I am not too fond of rants, particularly when they are ill founded or when they are written purely to antagonize without constructive criticism.

Still, there is a "gentle" and rather "polite" rant just posted on Adventure Classic Gaming that may be a good read for fellow GBers struck with BAAGS. The article is called, "Principal principles: a primer for adventure game developers?"

http://www.adventureclassicgaming.com/index.php/site/features/115/

Brings back fond memories of LucasArts.

Ok. I am tired. 3 posts in a row. Need to take a nap.

What a very intresting article, which I agreed on most points, as the adventure genre has become a bit stale and formula based recently.

I agree with a lot of what was said in that article

Is anybody else having trouble accessing the site?

It's okay for me Becky -you're up late, or very early!

Aha! The link is working now. Thanks myopia. Let's see -- I think I started out late, but now it's officially early.

Yikes, you're playing havoc with your sleep pattern but not the games!

Why sleep when you can game?

Nice article!

And one I found myself agreeing a lot with, especially in terms of writing and game mechanics. Nothing is more dis-heartening to the player when you can't give a guy back his swords right away, but have to go trough every bit of dialogue again...

The solution to all these design problems mentioned in the article is... testing, testing, testing.

Yes !!

And yet we so often get ....

Patching, patching, patching

Indeed. I've recently experienced through a game I'm working on by myself how bugs and other problems just pop up out of nowhere all the time during coding and design. I'll have to put up ads for testers soon, otherwise there will be patching x6.

"otherwise there will be patching x6"
Oh, nooooooooo ........

I wouldnt cll that article a rant. It sets out a lot of principals that many of us agree with and have often been proposed here and elsewhere.

I agree with most of it, but there are a few things I disagree with. I personally don't think that puzzle should be locally solvable, in fact I greatly prefer if they aren't and that traveling between locations far away from the puzzle are required, though if the entire game consists of many puzzles like this I can think of times where this becomes tedious. Also I am a fan of sound puzzles, but I also come from a pretty musical background so I understand why the writer of this article and others wouldn't like puzzles with an audio focus either. Lastly I don't find a story driving the game to be mandatory, I actually think it is cool when the entire focus is the environment and the puzzles, but I still think that stories to explain the reason that puzzles relate to the environment can be really interesting and I usually enjoy games that use this idea.

Other than that I agree with most of the points stated, I especially agree with "if a new hotspot has appeared, then there must be a visible change to the scene", I dislike it when games have hotspots suddenly available after solving a puzzle that has no logical connection with the location the hotspot appears in. I also get really annoyed when dialogue that is only heard once is required to solve a puzzle and reverting to an old save game is required to to retrieve the information. I remember Schizm had a lot of these moments and if the dialogue was possible to repeat, the difficulty would still be high but for reasons of complexity rather than just an inability to retrieve the clues again.

"I personally don't think that puzzle should be locally solvable, in fact I greatly prefer if they aren't and that traveling between locations far away from the puzzle are required, though if the entire game consists of many puzzles like this I can think of times where this becomes tedious."

I agree !!
I like travelling around to solve stuff and it doesn't get at all tedious if the developers are sensible and give us a "magic map"
[Whereas having a solution locally available every time would bore me.]

Even as far back as Secret of Monkey Island we were treated to magic maps - and I am disappointed every time one isn't supplied when the gameplay screams out for one

In Schizm, many puzzles were not locally solvable, and you often had to go on long hikes and rides to find solutions to puzzles. In Schizm 2, the puzzles were locally solvable and you never had to go too far to find solutions. I found the puzzles in Schizm 2 much more enjoyable. So though I wouldn't say every puzzle had to have a local solution, I prefer it most of the time. I don't think a "magic map" would work so well in a game like Schizm or Riven, because figuring out how to get around is part of a puzzle. Teleporting with a "magic map" seems to work better in 3rd person games where getting around isn't really part of a puzzle but is just tedious.

Ahhhhh, Jenny100, you've revealed my secret passion for 3rd person games !!

Me too.