Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Path: gmd.de!jvnc.net!yale.edu!qt.cs.utexas.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!pipex!pavo.csi.cam.ac.uk!ojwb1
From: ojwb1@cl.cam.ac.uk (O.J.W. Betts)
Subject: Re: What words to use and recognize
Message-ID: <1992Dec16.183123.6010@infodev.cam.ac.uk>
Sender: news@infodev.cam.ac.uk (USENET news)
Nntp-Posting-Host: upend.cl.cam.ac.uk
Organization: U of Cambridge Computer Lab, UK
References: <62856@mimsy.umd.edu> <1992Dec15.234807.298@starbase.trincoll.edu> <62874@mimsy.umd.edu>
Date: Wed, 16 Dec 1992 18:31:23 GMT
Lines: 41

In article <62874@mimsy.umd.edu>, avjewe@.umd.edu (Andrew D. Jewell) writes:
|> Before this gets any more out of hand, let me take back my "adverb"
|> comment. I will keep adverbs as my own private perversion, and renounce
|> them publicly.
|>
Personally, I'm against adverbs. If you must put them in, then I think the
message you get if you omit the adverb should give a strong hint as to what
you need to do.

There was a puzzle in Philosopher's Quest for the BBC Micro which had a sequence
of rooms with traps of spears and spikes which shot out of the wall at various 
heights. So something like:

> N
A spear shoots out of the wall and hits you in the head. You die.

whereas:
> CRAWL N
A spear shoots out of the wall above you. It misses you.

I think there were four of these, two to cross to collect something and two
different ones coming back. I thought it was a fair puzzle, as the phrasing of
the messages provided a clue as to what to try. 
 
|> I am still interested in opinions about how to let the player know what
|> words (especially verbs) are available without giving away the puzzles.
|> But, please, no more adverb bashing (or promoting for that matter).
|> 
|> The two primary problems I'm trying to solve are
|> 
|> a) I want to HANG from the rope, but the game doesn't know the word HANG.
|> 
|> b) The game wants me to DANGLE from the rope, but the word DANGLE
|> does not come to mind.
|>
In my (mostly written but not finished) game, I used a thesaurus and put in all
the words that seemed appropriate. This means that dangle and hang would have
both gone in. Also, my approach when playing and the problem seems to be the 
games vocabulary is to reach for the thesaurus - is this a common approach? 

-- Olly Betts --
