Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Path: gmd.de!ira.uka.de!yale.edu!yale!gumby!wupost!uunet!psinntp!dg-rtp!webo!dg-webo!pds
From: pds@lemming.webo.dg.com (Paul D. Smith)
Subject: Re: Walkthroughs
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Message-ID: <PDS.92Dec9180048@lemming.webo.dg.com>
In-Reply-To: djohnson@cs.ucsd.edu's message of 9 Dec 92 02:49:33 GMT
Date: 09 Dec 92 23:00:47 GMT
To: djohnson@cs.ucsd.edu (Darin Johnson)
Lines: 49
References: <1ftnlgINNkp4@life.ai.mit.edu> <BywuH8.BoD@acsu.buffalo.edu>
	<PDS.92Dec8105706@lemming.webo.dg.com> <42228@sdcc12.ucsd.edu>
Organization: NSDD/ONSD, Data General Corp., Westboro, MA
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[] Regarding Re: Walkthroughs;
[] djohnson@cs.ucsd.edu (Darin Johnson) writes:

    >If you have the game, then (IMHO) the walkthrough should be just
    >straight commands.  When you type them into the game, you'll see
    >what happens.

    dj> But this type is very bad for use as hints, which should come
    dj> as no surprise.  However, this is often the only form of hints
    dj> you can find for some games.

    dj> Plus, I don't even see what the need for a walkthrough would
    dj> be, other than hints.  Except for someone who just wants to
    dj> borrow the game for an hour and run through it.  But this seems
    dj> like such a small minority compared to people who would rather
    dj> have hints...

Hints is hints, walkthroughs is walkthroughs.  I don't believe they
should overlap at all.

A hint is when you want to play the thing, but are so frustrated you
need help before you put some vital body part through your computer's
screen.

A walkthrough is when you *don't* want to play it, but you want to run
through it for some reason: you want to see the story but you don't
want to spend any time working at it.  Or if you've finished the game
and just want to see how else it can be done.

I think with the newsgroups, hints files, etc. there's more than
enough places to obtain hints if a hint is what you want: it shouldn't
be necessary to resort to the walkthrough.

I kind of thought my "encrypt" program might be useful for encrypting
hints stored in the IF archive or something: since it can encrypt with
(currently) 40-odd different keys and you can easily store a different
key with each hint, you could theoretically run a large hint file
through the program and only successfully decrypt the hint you want...
or something.
--

                                                                paul
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