Re: [IF Book Club] Spiritwrak

[dsyu@my-deja.com]

[follow-up]

Well, it's been, what, 4+ years since I wrote Spiritwrak.  Boy,
I suddenly feel old.  Anyhoo...a special thanks to all those
who blew the dust off Spiritwrak and took it for a spin.

<some pseudo-spoilers follow>

-- On the transportation system:

I'd probably say I got more "nays" than "yays" on this aspect
of the game.  Initially, this was supposed to serve two purposes:
1) create a (false) sense of distance in the game between
locales and 2) be something of a puzzle, in that you had to
properly conserve coins to get to where you wanted to go.

"2" failed, and wasn't well thought out -- the gist being that
until the player really knew where to go, they wouldn't know
to conserve coins.  The Bank puzzle was added in version 3 as
a hack to address this.  Maybe a map early on would have helped.

"1" however, I thought worked out.  The Beyond Zork Ethereal
Plane was simpler and more convenient, I'd agree, but I'd also add
that the intention wasn't to provide a quick and easy means
of transportation.  I was always a big fan of the weird and
amusing means of transportation in Zork games (raft, balloon,
sky-car, roller coaster, etc.), and I wanted SW to have something
similar.

Using BZ as an example, I'm the type of person who never
really used the Ethereal plane to hop around, just so I could
get another ride on the sky-car.  Admittedly, the process
got essentially tedious, but just the faux feeling that you
were "traveling" made it worth it (to me).  Of course, with a subway,
there isn't as much scenery as, say, a hot-air balloon ride,
so I tossed in some odd denizens, and some quirks along the
way.

-- On puzzles and combat:

Creating the puzzles was something of a learning experience.
Most of the original puzzles were based on random academic
problems.  Morgan's windcats puzzle, for example, was
inspired (and I used this word loosely) by a classic
distributed computing problem (The Byzantine Generals Problem).
In the end, however, some puzzles I liked, players didn't
(ancient temple puzzle) and vis versa (the see-saw puzzle was
a total last-minute afterthought puzzle).  It all depends on
experiences and personal tastes, and I discovered (duh) that
it's quite difficult to create "generic" puzzles that are easily
approachable by anyone.

The other aspect to the game was that I tried to put a
mini combat-system in it, which only partially gets used when
dealing with the spirits (which you can't really fight anyway)
and the golems.  Different schools of thought on this -- I
liked the combat-system in the Zork series, for example.
I didn't like the overly RPG-like system in BZ.  Half-way
through doing this, however, I realized that it didn't really
make sense to have an intricate combat system in SW, since
the main character was a priest, after all.  Ergo...lame
combat system.

-- On Zorkiness:

As any fan-based work goes, replicating an environment is done
more as an act of homage, rather than an attempt to be
exceedingly accurate.  I mainly concentrating my efforts on
trying to replicate some of the Zork environment (mostly
creatures and characters) and whimsy (cakes, volcano, etc).
I felt I managed to capture a bit of the atmosphere, although
the plot suffered somewhat, and was a bit jumbled to begin with.
Such is life.

Dan



In article <8j6i38$7k9$1@bob.news.rcn.net>,
  "Duncan Stevens" <dnrb@starpower.net> wrote:
> This is an IF Book Club post. See www.textfire.com/bookclub for more
> information. Warning: there are major spoilers for Spiritwrak below.
>
> This isn't an essay so much as it's a series of thoughts about
Spiritwrak,
> most of them related to game design, specifically poor--or, at least,
no
> longer acceptable, game design. While there are things to like about
> Spiritwrak, there are also plenty of things for game authors to avoid,
> IMO.
>
> First: that damn transportation system, both tedious--usually at least
> twenty turns wasted getting from one area to another--and unfair, in
that
> it's not really so terribly hard to run out of coins. Sure, if you do
the
> bank puzzle early on, it's probably not a problem, but if you don't,
> you're apt to end up stuck somewhere. The irritating thing is that the
> author seemed to build in a shortcut, namely the huncho spell--which,
a la
> Beyond Zork, should let you move from place to place pretty quickly
via
> the Ethereal Plane--but (a) you don't get access to that shortcut
until
> the end of the game, and (b) you need all four rods to use the huncho
> spell, and players lose the four rods shortly after collecting all
four of
> them. (You can still get to the Ethereal Plane via the gating device
> thing, but that's not exactly handy.) If access to the shortcut had
come
> along much earlier in the game, the subway would have been bearable;
as it
> is, it's a major nuisance.
>
> Second, did anyone else find it odd that the quest itself--at least,
> collecting the four rods--was strikingly less interesting than the
puzzles
> you solve to get there? I guess I'm reacting mostly to the way you
get rid
> of the evil nasty spirits, i.e., cast the same spell on each one. The
> spirits themselves are guarded by some fun (even if highly artificial
> puzzles)--the layers of wood beams, the trophy puzzle--but the
spirits are
> pretty wimpy. This struck me as peculiar.
>
> The bag of holding--either the fur sack or, bizarrely, a flowerpot--
was a
> welcome touch, but it came along way too late. I was juggling objects
long
> before I found either of the "holding" objects. Moral: if you're
going to
> sacrifice realism to avoid inventory management puzzles, do it _right
> away_. Dammit.
>
> Mind-reading: a little too much of it. The ZEMDOR spell (triplicate)
is
> neat, but how I should have known to cast it on the cereal box, and
how I
> should have anticipated that the box would turn into three _different_
> boxes, well, I dunno. The hide-the-rod-in-the-foundation-of-the-house
> puzzle--I don't know why, but for some reason it wasn't obvious to me
that
> the one brick was weaker than the other, and it certainly wasn't
obvious
> that I have to leave the weak brick lying around so that someone else
can
> put it in the hole (as opposed to putting it in the hole myself).
There's
> a scroll in the painting? Like, why? The umbrella-in-the-pool puzzle
still
> makes zero sense to me, and the zombie puzzle is a cute joke that I
doubt
> most people would get until after the fact. My whistle will shatter
glass?
> Suggesting that I needed to find the Frobozz Magic Spatula to get the
cake
> out of the pan was a tad mean.
>
> Also, in the category of bad puzzles, the logic puzzle doesn't work at
> all. Specifically: one of the chambers (which can either be lying or
tell
> the truth) essentially says "I am lying." Uh...
>
> There are a few good things in the game design department, I guess.
> Assembling the various bits of backstory over the course of the game
was
> arguably the most interesting thing that happened, and while some of
the
> fragments you find are kind of repetitive, most are sort of
> intriguing--and the sequence of fragments (more or less predictable)
does
> a nice job of unfolding the story bit by bit. Thumbs up for that. The
> spheres you get for various good deeds are a bit hokey, but it's
still not
> a bad touch--it makes the quest feel a bit less formulaic than it
might
> be. The seesaw puzzle is pretty cool (though it's also easy to
suddenly
> render the game unwinnable), and the scroll-on-the-ledge puzzle is
clever.
> Not many of the puzzles were really strikingly original, but a few
were.
>
> On Zorkiness: yes. As in, it does capture the feel pretty well
(though the
> amount of slavish copying is part of that)--similar to Balances and
Frobozz
> Magic Support, better than Zork Zero. (I've never tried the graphical
> games.) Zorkiness isn't enough to make it good, of course, but it did
push
> my nostalgia buttons, which helped. It didn't really have the same
sense of
> humor as such, but the whimsy--the volcano puzzle, the contest, the
alarm
> clock puzzle--were all reminiscent of Zork.
>
> On the whole: not much plot, in the classic Zork style, and some game
design
> problems, but a nice trip down memory lane.
>
>


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