[Poll] Most Fully-Developed Red Herring

[Daryl McCullough]

In my attempts at writing IF, I've found myself introducing some
object---say, a bottle of wine--initially just for atmosphere, but
then getting distracted by the ramifications of its existence.
Can the player open the bottle? Can she drink the wine? What if she
mixes it with water? What if she sticks small objects into the
bottle? Etc.

I think it is worse than a waste of time to bother coding
for stuff that is irrelevant to the main story. It's worse
because the player will be fooled into thinking that messing
with the wine bottle *must* be the way to win the game,
otherwise the author wouldn't have gone to so much trouble.

So, although I'm not recommending that anyone develop their
red herrings to a ridiculous level of detail, I'm curious as
to what people thought was the most fully-developed red
herring in works of IF. Perhaps I should broaden the question:
What are the most memorable red herrings in IF?
Any nominations?

Just to get the ball rolling, here are some memorable
red herrings from "So Far" (although the level of detail
was not that much):

S

P

O

I

L

E

R

S

1. The edible fungus or mold in "cramped, crawling".
2. Licking the pole in "bright, bitter wind".

Daryl McCullough
CoGenTex, Inc.
Ithaca, NY

[Neil Cerutti]

In article <8pimmm$1a...@edrn.newsguy.com>,

da...@cogentex.com (Daryl McCullough) wrote:
> So, although I'm not recommending that anyone develop their
> red herrings to a ridiculous level of detail, I'm curious as
> to what people thought was the most fully-developed red
> herring in works of IF. Perhaps I should broaden the question:
> What are the most memorable red herrings in IF?
> Any nominations?

I vote for the "qualitative calculator" in +=3, by Dave Baggett and Carl
de Marcken.

--
Neil Cerutti <cer...@together.net>
Linux on board -- It is now safe to turn on your computer.

Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.

[Dan Schmidt]

Planetfall had scads of red herrings. Up until moments before I won
the game, I still thought I was only around halfway through. I
thought this worked great, but my impression is that lots of other
people were annoyed by it.

--
Dan Schmidt | http://www.dfan.org
Honest Bob CD now available! | http://www.dfan.org/honestbob/cd.html

[11dig...@my-deja.com]

In article <8pimmm$1a...@edrn.newsguy.com>,
da...@cogentex.com (Daryl McCullough) wrote:

---------------------

The pistol in Infocom's "Sherlock Holmes".