Dealing with death: opinions needed

Erkki · 06-14-2007, 08:26 AM

It seems like we die a lot in Zork. What are your opinions on how to deal with it?

Currently Ziggy autosaves after every 5 posts that it has processed. And I can manually restore one of these autosaves after we have died. But obviously I can't be around 24h to do this.

So what do you think -- should loading (and possibly saving) be available for everyone? There could be commans like "list saves" (which gives time, location, moves and score) and "load save <name of saved game file>" but this could be easy to abuse if it was available at all times.

If they were available, I think these commands would probably be handled through Private Messages or Instant Messaging to not pollute the main thread.

*Spaff* · 06-14-2007, 08:33 AM

we could also potentially have designated GMs who can do this.

DanJW · 06-14-2007, 08:42 AM

Bah, do nothing. If someone gets us killed they'll just have to put up with being hated for a while. It's not like we're in a rush to finish the game. Unless you guys have other text adventures you can load up (I'm hoping for another chance to enter the command "eat sam" in the Lord of the Rings Text Adv).

elmuerte · 06-14-2007, 10:43 AM

maybe add a counter, e.g. require 5 people to request a reload for example

Erkki · 06-14-2007, 12:56 PM

One thought I had is to detect the **** You have died **** message and present a list of say the last 5 save games when it happens.

But this would be Zork specific, and would have to be changed later for another game (yes, this can run other games).

Noyb · 06-14-2007, 02:45 PM

Well, Zork allows you to continue after death, scattering your inventory around. At least we're not playing The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which delights in killing the player moreso than an average Sierra game.

*Spaff* · 06-15-2007, 02:10 AM

well except that now we died permanently and Zork shut down...

hehe.

brkl · 06-15-2007, 04:21 AM

An "undo" command would be nice. I don't know if Zork has it, but I've played a few IF games that do.

Isn't Zork a rather long game for something like this? Maybe we should try newer IF games made by hobbyists. They tend to be just a couple of hours long if you play them by yourself. I nominate Vespers.

mantari · 06-22-2007, 01:08 PM

When I implemented a web based version of this years ago, the idea was:

LOAD PREVIOUS STATE
ISSUE USER COMMAND
SAVE CURRENT STATE

If you're doing something here, you can probably do an undo real easy. Before saving the current state, move the existing state file to GAMEnnn.SAV.0, and .... .1, ...... .2, etc, which can allow for multiple undos without too much effort.

Erkki · 06-22-2007, 02:20 PM

I'm starting to like this undo idea. It'd probably be enough if there were like 5-10 steps of undo possible.

Quote:

mantari:

LOAD PREVIOUS STATE
ISSUE USER COMMAND
SAVE CURRENT STATE

Ziggy actually has the game running all the time, so there's no loading usually -- although now that you mention it, it might be actually a good idea in some conditions to it like you said. But currently I can afford to keep it in memory at all times.

Care to tell more about your web based version?

Noyb · 06-22-2007, 08:29 PM

Looks like the publicity attracted some griefers.

midga59 · 06-24-2007, 09:28 PM

Which is just an even better reason to have a way to reload. Honestly I don't think it'd be bad to require an admin to reload the save state. Sure it would require waiting for a bit, but honestly it'd save a lot of headache in setting something up, and it would create a way to deal with griefing jerks that wouldn't have to waited on to be implemented (since apparently that's a problem >_>).