> It's been a while since I posted anything about the progress I've been making on "Game of the Ages," and that's because for a long time I wasn't making any. This was because it turned out the map I had for the second world (if you'll recall, I'm done with the first draft of the code for the first world, and now need to code up the second) was essentially unusable and had to be redone. That was a task I kept postponing in favor of less strenuous projects, but I did it two evenings ago, which means I'm back and ready to roll on the development of the game.
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> Hey, Iss -- how's it going?

After a period of complete inactivity, during which I was enjoying reading some good books far too much to put in any hours on my AGL design, I can say that work has re-started a week ago and now proceeds apace.

Part of the delay was due to my dread of getting into the whole "castle" area of the map, since the castle is fairly big and I only had a few definite ideas about what should happen in it. Having written up drafts for the first eight rooms or so, however, I'm really starting to get into it, and am coming up with some puzzles that are a lot of fun to write (we'll see how they play). Once the castle is done, I've got several locations in the Wild Woods to write up, and then the really tedious work of writing the interaction with NPCs in the village locations. And then comes the coding part. Ugh. I'd rather just do all the creative writing and then tell a super-smart computer to put it all together the way I see it in my head. ;-) No doubt I'll be deluging you with email at that stage, asking how to do stuff that would be obvious to anyone with a shred of coding experience.

One thing that sparked my appetite for getting back into the project was downloading an Interactive Fiction game or two from the web and playing them. At the same time, it's made me a little uncertain about the overall quality of the game I'm working on, compared with some of what's out there. I'm confident that I can produce a "good" game, but probably not a "great" one.

Of course, the AGL engine doesn't really lend itself to the sort of features and coding tricks that set great IF games apart from the others, since AGL is (as far as I can tell) at a level of sophistication somewhere between a choose-your-own-adventure book and a feature-rich IF system with a full parser. And that's not really a bad thing, because it would be far more difficult--prohibitively so--for me to write code for a more complex engine. AGL limits the number of things the author needs to keep track of, but has enough options and features to make an enjoyable game. Keeping this in mind, I think that I'm trying to settle for making a game that does not attempt to compete or even compare with the "greats", but is involving and fun to play within its inherent limitations.

(Listen to me critiquing the AGL engine as if I had a scrap of understanding about its complexity compared with other systems. Sheesh. I hope I haven't managed to give offense or suggest that AGL isn't a cool and darned impressive creation.)

I'll probably solicit the help of RinkReaders as beta-testers, if they don't mind playing through the game in an unpolished state, and with your permission to grant them access to whatever beta-form you use to test the game before adding it to the site. I crave feedback on ways to improve the prose, characterization, and other elements of style, since I haven't really taken on a project like this before, and the writing style I've been using may or may not fit the genre of interactive fiction as well as it could.

This whole undertaking is, despite intermittent periods of slackness on my part, wonderfully fun. I really hope to see some Rinkydinks other than myself come up with AGL projects for us to enjoy. I also really hope to someday come up with a working name for my own AGL design, so I don't have to keep calling it "my AGL design", but that perfect title has thus far been too elusive. Well, back to work now...

Iss "IF stands for Interminable Fiction, right?" achar