Default path-solving stuff
Adam J. Thornton
Whoever it was said they'd like to see
> GET FRISBEE
[Going to the garage]
[Getting the ladder]
[Returning to the back yard]
[Putting the ladder on the house]
[Climbing the ladder]
Rooftop
Gee, it's scary up here.
The Magic Frisbee of Quendor is here.
Taken.
>
My point is that this can, of course, be taken too far: spoilers for Zork I
below.
Spoiler Space
West of House
You are standing in an open field west of a white house, with a boarded front
door.
There is a small mailbox here.
> SW
[Going to the back of the house]
[Opening the window]
[Going to the Living Room]
[Moving the rug]
...pages and pages and pages of output deleted...
Inside the Barrow
As you enter the barrow, the door closes inexorably behind you. Around you it
is dark, but ahead is an enormous cavern, brightly lit. Through its center runs
a wide stream. Spanning the stream is a small wooden footbridge, and beyond a
path leads into a dark tunnel. Above the bridge, floating in the air, is a
large sign. It reads: All ye who stand before this bridge have completed a
great and perilous adventure which has tested your wit and courage. You have
mastered the first part of the ZORK trilogy. Those who pass over this bridge
must be prepared to undertake an even greater adventure that will severely
test your skill and bravery!
The ZORK trilogy continues with "ZORK II: The Wizard of Frobozz" and is
completed in "ZORK III: The Dungeon Master."
This would, I think, be silly.
Adam
--
ad...@princeton.edu
"There's a border to somewhere waiting, and a tank full of time." - J. Steinman
okbl...@usa.net
ad...@princeton.edu (Adam J. Thornton) wrote:
> This should be a followup, but I've lost the original post.
>
> Whoever it was said they'd like to see
>
> > GET FRISBEE
>
> [Going to the garage]
> [Getting the ladder]
> [Returning to the back yard]
> [Putting the ladder on the house]
> [Climbing the ladder]
>
> Rooftop
>
> Gee, it's scary up here.
>
> The Magic Frisbee of Quendor is here.
>
> Taken.
>
> >
>
> My point is that this can, of course, be taken too far: spoilers for Zork I
> below.
>
'twas I, and of course it can be taken too far.
The basic premise I was going for was not to have a new, previously
unperformed action be performed automatically by the program, but to
accomplish two things:
1. If the person has done it before (i.e., gone to the garage, seen the
ladder), don't make them do it again unless there's some POINT to it. For
example:
> GET LADDER
[Going to the garage]
Uh oh.
An earthquake knocked your beer stein collection of the wall and now the
ladder is buried under a mountain of broken glass.
Now what?
-->This is okay because it presents the player with a new problem.
2. Even if the person HASN'T done it before, if doing it should present no
problem (i.e., I, as the character, have lived in this house for 20 years and
used the ladder hundreds of times), let them do it automatically if there's
nothing in the process that advances the game, i.e., the Frisbee of Quendor is
the point, not fetching the ladder from the garage.
> GET LADDER
You remember you keep the ladder in the garage so you go to the garage to get
it.
Uh oh.
The Balrat is guarding the ladder. You may need some vorpal cheese to get by.
There are gray areas of course, but this is an author's consideration. I've
been thinking lately about a line in "The Art of Fiction" where John Gardener
refers to Mozart as "the great white shark of music". And it occurs to me
that one of the places where IF bogs down is in one of these three areas:
1. The author is trying to tell a story but the player can't get to it because
of unintended, tedious obstacles.
2. The author is trying to present a puzzle game, but the player can't get to
the puzzles because of unintented, tediuous obstacles.
3. The author hasn't communicated to the player that the game is a
puzzle-game or a story-game, so the player sees the story as an obstacle to
the puzzles (which aren't there, or aren't the main point) or the puzzles as
an obstacle to the story (which isn't there, or isn't the main point).
Sometimes I wonder if the first two problems occur because authors feel a need
to "pad" the game or welcome the "padding" as a way to stretch out the
game/story.
In some ways, you can see the "great white sharks" in the competition's
"Photopia" and "One Room-Dilly" games: You never have any doubt what the games
are about, and there is little to get in your way.
But if future works are to achieve similar effects with greater freedom, there
will have to be ways to say, "You tortuously recreate the steps of your six
months journey, only to return with the magic widget."
One more thing before I end this ramble: I'm just talking about a common
literary device I think we need to inject into IF. As Crow T. Robot might
say, "Would someone please tell the director about the compression of time
THROUGH EDITING?!?!?!"
[ok]
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