Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Path: gmd.de!Germany.EU.net!mcsun!sunic!liuida!thoni
From: thoni@ida.liu.se (Thomas Nilsson)
Subject: Re: OO Adventure Games
Message-ID: <1992Oct29.212334.748@ida.liu.se>
Sender: news@ida.liu.se
Organization: CIS Dept, Univ of Linkoping, Sweden
References: <Bwuqpy.Btw.2@cs.cmu.edu>
Date: Thu, 29 Oct 1992 21:23:34 GMT
Lines: 56

pww+@A.GP.CS.CMU.EDU (Peter Weyhrauch) writes:

... about the Oz system ...

>One nice property that makes everything "feel like `real'" is that all
>of our descriptions are generated by the computer.  There is very
>little canned text, except at the level that a book is denoted by the
>text "book."  Each object in the world must have properties that allow
>a reasonable description to be generated.  The down side of this
>stance is that our text is boring to read, and completely devoid of
>any style.

Isn't this problem inherent in the term fiction, doesn't it imply that
we want someone to author the story rather than just tell us the
events that results from the simulation. In short does it not put the
finger on exactly the difference between interactive fiction and a
simulation system?


>We also pursue one idea strongly that is rarely mentioned here.  We
>want our interactive fiction to be more like movies or plays, and less
>like puzzle-fests.  For this reason, we study how to best track and
>react to the emotional response of the user in his or her experience
>with a piece of interactive fiction.  Our idea is to gently guide the
>users experience so it conforms in some way to an artistic destiny,
>while at the same time allowing the user complete freedom of action.
>In this way, for example, stories about difficult choices can be go
>from being voyeuristic (where the character in a movie is making this
>choice) to personal (where YOU the user is making the choice.)

Now you are starting to talk about literature and the *art* of
interactive fiction, this sounds very interesting. Although I do not
really see that you need an extensive simulation for this. I think
this is possible in any of the simpler tools also, since it is mostly
on the part of the author, and would if considered in 'games' today
make for much, much better playing/reading. In fact I think these
ideas would be even simpler to implement in a not so advanced system
as you wouldn't need to try to 'gently guide the users experience',
but could just tell it straight and then set things up to allow for
the experience (of course, not at all such an interesting research
project, but would really allow for better games/literature!).


>Peter Weyhrauch, 
>Oz Project Member

Thomas

--
Little languages go a long way...
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Thomas Nilsson				Phone Int.: (+46) 13 12 11 67
Stenbrotsgatan 57			Phone Nat.: 013 - 12 11 67
S-582 47  LINKOPING			Email:	thoni@softlab.se
SWEDEN						Thomas_Nilsson@augs.se
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