> > One pretty exciting prospect immediately arises, however: multiple ways to win the game. It doesn't seem as if anything prohibits it--is AGL capable of this?
>
> Absolutely. There's a difference in the where you put the text that gets displayed when you win the game (described in "Making the Data Files"), but you can certainly do it.

Okay...I tried posting this yesterday but for some reason it didn't go through. Let's try again.

AGL won't permit players to lose the game simply by performing some action that results in death (I personally performed approx. 34,178 of those actions in FQ), because you can simply hit the "back" button and try something else. Also, Sam has made it clear that one requirement for all submitted AGL games is that the player must not be able to get stuck anywhere in such a way that they can't proceed to win the game. AGL is very much a "let the player win" sort of deal.

My question for Sam is, how much latitude should we take in interpreting what constitutes a "win"? Can we define it loosely as "satisfactory closure" to the story? In that case you could use a "win" sequence to describe a tragic ending to the game that's really more like a "losing" scenario.

Of course, you wouldn't want to make a "losing" ending short and unsatisfying; it should have the same buildup and climactic energy given to its tragedy as a traditional win has for its positive ending. I'm not really even sure I'd want to implement this feature into the game design on which I'm currently working, but I might play with it in the future, or someone else might incorporate the idea into their own design. I'd just like to get Sam's feedback, since he might want to suggest some guidelines for using a "player loses" ending that would help to avoid an unsatisfactory playing experience.

Is anyone else out there working on AGL game designs? Any tasty hints or other morsels you'd care to drop here in the Forum, triggering a Pavlovian response from the AGL enthusiasts? :-)

Iss