A Plea for Better Driving in IF
Dan Shiovitz
players who control them. They can effortlessly juggle dozens of items
of all shapes and sizes, have a perfect sense of direction, and,
depending on the game, are able to do things as diverse as picking
locks and casting spells. But there is at least one thing that no IF
protagonist seems to be good at: driving a car.
I'm not just speaking of _Fine Tuned_, which is set in the early days
of automobiles and so a certain amount of inexperience is to be
expected. Consider _Photopia_, a masterpiece of the genre -- people
talk about how meaningful it is and what important lessons it has to
offer, but what does it really teach us about traffic safety? Or
_Rematch_: you can change the situation, but not the driver's sloppy
habits. These games are all a few years old, but an entry in the comp
this very year demonstrates that protagonists have gotten no better at
this seemingly-simple task. The few games that do have the PC
successfully driving generally have the drive last no more than a
single turn -- hardly an adequate test of the their driving
skills. Would you call someone a musician if they played only a single
note, or a builder if they put one brick on top of another? Surely we
must demand more.
It's not even just cars -- last year's _Off the trolley_ demonstrates
that the incompetence of IF protagonists extends to driving other
vehicles as well. What about non-wheeled vehicles, you ask? We need
look no further than the plethora of games involving the PC waking up
in a crashed spaceship to get the depressing answer.
But, in fact, the situation is not as grim as I've presented it. There
is at least one game where the protagonist is able to get into a car
and make a long journey consisting of as many as four turns, and
finish up without a crash. The author has been heralded (at least by
himself) as a trend-setter in other areas of IF, but I think the real
achievement of Howard Sherman is the flawless driving in _Baltimore:24_.
--
Dan Shiovitz :: d...@cs.wisc.edu :: http://www.drizzle.com/~dans
"He settled down to dictate a letter to the Consolidated Nailfile and
Eyebrow Tweezer Corporation of Scranton, Pa., which would make them
realize that life is stern and earnest and Nailfile and Eyebrow Tweezer
Corporations are not put in this world for pleasure alone." -PGW
JDC
Dan Shiovitz wrote:
> IF protagonists are, by and large, far more competent than the
> players who control them. They can effortlessly juggle dozens of items
> of all shapes and sizes, have a perfect sense of direction, and,
> depending on the game, are able to do things as diverse as picking
> locks and casting spells. But there is at least one thing that no IF
> protagonist seems to be good at: driving a car.
I guess this is why experienced authors seem to provide their PCs with
a shuttle pilot. If I'd have done this for mine, perhaps he wouldn't
have gotten into so much trouble...
-JDC
David Fletcher
> IF protagonists are, by and large, far more competent than the
> players who control them. They can effortlessly juggle dozens of items
> of all shapes and sizes, have a perfect sense of direction, and,
> depending on the game, are able to do things as diverse as picking
> locks and casting spells. But there is at least one thing that no IF
> protagonist seems to be good at: driving a car.
>
I suspect you may have identified the real problem when you mention
the perfect sense of direction. Protagonists clearly have a
predilection for travelling in exact compass directions. If they
attempt to drive down a road that happens to be on a bearing of, say,
87 or 272 degrees, the habit must surely prove dangerous.
Of course there is some evidence that protagonists can follow twisty
passages, so one might assume that they could manage twisty roads.
But remember how often they walk into walls. That strategy that does
not work so well when driving at high speeds or when the walls are
replaced by oncoming traffic.
David.
quic...@quickfur.ath.cx
>
> Dan Shiovitz wrote:
> > IF protagonists are, by and large, far more competent than the
> > players who control them. They can effortlessly juggle dozens of items
> > of all shapes and sizes, have a perfect sense of direction, and,
This is one point that I have been considering: the use of relative
directions rather than cardinal directions. Andrew Plotkin tried this in
his Wumpus remake, and I found it somewhat effective. It always struck
me as odd that a PC lost at night in a jungle (without a compass) would
know exactly which way was north or west. Perhaps a better scheme might
be to navigate via landmarks (e.g., WALK TOWARDS THE HILL, WALK TO THE
HOUSE, GO TO THE SHED, etc.). This also helps in discouraging location
descriptions that are essentially lists of exits.
Also, cardinal directions don't make sense in some contexts, eg. on
ships. TADS 3 tries to mitigate this by providing the author a way to
switch between the two systems, but I'd like to see less dependance on
cardinal directions in IF in general. Except where it makes sense, of
course.
> > depending on the game, are able to do things as diverse as picking
> > locks and casting spells. But there is at least one thing that no IF
> > protagonist seems to be good at: driving a car.
>
> I guess this is why experienced authors seem to provide their PCs with
> a shuttle pilot. If I'd have done this for mine, perhaps he wouldn't
> have gotten into so much trouble...
[...]
<SPOILER SPACE>
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
On the other hand, if the driver in Madam Spider's Web were relieved of
this duty, we would've missed out on a great Comp entry. ;-)
QF
--
"Life is all a great joke, but only the brave ever get the point." --
Kenneth Rexroth
dgen...@hotmail.com
quick...@quickfur.ath.cx wrote:
> On Fri, Nov 17, 2006 at 04:17:46PM -0800, JDC wrote:
> >
> > Dan Shiovitz wrote:
> > > IF protagonists are, by and large, far more competent than the
> > > players who control them. They can effortlessly juggle dozens of items
> > > of all shapes and sizes, have a perfect sense of direction, and,
>
> This is one point that I have been considering: the use of relative
> directions rather than cardinal directions. Andrew Plotkin tried this in
> his Wumpus remake, and I found it somewhat effective. It always struck
> me as odd that a PC lost at night in a jungle (without a compass) would
Lost in a jungle without a compass is nothing.
Imagine waking up from an amnesiac comma, in a windowless room, and
trying to reckon your way north!
Dave
Andrew Plotkin
> On Fri, Nov 17, 2006 at 04:17:46PM -0800, JDC wrote:
> >
> > Dan Shiovitz wrote:
> > > IF protagonists are, by and large, far more competent than the
> > > players who control them. They can effortlessly juggle dozens of items
> > > of all shapes and sizes, have a perfect sense of direction, and,
>
> This is one point that I have been considering: the use of relative
> directions rather than cardinal directions. Andrew Plotkin tried this in
> his Wumpus remake, and I found it somewhat effective.
But I was careful not to make them *truly* relative directions. You
never get turned around and see an exit described as "left" when it
was previously "right" or "forward". There have been games (or parts
of games) that worked that way, and I didn't like it at all.
The "perfect sense of direction" is, to some extent, an interface
stand-in for the normal human *recognition* of exits. Outside of a
maze, you almost never confuse the kitchen door with the closet door.
The text-game convention simulates this clarity by giving each exit a
distinct (and easily typed!) label, which is the compass direction.
--Z
--
"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the borogoves..."
*
It used to be that "conservatives" were in favor of smaller government,
fiscal responsibility, and tighter constraints on the Man's ability to
monitor you, arrest you, and control your life.
quic...@quickfur.ath.cx
> Here, quic...@quickfur.ath.cx wrote:
> > On Fri, Nov 17, 2006 at 04:17:46PM -0800, JDC wrote:
> > >
> > > Dan Shiovitz wrote:
> > > > IF protagonists are, by and large, far more competent than the
> > > > players who control them. They can effortlessly juggle dozens of
> > > > items of all shapes and sizes, have a perfect sense of
> > > > direction, and,
> >
> > This is one point that I have been considering: the use of relative
> > directions rather than cardinal directions. Andrew Plotkin tried
> > this in his Wumpus remake, and I found it somewhat effective.
>
> But I was careful not to make them *truly* relative directions. You
> never get turned around and see an exit described as "left" when it
> was previously "right" or "forward". There have been games (or parts
> of games) that worked that way, and I didn't like it at all.
Yes, I noticed that. :-) In the case of the Wumpus, it wouldn't have
mattered if they were truly relative, since after all the idea was to
make the player feel really, really lost. But I can see how this would
quickly become extremely annoying. In fact, older games with twisty
passages often have this: you leave south, but arrive from the west, but
the game doesn't tell you that, so when you do the natural thing to
backtrack---move north---you end up elsewhere. Very irritating.
> The "perfect sense of direction" is, to some extent, an interface
> stand-in for the normal human *recognition* of exits. Outside of a
> maze, you almost never confuse the kitchen door with the closet door.
> The text-game convention simulates this clarity by giving each exit a
> distinct (and easily typed!) label, which is the compass direction.
[...]
Which is why I suggested landmarks instead, although you're right in
that it is troublesome to type. One possibility is to have automatic
path-finding (ala the map in Mike Roberts' Return to Ditch Day) that
lets you type GO TO ABC as long as you've learned where ABC is. I can
even think of interesting possibilities for this, such as having the
algorithm find two almost equivalent paths, but prompting the player to
pick one because it might make a difference (e.g. you might want to
avoid passing through a certain place to avoid being seen by certain
people).
OTOH, one of my hidden motivations in bringing this up is because I'm
toying with an idea along the lines of Strange Geometries... and I'm
wondering how (or if it is possible) to make a game set in an unfamiliar
geometry, yet not cripple the player's ability to move around until she
learns how to navigate using spatial directions.
QF
--
Recently, our IT department hired a bug-fix engineer. He used to work
for Volkswagen.
Michael Martin
> These games are all a few years old, but an entry in the comp
> this very year demonstrates that protagonists have gotten no better at
> this seemingly-simple task.
"An" entry?
--Michael
Steve Evans
<david...@bubblycloud.com> wrote:
>d...@cs.wisc.edu (Dan Shiovitz) writes:
>
>Of course there is some evidence that protagonists can follow twisty
>passages, so one might assume that they could manage twisty roads.
>But remember how often they walk into walls. That strategy that does
>not work so well when driving at high speeds or when the walls are
>replaced by oncoming traffic.
>
Indeed. Passages (even twisty ones) generally have walls on both
sides.
This difference between driving and cave-crawling reminds me of the
following excerpt from Arlo Guthrie's "The Motorcycle Song (The
Significance Of The Pickle)", which for some inexplicable reason I
thought I'd share:
...There was a time I was ridin’ my bike
I was going down a mountain road
I was doin’ 150 miles an hour
On one side of the mountain road there was a mountain
And on the other side, there was nothin’
There was just a cliff in the air
But I wasn’t payin’ attention you know
I was just driving down the road
All of a sudden by accident
A string broke on my guitar
It broke you know right there
Went flying across the road that way
Wrapped itself around a yield sign
Well the sign didn’t break
It didn’t come out of the ground
And the string stayed wrapped around it
Stayed in the other end of my guitar
I held onto my guitar with one hand
I held onto the bike with the other
I made a sharp turn off the road
Luckily I didn’t go into the mountain
I went over the cliff.
...
Joshua Houk
On Nov 17, 3:52 pm, d...@cs.wisc.edu (Dan Shiovitz) wrote:
> IF protagonists are, by and large, far more competent than the
> players who control them. They can effortlessly juggle dozens of items
> of all shapes and sizes, have a perfect sense of direction, and,
> depending on the game, are able to do things as diverse as picking
> locks and casting spells. But there is at least one thing that no IF
> protagonist seems to be good at: driving a car.
Ha!
Automobile accidents are a pretty cheap way to pull heartstrings, and
they are getting way too commonplace. I understand the attraction; they
have shock value, they allow a young, healthy PC/NPC to die rather
spectacularly, and they're very frequent occurances, unlike, say,
tablets falling from the sky. But with at least three in this comp
(four if you count trucks attacked by giant rabbits), please, authors,
consider doing something else.
Anyway...
If we're counting vehicles driven by an NPC, I think that Shadows on
the Mirror would hold the safe driving record.
-jh
Magnus Olsson
Andrew Plotkin <erky...@eblong.com> wrote:
>Here, quic...@quickfur.ath.cx wrote:
>> On Fri, Nov 17, 2006 at 04:17:46PM -0800, JDC wrote:
>> >
>> > Dan Shiovitz wrote:
>> > > IF protagonists are, by and large, far more competent than the
>> > > players who control them. They can effortlessly juggle dozens of items
>> > > of all shapes and sizes, have a perfect sense of direction, and,
>>
>> This is one point that I have been considering: the use of relative
>> directions rather than cardinal directions. Andrew Plotkin tried this in
>> his Wumpus remake, and I found it somewhat effective.
>
>But I was careful not to make them *truly* relative directions. You
>never get turned around and see an exit described as "left" when it
>was previously "right" or "forward".
And, if IIRC, you enforced this by having cave passages that were so
narrow that you couldn't turn around - a solution that's obviuosly
limited to a rather narrow sub-class of game settings.
>There have been games (or parts
>of games) that worked that way, and I didn't like it at all.
I've never played a game like that, but I don't think I'd like it,
either (I wrote a rather lame puzzle in "Dunjin" that builds on the
left-right distinction, and I had to recourse to explicitly telling
the player which way she was facing. I remember having trouble doing
thsii without sounding too stilted or obvious; the end result was not
very good, I'm afraid).
I think canonical IF world model (i.e. the usual, room-based model
with cardinal directions for movement) has just the right level of
detail for most text-based. Having to keep track of the direction
you're facing (which in most cases is necessary for relative
directions to work) seems to complicated, too fussy, while having a
vaguer concept of location and motion (such as only allowing travel to
named locations rather than in arbitrary directions; an example would
be _Narcolepsy_) generally makes me a bit uneasy that I'm teleporting
around rather than walking - the map loses its sense of continuity.
Of course, there are exceptions: relative directions worked well in
_Hunter, in Darkness_ and would work well in a scene where you're
driving on Interstate 5, and location-based travel would be quite
appropriate inside a house or when travel really is discontinuous
(such as when taking the Underground to various locations in London).
>The "perfect sense of direction" is, to some extent, an interface
>stand-in for the normal human *recognition* of exits. Outside of a
>maze, you almost never confuse the kitchen door with the closet door.
>The text-game convention simulates this clarity by giving each exit a
>distinct (and easily typed!) label, which is the compass direction.
Yes, it's an interface convention, and I think most players have
internalized it to the degree that they don't even think about
it being somewhat unrealistic (perhaps it grates more on the nerves
of people who are new to text adventures). IMHO it's a very good
convention in most cases - at least, nobody has found anything
better.
But there are cases where it does break mimesis. For example, if
the PC has an absolute sense of direction (or is carrying a compass),
how come she's lost in a forest? Why is my ship always moving
due north (since typing "n" moves me towards its bow)? What do we
do in these cases? Personally, I'm prepared to accept the break
of mimesis just because the convention is so convenient and I'm
so used to it.
--
Magnus Olsson (m...@df.lth.se)
PGP Public Key available at http://www.df.lth.se/~mol