InsideADRIFT ISSN 1743-0577

1

Issue 25 September/October 2005

Contents

News and announcements.

1. Main news

(ModuleMaker

)

1. Competition news

(Summer Competition results; Game of

the Year Comp rule changes

)

2. Forum news (

Regular features

2. Editorial

3. Drifters birthdays

3. Events diary

2. Drifters Toolbox: DAZ Studio out of

beta.

5. ADRIFT recent releases

9. InsideADRIFT merchandise

Articles

3. Drifters think about …. how they

will be writing in the future

5. What Were You Thinking…. By

David Whyld

7. Modules: a missed opportunit y.

By Ken Franklin

Reference

8. Manual:

Battle System

Issue: 25 (Sep/Oct 05)

Issue 26 due out 26 November 05

News and announcements

ModuleMaker: a helpin g hand for ”drifters

A small utility has been released on the InsideADRIFT website that is

designed to allow swift creation of the barebones of an ADRIFT

game. Currently a very basic text application, written in BBC Basic

by Ken Franklin, compiled into a Windows executable. It has its own

file format, but the main aim is to export the files as an ADRIFT

module (.amf) file that can be imported into ADRIFT Version 4.0.

Currently the program can handle rooms and objects, with a handy

facility that allows you to enter object names within curly brackets

into the room description (and also the descriptions of other objects).

The text is then parsed to remove the curly brackets and give you

the opportunity to enter the details of each object.

Competition news roundup

InsideADRIFT Summer Competition 2005

The results of the Summer Competition have been announced on

the forum and were as follow.

1. "Target" by Richard Otter (14pts)

2. "Lights, Camera, Action!" by David Whyld (13)

3. "Can It Be All So Simple." by The Dominant Species (10)

4. "Must Escape!" by Robert Rafgon (9)

5. "Regrets" by David Whyld (5)

A decent competition, with enough judges to give a fair result

InsideADRIFT Game of the Year Competition

The final event of the ADRIFT competition calendar is the Game of

the Year competition in December (rules can be found at

http://

www.adriftwiki.org.uk

).

These rules have been updated to automatically include the winners

of ADRIFT competitions and the best placed ADRIFT games from

the IF Comp and Spring Thing.

InsideADRIFT Issue 24 July/August 2005

2

Editorial

That‘s the Summer over, an

oddly British combination of rain

and draught.

I‘d like to take the opportunity to

wish survivors of the American

hurricanes all the best. How on

earth do you even exist when all

of the facilities you rely on are no

longer available.

In this issue drifters put forward

a few of their wishes for the next

version of ADRIFT, whenever

that emerges.

David Whyld takes a swipe at the

number of games that seem to

escape onto the adventures page

without any attempt to tame

their wilder excesses. It is a call

to look before you leap, rather

than an attack. It gives some

advice that new authors would

do well to heed if they really

want to start their relationship

with the community in the right

way.

KF

Contact

Send any suggestions, requests

or comments about the

newsletter to:

editor@insideadrift.org.uk

Find the newsletter at:

http://www.insideadrift.org.uk/

InsideADRIFT merchandise

You can now purchase an

exciting InsideADRIFT mug, if

you so desire. It has been

updated with the new logo.

The store is really not fully

operational, if you are interested

look at

www.cafepress.com/insideadrift

More details can be found on

page 9.

W ider IF Community

2005 Interactive Fiction Com petition

We are now very close to the start of judging in the IF Comp, and it

looks like ADRIFT representation is up (the last two years David Whyld

has had the only entry). A thread on the forum suggests at least three

ADRIFT entries this year and Rafgon has entered a game written in

Inform. Good luck to everyone.

(For more details go to

http://ifcomp.org

)

Spring Thing 06 launched

Greg Boettcher has launched the next Spring Thing for March/April of

next year. Greg ran last year‘s event it is good to see that he has

decided to carry on as organiser.

Details of the event can be found at http://www.springthing.net/

Forum news

In a shock bit of activity MileStyle breathed life into the Registered

Members only forum Cast Adrift and created a number of off-topic

threads that asked people to name their favourites in a range of

artistic classes including books, music, and movies.

The threads caught light and the forum that previously had a total of

377 posts received another 118 in just two days. This came after Mile

had suggest a —watercooler“ type of forum was needed to boost forum

usage. His point seems well proved by these new threads, though it

will be interesting to see who active things are by the time the next

newsletter is due at the end of November.

Drifter’s toolbox: DAZ Studio revisited

I hope that I will be forgiven for pushing one of my favourite programs

again (Previously reviewed in Issue 21 earlier this year). The only

reason I return to it now is that the final release is now available after

many months of beta testing. Since the program is released as Tell-

Ware I am telling anyone who reads this about the program.

DAZ Studio allows you to build 3D scenes from libraries of

characters and props. Many of the objects can be altered with sliders

to give millions of possible shapes. It is the modelling of figures that

is the real stand out, though you can also create animations with the

program.

This program is in the same mould as Poser, a program that has

been around for a number of years, but DAZ Studio is free. DAZ

hope that you will buy their content, but you don’t have to.

You can visit

http://www.daz3d.com

to find out more.

InsideADRIFT Issue 24 July/August 2005

3

Drifters birthdays

October

1 ImpShial (34); SoftIron (25)

2 Narniagate58 (37); Morpork (22);

Sprite (18); Cook ie (18)

4 TheDataHacker (28)

8 Shadrick (23)

12 skater_paulish (22);Lady_Juliet

(24)

14 baXter (31)

17 Rox iKat (17); wildfire74pa (31)

19 crick etmoon (33)

20 uk dave74 (31)

21 Century (23)

22 Valjean (40) cbishop (40)

23 theleaf (18); David Whyld (32)

25 ursus (35)

28 Sarazar (18)

30 evil_flagpole (18)

November

2 tsm_paul (29)

4 Lannly (21)

7 quantumdaimon

(26);jokerjesterknave (23)

11 Malym (37)

15 CJCole (35)

22 AgapeIncognito (32); Duncan_B

(20)

25 DuoDave (39)

27 Cowboy (49); Kel-nage (18);

qkara (26); desilets (59); Rafgon (23)

30 Hyomoto (22)

Articles

Drifters think about …. what new features would make a new version of ADRIFT

great!

Ace says

Option in rooms to trigger a task or event on enter, with options like

"First time player enters", "Every time player enters".

Some scripting options, if/else, for/while loops, arrays

A single root word that can be used to overide all inputs that

acomplish the same action, ie: overide get would automagically

include any verb that "gets", take, pick up, etc

Ken Franklin says

We obviously would all like a system that improved the creation of

task commands, making overriding this much more simple and

accurate.

The ADRIFT main interface is rather boring, though I admit it

accomplishes its task. What I would like to see is a front end, with a

bit of style, that puts the user in control. Currently there is the

interface and , apart from playing with the windows layout, that is it.

Let’s at least see a few different toolbar images, perhaps information

of making your own customised image sets.

I would like to see some way of speeding up the room/object creation

as I have done in my ModuleMaker program. It could be as simple as

the {object} system I used to indicate objects in descriptions, or a

more complicated automatic system. This would help to ensure there

were less undefined objects in descriptions.

It should be possible to define object types similar to edible,

wearable, but user definable and available to use in task

restrictions/actions. The type or group would be defined independent

of the individual object and then applied to one or more.. It would be

nice to be able to have unlimited user definable attributes and be

allowed to apply them to any game item.

I would like to see variables that could be created that would be able

defined as applying to objects or characters or rooms. Once defined

there would be an array of variables for each object/character/room

defined. This would allow the creation of something like an age

variable that applied to each character. They could be accessed as

%age[character name]%, though it might also be useful to be able to

use character numbers as an alternative.

The speech system is well up for improvement, it will be interesting

to see if we get a tree system to use.

It might be useful to see a system that allows the use of real time in a

game, where a turn could be forced to end at the end of a set period

of time, rather than when the user finishes inputting their command.

InsideADRIFT Issue 24 July/August 2005

4

Events Diary

September 2005

24th InsideADRIFT Issue 25

September/October 2005 due out.

24th 'Finish the game' Comp

entries should be in by today.

30th 2005 IF Comp

(http://www.ifcomp.org/) Authors

upload their games to the

competition site.

October 2005

1 2005 IF Comp

(http://www.ifcomp.org/) Games are

released sometime around now; the

six-week judging period begins.

15th 'Finish the game' Comp

judging ends.

November 2005

15th 2005 IF Comp

(http://www.ifcomp.org/) All votes

must be submitted by the end of the

day.

26 InsideADRIFT Issue 26

November/December 2005 due out.

December 2005

InsideADRIFT Awards 2005 votes

during this month

18th InsideADRIFT Game of the

Year Competition 2005 entries in

and judging starts

2006

January 2006

1st InsideADRIFT Game of the

Year Competition 2005 results

Shuarian says

For me, Adrift is a great piece of software. Why. It's easy to use. It's

powerful. It lets me focus on story-writing. In order to advance and

remain great, Adrift has to keep the balance between these three

pillars. This means that new features, no matter how powerful they

might be, should never confuse new users. This doesn't mean,

however, that no new features should be developed. Quite the

contrary. But these features must be implemented in a way new

users aren't confused or overwhelmed. And lastly, no bugs or illogical

behaviour should distract me from story-writing.

My perspective on the future development is probably insofar unique

as I haven't yet encountered any bugs or limitations of Adrift. Some

small improvements, some changes, is everything which is needed

to keep me happy. Among these small improvements are many

which concern the user interface. At present, keeping track of rooms

and objects can become rather dull and indistinct. Being able to

move them freely around the list would change this. Similarly, the

possibility to customise the interface by changing the order of menus

and adding custom shortcuts could benefit beginners and experts

alike.

As said, this would keep me happy. But what would excite me, and

what would attract more users. A more complex task and event

system could look attractive even to experienced writers who are

already familiar with the traditional IF languages. While the current

system should be retained for new user, the new version could come

in the form of an easy script language, akin to rexx or basic.

But the biggest - and presumably the most unlikely - vision I have for

Adrift is the further development of an under-estimated feature: The

inbuilt map of the Adrift generator. What now is only a window

displaying a map could become one of the most easy to use and

powerful features of Adrift. How. By making the map the second

main screen to develop the static environment (rooms, objects and

NPCs): To connect two rooms, just draw a line between them; cross

the line to delete the connection. Double click on white space to

create a new room, then move the room around freely. Double click

on a room to be get to its window. Hover the mouse over a room to

see a list with the room's objects, which in turn are accessible by

clicking on them. Be able to drag and drop NPCs and objects on the

map... and so on, there are many possibilities, and the use of it

would be very intuitive.

In conclusion, there are many possible ways Adrift can develop, and

every Adrift user probably has a different view on it. What's really

important for me is that Adrift remains what it depicts for me now: an

easy to use and powerful tool for writing text adventures.

InsideADRIFT Issue 24 July/August 2005

5

ADRIFT recent releases

These are the latest releases

from the ADRIFT site, why not

try one or two.

Complete games

Must Escape! [Version 2] (18 Kb,

mustescape.taf) By Robert

Rafgon, released Fri 2nd Sep 2005

Must Escape! is an action-packed

adventure where you must escape

from a facilit y that you have

sabotaged. This game features (stick

figure) graphic violence.

Regrets (11 Kb, Regrets.taf) B y

David Whyld, released Mon 29th

Aug 2005

You have returned to the cabin in

the woods, something you swore

you would never do. Here lie the

memories of your wife, and the

terrible fate that befell her. A fate

that you had more than a helping

hand in bringing about...

Lights, Camera, Action! [version

2] (123 Kb, lights.taf) By David

Whyld, released Mon 29th Aug

2005

Step into the shoes of celebrated

film director G. I. Torrance as he

endeavours to get his latest

masterpiece finished with all the

odds set against him. His main star

treats him lik e the hired help, his

assistant has become a monkey...

and there’s a serial killer at large.

Whatever else happens today, it’s

certainly going to make an

interesting film.

Target v1.00 (49 Kb, target.zip) By

rotter, released Sun 28th Aug

2005

Years of military training and

discipline have honed the skills

needed to execute a hit efficiently

and dispassionately. So when the

next piece of work comes in you

quickly accept, espec ially when you

have seen the fee. One poor soul is

about to get taken out. [1st in

InsideADRIFT Summer Comp 2005]

What Were You Thinking…. By David Whyld

A few things to do in order to avoid having your next game roasted:

•

Have you played your game through to the end and checked

that it can be finished. (Funnily enough, quite a few games

I've played are impossible to finish because the writer has

missed something out and not even realised it because he

hasn't bothered playing his own game.)

•

Have you read through all the text in your game to check for

spelling and/or grammatical errors. Better still, have you tried

spell-checking it. (And don't try to claim that spelling and/or

grammatical errors don't matter. They do. This is a text

adventure. The spelling and the grammar are the most

important things about it.)

•

Has your game got a proper introduction for when it's put on

the main site. (Believe it or not but "dis is me first game. its

prolly preety lame but plese rite a gud review of it" isn't going

to go down favourably.)

•

Is it a proper game as opposed to something you threw

together in five minutes and uploaded a minute later. (i.e. is it

more than 3-4 KB in size. If not, don't bother with it. Games

of that size are too small to be much good and will be over

with before the player has even started to play it. Tackling a

game of 20+ KB on your first attempt might seem daunting,

but ask yourself: do you want a reputation as someone who

writes proper games or someone who just messes around.)

•

Have you tested it for bugs. (And by bugs, I mean 'anything

wrong in the game'. Can items that are described in the room

description be examined. If there's a clock on the shelf, can it

be taken. If not, why not. Can the wardrobe be opened. If

not, include a reason for why not. Are there NPCs in your

game. Can they be spoken to. If not, why not. Does going

west from the lake crash the game. If so, wouldn't it be a

good idea to fix that error before you upload it.)

•

Have you got someone else to test it. (Not 100% necessary

but always a good idea, particularly if you're a newcomer and

might not realise just how much work there is in making a

good game.)

Now all of the above would seem incredibly obvious things to

remember to do when writing a game. After all, they're common

sense. Everyone does them. Right.

Wrong.

Recently, there seem to have been a spate of bad games uploaded

to the main ADRIFT site. Now, by "bad" I don't just mean "not very

InsideADRIFT Issue 24 July/August 2005

6

Space Boy’s First Adventure ver

2.0 (383

Kb,s_First_Adventure_ver_2.0.zip)

By thatguy, released Thu 11th

Aug 2005

A word about the game it is

intentionally designed to be a

simple-feeling, old-fashioned, text-

adventure style game. It does

contain both moderately difficult

puzzles (according to those who

BETAed it) and a simple kid-friendly

atmosphere (my wife and I have 5

kids so it leaks into everything else I

do.)

Take a moment, give it a go, and let

me know what you think.

Laboratory R.A.T.S. (8 Kb,

labrats.taf) B y Chenshaw,

released Wed 10th Aug 2005

The laboratory is dingy,

underground, and secret. You’re

looking for evidence of aliens. Now if

only you can get that microscope to

work... A mini-game for your lunch

break.

The White Singularity (770 Kb,

White_Singularity.taf) By Irene,

released Tue 26th Jul 2005

You are Dr. Christian Esguerra, a

world-famous scientist and explorer.

Your childhood dream has always

been to reach the Core. Then, one

day, you discover a way to mak e this

dream come true! However the trip is

very dangerous...perhaps you

should reconsider the destination of

your maiden voyage...

Demos

No Drop Demo (1 Kb,

NoDropDemo.taf) By KF, released

Tue 30th Aug 2005

Simple demo that shows a way of

stopping people dropping something

they are holding.

The Vergowven House (2 Kb,

johns_house.taf) B y

liquidblueflames, released Mon

29th Aug 2005

This is a walk through of my house!

good", I mean "downright awful. Terrible. Excruciatingly bad.

Appalling" and words to that effect. These were games that didn't just

have the kind of problems you'd expect from newcomers to the

scene – typos, grammatical errors, missing commands that

everybody expects in text adventures these days – but games so

mind-numbingly dire that it's hard to believe even the writers thought

they were any good.

Yet they uploaded them anyway.

Why.

Of course, the quality (or otherwise) of a game is a difficult thing to

judge. Particularly when it's your own game. I once wrote a game

that I thought, quite honestly, was brilliant. I expected people to heap

praise upon it and sing its sheer magnificence from the rooftops.

Instead, it just got lots of bad ratings and disappeared without trace a

week later and has never been heard of or mentioned since (aside

from a few comments by yours truly). It was my first game. At the

time it happened, I was pretty miffed at the way my masterpiece had

been so unfairly dismissed, yet looking at it later on, when I'd learned

a few things about writing games and took on some much needed

advice, I could all too easily see the game's many flaws. Things that

had seemed so wonderful to me when writing the game now seemed

so bad. The 'inspired storyline' I had come up with was actually

revealed as something quite embarrassing. The characters were a

mess, the puzzles impossibly hard, and the writing veered all over

the place in such a way that I winced at the idea I had once thought it

was ever going to rock the interactive fiction world. In short, I made a

lousy game yet was unable to see it for what it was because it was

my game.

Which is a kind of long (and rambling) way of saying that, yes, it is

difficult to judge your own games and know whether they're any good

or not. What might seem good to you isn't necessarily going to seem

good to anyone else. Yet at the end of the day, there's a big

difference between a game you've genuinely taken your best shot at,

and a game you've written in five minutes and uploaded a minute

later.

Which brings me nicely back to the subject of this article: the terrible

games recently uploaded to the main ADRIFT site. Now I haven't

played them all – several, thank heavens, were deleted before I had

the chance to download them; several others I took one look at the

descriptions of them – which tended to be along the lines of "dis is

me firs gam. Plese rite a review an tell me wot u fink of it" – and

decided against bothering with them; several others I did play. And

have regretted it ever since. Why any of them were uploaded in the

first place is probably one of life's great mysteries.

I don't know about anybody else, but when I see a game description

along the lines of "dis is me firs gam. Plese rite a review an tell me

wot u fink of it", the first thing I think is "ah, we've got a newbie here

InsideADRIFT Issue 24 July/August 2005

7

The Train Station (2 Kb,

train_station.taf B y

liquidblueflames, released Mon

29th Aug 2005

Harry Potter fan fiction.

Wasteland (6 Kb, wasteland.taf)

By strangelove, released Fri 26th

Aug 2005

Wasteland: This is just the first ten

rooms of a game I’m work ing on,

posted for other users to comment

on. It features only one real puzzle

which you will probably be able to

solve quite easily but it does feature

plenty of information for the player

should they want to take the time to

explore the complex. Players who do

so will have a much better idea of

what to expect when they reach the

outside world. If you’ve made it

outside of the complex then you

have got as far as I have (due to the

restrictions of my as-yet unregistered

copy). Hope you enjoy it, feel free to

e-mail me at starnode@hotmail.com

and let me know what you think or

comment on it in the forum.

Locations Change Picture

demonstration (39 Kb,

ChangePicture.taf) By KF,

released Sun 21st Aug 2005

You have a room with a picture

which, after you enter, changes the

picture after one turn. (From a

request by Cowboy).

Here if you move north to Another

Room, then look (or anything else) a

different image will be shown.

Player name as input (DEMO) (1

Kb, MyNameIS.taf) By KF,

released Sat 20th Aug 2005

This has a task with the command

%text% and then uses the INSTR()

formula to ensure required elements

are input. It won’t be perfect but

accomplishes what was required.

Teleport demo (1 Kb, teleport.taf)

By KF, released Thu 11th Aug

2005

A quick demo that allows you to

teleport between three locations.

who's written a game even he thinks is awful, but he's hoping that by

stating straight out that he's a newbie people will take pity on him

and say nice things about it anyway". Read the description again. It

doesn't exactly imply that there's a great game here, does it.

Judging a book by its cover might be a bad idea (the cover, after all,

is most likely done by someone else other than the author) but

judging a game by its description is a good idea. Bad description =

bad game right. Not necessarily, but more often than not when you

see a description which reads "dis is me firs gam. Plese rite a review

an tell me wot u fink of it", it's a fair bet that the game in question is

going to be a complete stinker.

The biggest question here is just why people upload these things in

the first place. Are they so eager to release their first game that

they're willing to put out something even they know is awful just so

they can say "well, I wrote a game". Or are they just totally

incapable of telling the difference between a good game and a bad

one. The strangest thing is that quite a few newbies come along with

a game they know is bad and yet they go ahead and release it

anyway. I even remember someone coming onto the ADRIFT forum

a few months back announcing he'd just written a game that he knew

was awful but had uploaded it to the main site anyway and was

looking for comments on it. What, honestly, did he expect. People

seldom heap praise on games by newbies at the best of times; when

that newbie has just announced that even he thinks his game is

awful, what are the odds he's going to get any decent feedback for

it.

So if you're going to upload a game, slip a little common sense into

your thinking beforehand. Ask yourself: if this was a game by

someone else and you were playing it, would you be happy with it. If

the answer's no, then keep on working on it until you would be happy

with it. Then, and only then, upload it.

Modules: a missed opportunity. By Ken Franklin

As you may realise, given my little bit of programming with

ModuleMaker, I have been looking at creating modules and to a

degree their role in ADRIFT.

Over a number of years I have been calling for an alternative way to

lay out your game a bit quicker, in ModuleMaker it is possible to add

new rooms in as you navigate the game by typing direction

commands. If you are in the living room and want to add in the a

new kitchen simply type R which tells the program you want to add in

a new direction from where you are, type in the number for the

direction (which is listed) then instead of picking a room from the list

type N and you get the chance to add a new room linked to the

original one. If you put curly brackets round an object name in the

room description you get the chance to add in the details of the

object.

InsideADRIFT Issue 24 July/August 2005

8

Armour (new and improved) (1 Kb,

armour2.taf) By David Whyld,

released Sun 31st Jul 2005

Wearing one suit of armour and

automatically removing any worn

armour.

Armour (1 Kb, armour.taf) By

David Whyld, released Sat 30th

Jul 2005

Wearing just one type of armour.

Stand on stool to examine (1 Kb,

standingdemo.taf) By KF,

released Wed 27th Jul 2005

A small file that answers a question

asked on the forum. The player can

only see what is on a high shelf if

they stand on a stool first.

While I don’t’ expect this to be added into ADRIFT, it shows another

approach to drafting out a game.

It would not have been possible to make ModuleMaker if it wasn’t for

the module format as the internal ADRIFT format is way too hard toi

hack into. The module should be considered as a format for

information interchange and not as a game writing language. I can

create a skeleton for a game in ModuleMaker, but modules are an

incomplete description of the whole of an ADRIFT game. If I make a

complete export of a game as a module I will not have the game

when I load it back.

That is what modules cannot do, what they can do is help us to save

things we have made for one game so that they can be re-used in

another one. This is a function of modules that tends to be very

much underused. If you look at the “big” languages they have

libraries of code made available for all. Attempts have been made to

implement this sort of thing, but somehow the module isn’t quite up

to the task.

Reference

Bulky chunk of manual here that details the much maligned ADRIFT

Battle System.

The Battle System

ADRIFT has a built in Battle System. What this allows you to do, is

create battles between the various characters in your game and with

the Player. By default, the battle system is disabled. To enable it,

select Adventure > Options from the menu, and check the Enable

Battle System checkbox.

Battles ensue in ADRIFT when two opposing characters meet, or if

the Player comes across a character marked as an enemy. Different

characters (and the Player) have different strengths and attributes.

These can be set within ranges, so that they are random to a certain

degree. Weapons and armour can also be picked up to enhance the

particular attributes of the characters. You can also make characters

flee or do anything when their stamina gets low, and run other tasks

when they die.

You should notice two things once the Battle System in enabled.

Both the Player dialog box, and Character dialog boxes should have

an extra tab, namely Battles.

Extra functions also become available in object attributes.

InsideADRIFT Issue 24 July/August 2005

9

InsideADRIFT

Merchandise

Although this is not intended as a

money spinning idea, more a way

to create items for me, these

items are available for the

discerning drifter to purchase.

The boxer shorts, priced at

$13.49, with a discreet

InsideADRIFT logo on the right

leg.

Costing $17.39, the baseball

jersey comes in red/blue/black

and white.

Also available from

www.cafepress.com/insideadrift

are:

trucker hat $11.79; sweatshirt

$22.39; sleeveless tee $15.89;

women‘s tank top $15.89;

mousepad $11.49; teddy bear

$13.79; sticker $2.69; journal

$7.69; messenger bag $19.99.

The Player

The extra tab in the Player dialog box looks like this:

The Player has five attributes; stamina, strength, accuracy, defence

and agility.

Stamina

is the amount of life the Player has. Once stamina reaches

zero, the Player is dead.

Strength

is the physical strength of the Player. This is what is used to

harm other characters – the greater the strength, the more damage

is done. Strength can be increased by wielding weapons with hit

strength greater than zero. You can also have cursed items with a

negative strength, which reduces the character strength.

Accuracy

is how likely the Player is to hit another character. The

greater the accuracy, the higher the chance of making contact.

Defence

is the ability of the Player to withstand physical attack. The

greater the defence, the higher the strength must be of the character

attacking in order to do the Player damage. The amount of damage

received on a successful attack will be the character’s strength,

minus the Player’s defence.

Agility

is the likelihood of the Player to avoid the attack of another

character. It is directly opposed to accuracy, such that the chance of

an accurate character hitting a Player with high agility might be the

same at the chance of a not so accurate character hitting a Player

with low agility.

All attributes are set on a sliding scale from

0

to

100

. Dragging the

slider up the scale selects the range. To clear the range, simply drag

back down the bar, or click onto the selector. You can also manually

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set the range to exact values by rightclicking on a slider. This will

prompt you for the minimum and maximum values. In the game, the

value of each attribute will be a random value in the range selected

each time the attribute is required, with the exception of stamina –

stamina is assigned randomly in the range whenever the game

starts.

You can allow the Player to slowly recover from any damage

sustained by selecting the

Automatic stamina recovery

checkbox.

This allows you to specify the number of turns to go by for the

stamina to go up by one point. This can be in the range 0 to 100. The

stamina will then be increased every so many turns up until it

reaches the maximum value set in your range.

Characters

Characters have exactly the same options as Player plus a few

more. The characters Battles screen looks like this:

In addition to the same options as the Player, you can also specify

the attitude of the character, from ally, neutral or enemy.

Allies will never attack the Player, but if an enemy appears in the

same room as the character, the ally will attack the enemy.

Neutral characters will never attack the Player, nor will they attack

any enemies.

Enemies will attack the Player, plus any allies they come across.

To further enhance the normal attributes of characters, you can make

super bad enemies. To do this, check the Extra Strong checkbox.

This changes the slider scales from being from 0-100 as with the

Player, to 0-1000.

You must assign a speed for the character to attack at. Potentially

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you, the player, can attack every turn. This allows you to give the

Player an advantage against slower characters but allows you to be

equally matched against faster ones.

The options for speed are:

• Attack every turn

• Attack most turns

• Attack every second turn

• Attack one in three

• Attack one in four

If a character comes up against more than one foe at a time, it will

randomly pickbetween the characters (and the Player) to decide

which one to attack.

In order to make a character flee, or do certain things if it gets low on

stamina, you can select a task in the Task

to run if stamina low

pull

down menu. This will execute every time the stamina decreases

below 10% of its maximum stamina.

The default behaviour for when a character is killed (i.e. its stamina

reaches zero) is for the character to disappear, and any objects it

was holding are moved to the current room. Typically you would want

to create a dead body and have some message notifying the player

of the recently deceased. To do this, create a task which moves your

body object to the current room with an accompanying message, and

select it in the

Task to run if killed

menu.

Objects

When the battle system is enabled, extra options become available in

object attributes like so:

Wearable objects have the option to become armour. If you select the

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12

checkbox

and is armour with protection value

, the textbox for

entering the value becomes available.

This allows you to specify a value that the armour protects whoever

is wearing it. This can be in the range –100 to 100, negative values

providing cursed behaviour.

The value of the armour is added to the defence value of whoever

wears it if an object is defined as a weapon, extra functionality

becomes available. You canspecify a

hit value

, and an

accuracy

value

. Both these can be in the range –100 to100. The hit value is

added to the strength of whoever is wielding it and the accuracy value

is added to the accuracy of whoever is wielding it.

Each weapon has an

attack method

. This is the verb that should be

used when attacking with it, such as shoot, hit, chop etc.

NB. Only one weapon can be wielded at any one time œ the weapons

attributes, and only that weapons, are added to the characters

attributes. A character will always wield its best weapon. Armour is

different, in that each separate piece of armour accumulates the

defence value of the wearer.

© Campbell Wild, Oct 2003

Information is copied and pasted from the manual and while every

effort is made to be accurate, there are no guarantees that it is error

free

© 2005 Edited by KF.

Please send any contributions or suggestions to

editor@insideadrift.org.uk

.