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From: buzzard@world.std.com (Sean T Barrett)
Subject: Re: competition - metamorphosis runthrough
Message-ID: <G46ww5.CJ0@world.std.com>
Date: Fri, 17 Nov 2000 22:24:05 GMT
References: <3A1565B2.85A37390@soc.soton.ac.uk> <8v3u3v$ev6$1@slb3.atl.mindspring.net>
Organization: The World Public Access UNIX, Brookline, MA
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Xref: news.duke.edu rec.games.int-fiction:58588

Emily Short <emshort@mindspring.com> wrote:
>>I picked up the runthrough and discovered there are exits from that
>>region. How is the player supposed to know this? There's no reference
>>in the room description.
[snip]
>>I just don't have time to go round trying eight compass
>>points and up and down in each location "just in case".
>
>Given various comments, it's pretty clear that this was a tactical blunder
>on my part.

Just to chime in, I got stuck here too for the same reason.
Although our readers at home won't know it, that means I
got stuck and had to go to the walkthrough *twice* in the
first twelve moves.  In both cases these were due to the
player's "game experience" being misled by the text that
was there (or was not there).

Now, Metamorphoses came in as my top game, largely on the
strength of its writing, because I had barely touched the
toys by the time I stopped at the 1:20 mark.  So I'm
loathe to say "you need to make your writing more helpful
to somebody who's trying to play the game".  Very loathe.

But in your reply to the above comments, I really didn't
see any evidence of how you intend the player to GAIN the
information of the possible directions; e.g.

>Lemma: Major and impressive exits, doors that will need keys, and up or down
>exits should be put into the room description itself.

This makes sense if the point of a room description is to
paint in the player's mind a pretty picture of the location;
but it seems to make less sense if the room description
serves the secondary goal of *providing the player information
needed to play the game*.  (And let me tell you, I don't
personally consider that goal *secondary* at all.)

>My general principle is this: don't obsessively list exits in all room
>descriptions, but make sure they're listed in the room's cant_go (ie.: if
>you try to go the *wrong* way, you get told what the options are.)  This
>allows for somewhat cleaner and less repetitive descriptive passages,
>without putting the player through the mindnumbing tedium of, as you point
>out, checking every conceivable direction from every conceivable place.

But it requires a player INTENTIONALLY go a way that the player
has no way of knowing whether there's an exit or not, so as to
get the cant_go information.  Right?  Does this really not strike
you as weird or awkward?  (If not, I'll be glad to explain why it
does to me.)

>On the whole, I've found this to be more successful than not.  It doesn't
>work in this particular location, though -- perhaps because the door does
>get described and it therefore seems that that's the sum total of the
>available exits; perhaps because it's harder to get a cant_go message when
>the cardinal directions are all viable.

Another contributing factor I identified at the time is that it's the
first real location in the game in which all of the exits are not described.
Which isn't really saying much, but I think it did contribute; I suspect
I may have actually tried alternative directions in the previous room,
it being the shore of a lake which one might reasonably expect to extend in
both directions, and from that (and the previous location, whose cant_go
message I'm positive I saw) falsely concluded "all exits are described".

>would necessarily notice.  Room descriptions (again IMO) need to fix a
>general impression in the player's mind and give him enough information to
>go on from there.  As a player I'd rather examine a number of individual
>objects mentioned in a brief room description than read a really long and
>fully revelatory Thing.  Better pacing that way; more sense of depth.

Sure, but anything the player COULD notice should be accessible by
simply successively examining things.  I mean, I didn't even try
this at the time, but here's a transcript I just made of me attempting
to examine the room to learn which ways I might go; since a wall and
the ceiling are mentioned, I could imagine them possibly revealing
the extents of the room to the side.

  Dome of Broken Light
  A straight white light comes through the hole in the ceiling,
  but it is soon after twisted and bent: mirrors cast it from
  angle to angle; crystal divides it; glass stains it.

  In the north wall is a close door, covered with a silver substance.

  Fallen from one of these strands, but intact, is a large magnifying lens.

  >X WALL
  (the walls)
  You don't see anything particularly exciting.

  >X NORTH WALL
  All the walls are covered with tiny mirrors and bits of beads and shells,
  pressed into the raw plaster.

  >X CEILING
  Glittering all around the central eye, like the sun with a court of stars.

  >X DOME
  You can't see any such thing.

So, on one level it boils down to realism: it's not realistic
that the only way I can learn which way I can go is by striking
out in some direction that I have not yet perceived it is legitimate
for me to go, when looking around the place for things to do
should, one would think, reveal the option of going elsewhere.

Here are some possible ways you could solve the problem:

  Mention it in the ABOUT text.  "Not all exits from rooms are described."
  The ABOUT text is a good place to describe deviations from traditional
  IF, and I think this is such a thing.

  Provide an EXITS verb.  I hate this idea; it would lead to me having
  to type EXITS every time I went to a new room.  Hey, I have a great
  idea, lets make it so every time you move to a new room, you have
  to type LOOK to see the description, too!  Or better yet, since contents
  lists are kind of ugly and detract from the room description, let's
  introduce a new command CONTENTS that you have to type to learn the
  contents of the room.  See, this way lies madness.

  Steal somebody's status-line ASCII compass code.  I especially liked
  Tod Levi's compact two-line compass in Transfer.  In my not-yet-published
  reviews, on the subject of rooms without exits listed, I mentioned the
  status compass as a cool thing that I'd like to see in every game as a
  user-configurable option, but that I don't think providing a compass
  is sufficient to excuse otherwise-undescribed-exits.

In the case of Metamorphoses, since you feel so strongly about it and
since my own judgement of its text suggests that you know what you're
talking about in terms of succeding with prose, I'd let you get away
with a status-line compass and a mention of the lack of exit directions
in the ABOUT, that is, "let you get away with" in the sense of "I
would consider the issue addressed perfectly", as opposed to one
or the other which I would consider imperfect.

SeanB
[Not sure what it'd take for you to get the last lousy point from me, though.]
