Piracy 2.0

When I discovered Inform 6, the language this revised version is coded in, (thanks, Graham Nelson! See Acknowledgments.) I decided as a good learning exercise I would redo the game in its original form, then rewrite it, modernizing it a bit.

Four seconds in, I realized I didn't want to rewrite it as it was, it was too simplistic. I wanted to make it better, and used this new version as my learning exercise.

I found not long after that I had to remove the humor. What was so funny about being in charge of a patrol ship and having your entire crew killed? Not a lot, I found. So I rebuilt the story with no humor at all. I even took out the Babelfish you could find, even though it's a fun item with lots of cute responses to various commands. Well, in truth, the Babelfish is still there, but you're not likely to find it during normal play.

Piracy 2.0 is a deeper story with intrigue and an ending that varies depending on things you've done during the game.

It was heaven being able to code this game concept with a full parser, the ability to use complex commands, being able to save the game and have all of the features I grew to love in INFOCOM games.

During development I learned of the Interactive Fiction Competition, and I thought this would be a good candidate for entry. But then I learned that competition was restricted to games that can be played in two hours, so I was a bit worried. But the more I developed and the more I played (and had testers play) the more I realized this game can easily be played in two hours.

And with all the work I put into it I had to go back and wonder how the heck INFOCOM games had me playing for weeks or months, in games that took up less memory than this one. Amazing.

Piracy ©1985,2008 Sean Huxter