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Date: Sat, 07 Apr 2001 08:34:35 -0400
From: John Colagioia <JColagioia@csi.com>
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Subject: Re: [design] Numbered rooms
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"J. Robinson Wheeler" wrote:

> emshort@mindspring.com wrote:
> > I assumed that the reason I'd found a Room 14 was that I
> > had something that had been inexplicably uploaded in alpha
> > development, so I ran off to get the 'real' version from
> > the other site. (Though this leads to another question.
> > Does anyone really implement numbered rooms like this,
> > intending to come back and describe them later?  I always
> > give them at least a name, even at the most primitive
> > moments of development... but this is more of a question
> > about style than anything else, I suppose.)
> I think this practice would be more widespread for an author who
> starts his design by mapping out game geography on paper, a form
> of planning that usually ends up (in my opinion/experience)
> demanding a lot of extra, empty rooms. To the eye, the map looks
> incomplete if it only has three actual "rooms" in it -- even though
> the IF story being told might not need any more coded up than that.

As a minor reference point, the times I do things like that are not
dissimilar to what Mr. Wheeler is describing, here.  Typically, it's "a
long hallway" or other large room, and I end up calling the rooms
"Hall_1," "Hall_2," and so on, until I think of something more
appropriate (like "Outside the Lab," or whatever).


