death?

[Chris M. McBride]

An adventure game without Death would not be completly boring. But
it may not be easy. One Infocom game i played had this window, and
I could see the object I needed out the window. Well I would climb out
the window, and promptly fall to my death. I either was carrying
something to heavy, or had to find another way down. Now if this game
wouldn't let me die, what would it do? Make me fall but not hurt
myself? That defeats the purpose because I defeated the puzzle without
solving it. So would it then not allow me to jump out the window? If
that was so, I would assume I COULD NOT go through the window, and
would spend weeks trying another route.
As for needless, or random deaths, with the exception of humor, I
can't think of any random death in any Infocom game I have played.
Most situatuions, I figured I would die when I did. (but I had to try
anyways!) A few times it killed me, just for the laugh factor. But it
the laugh was worth it.....

I thought Activision BOUGHT Infocom?

Lastly has anyone worked on, or played with either CDI or CDTV?

Chris

[Eric Smith]

>>On Fri, 10 Jul 1992 15:46:43 GMT, ad...@owlnet.rice.edu (Adam Justin Thornton) said:
> Random pointless death is annoying. Infocom was good about
> not killing you randomly.
>
> O'erweening overprotectiveness is equally annoying. More so,
> in my opinion, but then, I grew up on Adventure and the Zorks.

Agreed. If you do obviously stupid things, it should kill (injure, etc.)
you. What about things that aren't obviously stupid? Is it sufficient
to expect the user to save occasionally to provide for that?

What few people seem to remember is that the original Adventure on the
PDP-10 had code to keep you from doing a restore for a certain interval after
the save (typically 30 minutes), specifically to keep you from wanting to do
a save before anything even slightly risky. Was this a Good Thing? I'm not
sure.

Cheers,
Eric

[David M. Baggett]

In article <18...@optima.cs.arizona.edu> mcb...@cs.arizona.edu (Chris M. McBride) writes:
>
> One Infocom game i played had this window, and
>I could see the object I needed out the window. Well I would climb out
>the window, and promptly fall to my death. I either was carrying
>something to heavy, or had to find another way down. Now if this game
>wouldn't let me die, what would it do? Make me fall but not hurt
>myself?

The Devil's Advocate says that the game could kill you but not make
you restart the game. E.g.,

*-----------------------------------------------------------------------------*
>jump out the window
(opening the window first)

You plummet to a grue-some death on the pavement below.

*** You have died ***

Let's try that again, shall we?

>examine window
...
*-----------------------------------------------------------------------------*

Interestingly enough, Adventure (Colossal Cave) had something like
this: the game would ask you whether you wanted to be reincarnated
(though if I recall correctly it put you back in the brick building,
thereby forcing you to find your way back to your stopping point).

I'm still not sure whether I like this or not. You still know you're
never going to be penalized for carelessness or even outright stupidity.
(E.g., if the game warns you that "the rope bridge looks very unstable"
but you walk on it without saving first anyway.)

Dave Baggett
d...@wam.umd.edu

[Adam Justin Thornton]

There's always the Zork model: 3 lives, -10 points/death.

Random pointless death is annoying. Infocom was good about
not killing you randomly.

O'erweening overprotectiveness is equally annoying. More so,
in my opinion, but then, I grew up on Adventure and the Zorks.

Adam
--
"Man is conceivied in sin and born in corruption and he passeth from the
stink of the didie to the stench of the shroud. There is _always_
something." -- Robert Penn Warren | Vote Cthulhu in '92! | ad...@rice.edu
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