Final Selection - About the game
=================================

This game takes place entirely in one room. However, I wanted to create some sort of feeling of space and movement (for aesthetic reasons) and I wanted a framework for helping the parser to cope with the many objects in the room (for purely practical reasons). Hence, the game has a concept of the "point of focus" of the player's attention within the room. This means that some commands will behave slightly differently, depending on the current focus. For instance, if the player is sitting at the desk, the LOOK command will give more detail about objects which are on the desk. Similarly, if the player is at the desk and types a command such as TAKE BOOK, the game will assume that this refers to the book on the desk (if there is one) rather than the one on, say, the bookcase. Nevertheless, all accessible objects within the room remain in scope, and can be accessed if referred to unambiguously: eg TAKE THE GREEN PAPERBACK BOOK (if there is one) will cause the player to walk over to the part of the room where this item is located and pick it up, whilst automatically switching the focus to this new area. This is all less complicated than it sounds, and I hope it feels reasonably natural to the player.

Another unusual feature of the game is that, because the game takes place in a single location, there is little point in collecting every portable object into a huge inventory. I didn't want to give the player a "sack" and I felt that it was unrealistic for the player to make a minute examination of, say, a small scrap of paper whilst being encumbered with armfuls of boxes, bags and clothing. Hence, there is a limit on the total number of objects that can be carried, and there is also a limit on the number of "larger" objects. When the hands are deemed to be "full", objects are automatically put down when others are picked up. This should not be a major inconvenience, as all the objects remain accessible to the player at all times, anyway, because the game takes place in one room!

The above can result in objects being "automatically" dropped in different parts of the room (on the table, the shelf, the hatstand, etc) so I have provided a "WHERE IS" command that allows the player to locate any object that should be visible in the room. For example, typing "WHERE IS THE HAT" (or just WHERE HAT") will elicit a response such as "You can see a top hat on the hatstand".

The solving of the game's puzzles requires some deductions to be made from number and word clues. To avoid the player having to make copious notes, the game records everything that could possibly be a clue, and adds it into a menu which can be consulted by typing NOTE or REVIEW. This has been implemented using the menus.h library.

Nothing in the game can inflict a fatal injury on the player and it should not be possible to manipulate the objects so as to make the game unwinnable, until the very end. This means that it should not be necessary to restart the game, simply because of some mistake in the manipulation of its objects.

I hope you enjoy the game!

Sam Gordon
sam_r_gordon@hotmail.com
April 2006










