Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: Joel Finch <jfinch@ozemail.com.au>
Subject: News on Avalon, help needed.
Organization: Message Handling Systems Pty Ltd
Date: Tue, 5 Apr 94 07:10:45 GMT
Message-ID: <1994Apr5.071045.11557@news.mhs.oz.au>
Followup-To: rec.arts.int-fiction
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> 1. There are two kinds of conflict.
>    Internal, and external.
> 2. External conflict has been heavily
>    explored, including discussions on
>    conversation, puzzles, combat, and atmosphere.
> 3. Internal conflict is rather difficult
>    to simulate.
> 
> Conclusion: I decided to come here and see
> what yous thought.  How can we tackle this
> confusing and delicate thing in IF?

I think the problem with internal conflicts in IF
is that it is hard to TELL people what they are
feeling. It's simple to say:
  "You fill the cup with water",
but hard (impossible?) to say:
  "You are in anguish over the death of your cat"
because the *player* decides how they feel about
such things. (They might have hated the cat.)

  Internal conflicts such as disability
(blindness, as I see whizzard is working on) are
really external conflicts in IF because they are
separate from the mind playing the game. The mind
in IF really has to be an atom, ie. indivisible,
or the game starts doing things that the player
didn't instruct their character to do, and becomes
frustrating. Unless the premise of the game includes
schizophrenia or something, which in turn quickyly 
becomes an external problem, a puzzle to find a
solution to.

  The problem with IF and trying to remove the focus
from puzzles, is that by its nature, IF draws
attention to them. In real life, I wouldn't think
twice about selecting the right key to open a door,
but in an IF environment, you have to pay attention,
because the text is all you've got. Perhaps we need
an all new interface to be able to simulate internal
conflicts. Plain text has limits.
(Electrodes, anyone?)

Seeya, Joel :)
(jfinch@ozemail.com.au)




