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From: buzzard@world.std.com (Sean T Barrett)
Subject: Re: Walkthrough comp: reviews/critiques (long)
Message-ID: <GDvott.1xH@world.std.com>
Date: Fri, 25 May 2001 06:32:16 GMT
References: <GDv88M.GI@world.std.com> <emshort-2405012207470001@user-2inim92.dialup.mindspring.com>
Organization: The World Public Access UNIX, Brookline, MA
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Xref: news.duke.edu rec.games.int-fiction:63301

Emily Short <emshort@mindspring.com> wrote:
>I *am* still faintly sad that no one took up the purely linguistic
>side of this and made a game breaking the walkthrough the longest possible
>commands, e.g.)

Unfortunately I only thought of that sort of thing in hindsight
when I saw how delightful commands like "READ LOOK UP DRESS BOOK"
were. I'd have to say that the extra constraint I chose to put
on it turned out to be the least interesting one to do (although
for me it was good practice for doing a comp game), and numerous
other ones suggested themselves to me after I was already committed
to the approach I took: the game in which every noun in the walkthrough
referred to the same object; the two-room game in which every compass
direction leads to the other room--heck, the one room game with
vast quantities of stuff in it. But I suspect that adding further
constraints to the ones already in the comp generally reduces the
quality, though you could argue that another constraint shouldn't
prevent one from having a strong independent identity. But it
makes me think of Hofstadter's description in "le Ton beau de Marot"
of how he and his friends were able to communicate fine using only
e-less lipograms, but switching to no 'e' AND no 't' simply ended
the conversation. (The faux mud transcript in 'Fit' is an e-less
lipogram to celebrate the constraint-spirit of the comp.)

I think the choice of walkthrough had a really big impact there,
although I don't think it was a bad choice--the games might be
just as varied but there would be less coolness to them if the
walkthrough had read "N.N.E.GET BALL.W.S.W.PUT BALL IN BOX.".
If I were to try to improve the walkthrough I would strike some
of the two weird words (ZRBLM and XYZZY), three meta-commands
(HELP, ABOUT, and UNDO), and four sensing commands (X, LISTEN,
LOOK, and EYE), which I think required too much effort to work
into the games effectively for too little payoff--but this is
far easier to propose in hindsight, and even then I'm not sure
how many would be best cut.

Certainly I think the whole thing came out pretty well as it
was, or I wouldn't have written so damn much about it.

SeanB
