hello i´m totally new here

i just spent more than a week creating a game and would love to receive feedback! i´m a noob at this and i should have probably peeked into this forum much earlier. but was occupied to be completely obsessed with the quest software and writing the game. had little sleep in the last week lol

Sensor Interference it is a pretty linear and simple mystery/horror adventure kindof thing.
for experienced players it´s probably way to easy ...

its still in "beta" and not listed yet
would be awesome if you could check it out and let me know what you think...

http://textadventures.co.uk/games/view/ ... terference

some info about me
i´m an illustrator and for some years i did illustrations and some cgi for the ocean x team ( treasure hunters that discovered the "baltic anomaly")
and for the documentary about their discovery.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GGP_G5hHVMQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uaRFc2JY7N0

hope its allowed to show links here? if not i´ll remove!
the videos are a good teaser for Sensor Interference...

I looked through it a bit, and I have some thoughts. Take these for what they're worth.

First, I want to say that I'm not some sort of grammar Nazi - I know that on the internet, different people have different abilities. If someone is posting in a forum, for example, I don't care if they misspell something or get a period wrong. BUT... this is a *text* adventure game. The text is your medium. Once you generally release it, it will viewed and played by people who are there for the text. I think it's critical that you get that right.

The way it's formatted right now (and the occasional punctuation or spelling error) makes it harder to read than you would want. The text is your medium!

The lack of an initial capital letter on sentences could be considered a stylistic thing. I don't know if it's deliberate or not, but it's a bit off-putting (to me). And something like this is just hard to read:

> search music box
you take it and turn it around.there are innitials engraved on the bottom.it says C.T.maybe the owner of this place?

Beyond the misspelled word, jamming all the text together without proper spacing just makes it a chore for the player to have to deal with - things don't scan well, and you have to actually sit and figure out where things are instead of having it just flow from the page into your brain. It may not be much to work out, but the point is - unless you're deliberately trying to make things difficult - you just don't want that. (Forgive me if I get this wrong, but I sense English is not your native language?) So I would suggest you get people to proofread this. Ok - enough about that.

Second, I felt I was being led a bit by things, in terms of conclusions to be reached. "it says C.T.maybe the owner of this place?" How do I know there is an owner for where I am? I know nothing.

For another example, when looking at the colored image, it says:

there are some similarities between this image and the upper part of the grey scale scan ... maybe a submarine inspecting somekind of underwater arqueological site ? what is all this ?

To be honest, that wasn't what I was thinking. I had no idea what it was. It was a bit jarring to have the player character telling me what I'm supposed to be thinking. To have "me" reaching conclusions that I hadn't made just felt wrong.

More than that, if you look at that text, you can see the second part of this problem: that you're assuming people will be doing things in a specific order. What happens if the player looks at the colored image first? The text for the colored image implies that I've already looked at the grey scale scan. What if I haven't?

To give an example with a bigger issue, consider that the player doesn't look at anything but simply begins wandering around. They go N, N, E and then E, so that they are now in the second office room. The text for this room says:

You are in a second office room.
looks like you are the "guest" of some weird people
that are fascinated with a big stone
that a bunch of ocean explorers found underwater.
but why ? why did you come here ?

Without having looked at the photos, scans, cutouts, etc, this is nonsensical. It's referencing things that the player may not have even done or seen yet. I'm not saying there is an easy solution to this. You're trying to force a linear path of discovery in a medium that is basically free form. One solution is to vary the text based on what has happened. If they view the colored image before the gray scale one, then the text should reflect that fact.

A possibility for the larger issue is to perhaps be a bit heavy handed - force the user (either directly or indirectly by association) to view what you want them to view before they move on. I don't have a nice, neat and tidy way to present this to you. It's a question of design. But you simply cannot assume the player will look at the things you want in the sequence you do, if ever. And if your game relies on them seeing things, then you need to somehow make sure it happens.

The other solution is to not put text in that reaches conclusions for the player. Let them make their own conclusions.

The layout is ok. I like the use of images, though they're too large to fit under the map on my system.

Going further, here's another example:

almost no light reaches down here. should you really continue ?
slowly your eyes adapt to the darkness and you can see a greenish light below.
you continue to climb down.

You can go up or down.

What if I go up now, since I can? Doesn't "you continue to climb down" become a bit premature?

You can see a locker 1, a locker 2 and a locker 3.
You can go up, west or north.

> look at locker 1
a normal metal locker the door is open and you can see that it is clean and empty.

> look at locker 3
empty like the other two lockers.

Hopefully you can see how things don't have to go in the order you assume.

When looking at the schematic in the conference room, it says below:

this people must be totally nuts. this doesnt make any sense at all.

Actually, I studied it a bit, and it did make sense to me! Which just further creates that divide between me and the player character and spoils the immersion. You really don't want to tell the player what they should be thinking. Better to let them be confused if they're confused (unless you're really trying to make the player feel they are manipulating a uniquely defined other character, which you haven't done. Your character is just a standard AFGNCAAP. If you really want to force thoughts onto the player, then you need to give your PC more personality, back story, etc, so the player won't be disturbed by the separation. See this: http://www.ifwiki.org/index.php/Everyman and this: http://www.ifwiki.org/index.php/AFGNCAAP)

Another minor thing: the inability to take even commonplace things like photos is a bit jarring as well.

I hope you don't mind me nothing all these little things. I'm only doing it because I can see you have put a lot of effort into this so far, and that you're serious about getting it together and out into the world. If I didn't think you were serious, I wouldn't bother! I hope if any of this seems harsh, that you can understand why and maybe take some of the constructive bits on board.

I'm actually curious to see where this goes. It's off to a good start! It just needs a lot of polish and a lot of play testing to work out all the different paths players may take through it, so you can make it all make sense no matter how perverse the player is. (And it's definitely not "beta". In my experience, "beta" is feature complete. This is perhaps an early alpha. )

hello thank you so much for taking the time to look at this. really greatly appreciate your input!

i´m a total noob at this and your considerations really help !

i agree on everything you say - specially the part of putting judgemental thoughts into the text.

the formatting is a problem for me because i´m really bad at it. but i see what you say with the jammed text and will make my best to make it look better. maybe i can get help for that.

language isnt normally my medium and i will need help with the text before "unleashing" this to the public
the capital letter thing... i have to change it ofc
i was in such a rush that i had to jam it all down like that
and the whole thing might look precipitated.
and i will change it to alpha o1 lol

the schematic you are talking about does indeed make alot of sense.

i think i was writing the game from my view and the view of my friends that have been closely following the "anomaly" thing.
they will understand the "joke".
but you are 100% correct with what you say i have to make it accessible to all.
and the order how peole look at things... what you say is ofc true - i have to see how i can tackle that problem.
i´m a noob but want to learn!

and once again thanks for writing such an helpful post for me.
i did write games many years ago - but it was pen and paper. totally different thing ofc. need to figure out how to use this new medium

any tips from experienced game-makers is ofc very much appreciated.
and yes it looks like i am serious about this thing even if language really isnt my medium it seems to be quicker than attemting to create a 3d game. i tried game-guru ... was a nightmare.

Be sure to check and post on the "Quest Forum" if you run into scripting problems. Lots of solutions can be found and offered there. You can also PM me and I can try to help that way. Feel free to check out the "game" 'Quest - Tutorials and Templates'. I think (?) it is helpful to game creations, especially if you're a self-appointed "noob".

self appointed noob ---- lol that just made my day!

thanks for the tip i will check it out

i did follow the tutorials - to my defense...lol
but i am a veeery slow learner.

thanks !

I pm'ed you. Check it out.

Good luck!

I updated the file and tried to follow the excellent suggestions i got in this thread.
feeling kind of stupid for not having thought about those things before... lol

I made it so that when the player returns to a room - the first-time-room-description is gone and an room-info-item appears in the objects list.
The info item just has a simple description of what is to find in that room. I did this for most rooms. now the player can revisit a room without having a text saying that he sees it for the first time etc.

I changed the text - so that there are no more judgemental comments forced on the player. the player has to make his own judgement.
and i removed anything that would "force" a certain order to explore things.

I also started to address capital letters ... and tried to format the text better... oh boy lol
i hope it is a bit better now.

have been working some more on the game.
closed some doors to create a player-path and added some story-elements to justify the whole "find the key" thing.

all rooms should be set up with floor,walls etc and have interactive objects working correctly.
hopefully it´s a more al less functional skeleton.
some additional areas/rooms are still planned. but they are supposed to be just small additions for atmosphere.
One area that i want to expand is the archive area. Initially that was all i wanted to make- and archive about facts,half facts and weird stories that popped up around the "baltic anomaly" - but very quickly i got lost in the depths of my own archive and ended up in a horror story...lol

i want to add some tougher puzzles and mold-effects when i got the main path working correctly.

i think it would be nice to have some more meaningful choices and effects to player actions... but i have to be realistic with my abilities at this point. for now i just want to use the most basic scripts and elements.

there are two "different" endings, and one of them is kind of a cliffhanger.
who knows maybe in the future i want to have another sleepless week...weeks or months... and make something more elaborate.

curious what you folks think of this new build!!

sorry for the triple post

after a small low down in enthusiasm i´m back and working on a new update.

i´m making it so that most interactions are visible so the player doesnt need to type in the same verbs all the time.
from beginning i wanted this to be a click forward kind of game not so much a text adventure.
but the player must still type to search some objects and the game will reward extra effort with score.

i´m working on implementing health and a rudimentary "player mould infection system" which is still very experimental.
the game will reward and punish mold interaction. will be fun hopefully if i can figure it out lol

the toughest part it seems is getting feedback on this.
my play-testers are not overly busy and this forum is the only place i got serious feedback so far.

edit:
i think i have everything in place now. feature-complete so to say. alfa or beta whatever.

Jaynabonne is totally right with what he says above and i did my best to improve on everything on the list.
since he seems to be one of the veterans here and he is obviously very experienced in this
i guess most people that frequent this forum probably only read that far.

time is a precious thing and i understand that you cant look at something like this in two minutes. so i will be patient and keep improving it in the hopes that somebody gives it a chance.

ah and i have a question- can i somehow make spell-check work in the editor? - skip that i just read in the quest forum about it. no spell check. ugh

edit no 2 : i will not bump my own thread. still curious if anybody gave time to my ramblings...

hello
anybody thinks it would be worth to even attempt to correct the typos in my game ? lol this one is sure tough to get feedback. i guess it is 100% total trash ?

this forum was helpful but i only got feedback from 1 person.
maybe because my presentation sucks- i´m willing to admit that.

i still think it is an awesome medium and i´m sad that my english isnt good enough for making this kind of thing. i tried my best so there is that.

I would be willing to test it out for sure. There are, however, now 100 games that need categorized that I plan on milling through soon. I will give your game proper inspection soon enough. Don't give up hope. I've had this discussion before with myself and others. Make the game for you, not for an audience. Do it because it makes you happy or you get intrinsic reward for it. I came to the realization that there's not a huge audience for this like I'd thought and it took some internal debate to realize that I didn't care too much honestly. I look back at my 5 "productions" and I'm proud of them despite the meager 1000 or so plays combined!

Keep at it!

if you need feedback/recognition... get hired by blizzard (or besthesda and make the next TES game) and make diablo 4 or a new warcraft or starcraft game (with millions loving/playing it and telling you so), otherwise, get used to not getting much recognition... that's the state of the gaming industry... and if you were such a person, after you made the billion dollar game for blizzard, you'd probably get fired, as blizzard hires a new team for their next game. Also, that game that took so much effort and time and many sleepless slave-labor months, will soon be forgotten within a year after its release, as the world moves on to newer games. So, unless you're the staff/employee game maker of a major gaming company, it's just near impossible (very few exceptions) to get much notice/recognition for a game you make ... despite how good the game might be.

... even if you were great at marketing/promoting/advertising and developed a great reputation as an excellent game maker (from all your previous games you've made)... you still probably not get any reasonable notice/recognition... that's just the state of the gaming industry and the big monopoly gaming companies.

hey folks - thank you so much for your replies ! really greatly appreciate it !

Xan Mang - HegemonKhan

i could just delete it and get over with it - or maybe i should just release it ? ... lol
i mean i really totally overhauled it after your initial critic Xan Mang- but even so i could not attract any players.
so yeah - i gave up on it. i have much to do- this was an experiment for fun and not because i look for recognition or because i want to be a game developer... lol
ofc it would be cool if anybody enjoys it but i´m ready to admit that i failed. no problemo!

the medium looked really nice to me but maybe it just is not my thing... i love to make illustrations and imagine stories for them but i can not write well and i fail at scripting. this was interesting/frustrating/weird for me but probably does not communicate well so i just let it go.
just move on and do another thing.
i might return with new strength later on - who knows ?

hello,
i decided to just leave it here for now.
not going to publish it for now so the chance anybody playing this is small. but if allowed i leave it here.

i overhauled the game after the initial very helpful critique from jaynabonne and it is finished.
there are some small things that i still wanted to add and change but it has a storyline and it has an end.(there is a second alternative end)
since i never got any feedback for the overhauled version i stopped working on it.
it is sure full of bad English and typos but it should work.

i put three very intense weeks into this project and looking back i was really "out of my self" while doing this and it felt like i was doing this on autopilot.
for sure i am not a good writer . that i know but my own imagination can get pretty intense.at least for myself.

it might sound cheesy but this particular story really pulled me into a state of mind that i did not know before.
i left all other works waiting and focused on this for three weeks non-stop.
it was fun but it was also very intense and obsessive - i focused the weirdness,uneasiness,doubts and wonder
that i experienced since i got involved with the baltic anomaly into this story.

it´s not only about the anomaly and horror game aspect. it is also about how i sometimes feel myself being part of the baltic anomaly story in real life.
when i created this "sonar interference" i dug myself into my own very deep rabbit hole and it was weird.
as a result i gained even more respect for writers.

not saying that i was successful at doing this game not at all - but i also really dont know since i have almost no feedback - sure thing is that for me it was very intense to create it.

i would love to be able to explain in detail how the involvement with the baltic anomaly story affected my life in the last years... and how that somehow lead to me being in a weird state of mind for three weeks trying to create a game about it.
but considering my weak writing skills i think it would be very cheesy - even cheesier than this weird game i tried to write.

to finish this wall of text i just want to add that the Ocean X Team has a facebook page called "Ocean Explorer" and i am part of the admin group.
anybody that has read this far and is interested to find out more about the Baltic Anomaly story and the Ocean X team is very welcome to join the
Ocean Explorer group on facebook.

many thanks to everybody reading this and special thanks in advance to anybody that takes a closer look at sensor interference.
i´ll check in from time to time to see if something happens.
thanks again,

Hauke

Don't get discouraged. This is more of an obsession than a skill for me. Game ideas and writing are my strength, but I seriously lack the coding/scripting knowledge to really churn out game after game. My first attempts were so brutally obtuse that they are buried somewhere in the forever-eternal depths of my hard drive. After, no kidding, seven or eight pretty extensive muck-ups, I finally produced something that resembles a pretty good game - 'Xanadu - the World's Only Hope' Part 1. Even that game is scripted so poorly that I am going back through and fixing some scripts that aren't well done. Eventually I will update it in a new and improved form.

My point is... if you really want to do it, do it. I struggled with continuing the progress because of the seemingly impassable obstacles, but with time and PRACTICE I am proud of what I have turned out (publicly!) despite the lack of plays. It was done because I wanted to do it and still want to do it. It was done because I had some intrinsic motivation to turn ideas into games. If you have those motivations, please continue to work on creating and writing.

If you are best at illustrations and story ideas, intfiction has a forum page dedicated to collaborations. Maybe you can offer you skills as an illustrator and 'idea man' to the audience there. If you are not the best writer, you could always write it and have someone else edit it for you. There are people out there that actually like that kind of thing (I just finished a 1500 word commentary on a game of about as many words!) I love writing, but I am also a control freak! So, collaborations for me are out of the question! But, again, there are people out there who are up for it.

Good Luck and Happy Gaming!

XanMag wrote:Don't get discouraged. This is more of an obsession than a skill for me. Game ideas and writing are my strength, but I seriously lack the coding/scripting knowledge to really churn out game after game. My first attempts were so brutally obtuse that they are buried somewhere in the forever-eternal depths of my hard drive. After, no kidding, seven or eight pretty extensive muck-ups, I finally produced something that resembles a pretty good game - 'Xanadu - the World's Only Hope' Part 1. Even that game is scripted so poorly that I am going back through and fixing some scripts that aren't well done. Eventually I will update it in a new and improved form.

My point is... if you really want to do it, do it. I struggled with continuing the progress because of the seemingly impassable obstacles, but with time and PRACTICE I am proud of what I have turned out (publicly!) despite the lack of plays. It was done because I wanted to do it and still want to do it. It was done because I had some intrinsic motivation to turn ideas into games. If you have those motivations, please continue to work on creating and writing.

If you are best at illustrations and story ideas, intfiction has a forum page dedicated to collaborations. Maybe you can offer you skills as an illustrator and 'idea man' to the audience there. If you are not the best writer, you could always write it and have someone else edit it for you. There are people out there that actually like that kind of thing (I just finished a 1500 word commentary on a game of about as many words!) I love writing, but I am also a control freak! So, collaborations for me are out of the question! But, again, there are people out there who are up for it.

Good Luck and Happy Gaming!

hey XanMag! many thanks for your kind reply! much appreciated !!

i really like the suggestion you made about having someone helping me with the writing etc.
i know you said it´s out of question but
if you (or another trusted member of this forum) would consider to take on the lead with Sonar Interference i could make illustrations in exchange...
i would be very happy to have someone with more knowledge about text quest -and the English language- take on the direction of my Sonar Interference idea.

i could still give input and advice if needed but i would happily give on the torch if someone thinks it is worth it.
it would be thrilling to see what you would do with my basic idea! considering the subject matter it could be genuinely exciting.

here one can see my illustrations : http://vaghauk.deviantart.com/
also thank you for suggesting that i offer my illustration services to that forum you mentioned. it could be an interesting idea!
in any case because of all the help and patience you guys gave me here i would be happy to make a small illustration for any of your games (for you and jaynabonne) message me if you are interested i will not charge anything.

cheers
hauke