UNCREATION - A new text mystery adventure!

[madscijr]

I think I was mostly deflated yesterday - this week was really rough, and I was excited to finally show this game, so to have it received thus... it didn't offend, it just took all the wind out of my sails, I guess.

We've all been there, especially after working so hard on a project! 
Last year I poured blood, sweat, and tears into a game I was really proud of, only to get a single reply, where the person basically said they can't play it because the keyboard controls are too complicated (even though the game works with game controllers too). Basically the person said my game was an interesting exercise for people to become more familiar with the keyboard, LoL. I got no actual feedback from anyone on the game itself. Talk about wind out of sails! 

You just have to keep trying! In my case, I moved on to another project but will eventually get around to "re-releasing" the game, maybe with some tweaks.

I can certainly understand people's reluctance with EXE files, but I'm struggling to think of a way to post source that doesn't give away every puzzle in the game.

It can be done! See our discussion above...

Hello. Completely logical. If the person wants to play it, he will compile it straight away and not study the source code.

But if someone studies it first before play it, he cheats himself in the game. So I would leave it up to each individual how they approach it.

That's all you can do! As a programmer (or the creator of anything), it's often the case that our control ends once our creating is in the audience's hands. You just have to let go, and hope they listen to whatever instructions you tell them!

Yes, that's completely reasonable and I agree with you... that is how I was thinking at first.  But after that, I realized another scenario is more likely - that someone will begin playing in earnest, but then get stuck for a bit, and realizing they can just dig through the code to find the way to make progress, give in to temptation.  That's the scenario that concerns me... not just because people might get less enjoyment from solving things, but also because I'd essentially be leaving temptation wide-open for people to reinforce a bad habit.

Maybe one approach is how Infocom approached this - by having a hint book, with help for different puzzles on separate pages (so they don't inadvertently see more than they need to).

Or have a hint feature in your game, where if the player is stuck, they can type the "help" command, and the game will provide a hint. Maybe you can vary the difficulty, where the first time they ask for a hint, the answer is vague. If they ask again, it can be a little more specific. Each time they ask, they would get more information. It's up to them whether they want to keep asking.

Another thing that occurred to me, after having posted this thread and thinking some more - some of the more satisfying solutions in this game actually wouldn't be evident from studying the code at all.  A large majority of the simpler stuff would be completely transparent on reading the code, but there are bigger puzzles in this game, where you have all the information already.  In those cases, cheating wouldn't tell you anything you didn't already know, since the challenge is putting the pieces together in the right way.

Anyway, I also realized it's not really important at this point.  This is just a taste, the first chapter.  After the game is finished, it would be a lot easier for me to retroactively encrypt everything.  And I've got some friends playing the game as well, so it's not like I'm missing out on testing at this point in development.  I think this is what I'll go with for now.

Sounds good. Whenever you can send the source code, I will give it a shot!