Spacestation

Title           Spacestation
Game Type	Adventure
Author		David Ledgard
Players		1
Compatibility	All (with interpreter)
Submission	dledgard@hotmail.com

Review
First I would like to thank Activision for giving me permission to use
material from Infocom's Planetfall game, which they now own. This game
was entered in the 1998 Interactive Fiction Game competition, and is a
good introduction to modern IF. It came 19 out of 27, not too bad for
only 2 months work on and off, with scores ranging from 2 to 7 out of
ten, so you can see how much reviewers tastes vary, it also depends on
how much effort they put into playing the game. One puzzle was
completely lost on most people, due to instinctively doing an action
which solved it. Most complaints were that it was based on someone
else's material, too small, too easy (some people liked it easy though),
and incomplete. I was complimented on the robustness of my code, and
recreating the transcript so well. It only has about a dozen locations,
two dozen objects, and one very complex and entertaining NPC (non player
character). The puzzles are very simple, as I think RPGs are more fun if
you solve them yourself without having to use hints.

They say it is bad form to review your own game so I will use material
from reviewers of my competition version. I have improved it quite a bit
since then, and will expand it more in the future, so will leave out
stuff mentioned that I have now fixed. The object of the game is to
search a spacestation, free a character, and escape. The game is closely
based on the Infocom Sample Transcript for Planetfall, people who have
played Planetfall and Stationfall find the game more entertaining and
nostalgic, and get more of the in jokes. I left some blank descriptions
for exits that didn't exist, using 'Unimplemented!' to signify them,
people liked the idea of blank descriptions, but thought unimplemented
was sloppy programming. It was in fact an in joke, as Infocom refer to
the game writers as implementers in several of their games, it has now
been replaced with bulkheads. People also complained I copied the game
idea, but so have quite a few other authors, probably not as closely,
but I still had to code it, and fill in the blanks, which is difficult
if you are trying to keep it exactly the same. I have now added a lot of
new material of my own. Anyone wishing to view the original transcript
this game is based on, just Email me, so you can spot the differences. I
think you might have some fun guessing which bits are by Steve Meretzky,
and which bits are by me. But solve the game first, before you ask for
it. Also please report any errors, and possible improvements.

Game code available from:
ftp://ftp.gmd.de/if-archive/games/competition98/inform/space_st

This game requires an Inform Interpreter available from:
ftp://ftp.gmd.de/if-archive/infocom/interpreters/frotz/AmigaFrotz232Std10.lha

Workbench 1.3:
ftp://ftp.gmd.de/if-archive/infocom/interpreters/zip/zip.lha

Alphabetical list.