InkLink
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InkLink is a multiplayer internet game created by Macromedia Shockwave. A person can choose from a variety of rooms that vary in age, level, hints and members. While in a room, players can chat. In order for a game to start, a room needs at least three players. The drawer and the first player to guess the correct word or phrase, receives points. The person(s) with the highest score(s) win(s).
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[edit] Gameplay
The player's only drawing tools are eight markers–black, red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, and brown–and an eraser. The markers' lines are about 5 pixels wide, and the eraser about 20 pixels.
As a player draws he can no longer chat, but the other players can chat and guess at the word at the same time. If the word or phrase is contained in a player's guess, that player gets 120 points, minus 10 points for each 10-second interval between the time the drawer receives his clue and the time the clue is guessed. The drawer gets the same number of points.
In most rooms, after the first twenty seconds of the round, a blank for each letter in the word is shown as a hint, which includes spaces and punctuation. Twenty seconds later, when the points remaining for the round hit eighty, the first letter of the clue replaces the first blank. A minute gone, and a minute left, and the last letter falls into the hint. At the forty-point mark, the second letter of the clue appears, and when there are only twenty seconds left, the hint gives the guessers the second-to-last letter in the phrase. If the clock runs out without any correct guesses, no player gets any points and the game advances to the next numerical round. There are ten rounds per game. A drawer can pass at any time during the round. If the drawer passes, the next player up to draw gets a new word and the round number does not change. After ten completed rounds, the game is over and the three players whose points are the greatest are listed in order on the screen.
[edit] Booting
If someone is cheating, being annoying or abusive, one can click the player's name and then choose to "boot" the person. This will place a boot next to the offender's username. If more than half of the people in the room vote to boot someone, the person will be booted out of the room and are no longer able to re-enter under that profile until all the members who were in the room at the time of booting leaves that room. Also it has been a common occurrence to see someone receive boots for doing extremely well in the game. Jealously runs rampant throughout the community of InkLink.
[edit] Cheating
The most common act widely considered as cheating is spelling out the word as you draw. In beginner rooms, even if a player writes out the exact word, writing is usually tolerated. In intermediate rooms, any form of writing is frowned upon, and in most cases the writer will be booted out. In expert rooms, letters and numbers are not acceptable. Anyone who attempts to spell will soon find themselves an outcast. Spelling words defeats the entire purpose of the game, yet you'll be surprised at the number of people who do it.
Another method of cheating is to have a friend playing in the same room and having some means of communication, the phone, instant messaging, or just being in the same house. For an easier way to cheat, users just make multiple names and log in to the same room, or make a script (such as applescript) that inserts many of the common words into the game very quickly.
[edit] Known issues
[edit] Bugs
All games have their bugs, and there are a couple of easily spotted ones in InkLink. For instance, sometimes (perhaps when two people guess the correct phrase at nearly the same moment) the exclamation point, which always comes up next to the winning guesser's name pops up by one name, but quickly changes to another.
[edit] Lag
Lag is usually caused by a full server and, sometimes, for unknown reasons. Once a player receives lag, their speech bubble won't appear as rapid as usual. This can cause loss of points and, in rare cases, stopping a person from winning a round. Lag can also be created by the drawer who scribbles rapidly or a player with a high words per minute. At times, the servers go down completely, preventing anyone from playing. As of late, despite the new design of InkLink, (it received a complete overhaul in the summer of 2005) the servers have been extremely unreliable. On many days people are unable to connect to the rooms at all due to server issues.
[edit] Inappropriate Drawings and Cyber Sex
Internet trolls are sometimes found in the game drawing inappropriate or explicit images that have nothing to do with the word they have been given to draw. Due to the very nature of the game there isn't much anyone can do to stop it, besides voting to boot the offender. There is also a large group that uses the site for cyber sex[citation needed]. Often one will contact another user by Private Messaging and asking "age/sex/location" or "asl." This can often lead to cyber sex on the game our on another messaging system.
This type of behavior is generally frowned upon but as long as the sexual nature of the contact is kept private, there is usually nobody offended, or any the wiser to the content.
[edit] Characters
Many players decide to create "characters" to use in their drawings. Each time a player draws, they make a creative attempt to incorporate their character into their drawing. Characters tend to relate to a player's username. Most characters are foods, animals or people. Characters are common and well recognized among users who play frequently. Those users who are unknown to the character fad often guess the object the character is instead of the actual word or phrase.
