I try to make puzzles range all the way from easy to hard, and to leave many open at once.

Then in my early teens, when the home computer bubble was blowing, I had one of the first, an Acorn Atom, and used to write primitive adventures on that.

A deliberate choice on my part was for the player to continue to find new possibilities in the early Attic rooms far into the game. I think this builds atmosphere, though it means there's no neat division of the prologue from the middle game.

Writing a really general parser is a major but different undertaking, by far the hardest points being sensitivity to context and resolution of ambiguity.

Eventually I found it had been working all along-but didn't show anything on screen until it had the first full page of text. I inserted 30 new lines, and suddenly my toy said 'hEllO woRlD'. An hour later I understood alphabet shifting rather better!

By the new year of 1994, it had grown up into Inform 4 and could produce games twice as large.

The most frequent complaint is that it's hard. True. it's a hard game to win Also, many people ask me how to use the secret debugging commands, apparently under the impression that I'll tell them.

I'm rather pleased with the new manuals. I see Inform now as a gauche young adult, having got past the stage of growing out of his shoes every few months.

For a fortnight nobody at all emailed me, or posted a follow-up. Doesn't anyone care, I thought? It turned out my newsreader was broken, and hadn't posted at all.

At the end of April I archived 'Curses' and Inform, and announced them on the newsgroups.

This means keeping many trails open at once, inevitably requiring a fairly 'parallel' plot. This plot should be discovered rather than announced, so show, don't tell.

If you're setting a game during the Cuban Missile Crisis, look through a library. find out what people were wearing, what other issues were in the news, how houses were furnished, what cars were being driven. Especially include things which now seem foreign.

I try to make puzzles range all the way from easy to hard, and to leave many open at once.

I don't really believe in 'directions' in art; the rope twists as you follow it, that's all.

The 'interactive fiction' format hasn't changed in any fundamental way since the early 1970s, in the same way that the format of the novel hasn't since 1700.

I like to employ a form of repetition, in which the same elements recur but in different and unexpected ways. rather than being discarded as soon as they are understood or passed over.

Players very widely disagree with me about what's hard and what's easy. and in a way, 'I won, but it was a fight' is the best compliment a game can receive.

The time has mainly gone on getting Inform into a decent shape for public use. I suppose the plot of 'Curses' makes a sequel conceivable when compared with, say, the plot of 'Hamlet' but none is planned.

What I would pay much more attention to are the few points where the player can inadvertently make a career decision. Most players end up back-tracking, though some actually enjoy this.

If pushed, though, I'd say that the next stage will be reached when it it's no longer true that about 75% of the best games were written in 1980's on the way to that.

Sometimes life's so much cooler when you just don't know any better and all the painful lessons have not hammered your head open yet.

I am a very open, social, friendly person, and when it comes to people approaching me and asking for an autograph, I am totally cool with doing any of that. It's a lot of fun.

We Finns represent a very transparent and open-minded way of reaching political decisions.

Life is intrinsically, well, boring and dangerous at the same time. At any given moment the floor may open up. Of course, it almost never does; that's what makes it so boring.

Slovakia's joining the OECD in 1999 is totally dependent on meeting economic reforms required such as transparency and legislation that permits fair and open conduct of trade and business.

What I have learned from my work up to now, is to try to be open, but also protect myself by not letting the good and the evil get too much importance.

So the thing that's beautiful about the Rolleiflex is that I open the camera up from the top and put my face in and that the camera's all about composition and all about light.

I am a camera with its shutter open, quite passive, recording, not thinking.

Doorman - a genius who can open the door of your car with one hand, help you in with the other, and still have one left for the tip.

I would never jeopardize classified information to be brought out to the public. This information is all open source. There is no reason to worry about classification. It is simply an attempt by bureaucrats to cover their rear ends.

Our aristocracy, unlike that of Europe, is open to all comers.

And when you see it the first time you put the film together, the roughest cut, is when you want to go home and open up your veins and get in a warm tub and just go away. And then it gradually, maybe, works its way back, somewhere toward that spot you were at before.

I like to think the price I paid by being open about my private life helped.

We did a different show every night. We'd open a show, and then two weeks later we'd open the next show. And two weeks later we'd open the third show until we had all eight running. And it was just one of the richest experiences I'd ever had in my theatrical life.

I'm open to getting more equipment, but I really won't have time to look into that until after the tour.

A great department store, easily reached, open at all hours, is more like a good museum of art than any of the museums we have yet established.

Fancy your having no sunshine in London yesterday! Here it was glorious, like full summer, and I sat up with the window wide open, listening to the discourse of two amorous thrushes.

I have a very open line of communication with both my children.

To play a good guy is nice because in a way, he is so open for answers.

If it wasn't for Abe Lincoln, I'd still be on the open market.

You have to open your mind. I like the ability to express myself in a deep way. It's the closest music to our humanity - it's like a folk music that rises up out of a culture.

The decision to open up Bahrain to embrace all people indiscriminately was fostered in me ever since I was a child.

In all feats of fire-eating it should be noted that the head is thrown well back, so that the flame may pass out of the open mouth instead of up into the roof, as it would if the head were held naturally.

If you live a life of make-believe, your life isn't worth anything until you do something that does challenge your reality. And to me, sailing the open ocean is a real challenge, because it's life or death.

One of our most noble political tasks is to open up trust.

On sensitive issues, talk isn't cheap - it takes real courage to pry open topics nailed shut.

Try to open up your mind a little, and move away from rigid opinions of what people should do and be - unless you have been there.

We're very open and outspoken about our faith and our beliefs. We also talk about our doubts, our moments of insecurities. We talk about it all day, how we're inspired by God. We recognize little miracles every day, and that's how we're raising our daughter.

We know that the airports are not protected as they should be protected. The terminals are public areas, wide open - anyone can go and walk at any terminal he wants.