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From: buzzard@world.std.com (Sean T Barrett)
Subject: Re: [comp00] buzzard reviews (very long)
Message-ID: <G4EsMq.Fnv@world.std.com>
Date: Wed, 22 Nov 2000 04:32:49 GMT
References: <G4D2tz.EM1@world.std.com> <8vf8qa$ksl$1@nnrp1.deja.com>
Organization: The World Public Access UNIX, Brookline, MA
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Xref: news.duke.edu rec.games.int-fiction:58986

Spoilers for Planet of the Infinite Minds



















In article <8vf8qa$ksl$1@nnrp1.deja.com>,  <afrobot@my-deja.com> wrote:
[explanation that you're creating a library because you're supposed
 to be looking for a book, so it's clued--I'm summarizing here because
 this post had weird non-ASCII characters which made my editor misbehave
 so I couldn't trim it properly]

Ok, that makes sense. Unfortunately, the puzzle also hinges
on classic adventure game "what I say not what I mean" logic;
the world is allowed to behave in an illogical manner simply
because it matches some other language.  Now, this certainly
wasn't the first time (e.g. the wearing of time), but it's
pretty clearly incoherent: the PC wants to examine a book,
so he creates a library containing that book; however, the
premise of his ability to create is that he must be able to
imagine every detail of the thing he's creating; and the
introductory text mentioned that the PC knew the library in every
detail. We are even given an example of something the player
doesn't know in every detail--the key. Wouldn't the PC's
ability to create a library with a particular book imply
the PC already knew the book? Wouldn't the ability of
the PC to create the contents of that book in every detail imply
that the PC already knew every detail ofthe book?  Hence why
would the PC even want to do it?

So I can see what you intended, and I don't mean it as an insult
to call it "adventure game illogic"--ad verbum and letters
from home were both based around the same sort of thing--but
adventure game illogic can be hard to predict, which, I tihnk,
means it needs even more clueing if you want the player to feel
properly motivated.  (I don't think it was hard to come up with
the idea of typing that command--I just had no clue why I
was doing it, due to the logic from the previous paragraph.)

SeanB
