Working away...
Andrew C. Plotkin
> How do you force a IF player to do something without making him realize
> he's being forced. Without spoiling my game too much, you make your way
> to a tribal area (the prologue). While there you get to see the reason for
> the whole game (the catch). In a real piece of fiction, I would have the
> main character simply say, "By golly Chief, I'll gladly go out and risk
> getting skewered to help you and your tribe even though I've known you for
> only 2 hours." and that would be that. But since this is IF, I can't the
> force the player on to the next part of the game. Maybe it's the way I
> scripted everything -- prologue, middle game, epilogue -- with each major
> part being broken down into smaller story elements. But I didn't allow
> for a story element to be reentered.
>
> Should I have? Should I allow the player to reenter the maze he just got
> out of? Should I allow the player to go back to the town and get drunk?
> I hate using the score as a means, I'd rather have a logical consistency
> to a player's actions. But how do you do that without having desciptions
> like "Sorry, the forest ends abruptly and you can't go any further." etc.
The Its-A-*Story*-You-Idiot method: "You just got through that forest!
It would be a waste of time to go back in."
The Nasty Game method: You *can* go back in. Nothing happens in there.
You can wander around as long as you want. Eventually the clever
players will realize that they have to explore more.
The Blunt Game method: If you back into the forest, bears devour you.
The Clever Author method: design the story so that failing to go on
really is disastrous, for some reason which makes sense in terms of
the story.
The game I'm working on now is a combination of 1 and 4. It's taken a
lot of thought, and this is a small game (ten rooms or so). I'm not
saying it's an easy problem.
--Z
"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the borogoves..."
Jeff Jetton
nstn...@fox.nstn.ca writes:
>How do you force a IF player to do something without making him realize
>he's being forced.
Aye, there's the rub. In my inexperienced opinion, this is where a well
structured plot and puzzles come into play. In other words, you seemingly
let the character do anything they want, but eliminate all options except
what *you* want them to do, by using puzzles that require information or
items from other parts of the game. The game universe is non-linear, but
the steps needed to solve the game aren't.
Look to other games to see how this is done. In Planetfall, for example,
you need key cards to get around the complex. You only get these cards by
going certain places, and you need certain cards to get *there*. The
player is drawn through a more-or-less linear plot by the puzzles, even
though they have "free will".
You mentioned another option: ""Sorry, the forest ends abruptly and you
can't go any further." There's other, more acceptable (to me anyway) ways
to say the same thing. In Curses, if you try to leave the attic, you get
something like "You've missed the point entirely!". Or in Unnkulian
Unventure, you are psychologically kept from going north to the city due
to the way you were raised; remember that the user of the game is playing
a character in the story, so things the user might do are not necessarily
what the character is willing or able to do.
I guess I'm rambling, but hopefully some of these ideas will help. Good
Luck!
- Jeff
Jean-Henri Duteau
I'm here plugging away at my first adventure. Mostly design work since I
haven't written a stitch of code (TADS code it will be since I registered.
Figure I might as well use it. 8#) Anyways, I'm working on a few of the
plot snags and suddenly a big problem hit me in the head.
How do you force a IF player to do something without making him realize
he's being forced. Without spoiling my game too much, you make your way
to a tribal area (the prologue). While there you get to see the reason for
the whole game (the catch). In a real piece of fiction, I would have the
main character simply say, "By golly Chief, I'll gladly go out and risk
getting skewered to help you and your tribe even though I've known you for
only 2 hours." and that would be that. But since this is IF, I can't the
force the player on to the next part of the game. Maybe it's the way I
scripted everything -- prologue, middle game, epilogue -- with each major
part being broken down into smaller story elements. But I didn't allow
for a story element to be reentered.
Should I have? Should I allow the player to reenter the maze he just got
out of? Should I allow the player to go back to the town and get drunk?
I hate using the score as a means, I'd rather have a logical consistency
to a player's actions. But how do you do that without having desciptions
like "Sorry, the forest ends abruptly and you can't go any further." etc.
How do all of you experienced IF writers provide decent hooks from one
part of the story to the next?
All for now,
Jean Duteau
Jason Dyer
: Should I have? Should I allow the player to reenter the maze he just got
: I hate using the score as a means, I'd rather have a logical consistency
: to a player's actions. But how do you do that without having desciptions
: like "Sorry, the forest ends abruptly and you can't go any further." etc.
If, logically speaking, the player should be able to go back to an earlier
area, they should be able to do so. If you want to force the player into
another section, there are plenty of ways to make something one-way:
a ledge to jump off of that you cannot climb up again, a door that
closes and locks behind you, a river that carries you downstream to the
next section.
Try to make sure that there is no time where a player has to restore
a game to get back to an earlier point because there was an object they
missed they can no longer get. One of the easiest ways to do this is
to put an object needed for the current part and one needed for the
next part together so they must both be picked up at once.
--
Jason Dyer - jd...@indirect.com