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From: erkyrath@netcom.com (Andrew Plotkin)
Subject: Re: [CONTEST] Planning for 1997, take 2.
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Date: Fri, 8 Nov 1996 19:36:27 GMT
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Gerry Kevin Wilson (whizzard@uclink.berkeley.edu) wrote:
> Sigh.  Okay, fine.  If we really want to argue over adding 8 lines of code
> to everyone's program.

Deterministic random events is a little more than that, though; it 
affects the feel of a game, and potentially makes it harder to debug. (I 
mean, turning randomness back on at the end of the contest may unleash a 
slew of bugs that happened to never get triggered in the contest version.)

> The walkthrough is a safety net for new authors.  It not only ensures that
> their games will be posted in a winnable format, but it ensures that even
> if their game is too hard, some folks will use portions of the walkthrough
> in order to see the end of the game, which might be very well written, and
> so the game will not suffer as much as it might otherwise.  It is very
> difficult for a new author to judge how hard their puzzles are.  The
> contest is primarily designed to draw in new authors.  QED, the rules are
> geared towards new authors.  Everyone else just has to suffer along for
> the cause.

If the point is to make a safety net, why not make it optional? Tell 
authors, look, players won't be very impressed with your sparkling prose 
if they never see the last 75% of it. Including hints or a walkthrough 
will prevent this problem. 

And if your walkthrough isn't clear enough for the average jerk to follow,
it'll be as if you didn't put one in at all, right? 

And if there's a bug in your game which makes it unwinnable, you're going 
to get *really* lousy scores.

I think most authors are capable of coming to their own conclusions, 
given that sort of guideline. 

Actually I think this year's contest is working well with the "you must 
have some kind of hint or walkthrough thing." I've played a lot more game 
than I would have if there had been no hints (or if I had any kind of 
willpower. :-) But I think it would be sufficient to tell authors "A 
walkthrough is a waste of time if the player can't follow it; and 
unwinnable games suck."

--Z

-- 

"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the
borogoves..."
