the inner workings | |
| of the groundbreaking Facade, and a nice article from Chris Crawford on his | |
| interactive storytelling system, and... Just go buy this one, folks. It may be | |
| published by MIT Press, but it's not a lifeless academic text at all. (Trust | |
| me! I'm a graduate student, so I know lifeless academic texts when I see them.) | |
| http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?ttype=2&tid=11000 | |
| ZOOM 1.1.0 | |
| Andrew Hunter has improved his Unix and Mac Z-Code interpreter to make it... | |
| more than just a Z-Code interpreter. This version adds support for Glulx, TADS | |
| 2 and 3, and Hugo games. Wow! | |
| http://www.logicalshift.co.uk/unix/zoom | |
| GNOME INFORM 7 | |
| Philip Chimento is working on a version of the shiny Inform 7 IDE for versions | |
| of Linux with the Gnome libraries installed. See his development site for the | |
| latest beta. | |
| http://sourceforge.net/projects/gnome-inform7 | |
| QUEST 4.0 | |
| Alex Warren has released a major update to his Quest IF authoring software, | |
| which plays in the "no programming required" arena of ADRIFT. Also like ADRIFT, | |
| this is a shareware product. The full version will set you back .95. | |
| http://www.axeuk.com/quest | |
| ONLINE QUEST GAMES | |
| Mr. Warren has also launched a website where one can play Quest text adventures | |
| online for free. | |
| http://www.textadventures.co.uk | |
| NEW Z-MACHINE INTERPRETER | |
| Mike Greger has authored a new Z-Machine interpreter in C# for Windows. He | |
| calls it Grue. | |
| http://home.cinci.rr.com/grue | |
| INFORM 7 TUTORIAL | |
| Stephen Granade wrote an article for PC Plus recently on getting started with | |
| Inform 7. He's now made it available on his Brass Lantern website as well. | |
| http://brasslantern.org/writers/howto/i7tutorial.html | |
| EMILY SHORT ON GAMASUTRA | |
| IF got some attention on the Gamasutra, a site which normally focuses on | |
| professional game development, in the form of an interview with Emily Short. | |
| Savoir Faire gets a lot of attention, as does Inform 7. | |
| http://gamasutra.com/features/20070410/munroe_01.shtml | |
| HOTEL DUSK | |
| Speaking of commercial products, Nintendo has released an "interactive novel" | |
| for the DS handheld console that looks very interesting. I don't have a DS to | |
| play it on, unfortunately, but maybe some of you do. | |
| http://www.hoteldusk.com | |
| CIRCUMREALITY | |
| Mike Rozak has released a beta version of CircumReality, a development kit for | |
| multiplayer graphical adventures. Windows only, and it requires quite a | |
| powerful machine to run, but looks very interesting. | |
| http://www.circumreality.com | |
| SPAG NEEDS YOU! | |
| I've already chided you about the lack of reviews I received for this issue. | |
| There are so many games out there deserving of reviews. Please, won't you take | |
| an hour or two of your time to give something back to an author who has tried | |
| her best to entertain you? | |
| SPAG 10 MOST WANTED LIST | |
| ======================== | |
| 1. Remaining IF Comp 2006 Games (any or some) | |
| 2. Getfeldt's Treasure | |
| 3. 1893: A World's Fair Mystery | |
| 4. Final Selection | |
| 5. The Retreat | |
| 6. When in Rome, parts 1 and/or 2 | |
| 7. Bronze | |
| 8. Suprematism | |
| 9. Moments Out of Time Adventure Type | |
| 10. Spring Thing 2007 games (any, some, or all) | |
| A HISTORY OF RUSSIAN IF By Sergey Minin (aka Zer)--------------------------- | |
| All Quiet on the Eastern Front? | |
| History of QUESTion | |
| In general, adventure games are rather popular in Russia. Of course, they have | |
| incomparably less fans than, say, Half Life or Diablo, but they can't complain | |
| about lack of attention, either. The genre made a name for itself in the 1990- | |
| ies, when the Quest-series by Sierra gained popularity in the CIS countries. | |
| Even people barely aware of the genre would know such serials as Quest for | |
| Glory, King Quest, and Police Quest. The expression "made a name" is to be taken | |
| literally, because the simply-to-pronounce term quest soon replaced the word | |
| adventure, which sounded more intricately (at least to a Russian ear), almost | |
| entirely. As a result, the following terminology has been spontaneously formed: | |
| a graphic 2D adventure is usually called a quest, a work of interactive fiction | |
| � a text quest, and only 3D adventures with action elements are adventures as | |
| such for Russians. Occasionally, strange mutants would show up, defining their | |
| own genre as "Adventure/Quest", or even "Adventure/Quest/IF"! | |
| However, due to a number of reasons, the predecessor of graphic adventures, | |
| interactive fiction, isn't too well-known in the fatherland of Pushkin and | |
| Dostoevski. A few hundreds know the genre exists, several dozens at least | |
| attempt to play text adventures, and faithful fans can be counted on the | |
| fingers� of one hand. One of the grounds for such a low popularity of IF in "the | |
| world's most-reading country" (one of the myths created by propagandus | |
| sovieticus) was undoubtedly the lack of appropriate material resources at the | |
| time the genre was on the height of its fame: in 1980-s, the term "personal | |
| computer" sounded like non-science fiction to USSR citizens. CYOA books, which | |
| were, in a way, forerunners of IF, also passed our country by somehow. | |
| Figuratively speaking, we didn't learn Adventure at our mothers' knee, didn't | |
| play Zork in our childhood, and weren't engaged in discussions about Trinity | |
| during breaks between the lectures we attended. To most of us, the legendary | |
| names of Steve Meretzky, Brian Moriarty, and Dave Lebling would convey nothing. | |
| The most real chance of gaining a firm footing in Russia cropped up for IF by | |
| the end of 1980-s, when the British star called Speccy just started crawling up | |
| the Soviet sky, and text-only games weren't considered a mossy anachronism yet. | |
| And while it probably was the most unfavorable period for the residents of the | |
| former "socialist camps" � inflation, dramatic impoverishment of people, and | |
| growth of the unemployment rate anything but stimulated the expansion of a | |
| relatively expensive "toy" en masse � the first Russian "adventurers" showed up | |
| just then. Sure, they weren't many � the specificity of the genre, as well as | |
| the need for at least rudimentary knowledge of English had their (negative) | |
| effect; still, early in the 1990-s, one of the first Russian magazines dedicated | |
| to computer games for the ZX Spectrum, ZX-Review, entered the scene. A great | |
| deal of its materials was devoted just to adventures. The editor of the magazine | |
| and simultaneously one of its authors, Sergey Simonovich, can by right be | |
| honorably entitled the first PR manager for gaming in Russia, because, thanks to | |
| his unexampled adventure promotional efforts, the circle of "initiates" of the | |
| genre became considerably wider, although (sigh) it still remained a club for a | |
| select company. | |
| In the 1990-s, the mass computerization of the ex-USSR by IBM PC-compatible | |
| machines began. By the time a personal computer had become a common thing at a | |
| Russian's home (middle to late 1990-s), graphic games already dominated our SVGA | |
| screens, and I'm afraid you couldn't find too many people who, instead of Zork | |
| Grand Inquisitor, would prefer to play its text-only predecessor. Thus, after a | |
| short blip of interest for the text genre, silence fell, which was complicated | |
| by the further graphical evolution of the IBM PC. Our old acquaintance, Mr. | |
| Simonovich, made an attempt to break this hush by introducing his new project, | |
| the online magazine PC-Review, now devoted to games for the PC, whose popularity | |
| soared up like a rocket. | |
| In 1996, this journal published a translation of the epochal work by Graham | |
| Nelson, The Craft of Adventure, and enclosed the immortal Curses by the same | |
| author. Among those who got caught in the meshes at that time was your most | |
| humble servant, but (I'd like to add gloatingly) he was not the only one. Later | |
| the magazine and its offline satellites -- PC-Express, PC-Forum, and PC-Help � | |
| repeatedly addressed interactive fiction: the documentation for the adventure | |
| games development system OASYS was translated into Russian, an article about the | |
| legendary Infocom and games produced by this company was brought out, a joint | |
| brainstorm of Curses was announced, and So Far by Andrew Plotkin received its | |
| portion of attention, too. Unfortunately, the PC-Review project ceased to exist | |
| soon after that. After its demise, no other Russian media would launch such | |
| large-scale operations for promotion of "text quests". | |
| RussIFication | |
| As mentioned earlier, another reason for the lacking popularity of IF in Russia | |
| was the language barrier. Even if the novice had a "text adventuring" vein in | |
| her/his character, (s)he'd be confused by the many lines of foreign text, and | |
| scared away by the necessity of establishing a dialog with the game in a little | |
| known language. This made the newbie's choice quite obvious � graphic games, | |
| where the narrative was reduced to a minimum, and most puzzles could be solved | |
| by uncomplicated manipulations with the mouse. However, attempts of directing | |
| the genre on Russian rails are known even from the Spectrum epoch. Probably the | |
| most well-known piece of Russian IF of that period was The Stellar Legacy, a | |
| game released in 1995 for the Spectrum that was agonizing by then (its graphical | |
| remake has been released a short time ago by the companies Step Creative Group | |
| and 1S). The Stellar Legacy represented a graphical game with a textual input of | |
| suggested sentences by means of a menu system (or, to put it short, a CYOA). | |
| By 1999 A. D. the world-wide web even reached Russian backwaters. People in | |
| the provinces stopped making sacrifices to the mighty yet mysterious divinity | |
| called "Internet", and at last, the word "Dial-up" wasn't used for scaring | |
| babies in the villages anymore. Russian Internet-communities, forums and other | |
| forms of virtual gatherings started mushrooming out. The not too numerous IF | |
| fans didn't stay on the sidelines, either. About this time, several remarkable | |
| sites dedicated to interactive fiction were founded, and the idea of creating | |
| "native" Russian text adventures was discussed on the forums actively. IF | |
| theorists were joined by people who weren't acquainted with the genre before, | |
| but were attracted by the relative easiness of game creation � it's known that | |
| coding a video game is a very laborious enterprise, and at the current stage of | |
| development of the gaming industry, it's practically impossible to complete a | |
| project of decent quality on one's own. Yet, the experience of the foreign | |
| colleagues, as well as the success of such systems as Inform, TADS, Hugo, and | |
| Adrift, showed us -- nothing was impossible in the IF-genre. Still, the whole | |
| thing rested on that notorious "language barrier". The question was, how to | |
| overcome it. The solution seemed simple: either develop a parser-based game | |
| platform similar to the "western" ones that'd support Russian, or confine | |
| oneself to creation of CYOA-games akin to the aforementioned Stellar Legacy, | |
| that'd only allow the player to pick options from a menu. | |
| However, things that look easy in theory often conceal pitfalls when it comes to | |
| putting them into practice. The problem is, the structure of the Russian | |
| language differs from that of English significantly -- say, you can't get by | |
| with only one verb form. Add declinable substantives, and changeable endings to | |
| that. The general difficulty of creating a universal development system from | |
| scratch isn't to be underestimated, either. To put it short, there were more | |
| than enough pitfalls for breaking one's legs, so that most of the parser-based | |
| projects didn't survive till their delivery, many of them never getting any | |
| further than the pregnancy planning stage. Finally, only menu-based (in other | |
| words, CYOA) projects stayed alive, the most well-known of which were URQ | |
| (Universal Ripsoft Quest) � the most popular development system today; and QSP | |
| (Quest Soft Player). Both platforms still are fit and vigorous, and have been | |
| updated several times. About the same time, the IF-community split in two | |
| parties: "the parserers" and "the menuists". Although the parties were supposed | |
| to be friendly, their relationships varied between cold neutrality and open | |
| conflict. | |
| By 2001, after getting tired of the many duplicating posts on different forums, | |
| the Russian IFers decided to unite on a common place that should become a | |
| central point for the whole community. After the naming and hosting problems had | |
| been settled, the web site http://taplap.ru/ became such a point. The start was | |
| very vigorous and energetic, but later on, as it often happens, the site | |
| activity went downhill little by little. At the same time, an attempt was made | |
| to link together the two community parts � parser-lovers and menu-devotees � | |
| under the aegis of this site. This attempt, however, remained unsuccessful: the | |
| menuists preferred to go their own way, and to create their own, separate | |
| communities (http://urq.allquests.ru/ and http://qsp.borda.ru/). And it must be | |
| said, they turned out to be much more active than their parser-addicted rivals � | |
| games were released more often, "internal" competitions for CYOA games were | |
| carried out, and the community live in general was more intense; the parserers, | |
| on the other hand, as well as the site http://taplap.ru/ itself, remained in a | |
| coma-like state since the end of 2003. | |
| The 21st century set in, but the Russian IF-scene still didn't have a really | |
| working development system for parser-based games. This changed in 2002, as one | |
| of the enthusiasts of Russian text adventuring, Andrey Grankin aka GrAnd, | |
| started the venture of translating TADS into Russian, which was successfully | |
| completed in the same year. As a result of his titanic work, most of the | |
| "Russian national particularities" could be solved, and the ones that couldn't | |
| were evaded. The overall happiness was so close, it seemed, and Russian games � | |
| about to start pouring out like from a cornucopia. However, it didn't happen. A | |
| few released games, oodles of unfulfilled promises, translation of Ditch Day | |
| Drifter and Deep Space Drifter � that's pretty much all game authors vouchsafed | |
| to create using Russian version of TADS called RTADS (http://www.rtads.org) | |
| between 2002 and 2005. It's difficult to say what the reasons for that were � | |
| maybe the lost of interest in IF by most community members, maybe the overall | |
| stupor that befell the community just in this period of time, or maybe the | |
| relatively steep learning curve TADS is known for. | |
| We are the Champions! | |
| The idea of organizing contests analogical to the "main" IF-Competition was in | |
| the air probably from the very first post made by The Unknown Player at T?me | |
| Immemorial, and after the (partial) joining up, the community came to the | |
| conclusion of the necessity for such a contest. The first Russian Interactive | |
| Fiction Competion aka RussComp took place early in 2002, and was a brilliant... | |
| flop, since there was exactly one game participating. In the same year, | |
| literally a few months later, "attempt number 2" was made, with 5 participating | |
| games, and a successful completion. In spite of a lot of talking about the | |
| necessity of maintaining this great tradition, nothing happened until 2006. The | |
| previous year, the community site experienced a certain revival, and another try | |
| to organize the contest (this time called KRIL'06) was made. This time, six | |
| games participated (four parser-based, and two CYOAs), and it must be said that, | |
| in respect to game quality, this competition surpassed the previous one by far. | |
| This, of course, inspires certain hopes. As it turned out that, in spite of | |
| disappearing of the sonic radars' screens, the submarine called "Russian | |
| Interactive Fiction" didn't sink or go for a burton � it was just exploring the | |
| seabed for a while. Who knows � maybe it emerges to the surface once more. Not | |
| to dive back this time. | |
| RUSCOMP 2002 Results: | |
| 1. Shadow of the Malice, author: Elf Dillm (own parser) | |
| 2. In the Deepness, author: Vovka Smert' (URQ) | |
| 3. Desperation, author: Igor Savine (own parser) | |
| 4. Zombie IV, author: Eugene Sharov (own parser) | |
| 5. Abyss, author: Eugene Sharov (own parser) | |
| KRIL 2006 Results: | |
| 1. Dreamour, author: Andrey "GrAnd" Grankin (RTADS). | |
| Although the game hardly can be considered a completed project � it's rather a | |
| prequel � its fantasy world full of caves, goblins, and golems was to the liking | |
| of the vast majority of the judges. | |
| 2. Waiting for the Morning, author: Stas "Unreal" Starkov (RTADS). | |
| A short puzzle-based digression to the roof of a building, where your goal is to | |
| get down. The most polished game of the contest. | |
| 3. Genie from the Machine, author: Korvin (URQ). | |
| Sci-fi story about an astronaut whose ship had an accident, and his brave | |
| girlfriend. | |
| 4. Stone of Shady Sands, author: Ivan "Zevs" Zykov (own menu-based engine). | |
| Multimedia-heavy, post-apocalyptic adventures evoked by the immortal piece by | |
| Interplay. | |
| 5. Klara the Jam-Plunderer, author: Belial (6 days � an original parser-based | |
| development system). | |
| A charming little story about a naughty sweet tooth. | |
| 6. Gad, author: Davarg and Nunhan (RTADS). | |
| A (rather unsuccessful) attempt to create a bleak medieval world, injecting | |
| fantasy in the process. | |
| And a few more links of interest not mentioned in the article (unfortunatel, all | |
| of them are in Russian): | |
| http://advantureclub.narod.ru/ - a site dedicated to making Russian adventures | |
| with Adrift. | |
| http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interactive_Fiction - Russian Wikipedia entry on | |
| interactive fiction. | |
| http://vixterm.narod.ru/IFRusFAQ.htm - a Russian IF FAQ; quite useful, although | |
| it hasn't been updated for a while. | |
| http://zerrr.livejournal.com/ - "Non-Russian Interactive Fiction", a site mostly | |
| dedicated to Russian reviews of English IF-games | |
| THE SPAG INTERVIEW (DEPARTMENT OF RUSSIAN STUDIES)------------------------- | |
| Longtime SPAG stalwart Valentine Kopteltsev has done me and you a huge favor | |
| this issue by translating interviews with several prominent members of the | |
| Russian IF community. It's a world brand new to me. I never even realized | |
| Russian IF existed until David Kinder sent me a Russian version of Adventure to | |
| test with my Z-Machine interpreter a couple of years ago. These interviews | |
| provide an interesting glimpse into the way IF, computer games, and ergodic | |
| literature in general are received in a culture that is still just slightly | |
| remote and exotic to most of us in the West. | |
| I struggled with how to handle the Cyrillic names of people and games, and | |
| finally reluctantly decided to just publish the English translations. Using | |
| Cyrillic would require using Unicode encoding, which would double the size of | |
| this issue of SPAG. I was concerned about that, and concerned whether some | |
| folks' mail software -- or the Majordomo listserv, for that matter -- might | |
| garble it. | |
| We'll begin with an interview Valentine conducted with Andrey Grankin, whose | |
| game Suprematism was recently released in English; then we have an extended | |
| joint interview conducted by Jenny Waynest and translated by Valentine with six | |
| prominent members of the menu-based CYOA Russian IF community, which is far | |
| larger than its parser-based community. Their games are developed in a system | |
| known as URQ. Valentine's comments as translator are enclosed in square | |
| brackets []. | |
| Huge thank yous go out to Valentine and Jenny for conducting these interviews, | |
| and to all seven interviewees for participating, even at the expense of time | |
| spent on World of Warcraft. | |
| =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- | |
| Andrey Grankin | |
| -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= | |
| VK: So, meet Andrey Grankin aka GrAnd, inhabitant of Moscow, an outstanding, | |
| if not legendary, figure in Russian IF. His most significant project up to | |
| this date is the RTADS system, a russified version of TADS 2. At that, the | |
| russification doesn't confine itself to the translation of the system | |
| libraries and a constant support for users in word and deed, but also includes | |
| the development of teaching demo-games for that platform, as well as | |
| documentation about creation techniques for Russian games and auxiliary | |
| instruments that make the author's life easier. By the end of the last year, | |
| Andrey's game, Dreamor, won the Russian IF-Competition KRIL-06. Besides, one | |
| can call him a popularizer of the genre in Russia, since he's the author of | |
| several analytical articles dedicated to IF. | |
| Andrey, would you like to add something to this introduction? | |
| AG: In addition, I can say that in real life, I'm 24 years old, have two dusty | |
| diplomas (in mathematics and economics), and can currently be found in my little | |
| office at the Third Transport Ring in the city of Beijing [Moscow also has a 3rd | |
| Transport Ring]. I'm here for more than one and a half years now due to family | |
| business. | |
| VK: For understandable reasons, interactive fiction is not the primary | |
| occupation for any of us as a matter of fact, well, not even the only hobby. | |
| Could you tell more about your other areas of interest, and their relations | |
| with IF (whether they help, intervene, etc.)? | |
| AG: My interests are manifold, but lie in the erudition widening sphere for the | |
| most part. Reading books, articles, news, well, whatever from the screen of my | |
| computer or mobile phone. This predilection took the place of awfully dipsomanic | |
| computer gaming. I hardly watch any TV, apart from occasional movies. I study | |
| Chinese: it's both needed for my work, and exciting. I'm not overfond of sports, | |
| but visit the fitness center regularly, and am pretty good at ice- and | |
| roller-skating (thus, don't think I'm a complete computer geek :)). | |
| Until recently, I've been keen on programming, but have given it up for quite a | |
| while, except for building websites with php. Now, if one day I return to this | |
| activity, then as a director I hope. | |
| All in all, IF is my only hobby I could more or less fully self-actualize in. | |
| Mainly thanks to the persistence that overwhelms me in situations when it | |
| becomes necessary to apply it to more important things. Banach spaces and | |
| deformation tensors were send to hell when I submerged into the depths of | |
| creation, and would then torment me in the most cruel way after my awakening by | |
| the end of the semester. | |
| VK: And where there situations when IF helped you in real life? Or, to put it | |
| another way, have you gained something from your IF studies? | |
| AG: At the very least, I used the Case Generation Utility for RTADS in my | |
| graduate work. Well, and all the training makes it easier for me now to write | |
| ads. | |
| VK: Now, let's come to the point. So, how people become IFers in this country, | |
| which isn't very suitable for that particular genre? | |
| AG: They play text games on ZX Spectrum, then give up them for years to run | |
| across them again one day and become moved to tears. That's exactly what | |
| happened to me. I found out about Russian text adventures in 2001. Not satisfied | |
| by their quality, I went on with my search, and finally discovered the classic | |
| games in English. And once you played long enough, it's hard not to get a | |
| burning desire to write something on one's own, especially if one has certain | |
| skills in this respect. | |
| VK: So, what games re-opened the world of IF for you? | |
| AG: Of the Russian ones, it was Zombies 4, and of the ones in English, I can't | |
| say exactly which was the very first, since I downloaded a collection. The ones | |
| I tried, completed and was delighted in: The Lurking Horror, and Theatre. I | |
| liked the Zorks as well, but I didn't get further than about a third-way through | |
| any of them; the same goes for Curses!, which scared me by its scale. Of more | |
| recent games, I'd like to mention Photopia. Other games didn't leave such a | |
| long-lasting impression, although they also were great. But generally, I'm only | |
| superficially acquainted with the life and works of the English-speaking | |
| IF-community. Especially the last couple of years, since I stopped following the | |
| discussions in r.a.i.f, and confined myself to glancing through the SPAG issues. | |
| By the way, my advice to all those who promote IF-games in non-English-speaking | |
| countries: don't advertise LARGE works. An enthusiastic mention of daylong | |
| gameplay is enough to eliminate the slightest wish of trying out the new game. | |
| English is the world's technical and economical language, but reading fiction is | |
| very tiresome for many people, even with an electronic dictionary at hand. | |
| Ideally, I'd like to see a "the best" list of shorter new releases, playing | |
| which would allow one to feel up to date with the current development and | |
| general tendencies of the "big" IF-community. | |
| VK: A question that is of great interest personally to me: Why TADS? Why not | |
| Inform or Hugo? | |
| AG: It could be Inform, as well, since it was the first development system I | |
| stumbled across. However, all translation attempts remained without success, | |
| since at that time, none of the interpreters supported Cyrillic letters. | |
| Somewhat later, David Kinder turned to that problem, and at least one | |
| interpreter (WinFrotz) is now usable by Russian players. Well, and as to Hugo -- | |
| I didn't get to it, since TADS rewarded me with understanding after five minutes | |
| of experiments. | |
| VK: Although the RTADS platform exists for almost five years now, there are | |
| still not as many games for it as desired. What do you think, what are the | |
| reasons for such a situation, and how it could be changed? | |
| AG: I'm also puzzling over it for a long time, but still can just come out with | |
| my suggestions. | |
| First of all, too little people know about text adventures. I myself only was | |
| able to find the Russian IF-community after I understood what's the name of the | |
| thing I'm looking for. The situation can be changed, but only by united efforts | |
| -- by spreading games, articles and IF-related links over the Web. The KRIL-06 | |
| Competition gave us a good chance in this respect, which should be used wisely. | |
| Then, there are the notorious difficulties learning TADS. Well, a lot has been | |
| done already for newbie support, and a few experienced authors always can help | |
| them with advices. I think this isn't the most crucial problem, especially | |
| considering the fact many people are so good programmers they constantly start | |
| writing their own IF development systems. | |
| Furthermore, questions of creativeness and problems of self-discipline come to | |
| mind. Personally for me, this is the most serious difficulty. I have about ten | |
| unfinished projects, and I shudder to think how many potential authors have also | |
| dropped their creations barely starting them. Our "menu-oriented" community part | |
| solves this problem by organizing competitions on regular basis (several times a | |
| year), which allow everybody to remain in shape and create a healthy creative | |
| atmosphere. However, parser-based games have a much longer average development | |
| period and much less authors, so that this experience can't be taken over | |
| directly. Unless we organize some sort of "warming-ups" -- mini-comps, say, for | |
| single-puzzle games, or for sketches on a given theme. I think it's time to | |
| start this tradition. | |
| VK: By the way, since you mentioned the "menuists". What do you think, our | |
| genres ("classic" IF and CYOA) are doomed to be each other's competitors, or | |
| there is some common ground allowing them to be mutually useful? | |
| AG: I'd say they supplement each other. CYOA is democratic and easy, classic IF | |
| is difficult both for the author and the player, but provides more possibilities | |
| and artistic means. The target audiences are very similar, but in the end, IFers | |
| are glad about any mentioning of their genre, while CYOA lives in every RPG and | |
| prospers as anime/manga games. | |
| Coming back to our situation: a part of the "menuists" would write parser-based | |
| games if our community life were as lively as theirs. Regular communication with | |
| the platform developer and other authors via an IRC chat is a very valuable | |
| possibility. Maybe that's the reason why they don't migrate to a more | |
| sophisticated CYOA platform, which also is available. Some of them have tried to | |
| write something in TADS and even succeeded, but finally they returned back to | |
| menu-driven games. I believe sooner or later they will write parser-based games, | |
| and be it just a test of skill. | |
| VK: Connected with that, a global question (while the answer can be partially | |
| found in your article, most SPAG readers haven't read it, I'm afraid): what do | |
| you think of prospects of IF in general, and of Russian IF, in particular? | |
| AG: I also expressed the main idea on r.a.i.f, but didn't raise any significant | |
| discussion. My claim has been, interactive fiction will gain mass popularity | |
| again and become commercially successful only in the form of a verbal dialog | |
| between the player and the computer. However, now I think that, when voice | |
| recognition technologies will reach the proper level for it, such an application | |
| of them will just be lost in the variety of other possibilities. Even now we can | |
| see new principles of player input and game control appearing, which introduce | |
| their own (and very effective) means of game immersion. To put it short, the | |
| gaming industry is on the verge of changes, and the IF community should be open | |
| towards novelty in order not to miss the opportunity to conceive a new | |
| interactive genre, since I can't imagine a prosperous future for IF within the | |
| existing technologies. | |
| As far as Russian IF is concerned, I reckon it will grow due to the increasing | |
| number of Internet users in Russia, if nothing else. Besides, every new | |
| high-quality game represents another brick in the fundament of the genre | |
| popularity, thanks to the wide promotion possibilities. | |
| VK: You really think that's the path of IF? As I see it, IF would mutate into | |
| an entirely different genre this way... | |
| AG: Exactly. Classic IF will still be there, but new genres will arise. IF will | |
| play in them the same part menu-driven CYOA-principles play in modern RPGs. | |
| Audio-IF is the most obvious trend, which could beget graphic adventures with | |
| voice input, as well as other genres one could only speculate about. An | |
| interactive movie, for instance, where the hero acts pretty independently, but | |
| the spectator influences the plot indirectly by mocking or invigorating the | |
| hero, "whispering" hints into his ears, or even by arguing with the narrator. | |
| VK: From the global to the "special cases". Please tell us a little about your | |
| game Dreamor that won the KRIL-06 competition. | |
| AG: Oh, I can speak about it a *very* long time, since it took me four years to | |
| write it. Contrary to some conjectures, its creation began not with the lengthy | |
| and redundant prologue but with the small room the PC wakes up. The only idea I | |
| had at that time, was "a malicious monster breaks loose and chops everybody down | |
| to sausages". I think the theme of unmotivated and ultimately gory violence is | |
| generally very popular among young writers and artists, but that's an entirely | |
| different story :). | |
| Thus, after the more or less sophisticated battle system was finished, I started | |
| filling in the details and the game world. As to be expected, it changed many | |
| times and often came into contradiction with pieces written previously. The game | |
| was influenced by every new book delivered, every impressive film watched, every | |
| new thought or idea that came to my mind. At some moment, I decided the game | |
| should reflect the idea of ditheism I was interested in at that time: two | |
| deities, one of them representing the void (space, static matter), and the other | |
| -- the chaos (changes, entropy; strictly speaking, Dreamor is its name), form a | |
| world that is very similar to our own one, but the protagonist, who isn't an | |
| ordinary human, or, rather, no human at all, can see it under an entirely | |
| different angle. At the end of the day, the goal of the game is to explore this | |
| world. Unfortunately, the idea turned out to be too wide-scaled, and I'm | |
| inclined to getting into the tiniest detail and non-linearity. Thus, the game | |
| name turned out to be prophetical, and the divinity of chaos almost ruined the | |
| game. To bring some order to the game world, I wrote the not very interactive | |
| and somewhat autobiographic introduction. Several of the autobiographic aspects | |
| weren't resolved yet in real life at that time, and because of that, or maybe | |
| for other reasons, I did very little in terms of game development for more than | |
| two years. | |
| The situation was saved by the competition. I hoped sincerely and naively, I'd | |
| complete the game by the deadline, but in reality, the competition started only | |
| after I finished the game, because as it turned out I had finally to organize | |
| it. I had to finish my work at an accelerated tempo within a week. | |
| Unfortunately, a few nasty bugs turned up afterwards, and the game had been to | |
| be reduced to the first of two chapters of the first game in the series (which | |
| represented about one sixth of the initial conception), but I badly needed to | |
| finally show my "monster" to the audience. And it looks like it impressed them. | |
| VK: Did you think about writing a sequel? Also, tell us about your IF-related | |
| plans in general. | |
| AG: There are thoughts about a sequel, but no real desire. I hope to become an | |
| effective businessman, and in this case, there just won't be any time left for | |
| interactive fiction. If I write something as monumental again, it will mean that | |
| I either manage to canalize the creative energy needed for that once more, or | |
| reach such a level of effectiveness that I will have enough time for everything. | |
| All in all, I have an idea I want to implement especially badly. It's more worth | |
| to me than ten Dreamors. It's a short, but very emotion-loaded game. When this | |
| idea came to me, I chilled, and my hair bristled. Even a mere retelling of the | |
| plot makes people gloomy, although they don't know yet how it happened. The most | |
| dramatic thing is, the story is entirely real, and not even unique. It's the | |
| recent past of my country, which is so rich in tragic episodes... | |
| VK: Yeah, you managed to be quite intriguing :). Could you give at least a | |
| slight hint what the story is about? | |
| AG: Its working name is Mother. And it has nothing to do with the novel by Maxim | |
| Gorky of the same name. | |
| VK: English-speaking players mostly now you as the author of the experimental | |
| work Suprematism in IF, which has been uploaded to the Archive this February, | |
| and caused a rather vivid discussion in the rec.games.int-fiction group. Could | |
| you say a few words about it please? | |
| AG: Thanks, I think it isn't worth so many words, and I already got more | |
| feedback than I ever could expect. | |
| VK: Well, then, let me wish you to increase your efficiency, and finally | |
| complete The Game of Your Dream! | |
| AG: Thanks, I'll do my best. | |
| =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- | |
| Victor Koryanov, implementor of the major URQ runner (URQ DOS) | |
| Akela, implementor of an advanced URQ runner (AkURQ) and several games | |
| Eugene Tugolukov (nickname Korwin), a prolific author and promotor | |
| Evgeny Bychkov (brevno), implementor of URQ editor SMSQuest and contest guru | |
| Yuri Pavlenko (Goraph), prolific author, contest guru, and reviewer | |
| ZombX, who used to write games but now is just good company! | |
| -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= | |
| Jenny: My friends, I wonder when and how you found out about IF? | |
| Victor: In my childhood, when I found in a magazine (a paper one) the source | |
| code for an IF-game about a larceny from a gallery. I think it was the very | |
| beginning of the 1990-ies. There was no accessible Internet at that time, so it | |
| was very hard to find any new programs. Then, computer magazines often simply | |
| published the source code for useful utilities and games, so that a new issue | |
| often became a great event. There just hasn't been any other way to quickly get | |
| something new for one's computer. | |
| Goraph: At the age of about 11, I bought a computer gaming journal (I didn't | |
| have a computer at that time). There were lots of adventure reviews there, and | |
| at the end of the issue, there was a Russian translation of an adventure | |
| players' guide. After reading it, I blazed up with the desire to play | |
| adventures, and managed to make a reality of it with time:). | |
| Korwin: For me, it's a difficult question, which I can't give an unambiguously | |
| and concrete answer to. The thing is, I had a hobby of inventing fantastic | |
| stories for my friends at the age of about 9 to 11 years. I'd describe a | |
| situation (most often loaned from the books I read) to them, and they would tell | |
| me what they were going to do in the place of the main characters. The plot | |
| developed independent of the initial conditions. Our games sometimes went on for | |
| several years -- I remember a session based on The Lord Of The Rings that | |
| continued from 1981 till 1987! Of course, there were breaks for other games, | |
| studies, dancing and other private life. As far as "real" computer IF are | |
| concerned, it was 1995, ZX-Spectrum, a number of adventures (I remember Emerald | |
| Isle, Red Moon by Level 9, Kayleth by AdventureSoft, which was based on an Isaac | |
| Asimov's short story). | |
| brevno: That's an easy question I *can* give an unambiguously and concrete | |
| answer to. Even in my tender age I became acquainted with the delights of | |
| interactive fiction -- by means of the story about Ilya Muromets. You know, that | |
| stone at the crossroads with three paths leading in different directions: if you | |
| go right you'll lose your horse, left -- you find a wife, and if you go | |
| straight, you'll ride into the stone. [This is indeed a very common situation in | |
| Russian fairy tales, but I'm not sure there is a counterpart in English | |
| literature. Oh, and you can read about Ilya Muromets in Wikipedia at | |
| http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ilya_Muromets.] Being a true gamer and explorer, | |
| Ilyusha [that's a diminutive for the name Ilya] checked out all options of this | |
| famous quest. | |
| Well, and after that, there were the great CYOA-books by Braslavsky: The | |
| Faithful Rapier Of The King, The Master Of The Endless Desert, where you had to | |
| browse the pages to find the location with the proper number, and even to roll | |
| the dice when fighting with brave chevaliers and other gremlins. My next stage | |
| of evolution was, finally, real computer IF -- menu-based quests for the Space | |
| Rangers game, which was in development at that time. Then, I got the burning | |
| longing to create something in that vein, but cooler. As it turned out, I | |
| couldn't make something cooler myself, but it looks like I was able to help | |
| others to accomplish that feat. | |
| ZombX: I found Orczero [that's one of the first Russian text adventures, | |
| inspired by Zork Zero] in a game collection, that's how everything started... | |
| Akela: ... (plays WoW, and gives no answer therefore.) | |
| Jenny: What's your first IF-game? | |
| Victor: I typed in the source code of the aforementioned game from the magazine. | |
| It was seemingly the first program in my life. | |
| Goraph: My first game was written in Basic for the ZX-Spectrum, its name was A | |
| Wizard Of Archipelago, and it was based on the book by Ursula Le Guin. | |
| Korwin: You mean the first one that has been completed? Well, that's of course | |
| Winnie-the-Pooh And Other Animals), developed in urq_dos in 2003-2004. It was | |
| intended to be a test game -- at that time, I just wished to familiarize myself | |
| with the features of this engine; besides, I wanted to boast about a bit, and to | |
| demonstrate my son who's been 7 years old then that his dad is a cool | |
| programmer, and also can write computer games. With such a motivation, I just | |
| couldn't fail to complete this not-so-big work. For me, it was a very conceptual | |
| effort. First of all, because I revised my attitude towards the character I was | |
| very fond of from little up after reading The Tao of Pooh by Benjamin Hoff. | |
| Secondly, because in spite of the rather modest size of the game, I did my best | |
| to provide all four characters of the story with distinct personalities and | |
| certain behavior logic, and it looks like I succeeded. Finally, I kept this game | |
| fair, which is rather untypical for me. You can't lock yourself out of victory | |
| here; saving and restoring the game are retained only for the players' comfort. | |
| brevno: The acme of my creative work that sullied me with glory forevermore is | |
| the URQ-game White Bull-Calf. Amazingly, it isn't menu-based but uses keyboard | |
| input (in fact, this was the goal of its creation -- demonstrating how to handle | |
| that kind of input in URQ). The game is remarkable not just because of being the | |
| only annoyance tale in the whole Russian IF, but also because it's the only URQ | |
| game I know that managed to lock up someone's computer:). Needless to say, I'm | |
| proud beyond all measure. [The tale of the white bull-calf is a traditional | |
| Russian annoyance game. It goes like this: you ask the person you want to annoy, | |
| "Shall I tell you the tale of the white bull-calf?" He answers, "Yes, tell me." | |
| You say, "Yes, tell me. Shall I tell you the tale of the white bull-calf?" etc., | |
| etc. The idea is, you repeat the answer, and add the everlasting phrase about | |
| the white bull-calf again and again. In a figurative sense, Russians say someone | |
| is telling stories about the white bull-calf if the said person avoids giving | |
| you a clear answer/decision, repeatedly digging up points that have been | |
| discussed over and settled a long time ago. It's a bit like the old "Who's on | |
| First?" comedy routine.] | |
| But what am I talking about? In fact, I'm only indirectly involved in game | |
| development. My main merit is, I programmed the sole (at that time, at least) | |
| specialized editor for writing URQ games. And, which is even more important, I | |
| played the role of an acres gatherer, which effectively means the centralization | |
| of URQ-related resources. The web site dedicated to my editor (both of which has | |
| almost sunk into oblivion since then -- the web site and the editor) contained | |
| the biggest collection of Russian menu-based URQ-games. It served as a powerful | |
| incentive for the further progress of that platform, as well as for the creation | |
| of new games. Previously, these games were scattered about minor web pages, the | |
| authors' hard disk drives, as well as other wondrous places. In the course of | |
| time and numerous migrations the site transformed into the main resource of the | |
| whole URQ-community, and its guest book -- into the forum where most of the | |
| URQ-related life is humming on. And the game catalog is continuously replenished | |
| with new works. | |
| Finally, I can proudly state that I'm one of the organizers and one of the | |
| stimulus of the Summer Adventure Contest (abbreviated as LOK or LOKa), a | |
| competition that takes places at our site annually. I call myself a "stimulus", | |
| because I award every game for participating with an illustration to that game, | |
| which I draw myself :). And there haven't even been complaints about that so | |
| far. Oh, and one more thing -- I'm the most popular co-author of URQ-adventures. | |
| It's rumored there's hardly anyone who screwed up as many mutual projects as I | |
| did. | |
| Well, considering all the aforesaid, I just have to wonder why they still | |
| haven't set up a monument, don't bow down, and, above all, haven't started | |
| sacrificing young virgins to me yet... | |
| ZombX: Oooh... it's been a long time ago... you mean a real GAME, or just | |
| creative experiments? As a matter of fact, it's been Dmitry Smetanin. But let's | |
| say Teletubbies, because I can't remember a thing about Dmitry Smetanin anymore. | |
| [Teletubbies is the brief name of a short but very interesting surrealistic | |
| adventure, the full name goes as follows: The Comeback Of The Teletubbies, Or | |
| The Revenge Of Freddy Krueger. One Of The Two. Part One, As Well As Six And | |
| Eighteen. "About The Harm Of The Drugs". However, even the author himself is too | |
| lazy to say the complete version.] | |
| Akela (tears himself away from WoW and remarks briefly): Fortunately for | |
| everyone, it remained on my HDD forever. | |
| Jenny: Evgeny, since you mentioned this subject yourself, could you give as | |
| some more details about LOKa and ZOKa? | |
| brevno: Even at the very early stages of organizing the big URQ-site, the | |
| objective was set to introduce competitive spirit to the game creation process | |
| in order to influence their quality and quantity positively. Thus, LOKa -- the | |
| Summer Adventure Contest (Letnyaya Olimpiada Kvestov in Russian) was started -- | |
| an all-URQian game competition, which goes on over the whole summer. The | |
| competition is still a bit unripe, and we experiment with its rules and | |
| conventions all the time. For instance, in one of the first LOK contests the | |
| game authors had to write games that started with an excerpt chosen by the jury. | |
| Why, we tried just everything -- limiting the game size, setting a fixed set of | |
| words and noun phrases to be used in the game... To put it short, we did any | |
| perverse thing we could think of:). For instance, the last LOKa had a prescribed | |
| set of themes, ideas, one of which had to be treated by the participating games | |
| (not necessarily word for word): "mutual effort", "damnation of mastery", | |
| "fulfilling of a wish", "the necessary question", etc. I think one of the | |
| authors even tried to treat all themes simultaneously :) | |
| There also is a winter counterpart of LOKa -- ZOKa (Zimnyaya Olimpiada Kvestov | |
| -- The Winter Adventure Contest). It was established as an alternative contest, | |
| because during the first LOKa, doubts about the accuracy of the voice counting | |
| by the jury (by the way, those doubts were completely unfounded). The main | |
| difference is, ZOKa is organized by one or several enthusiasts who both invent | |
| the rules and choose the winner by themselves (in LOKa, public voting is used). | |
| Traditionally, the organizer of ZOKa writes reviews of all participating games, | |
| founding the ratings he's given them. | |
| Jenny: Thanks, Evgeny. Now, a question to the developers of URQ: when and how | |
| did you come to the idea of creating a program for Russian IF-games? | |
| Victor: When I stumbled upon Ripurka [a familiar name for RipURQ -- the ancestor | |
| of all modern URQ versions] somewhere by the end of 2000. At that time, I had a | |
| computer almost unsuitable for Windows, among other things, because of an awful | |
| EGA monitor. I "lived" under monochrome DOS that wouldn't allow to start Ripurka | |
| in an even remotely decent way, but there already had been an interesting | |
| adventure for that platform, The Ancient Dagger. The first versions of urq_dos | |
| aka Dosurka were created literally for playing through that game. | |
| Akela: ... [apparently, he has a difficult situation in his game, so that he has | |
| no time for us; that's a pity, since AkURQ is the URQ interpreter with the most | |
| powerful capabilities for the time being]. | |
| Jenny: Victor, please tell us, what's the difference between URQ and other | |
| adventure games authoring tools, what stipulated such a wide popularity of it | |
| (it's no secret that in Russia, about as many games have been developed for | |
| this platform as for all the others taken together)? And how do you decipher | |
| this mysterious abbreviation URQ? | |
| Victor: About the popularity: there were several factors. Historically, URQ was | |
| the first successful text adventure development tool written in Russian | |
| (projects that had been preceding it, for instance, OrcZero, hadn't found a wide | |
| distribution). For it, two very important games have been written almost | |
| immediately -- the very interesting Ancient Dagger (by Kaschey) and the | |
| "didactic" Pilgrim -- The Case Of The Kidnapped Girlfriend (by Devil). In | |
| Pilgrim, the author demonstrated how to describe typical gaming situations, so | |
| that for a certain period of time, this game became a programming language | |
| manual de facto. An important role also played the gentle learning curve, | |
| combined with the feature allowing code modification during its execution. The | |
| main idea, as I saw it at that time, consisted in drawing the source code as | |
| close to common book-like text as possible. In other words, the author just had | |
| to insert instructions and branching conditions into his (static) story to make | |
| an adventure game of it. Although this concept was pretty early diverged from | |
| towards introducing a gradually increasing number of elements of a general | |
| programming language, the possibility of writing an adventure as a CYOA book has | |
| been retained till now. The code modification possibility means that you can | |
| insert a renewable expression value at any place in the code line, and the final | |
| execution of this line by the interpreter will only take place after all values | |
| have been calculated and substituted. The important thing is, the location of | |
| these renewable expressions isn't restricted by any means, so that this way, | |
| instructions, variable names and parts of data structures can be generated. Not | |
| only allows this feature the automatic creation of some standard language | |
| structures (like arrays), but also provides opportunities the limits of which | |
| aren't quite clear yet. | |
| As to the name, it's been invented by the initial designer of the language and | |
| the first interpreter for it, RipOs (Timofey Basanov). URQ means Universal | |
| Ripsoft Quest, where RipSoft is the designation of the fictional "company" in | |
| whose name RipOs released his programs. When there was only one interpreter, the | |
| name URQ was applied both to it and the language. After RipOs withdrew from IF | |
| and stopped the development of his related project, they began calling the | |
| language URQL to avoid confusion, and new interpreters by other authors received | |
| names derivative from URQ with additions of prefixes and suffixes -- just the | |
| way as is customary in the TeX world. The original interpreter by RipOs is | |
| sometimes referred to as RipURQ or Ripurka in modern articles, manuals, etc., to | |
| avoid confusion with the URQL-language. | |
| Jenny: Why did you choose a menu-based interface for your game? | |
| Victor: Ripurka was menu-based. | |
| Goraph: Since I wasn't very well-acquainted with BASIC at that time, I chose a | |
| menu interface, because it was easier to implement. Besides, it must be said my | |
| game was in Russian, which is one of the world's most difficult languages | |
| (almost like Japanese). To write an adequate parser was far beyond my abilities | |
| at that time. | |
| Korwin: In most likelihood, it was the fact that I'm rather an author than a | |
| programmer. The URQL language was exceptionally easy to use, yet provided pretty | |
| decent possibilities, and I was just delighted by the idea to write a game using | |
| only the Notepad editor. In other words, the menu interface allowed creating an | |
| adventure with approximately the same plot, but with significantly less efforts | |
| on my part. | |
| ZombX: I hate parsers... | |
| Akela: Just because! | |
| Jenny: Who helped designing and testing your program? | |
| Victor: As far as the first versions are concerned -- nobody. [Victor means the | |
| development of Dosurka.] | |
| Goraph: My friend Alexey helped me testing my game. It must be said he never | |
| could complete it -- its puzzles probably were too difficult. For instance, you | |
| had to guess the name of a dragon that was hidden in the lyrics of a song taking | |
| up two screens of text. He just didn't read it! | |
| Korwin: In first place, it's been the creator of urq_dos Victor Koryanov, who | |
| not only gave very clear explanations on using his game engine, but integrated a | |
| number of useful functions in it at my request, even those used very rarely now | |
| (at that time, I wanted to write a parser-based game in Dosurka). Secondly, it's | |
| my best beta-tester Stas Starkov, who found a heap of mistakes -- not just | |
| programming ones, but also (to my shame) misspellings. Some of them ignited | |
| heated discussions, during which Internet search, examples from the world's | |
| literature and consultations with professional teachers of the Russian language | |
| were called in. Finally, my friends, relatives and Internet acquaintances. | |
| brevno: If you mean my notorious adventure games editor -- there were huge lots | |
| of people, mainly our wonderful game authors, who tested on themselves all ruts | |
| and grooves of this program, which I started writing barely knowing how to | |
| program, only inspired by the bright idea of URQ-domination on our planet... I'd | |
| like to thank them all. I'm sincere about it. I've always said the most | |
| important thing isn't the language, the development platform, the choice between | |
| a menu- or parser-based interface, but the author of the game, its text, its | |
| plot. That's the salt of the earth -- the creator. | |
| ZombX: Well, I did all the writing part myself, and the testing was done by | |
| those in front of whom I wanted to show off. | |
| Akela: What's this question about? As far as AkURQ is concerned -- everybody | |
| helped. However, mostly by criticizing it. | |
| Jenny: How did you see the prospects of the Russian IF movement at that time | |
| (when you were first introduced to IF)? | |
| Victor: Then, there wasn't any "movement" I knew of, the first Dosurka versions | |
| were distributed to as little as four addresses. | |
| Goraph: At that time, I didn't think of the prospects of the Russian IF movement | |
| at all, I just did what I liked. The very process of game creation was fun for | |
| me, I had no concerns about whether someone would actually play it (and if he | |
| would be able to play it at all); admitted, this influenced the quality of my | |
| game unfavorably. | |
| Korwin: In 2003, I was very optimistic about it, wrote articles, was working on | |
| two games simultaneously, tried playing English text adventures again -- it | |
| seemed to me the only problem of the genre was the lack of publicity, and that | |
| in our "world's most-reading country" IF was just doomed to be successful. | |
| What have I not done to shake the Russian interactive fiction out of its | |
| slumber: | |
| - wrote help for URQ and QSP -- the two most advanced Russian menu-based | |
| adventure development platforms; actively communicated in forums and via e-mail | |
| with every person who, as I thought, could help the genre to expand; among them, | |
| there were the developers of all Russian adventure authoring tools I knew of | |
| (including GrAnd -- the author of RTADS; Byte -- the creator of QSP; Victor | |
| Koryanov and Akela, both present here; Overlord, who tries porting URQ to Java; | |
| Sonic, who intends to develop the YaRIL/IFML -- Interactive Fiction Markup | |
| Language) adventure-oriented programming language, which should be completely in | |
| Russian, including instructions and operators; several other developers); | |
| - entered games in contests organized on the URQ forum (urq.fastbb.ru), often | |
| using different nicknames to give the impression of a more vivid activity, | |
| winning several competitions (sometimes beating myself). | |
| As I see it, these efforts were fruitful, and I'm proud there is my humble | |
| contribution to the development of Russian IF. | |
| brevno: I was at an age when one doesn't care a jot about the future, only | |
| living by the present day. A new program version every week -- bang. Manually | |
| rearranging the adventure games catalog growing out of size (the non-kosher PHP | |
| was out of question) -- no problem! Playing a game or discussing it on the forum | |
| instead of preparing for an important test -- well, you really didn't need to | |
| ask! | |
| ZombX: Well, I expected the new URQ for Windows by RipOs and the SMSQuest by | |
| Evgeny to finally be released... | |
| Akela: I haven't been there. | |
| Jenny: How do you see it (the future of IF) now? | |
| Victor: First of all, the URQ-community has no official structure. Sure, the | |
| opinion of the "old-timers" is often weighty when routine problems are | |
| discussed, well, and people related to the support of the main site and forum | |
| have some technical privileges. However, all this is rather nominal. It's a very | |
| common situation that a newcomer showing up with fresh and reasonable ideas, or | |
| a new author who strikes everybody with a game setting a new quality standard, | |
| enters the community life as an active full member from the very first days. | |
| Considering such organization principles, it's not quite right to speak about a | |
| "movement". The veterans' only organizational initiative are the annually | |
| contests that pull up the games' overall quality and creativity little by | |
| little. Under such conditions, it's just not possible to have a clear "vision of | |
| the future". There is hope that we will put into practice the technical ideas we | |
| have, which, in its turn, will give the authors and the whole community a new | |
| motivation, that the oncoming contests will become even more interesting, but | |
| that kind of predictions don't change with time, I could tell you exactly the | |
| same things two years ago. | |
| Goraph: Russian IF-authors are notable (compared to the Western ones) for their | |
| incredible laziness, and incredible lack of time. Therefore, although there are | |
| enough adequate authoring tools available, there aren't too many quality and | |
| finished games. The Russian IF-community will exist for a long time as a | |
| subculture, but I don't think it will ever result in a large number of | |
| high-quality games being released. | |
| Korwin: At present time, there are at least three almost perfect IF-development | |
| systems for Russian games: the parser-based RTADS, and the menu-based URQ and | |
| QSP. Besides, there are at least a dozen of other systems, which are also quite | |
| usable (ADRIFT, RINFORM, TGE, TKR2, GTI, QTech and a few more.) The stumbling | |
| block isn't the lack of a development platform, but rather the lack of authors. | |
| Maybe writing adventures for palmtops and mobile phones could spur interactive | |
| fiction in general -- if there are (paying) players and, consequently, money, | |
| serious authors probably will get attracted. | |
| brevno: It's easy to say there's a lull. However, there's always a place for | |
| dreams and hopes. | |
| ZombX: To tell you the truth, somewhat puny, the initial enthusiasm faded away. | |
| Everybody ponders why it peters out little by little, but no one does anything | |
| in order not to let it kick the bucket. | |
| Akela: To be honest, I don't see it. | |
| Jenny: What are the main problems of Russian IF as you see them? | |
| Victor: There are still too few really big games. Games with a world one would | |
| be pleased to dive into, without concerns about hitting the bottom too fast; | |
| with characters one would remember even half a year later. Such games have | |
| already started to be released, but not as many as I'd like to see. | |
| Korwin: First of all, it's the absence of massive IF traditions in Russia, | |
| which, in its turn, has its roots in the fact a computer was a too expensive | |
| "toy" for most Russians over a long period of time, so that the IF-heyday of the | |
| 1980s passed our country by. | |
| Then, there is the difficulty of the Russian language with its variety of | |
| wordforms, which represents a serious obstacle for writing a decent parser. This | |
| problem was solved only by 2002-2003 thanks to the efforts of GrAnd; another way | |
| for solving it was using of a menu-based interface in such interpreters as URQ, | |
| QSP, TGE and others. | |
| Thirdly, the best authors usually prefer to write books, since they bring their | |
| creators more profit than computer games. My opinion is, to create a good text | |
| adventure, a cooperation between a good programmer and a good author is | |
| required; at that, none of them needs to have outstanding skills in their | |
| respective field of activity. The thing is, good programming skills and the | |
| ability to express one's thoughts coherently and aesthetically are very rarely | |
| combined in one person -- and that's one of the most serious problems of Russian | |
| IF. [Not only of the Russian one, it seems ;)]. | |
| brevno: Our (URQ) authors are young and rash people for the most part. That's | |
| great of course. Sometimes, however, they're full of ideas and eagerness, but | |
| just can't properly express their feelings and concepts. You hardly can expect | |
| an impeccable plot and language from a jolly teenager. Persistence is also an | |
| important factor here, since, if you work too long on one thing at that age, | |
| your interest tends to fade away. Yet, on the other hand, our unfinished, even | |
| homely gamies occasionally conceal such little gems one doesn't find so easy in | |
| professional works (and I don't mean just IF). | |
| Sure, there are also mature authors (casts a glance at Korwin) writing solid, | |
| polished adventures. If only they loaned that little spark from our young | |
| people... ;) | |
| Finally, there's a lack of motivation. Authors write for self-entertainment for | |
| the most part, the target audience isn't too big: once you don't find means to | |
| make yourself glad, you run about as if you've been shi... spit upon. | |
| Generally, I think URQ is rather a therapeutic product. One has to ponder hard | |
| to find an easier and better way of self-actualization through a game for a | |
| beginner. To make a game using a sophisticated, well thought-out programming | |
| language, especially a parser-based one, one needs to read manuals, studying | |
| examples, etc. And here -- zap, zap, you smash your thought into the Notepad | |
| editor, and the game -- albeit small and simple, yet alive -- is ready. And it's | |
| yours -- your brainchild. You feel happy. The player does, too (well, maybe:) ). | |
| Goraph: Because of the difficulty of the Russian language, it's not easy to | |
| develop a good parser; however, a passable parser-based authoring tool exists | |
| already (I mean RTADS). Besides, there are no obstacles for writing high-quality | |
| menu-based games, as they do it in Japan (they seem to have much more problems | |
| with parsers than we). | |
| This leaves us but one problem -- the lack of interest and time on the authors' | |
| part. | |
| Akela: No one writes anything -- that's the problem! | |
| Jenny: Goraph, what do you think of the "evolution" of IF into hybrid games | |
| through melting with other genres? Is there any place for menu-based games in | |
| your vision of future? | |
| Goraph: It depends on what you mean by evolution into hybrid games. If you | |
| include illustrations in your work of IF without harming the quality of the | |
| text, it'll still remain an IF game. However, if the amount of text gradually | |
| decreases, it finally isn't IF anymore. "The best visualization is your | |
| imagination" -- that's the criterion I distinguish interactive fiction from any | |
| other genres by. Menu-driven games have existed and will always exist in future | |
| for languages where it's difficult to write a good parser. | |
| Besides, such games may have success on devices with limited input capabilities | |
| (mobile phones, palmtops). On the other hand, they already begin playing DOOM on | |
| cellular phones. I believe IF games will exist as long as literature will. It's | |
| possible they become extinct together with literature in the future, to be | |
| replaced by another sphere of creative work. | |
| Jenny (now to all): What games did stick to your memory? | |
| Victor: I've made up such lists -- both brief and more detailed versions -- on | |
| the forum several times. I think it's not very useful to enumerate them here | |
| once more, since the names won't mean anything to an uninitiated person; as to | |
| explaining from scratch why I liked this or that game -- it alone would provide | |
| material for a large article, or even a series of reviews. | |
| Goraph: As far as Russian IF is concerned, it's Waiting for the Morning by Stas | |
| Starkov, 40000 Years B. C. by Vampire, Winnie-the-Pooh And Other Animals by | |
| Korwin. Of old commercial western text adventures, it's Hunchback by Ocean; | |
| among the amateur "modern" IF, All Roads by Jon Ingold takes a clear lead | |
| (actually, it's my favorite adventure altogether). | |
| brevno: I'm a big fan of Goraph (who's going to become the best writer of | |
| Ukraine one day), especially of his notorious Ottar (How Ottar, Hetchhock And | |
| Koyot Shook the Tail of Whitesquirrelwolf) -- an absolutely unique game written | |
| in a language barely corresponding to Russian;). No, it isn't mat, it even isn't | |
| Albanian. One has to see it. One has to dig it. ["Mat" (pronounced as "mutt") is | |
| the famous Russian obscenity jargon, which is considered a unique phenomenon of | |
| linguistics: the thing is, one can express oneself using this jargon only | |
| without any loss of sense or expressiveness. I don't know whether the term "mat" | |
| is known in the USA, if not, it can be translated as "obscenities". Albanian | |
| means the deliberately grammatically distorted language (you know, in which you | |
| say "kull" instead of "cool") that has become so popular in some Internet forums | |
| and blogs recently. Again, the only term that seems to be a more or less | |
| adequate translation is, well, "Akmi-speak"; however, I'm sure there must be a | |
| word for that phenomenon in English that is known not only to fans of the | |
| Unnkulian series;).] | |
| Other games that come to mind immediately: the frolic The Golden Key, Or... How | |
| It Happened In Reality by Akela; [The Golden Key (the full name is The Golden | |
| Key, Or The Adventures Of Buratino) is a rather loose Russian adaptation of the | |
| Pinochhio fairy tale. Until very recently, it was practically the only version | |
| of the story inhabitants of the former USSR/Russia had access to; it's still | |
| much more well-known and popular in Russia than the original story by Carlo | |
| Collodi.] the historical Pyramid by Korwin; the monumental yet incomplete Trion | |
| by D. Mazayev; games by VovkaSmert' aka Vegeta The Hero, In The Deep, both of | |
| which are notable for their good writing; fun yet crazy game series by Larry | |
| Baggins -- I'm tempted to go on enumerating :). I'd rather like to mention a | |
| couple of mini-games not much talked about or just fallen into oblivion -- | |
| PARISH 1313 that almost jazzed me out of my mind by the author's logic and | |
| bizarre plot turns; The Co(s)mic Odyssey, the author of which remained unknown | |
| due to a tragic mishap. | |
| Korwin: Among the western adventures Eric the Viking, Zork I, So Far. | |
| Among the Russian ones: | |
| - Dreamour (GrAnd, RTADS), | |
| - Waiting for the Morning (Stas Starkov, RTADS) | |
| - In The Deep (VovkaSmert' aka Vegeta, URQ), | |
| - Agent-D (Aracon, URQ), | |
| - Hope For Life (Phobos, URQ), | |
| - Door Into The Summer (Demon, URQ), | |
| - Chronicles Of Captain Bloud: The Secret Of The Left Buttock (Goraph, URQ), | |
| - Hill Of The Fairies (Belial, URQ), | |
| - Little Red Riding Hood (Yegorka Bestalanny, URQ), | |
| - Ukouzya (Tanya, QSP), | |
| - Zork Legends: Through the Dragon (Zorn, QSP); | |
| - Klara the Jam-Plunderer (Belial, 6days) | |
| However, I didn't play every game existing, and there're certainly a lot of | |
| interesting ones beyond this list. I think Russian games currently are | |
| noticeably inferior to western masterpieces. | |
| Jenny: Korwin, you are considered one of the most prolific URQ authors. What | |
| other games did you write? | |
| Korwin: First of all, I'm not the most prolific author: there also is Larry | |
| Baggins who seems to have been the creator of even more games. In addition to | |
| Winnie-the-Pooh, I most actively participated in designing of a number of | |
| adventures; only in the contests from 2004 to winter of 2007, there were eleven | |
| games entered I had a hand in (I even can't enumerate them all): | |
| Pyramid (historical adventure about the ancient Egypt); | |
| The Wings (a modern-time story about a young man dating a girl on a rock music | |
| festival); | |
| Rendezvous (a tiny game consisting of two locations, about an encounter of a | |
| space traveler with an unfriendly spaceship of an alien civilization); | |
| In Spite Of Winds And Waves (the PC is to be rescued from a yacht going down); | |
| Genie Ex Machine/Genie From The Machine (the heroine rescues her beloved (who's | |
| an astronaut), confronting state institutions and an AI); | |
| Q-Quest (the adventures of a student in the forest and on a foreign planet)... | |
| Sadly, I have to admit there are very little fully finished games in this list | |
| -- I feel like getting my hands on it again and give it more polish about | |
| practically any of them. Rendezvous, for instance, is a wee fragment of a big | |
| game, the conception of which is haunting me since 1996. However, this haunting | |
| hasn't been very fruitful till now. | |
| Jenny: Which of the authoring tools and interpreters for Russian text | |
| adventures you think is the best one? Why do you think so? | |
| Victor: As to authoring tools, it's a simple question to answer: for URQ, only | |
| one specialized editor exists, so that you just have to choose between SMSQuest | |
| and any common text editor. I prefer the second option, but I'm not indicative | |
| here, since I've never tried to write a longer adventure. As to the | |
| interpreters, I barely keep track of other Russian IF systems. I just look at | |
| them, say, once in a year to see what new features have become available over | |
| this period. Thus, I can't judge which system is "better", and which is "worse". | |
| Goraph: RTADS by Andrey Grankin. A very good platform for parser-based games in | |
| Russian. Its disadvantage is the rather steep learning curve, but for me, it | |
| doesn't represent a problem (I'm working as a programmer for a living). | |
| Korwin: I won't answer, for one simple reason: I consider all the authors of the | |
| development systems I've mentioned before to be my friends; to some extent, I | |
| was involved in the creation process for all of those platforms (to a smaller | |
| degree in respect of RTADS, to a larger degree regarding URQ). All of them are | |
| perfectly suitable for writing text adventures; of course, each one has its | |
| characteristics and advantages, but one can perform great work with any of them. | |
| brevno: I haven't seen any that'd make me say -- yeah, this one is definitely | |
| the best! One has to work with the tools available. Go ahead, not a step back! | |
| ZombX: WinURQ v. 1.4, since it's the only platform I can work with. | |
| Jenny: What programming languages do you prefer to work with? | |
| Victor: C99 with a few extensions. | |
| Goraph: I'm a web-programmer and only work in PHP and JavaScript. Besides, I | |
| like Python. As to text adventures, I mostly work in urq_dos, because it's so | |
| simple to use. It allows me to put aside all the programming aspects and | |
| concentrate on the plot (this is important to me, since I usually don't make a | |
| layout of the game on paper). This platform is perfectly suited for developing | |
| games in English too -- if you're not put off by built-in system messages in | |
| Russian and the absence of English documentation, that is. | |
| Korwin: Hmmm... Since I program games for the most part, it seems to me this is | |
| another form of the previous question. However, I'll give you the following | |
| answer: because of historical reasons, I've written most of my games using URQ, | |
| but now I intend to make up for this lack of attention to other platforms (QSP, | |
| RTADS). | |
| brevno: I like PowerBASIC. I also program in C. | |
| ZombX: URQL of course. | |
| Akela: I prefer not to work at all, and play WoW instead. | |
| Jenny: Your work and your hobby -- are they related to each other in some way? | |
| [Apparently, there's been a misunderstanding between the interviewer and some | |
| of the interviewees: Jenny obviously implied the guys' hobby is interactive | |
| fiction, but a number of them told about their other hobbies]. | |
| Victor: Very remotely. I'm a scientific associate in a research institute and do | |
| a lot of programming at work, but the main themes, the development environments, | |
| etc. are entirely different. | |
| Goraph: I'm a web-programmer, I like my work, which also represents my hobby at | |
| the same time. | |
| Korwin: In no way at all. I'm a business trainer. However, the communication | |
| with my clients often puts me in situations more challenging than any adventure | |
| game puzzles. | |
| brevno: I'm an engineer who programs microcontrollers, and develops/produces | |
| devices based on them. Many people think I'm making infernal humanlike robots. | |
| Unfounded speculations! This is what Victor Koryanov does! | |
| ZombX: They're somewhat related, if you mean my study. I like cinematography | |
| (its technical aspects), and we have a lecture about TV broadcasting. | |
| Akela: My hobby is computer gaming. | |
| Jenny: What do you gain from contacts with other members of the Russian IF | |
| community? | |
| Victor: It happened several times already that such contacts directly urged me | |
| to implementing new features, fixing bugs, thinking over ideas not yet realized. | |
| That's an especially common thing when an author writes an adventure, the code | |
| of which could be made a lot more elaborate and compact if this or that feature | |
| were present. Or, if a reasonable plot idea can't be implemented at all without | |
| this feature. | |
| Goraph: Russian IFers are great beta-testers capable of introducing constructive | |
| critics that makes my games better, and the target audience for these games at | |
| the same time (unfortunately, at the current stage players and authors are | |
| practically the same for us). | |
| Korwin: Probably a certain feeling of being free. We're all from childhood by | |
| origin, and IF allows me to come back there. | |
| brevno: I met many great guys. | |
| ZombX: Much fresh and useful information about cinematographic news. | |
| Akela: Yeah. | |
| Jenny: How old are you? What's the average age of Russian IFers in general, | |
| and how many are they? | |
| Victor: 1979 YOB. No one could tell you the average, but the fact is the age | |
| spectrum began growing broader recently. As to the number of community members, | |
| there are over 100 authors registered in the URQ games catalogue, but it must be | |
| taken into account that a "generation change" goes on steadily. Some authors | |
| drop out of sight after uploading several games, others come anew, and some | |
| return after keeping silent for a long time. The approximate number of | |
| simultaneously active authors is about 10, maybe 20. | |
| Goraph: Personally, I'm 26 years old; I can't tell you anything about the | |
| average age, and it doesn't make any sense anyway, since some of the community | |
| members are old enough to be the others' fathers or even grandfathers. I think a | |
| realistic estimation of the number of members is over fifty, but the absolute | |
| majority of them are passive; the number of those who are active is slightly | |
| over ten. | |
| Korwin: I'm 37 years old now, but that won't last long. It's difficult for me to | |
| judge about the age of other IF enthusiasts, but my impression is they're | |
| younger than me. By my estimation, the number of those who write their own games | |
| is about twenty to thirty... if they don't write (like myself) under several | |
| nicks, that is. | |
| brevno: I'm 23, have no pernicious habits (apart from URQ), but a bad character, | |
| and I'm single. I think 13 to 19 years is the most accurate estimation of the | |
| average age of community members. Judging by the number of adventures sent in | |
| and nicknames registered, they are about eighty, regular rotation kept in mind | |
| of course. But I can't say about other development platforms. | |
| ZombX: I'm 19. The average age is 17 to 30. Yeah, the interval is like this. | |
| Other ages are a rarity. | |
| Akela: I'd be glad to tell about myself as well, but unfortunately I can't | |
| reveal the coordinates of my home planet... | |
| Jenny: What would you like to tell the readers about yourself? | |
| Goraph: [In English...] Hello, Dear Readers, my name is Yura, I'm living in | |
| Chernigov, Ukraine, a small beautiful town 140 km east of Chernobyl. I never pay | |
| taxes, and love interactive fiction for the most part of my life. :) | |
| Korwin: I have a house, a much-loved wife, a job I like, a son and a daughter. I | |
| also have a number of minor everyday problems life probably would be impossible | |
| without, solving of which gives one the feeling of a full-blooded life. And lots | |
| of problems at work they wouldn't pay me my wage without. | |
| brevno: My nickname is brevno (translated from Russian as "a log" or "a | |
| numskull"). Are you sure you want to know anything about someone who has chosen | |
| such a nick of his own accord, and is using it over several years?:) | |
| ZombX: Well, I was born in a small town of the Nizhni Novgorod Region, I'm | |
| unmarried, am fond of horror movies; I had a hard childhood, didn't go to school | |
| until the age of 7, was afraid of anybody. When I was beaten up, I cried. | |
| Akela: (Inarticulate mumbling.) | |
| Jenny: Your favorite books? Writers? Films? Song? | |
| Goraph: Book - The Hobbit by Tolkien (I reread it about fifteen times) | |
| Writer - China Mi�ville and Neal Stephenson | |
| Films -- all Hong Kong films by John Woo, True Romance by Tarantino, as well as | |
| Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead. | |
| Song: The Young One by Yefrem Amiramov | |
| Korwin: As far as books are concerned -- it's a difficult question. There are | |
| too many of them, since reading is my favorite way to spend my spare time. I'll | |
| list some of the books I've reread several times. | |
| Among foreign authors: Dragonsbane by Barbara Hambly, Ender's Game by Orson | |
| Scott Card, Foundation by Isaac Asimov, Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman, The | |
| Alchemist by Paulo Coelho, Illusions and Jonathan Livingston Seagull by Richard | |
| Bach. | |
| Among Russian authors, I like the books by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky, Sergey | |
| Lukianenko, Pavel Shoumil, Lev Vershinin. | |
| brevno: I like reading SciFi and historical literature. I hope the names won't | |
| be totally unfamiliar to you... Among ours, the first ones who come to mind are, | |
| say, Loukin, Belyanin, and Kaganov. Of the foreign ones - Longyear, Adams, | |
| Harrison, Asprin, well, and Pratchett is going to join this list soon. | |
| Films... Recently, I started watching movies way too much. Therefore, now, I | |
| don't like cinema at all. Well, the only exception may be good old Russian | |
| (Soviet) films, like the Midshipmen. [Midshipmen, Go Ahead! is a series of | |
| semi-historical full-length films made in the late 1980-ies, which is very | |
| popular in the SU/Russia. The plot is in the vein of Three Musketeers AFAIK]. | |
| Songs -- depend on my mood. Generally, I have a weakness for merry Irish music, | |
| frantic revolutionary and military songs, simple and sunny songs from the Soviet | |
| time, sometimes bardic song and folk. In a sad mood, I listen to classical music | |
| or punk rock. | |
| ZombX: Book: The Autumn Carnival Of Death. Authors: Ron'shin, Kharms. Films -- | |
| Cigarette Burns by Carpenter, then Man Bites Dog. Song She Loves So Much by | |
| Secret. | |
| Akela: Books -- there're lots of. Author - Lukianenko. Films -- are very many | |
| too, anime for the most part. Songs -- a whole lot too, by The Mill, The Rowan | |
| Tower, The King And The Fool, etc. | |
| Jenny: A forgivable weakness in a person? | |
| Goraph: I have difficulties answering this question, I only can talk about a | |
| specific person and a specific weakness:). | |
| Korwin: Telling lies -- in order to put oneself in a better light. But not | |
| slandering. | |
| brevno: IF. | |
| Akela: A weakness for computer games... that's mine. | |
| ZombX: Probably smoking. By the way, I'm a non-smoker. | |
| Jenny: What do you think, which merit deserves the most respect in a person? | |
| Goraph: All in all, you shouldn't ask me about that, rather the government and | |
| the sociologists. But the desire to write interactive fiction is undoubtedly | |
| worthy of all kinds of respect. | |
| Korwin: Perseverance, diligence. | |
| brevno: Adequacy, understanding, cordiality, fervor. | |
| ZombX: Well, the ability to carry an undertaking through. | |
| Akela (reluctantly tearing himself away from the screen): Honesty, decency. | |
| Jenny: The worst streak of the Russian mentality. | |
| Goraph: I don't know any. | |
| Korwin: Unreliability. I'm a historian by education, thus, I understand where it | |
| comes from, and hope very much modern conditions will form other habits. In me, | |
| too. | |
| brevno: A generous nature. | |
| ZombX: The way everything is put off till the last minute. | |
| Akela: How can you measure all Russians by one yardstick? | |
| Jenny: The best streak of Russians. | |
| Goraph: The best streak of the Russian mentality is their "unconventional" way | |
| of thinking (that doesn't resemble either the Western or the Eastern one, and is | |
| a sort of a mixture between them), which sometimes leads to interesting results. | |
| Korwin: Optimism. | |
| brevno: A generous nature. | |
| ZombX: A generous nature. | |
| Akela (is immersed in the game again):... | |
| Jenny: A traditional question: your plans for the future. | |
| Victor: urq_dos is a text-only (command-prompt only) application originally | |
| developed for DOS16. After the machines that only had "pure" DOS installed | |
| became completely obsolete, it was ported to DOS32 and WCL (Windows Command | |
| Line). The last update goes back to 2004, and of course a huge number of new | |
| ideas and features not yet implemented are pending. This includes a version with | |
| a suitable graphic interface, porting to new environments and operating systems, | |
| several new key features of the URQL language suggested by adventure authors, as | |
| well as a lot of other things I can't remember straight off. In other words, | |
| there's no lack of new plans and prospects, the question is just, where to find | |
| spare time, a motivation and opportunities for implementing all this. When I | |
| started working on Dosurka I was a student, and while there isn't ever enough | |
| spare time, in that period, I had the wish to just get a look at various aspects | |
| of programming, to try my strength at solving interesting problems; well, and | |
| the burden of reality hasn't been as heavy as it is now -- many of the problems | |
| I've been confronting at that time seem rather trifling to me now. Currently, | |
| I've already graduated from the university and upheld my thesis, I have an | |
| intense work full of responsibilities, as well as a number of problems that | |
| somehow never get fewer. As time goes by, it becomes more and more difficult to | |
| simply throw everything out of mind and return to one's hobby. | |
| Goraph: Currently, I have no plans related to IF, I'm interested in sim-racing | |
| now, but sooner or later I'll have the desire to write a text adventure again, | |
| as it happened many times over the last fifteen years :). | |
| Korwin: My most intimate dream is to write a masterpiece of a game, a game of | |
| the same level as the best Western text adventures. There're a lot of plans: to | |
| write a menu-based game in j2me for a cellular phone, two projects to be | |
| implemented in RTADS, one -- in QSP, and half a dozen -- in URQ. To be honest, | |
| I'd prefer if there was only one project -- I'd had better chances to complete | |
| it this year then. | |
| brevno: I'd be glad to say that I'm planning to do something really useful: to | |
| improve my editor, to program a GUI for URQ, or to write a stunning adventure... | |
| But instead, I'll just say that I'm going to take a firm hold on my line -- | |
| continue organizing the LOKa contests and second our authors' efforts. Sure | |
| enough, as much as I can, yeah. | |
| ZombX: I'm planning to shoot my low-budget horror film within the next three | |
| years. | |
| Akela (tearing himself away from the game one last time): To finally boost | |
| myself to the 60th level and solve all quests to get t3. | |
| KEY TO SCORES AND REVIEWS-------------------------------------------------- | |
| Consider the following review header: | |
| TITLE: Cutthroats | |
| AUTHOR: Infocom | |
| EMAIL: ??? | |
| DATE: September 1984 | |
| PARSER: Infocom Standard | |
| SUPPORTS: Z-code (Infocom/Inform) interpreters | |
| AVAILABILITY: LTOI 2 | |
| URL: Not available. | |
| VERSION: Release 23 | |
| When submitting reviews: Try to fill in as much of this info as you can. | |
| Authors may not review their own games. | |
| REVIEWS ------------------------------------------------------------------- | |
| From: Mike Harris (harriswillys SP@G grandecom.net) | |
| TITLE: The Ebb and the Flow of the Tide | |
| AUTHOR: Peter Nepstad | |
| E-MAIL: petern SP@G illuminatedlantern.com | |
| DATE: December 16, 2006 | |
| PARSER: TADS 2 | |
| SUPPORTS: TADS-2 Interpreters | |
| AVAILABLITY: freeware | |
| URL: | |
| http://www.illuminatedlantern.com/if/games/the_ebb_and_flow_of_the_tide.html | |
| VERSION: 1.1 | |
| The Ebb and Flow of the Tide is the second of Peter Nepstad's IF interpretations | |
| of Lord Dunsany's short stories, the first being The Journey of the King | |
| released in November 2006. | |
| "Tide" is certainly the more successful, perhaps because the story itself is | |
| more readily adapted to IF and also perhaps because the prose of the story is | |
| less florid and more accessible to the 21st century reader. | |
| Fans of the usual action-adventure will take some comfort in the fact that the | |
| PC can not be killed during the course of the game, for the simple and somewhat | |
| novel reason that the protagonist starts out in this unfortunate state. | |
| As one can imagine, this somewhat limits the actions available to the PC, but | |
| the author has done a good job implementing all of the sensory commands - | |
| listen, feel, smell, taste. | |
| This should be kept in mind, as arguably the most used command in more | |
| conventional IF, examine, will not always further the story. I would not call | |
| them "guess the verb" problems although they superficially resemble same, merely | |
| that the author forces the player to take a somewhat less orthodox approach | |
| given the limitations of the PC. With this in mind, play should take no more | |
| than 15 or 20 minutes. | |
| Beyond this unusual twist, play is bug free and cues are well integrated into | |
| the responses; for example at one point examining a wall will reveal the | |
| existence of passages which can then be further investigated with the sensorium | |
| available to the PC. At no point is a player left to wonder what to do next | |
| provided that they've investigated all of the current options at hand. | |
| The Ebb and Flow of the Tide is a memorable game, not least due to the efforts | |
| of the game author. The Dunsany tale is a somewhat chilling dream sequence but | |
| ultimately of little import; Mr. Nepstad's interpretation gave it life and | |
| immediacy. | |
| Out of 10 I give it a 3 for simplicity and 8 overall. | |
| =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= | |
| From: Jimmy Maher (maher SP@G grandecom.net) | |
| TITLE: The Elysium Enigma | |
| AUTHOR: Eric Eve | |
| E-MAIL: eric.eve SP@G hmc.ox.ac.uk | |
| DATE: October 1, 2006 | |
| PARSER: TADS 3 | |
| SUPPORTS: TADS interpreters | |
| AVAILABILITY: Freeware; IF-Archive | |
| URL: http://mirror.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/tads/Elysium.zip | |
| VERSION: 2.01 | |
| As anyone who read my IF Comp reviews last year will know, The Elysium Enigima | |
| was my game of the Comp. I noted at the time that I would like to return to it | |
| later to try for a full score, something the game encouraged when I completed it | |
| by helpfully suggesting some things that I left undone and might want to try | |
| next time. I had intended to play it again soon after the Comp, but Last Resort | |
| and the holiday season intervened. When Elysium won the XYZZY awards this year | |
| for Best Game and Best NPC, however, I was reminded to return to it, armed with | |
| my list of additional things to try to accomplish in search of a full score, to | |
| see if it was really as good as my almost embarrassingly enthusiastic previous | |
| review would indicate. And so I downloaded the latest post-Comp release and | |
| dove in. I am still very impressed, but also noticed a few things that bothered | |
| me this time around, as I was able to spend more time with the game and, | |
| unbothered by the joy of first discovery, view it with a bit more of a critical | |
| eye. | |
| First, though, let me explain the premise and the many positives for anyone | |
| coming to the game for the first time through this review. You play the role of | |
| a rather junior interstellar diplomat sent on a routine mission to the planet of | |
| Elysium, a backwater colony world populated by ludites who reject all but the | |
| most basic technology and have a rather ambivalent attitude about being a part | |
| of the Empire you work for at all. You are supposed to -- literally -- show the | |
| imperial flag, meet with a few of the society's elders if they desire it and | |
| make note of their concerns or complaints, and be on your way. The inevitable | |
| complications arise in the form of a mysterious and attractive female who | |
| doesn't seem to belong here. You must also deal with the suspicious natives, | |
| and may even be able to learn the reasons for their latent hostility toward the | |
| Empire. A lot is going on here, and the story, setting, and implementation are | |
| as well fleshed-out as you are likely to find in IF. Like all of Eric Eve's | |
| TADS 3 work, the whole serves as fine advertisement for the power of TADS 3. | |
| Most of the commentary on the game has focused, rightfully so, on the mysterious | |
| Leena, one of its three NPCs. You meet her early in the game, when she | |
| approaches you in the guise of a dirty and apparently hungry, but nevertheless | |
| very shapely, outcast. Much of the game revolves around figuring out just who | |
| and what she really is. I am already treading right on the line of spoilerdom | |
| here, so I will not go into more detail but rather defer to Valentine | |
| Koptelsev's SPAG Specifics piece, which focuses on Leena's role in the game. I | |
| agree with many of Valentine's concerns about Leena's sometimes illogical | |
| behavior, but also remain very impressed with Mr. Eve's masterful job in | |
| creating her. You can converse with Leena in great depth and breadth. The TADS | |
| 3 conversation system is in full flower. Talking with Leena doesn't feel like a | |
| game of "guess the topic," but rather feels at certain stretches like real | |
| conversation, as the two of you probe and feint, each trying to determine just | |
| what the other is really about. It's a fine merging of technical and artistic | |
| mastery that remains as impressive to me as it did when I first played the game. | |
| These interactions with Leena and (to a lesser extant) the two other NPCs, | |
| along with the thoroughly implemented environment, pull the game away from the | |
| text adventure feel and into something that feels more like a true interactive | |
| story. | |
| I think this feeling contributes to the disappointment I felt with some of the | |
| non-character interaction puzzles. First, though, I should mention that Mr. Eve | |
| did vastly improve in this post-Comp release the most egregious offender, a | |
| fiddly puzzle that required a degree of, shall we say, lateral thinking, and was | |
| borderline unfair. I complained about it in my previous review, and was | |
| apparently not alone. It's nice to see an author listening to his players and | |
| taking his work seriously enough to revise it and incorporate their input. | |
| Some of the other puzzles still bother me, though, because they destroy the | |
| sense of reality the game otherwise so masterfully creates. The worst offender | |
| comes when you find a housecat lying on top of a chest you would dearly like to | |
| open. Removing said cat requires solving a sequence of absurd puzzles that | |
| might be amusing in a Monkey Island-style comedy adventure but clash horribly | |
| with the believable tone of this story. I am an intrepid, healthy young | |
| adventurer visiting a planet as the representative of a powerful Empire, and I | |
| am stymied by a housecat? I love animals as much as the next guy, but... just | |
| kick the damn cat out of the way, already! The game doesn't need stuff like | |
| this to artificially lengthen it. | |
| I want to see more simulation-oriented puzzle-solving in IF, something at which | |
| TADS 3 should excel, and less fiddly set-pieces like this. (I know that places | |
| me outside the consensus position in the community, but so be it.) Apparently | |
| others complained about some of the puzzles as well, as Mr. Eve mentions in his | |
| notes on this release that taking their suggestions would entail making more | |
| extensive revisions than he was ready to undertake, in effect making the new | |
| release into an entirely new game. Fair enough, I can certainly understand that | |
| position, but do hope that he will consider our comments when writing his next | |
| game. He is so very, very close to achieving the most fluid storytelling we | |
| have yet seen in IF that it is a shame to see his efforts foiled by | |
| ill-considered puzzles seemingly inserted out of a sense of obligation. | |
| But let me place my complaints aside to state again that Elysium is a brilliant | |
| piece of work. It does not attempt to radically, explicitly innovate for the | |
| sake of mere cleverness, but rather molds its form to its function of providing | |
| the player with a fun, immersive interactive story. Even the writing does not | |
| call attention to itself, but flows fluidly and cleanly out of the way of the | |
| story. The game stands as my personal favorite of a very strong year, and I am | |
| happy to see the XYZZY voters recognize it. If you are reading this review to | |
| find out if you should play it... Yes, you should. | |
| =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= | |
| From: Jimmy Maher (maher SP@G grandecom.net) | |
| TITLE: Tales of the Traveling Swordsman | |
| AUTHOR: Mike Snyder | |
| E-MAIL: wyndo SP@G prowler-pro.com | |
| DATE: October 1, 2006 | |
| PARSER: Hugo | |
| SUPPORTS: Hugo interpreters | |
| AVAILABILITY: Freeware; IF-Archive | |
| URL: http://mirror.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/competition2006/hugo/tales_ts | |
| Tales of the Traveling Swordsman is one of several games from the 2006 | |
| Competition that I returned to recently for another look. I enjoyed my second | |
| play-through just as much as my first, even though the game is not the sort that | |
| generally most excites me. You see, Tales very much wants to tell you a story | |
| -- one particular story. It is very linear, and implemented just deeply enough | |
| to get you through that story. And it is a fantasy game, not my favorite genre | |
| of IF or literature. The fact that someone like me, who is generally interested | |
| by more simulation-oriented, open-ended IF set anywhere BUT a world of magic and | |
| fantasy, finds the game so appealing is a testimony I think to just how well it | |
| operates within its chosen restrictions. | |
| The game casts you as the eponymous swordsman, an adventurer who roams the land | |
| in search of villains to vanquish and fair maidens to rescue. It proceeds | |
| through three linear episodes to a suitably exciting climax; then comes a | |
| wonderful little denouement that casts everything that happened before in an | |
| entirely different light and really makes the game for me. The writing fairly | |
| charges along with lots of swashbuckling vigor right from the opening lines: | |
| "Thick blades of grass at hip level part and bend with your long strides. Onward | |
| you go, one hand on your broadsword's sheath, the other clutching a scrap of | |
| parchment, and your water flask dangling from the opposite hip. The town of | |
| Homesdale is now a morning's journey behind you." Mr. Snyder also takes modest | |
| advantage of Hugo's multimedia capabilities to display some nicely-done | |
| scrollwork chapter titles that add to the atmosphere. I hate to always refer to | |
| games by name-dropping books and other games, but in this case I can't resist. | |
| In the book department, this reminds me of a Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser story | |
| with a rather less roguish protagonist; in the game department, of a less | |
| aggressively silly Eric the Unready. | |
| It does have plenty of puzzles, but they are quite straightforward and likely to | |
| stump you just long enough to make them satisfying. You won't find any | |
| brain-twisters here to derail the story, and that's a good thing. In fact, you | |
| won't find any of the things you might be used to seeing in next-generation | |
| titles by the likes of Emily Short and Eric Eve, or even the author's own 2005 | |
| Competition entry Distress. | |
| So why do I want to give this one such an excellent review? In short, because | |
| the atmosphere is just so darn innocent and fun... and because at the end, when | |
| you realize what you have really been experiencing, it manages to be both very | |
| funny (especially the bit about the cat!), and poignant, a reminder -- for me, | |
| anyway -- of childhood summers that seemed to go on forever. Without the | |
| epilogue, it would be a competent but unexceptional little piece of lightweight | |
| fantasy. With it, though, it rises to mingle with the cream of the 2006 crop. | |
| I can't think of a better choice for the 2006 XYZZY award for best story. | |
| I could happily go on for several more paragraphs, but to do that I would have | |
| to spoil the central surprise about which I've possibly already said too much. | |
| I have to say, though, that a huge source of confusion for me as I was playing | |
| the first time, the fact that I couldn't seem to TALK to anyone, gets explained. | |
| In fact, I realized on my second play-through that there was no sound at all in | |
| the story, and, again, when you get to the end yourself you will understand why. | |
| I'm not sure if I'm quite happy with the point of view switch that happens | |
| inside the epilogue, as it felt a bit jarring to suddenly be somebody else after | |
| going all through the game through behind another set of eyes, but I'm also not | |
| sure if the real situation could have been communicated quite so economically if | |
| this hadn't been done. | |
| The overall level of polish is excellent, bugs seem well-nigh nonexistent, and a | |
| play-through will take no more than a couple of hours at the outside. So go to | |
| it, and if you have any heart at all prepare to laugh and even be a little bit | |
| moved. | |
| ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ | |
| !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! | |
| ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ | |
| ___. .___ _ ___. ___. | |
| / _| | \ / \ / ._| / _| | |
| \ \ | o_/ | | | |_. \ \ | |
| .\ \ | | | o | | | | .\ \ | |
| |___/ |_| |_|_| \___| |___/ PECIFICS | |
| SPAG Specifics is a small section of SPAG dedicated to providing in- | |
| depth critical analysis of IF games, spoilers most emphatically | |
| included. | |
| WARNING! SPOILERS BELOW FOR THE FOLLOWING GAME: | |
| The Elysium Enigima | |
| PROCEED NO FURTHER UNLESS YOU HAVE PLAYED THIS GAME! | |
| THIS IS NOT A TEST! GENUINE SPOILERS TO FOLLOW! | |
| LAST CHANCE TO AVOID SPOILAGE! | |
| From: Valentine Kopteltsev (uux SP@G mail.ru) | |
| TITLE: The Elysium Enigma | |
| AUTHOR: Eric Eve | |
| E-MAIL: eric.eve SP@G hmc.ox.ac.uk | |
| DATE: October 1, 2006 | |
| PARSER: TADS 3 | |
| SUPPORTS: TADS interpreters | |
| AVAILABILITY: Freeware; IF-Archive | |
| URL: http://mirror.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/tads/Elysium.zip | |
| VERSION: 2.01 | |
| Five Things A Spy Should Never Do | |
| Since the publication of my IF-Comp rant in SPAG issue #47, I've been | |
| restless. (And that's not as much an exaggeration as you might have thought). | |
| The reason for that were the rather unkind words I applied to Mr. Eve's work, | |
| Elysium Enigma. To be more precise, it weren't exactly the words | |
| themselves -- rather, the way I left them without any grounding or | |
| explanation. "The behavior principles of the most important NPC are | |
| fundamentally wrong", "I'm confronting dummies" -- those certainly aren't | |
| accusations to be thrown about without rhyme and reason! Yes, the requirement | |
| of not being spoilery can sometimes have strange (and clearly unintended) | |
| effects on a review; in this particular case, for instance, it probably | |
| provided the author of the reviewed work with the unique opportunity to slip | |
| on the shoes of a theatre producer whose play is pelted with rotten tomatoes | |
| by the audience for no apparent reason. Well, at least this non-spoilery | |
| requirement is fair in respect of its effects working bothway: to me, it gave | |
| the genuine feeling of being one of such a tomato-throwing rowdies paid by | |
| the competitors, who play their mean tricks out from the safety of the | |
| spectators' hall. Not a very pleasant sensation, by golly! | |
| That's when one starts to appreciate the SPAG Specifics section. God bless | |
| Paul O'Brian who introduced it! God bless Duncan Stevens, too, who was the | |
| first to write a Specifics review! | |
| What follows is a list of a few key behavior aspects of the most important | |
| NPC in Elysium Enigma, Leela the spy, which I found totally unrealistic, | |
| accompanied by an explanation why exactly they didn't convince me. Please be | |
| aware that my analysis is based not on deep insider knowledge of the spy | |
| trade, but mostly on plain common sense (with only sporadic insertion of | |
| information I gained from the few spy movies/novels I watched/read). | |
| So, the first of the DON'Ts for a spy would be | |
| 1. NEVER TALK TO STRANGERS (unless you really have to) | |
| In fact, questions start to crop up immediately after the spectacular | |
| apparition of Leela. So, shortly after you start the game, she comes up to | |
| you, telling her tear-jerking story about being expelled by the other | |
| dwellers, and begging you to find her some food and clothing. Now, keeping in | |
| mind Leela turns up to be an enemy spy by the end of the game, we just can do | |
| nothing but ask: why would she do it? Let's assume she only has professional | |
| interest in our PC, so that several motives quite natural for a "young woman | |
| of about twenty standard Earth years of age", like feeling lonely or the need | |
| for men's attention, can't be applied here. | |
| Well, a spy's main goals usually are sabotage and gaining information. Let's | |
| start with the former. | |
| Damaging the already troubled relations between the Empire and the Elysium | |
| people certainly would be an enticing objective for Leela. Say, something | |
| like obtaining the Empire officer's ID card, then penetrating the Legion | |
| office, decoying one of the local Elders by hoisting up the flag, killing | |
| him, and framing the Empire for the murder. She then could depart, taking the | |
| captured Empire officer with her, or, alternatively, kill him too, leaving | |
| his body somewhere not far away from the landing site of the Empire shuttle. | |
| Granted, the departure part might turn out somewhat problematic, but even if | |
| she failed to split -- the damage to the Empire probably would more than | |
| justify the loss of an agent for the Federation. (I know, it sounds pretty | |
| cynical, but so is the spy trade.) | |
| The problem is, Leela wouldn't have to contact our PC to achieve that. In | |
| fact, she'd just have to wait for him in ambush (which wouldn't represent a | |
| problem, since she clearly knew the path he'd take, as well as the | |
| approximate time of his arrival), then kill or stun him using a long-range | |
| weapon. She then would have at least a couple of hours to arrange everything | |
| the way she wanted... But I'm digressing from the subject. The main point is, | |
| if Leela was planning to inflict damage the way described above, the less the | |
| PC would become aware of her presence, the better it'd be for her. | |
| What other goals could she be after, then? Seduce the PC in order to win him | |
| over? More than doubtful, considering how little time is at her disposal, and | |
| what a low-value target a "hoist-up" officer probably represents. Start small | |
| talk with the PC in the hope to worm a few crucial secrets out of him? The | |
| very idea is ridiculous -- considering, again, the humble time resources she | |
| has, and the way how utterly suspicious any questions about the Empire | |
| (except maybe for the most general ones) would sound in her lips ("They say | |
| this year, the crops are gonna be good... By the way, darlin', what's the | |
| numeric strength of the Empire's most important starship fleets in the Sirius | |
| system?") Maybe just undermine his morale and arouse doubts about the | |
| correctness of the Empire's politics on Elysium by demonstrating how cruel | |
| the people he's going to talk to are? Again -- this means high risks (see | |
| more on that below), unclear (and probably pretty weak) effect to the benefit | |
| of the Federation, and low probability of success. | |
| And now, what are the dangers Leela is taking upon herself by contacting the | |
| PC? Well, a pretty severe risk of exposure -- no more, no less. Elysium | |
| Enigma's optimal path suggests the PC does all the work by himself, but he | |
| really didn't need to. Even if he was a narrow-minded martinet only capable | |
| of directly following the instructions he received, anybody "with a deeper | |
| understanding of the situation" would reveal Leela's legend as a fake one, | |
| and know, on reading the PC's report, something foul is going on there. The | |
| result most likely would be a special de-spying mission to Elysium... | |
| Finally, a passage from a mystery by Agatha Christie comes to my mind (the | |
| highlight is mine, and I'd like to apologize for the quotation being not very | |
| accurate -- I've read the novel several years ago, and not in the original): | |
| "If he stayed quiet, we'd probably let him be, but *the idiot* kept getting | |
| underfoot and putting his nose in our affairs, so that finally, we started | |
| suspecting him." | |
| I think certain similarities between the way the criminal referred to in the | |
| previous section acted, and the behavior of Leela the super-spy haven't | |
| eluded the reader's attention. Also note the characterization the said | |
| criminal received -- no, not from a high-skilled spy-catcher, but from a mere | |
| police detective. | |
| 2. DON'T LET YOUR KEYS LYING AROUND | |
| What's the optimal distance between a spy's hideaway, and a representative of | |
| the opposing party, from the spy's point of view? Correct answer: as far as | |
| possible. | |
| Leela doesn't just draw the PC to her shelter: after all, that might have | |
| been required for her plan (whatever it was -- see DON'T #1 on that). In | |
| addition, she conveniently drops the key to it in the next vicinity. That's | |
| the acme of negligence for a spy: she could as well just put a WELCOME mat on | |
| the "secret" trapdoor, hiding the key for it underneath! | |
| Well, if I were the spy, I'd probably carry the key somewhere on my body -- | |
| say, on my neck, disguised as a locket, or concealed in my hair -- regardless | |
| of whether any enemy officers were around or not, but especially in the | |
| former case. At the very least, I'd hide it somewhere I truly could rely on | |
| nobody being able to find it (like, burying it in the forest, that kind of | |
| thing). Sure, that'd be less handy -- but the elimination of unauthorized | |
| access risks clearly outweighs any inconvenience in this situation. | |
| 3. DON'T FORGET TO TRAIN YOUR MEMORY | |
| A short digression: it's amazing in itself both opposing forces, The Empire | |
| and The Federation, use compatible data storage systems. In this regard, I | |
| remember the semi-fable about how the Soviet engineers cloned the IBM PC, yet | |
| the clone turned out to be incompatible with the original device, because all | |
| imperial dimensions were converted to metric ones. | |
| But that's not the subject I initially intended to talk about. I've really | |
| been stunned to find the passwords to the datatabs scattered around here and | |
| there. I'm more than unsure spies are allowed to write down such information | |
| at all! Leela also seems to have even more serious problems with her memory, | |
| since she had to jot the passwords down on like-colored objects to match them | |
| to the proper datatabs... | |
| Well, I probably even could buy this whole business as a relatively minor | |
| plausibility break. The thing that clearly went over the top was, having a | |
| password written down on Leela's shuttle! Were there not a single other, | |
| more suitable black object around? It's practically as if I scribbled the | |
| password to my office computer on the wall in the entrance hall of the house | |
| I'm living in! The Federation really must be suffering from lack of qualified | |
| personnel. | |
| 4. DON'T NEGLECT YOUR SURROUNDING LANDSCAPE | |
| At a couple of occasions during the game, Leela semi-actively tries to get | |
| into the PC's way -- say, by preventing him from moving the cabinet to reveal | |
| the trapdoor, or not letting him cross the river in her presence. Now, what | |
| would be a suitable tactics to encumber him not just at one occasion, but | |
| permanently? I'd see two ways: a) find a vantage point I could watch the | |
| whole surroundings from, and run to intercept the PC as soon as I see him | |
| make his way to the spot he was trying to do something I didn't let him to, | |
| or b) occupy a key location the PC couldn't pass without meeting me. None of | |
| those plans are ideal, but at least they're consequent. | |
| What does Leela instead? She follows the PC to the edge of the forest and | |
| remains there sheepishly, giving him the opportunity to do what he's | |
| initially intended to unnoticed. Someone could point out to me the courses of | |
| action I suggested above aren't the solution under the given topographic | |
| circumstances. That's a strong argument I fully agree with; but then, | |
| wouldn't it be *much* wiser for Leela to just refrain from those attempts of | |
| hindering the PC, since they were doomed for failure from the very start? I | |
| mean, she had plenty of time to study the area to find out there's no easy | |
| way to intercept someone who's trying to slip by secretly, and any person | |
| with an IQ of at least a three-year-old child would know trying to talk | |
| someone out of doing something with a motivation like "you'd kill yourself" | |
| (while he obviously wouldn't) just couldn't be successful. If anything, | |
| such an attempt would just stir up the curiosity of the person it's directed | |
| against, and make the one trying to get in the way look extremely suspicious. | |
| (By the way, the part about making Leela look suspicious worked perfectly for | |
| me). | |
| 5. DON'T TURN AWAY FROM PROBLEMS (because they tend to come back to you) | |
| As the game was going on and I was getting past its puzzles, I tried hard to | |
| provoke a sensible reaction from Leela. I got down into her hideaway, | |
| accompanied by her; I asked her questions that should have make it obvious | |
| for her I discovered the shuttle, the listening device, etc. To put it short, | |
| I did everything to make a person with even a trace of intellect understand | |
| she's in for trouble. | |
| What kind of reaction did I expect? Well, there were three options. Leela | |
| could try to take the PC by surprise and shoot him (oh, and don't tell me a | |
| decent spy wouldn't have a suitable weapon hidden somewhere!); alternatively, | |
| she could return to the role of a degraded, half-nutty girl she was playing | |
| at the very beginning, and flee (for instance, accompanying her retreat with | |
| shouting at the PC, "You're a monster! Don't touch me!") The third option | |
| might have been a combination of the other two (Leela would run away, then | |
| eventually return and try shooting the PC). | |
| What happened in the game instead? Nothing, actually. Leela kept following me | |
| around, playing the innocent, until a point where the situation became | |
| absolutely hopeless for her. We know how to call such a way of action: | |
| ostrich policy, a behavior pattern very typical for a bureaucrat who's pretty | |
| sure it's not him who's going to sort out the consequences of the problems | |
| he's trying to ignore; but certainly not for a spy knowing that her mission, | |
| her career, well, even her freedom and life are at stake. | |
| EPILOGUE | |
| There are a few other inconsistencies in the game, including a couple of plot | |
| branches dangling in the air (for instance, I don't think we ever get an | |
| explanation how it came to the flag/pillowcase confusion, which, in its turn, | |
| resulted in the listening device being revealed), but they are relatively | |
| minor compared to the ones listed above. | |
| Now, I can't say it often enough: I don't think The Elysium Enigma is a bad | |
| game -- on the contrary, it's great, especially once you stop creating | |
| illusions about it being a spy mystery, and perceive it as a puzzle-fest. | |
| Leela, too, is a nicely done character -- in her own way. I had the | |
| impression Mr. Eve designed a set of reactions that'd be plausible for an | |
| innocent village girl, but for some reason, didn't go a step further and | |
| check whether they'd be logical for a spy *pretending* to be an innocent | |
| village girl. Also, a few inconsistencies in her behavior can be explained by | |
| the game author's desire to keep his puzzles fair. Which, in its turn, quite | |
| unambiguously hints at Leela's primary predestination: she's not here to be | |
| your opponent -- rather, to provide puzzles for you. This is perfectly fine, | |
| but I radically disagree with the opinion EE in general and Leela in | |
| particular represents a breakthrough in character interaction. | |
| Finally, I'd like to remind you that I'm just expressing my personal opinion | |
| here, and that my words aren't intended to be taken as a gospel. I might very | |
| well have overlooked something. Thus, I've always open for a discussion via | |
| e-mail or R*IF in case you find a mistake in my reasoning, or just disagree | |
| with my views. | |
| P.S. My work on this review was in full play when the news came | |
| The Elysium Enigma won the XYZZY Awards for best game, and best individual | |
| NPC. The only thing I can do here is, to congratulate Mr. Eve sincerely with | |
| but one comment: we have a worthy winner here;). | |
| SUBMISSION POLICY --------------------------------------------------------- | |
| SPAG is a non-paying fanzine specializing in reviews of text adventure games, | |
| a.k.a. Interactive Fiction. This includes the classic Infocom games and similar | |
| games, but also some graphic adventures where the primary player-game | |
| communication is text based. Any and all text-based games are eligible for | |
| review, though if a game has been reviewed three times in SPAG, no further | |
| reviews of it will be accepted unless they are extraordinarily original and/or | |
| insightful. SPAG reviews should be free of spoilers, with the exception of | |
| reviews submitted to SPAG Specifics, where spoilers are allowed in the service | |
| of in-depth discussion. In addition, reviewers should play a game to completion | |
| before submitting a review. There are some exceptions to this clause -- | |
| competition games reviewed after 2 hours, unfinishable games, games with | |
| hundreds of endings, etc. -- if in doubt, ask me first. | |
| Authors retain the rights to use their reviews in other contexts. We accept | |
| submissions that have been previously published elsewhere, although original | |
| reviews are preferred. | |
| For a more detailed version of this policy, see the SPAG FAQ at http://www. | |
| sparkynet.com/spag/spag.faq. | |
| --------------------------------------------------------------------------- | |
| Thank you for helping to keep text adventures alive! | |
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