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Date: Wed, 11 Apr 2001 09:23:30 -0400
From: John Colagioia <JColagioia@csi.com>
Organization: No Conspiracy Here...
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Subject: Re: [INFORM] Menu-driven conversation, take 2
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Magnus Olsson wrote:
[...]

> * It's more unobtrusive to put the menues in the status line, as
> "Pytho's Mask". The main disadvantage to "Pytho", as I see it, is that
> it's easy to miss that the menu has changed, or even that there is
> a conversation menu. Perhaps the prompt should change or something.

On the other hand, it allows one to easily ignore any conversation in which
the player does not want to participate.


> * Then there's the question if the conversation should break out of
> the normal turn system. "Once" has a menu system simlar to "Pytho's",
> but the entire conversation is in essence one move. This has the
> disadvantage that you can undo the entire conversation, but not just
> the last thing you said. Some people may find this a feature rather
> than a bug, but I don't think I agree - what's the use of undo if you
> can't use it?

I wouldn't mind an "undo last comment" and an "undo conversation" command,
but that starts getting to be painful to program.  And opens up new cans of
worms ("Why can't I undo three comments...?").


> What I think I'd like the most is a system rather similar to that in
> "Pytho's Mask", where the menu of choices appears in the status line,
> and converstaion choices are treated as ordinary commands (so you can
> undo), but where the system still has two different modes,
> conversation and command. So when you're in a conversation, you can
> only enter conversation menu choices, and you have to finish the
> conversation before doing other things.

I'm not a fan of "modes," honestly.  Again, it might just be me, but I find
such things (even as subtle as changing the prompt) to seem a little
"hackish," as if the programmer failed to integrate the ability into the
game.  Not that this is at all the case (since I'm sure many authors have
heavily considered their conversation system and decided it was the best),
just that it gives me that impression.


> Then there's of course the entire question of implementation... :-)

Well, if you want to get all technical about it, yeah...


