Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: crosby@ucsu.Colorado.EDU (Matthew Crosby)
Subject: Re: User-Selected Difficulty levels
Message-ID: <1993Jan27.024100.18497@ucsu.Colorado.EDU>
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Organization: University of Colorado, Boulder
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Date: Wed, 27 Jan 1993 02:41:00 GMT
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In article <81904@hydra.gatech.EDU> ccocsme@prism.gatech.EDU (StatMan) writes:
>Howdy,
>  I am currently developing a TADS text adventure, and came up
>with an interesting problem. How difficult should I make it? Then,
>I thought about letting the user enter the difficulty level he/she
>wants. I would let it be confined to easy/medium/hard. I dont
>think the development would be that hard. Mainly,  the differences
>between the difficulty levels would be limited to the availibilty
>of needed items, methods for solving certain puzzels, and the
>addition/subration of "clues" in the description text.
>
>I then wondered if I should let the player fully "win" the
>game at easier levels, or have the game leave the player
>with information that there was more to look foward to in
>the next level.
>
I can't think of any games like this, but a few games had several solutions
to various problems, with the easier solution being penalised.  Perhaps
the best example of this I can think of was Wishbringer.  There where
certain puzzles that could be solved in two ways:  By using the stone to wish
for something, or some other way.  At the end, however, you where penalised for
using wishes:  The optimal solution was with no wishes.  This worked kind of
well, and was kind of neat, except

1)  This applied to only a few of the puzzles.
2)  The game was so easy anyway, and the puzzles so easy, that often you didn't
    even need to use the wishes the first time.  (Note that it wasn't until the
    end that the game told you to avoid wishes)

Heres an example (the only puzzle I solved with a wish first):
Spoilers, I suppose.


Well, there was a pit with a platypus in it.  You could rescue the platypus
by one of two methods:
1)  Wish for rain, so the platypus could swim out.
2)  Get a stick you found and put it in the hole so the platypus could climb up
    it  (I recall the parser being kind of picky about the wording for this)


-- 
-Matt
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the net!
mcrosby@nyx.cs.du.edu    -or-    crosby@cs.colorado.edu
