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From: allen@viewlogic.com (Dave Allen)
Subject: Re: puzzle DAGs and adaptive hints
Message-ID: <CxKzxu.JpB@viewlogic.com>
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Organization: Viewlogic Systems Inc.
Date: Wed, 12 Oct 1994 22:32:17 GMT
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Felix Lee (flee@cse.psu.edu) wrote:
> I've been wondering about plot-modelling in puzzle-adventures.
> Built-in hints, like the game wizard in UU2 or the demon/angel in
> Curses, these are pretty limited.  If the game had an internal model
> of its own plot, then it could guarantee a useful hint.  It could
> answer the "what do I do now?" question by pointing you at a
> particular puzzle you can solve next.

Paul Munn (pmunn@westnet.westnet.com) replied:
> For my Senior Project as an undergraduate, I wrote an add-on module for 
> TADS that allows plot modeling much the same way as the adaptive hint 
> module on ftp.gmd.de does:  by using plot diagrams in the form of 
> Directed Acyclic Graphs or DAGs.
> 
> [...]
> 
> The plot diagramming method I used (I later found out) is being used by 
> others in TADS games already.  This format makes adding hints that change 
> with the game state not too hard to do.  I think Mr. Baggett is using a 
> plot-dag like system.

I wrote the adaptive hint system for TADS to which Paul refers; let me take
this opportunity to plug it.  It's the file adhint.zip on ftp.gmd.de in
if-archive/programming/tads/examples, posted April 18, 1994.  There's a
technical document with it, adhint.doc (inside the zip file), which describes
what a puzzle DAG is.

I took an existing TADS game (Ditch Day Drifter) and wrote out the puzzle
DAG for it.  Then I wrote some functions which do exactly what Felix 
suggested; looking to see which puzzles are available and haven't been
solved yet, it gives you a hint which makes sense.

Let me know if you have any questions.

- Dave Allen: allen@viewlogic.com
