ARENA: More initial comments From: troyer@socrates.ucsf.edu (John M. Troyer %IDK) Date: Thu, 26 Aug 1993 17:19:06 +0000 [ insert three glowing paragraphs of praise. I wondered why nobody did this before; bravo! It has always amazed me that people could charge for this stuff. I guess I'll throw away my preliminary notes on coding up the same thing now. :-) ] 'description' command: this is in examples, but not in command list. No documentation for it. jaguar style: in examples, but no documentation. there is no 'exhausted' battle situation, but there is an 'o-exhausted' not parallel several times the 'new' command is mentioned, but it is not needed. can you sell items? Give them to other players? Note that the very short turn-around time and newness of the game leads to itchy fingers. The temptation to submit multiple characters for multiple fights right now is very high. What counts as abuse? turn report comments: perhaps the insult lines could all be slurped before giving current list? Giving 10 insults gives you 1+2+3+4+5+6+7+8+9+10 lines of confirmation. Giving a complete roster after each fight could become . . . quite large after a while. Perhaps a 'roster' command to print current roster, with an abbreviated roster given otherwise. (maybe the top fighter, you, and people around you, so you know who to challenge?) The armor and and weapons of each opponent were not shown on the turn sheet. I have no idea what my opponent was using. Apparent woundedness/exhaustion at the beginning of each round would be nice to know, too. from my fight: 'Hrothgar the Unlucky keels over from the stroke.' I did no such thing. I won, too. I must have gotten up quickly :-). general comments: There are obviously many ways to make this game more complicated. And I was about to suggest them, but it occurs to me that you really don't want a whole lot more complexity to this. At least not visible complexity. But I'll still throw out the following, since it's in the grand free game tradition of demanding more poorly thought-out features before you even understand the game. One addition that would be interesting (but that doesn't really fit with the arena concept, I suppose) is 'stuff' around the arena to throw, jump up on and kick your opponent, hide behind, trip on, etc. Would add some variety to the combat. A 'dirty tricks' strategy or activity level would be fun. Eye gouges, knee to the groin, rabbit punches, sand in the face, tripping, would make my day. Which leads to the idea of more hand-to-hand close combat. Other skills? Note that I've had only one fight. All of these comments are coming from my preconceived notions and don't necessarily have anything to do with the game 'Arena.' Thank you, Scott. very much! john troyer@cgl.ucsf.edu Referenced By Up