Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: neilg@malibu.sfu.ca (Neil K. Guy)
Subject: Re: Teleportation? Magic words? Not really! (was: Original Adventure)
Message-ID: <neilg.745186283@sfu.ca>
Sender: news@sfu.ca
Organization: Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, B.C., Canada
References: <)> <Aug.8.14.32.04.1993.9522@math.rutgers.edu> <)> <243rfrINN62o@life.ai.mit.edu> <1993Aug11.205402.27071@nomina.lu.se>
Date: Thu, 12 Aug 1993 20:11:23 GMT
Lines: 60

magnus@thep.lu.se (Magnus Olsson) writes:

>a) "Shorthand movement commands", that move you a short distance (a
>few rooms away), when you can be assumed to know the way already, and
>without needing any supernatural "teleportation" to explain the result
>of the command. The command to be typed should be trivially possible
>to infer from the situation; e.g. it could be just the rule that
>"typing the name of a room brings you there if you're not too far
>away". 

 I'd love to be able to implement a feature like this in my TADS game.
In Infocom's Suspended you could tell the robots to go to various
places and they'd toddle off on their own and let you know when you
got there. I'd like to be able to let the player type, say, "Go to the
doughnut store." The game would then move the player to the doughnut
store, incrementing moves as necessary. If something happens - a fuse
goes off, say, then the game would stop and let the player respond. If
there's an obstacle - a closed door, perhaps - then the game would try
to remove the obstacle (unlock and open a locked door maybe) or stop
if the obstacle is impassable. And, of course, if the player had never
been to the doughnut store in the current incarnation then the game
would respond with "I don't know where that is" or whatever. This
command would appear to the user as an extension of the "go" command.
S/he could just type "go to x" or "run to the mad scientist's
laboratory" and off they'd go.

 Unfortunately this sort of thing requires a hell of a lot of work to
set up, and I sure haven't figured out a neat way of doing it.
Something beyond my meagre programming skills to implement, short of
something totally impractical like a bunch of hardcoded direction
instructions for each room. This would work for a smallish game, but
not the opus I'm trying to work on. Presumably some sort of decision
tree structure with matrices would be needed.

>b) "True telportation". These commands move you with total disregard
>for all physical laws (for example, in my game Dunjin, there's one
>magic word that takes you out of a place with absolutely no exits that
>you can use). [...]

 For testing purposes I implemented a kind of teleport command ("pow")
that zaps the player directly to his/her destination without
incrementing the time counter properly, and completely ignoring
inconvenient obstacles. It's quite useful for testing but obviously
won't make it to the finished game. It *is* rather nice to be able to
type "pow desert" or "pow railway station" and get there without
typing "n. e. e. e. u. s. n. ne." or whatever.

>So, why do I bother typing all this? Maybe because I wish more games
>could use "shorthand movement". After all, it *is* irritating when you
>have to move repeatedly back and forth between two rooms that are not
>too far apart, especially when the path between them is twisting and
>non-intuitive. 

 Yep. Sure would be nice to be able to do this....

 - Neil K. (n_k_guy@sfu.ca)

 (boy the traffic in this group suddenly seems to have skyrocketed
overnight, hasn't it? Weird. Maybe it was timed to coicide with the
supposed hail of meteors last night...)
