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From: Russell L. Bryan <rbryan@Mail.trincoll.edu>
Subject: Re: What words to use and recognize
Message-ID: <1992Dec15.234807.298@starbase.trincoll.edu>
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Date: Tue, 15 Dec 1992 23:48:07 GMT
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I quote from Michael J. Robert's manual for TADS, the section "Writing
Better Adventures" :

A certain number of verbs will work on pretty much any object in an
adventure game; for example: take, drop, open, close, examine, put an
object in (or on) another object, give object to a character.  All games
have these verbs.  Now, imagine writing a game with only these verbs, plus
one more special verb: "use....."

.....It may appear that limiting your verbs in this manner makes puzzles
too
obvious, since the player doesn't have to think of the actual thing to do
with
an object, but can just "use" it and have the game figure out what to do.
 In
fact, it encourages you, the designer, to choose objects that have exactly
one very obvious use; doing so means that the "use" verb detracts nothing
from the puzzle, since it's obvious that you push a button and turn a
knob,
and that you'd do nothing else with them.  Hence, this forces you to avoid
obsucre verbs that apply to just one object as you choose your puzzles.

--

While I do not advocate limiting a parser to the verb "use," the article
does bring up a good point.  Our job as designers is not to fool the
player.
You say you want to use adverbs, but do you want adverbs to be a necessary
part of the game?  If so, then will the player always have to try to guess
in what MANNER he is supposed to do something?  If not, then the parser
will
merely ignore the adverb anyway -- why bother?

The only possible use of an adverb would be if you were trying to do
something
which ran against the obvious way something is done.  Say, perhaps, that
there was a monster in your game with poor eyesight who knows to attack
only
because something moves quickly across his field of vision.  Then, "Go
west
slowly" might be appropriate.

I stress that ONLY in extreme cases such as this should adverbs be used. 
If
you DO use adverbs, I strongly recommend that you include adverbs in your
example vocabulary list.  In general, I'd say don't use them at all.  If
the troll is keeping an eye on the chicken, I sure as hell am not going to
take the chicken "slowly," or "casually," or "daintily."  I'm gonna grab
the damn thing and take off.

-- Russ
