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From: "John Colagioia" <JColagioia@csi.com>
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Subject: Re: Object Searching
Date: Sat, 20 Jul 2002 08:35:50 -0400
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Joao Mendes <public.email@anywhere.invalid> wrote:
>Hi, :)
>Ok, here's another one for the 'arguable content' bonfire:
>The setup is that I have a pen hidden in a sofa. But I do not want a player
>that goes randomly searching and looking everything to find it. Rather, I
>want to define a command 'look for'. Something like this:

How about a slightly different approach?

Let's say I'm playing "IF: The Home Edition."  I'm wandering
my house, picking up anything that's not nailed down, trying
to ask my cat questions about the novel I found on the
coffee table, and trying to figure out which !@#$%^& verb I
need to check my e-mail (the guy who implemented my house
wasn't very good, apparently).  I decide, because I'm that
kind of guy, to search the sofa.

How do I probably do this?  I might move it, if I'm feeling
all energetic.  I'll probably check behind/under the
cushions.  Without a specific goal, though, I'm probably
not going to reach down the crevices, or lift the couch and
check inside the lining.

This, I think, is the key.  I won't accept a game that
basically tells me, "you don't see anything now, but if you
come back later, maybe this'll change without good reason."
I will, however, naturally accept a (literal) response of,
"A quick search turns up nothing, but without any sort of
goal in mind, you could probably spend days taking the sofa
apart to look for 'clues.'"

Here's the problem, though.  Looking for your pen will be
the same kind of effort as, say, looking for some spare
change, which means that you should be reasonably prepared
to accept other small objects as "look forable," with a
"you didn't find any insects, but there's a nifty pen in
here."

*Or*, you could actually fill the couch with useless junk,
and present it to the player whenever he searches for
something else:

] search sofa for change

Whoa!  There's a lot of junk down here.  No change at
first, but you stop when you find some rusted 'D'
batteries.

[Note the gentle push that (a) searching some more
will be fruitful, and (b) searching at random will not
produce a useful result]

] again

Whoa!  There's a lot of junk down here.  No change at
first, but you stop when you find a moldy cracker.

] search sofa for pen

Hey, look!  There is a pen in there.  Neat.

[...]
