Jonathan S. Fox
The engine no longer runs on my computer,
This is kind of discouraging. Apparently this bug was
reported in April 2007 (by me, no less) and has been unresolved since then. It massively diminishes my enthusiasm to develop when a significant portion of the user base is going to have this kind of problem.
However, there are two positives:
1) There is a simple workaround. Included in the windows disribution there are two executables. tome3.exe exhibits this problem. tome3-sdl.exe does not. So, use the SDL version. It is graphically somewhat different and to get a screen larger than 24x80, screen resizing must be done by text-editing configuration files rather than with the mouse, but it does work.
2) There is a push going on right now to fix these problems and get the engine into beta. Whether that happens or not remains to be seen. But there are people working on it, and apparently some of these problems have already been fixed and are simply awaiting CVS commitment.
Zombie Horror, I really liked.
Thank you. Yes, Zombie Horror was very well received. It has a few loose ends (Tyler never arrives, the reactor never melts down, the hidden area in the maintains isn't accessible, etc.) but it was a
7 day roguelike, and I started to run out of time.
I'd tone the damage from the glass down a bit
...did it occur to you that perhaps the lethality of glass might be...useful?
I didn't have the opportunity to use the chainsaw, since lighting was so important and I needed a free hand to use a flashlight
...well, there are
other solutions to that particular problem, but it's certainly possible to get through the game with just a machete and a flashlight. I don't usually use the chainsaw myself, either.
BGC
I couldn't find my way around Mega Tokyo. Needed a map
That was the most frequent complaint. Personally, as someone who used to play games that required pencil and paper mapping on graph paper, I never understood why BGC players were so unwilling to simply writie down a whole dozen place names and associate them with an area number and a subway station name. It actually is possible is get an overhead map of your current area by pressing capital-M, but as for a "see everything" map...it's kind of the whole
point of the design that getting around is something you have to specifically learn how to do. The design was inspired by the month I spent in Tokyo. Trust me...all the difficulty you have getting around in BGC is
totally true to life.
Anyway, it's actually much easier to get around than it first appears. The whole of the aboveground-Tokyo map is basically two interlinked circles. You just can't see it because of the limited visibility. But since every highway, every junction, and every major building is all clearly labeled, all it really takes is five minutes taking notes of landmarks and you'll see how it all fits together.
Here's the spoiler:
You start in Area 2. You'll notice the "Area 2 Apartments" directly to the west of Silk'n Doll. If you go directly north through Junction 4, it will take you to Area 12. (Again, see the label: Area 12 Apartments." The path to the left through Junction 11, and the path to the right through Junction 17 are both dead ends. Left goes to the park, right goes to Fuchi Cybersystems. Instead, just keep going north.
You're now on the freeway. If you go south, you'll come to a Y. South at the Y leads you exactly right back where came from: Area 12. West taes you to Area 1, which connects via Junction 7 back to Area 2 with the Sil'n Doll. That's the first circle.
The second circle is bigger, not not much more complex. From the Silk'n Doll, again go north to Area 12, and north onto the freeway. Go east on Highway 16, keep going east at first Y, the exit the offramp west at the next Y. You'll see the Gym the moment you come out, and by following the road and looing for the apartments you'll see that you're in Area 8. Just keep following the road south, you'll pass through Junctions 8 and 6 into Area3, with USSD the first building you'll see. To the northwest is a dead end with Genom. Instead, keep going south, through Junction 5, to the Beach, then Junction 15 to Genom Research. The next Y is redundant. Whichever way you take will more or less lead you to the same place, but if we take the east path, we'll pass ADPolice headquarters. So do that, turn south, then west, then east at the next offramp, and you'll exit at Raven's, back in Area 2 where you started.
And that's the whole circuit. You've just seen every major building in the game. The turns that we didn't take are all either dead ends, redundant loops, or transitions back and forth between the two circles. Once you know those circles, getting anywhere is just a matter of getting on the freeway and following the circle until you get the offramp you want. And occasionally you have to swap from one circle to the other. Or, simply take a subway. I figured most people would to begin with. Just write down a list of place names and where they are, and go directly by subway without worrying where they actually are on the map.