Re: [Enigma-devel] Enigma 0.8 beta version questions

[Ingo van Lil]

On Thu, Sep 25, 2003 at 10:10:55PM -0400, slfabian wrote:

> I don't like being forced to play them more or less in order.  Again,
> this is why I don't like other "level" games.  I don't think that this
> makes them fun--it only makes them frustrating.

Challenge and frustration are pretty closely related. Finding a good
balance between these two is probably the hardest and most important
thing about designing a good game. E.g., one of my favourite games in
the good old DOS days was "The Lost Vikings". To solve a level you had
to get all three actors to the exit. There were level codes, but no way
to save in the middle of a level. If one of your vikings died, you had
to restart from the beginning of the level. This could be hellishly
frustrating in some situations, but if you had the chance to save each
time before playing a tricky bit the game would be far too easy to be
fun.
Anyway, I'm not entirely sure, but I think Enigma is challenging enough
without enforcing a certain level order. There are lots of levels which
I can't seem to figure out or currently lack the skill to solve, so I
like to postpone them and come back later (e.g., I have no idea yet how
to solve "Escape?" and "Easy?" in the Enigma 2 level pack). Since
there's no continuity, i.e. the levels don't depend on each other,
skipping single levels doesn't diminish the fun of subsequent puzzles.

> I wouldn't mind the idea of having an option to turn level locking on or
> off.  I know that someone else said that this is the same as unlocking all
> levels, but at least it would give you a choice.

Yes, but having this choice may be too tempting for some people. It's
like trying to solve an adventure game and having a walkthrough ready at
hand. I don't know how others cope with that, but I always swear to
myself to solve the game on my own, but as soon as I'm stuck at some
place for longer than a few minutes I fail to keep that resolution.

> Another person wrote that he would have also complained if he wasn't able to
> get some hints about how to solve certain levels by looking at the lua
> files.  I am generally pretty computer illiterate, so I don't even know what
> this means or how to look at these files.

The lua files are the actual level description files in the data/levels
directory. You can read them with any normal text editor or viewer, but
unless you're somehow familiar with at least the general concepts of
structural programming languages they probably won't make much sense to
you. I sometimes use them to get a hint about a seemingly unsolvable
level.

        Cheers,
            Ingo