> It also sounds like testing the thing is going to be a royal pain in the neck. But I'll help you with that, though.
>

That's good; I'm sure to need it. My big hope, though, is that I'll be able to produce as bug-free a submission as possible. It seems sort of unfair that each submission is sort of spoiled for you ahead of time, because of the necessity of your playtesting it before it reaches its finished form. You'll apparently never get to play an AGL game the way the rest of us out here get to enjoy them, with a surprise around every corner. Thus, it would be nice if the playtesting version of the design were as complete as possible, so that you get to at least play the thing partway through.

This, of course, is looking quite a ways ahead. Meanwhile, I'm interested to hear your thoughts about the integration of a real storyline into AGL, with the limitations that result from its unique interface. What do you feel are reasonable limits to the amount of text that should appear on any given screen, to avoid forcing the player into excessive page-scrolling and so forth? This may be a matter of the game's polish more than anything else, but it affects the way I try to limit the length of each block of text while writing it the first time. The less re-writing I set myself up for later on, the better.

Iss