it's really only one guy who really didn't like the video. The rest are just glad to see someone like me trying his best to show off their favorite platform. I am thankful for that.
If it weren't for you guys - and especially Matt's RPG book and this video - I probably would have never known *how* advanced some of the early Plato games were!
IMHO you demonstrate quite nicely that these games are difficult to play which is not exactly a sensation as their developers weren't experienced designers of commercial games which try to maximize their target audience. Instead these guys tried to program for the fun of it and/or to play that stuff themselves.
Compare these guys with a hobbyist sitting at his C64 (or whatever) and cloning an Ultima-RPG and you see what those Plato guys achieved: They simply had no popular RPG like Ultima or Wizardry to look up to! They had to be creative and invent stuff which is the hardest work of it all!
I think this is outstanding stuff and most games today are so severly dumbed down in user interaction (capabilities) and complexity that it is sickening! The only thing worthy to "dumb down" is the user interface to make a game more accessible, IMHO.
While I think that some clever, polished on-screen menüs or a tiny help-system may have helped these early gems - especially as these weren't commercial games with printed manuals & stuff like maps - one should keep in mind that the system was limited and there are already so many innovations that one cannot expect everything to be perfect.
it's really only one guy who really didn't like the video. The rest are just glad to see someone like me trying his best to show off their favorite platform. I am thankful for that.
If it weren't for you guys - and especially Matt's RPG book and this video - I probably would have never known *how* advanced some of the early Plato games were!
IMHO you demonstrate quite nicely that these games are difficult to play which is not exactly a sensation as their developers weren't experienced designers of commercial games which try to maximize their target audience. Instead these guys tried to program for the fun of it and/or to play that stuff themselves.
Compare these guys with a hobbyist sitting at his C64 (or whatever) and cloning an Ultima-RPG and you see what those Plato guys achieved: They simply had no popular RPG like Ultima or Wizardry to look up to! They had to be creative and invent stuff which is the hardest work of it all!
I think this is outstanding stuff and most games today are so severly dumbed down in user interaction (capabilities) and complexity that it is sickening! The only thing worthy to "dumb down" is the user interface to make a game more accessible, IMHO.
While I think that some clever, polished on-screen menüs or a tiny help-system may have helped these early gems - especially as these weren't commercial games with printed manuals & stuff like maps - one should keep in mind that the system was limited and there are already so many innovations that one cannot expect everything to be perfect.
take care,
Calibrator
take care,
Calibrator