Re: [Ad] Kalevala - the land of heroes is born

From: carissea@my-deja.com

Date: Wed, 15 Sep 1999 00:00:00 +0000

In article <37df9f82.20112760@news.dial.pipex.com>,
  nospam@here.please (Evilb) wrote:
> On Tue, 14 Sep 1999 10:38:25 GMT, Jonathan of Faraway Games
> <gibbonsj@tfseur.co.uk> wrote:
>
> >Kalevala - the Land of Heroes is being born.
> >
> >Kalevala is a game system which lets you design and run your own
> >adventure games from your own web site.  Its all Java using the
Plug-in
> >so there are none of the browser compatability hassles.   Its all
> >graphical and supports fighting, traps and quests.  But why say more
> >here - go and look at the web site and play the demo game (still
under
> >development).
> >
> >    http://www.faraway.co.uk/dungeon.html
> >
> Generally tho, I think faraway games is headed up the right road. I've
> been fairly vocal in this group, that the methods, which you are using
> are the way forward, and I'm glad to see a like minded soul.
I have to say I was intrigued by Kalevala, myself. I've always been
partial to the Finnish myth, and I like a good dungeon crawl as much as
the next person.

However, I have a couple of problems with this genre, some of which
aren't going to be solved really soon:

I have a slow modem - so loading graphics is painfully slow, even when
they're as simple as they are in this game. (IMO, they're also overused,
but that's a design issue).

Colors: All of the graphics images look like speckled junk on my browser
(Netscape 4). This is a color map problem, not the browser's fault, but
without something to load the correct colors, the graphics will always
be ugly for me.

Java: My browser is set to prevent running programs from other machines.
This includes all Java, so many features are disabled unless I'm willing
to trust the ethics of every person who uses their game engine. I'm not
likely to be this trusting in the foreseeable future - and blocking
technology for malicious code is still too primitive.

Despite all that, I would love to see more games of this sort become
playable over the web. The slow (> 1 day) turnaround games suit me much
better than, say, Internet Doom or Quake - and I enjoy a good dungeon
crawl or space shoot-em-up where my reflexes aren't an issue. But I need
to be able to produce turns offline (web-page response times can be
terribly aggravating), and I need to be able to trust the security of
the game system.

Also, if I'm going to be playing this type of game, I'd love to see
multi-player interaction on a greater scale than is currently supported.
(My vote for next improvement to implement). I think a game like this
needs something to differentiate it from the MUD-style games.

--
Bob

Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Share what you know. Learn what you don't.

References

[Ad] Kalevala - the land of heroes is born
Jonathan of Faraway Games <gibbonsj@tfseur.co.uk>
Tue, 14 Sep 1999 00:00:00 +0000
Re: [Ad] Kalevala - the land of heroes is born
nospam@here.please (Evilb)
Wed, 15 Sep 1999 00:00:00 +0000

Referenced By

[Ad] Kalevala - the land of heroes is born
Jonathan of Faraway Games <gibbonsj@tfseur.co.uk>
Tue, 14 Sep 1999 00:00:00 +0000
Re: [Ad] Kalevala - the land of heroes is born
nospam@here.please (Evilb)
Wed, 15 Sep 1999 00:00:00 +0000