HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: Whitten@Fwva.Saic.Com (David Whitten)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Answering question WHAT IS THIS GOOD FOR?
Date: Thu, 17 Dec 1992 21:50:55 GMT
	<1992Dec17.163944.10997@pollux.lu.se>
Organization: Science Applications Int'l, Corp. - Computer systems operation

In message <1992Dec17.163944.10997@pollux.lu.se> is written:
>In article <BzDIsJ.M9M@world.std.com> tob@world.std.com (Tom O Breton) writes:
>>I suggest that there be a standard verb (taking no game time) that describes
>>what things you can do with an object. Something like "WHAT_CAN_I_DO_WITH <X>"
>>(Anyone got a good 1-word synonym for 'what can I do with'?)
>>
>>For example:
>>
>>> WHAT CAN I DO WITH CUP?
>>You can use a CUP in these ways:
>>  drop
>>  pick up
>>  give CUP to (X)
>>  use
>>  fill
>>  drink from
>>  command
>>
>>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)
>
>This is not a flame, and I'm not going to argue that "this takes away
>the mystery". I am going to argue that many puzzles will be spoiled by
>this. 
>
>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.
>
>Actually, I'm getting a bit worried about the assumption in this
>thread, that the game should actually list all possible actions. 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).
 
I'm not attempting to flame, but I think this is a important point.
 
Didn't Tom explicitly say you could hide some commands from the user by
saying "command" above ?
 
Lets say I have a rope.
I say "WHAT_CAN_I_DO_WITH ROPE"
 
The adventure comes back and says
You can get, put, and swing with a rope. There may be other commands available
in special circumstances.
 
Now lets say I want the player to lasso a jar of cookies to get them from a 
shelf behind the ogre.
 
If I don't say LASSO in the list of verbs, the user may not even know that
I'll allow them to use the rope to Lasso.
 
I personally think that lasso should be listed in verbs for a rope.
 
What if I expect the user to Fray the rope, and use it as a replacement fuse
for a stick of dynamite?
 
I don't think you need to mention this in the list of verbs, since this is
an innovative use of a rope.
 
 
Dave (whitten@fwva.saic.com) US:(619)535-7764 [I don't speak as a company rep.]
From: Whitten@Fwva.Saic.Com
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Acclaim Entertainment (Synthetic actors)
Date: Mon, 14 Dec 1992 16:00:10 GMT
Organization: Science Applications Int'l, Corp. - Computer systems operation

goetz@acsu.buffalo.edu (Phil Goetz) writes:
>From _Standard and Poor's Corporation Records_, Thur Nov 5, 1992 p. 5345:
>
>Acclaim Entertainment, Inc.
>	Obtains Use of Technology to Develop New Interactive Media -
>Nov. 5, 1992.  Co. announced that it signed an exclusive technology
>agreement with Biomechanics, an Atlanta GA concern, and Ardent Studios,
>Memphis TN.
>	The technology will allow Co. to create "synthetic actors" through
>the conversion of mathematical data obtained via the processes of
>geometric modeling, texture mapping and motion capture.  The completed
>images and movements of the synthetic actors, based on inanimate objects
>or live actors, can be incorporated as video game characters in a
>variety of interactive media, including CD-ROM.
>	Co. anticipates its first products incorporating the technology
>will reach the market during 1993.
>--
>Don't ask me for details 'cuz that's all I know!
>
>Phil Goetz
 
What little I know is from seeing some books on graphics in the book store
about six months ago. (No, I don't remember the name of the book..)
It was talking about a software/hardware system to simulate people by
geometric objects.  Kind of like the way that a sphere is an "ideal object"
that then gets deformed to make balloons, or an egg or an ellipsoid.
In the same way, there is an "ideal male person" and an "ideal female person"
who get modified by some numeric arguments to look different.
 
This is hard enough, but when you take into account the fact that people
can move, and they change as they move, you start to see why a synthetic
actor is a serious computational entity.
They seemed to model people by a skeleton of the person, and then to build
from the skeleton the appearance of the actor.  There also seems to be
some bio-feedback involved too, since I remember something about sensors
taped to a real person's skin that gave the computer the information about
what the current angles between the bones were....
 
Again, take all of this 3rd or 4th hand, since I read it so long ago and
may have mixed these books (2?) with a magazine article about "real time
animation" that I read about the same time.
 
Dave (whitten@fwva.saic.com) US:(619)535-7764 [I don't speak as a company rep.]
 
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
From: jondr@sco.COM (Karen Silkwood's car)
Subject: Re: What words to use and recognize
Organization: The Santa Cruz Operation, Inc.
Date: Tue, 15 Dec 1992 22:48:05 GMT


avjewe@.umd.edu (Andrew D. Jewell) writes:
>The First Law of Parsing :
>	Any word displayed by the game should be recognized by the parser.

until parsers make great strides i think this is going to remain fairly
impossible.

>The Second Law of Parsing :
>	One should be able to "win" the game using only words displayed
>	by the game.

this is just dumb.  it means you have to give away the solution more or less
implicitly in every game you write.  for example: suppose there's a rope
that you have to swing on to cross a ravine.  why would you ever need to
mention the word "swing" in describing it?  it just gives away the answer.
i'd prefer to let the player think of possible things that you can do with
ropes (tie stuff to them, swing on them, cut them off and use them to fasten
other stuff down...)

>(Yes, I include adverbs. They increase the power and
>flexibility of commands, and don't create any problems that verbs haven't
>already created.)

i think adverbs are a bad idea.  this discussion has already been hashed out
pretty thoroughly on r.a.int-fiction.  how are you going to know that you
have to enter "PULL HARD ON LEVER" instead of just "PULL ON LEVER"?

>>HOW CAN ONE OPEN A BOOK
>One can open gently or strongly.

to me, this just adds a completely unnecessary level of detail to the game.
you're going to be going around asking the game for every possible nuance of
every possible object.  i think this would detract from the experience,
rather than enhance it.

>How can we inform users WITHIN THE CONTEXT OF THE GAME of the verbs and
>adverbs available to them. To force players to think about the right thing
>to DO while freeing them from thoughts about the right thing to SAY.

i say don't bother.  it's already hard enough guessing which sentence
permutation is accepted without adding another variable to the equation.
i want "slide card through slot" to be enough.  "slide card quickly through
slot" doesn't make for an enjoyable game in my book.

-- 
Jon Drukman (God's personal DJ)                 uunet!sco!jondr   jondr@sco.com
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I was an infinitely hot and dense dot.
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
From: pshepard@nyx.cs.du.edu (Pat Shepard)
Subject: TADS and doors
Organization: Nyx, Public Access Unix (sponsored by U. of Denver Math/CS dept.)
Disclaimer1: Nyx is a public access Unix system run by the University of
Disclaimer2: Denver for the Denver community.  The University has neither
Disclaimer3: control over nor responsibility for the opinions of users.
Date: Sat, 19 Dec 92 04:59:55 GMT

I figured out the problem I was having with TADS before...bad media.
 
I have encountered a new problem.  How do I use doors?  I have tried
just sticking the item in a line like        
 
northwest = door
 
in the room with the door in it, but it tells me "You can't go that way"
no matter what the status of the door is (open, closed, etc).  
Both doordest and otherside are set in the door (a lockableObject).  Any 
idea what I am doing wrong?  (And yes I am using a good disk now. :)

Xref: sparky rec.arts.int-fiction:1078 comp.misc:4571 comp.sources.wanted:5348 alt.sources.wanted:1884
From: Whitten@Fwva.Saic.Com
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction,comp.misc,comp.sources.wanted,alt.sources.wanted
Subject: Re: Petri-Nets for On-Line Hints
Date: 13 Dec 92 00:48:06 GMT
Article-I.D.: MVB.9643954
Organization: Science Applications Int'l, Corp. - Computer systems operation

peugh@wam.umd.edu (Haig Herkenflirtz (sp ?)) writes:
>
>My suggestion, is to use petri-nets to represent the hints.  Thus if you
>have not seen an important room, a transition could not fire, and the
>game can do many things, such as refuse a hint, tell the player to look
>somewhere else, or so on.
>
>The thing is, petri-nets, from what I've heard only take about a week to
>code, and also would be very useful for such storage.  Take for example,
>giving a hint to what the player should do next.
>
>    The player is in a specific location, and asks for a hint.
>    Something blocks the transistion from firing.
>    The game system looks at the places before the transition.
>    Follows the place with no token.
>    And so on, until a fire-able transition is met
>    Take special description from that transition, and give it to the player.
>
>So the upshot of all this is, in a game like Zork Zero,
>The game would refuse to give you hints on the East Wing, if you have not
>even seen the East Wing.  Or It would not give you any hints regarding the
>Homing Pigeon if you have not been to the post office.
>
>This also is an effective way to stop people from getting tired, reading all
>the hints, and solving the game.  (As I used to do)
>
>			--David Peugh
 
Sounds like a good idea, but I have only used Petri Nets when analyzing an
operating system, Do you know of any general code to implement Petri Nets?
I haven't seen any free or copylefted Petri Net engines out there.
Do they exist?
It seems like a good end of semester project for an undergrad...
 
Ideally, this Petri Net engine could be inserted into your code the same
way that Regex seems to be popping up in a lot of programs.
 
Thinking about making code more modular,
Dave (whitten@fwva.saic.com) US:(619)535-7764 [I don't speak as a company rep.]
 
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
From: pshepard@nyx.cs.du.edu (Pat Shepard)
Subject: TADS and errors...
Organization: Nyx, Public Access Unix (sponsored by U. of Denver Math/CS dept.)
Disclaimer1: Nyx is a public access Unix system run by the University of
Disclaimer2: Denver for the Denver community.  The University has neither
Disclaimer3: control over nor responsibility for the opinions of users.
Date: Wed, 16 Dec 92 05:01:02 GMT

I have just started using TADS and am having rather odd things happen with
the compilation of my programs.  The file will compile normally one time,
but after only changing text it will give errors the next.  Changing the
"white space" characters within methods also will sometimes give errors or
get rid of them...such as the difference between:

doTake( actor ) = { "You can't pick up a liquid! "; }
 
and
 
doTake( actor ) = 
     {       
       "You can't pick up a liquid! ";
     }
 
has changed whether I got an error message or not.
 
Does anyone know why?  Have I missed something?
From: dmb@case.ai.mit.edu (David Baggett)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: TADS 2.0 fussy on the 8088 PC.
Date: 13 Dec 1992 16:19:31 GMT
Organization: MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory
NNTP-Posting-Host: case.ai.mit.edu
Keywords: TADS

In article <1992Dec13.043039.6233@athena.mit.edu> zelevin@athena.mit.edu (Vladimir V Zelevinsky) writes:
>Well, subject says it all.  Downloaded from FTP.GMD.DE,
>worked considerably faster than v.1.1, but the TR.EXE
>displayed all characters FUSSY in the text mode.  It's
>really hard to explain, but it was impossible to read,
>and the screen continued to display fussy characters
>when I left TR.  MODE CO80 retuned the screen to normal
>mode.

If I remember correctly: as of this release, TR uses the Bios for text
output.  It used to write directly to video memory (or at least the
impression I got).  The fact that it's less compatible now is therefore
very hard to explain.  What sort of video card do you have?  You should
report this to High Energy <73737.417@compuserve.com>.

Dave Baggett
--
dmb@ai.mit.edu           MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory                  
ADVENTIONS: interactive fiction (text adventures) for the 90's!
dmb@ai.mit.edu *** Compu$erve: 76440,2671 *** GEnie: ADVENTIONS
From: Whitten@Fwva.Saic.Com (David Whitten)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: What words to use and recognize (subtle hints)
Date: Wed, 16 Dec 1992 17:19:57 GMT
Organization: Science Applications Int'l, Corp. - Computer systems operation

avjewe@cfar.umd.edu (Andrew D. Jewell) writes:
>I am still interested in opinions about how to let the player know what
>words (especially verbs) are available without giving away the puzzles.
>
>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.
 
This strikes me as another example of needing the game to provide subtle
hints.  What immediately comes to mind is:
 
1] Common (among IF developers) agreement upon a dictionary - synonym list.
(This would help all of us to provide bigger vocabularies that are consistent
among the games we create)
 
2] Providing a description (in some nearby room possibly) that has something
dangling from a rope.  Something like: 
 
You're in a dank dark dungeon with an exceptionally high ceiling. Something 
swinging slowly catches your eye deep in dark recesses of room.
 
>LOOK UP
 
You see a skeleton dangling from a rope, far out of your reach.  Dust falls
from above, causing your eyes to blink with tears.
 
>GO NORTH
 
This option allows the reader to notice something that might give a subtle
hint, but isn't part of the description of the room, so they don't have to
see it when they enter, and have the AHA! experience later when they need
to use the rope.
 
Comments?
Dave (whitten@fwva.saic.com) US:(619)535-7764 [I don't speak as a company rep.]
 
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
From: scythe@stein.u.washington.edu (The Grim Reaper)
Subject: Re: What words to use and recognize
Organization: University of Washington, Seattle
Date: Wed, 16 Dec 1992 17:03:18 GMT

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.
>
>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.
>
>Andy Jewell
>avjewe@cfar.umd.edu
>


I'd still say the best way to do it is to give the verb in the item
description-

>LOOK AT ROPE
The rope is long and somewhat frayed at the ends.
>TIE ROPE TO HOOK
You tie the rope to the hook in the ceiling
>LOOK AT ROPE
The rope is long and somewhat frayed at the ends.  It's tied to 
a hook in the ceiling, reinding you of those Tarzan movies
where he goes around swinging and hanging from the vines to
rescue the girl.

Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
From: jondr@sco.COM (Karen Silkwood's car)
Subject: Re: What words to use and recognize
Organization: The Santa Cruz Operation, Inc.
Date: Wed, 16 Dec 1992 17:49:53 GMT


avjewe@.umd.edu (Andrew D. Jewell) writes:
>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.

i think this is the sort of thing that should be caught in playtesting.
i've distributed a few copies of my adventure-in-progress with explicit
instructions to the testers - if you see something that you think you ought
to be able to do and the program doesn't understand the word - TELL ME!  i
will fix it!  really, you can't cover every possible base but hang should
definitely be a synonym for dangle in the game's vocabulary.

-- 
Jon Drukman (God's personal DJ)                 uunet!sco!jondr   jondr@sco.com
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I was an infinitely hot and dense dot.
From: pww+@A.GP.CS.CMU.EDU (Peter Weyhrauch)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: What words to use and recognize
Date: 16 Dec 92 22:53:54 GMT
Organization: School of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon
Originator: pww@A.GP.CS.CMU.EDU

Hi, all.

On the 15th of December, Jon Drukman comments on Andrew Jewell's post:

    avjewe@.umd.edu (Andrew D. Jewell) writes:
    >The First Law of Parsing :
    >       Any word displayed by the game should be recognized by the parser.

    until parsers make great strides i think this is going to remain fairly
    impossible.

I don't agree with this in the most general sense.  There are a continuum
of options for the technologies of text generation and text understanding.
At one end you have human authors writing subtle and amusing prose that
no current computer can understand.  I assume this is what Jon meant,
and I agree with him fully for that case.  But, it leaves out the other
end of the spectrum.  If you use a computer to generate your text, you
might be able to satisfy Andrew's First Law of Parsing.

A case in point is the Oz system.  We currently generate all our
narrative text, and soon will generate character dialogue as well.
Since the same lexicon is used for generation and parsing, any word
used in generation is parseable.  The grammars are currently
different, but encode (roughly) the same functionality.  Notice that
you could use a more universal parser if you chose.  The perhaps
unacceptable downside is that our output is uninspired for now.  Part
of our research efforts are aimed at doing stylistic generation.  For
your curiousity, I'll attach a fragment at the end of my post.

One of the issues we consider is whether our hard-line attitude is
warranted.  Couldn't we rather do pre-canned text, enriching the
texture of the experience?  We could, but I think the ultimate sense
of immersion in our worlds would then suffer.  I have proposed, but
never implemented, though it would be simple, a concept of incidental
text, which is text that pops up on the screen at times, but is
considered officially outside the system.  That way, at a climactic
moment, when the ordinary super-dry text just won't do, you can read a
rich description of the event.  Perhaps with this you can get the best
of both worlds.

	Peter Weyhrauch
	Project Oz

Fragment of Oz output (Lyotard is a cat):

PLAYER> go to the bedrom

Correcting typos:
   bedrom --> bedroom (deletion)

Tick 17...

You go to the east.
You are no longer located in the sunroom.
You are now located in the bedroom.

You are in the bedroom:

    To the south, you see the closet door.
    To the south, you see the closet.
    To the west, you see the sunroom.
    To the west, you see the red bedroom door.

    Lyotard, the small liquor cabinet, the wicker trash basket, the
    bed and the table are located in the bedroom.  The small book and
    the red superball are located in the under bed space.  The white
    brush and the black china cup are on the table.

Lyotard licks himself.

PLAYER> pet the cat

Tick 18...

You pet Lyotard.
Lyotard meows.
You hear a MEOW.
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
From: magnus@thep.lu.se (Magnus Olsson)
Subject: Re: What words to use and recognize
Organization: Theoretical Physics, Lund University, Sweden
Date: Thu, 17 Dec 1992 16:39:44 GMT

In article <BzDIsJ.M9M@world.std.com> tob@world.std.com (Tom O Breton) writes:
>I suggest that there be a standard verb (taking no game time) that describes
>what things you can do with an object. Something like "WHAT_CAN_I_DO_WITH <X>"
>(Anyone got a good 1-word synonym for 'what can I do with'?)
>
>For example:
>
>> WHAT CAN I DO WITH CUP?
>You can use a CUP in these ways:
>  drop
>  pick up
>  give CUP to (X)
>  use
>  fill
>  drink from
>  command
>
>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)
>
>BTW, please direct flames to the effect that "This takes away the mystery" to
>/dev/null. 

This is not a flame, and I'm not going to argue that "this takes away
the mystery". I am going to argue that many puzzles will be spoiled by
this. 

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.


Actually, I'm getting a bit worried about the assumption in this
thread, that the game should actually list all possible actions. 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).

If the solution of a puzzle requires some very complicated commands,
with adverbs and whatever, then IMHO the puzzle is too complicated.
The way out of this problem is not to change the user interface, but
to re-think the puzzles.

>A game where you don't know what you can do doesn't create
>mystery, it creates boredom and gives text games a bad name. You can't create
>mystery by default.

I agree on this, though. Mystery is not the same thing as obscurity.

              Magnus Olsson                | \e+      /_
    Department of Theoretical Physics      |  \  Z   / q
        University of Lund, Sweden         |   >----<           
 magnus@thep.lu.se, thepmo@seldc52.bitnet  |  /      \===== g
PGP key available via finger or on request | /e-      \q
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
From: billc@searchtech.com (Bill Cody)
Subject: Looking for J. of Computer Game Design
Organization: Search Technology, Inc.
Date: Mon, 14 Dec 1992 19:07:37 GMT

Does anyone have either the phone number or e-mail address
for the Journal of Computer Game Design? 
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction