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From: magnus@thep.lu.se (Magnus Olsson)
Subject: Re: What words to use and recognize
Message-ID: <1992Dec17.163944.10997@pollux.lu.se>
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Organization: Theoretical Physics, Lund University, Sweden
References: <62874@mimsy.umd.edu> <1992Dec16.183123.6010@infodev.cam.ac.uk> <BzDIsJ.M9M@world.std.com>
Date: Thu, 17 Dec 1992 16:39:44 GMT
Lines: 58

In article <BzDIsJ.M9M@world.std.com> tob@world.std.com (Tom O Breton) writes:
>I suggest that there be a standard verb (taking no game time) that describes
>what things you can do with an object. Something like "WHAT_CAN_I_DO_WITH <X>"
>(Anyone got a good 1-word synonym for 'what can I do with'?)
>
>For example:
>
>> WHAT CAN I DO WITH CUP?
>You can use a CUP in these ways:
>  drop
>  pick up
>  give CUP to (X)
>  use
>  fill
>  drink from
>  command
>
>Where 'command CUP' would be a catchall for command words that you
>deliberately withheld from a player. (Presumably providing some clever way to
>discover them)
>
>BTW, please direct flames to the effect that "This takes away the mystery" to
>/dev/null. 

This is not a flame, and I'm not going to argue that "this takes away
the mystery". I am going to argue that many puzzles will be spoiled by
this. 

What's the point of a puzzle where the solution is to find a new use
for some everyday object if you can just ask the game and get a
complete list of all possible ways to use the object in question.


Actually, I'm getting a bit worried about the assumption in this
thread, that the game should actually list all possible actions. An
adventure game should of course not be a "guess the correct verb"
game, but IMHO what every game designer should work _very hard_ to
make all puzzles so "intuitive" that it's possible for the player to
express the needed action in a very simple sentence, with everyday
words (of course the game should accept all reasonable synonyms and
alternative wordings).

If the solution of a puzzle requires some very complicated commands,
with adverbs and whatever, then IMHO the puzzle is too complicated.
The way out of this problem is not to change the user interface, but
to re-think the puzzles.

>A game where you don't know what you can do doesn't create
>mystery, it creates boredom and gives text games a bad name. You can't create
>mystery by default.

I agree on this, though. Mystery is not the same thing as obscurity.

              Magnus Olsson                | \e+      /_
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