Resource centre for ZX Spectrum games
using Manic Miner and Jet Set Willy game engines
Archive of the
Manic Miner & Jet Set Willy Yahoo! Group
messages
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Message: 5617
Author: soa1000
Date: 28/02/2006
Subject: 2% of one dollar
I've been following the back-and-forth of the last few days, and I
felt I had to say *something* or I was going to keel over from the
annoyance. So here's my opinion on things, take it as you will:
1 - on the one hand, all this griping about the use of glitches within
the game engine needs to stop. There's a long tradition of people
wringing strange and exciting new things out of unintended effects,
nowt wrong there. Hell, the only reason people could program for the
Atari 2600 at all was by exploiting the quirks and glitches of the
system, since it was only ever intended to play "Tanks". Nonetheless,
you have a point. Though these things *are* valid in theory, they're
no good if there's no clue what they do or that they're even there.
Which brings me to my second point:
2 - this group needs to recognise that these things aren't common
knowledge. In fact, they're outright counter-intuitive. There's just
no reason to look for them, or even believe them to be there, unless
you've been told about them beforehand. Not everyone wants or needs to
delve into the machinery behind the scenes to love a game. And yet
there are people here who are pretty much sneering at players and
saying they're not "serious" or "real" fans for not knowing about
these things. It's insulting, like giving someone a device with only
half the manual and then telling them they're not serious enough about
it when they can't figure it out. Hell, *I* feel insulted, and I know
this stuff off by heart
I think Andrew's trainer game is the best response so far to this
situation. I also think authors could stand to make it more clear to
players that all this specialist knowledge is required rather than
just assuming it's already known
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