Letter to George Dorn

Hi, George.

I appreciate the review of Piracy 2.0. I've been hitting "Refresh" on many pages since the competition began, eager to see what people thought of my first IF game.

I always appreciate it when someone takes the time to play it and give it a thoughtful review, and not something slapped off after typing in a dozen commands and dismissing it as not his cup of tea.

Your review was thorough and very thoughtful. Thanks.

But it has some basic facts wrong. In fact, the main two peeves you mention are incorrect. There are no time limits in the game. Well, not 100% true. Once you set your course for home (either to one of the two starbases or to United Worlds Command) you do have a time limit, but until you do that, which is generally one of the last things to do, there are no time limits at all.

The second is you claimed there were an infinite number of enemies. Unless there is a serious bug that none of my testers caught, there are exactly 10 pirates that teleport in. Once you kill the last one, you are never bothered by them again. (Testing it right now in a debug build confirms this. Once the 10th pirate is dead, you encounter no more.)

Obviously the object of the game is to discover what it is you have to do and do it. This is of course never obviously intuitive, and if you don't discover this, you can get to a non-optimal ending, which is part of my game design. I find any game where you can win at any stage no matter what choices you've made, to be unrealistic and coddling the player. "Learn by dying" was perfectly ok with Infocom, and my game follows in their tradition.

Don't get me wrong. I understand the format of my game is dated, but the aim was to recreate the INFOCOM format, and I think I succeeded at least in part on that score.

There are a few things you can do to ensure a bad ending, two of which being the lifeboats. Also there are computer commands that can end your life pretty quickly. But you're on a ship with deadly pirates who have control of your ship. Of course you can make moves that will kill you. The aim is to remove their control of the ship and regain control yourself, disabling their ability to harm you or your ship. It IS possible to do all of this, get safely home, and completely restore your honor as a United Worlds officer.

Given the various tasks you "should" complete, you are given a score at the end based on those tasks you did complete. Missing some results in a non-perfect score. But at least you survive to live another day. A sub-optimal ending has you disgraced and discharged from service, with a dismal future. A perfect score gives you immediate command of a new vessel, your name and honor completely exonerated.

Also, bypassing any room in an Text Adventure can result in a bad play-through. And as you say, as Captain you should know everything about the ship. (And, to that end, I provide a ship's map on my web-page, as noted in my About menus, in the "Feelies" section.) But this inherent knowledge is hard to portray in a game such as this. Yes, you're the Captain, but you're still a player trying to sort out the tasks in front of you and achieving them.

It would be similar if I had set this game on a Wild West Ranch where you should know how to herd cattle, but the PLAYER doesn't necessarily know how to harness a horse properly. Hopefully the game is set up in a way which will make it fairly obvious to the player once he finds the necessary equipment.

While the codes necessary for completing the game are mentioned in the Captain's Computer, the actual codes for the computer are in the computer room and monitor room, which is as it should be. These codes could theoretically change at any time like timed-out passwords, so the one monitor is there to inform you of the current codes. Of course in reality in this game they do NOT change, but that's the idea.

Only the course you need to set changes with each play, but those are clearly shown in two places, so they're hard to miss. They're even coded to read properly in the "Walkthrough" command list.

Some tasks are entirely non-obvious, but none of them are beyond figuring once you get involved in the story. Some of the tasks you should complete are even mentioned specifically. Holiday tells you more or less exactly what you should do with the purple DataCube if you show him things that may be of import.

As for fairness to the player, I believe I'm highly fair. The random pirates add a sense of very real danger and urgency, and as you correctly point out, their fervency depends upon some of your own actions.

I'm actually surprised you caught a vital but little-known detail - that if you creep back to the Brig after Whitehall alerts his crew you are out, you do buy yourself some time. The pirate's urgency doesn't go up in such a case. (I'd hazard a guess that fewer than one in twenty players will EVER discover that little detail.) But if they don't find you in the Brig, they immediately are put on medium alert. And certain other actions you take up that urgency even further.

But while random, the combat is not entirely unfair. The food restores health, after it thaws out. As well, the bioinjector restores several health points, and has three uses before it runs out. And your gun has infinite power, so you never run out of shots, swaying the fairness balance in the player's favor. And, as I said, once you kill 10 of them, you no longer have to worry about them.

Yes, the battlecruiser will fire on you, but only if you fire on them first. After all, they are not privy to the situation aboard, and since you fired upon them first, they must assume your ship is in control of the pirates and they take appropriate action. A good explore of the whole ship should make it fairly obvious how to prevent this.

Anyway, as I said, thanks for a very thoughtful, honest review. It just doesn't sit well with me when a reviewer bases his review on false assumptions, and I thought it proper to point those out.

And yes, any review is based on the game as the reviewer sees it, and I accept that. But certain facts should be made known. I make them known to you in hopes that you may perhaps give it another shot. But that's your call. 35 games, six weeks. Not a heck of a lot of opportunity to re-visit any particular game, and I respect that.

But no infinite enemies, and no time limits. Just thought I should let you know.

Sean Huxter.

 

Piracy ©1985,2008 Sean Huxter