Length of Descriptions in Adventure Game
Luis E. Torres
I've been at it for quite a few months, and I've finished the room, object,
person, and some event descriptions. I have been playing a test version in
which I move around the place, reading the descriptions, and stuff like
that.
The problem is, the few friends I've shown the test version to say the
descriptions are too long. Each description is, on average, about 16 to 20
lines on an 80-character PC screen. This is also true of most person
descriptions.
I actually like most of the descriptions, as I think they add some feel to
the game, and also, a couple of them are a bit funny. I don't feel they are
too long, I think they're what they should be. But they look long, when
compared to the descriptions used in Infocom games.
So, does anybody out there have any opinions on the appropiate length of
descriptions? I would really like to hear opinions from the people on
r.a.i-f who have written/are writing/are planning to write(aren't we all...
8-) ) adventure games.
Luis
l...@cis.ufl.edu
John Switzer
Consider it this way - you're writing an interactive novel, which means
that there is the added dimension of the gamers' involvement. The gamer
wants to explore and do things, and these people
think the descriptions are too long, then they are. Most writers, especially
beginning ones, are way too wordy, and I'm sure this applies to game writing,
too. You should first cut out everything that is not essential and then
try that out. If that works, then you might be able to add a few things back
in, but you have to start from the basics, which means essentials only.
20 lines might be an acceptable length for a description for an involved
room, but it definitely is too long for most people descriptions.
--
John Switzer | 50 years from now, nobody will
| remember Candice Bergen or Murphy
74076...@Compuserve.com | Brown, but every school kid will
j...@netcom.com | be taught about President Quayle.
The Apathist
>The problem is, the few friends I've shown the test version to say the
>descriptions are too long. Each description is, on average, about 16 to 20
>lines on an 80-character PC screen. This is also true of most person
>descriptions.
You may be running into a problem of usability here. There is a sense
in which the screen acts as a player's very-short-term memory. If I
remember correctly, a standard PC screen is either 24 or 25 lines
high; by making such long descriptions, you've limited this memory to
roughly one room.
The trick of having both long and short descriptions helps out here,
but it only works where the short description contains all the
commonly useful information.
Looking back at well-designed games, I suspect that the length of a
description should be inversely proportional to the number of times
you expect a player to see it, but that the constant of
proportionality will vary with the hardware on which the game is
presented.
--Tom Lippincott
lip...@math.berkeley.edu
"There is no place I know like the land of pure imagination..."
--W. Wonka
Noah Friedman
David Baggett
>In article <37...@uflorida.cis.ufl.edu> l...@insect.cis.ufl.edu (Luis E. Torres) writes:
>>The problem is, the few friends I've shown the test version to say the
>>descriptions are too long. Each description is, on average, about 16 to 20
>>lines on an 80-character PC screen. This is also true of most person
>>descriptions.
>
>that there is the added dimension of the gamers' involvement. The gamer
>wants to explore and do things, and these people
>think the descriptions are too long, then they are.
I don't think it's so simple. You're answer assumes the original
poster is a poor writer, and that that's the reason for the "excessive"
length. This may not be the case.
The game I'm currently working on has a similar "problem." It all
depends on how much you want to pander to the "weekend gamer" versus
trying something new with the genre. The game universe I'm creating
right now is complex, because I'm trying to create as realistic a world
as possible *within the context of the game*. This may be interpreted
as "information overload" but the fact is that some interactions in the
game setting are complex enough that not giving the player at least a
few screens of test would leave things incredibly vauge and confusing.
I think that would be unfair and amazingly frustrating.
A concrete example: if you play Enchanter and then play Unnkulian 1,
you'll find that the information density (i.e., number of words per
object) is greater in UU1. This comes as no surprise considering that
Enchanter runs in 48K and UU1 runs in a couple hundred K. An early
example of the lameness caused by such a restrictive memory limit is
(paraphrase) "You're in a shack. There's an oven here." What kind of
a room description is *that*? Answer: a minimialist one, and because
the game had to be tiny. But what *kind* of shack was it? Was a
brisk breeze blowing through? Did it smell funny? Was it well-light?
Were there any lights at all, for that matter? This kind of information
creates vivid pictures in the player's mind. Almost everyone who's
played Crowther and Woods' Colossal Cave remembers the letters written
in fire. Not coincidentally, this was one of the longest scene
descritptions in the game, and it methodically address every sense --
the bright light and the lava below, the heat, the rumbling, etc.
Other examples: examine <whatever> -> "You see nothing interesting."
Also lame, but again unavoidable within the confines of 8-bit
machines. One should really never do that these days -- there's no
reason. Anything that can be examined should give at least *some*
interesting message. This furthers the illusion that the game
understands the player and that the world is "real."
It should be obvious that Infocom achieved extremely impressive results
with Zil; their games a generally well fleshed out. But to accept
their at-times-necessarily minimalist approach as "the only right way
to do it" is just reactionry, I think. We now have megabytes to play
with. Why not use the extra memory to make IF games more like
interactive novels, which, though I loved Infocom's games, I never
really considered them to be. An interactive novel may have pages
and pages of text that you just read. People who don't object to
reading in general shouldn't have a problem with this. And of course
you need the "interactive" part, but there's no danger of losing that
these days. Most games so far have been far more interactive than they
have been novels.
>20 lines might be an acceptable length for a description for an involved
>room, but it definitely is too long for most people descriptions.
No such metric is reasonable, IMHO. Avoid wordiness, write with
strength (i.e., no unnecessary passives, use active verbs often, etc.),
and be sure you know what you're aiming to say before you write
anything down. If you do this your IF work may take longer to get
through but shouldn't be any more tedious to the player than an Infocom
game is when compared to a Sierra (i.e., graphics) game. (Oh God, I
have to *read* stuff to play this game? Boot up Strike Commander.)
(For the IMHO-imparied: IMHO)
Dave Baggett
--
d...@ai.mit.edu MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory
ADVENTIONS: interactive fiction (text adventures) for the 90's!
d...@ai.mit.edu *** Compu$erve: 76440,2671 *** GEnie: ADVENTIONS
John E. Hinding
wrote:
> d...@ai.mit.edu MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory
> ADVENTIONS: interactive fiction (text adventures) for the 90's!
> d...@ai.mit.edu *** Compu$erve: 76440,2671 *** GEnie: ADVENTIONS
Well the problem with long paragraphs is that they tend to lose the
reader. I personally would prefer for more of the description to unfold as
I examined a room. For example maybe the squaking parrot will not squak
until I have been in the room for a couple of minutes or done a few
actions. I feel that it would lead to a more life like representation.
David Librik
>In article <1992Sep30....@netcom.com> j...@netcom.com (John Switzer) writes:
>>In article <37...@uflorida.cis.ufl.edu> l...@insect.cis.ufl.edu (Luis E. Torres) writes:
>>>The problem is, the few friends I've shown the test version to say the
>>>descriptions are too long. Each description is, on average, about 16 to 20
>>>lines on an 80-character PC screen. This is also true of most person
>>>descriptions.
>>
>>Consider it this way - you're writing an interactive novel, which means
>>that there is the added dimension of the gamers' involvement. The gamer
>>wants to explore and do things, and these people
>>think the descriptions are too long, then they are.
>I don't think it's so simple. You're answer assumes the original
>poster is a poor writer, and that that's the reason for the "excessive"
>length. This may not be the case.
>The game I'm currently working on has a similar "problem." It all
>depends on how much you want to pander to the "weekend gamer" versus
>trying something new with the genre. The game universe I'm creating
>right now is complex, because I'm trying to create as realistic a world
>as possible *within the context of the game*. This may be interpreted
>as "information overload" but the fact is that some interactions in the
>game setting are complex enough that not giving the player at least a
>few screens of test would leave things incredibly vauge and confusing.
>I think that would be unfair and amazingly frustrating.
But that's not what the original poster was saying; he said that he had
written it so that _each description_ was _on average_ SIXTEEN TO TWENTY
LINES. That sounds like way too much wordiness to me, especially for an
adventure game. If you are creating "as realistic a world as possible,"
then you may have complex descriptions, but you're more likely to want
complex _behavior_.
I remember this from the time I was writing Dog Star. There is a terrible
temptation to just blather on and on. The user can't "use his imagination"
to picture the scene when he's drowning in a sea of pointless detail.
Sure, you don't want to just see "You're in a shack. There's a table here."
but if someone can get 16-20 lines of 80-character description out of
the table -- you have to wonder if all that description is properly supported:
can you "examine" the features described in the table? And how relevant
is most of that to the game? Since a major technique in playing Adventures
is picking up on things in the descriptions, I think I'd get frustrated
with all that verbiage. (This is a problem that arises on MUD-like
games: everyone can build rooms full of description, but there's no
substance behind it.)
It's so tempting to create an item, then sit down and say "okay! let's
come up with a description for it!" and then be witty and descriptive
for half-a-dozen lines. Except in the case of real humor -- one of
the best features about the Unnkuulian series is that the descriptions
are hilarious even if they're often irrelevant -- it's usually better
to try to keep things in a consistent style. Despite what we'd like to
think, our players aren't playing the games to read all the nifty descriptions.
> Almost everyone who's
>played Crowther and Woods' Colossal Cave remembers the letters written
>in fire. Not coincidentally, this was one of the longest scene
>descritptions in the game, and it methodically address every sense --
>the bright light and the lava below, the heat, the rumbling, etc.
This was one of the more subtle ironies in that game: with all that
wonderful description, that room had nothing at all to do with the rest
of the game. There wasn't even anything you could do with all the
things mentioned in there but gaze on it. You wouldn't want the whole
game to be like that.
- David Librik
lib...@cory.Berkeley.edu
David Baggett
>I don't think it's so simple. You're answer assumes ...
Ah but it IS wonderful to read one's typos posted world-wide. Damn homynyms.
:-)
kand. Pontus Gagge
[Deleted]
>The problem is, the few friends I've shown the test version to say the
>descriptions are too long. Each description is, on average, about 16 to 20
>lines on an 80-character PC screen. This is also true of most person
>descriptions.
That *is* too long; it makes the reader/player too passive. Why not use
a stratagem Infocom employed in some later games (ah! Trinity!): achieving
great detail by having *hierarchies* of descriptions? To take a trivial
example: in the description of the "Wabe" there is mention of a sundial;
the sundial is described as having a gnomon; in the gnomon's description
you are told it is affixed to the sundial with a bolt; which is threaded
left/right-handedly.
Instead of force-feeding descriptions in purple prose to the readers, make
them participate. It is, after all, the fundamental idea in IF. Besides,
it makes a "second reading" much more likely - you never discover all there
is to be read.
--
/-------------------------+-------- DISCLAIMER ---------\
| Pontus Gagge | The views expressed herein |
| University of Link|ping | are compromises between my |
| | mental subpersonae, and may |
| c89p...@und.ida.liu.se | be held by none of them. |
\-------------------------+-----------------------------/
David Baggett
>That *is* too long; it makes the reader/player too passive.
Bah humbug. How can you guys be saying this when you've never played a
game like the one described? No one's ever released a game like that,
so how do you know what it would really play like?
>Why not use a stratagem Infocom employed in some later games (ah!
>Trinity!): achieving great detail by having *hierarchies* of
>descriptions?
The two things are not mutually exclusive! If I put you in a room with
a three page description, that doesn't mean you won't have lots of
stuff to play with in the room. In fact, the trend in my current game
is very much towards spending a long time in each room, since there's
an hour of stuff to do versus in an Infocom where there's five minutes
of stuff to do (unless you're in the middle of a puzzle).
Optimally, we'll have breadth *and* depth in our games.
Jamieson Norrish
I remember this from the time I was writing Dog Star. There is a terrible
temptation to just blather on and on. The user can't "use his imagination"
to picture the scene when he's drowning in a sea of pointless detail.
Sure, you don't want to just see "You're in a shack. There's a table here."
but if someone can get 16-20 lines of 80-character description out of
the table -- you have to wonder if all that description is properly
supported: can you "examine" the features described in the table?
To go off on a slight tangent here, I'd just like to ask whether
anyone uses an in-depth heirarchical technique for descriptions. That
is, that on examination of a particular "object", the description
contains more "objects" which can be examined. I've never seen this
done to more than 2 levels, but I think in some cases it could be
taken further. The reason I mention this is that it is one way of
breaking down a large single body of descriptive text, without losing
any of the detail.
The one hitch to this scheme (that I have thought of) is that players
who didn't want unnecessary description would not know when to stop.
Perhaps if there was a designated level beyond which "useful"
information stops? Or would this be too artificial.
The other option of course is to incorporate as much of the
description into the "object"'s usefulness. That is, that the author
go to the trouble of putting in little (non-vital, but perhaps
interesting, or alternative) ways that the object can be used which
depends on information gleaned from its description.
Jamie
Tom Almy
>>Almost everyone who's
>>played Crowther and Woods' Colossal Cave remembers the letters written
>>in fire. Not coincidentally, this was one of the longest scene
>>descritptions in the game, and it methodically address every sense --
>>the bright light and the lava below, the heat, the rumbling, etc.
>This was one of the more subtle ironies in that game: with all that
>wonderful description, that room had nothing at all to do with the rest
>of the game. There wasn't even anything you could do with all the
>things mentioned in there but gaze on it. You wouldn't want the whole
>game to be like that.
The real joke about that room is no longer apparent with todays high
speed systems -- the typical (interactive) computer user back then
used a Teletype which printed 10 characters per second. That breathless
view description took several minutes to print--and of course was
worthless!
--
Tom Almy
to...@sail.labs.tek.com
Standard Disclaimers Apply
Magnus Olsson
and got the following results on the length of room descriptions:
length of description (lines) # of rooms
1 18
2 42
3 36
4 24
5 25
6 12
7 6
8 4
9 7
10 1
11 2
12 2
18 1
20 1
22 1
The mean number of lines is 4.15.
I'm a bit surprised myself at these results, since in general, I quite
like long descriptions, and hate it when adventure authors are lazy
and just provide you with the absolute minmal descriptions ("You're in
the dragon's lair. There are exits to the east and to the west"). I do
believe, however, that you shouldn't overload the users by unneeded
verbiage; often one long description provides the right setting for a
group of rooms, so for the rest of those rooms just a few
well-selected words are needed to nudge the user's imagination in the
right direction.
As an example, in Dunjin the player starts out in a forest:
"You are in a dark, mysterious and confusing forest. Tall fir-trees form
a dark wall around you. A cold wind is blowing from the mountains, and in the
far distance you can hear wolves howling. Faint trails lead east and south.
To the north the forest seems to continue for ever, and to the west the
vegetation is so dense that it would be impossible to go in that direction."
Then, the rest of the forest locations only need rather minimalistic
descriptions, until there's a change in the scenery:
"You are standing on the sandy shore of a small, muddy lake. The wind makes
small ripples in the still, dark surface of the lake. On the southern shore
of the lake, the water licks the surface of a high, vertical cliff, while the
forest reaches all the way down to the shore on the other three sides of the
lake. About halfway up the cliff face, there is a wide, dark cave opening.
The paw prints of some large animal lead down to the water and back into the
forest. No sign of human life is to be seen. A narrow path leads north."
I must add that the statistics above are also a bit skewed by the fact
that there are quite a few identical rooms with very short
descriptions - such as rooms of the infamous "you're in a maze of
twisty passages, all alike". Also, some rooms have quite long
descriptions that for various reasons are shown only under special
circumstances and therefore aren't included above. The following
description, for example, is shown only once, so the room description
counted in the statistics is counted only once.
"You enter what must be the workshop of a wizard - a fantastic room full of
weird objects: a dried basilisk; a large bottle containing several
homunculi, engaged in a range of strange activities; a mirror that reflects
an image not of the room, but of a weird, reddish desert landscape illuminated
by twin moons; several crystal balls; a rack of wands of varying materials;
a golden chair that seems to levitate in the middle of the air; the severed
head of a hideous ogre that - despite its bodyless state - seems to be quite
alive and rolls its eyes at you; three moving ivory statuettes of semi-nude
maidens that constantly throw a golden ball between them...
The workbench is covered by large, leatherbound tomes and scrolls of
parchment; the shelves are full of strangely shaped vials of brightly
coloured potions and powders.
As soon as your foot touches the floor, however, there is an intense flash of
light that blinds you temporarily, and you feel a cold draught. When your
vision returns, all the strange objects (except for a black book) are gone."
Magnus Olsson | \e+ /_
Dept. of Theoretical Physics | \ Z / q
University of Lund, Sweden | >----<
Internet: mag...@thep.lu.se | / \===== g
Bitnet: THEPMO@SELDC52 | /e- \q
Jamieson Norrish
do many authors use dependent descriptions? That is, writing multiple
descriptions for one "object", depending on whatever circumstances is
thought appropriate. The most common use of this technique is the
"brief" description, given after a room has been described in full
once. This sort of thing, although time and memory consuming, would be
a wonderful thing to keep unsuspecting players guessing, particularly
if one effect was to leave out all gettable objects.
Jamie
Larry Smith
>On another tangent (and I hope I haven't been preempted on this one :)
>do many authors use dependent descriptions? That is, writing multiple
>descriptions for one "object", depending on whatever circumstances is
>thought appropriate.
This was used to considerable advantage in "Suspended", in which you play a
frozen corpse in mental control of half-a-dozen or so robots, each equipped
with only one type of sensor. Auda could only hear, Sensa could only feel,
and so forth. Interesting game. Don't have a robot open your container.
Larry Smith (sm...@ctron.com) No, I don't speak for Cabletron. Need you ask?
-
How about we all do something reasonable? I bet that'll confuse 'em!
David Baggett
>To go off on a slight tangent here, I'd just like to ask whether
>anyone uses an in-depth heirarchical technique for descriptions. That
>is, that on examination of a particular "object", the description
>contains more "objects" which can be examined. I've never seen this
>done to more than 2 levels, but I think in some cases it could be
>taken further. The reason I mention this is that it is one way of
>breaking down a large single body of descriptive text, without losing
>any of the detail.
This goes hand-in-hand with the "if there's a noun in a description,
the player should be able to examine that noun" principle. I
intentionally go through every room and object description and make
sure this criterion is satsified. It's kind of a pain but it makes
the game seem a lot more "aware."
With a traditional amount of complexity, two levels of description
seems sufficient. In UU2 I often wrote the prose for object
descriptions sepecifically to "cut off" further e(x)amination to
prevent an endless chain of description. In my current game I've been
going up to five levels deep; it all depends on how much you're trying
to model/explain. (Of course, it should be noted that my current
"style" hasn't been tested on anyone yet since the game hasn't even
been locally released; perhaps it will turn out to be overwhelming. I
doubt it, but who knows.)
David Baggett
> Well the problem with long paragraphs is that they tend to lose the
>reader. I personally would prefer for more of the description to unfold as
>I examined a room. For example maybe the squaking parrot will not squak
>until I have been in the room for a couple of minutes or done a few
>actions. I feel that it would lead to a more life like representation.
I didn't say long paragraphs, I just said long descriptions. But you
point out something important here -- in extending the average
description, I've had to pay a lot more attention to the formatting of
the paragraphs. I put line breaks between paragraphs and pay closer
attention to keeping the paragraphs themselves short now. Certainly a
monolithic block of text is extemely difficult to follow. But remember
that you can always page back through the text (at least with TADS) if
you get lost.
(Another side effect is that it's taking me a lot longer to write this
one than the last one. That's probably understandable but it's still
kind of depressing!)
Dave Baggett
--
David Baggett
>written it so that _each description_ was _on average_ SIXTEEN TO TWENTY
>LINES. That sounds like way too much wordiness to me, especially for an
>adventure game. If you are creating "as realistic a world as possible,"
>then you may have complex descriptions, but you're more likely to want
>complex _behavior_.
Yes, and what I'm telling you is that my current project also has (at
least) that size average room description. When I said you could spend
an hour in a room just reading, I wasn't kidding. There's just a lot
of *stuff* and a lot to say about the stuff.
Length can imply wordiness *or* more information being imparted. One
is bad; the other is good (or at least questionable).
>I remember this from the time I was writing Dog Star. There is a terrible
>temptation to just blather on and on. The user can't "use his imagination"
>to picture the scene when he's drowning in a sea of pointless detail.
You could make the same argument about storytelling. William Gibson
may "blather on and on" about the high-tech setting in Neuromancer, but
that does *not* imply that he's wordy -- in fact his style almost
epitomizes compactness and strength. He just gives you tons and tons
of detail, and that's what makes the world (at times) hauntingly real.
>Sure, you don't want to just see "You're in a shack. There's a table here."
>but if someone can get 16-20 lines of 80-character description out of
>the table -- you have to wonder if all that description is properly supported:
>can you "examine" the features described in the table? And how relevant
>is most of that to the game?
That's my point: You wouldn't spend 20 lines describing a table. You'd
spend 20 lines describing the several *important* things in the room in
detail,the general atmospehere (things like architecture, decor,
lighting, scenery through a window, sounds, smells, how the player's
actor "feels" about the place, etc.) Come on -- 20 lines times 12
words (avg. per line) is only 240 words. That's nothing! If you're
trying to describe a scene vividly, *in addition* to describing any
interactions between characters, objects, etc. it seems to me that
doing with less than a couple paragraphs is just being minimalist.
The nice thing is that the more information you give the player, the
larger the search space is, and hence the more potential for clever
puzzles there is.
>Except in the case of real humor -- one of
>the best features about the Unnkuulian series is that the descriptions
>are hilarious even if they're often irrelevant -- it's usually better
>to try to keep things in a consistent style. Despite what we'd like to
>think, our players aren't playing the games to read all the nifty descriptions.
If people didn't want to read the descriptions, they wouldn't be
playing IF games, they'd be playing Sierra games where you don't have
to bother. At least that's the impression I get. You argue that the
nifty descriptions are ignored, yet cite the Unnkulians as good
examples of the opposite. If the descriptions in UU[12] were
minimalist, they wouldn't be funny.
>This was one of the more subtle ironies in that game: with all that
>wonderful description, that room had nothing at all to do with the rest
>of the game. There wasn't even anything you could do with all the
>things mentioned in there but gaze on it. You wouldn't want the whole
>game to be like that.
I see it a bit differently -- there's much more to an IF game than just
the puzzles. As an author I view it more as "welcome to my made-up
world; now play in it." And in that context a thorough exposition of
the setting is crucial to creating the illusion that the player is
really "there."
John West
should be. I believe that the descriptions should be as long as they need to
be, no longer, and no shorter. A 5 page description of a simple hallway is only
going to annoy the user, and slow down the pace of the game. A 5 word
description of the elf-king's throne room near the end of the great quest is
going to annoy them just as much.
The majority of descriptions should be fairly short - 5 to 10 lines or so, with
the occasional longer description for more important locations and objects.
The important thing is to have *lots* of descriptions. If your 20 line
description of the throne room says there is a glittering jewelled throne,
the user should be able to take a closer look at it, and get a more detailed
description. If this description mentions the huge ruby mounted on the top,
give that a separate descrition too. This creates depth, and also keeps the
amount of irrelevant information down for the users who don't want it.
Remember that these descriptions dicate the mood of the game. If you want the
feeling in one part of the world to be fast-paced and exciting, then lots of
short descriptions are what you need. Keep the players moving. In areas where
there is less pressure, and the players can relax a bit, make the descriptions
a longer - it gives a feeling that the characters are taking the time to have
a good look around. Build up the feeling as they approach an important
location, and give a good description at the end - they don't want to just be
told that this is important. They want to feel it.
It all depends on your goals, of course. If you want a hack-and-slay game
like a lot of MUDs I've seen, then descriptions are going to be short. Players
are just going to ignore them anyway. If developing atmosphere is important,
you want more. Just don't overdo it - long chunks of text are difficult to
read in one go. It is better to break them up into smaller parts.
John West
--
For the humour impaired: Insert a :-) after every third word
Erik Max Francis
> The problem is, the few friends I've shown the test version to say the
> descriptions are too long. Each description is, on average, about 16 to 20
> lines on an 80-character PC screen. This is also true of most person
> descriptions.
I'd say that might be moving into the a-little-too-long range.
> So, does anybody out there have any opinions on the appropiate length of
> descriptions? I would really like to hear opinions from the people on
> r.a.i-f who have written/are writing/are planning to write(aren't we all...
> 8-) ) adventure games.
Well, I suppose it depends. If this adventure game is a real thinker,
then the descriptions should be pretty in-depth. Obviously, the
essential information for solving the puzzles and succeeding at the game
need to be there . . . if this is basically all you have, keep it in
there (and let me see this game if it's that deep!). If most of it is
superfluous information that may add a little atmosphere to the game but
probably won't add any better understanding to the player, then you might
want to cut some of it short. (I mean, if people are complaining . . .)
I personally don't have any problem with long descriptions, as long as
they're _intelligent_ and _well-written_ -- but that's just me. (I hate
more than anything insufficient descriptions, and lack of descriptions
"You see nothing special" for things which should _definitely_ catch the
eye, like a golden chalice, instead of being some token treasure.)
Anyhow, I also have AGT, so I'd be able to help you betatest the
adventure if you're looking for helpers . . .
----------
Erik Max Francis Omnia quia sunt, lumina sunt. Coming soon: UNIVERSE _ | _
USmail: 1070 Oakmont Dr. #1 San Jose CA 95117 ICBM: 37 20 N 121 53 W _>|<_
UUCP: ..!apple!uuwest!max Usenet: m...@west.darkside.com 464E4F5244 |
David Baggett
>But should all that information be crammed into the general room description?
>My impression from the original poster is that when you walk into a room,
>he's giving you the room description, plus the description of every object
>tacked onto the end.
That may be your impression, but having not seen any of the text you
have to admit that it's an assumption. Since I'm not getting anywhere
trying to convince people that it's possible to have long but good room
descriptions, I'll post the room description for the first room of _The
Legend Lives!_, my current project. Perhaps this concrete example will
make both sides' arguments clearer. Free free to rip me to shreds. :-)
The following text is Copyright (C) 1992 David M. Baggett. All Rights
Reserved. Please don't quote from it or copy it.
*-----------------------------------------------------------------------------*
Your bachelor pod
Ahhhhh. Pod sweet pod! Sure feels good to be back in the ol' closet-sized
capsule again, yes sir. While slaving away on your master's thesis you've
spent many late hours here, sustaining yourself on naught but Akmi Snak Chipz
and ReVoLT Kola.
Yep, it's basically a hell-hole, but it's served you adequately. Looking
around you can see blurry reflections of yourself and your surroundings in the
familiar mauve and orange metal walls, which are rounded in the corners as is
typical of today's "economical" graduate housing. (As if they offered any
other kind.) The walls are still bare; you'd think after living here for two
years you'd have put some posters up. But there's never much time for
aesthetics at Akmi Yooniversity.
Your bed (if you can call it that) and the matter mover take up all the
available floor space in your pod. Miscellaneous Stik-Em Nowtz cling to
various parts of the furniture and walls, and papers fill any stray gaps,
making this den an incredible fire trap. Good thing you don't really have
heating here.
Your pod is one of the "Yooniversity Economical Graduate Off-site Dwelling
Stations" (YEGODS). Though the school is actually hundreds of light-years
away, matter mover technology makes it possible for them to put housing in the
cheapest, remotest, most inhospitable parts of the galaxy -- places like Frost,
the iceball of a planet your pod is situated on.
On your desk is your EV, and next to that sits the computer you use nearly
37 hours a day. Or at least you *assume* it's there; you can't really see it.
It's buried under the pile of books that just crashed down in front of you as
you hit your head on the shelf above upon reading more of the awful truth about
the Unnkulians. Still rubbing the bruise on your topknot, you pick up all the
books and put them back in order.
The EV is tuned to Hot Hits 1000, the "newest, coolest, most outrageous"
music video station. Yep, it's pop, 37 hours a day. Right now you see the
video for "I Want a Girl with Green Hair and Horns," by Timon Sketch and the
Hoi-Polloi.
*-----------------------------------------------------------------------------*
Viola, 31 lines. A few extra lines are in there only when you first
see the room (the stuff about returning the books to the shelf), and
the last four lines have some specific description about an object (the
EV). I have reasons for making the EV "self-describing" but I'd need to
say a lot more about the game to explain them.
But note that this description doesn't even include information about
"possible exits," as is common. (The reason is that the pod doesn't
have any exits. But that's another story.) You have to work the
possible exit list into the prose too, and that takes up space as well.
Consider the following:
*-----------------------------------------------------------------------------*
Room
You are in a room. A tall, narrow tunnel leads east. There is
a grate in the west wall convering a passageway that it looks like
you could squeeze through. High above you is a ledge. With luck,
you might be able to climb up to it.
*-----------------------------------------------------------------------------*
Four lines of text, and I've said nothing about the room itself! I've
only described the exits, and I hope most people would agree that the
prose is minimalist and uninspired. So, again, I contend that double or
triple this length is often barely sufficient.
One point is that some of the _Legend_ text describes the player's
*situation,* not just his immediate surroundings. You need to do this
if you want to have any semblance of a real plot, and you can't expect
the player to examine every single object in the game to get some
crucial plot points -- that would make for an utterly incomprehensible
story. If your plot moves along well, you can expect to have plot
exposition in almost every location, or at least in every "location
cluster."
Of course, when the player examines objects he also gets similar
information. For example, when you examine the matter mover the game
tells you all about how matter movers work, when they were invented,
the fact that Akmi lost the matter mover contract years ago due to
some terrible disaster <grin>, etc. Such information may or may not be
used in a later puzzle, but at the very least gives the player a better
understanding of the game world and of his own context in it.
As in a novel, there's an enormous of information to impart to the
reader. You need to say at least a little about so many things:
What kind of person is the player? What is his job? Where does that
put him on the "social ladder?" What's the society like in general?
What's the government like? What kind of technology is there? How
do people (creatures) generally interact in the universe? Etc.
The parsing interface is extrememly limited. I don't want to rely
only on the player asking questions to get information that I think
is crucial. If parsers were good enough so that players could type
>What is a matter mover, and how does it work?
that would be one thing, but the only current way for a player to
get information is by examining things and through
>ask troll about book
types of commands, which are pitifully limited. Similarly,
player-actor interactions are hopelessly stunted by the fact that
making an intelligent actor is a long way out of the realm of
possibility now. That doesn't mean that I don't still want to have
complex player-character associations, though! For such things we have
to resort to "plain old" static prose, and that makes descriptions
longer.
Norman St. John Polevaulter
>Your bachelor pod
> Ahhhhh. Pod sweet pod!...
[description of room deleted]
Hmm. Much as I enjoyed the room description (and I did), and as much as
I'm looking forward to playing The Legend Lives, I have to admit that
descriptions of that size ARE a bit overwhelming. It would be inconvenient
to have to scroll through a full screen of text every time I returned to
the pod, for example.
Here's an idea: Use more compact default room descriptions --
Your Bachelor Pod
The pod is still the same old lovable hellhole it's always been. There's
almost enough room to stand up straight, if there was any place to stand
that is. Practically speaking you can't stand up because all available
floor space is taken up by vital equipment such as your bed, the matter
mover, the EV set, stacks and stacks of books and notes and your computer.
The empty word processor screen glares mockingly at you, reminding you of
that wretched Master's Thesis you have yet to write.
The EV spits out a burst of static, then begins to play "Which Way to
Tipperary" remixed for common household appliances.
HOWEVER -- the expanded description could still be made available by
typing, say, EXAMINE ROOM. That way people just cruising through the
area wouldn't be overwhelmed by all the descriptions, but can still get
all the vital information contained in the long description.
Alternatively you could do it as a VERBOSE/BRIEF situation. Print the long
description the first time you enter a room, then the short one thereafter;
once again, the long description is still available with EXAMINE ROOM. Prose
maniacs could presumably use a command to activate long descriptions all the
time. Maximum flexibility -- that's the key.
"Two hundredth verse, same as the first!"
[Your blood pressure just went up.] Mark Sachs IS: mbs...@psuvm.psu.edu
DISCLAIMER: If PSU knew I had opinions they'd probably try to charge me for it.
SCHIDLOWSKY james c.
>least) that size average room description. When I said you could spend
>an hour in a room just reading, I wasn't kidding. There's just a lot
>of *stuff* and a lot to say about the stuff.
This made me think of something... what is the least amount of rooms in
a game? How about a game with only ONE room? It would of course contain
tons of stuff, and you'd have to find or build something, by rummaging
through all the stuff.
Of course, one couldn't describe the room all at once.
Maybe this isn't a good idea... people probably want to GO somewhere.
_-_
</+\:=-- James. /\ <\
^\:-(jamesc@.cs.concordia.ca) \/ "These are the dark ages." -- NoMeansNo </
Tom Almy
>This made me think of something... what is the least amount of rooms in
>a game?
Hey, the ENDgame of the original adventure, Colossal Caves, had a mere two
rooms.
Ed Skinner
There was an adventure-gaming program--called "GROW" I think--that allowed
the players to "extend" the game as they played. Starting with one room,
the "cave" would grow dependent on the creativity of the players. The origi-
nal version was published in a programming magazine, and I think it was in
BASIC.
I dabbled with this program a little and, over the years, transmogrified it
into several different versions and languages. In general I found that being
the "writer" of a dungeon is far more challenging (and difficult) than being
the "player."
Please don't ask. I no longer have the source for any of the now mostly
forgetton implementations.
--
--
#include <disclaimer.h>
Ed Skinner, Customer Education Services, Motorola Inc., USA(602)438-3956
Internet: ed...@phx.mcd.mot.com, UUCPnet: noao!asuvax!mcdphx!edski
Eric D. Shepherd
be kept short for two reasons: (1) the user doesn't want to have
nonessential text cluttering screen and/or printouts, and (2) the player
may think that long text implies that the room is significant.
Having a ten-page essay on the texture of the walls in "North-South
Passage" is excessive. However, in rooms which have one or more puzzles
or problems associated, having a long description is important and
heightens the enjoyment of the game.
- Eric S.
--
Eric Shepherd | Internet: uer...@mcl.mcl.ucsb.edu | AOL: Sheppy
-------- ACM Member ----- Apple II Alliance Charter Member --------
"Apple II Forever!" is a trademark of Apple Computer, Inc.
Isn't that ironic?
Eric D. Shepherd
"short" and "descriptive" text. That way, the "I just wanna play the
game" crowd can have their way, and the "I wanna _savor_ the game" people
can really get into it.
Pauli Dale
>There was an adventure-gaming program--called "GROW" I think--that allowed
>the players to "extend" the game as they played. Starting with one room,
>the "cave" would grow dependent on the creativity of the players. The origi-
>nal version was published in a programming magazine, and I think it was in
>BASIC.
Yep it was in basic and it was published in an early Byte or Creative
Computing. The program was actually quite simple. Each room was stored
in a file which contained a description and a series of pairs. The pairs
consisted of keywords and actions. When the user entered a keyword, the
corresponding action was executed. The actions were very simple, print a
message, goto a new room, +/- your score and possibly a few others I don't
remember any longer. Actions were identified by their first letter and
the rest of the line was the argument (so e.g. 'Phi' printed the message 'hi').
For this kind of thing, a modern MUD is much easier to use and heaps more
functional.
Pauli
Paul Dale | gr...@cs.uq.oz.au
Department of Computer Science | +61 7 365 2445
University of Queensland |
Australia, 4072 | Did you know that there are 41 two letter
| words containing the letter 'a'?
--