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From: goetz@cs.buffalo.edu (Phil Goetz)
Subject: Re: Choosing your IF setting / genre
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References: <2r9t9d$ss7@sunb.ocs.mq.edu.au> <1994May19.013111.4382@cs.tcd.ie> <)> <2rl0gvINNp0k@life.ai.mit.edu>
Date: Mon, 23 May 1994 18:03:47 GMT
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In article <2rl0gvINNp0k@life.ai.mit.edu>,
David Baggett <dmb@ai.mit.edu> wrote:
>In article <1994May19.013111.4382@cs.tcd.ie>,
>Russell Wallace <rwallace@cs.tcd.ie> wrote:
>
>And then do what, change the description of the object to be "The X looks
>burned?"  How about if the player torches himself or another actor?

*** talking about Inmate again mode ON ***

In _Inmate_, burnt is generally equivalent to broken.  If the property
"broken" is assigned to an animate object (person, dog), the adjective
"dead" is prepended instead.  Animate objects can only do things when
they are not broken.  So you can kill people in _Inmate_, and they will
stop moving around.  More to the point, you could (I suppose, though I
don't remember if people are burnable) burn a person, and the physics
would _automatically_ infer that that person was dead, and they would
stop whatever they were doing.

*** _Inmate_ mode off ***

>The whole point is that the player wants to be able to burn everything in
>sight because he wants the game to model the world realistically.  No code
>that checks an object's general composition and sets a flag "burned = true"
>is going to be realistic.

Better than saying "I don't think that's a good idea."

>This gets back to the basic "realism vs. playability" argument.  Though
>many people think this kind of realism is good for IF, I'd argue that the
>end result is a poorly designed game which is no fun at all.  (You torched
>that newspaper early on?  Too bad, you needed to read that to find out
>about the secret headquarters on Galapaos Island...  But I won't tell you
>that, because in a "realistic" simulation you don't get this kind of
>feedback.)  Ugh.

If you burn a newspaper without reading it in IF, you get what you deserve.

>In real life, doing anything nontrivial is a complete pain.  (Oh geez, how
>the hell am I going to get to *Galapagos Island*?  Gotta call a travel
>agent.  And how am I going to pay for this?  And what about my chemistry
>final?).  Consequently, trying to make a game model the real world is
>actually a *bad* idea -- what you want is a game world that amplifies the
>"highs and lows" and glosses over the boring stuff.  Impressionism, not
>realism, is the traditional basis for good games.

I think you're confusing a realistic PLOT with a realistic PHYSICS.
I wouldn't read a book about my life, because it would be boring.
I like books and movies about highly improbable, unrealistic stories.
But I want the world they take place in to behave orderly.

Phil goetz@cs.buffalo.edu
