ckolderup/picaro — Issue #10: the case of the leaf
Author: ardubs
Created: 2012-02-02 06:01:21+00:00
State: open
Labels: Enhancement

So I was turning around a short test game idea. I tried to restrict it to one room, no dialogue, and no more than a handful of items. Basically just a single puzzle.

It goes something like, you're standing in front of a tall tree. There's a single leaf on it. Lying up against the trunk of the tree is a rake. It's clear from your character's perspective that your shining single purpose in this world is to get that leaf off the tree.

Now: someone who's played adventure games before will pick up the rake and use it on the leaf to get it down. Victory! What an amazing performance.

But: say they went with their first instinct, and just tried to take the leaf. I looked over the wiki and I don't think we have anything in the spec for failure messages specific to items, along the lines of "But you're only four feet tall" in the case of this leaf.

My proposal, depending on how feasible this is, would be to give items their own noTake property, so that we can acknowledge what the player wants to do -- take the leaf -- and point them in the right direction -- the rake.

Thoughts? I think it's possible this would be useful as a general-purpose property around all verbs, given that so much of adventure gaming boils down to placing obstacles in front of the player and then hinting at how they might bypass those obstacles.