Do IF players read? (was: Re: Do IF writers write?)
Nulldogma
> I have this problem to. With me it's mainly due to a reluctance to
> read the same thing twice - and that's something which you have to do
> often in IF (maybe I should turn verbose back off again...). But
> often you have to read it carefully, or else you miss something new.
Something I did a little bit in Lost New York, and am trying to do more in
my next game, is to have a longer, more atmospheric description the first
time you enter a location, then a shorter, more to-the-point one
thereafter. (I've even started implementing a new TADS attribute,
firstdesc, that replaces ldesc on first lookAround.) So you'd have
something like this:
>LOOK
Ruins of Washington, D.C.
The scene before you is one of utter devastation, unlike anything
you've seen since "The Day After." Rotting corpses and the ruins of
stately federal buildings are everywhere -- there's the stump of the
Washington Monument, the smashed remains of the White House, the ruined
Capitol -- as if in preparation for the climactic scenes of "Logan's Run."
Above you, the alien ship hovers silently, not so much like the mothership
from "Close Encounters" as like the one from "V".
>LOOK
Ruins of Washington, D.C.
Still devastation everywhere. Overhead, the damned ship just hovers
silently.
Neil
---------------------------------------------------------
Neil deMause ne...@echonyc.com
http://www.echonyc.com/~wham/neild.html
---------------------------------------------------------
Julian Arnold
In article <4v9t41$o...@newsbf02.news.aol.com>, Nulldogma
<URL:mailto:null...@aol.com> wrote:
>
> Something I did a little bit in Lost New York, and am trying to do more in
> my next game, is to have a longer, more atmospheric description the first
> time you enter a location, then a shorter, more to-the-point one
> thereafter. (I've even started implementing a new TADS attribute,
> firstdesc, that replaces ldesc on first lookAround.) So you'd have
> something like this:
>
> >LOOK
>
> Ruins of Washington, D.C.
> The scene before you is one of utter devastation, unlike anything
> you've seen since "The Day After." Rotting corpses and the ruins of
> stately federal buildings are everywhere -- there's the stump of the
> Washington Monument, the smashed remains of the White House, the ruined
> Capitol -- as if in preparation for the climactic scenes of "Logan's Run."
> Above you, the alien ship hovers silently, not so much like the mothership
> from "Close Encounters" as like the one from "V".
>
> >LOOK
>
> Ruins of Washington, D.C.
> Still devastation everywhere. Overhead, the damned ship just hovers
> silently.
"Independence Day"? ("V" is still best though.)
This method is fine. Some older text adventures used to do this
("Countdown to Doom" for the BBC). I think it is important that an
explicit LOOK always prints the first description, even if the location
has been visited before. The short description would be printed on
subsequent visits (implicit LOOKs). It's very irritating to only be
able to get at text once:
>N
[long desc]
>N
[long desc]
>S
[short desc]
>LOOK
[long desc]
Jools
--
Nulldogma
> I hate to be the one to break this to you - but most adventure programs
> have done this since adventures began ie, a verbose description is only
> shown on the first time of asking.
But I'm not talking about a VERBOSE/BRIEF thing -- I'm talking about text
that only shows up the first time you enter a room, to be read once, then
safely forgotten about afterwards.
I've already gotten one e-mail expressing confusion about this, so I'll
post the same revised example that I gave them:
> LOOK
Ruins of Washington, D.C.
You emerge from your hiding place to see nothing but devastation all
around you. Corpses and the tangled debris of once-stately buildings clog
the streets for as far as the eye can see. Overhead, an immense black
spaceship blots out the sky.
Even though you never much liked Washington, D.C., this, you think,
is overkill.
> LOOK
Ruins of Washington, D.C.
You are surrounded by devastation. Corpses and the tangled debris of
once-stately buildings clog the streets for as far as the eye can see.
Overhead, an immense black spaceship blots out the sky.
Get it now?
Brad O`Donnell
Nulldogma wrote:
>
> Ruins of Washington, D.C.
> You emerge from your hiding place to see nothing but devastation all
> around you. Corpses and the tangled debris of once-stately buildings clog
> the streets for as far as the eye can see. Overhead, an immense black
> spaceship blots out the sky.
> Even though you never much liked Washington, D.C., this, you think,
> is overkill.
>
> > LOOK
>
> Ruins of Washington, D.C.
> You are surrounded by devastation. Corpses and the tangled debris of
> once-stately buildings clog the streets for as far as the eye can see.
> Overhead, an immense black spaceship blots out the sky.
>
> Get it now?
>
Yeah! I really like the idea. Do it!
Brad O'Donnell
Andrew D. Pontious
Nulldogma wrote:
> But I'm not talking about a VERBOSE/BRIEF thing -- I'm talking about text
> that only shows up the first time you enter a room, to be read once, then
> safely forgotten about afterwards.
That would mean, then, that the *extra* descrip. in the first go-around
would be purely decorative, and the *2nd*, shorter descrip., would in
its more compact form, still have all the details you need to solve the
game. Right? That's what your getting at?
I still don't quite agree with you. :-) I've been having this same
concern in my latest/first game, and another way to handle the problem
is to write your descriptions the *first* time around so that they're
both compact yet informative *and* poetic. It's part of the art of IF
writing that it must be durable for repeated readings. It's just as
demanding a form, if not more, as the short story, where every word
counts. What you're saying in your *first* descrip. is "here are words
that I could've left out, that are less necessary." Under the strictest
judgment, if they can be left out, why worry about including them at all
when you could spend more time writing the compact version better?
That being said, now I'm going to retract. ;-) Momentous, dramatic
moments in your game could very well have special paragraphs, probably
should, to describe that action (or reaction, if you're seeing a
devastated city for the first time, and maybe go to the side to retch or
something). That separates the drama from the everyday room descriptions
you'll be reading 100 times. Should such drama para.s appear only once?
Probably. But to have a longer para. like that for *each* room isn't
something that I would do.
Nulldogma
Andrew, ruler of all he surveys (or at least the I-F CD), wrote:
> That being said, now I'm going to retract. ;-) Momentous, dramatic
> moments in your game could very well have special paragraphs, probably
> should, to describe that action (or reaction, if you're seeing a
> devastated city for the first time, and maybe go to the side to retch or
> something). That separates the drama from the everyday room descriptions
> you'll be reading 100 times. Should such drama para.s appear only once?
> Probably. But to have a longer para. like that for *each* room isn't
> something that I would do.
God, no, not for *each* room. What kind of madman do you think I am? I set
my default definition for firstdesc to = self.ldesc -- i.e., the regular
room description. I only override it in special cases, along the lines of
your examples above.
However, I have enough special cases (especially in my new game) that I
felt I needed ready-made code to handle them. Hence, firstdesc.
If anyone is still confused (if anyone still *cares* -- how did this
thread start again, anyway?), go to the corner of 23rd Street and Broadway
--
(pause for punchline)
-- no, *get off that plane*! The corner of 23rd Street and Broadway in
LOST NEW YORK, of course. It's a perfect example of what I'm talking
about.
Neil K. Guy
Andrew D. Pontious (byza...@tuna.net) wrote:
: I still don't quite agree with you. :-) I've been having this same
: concern in my latest/first game, and another way to handle the problem
: is to write your descriptions the *first* time around so that they're
: both compact yet informative *and* poetic. It's part of the art of IF
: writing that it must be durable for repeated readings. [...]
Perhaps. But interactive fiction is meant to be more dynamic than
traditional fiction, hence the name. At one level this means room
descriptions changing when you drop an item on the floor (There is a
turnip, an umbrella and a copy of the 1971 edition of the Concise Oxford
English Dictionary on the floor here) but I think it goes beyond that. A
lot of games try to set an emotional mood for the player when you enter
a space (You're awestruck by the giant sculpture of a demijohn, artfully
crafted out of the purest spam) and that sort of thing gets really
irritating if you see it more than once. In fact, I think it undermines
any illusion the game may try to create.
Like Neil (it was Neil deMause who started this thread, wasn't it?) I've
hacked adv.t so that it displays a room firstdesc the first time a player
enters a room; its ldesc thereafter. Since I'm using TADS I set firstdesc
to default to inheriting the room's ldesc, so I can simply override it
for rooms in which I feel it's appropriate to provide a slightly
different description the first time a player shuffles in. I personally
feel this adds a fair bit to the descriptions.
- Neil K. Guy
--
Neil K. Guy * n...@vcn.bc.ca * n...@tela.bc.ca
49N 16' 123W 7' * Vancouver, BC, Canada
Nulldogma
I wrote:
> Andrew, ruler of all he surveys (or at least the I-F CD),
> wrote:
Sorry -- that was Andrew *Pontious*, not Plotkin. (No wonder I didn't
understand that reference to his "latest/first" game...)
I'm going to go to bed now. G'night, all.
Andrew Clover
"Andrew D. Pontious" <byza...@tuna.net> wrote:
> I've been having this same concern in my latest/first game, and another
> way to handle the problem is to write your descriptions the *first*
> time around so that they're both compact yet informative *and* poetic.
Agreed: my strategy is to write the room descriptions small and stick
'verbose' on by default. Any long bits of text can be stuck elsewhere, in
objects' descriptions, examine-descriptions, actions that happen, and so
on.
I find myself skimming the text a lot when there's a reasonable amount of
it and there's a > prompt sitting at the bottom of the screen. I'm very
tempted to skip bits of text and get right on with my next move. I can't
see any obvious way of avoiding this effect, but passages after which
you have to press a key, and then the screen clears - such as that at the
end of the prologue in Trinity - are very effective in getting you to
read everything well.
Hmm.
BCNU, AjC
Eli The Bearded
>Nulldogma wrote:
[Idea of using "full" and "less full" descriptions]
My news server has expired the original question, so I can't
check what the actual question was. If it was how to do it,
coudln't you just [in Inform] make description a routine
that checks if the place "has visited"? If it is should you
do it, I would have to say it is your game write it how it
makes you happy. But unless the change in descriptions
serves some useful purpose like differentiating first
impressions from the actual description, I think you are
going to annoy the players.
Elijah
------
vi makes working with multisecond telnet lag tollerable
Greg Ewing
Nulldogma wrote:
>
> I'm talking about text
> that only shows up the first time you enter a room, to be read once, then
> safely forgotten about afterwards.
There should be some way of requesting the initial text
again, even if it's unimportant. Some sort of "full look"
command... not sure what to call it, though...
Greg