: As with novels, this is part of the craft. I doubt there's a mechanical
: method that answers these kinds of questions. (Not a fun answer, of
: course.)
Oh, come on, Dave! You're a clever boffin! You work in a world-famous
AI lab. Surely you can whip up a little artificial intelligence that'll
do the trick? ;)
If things were that easy, eh?
: I guess it depends on how you feel about _Legend_, but I wouldn't
: underestimate the effectiveness of cut scenes. Instead of making your
: player go ">n, n, n, n" past five different buildings, you could have them
: type ">n" and noninteractively walk them past scenery that doesn't matter.
Hm. I've considered more overt ways of moving the player around, such
as cut scenes. But I guess I'm not entirely comfortable with this
approach. You know, if I'm sitting watching the puppets move on the stage,
and they glide along because someone is operating them with hidden
magnets, I don't much mind; it's part of the performance. But if a giant
hand reaches down from the Gods and picks up a player and puts it down
somewhere else, I feel the illusion is broken.
The difference, I suppose, is that one is cleverly disguised to look
internal to the action whereas the other is more clearly external. In an
adventure game I don't object to a game saying "As you pass through the
gate a cloud of noisome gas blows in. You collapse..." because the
action, no matter how contrived, seems part of the performance. But if
the game says "You hang around for a few minutes, then decide to walk
back to the more interesting part of the hallway." then I feel like my
character is being overtly manipulated by the author.
: I do find it encouraging that separate people have cited all three of the
: Barfee Outlet, the sequence on Foon, and the New Hell bit as portions of
: the game that evoked very vivid mental pictures. These are quite different
: from each other when it comes to level of interactivity. So I think many
: different styles can work.
That's a good point. Perhaps I should focus on trying to conjure up
evocative scenes rather than getting sidetracked by the issue of how
transparent the player's manipulation seems to be...
- Neil K.
-- Neil K. Guy * neilg@sfu.ca * tela@tela.bc.ca 49N 16' 123W 7' * Vancouver, BC, Canada