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Message: 5985

Author: Daniel

Date: 11/12/2006

Subject: Jet Set Emily FE - response to Andrew's comments

 

1. Andrew Broad wrote:

I just decided to have a quick stroll to "Emily Meets the Taxman"
[12], to finally see a version of JSE where it is possible to go
back down to "Treed Off" [6] without encountering infinite death!

But on my way there, I encountered a very nasty, never-before- seen
IDS when I took the bottom-right exit from "the dining room has
gone dim" [106] to "dark yet welcoming" [30] and was repeatedly
killed by an arrow - hardly welcoming!

Well, this is another example of how important repeated playtesting
it, and that it should be done by various persons! And how nothing
is "final" in life! I playtested the game several times, but
I /never/ took this route - I always got to the "tree" section after
passing through "Daleks Conquer and Destroy" and the whole sequence
of rooms preceding it.

This is a serious bug, and it should be corrected. However, I think I
will wait for other comments, to see if you, Andrew, or other people
find any other bugs or problems or areas for definitive improvement,
and only afterwards will I take the appropriate action :-) .

This is also an example of how a game release should /not/ be rushed.
A philosophical question: if it is December and someone wants badly
to release the game (s)he is working on with the current year's date,
is it OK to "gamma-release" it without proper playtesting, and then
the following year release bug-fixed version(s)?

"JSE FE" is not such case, really, because I thought I had playtested
the game to perfection (I was wrong), but I'm just wondering...

2. Andrew Broad wrote:

The Final Edition looks like a very impressive effort, though, with
J.G. Harston's 7-bit room-number patch and other game-engine
modifications, the Map and the Quirky Spoiler!

Thanks a lot, Andrew, it is great to hear it :-) . You have
contributed visibly to the final shape of the game with your comments
and suggested solutions posted back in the spring, and going back
down to "Treed Off" without encountering infinite death is one of
those things :-) .

3. Andrew Broad wrote:

All the room-numbers seem to have changed - was this done to
control which rooms do and don't suffer the double-items effect of
the 7-bit room-number patch? (not that I really like the
term "double-items effect", as it immediately makes me think of The
Beach).

Yes, but not only. It was done for two reasons:

- to control which rooms do and don't suffer the double-items effect
of the 7-bit room-number patch;

- to make the attract mode possible by ensuring that Willy does not
get killed at any time during the attract mode sequence.

What would you suggest as a better term than "double-items effect"?

Daniel

 

 

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