Maher part III

In his third post about Eamon, Maher looks at the divergence of Eamon and Swordthrust, and how John Nelson got involved in the world of Eamon. Check out http://www.filfre.net/2011/09/eamon-part-2/

Maher looks at Eamon

Part two of Jimmy Maher's examination into the history of Eamon is now available at http://www.filfre.net/2011/09/a-journey-into-the-wonderful-world-of-eamon/

What do you think? Do you agree with his assessment of Eamon?

A new history of Eamon

Jimmy Maher has been busy writing a history of the early days of Eamon. There's some pretty good stuff here and it's worth checking it out: http://www.filfre.net/2011/09/eamon-part-1/

Special thanks to Ken Gagne for sending me the link!

Apple on the iPhone?

Huw Williams sent this update:

Just wanted to mention that Eamon is now available on the iPhone via "iBasic", a simple little app by Akeysoft Group that lets users play a few different Apple II games.  No frills, but still kinda neat. :)

http://iphone.akeysoft.com/iPhone_Playground/Welcome.html

Gartin Manor re-released

Greg Gioia has sent me an updated version of Gartin Manor, 26 years after it was originally released.

This update corrects some of the room connections and descriptions and fixes a bug in the flee routine. Additionally, he does describes the method of returning to the main hall. This is important because the original reviewer could not find an exit!

Interested? Why not download it at http://www.eamonag.org/programs/Dos33/d3_144(2011edits).dsk? You can then post your own review by commenting below or by writing on the wall of our facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/EamonGuild.

Thanks Greg!

Wade Clarke's responses to Leadlight reviews

Wade Clarke emailed me a few months ago to respond to some of the Leadlight reviews. His email is reprinted below:

"Thanks for showing me your EAG article about Leadlight. You covered a good cross-section of opinions in your links to reviews.

I think ultimately that Eamon, or at least my game, is not as archaic compared to modern IF as it may seem at a glance. For instance, the ability to type more than two words often adds little to a game, and a recent survey at intfiction.org demonstrated that in modern games, people only need to type two words 80% of the time anyway. Another point of interest is that even a straight Eamon 7 can take punts at abbreviated words, something Inform cannot do at all (unless the programmer specifies every abbreviation manually).

Combat with random elements is a design choice that has fallen out of favour rather than something which is actually invalid, and I noticed there wasn't a single reviewer who admitted they might simply be bad at this game :) … they just blamed the invisible die rolls and spammed their save games, rather than think about how they were playing. Like in a console survival horror game, you can definitely become a better player by making judicious choices based on experience.

I think the most valid criticism of the game was that some people felt the heroine did not react enough to all the horror. And I realised in retrospect this is a function of the fact that no description can be longer than 255 characters, so some emotional reactions which would have required longer pieces of prose to pull off successfully, had to be dispensed with within a sentence, and looked glib as a result. But this only bothered a minority of players, so I figure it's an okay trade-off considering the fact that I managed to keep paying off all the interactive scenery in room descriptions of 255 characters or less. And that I had to manually justify them for the 40 column screen as well!

I just received my copy of Juiced GS today, and I like your quote about building a ship in a bottle. That is certainly how I feel about the game."

Eamon on Adrift

Last month, Wade Clarke sent an interesting thread on one of the forums for Adrift, a modern IF system.

If looks like someone has developed an Eamon converter for both Inform 6 and Adrift 5. Check out http://forum.adrift.co/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=7203