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Message: 2030

Author: andrewbroad

Date: 02/03/2001

Subject: Difficulty (Regarding the JSW rewrites)

 

There are many discussions on this board regarding various attributes of JSW/MM rewrites, but it seems to me that one subject I've only seen mentioned once is of extreme

importance;

a games general playability and accessability with regard to it's difficulty. As someone else said, one of the main reasons the original JSW was so well recieved was because it allowed the player to visit so many of

the rooms to allow him (or her if you're
pedantic!) to see a large part of the game. And

yet

many of the remakes seem to make it as hard
and as demanding as possible to see even a
small

area of the game. From a technical point of view that is very impressive, plus no doubt the true JSW fanatics enjoy the challenge, but to the casual player such as myself I don't really wish to have to know all of the quirks of the JSW engine before I can attempt the latest

rewrite.

What I'm saying, basically, is that whilst I

certainly respect those of you who build JSW

rewrites to be difficult and/or challenging, I do miss the feeling of freedom that the original JSW gave. With most of the latest JSW rewrites I just don't have the patience to explore vary

far.

Please consider what I say, and don't think I'm critising; some of the rewrites are very good but I just would like to play them without having to complete them just to see all of the screens. By all means put some difficult parts in, but please leave large areas of screens easily accessible, even if their objects are very difficult to

get.

I have a penchant for writing notoriously difficult
MM/JSW rooms, but I hear what you're saying. I think
it's nice if a JSW game is 90% easy to explore, with
some difficult-to-get-to places tucked away in corners
of the game. The original JSW is a prime example of
this - I'd been playing JSW for years before I got
through The Forgotten Abbey and managed to reach the
promised land in Security Guard, and see Under The Drive
and Tree Root for the first time! :-)

I will
continue to write mind-bogglingly difficult MM/JSW games,
but I plan to make Party Willy and JSW Iva much
easier. I will try to apply the 90/10 rule, and to have a
high branching factor without making them too
frustrating to systematically explore and
complete.

There's also a distinction between quirky features and
pure orthodox difficulty. Quirky features are easy and
fun when you know about them, and one of the
criticisms of the easy versions of MM:Hobbit and JSW:LOTR
was that I had removed all the quirky features as
well as those difficulties for which you need either
lightning reactions or judicious use of the pause
button!

--
Andrew Broad
http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~broada/

http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~broada/spectrum/

http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~broada/spectrum/willy/

http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~broada/spectrum/download/

 

 

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