Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Path: gmd.de!Germany.EU.net!mcsun!uunet!munnari.oz.au!titan!trlluna!bruce.cs.monash.edu.au!labtam!labtam!philip
From: philip@labtam.labtam.oz.au (Philip Stephens)
Subject: Re: A bill of players' rights
Organization: Labtam Australia Pty. Ltd., Melbourne, Australia
Date: Wed, 19 May 1993 05:03:02 GMT
Message-ID: <philip.737787782@labtam>
References: <1993May18.223852.18303@infodev.cam.ac.uk>
Lines: 58

Graham Nelson writes:

>    4.  To be able to win without knowledge of future events

>  For example, the game opens near a shop.  You have one coin and can buy a
>lamp, a magic carpet or a periscope.  Five minutes later you are transported
>away without warning to a submarine, whereupon you need a periscope.  If you
>bought the carpet, bad luck.

  A classic example of this is in _Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy_, in
which the significance of the dog at the start of the game is not revealed
until almost towards the end.  I could've killed Douglas Adams for that!

>    8.  Not to have to type exactly the right verb

>  For instance, looking inside a box finds nothing, but searching it does. 

  This is probably one of my biggest gripes about the Infocom games that
I've played.  The number of times that I had to try every permutation of a
sentence before the parser would recognise what I wanted to do was more
than I would have expected...every game had at least one of these.

>    13.  To be able to understand a problem once it is solved

>  This may sound odd, but many problems are solved by accident or trial and
>error.  A guard-post which can be passed only if you are carrying a spear,
>for instance, ought to have some indication that this is why you're allowed
>past.  (The most extreme example must be the notorious Bank of Zork.)

  Actually, I thought that the solution for the Bank of Zork made perfect
sense.  After all, if you're trapped in a room with no exits, and no
objects in your possession that could be of any use, then what else have
you to try and do? :-)  (Besides, the solution is hinted at in a note in
the bank).

>    14.  Not to be given too many red herrings

>  A few red herrings make a game more interesting.  A very nice feature of
>"Zork I", "II" and "III" is that they each contain red herrings explained in
>the others (in one case, explained in "Sorcerer").  But difficult puzzles
>tend to be solved last, and the main technique players use is to look at
>their maps and see what's left that they don't understand.  This is
>frustrating when there are many insoluble puzzles and useless objects.

  For me, more annoying than red herrings are those puzzles that cannot be
solved until you gain access to objects which are hidden until a different
puzzle is solved.  The Zork trilogy is an example of this: particularly Zork
II.  In that game, there were several "doors" that needed to be gotten
through in the same area, but they could only be done in a particular
order, and the objects used in the solutions were often ambiguious in their
purpose to make me waste my time trying to open a door that couldn't be
opened.  Very frustrating and tiring.

-- 
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