From: tob@world.std.com (Tom O Breton)
Subject: Re: What words to use and recognize
Organization: The World Public Access UNIX, Brookline, MA
Date: Thu, 17 Dec 1992 21:22:14 GMT

Magnus:

> What's the point of a puzzle where the solution is to find a new use for
> some everyday object if you can just ask the game and get a complete list
> of all possible ways to use the object in question.

Hope you don't mind if I respond by quoting myself, but:

"Where 'command CUP' would be a catchall for command words that you
deliberately withheld from a player. (Presumably providing some clever way to
discover them)"

If you, say, wanted to make use of the cup to safely snuff a candle flame,
and the player is supposed to cleverly realize this can happen, you might use
this.

The idea is that

  0:  it only happens when the author *realizes* that they're putting forth a
      puzzle, not when the author didn't think of something.

  1:  The player knows that there's a puzzle there, thus distinguishing it
      from (unavoidable) similar-looking problems whose "solving" isn't part
      of the game.

      (IE, parser stupidity, unforeseen-and-unsupported actions, and
      unsupported vocabulary.)


I picture a player coming up with half-a-dozen odd-but-plausible things to
tell the cup before the parser understands "snuff candle with CUP". It's
still mixing up "Can you solve my clever puzzle?" with "What have I supported
in my stupid parser?", but at least it's fairer than blind guessing.


> An adventure game should of course not be a "guess the correct verb" game,
> but IMHO what every game designer should work _very hard_ to make all
> puzzles so "intuitive" that it's possible for the player to express the
> needed action in a very simple sentence, with everyday words (of course the
> game should accept all reasonable synonyms and alternative wordings).

Again quoting he-whom-I-admire-most:

"there is no way an IF writer can truly support all the uses a player can
think of (I can think of at least a hundred things a brick might be used
for);"

However hard a designer works, I expect that within a *minute* I can find
something I can do in real life that the game does not support (Barring
extraordinary dodges such as a spartan setting to specifically defeat this)

I would much rather play a game that used a 'sensible default' mechanism like
this than one whose author worked "really really hard" to support synonyms.

> An adventure game should of course not be a "guess the correct verb" game,

It goes beyond mere VERBS. All too often, it comes to a question not of
solving the puzzle, but of guessing which way of solving it is *supported*.

I recall someone describing a puzzle where one had to get past laser beams by
clapping an eraser so that you could see the beams outlined in the dust.

Clever? Yes, but you also have to *GUESS* that this functionality is
implemented, whereas other functionalities such as

  sweeping dust instead up from the floor,
  improvising a mirror,
  improvising an ablative shield that would hold for the few seconds
    required,
  holding something disposable before you as you go as a 'mine detector',
  etc,

  are not. (Nor could one reasonably expect all such creative solutions to be
  supported)

        Tom

-- 
The Tom spreads its huge, scaly wings and soars into the wild sky...      
up...       up...     out of sight...   (tob@world.std.com)
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