Listing exits
David Fisher
Here are a few I can think of:
* There is a door on the north side of the room
* On the north side of the room there is a door
* In the centre of the north wall is an ornate looking door
* A narrow shaft leads west / proceeds to the west
* There is a set of stairs at the south end of the room, descending into the
darkness
* From here you can go ...
* The only routes you can make out are ...
Listing multiple exits together:
* You are at a T intersection, leading every way but south
* There are exits in all directions / passages lead in all directions (in
Zork this includes NW, NE, SE and SW as well as N, S, E, W)
Also - is it acceptable not to explicitly name directions ? For example:
* On the east side of the roadway there is a small hut, and on the opposite
side is a paddock.
David Fisher
(On another "thread starting" spree ...)
~~ http://www.ifwiki.org/Index.php/Past_raif_topics ~~
danie...@hotmail.com
style of writing. The Zork style is only appropriate when you wish to
invoke the sound and feel of an Infocom work. One of my favorites:
"...we left our shadow and walked up to Mangan's steps resignedly. She
was waiting for us, her figure defined by the light from the
half-opened door." -- Joyce, Araby
The style of a piece of interactive fiction should ideally match the
style of a comparable piece of non-interactive fiction; the language of
one genre isn't always best-suited to another. If it's a detective
piece, follow Dashell Hammet; for sci-fi emulate Asimov or Bradbury.
Of course, that's not to say you shouldn't take your own direction as
well, but if you're going for a starting point, it doesn't need to be
Zork; otherwise, we'd all be wandering around in mazes of twisty little
passages and wading through piles of scrap paper and envelope-backs
which at one point indicated the precise nature of the connection
between the rooms holding, respectively, the giant axe and the rubber
chicken.
David Fisher
news:1119590189....@o13g2000cwo.googlegroups.com...
> Really, I'd reccommend reading your favorite authors to absorb their
> style of writing. The Zork style is only appropriate when you wish to
> invoke the sound and feel of an Infocom work. One of my favorites:
>
> "...we left our shadow and walked up to Mangan's steps resignedly. She
> was waiting for us, her figure defined by the light from the
> half-opened door." -- Joyce, Araby
>
> The style of a piece of interactive fiction should ideally match the
> style of a comparable piece of non-interactive fiction; the language of
> one genre isn't always best-suited to another. If it's a detective
> piece, follow Dashell Hammet; for sci-fi emulate Asimov or Bradbury.
True ...
But I am wondering about the situation where you need to explicitly name
exit directions such as "north" and "east", which doesn't often happen in
static fiction ...
Basically, the problem is this: How do you include a list of exits (and exit
directions) in the description of a location in a natural sounding way, with
enough variation to stop it sounding repetitious and boring ?
David Fisher
JohnnyMrNinja
> Basically, the problem is this: How do you include a list of exits (and exit
> directions) in the description of a location in a natural sounding way, with
> enough variation to stop it sounding repetitious and boring ?
>
> David Fisher
The most commonly thrown around phrase in most media is "Show don't
tell". All of the above examples suffer from a basic "this is that"
format. A more natural seeming approach would be to include the exit in
a text that is not exactly about including the exit. For example -
The waterfall that dominates the northern wall almost completely
obscures the small opening behind, forming a small river that tears
along through an artificial-seeming arch to the south. The wall itself
is smooth near the water, but looks almost climbable further east.
and so on.
Gemma Bristow
news:QgMue.21983$Le2.1...@nasal.pacific.net.au:
> What are some variations on "there is a door to the north" ?
In an outdoor location, it might be possible to describe directions
relative to natural phenomena. E.g. the player could work out that 'a
long road that disappears into the glare of the rising sun' leads
eastward. (Provided the game isn't set on another planet or at the North
Pole.) The possibilities are probably limited, though, and the phenomena
would have to be common knowledge.
> Also - is it acceptable not to explicitly name directions ? For
> example:
>
> * On the east side of the roadway there is a small hut, and on the
> opposite side is a paddock.
That reads more naturally than 'On the east side... and on the west
side', and in this context it's fairly unambiguous that 'the opposite
side' refers to the west. In a different location, such as a square
room, using a relative orientation like 'the opposite side' might be
ambiguous because it could encompass exits at the northwest and
southwest corners. But in general, describing directions relative to one
another seems economical and less like information-dumping than listing
all the directions explicitly.
Gemma
danie...@hotmail.com
all that well-suited. Sure, if the player is driving cross-country
chances are that they are thinking in terms of map directions, but if
you're walking from one aisle of the supermarket to another do you
really think, "Okay, I'm going to go east to the end of the aisle and
then southwest to the produce department?" I don't know about you, but
when I'm inside a building I usually lose all sense of absolute
direction, and I certainly don't go around with a compass.
ke...@lysseus.com
> (On another "thread starting" spree ...)
Carry on! You're doing all the legwork gathering some useful
information for those developing IF systems or system replacements.
--Kevin
Mike Snyder
news:1119626351.5...@g49g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
It's easier for me to visualize *in a game environment* using the compass
directions. I can orient myself within the game world by knowing where each
area resides in relation to the others. When you're in the supermarket, you
have the advantage of visual orientation. You don't think "it's north of
here" or even necessarily "if I'm facing west, then it's to my right". You
simply know "it's over in that direction". But that's not true of IF. Having
compass directions make perfect sense, in that construct.
Not to say that's the *only* option -- IF can work in other ways. But I do
think compass-based travel is pefectly suitable.
--- Mike.
Mike Snyder
news:QgMue.21983$Le2.1...@nasal.pacific.net.au...
> What are some variations on "there is a door to the north" ?
I'm not sure it needs much thought, except to the extent that the
descriptions are varied from room to room, read well, and allow players to
get a good sense of the layout. That last bit is probably the most
important. I don't think it's necessary to always say "this exit is to the
south" and "this other exit leads east" if you can flow additional exits
from the description of the first, or use cues already given in the text:
"The large room is bare, except for one free-standing lamp near the north
wall. A door behind it leads out and away to the garden. Another exit, its
broken door hanging from a single hinge, opens eastward to what remains of
the kitchen."
---- Mike.
Mike Snyder
news:Xns967F95B057E43ge...@62.253.162.204...
> In an outdoor location, it might be possible to describe directions
> relative to natural phenomena. E.g. the player could work out that 'a
> long road that disappears into the glare of the rising sun' leads
> eastward. (Provided the game isn't set on another planet or at the North
> Pole.) The possibilities are probably limited, though, and the phenomena
> would have to be common knowledge.
As long as the planet rotates around an axis, east will be where the sun
rises, and west will be where the sun sets. North and south branch off at
adjacent angles, toward the poles. If the sun rises in some other direction
than east, then you've misjudged the axis of rotation. If it appears to
rotate backwards, then you're looking at it upside down. :)
I guess you could have a really wacky, unstable planet. Jack Vance did this
in a story titled "The Devil on the Hill" (or something like that). For any
bodies that don't revolve around a sun -- a space station, perhaps -- then
you use fore, aft, port, and starboard, with "north" being assumed as
forward.
---- Mike.
Tommy Herbert
> What are some variations on "there is a door to the north" ?
In issue 41 of SPAG, Jon Ingold wrote:
'Advice: don't just write something functional. You may as well try
and phrase things in a vaguely interesting way, if you can. Oh, and do
get hung up on trying to describe where the exits are, because there is
nothing more dull than "You can go east, north, or west."'
I think Till Death Makes a Monkfish out of Me practises what Ingold
preaches.
r.sh...@gmail.com
David Fisher wrote:
> But I am wondering about the situation where you need to explicitly name
> exit directions such as "north" and "east", which doesn't often happen in
> static fiction ...
>
> Basically, the problem is this: How do you include a list of exits (and exit
> directions) in the description of a location in a natural sounding way, with
> enough variation to stop it sounding repetitious and boring ?
I don't know that this _is_ a problem. If you look through most genres
of conventional fiction, when it's necessary to state who is doing the
talking, it's usually done with the convention, "Blah blah blah," said
John. In women's romantic fiction, there's a habit of using all sorts
of florid synonyms for said, but in most of the rest of the writing
world, said is regarded as the perfect word for getting the job done:
it exists to perform a service for the reader's understanding, not to
demonstrate the author's vocabulary.
In the same way, listing room exits is done as a service to the
player's need to navigate. By all means, make them fit the mood, but
if this happens at the expense of rapid understanding, then you do the
player a disservice.
letmes...@gmail.com
it own unique set of commands for movement. "Leave Room", "jump out
window". Doing away entirely with the compass has interesting
effects.
But...
The other use for a compass is map making.
Imagine a set of rooms that each had 4 uniquely colored doors and you
navigated by saying "go to blue door". You could draw a map of
connections, but they could only be strung in a "web" of connections.
This could lead to some interesting uses of impossible connections ALA
the mazes in Atari Adventure. ^_^
What has always bugged me in IF though.. Is compass directions that
DON'T move you in straight line. If I say "NORTH" I expect to go
north.. and if it curves I'd rather be told.
This drove me nuts in Zork... even with the supplied map.
You'd be West of the house.. and go North to end up North of the
House....
If the message was 'you walk northward onto a path that curves to the
east' I would have made more sense to me personally.
Mike Snyder
news:1119823025....@f14g2000cwb.googlegroups.com...
> You'd be West of the house.. and go North to end up North of the
> House....
>
> If the message was 'you walk northward onto a path that curves to the
> east' I would have made more sense to me personally.
I agree! My map-making tends to be very grid-oriented -- if I'm in a room
and I can go north, I expect to be in a room just above it on my map, which
takes up the same amount of space on my grid. That isn't always the case,
which makes mapping a lot harder. I try to do that when I'm making the map
for games of my own. Just a preference, I guess.
--- Mike.
aph...@altavista.com
I think the smoothest way is to use html \b in tads2 which drops a line
down. For instance:
The room is cluttered with fucking crap. The crap resembles something
you've never seen before.
There is a hallway to the north and a door to the west.
I think we all know we're playing a game here, so don't listen to the
gibberish about directions being inadequate. I've said before, hiding
directions in some fancy tart of text is like trying to make your fart
smell pretty, you just can't do it. Directions are too dependent on IF
and you just look silly hiding them.
A.P. Hill
My Toe is becoming more crusted, I need medical advice.
JohnnyMrNinja
utilitarian and not mess up anyones flow. (I know games do this but I
can't remember which)
I personally never thought that compass directions were meant to be
realistic... it's just the prettiest way to say that the PC is a
gamepiece. If you say "North/South" or "Forward/Backward" or "Fore/Aft"
or whatever, it still equates to an "Up" move on a gameboard (meaning
towards the top of the board, or further away from the player).
As far as doing away w/ the compass, Empire of the Overmind did it as
early as 1979 -
http://ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/pc/Overmind.zip
aph...@altavista.com
I don't like the status bar too much, not sure why , maybe perhaps,
because the bar is so far away from your last text read. Your eye has
to travel a great distance.
Tabletop role playing still does cardinal directions, it's the easiest
way of moving the player from room to room. Having a DM say, "You see
a door to the north" is sufficient. I'd have to slap a DM silly if he
said, "Winds of time brush the window curtains burly in feather
motations to an elegant door pointing toward the stars."
Damn Silly.
A.P. Hill
I hang west.
Graham Holden
>
>A.P. Hill
>My Toe is becoming more crusted, I need medical advice.
Dons stethoscope.
Amputate at a point five feet above the toe nail :-)
Trust me, I've met a doctor.
Regards,
Graham Holden (g-holden AT dircon DOT co DOT uk)
--
There are 10 types of people in the world;
those that understand binary and those that don't.
aph...@altavista.com
Hmm, five feet, that would mean..HEY!!! Good one. You sir, are a
menstrating cycle of comedy.
Seriously though, I have a very crusted Big Toe. I've tried oils and
gels. People laugh becuase I wear socks with my flip flops. You know
me, I can give a rats ass about people thoughts, but I am beginning to
feel a bit demeanored. When you walk into a grocery store and everyone
in the express line turns and then laughs, it may be an indication of
problems.
But believe me, I AM protecting those very people from a truly horrific
exposure to human eye. I don my sock for you Lady of the Yogurt Isle.
David Fisher
news:1119627639....@g43g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
You found me out :-)
(That's one of my secret plans ... well, kind of secret ...)
David Fisher
~~ http://www.ifwiki.org/Index.php/Past_raif_topics ~~
(You may like to have a look at
http://www.ifwiki.org/index.php/Past_raif_topics:_Development#Creating_an_IF_language
if you haven't already).
Robin Johnson
> Basically, the problem is this: How do you include a list of exits (and exit
> directions) in the description of a location in a natural sounding way, with
> enough variation to stop it sounding repetitious and boring ?
If I take that as a rhetorical question - and I guess that's not how
you meant it - then I agree. You can't. That's why I don't try.
I can (try to) show off my writing skills in a room description without
having to worry about clumsily stitching in guises of "you can go
north" - which, as a player, I find very annoying, since especially if
they're in constructs like "you can go any direction except east", or
"exits, running clockwise, are..." they're a lot harder to just scan
for.
So the player sees a room description written under pretty much the
same constraints as those of 'static' fiction, followed by a separate,
obviously automatically generated, "Exits are north, east, and up"
line. This is not entertaining prose and it is not meant to be, but
(after a few turns) the player does not expect it to be; nor, if he
thinks like me, does he want it to be.
Note that if there are two 'synonymous' exits for a particular location
- e.g. a room with only one exit to the north, so 'out' is the same as
north here - only one of them gets listed.
Robin Johnson
www.robinjohnson.f9.co.uk
Adam Thornton
Mike Snyder <wy...@prowler-pro.com> wrote:
>I guess you could have a really wacky, unstable planet. Jack Vance did this
>in a story titled "The Devil on the Hill" (or something like that). For any
>bodies that don't revolve around a sun -- a space station, perhaps -- then
>you use fore, aft, port, and starboard, with "north" being assumed as
>forward.
There's always clockwise, widdershins, hubward, and edgeward, for the
Discworld.
For the Ringworld, Spinward and Antispinward, and East is to your right
if you're facing Spinward, West to the left.
How do you describe directions on a Dyson sphere, if you're on the
inside, it's opaque, and you have no easy means of observing the
universe outside?
Adam
Ben Heaton
> How do you describe directions on a Dyson sphere, if you're on the
> inside, it's opaque, and you have no easy means of observing the
> universe outside?
If it's rotating, then you handle directions the same way you would for
any hollow world. Otherwise, you hope that there are some things inside
it that can be used to define directions -- a couple planets revolving
around a sun, for instance. If that fails, directions would probably have
to be chosen arbitrarily, as they are in some IF. (Ha! This post is on
topic!)
-Ben Heaton
--
No sale, honcho!
Gene Wirchenko
[snip]
>As long as the planet rotates around an axis, east will be where the sun
>rises, and west will be where the sun sets. North and south branch off at
>adjacent angles, toward the poles. If the sun rises in some other direction
>than east, then you've misjudged the axis of rotation. If it appears to
>rotate backwards, then you're looking at it upside down. :)
>
>I guess you could have a really wacky, unstable planet. Jack Vance did this
>in a story titled "The Devil on the Hill" (or something like that). For any
>bodies that don't revolve around a sun -- a space station, perhaps -- then
>you use fore, aft, port, and starboard, with "north" being assumed as
>forward.
How about Uranus? See
http://www.crystalinks.com/uranus.html
Sincerely,
Gene Wirchenko
>
>---- Mike.
>
Computerese Irregular Verb Conjugation:
I have preferences.
You have biases.
He/She has prejudices.
Mike Snyder
news:j863e1lqm4c0cu340...@4ax.com...
> "Mike Snyder" <wy...@prowler-pro.com> wrote:
>
> How about Uranus? See
> http://www.crystalinks.com/uranus.html
I guess it just makes sense to pick a setting that lends itself to
text-based navigation. If it's important enough to the story that it be set
on a planet with unusual rotations -- i.e., key to it -- then I guess you
just make up something. I'd give the player some sort of super-compass that
measures whatever environmental factors can be attributed to directions --
even if arbitrary -- and use them.
--- Mike.