Re: Mazes and why I can't get very far in Curses!


Thu, 5 Jan 1995 07:09:00 GMT

In article <3ef9g5$b1i@Owl.nstn.ca>, nstn1433@fox.nstn.ca(Jean-Henri Duteau) writes...
>Hi all,
Salutations.
Sorry about the esoteric conversation. Every once and a while someone
wants to implement a concept in this or that programming language and someone
else says,"Well, in order to implement this, you have to have some idea of how
the concept 'actually' works. . ." Since many of these concepts are inherently
not very real, this can often lead to heated debate which often does not
actually have anything to do with IF. (and often never gets back to it by the
by. . .so we still don't know how to best implement it)

> The thing that will make me drop a game faster than a hot potato
>is an inability to map the game world. And this inability really bothers
>me. I mean, here we are trying to simulate "real life" to some extent and
>we put in places that can't be mapped without explanations. I will use
>two examples of "mazes" that I think exemplify my thoughts. The maze from
>Zork has got to be the stupidest thing I ever encountered. Can someone
>explain to me how, after leaving a room to the north, I don't know that
>I've been turned around and am now facing west? Or that I've returned to
>the room I just came from? I can understand if I've come upon a room from
>a different angle that I don't recognize it, but if I just left a room, I
>should know where exactly I am now in relation to that room.

The Mazes of twisty passages "all alike" and "all different" are
definitely bummers, but hey, they're classics. In a way they were a way
to show what could be done with the room data structures. However, as to
the sudden translocation problem, well, that's a standard part of any magical
world in any game system. Stepping through a teleporter trap or a magical
portal can have this effect easily, and NO I DON'T think that it should
always be obvious to the player. However, I do believe that it can be severely
abused. Any body out there remember some of the teleporter mazes in Bard's
Tale? Not that I'm sure you refer to this as IF, but the mazes sure annoyed me.

> As opposed to this, an "easier" game Wishbringer had the trip up
>the mountainside. If you didn't map it, you had to remember from memory
>which way to turn or you'd fall off the cliff. This makes sense and is an
>appropriate "mapping problem" in my books. The first maze is an extreme
>case of "mapping problems" that seem to pop up time and time again. Even
>in those games that advertise "NO MAZES", they still have rooms where you
>leave north and come in facing east without explaining this to the player.
>These puzzles are ones I consider to be really brute force puzzles (kinda
>like that clothing thing in 3+=, 8->).

Well, sometimes things might be considered necessary, but not obvious.
I agree that it can be annoying, but you have to be careful when you construe
the author's intention as simply creating a puzzle. As a writer, I like to
think that the situations that I create have meaning somewhere even if you do
have to think about it, and making that meaning obvious can ruin a good story.

> To me, I should be able to map everywhere my persona goes in the
>game world. I may not be able to get everywhere, but my map should show
>me where I've been and how I got to where I am. In Curses, (which I've
>just retried), this happens quite nicely in the beginning (which is the
>farthest I ever get! 8-<). There are eight or nine rooms or so, and I
>have to solve some puzzles to go further (like, what the hell is a
>dumbwaiter???).

It's a small elevator used to send small loads (such as food or dishes or
laundry) between floors for the convenience of the serving staff. Hope
this helps.

>In my own game, the opening has fifteen rooms. The
>player can initially visit 9 of them and they are easily mappable and tend
>to indicate that more remains to be discovered. In the closing part, I
>have a maze (it's part of the norse mythos) but it's not one of those
>annoying indescript room mazes. The player is able to distinguish rooms
>from each other and knows how to backtrack to the room he just left, but
>there are an amazing number of dead-ends, and loop-backs, that make it a
>maze game. (The map was actually taken from one of Adrian Fisher's
>designs) (Fisher is an expert maze maker who designs about 100 real-life
>mazes a year.)

How big is this maze? If it's too large then it may prove every bit as
annoying as the ones you complain about. On the other hand, if you like
spending the memory it might be a great way to do the Labyrinth of Minos.
But what about the Escher type mazes used in movies like Labyrinth. They
give no explaination at all, and an entire maze could be in a single room!

> This leads me onto my next topic of automapping, but I'll leave
>that to a future thread. For now, I'd appreciate hearing other game
>designers' and game players' opinions about this. Please post to the news
>group as I'd like to put some IF discussion back in this group. 8->

Automapping is a useful feature. I wish Black Dawn had it on my Amiga.
(Curse curse). But remember that in order for it to work well, it really
shouldn't make every teleporter trap obvious. (Gee I seem to be on a new map)

James O. Shank Jr. HEE! v131p9t3@ubvms.cc.buffalo.edu
AKA: Ninstar Cybermage I or shank@acsu.buffalo.edu
Black Phoenix Rising... A or shank@sun.acsu.buffalo.edu
XINEOHPAEGAMREBYCRATSNINMONMYWAYBACKTOTHEWAYTHINGSARESUPPOSEDTOBELIFEISGOODYAY
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