Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Path: gmd.de!xlink.net!howland.reston.ans.net!noc.near.net!uunet!pipex!uknet!pavo.csi.cam.ac.uk!gdr11
From: gdr11@phx.cam.ac.uk (Gareth Rees)
Subject: Re: Dynamic interactive fiction
Message-ID: <1993Jul29.003747.16064@infodev.cam.ac.uk>
Keywords: infocom rules text-generation story-generation question
Sender: gdr11@cl.cam.ac.uk (gdr11@phx.cam.ac.uk)
Nntp-Posting-Host: hall.cl.cam.ac.uk
Organization: U of Cambridge Computer Lab, UK
References: <Benjamin_Taylor.1tnf@grace.bah.rochester.ny.us>
Date: Thu, 29 Jul 1993 00:37:47 GMT
Lines: 36

Benjamin Taylor writes [heavily cut]:
|> I have been developing an alternative form for interactive fiction myself.
|> My reason is that I'd like to have interactive fiction that is more like
|> roleplaying games [...]  I'd like a story that resembles
|> a flesh & bones gaming session;  my requirements resemble a Turing test for
|> GMing. 

A highly laudable aim, but very very difficult to achieve in practice.
Role-playing games have the benefit of the continual creative input
of the GM - no computer program for the foreseeable future is going to 
be able to give you that.  You're right to talk about Turing tests.

|> Eventually, whether you're playing AMFV or TinyMUSH, one reaches a
|> point after which there is nothing new to discover [...]
|> Must this be a concrete characteristic of i-f software?  Or could
|> software generate new territory and events?

There's no reason why an adventure game shouldn't generate new 
territory and events, but... the thing that makes the territory 
and events in Infocom games good is that someone's put months 
of effort into imagining them, designing them, writing all that 
prose and getting comments from other intelligent and imaginative 
people.  You can't code that into rules; so in your 'dynamic 
interactive fiction' I fear that although there will always be 
new territory to explore, it will become clear after a while that 
the territory is being generated out of a limited set of rules, 
and that when the rules are intuited then the game will lose 
interest in the same way that the Infocom game did.

However, I would like to hear more about your attempts to write 
such an adventure; I think you may find that in order to produce
a good piece of interactive fiction there really is no substitute 
for sitting down and writing lots of prose.

-- 
Gareth Rees <gdr11@phx.cam.ac.uk>
