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From: erkyrath@netcom.com (Andrew Plotkin)
Subject: Re: Do IF writers write?
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Date: Tue, 27 Aug 1996 04:18:50 GMT
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Greg Ewing (greg@cosc.canterbury.ac.nz) wrote:
> Francis Irving wrote:
> > 
> > With me it's mainly due to a reluctance to
> > read the same thing twice - and that's something which you have to do
> > often in IF

> It would be nice if there were some way to tell whether
> you were looking at the same old piece of text you've
> seen a hundred times before, or whether there's some
> new twist to it this time.

> Maybe the interpreter could display a string in a
> different typeface the first time it is printed out
> in a game?

Too complicated for the interpreter to do well. Strings are usually 
broken up in all sorts of ways, depending on how they're going to be used.
You'd have to put a lot of support in the game code to get this to work.

(Not that I object if someone writes a game which does.)

Also note that there is a long tradition of trying to sneak new text into
descriptions without the players noticing. Starting with the maze of
twisty little passages, all different. (Honest, the first time I played I 
didn't notice they were all different. I think I was nine...)

--Z

(But I came up with how to get past the troll *all by myself*.)

-- 

"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the
borogoves..."
