Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Path: gmd.de!ira.uka.de!sol.ctr.columbia.edu!destroyer!cs.ubc.ca!uw-beaver!cornell!glazer
From: glazer@cs.cornell.edu (Scott Glazer)
Subject: Re: Stuck in Planetfall
Message-ID: <1993May1.222253.28948@cs.cornell.edu>
Organization: Cornell Univ. CS Dept, Ithaca NY 14853
References: <1993Apr28.152551.27930@ra.oc.com> <1rson3INNdnv@golem.wcc.govt.nz> <93121.053100MBS110@psuvm.psu.edu>
Date: Sat, 1 May 1993 22:22:53 GMT
Lines: 39

In article <93121.053100MBS110@psuvm.psu.edu> Mark 'Mark' Sachs <MBS110@psuvm.psu.edu> writes:
>In article <1rson3INNdnv@golem.wcc.govt.nz>, bailey_j@kosmos.wcc.govt.nz says:
>>I originally solved Planetfall on my C64 (slow, lots of disk access), which
>>only served to heighten the tension!
>
>Cool! I have to admit, these games are, for some reason, _better_ playing
>on a simple two-color screen, waiting with anticipation to see what each
>command does. Our modern systems are lit up like Christmas trees and access
>instantly -- no fun at all. Why, in my day...
>
>Perhaps this could be a new mode on the Infocom interpreters, complete with
>a user-settable disk drive delay. This is a serious suggestion.

It's absolutely true -- games seem much more serious when huge disk delays
come into play.  The c-64 was the ideal Infocom machine for this reason.  Who
am I kidding; if there _was_ a user-settable drive delay, I'd set it at its
quickest.  It's an impatient world.  But back in the old days....

Remember how long it took to restore a game on the C64?  You really, really,
didn't was to mess up or die.  The delays between turns also led to more
time to think, more time to imagine what was going to go horribly wrong
from typing "eat goo" or "go north", and more incentive not to have to 
repeat the same things over and over again.

A side note on the red herrings in Planetfall -- they were great!  One, you
never really had much of an idea how close you were to winning.  Two, it
let you believe that the world was bigger than what the programmers entered 
in.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
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