Jolt Country

Say, if someone wrote a review of a comp game like, say, The PK Girl, and said hypothetical someone wanted to submit it to the Trotting Krips but then realized the submission code wasn't working and the address provided for submissions went to a guy who hasn't been affiliated with the site for over a year, where would this someone submit his review? Should he just send it to beaver@zombieworld.com, and just deal with the fact that he would have to get a whole new email address since all his old accounts have long since collapsed from inactivity? Should he post it here? What?

Nevermind, I just emailed it to you. Let me know here if you don't get it, or if you can't/won't post it or something. Don't reply to the email, unless you don't mind me never reading the reply, I'm not likely to ever wade through the spam in that account again.

Yes, I.... should probably fix the submission stuff there.

Here's what's up with me: I have been out of communication for today (up to this point) and yesterday. I flew from Colorado to Western New York on Wednesday, and went to an auto auction with my pop yesterday and today.

While on that trip, I managed to acquire a stomach virus (or perhaps, a small-to-medium sized bacteria!!) which has drawn all the strength away from my body and caused food to go right through me. If any of you have had this particular disease, my heart goes out to you, literally, I just passed it and an oddly-shaped purple organ in my toilet just now. I have not been away from a toilet for more than 55 minutes in the last day and a half. It was a six-hour trip to the place where the auction was (Manheim, PA, for the JC Car Guy Players Crew) and I just got back. Ordinarily, I have nothing going on, and an actual RFTK submission would be my priority. However, I think right now I am just going to go faint.

But the Content Beaver has been fed!! I will arise tomorrow at the latest and post that. What a strong comeback. After being absent for a little while, Debaser returns with an IF review. Boy, if Ben "Ben" Parrish ever returned, a similar from-the-ashes rebirth would be really super. Unfortunately, the man believes Galaga to be superior to Phoenix, so that's that.

... Hm, somewhere along the way my message that was intended to say "thanks" to Debaser became an unfair rant at Pinback. Whoopsies! Happy Holidays, all!

Allrighty, the PK Girl review is now up! Sorry it took me a couple days to post that -- I had needed to grab some sleep in order to fight off this infection / disease / whatever it was, and I think I finally did that. I usually try to aim for a faster turnaround.

For the one-click crew, tasty content awaits right [url=http://www.joltcountry.com/trottingkrips/thepkgirl.html[/url]. Even tastier is that Debaser's review makes me want to go out and play the thing, so if I can get my ducks in a row there might actually be some back and forth IF content on this site. Kind of a novelty, but what the hey, let's give it a try!

Bah, that game sounds interesting and I'll probably play it, but man oh man, I hate ADRIFT. More times than I can remember, I've installed the runner, played a game, then un-installed it all just because I couldn't stand to have it on my computer.

Hey, cool, it's up. Thanks, Jonsey, and hope you feel a bit better.

And RY, don't let the whole ADRIFT thing scare you off. This is not only the first ADRIFT game I've found really and truly playable without excessive frustration, it pretty much stacks up with "decently" implemented Tads/Inform/Hugo. Honestly, given the degree of time this guy obviously spent implementing, I'm surprised he didn't just use one of the better (and free-er) languages out there, since it was probably more work to get the Adrift parser up to its current level than it would have been to learn, say, Hugo. Then again, given how precious little of The Magistrate I've managed to code using Hugo, I suppose I'm in no position to question the choices of a guy who's produced an actual complete game.

But, anyway, just bear in mind the disambiguation bit I mentioned in the review, and you should be okay.

Oh, aside from the ugly ugly typos that are now immortalized for all the internet to see (I of course meant the SCUM Manifesto by Valerie Solanas, and not the SCUMM Manifesto, which I guess would have been written by Guybrush Threepwood), one thing I regret about this review is not mentioning the nifty PK detector you can get early on in the game. It goes off whenever one of the many psychics/telekinetics/whatever in the game uses their power in your current area. At no point is having this thing necessary or even particularly useful from a puzzle solving standpoint, but it seems to be implemented absolutely perfectly.

I remember on my second playthrough, I was hanging about the house when it started going off for no apparant reason. I was surprised, because I didn't recall any power usage at that point in the game. So I looked around a little, and found one of the girls using her power in an atmospheric throwaway bit that I'd missed the first time around. That level of precision on something completely superfluous like that impressed me a fair bit.

I think one of the things that bothers me the most is the necessity of upgrading with ADRIFT all the time (as you mentioned, the 4.0 ADRIFT runner doesn't work with 3.9 games or whatever). It seems every ADRIFT game I've played required downloading a new interpreter; sometimes it'd have to be the full package just because the runner hadn't been upgraded yet. It's that kind of stuff that makes me feel bad for every well-meaning ADRIFT author.

Debaser wrote:Oh, aside from the ugly ugly typos that are now immortalized for all the internet to see (I of course meant the SCUM Manifesto by Valerie Solanas, and not the SCUMM Manifesto, which I guess would have been written by Guybrush Threepwood)

Heh, heh, heh. That was me; you had it right. In my delieria (?) I saw the word "SCUM" there in caps and did a "LOL LIEK SCUMM HAW AHW HAW" thing there or something. I changed it back. Sorry about that. (Bryan was always the better editor than I.)

one thing I regret about this review is not mentioning the nifty PK detector you can get early on in the game. It goes off whenever one of the many psychics/telekinetics/whatever in the game uses their power in your current area. At no point is having this thing necessary or even particularly useful from a puzzle solving standpoint, but it seems to be implemented absolutely perfectly.

Oh wow, that sounds cool. Huh... so other characters are off doing their thing, and you can essentially get notified of that through an optional piece of hardware? That seems really neat.

That was me; I login like old people screw.

Anonymous wrote: Heh, heh, heh. That was me; you had it right. In my delieria (?) I saw the word "SCUM" there in caps and did a "LOL LIEK SCUMM HAW AHW HAW" thing there or something. I changed it back. Sorry about that. (Bryan was always the better editor than I.)

Well, I feel better at least. But now I have this idea stuck in my head of DotT where Purple Tentacle instead wants to grow thumbs in order to shoot Andy Warhol.

Oh, and I should mention that nine times out of ten, when the PK detector goes off it's fairly redundant because the power setting it off is being used in an attempt to kill or save you. The bit in the house I mentioned is more the exception than the rule.

Debaser wrote: Well, I feel better at least. But now I have this idea stuck in my head of DotT where Purple Tentacle instead wants to grow thumbs in order to shoot Andy Warhol.

Wow. That just made my Christmas Eve.

Bruce