The Status Whine

First off, apologies that I didn’t properly categorize my last IF-related post so it didn’t show up until now. That said, I have another annoyance to share with the IF world. I figure shouting out to the “planet IF” crowd is as good a way to get word out as any.

I have no problems with scoreless games in themselves, but I hate the common  Inform game thing where there is just a floating turn count number in the status bar. If your game is timer or daemon heavy and you want to keep the player appraised of time passage, change it to “TURNS: #” or  “MOVES: #” or something more informative. I find the only-a-number look ugly and imagine it’s confusing to new players. Alternatively, don’t even print any turn counter in your status bar.

I imagine this might be somewhat a new-author thing, kind of like the olden days where it was considered a success if the author managed to compile the game with debug mode turned off. I know nothing about how easy it is for Inform authors to change this; I imagine there are helpful extensions out there but can’t say for certain. Anyhow, authors, if you agree with me, I encourage you to look into this.