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From: goetz@cs.buffalo.edu (Phil Goetz)
Subject: OK, you're not a fascist (Re: When should "all" be allowed?)
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Date: Thu, 10 Mar 1994 03:59:44 GMT
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I'm sorry already, Dave!  Don't take it personally.
(I'm sure those rumors about your swastika collection are untrue. ;)

>>I have yet to find a game where we are supposed to "discover" things
>>through reasoning rather than through simply examining everything
>>we encounter.
>
>I don't know what you mean by this -- there are plenty of puzzles in
>existing games that you have to solve by reasoning, and not just my
>examination aand object manipulation.  How about riddles, where you "say"
>the right answer?

I mean that in any game we have to examine everything, and cannot afford
to leave a wad of paper in the garbage can ignored like we would in
real life.  Hence we examine all.

If we're not given the convenience of X ALL, then we shouldn't have to
examine everything.  If a wad of paper is important, we should be led
to know that someone may have thrown away a map in that room.  Figuring
out that a makeup kit may have something important in it is a valid
puzzle.  Discovering something useful about the makeup kit by
examining it is not.  I want to back-chain from obstacles, not
forward-chain from objects.

Phil
