Review of "Simulation in Interactive Fiction"
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Short summary: Fairly well-written. I like the taxonomy. I learned from
this
article.
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1. Is this article clear and comprehensible?  Yes.  However, flow and
transition suffer in a few noticeable places: many sections seem to be
dropped in to the article without relating to the other sections around
them.
(Nothing would suffer from this article being chopped up into discrete
web
pages and used as hypertext; this reviewer's bias is towards connected,
linear texts, especially in books.)
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== Theory ==:  This section seemed to me to end particularly weakly (as
did
the entire article; see below).  "Design vs Implementation" isn't clear
enough or strongly enough written for one sentence summing it up to feel
like an adequate summation of everything discussed before.
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== Fifty Simulations ==:  The author probably should list the sections
that
appear subsequently.
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== Challenges ==:  Even one sentence of transition would help.
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The article appears to have no conclusion?  It doesn't have to appear at
the end;
the text under "Fifty Simulations" feels a little bit like a conclusion
but didn't
seem to tie things together enough to please me.  There's good
expository text
in the first half-dozen pages, but nothing to tie it all together.
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2. Are there places where you would like to see the line of argument
expanded or explained in more depth?
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The author briefly touches on 3D coordinate systems. It might be worth a
nod
to simulations of mundane physics (most often seen in games but also a
real
subject of research) - the spatial model closely ties into *many* of the
other
simulations being performed. An explicit 3d model of every object
combined
with a collision detection system would automatically handle several of
the
simulations discussed. This is an advantage held by some video games,
but they
have plenty of consequent disadvantages.
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(Note that I'm not advocating this for IF in general, although it would
make an
interesting experiment that given infinite free time this reviewer would
love
to try.)
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The list of classes of simulations feels like a taxonomy, in some places
the
article addresses the interrelationships, while in other places it
doesn't.
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3. Are there things you disagree with entirely?  No.
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4. Are there examples or interesting points you can think of that the
author has not addressed, that you think he should cover?  No.
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5. Grammar problems, mispunctuation, etc.
== Fifty Simulations ==:  "Nevertheless, for the remainder of this
article,
though," jumps out as having two qualifying words where none would be
sufficient.
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== Extending the Player Character ==:  Under _Inventory_, "although this
is usually
explained away with an implicit."  An implicit what?  And the example
here should
be made explicit.