> So, you might hear from 2 or 3 testers that they
>tried to use the squirt bottle of koolaid to cool down the lasagna, and
>were rewarded with, "The kool aid mists gently over the steaming
>lasagna." They say they found this counter-logical, as cool liquid
>should cool the lasagna. So you change the response to "As the kool aid
>hits the steaming lasagna, there is a hissing sound, and the quiet scent
>of strawberry meat sauce rises into the air. Nauseated, you throw the
>now-soggy lasagna as far away as you can manage." This appeals to the
>testers, so that problem is solved for the moment.
I LOVE adventures with those kinds of dead ends or failure! That's
what makes IF worth playing, in my opinion. Besides being more logical,
and thereby not annoying the player, there is an automatic reaction
from the "narrator character", the "little guy" whom you control with
your typed-in imperative sentences.
Some of the posts in this group talk about the future of IF, more multimedia,
more senses involved, moving toward a Star Trek holodeck-style adventure.
Obviously it makes sense to make the player feel like they, themselves,
are playing the game.
But this is, I think, the wrong goal for a TEXT adventure. No senses of
any kind are involved. (You can't say "sense of sight" because, for a
pure text adventure, there aren't any accompanying pictures.) Instead,
it's like you're kibitzing a novel. Really good novels get deep into
the main character's head, and his/her thoughts are often unlike your
own, since they're a different person than you.
So, in summary, one thing I like in IF is a "narrator" who has their own
reactions to things, helping the writer conceal what are
actually dead ends behind this "narrator's" personality. Most of the
IF I've played (not an exhaustive list) has this "narrator" trying to
be invisible, sort of a pantographic extension of the player. If you're
going to go this way, it seems to me, you should be complete about it:
in the "hot lasagna" puzzle above, the player should be able to force
the "narrator" to shove the blazing hot lasagna down his throat, with
the accompanying tissue damage, or messages like "you are feeling extreme
pain". This could, of course, get quite morbid, and is more like controlling
a zombie.
Is there any IF out there, for example, which requires that the player help
the narrator overcome some "personal" phobia before being able to undertake
some activity? Like trying to overcome a fear of heights?
What do you the rest of you think? Does that make IF more or less fun?
--Derek Jones
dtj@primenet.com
-- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Derek Jones dtj@primenet.com -------------------------------------------------------------------------------