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From: "Look What the Cat Dragged in" <news@lwtcdz.prestel.co.uk>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction,rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: New book by Graham Nelson
Date: 29 Nov 1997 19:24:41 GMT
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Graham Nelson <graham@gnelson.demon.co.uk> wrote in article
<ant2822210b0M+4%@gnelson.demon.co.uk>...
> 
> I should really apologise to regular readers of rec.*.int-fiction
> for an unwarranted helping of spam, because this post is just to let
> people know that my first honest-to-goodness book has been published.

So, you think you get the special treatment just because you wrote Inform,
eh?

No such luck...

(Sorry this is a bit long, but it's the best I could churn out in the time
available)

------

Ticking the little box marked 'Live performance' was a bad idea,
considering how prone you are to bouts of anxiety. But you'd never get your
book published otherwise...

Howl
An Interactive poetry reading
By J.S.Alan
Serial number 112997.

You are in a dressing room. There is a make-up table and a mirror with
flashing bulbs round the edges, and various signatures on the wall. A door
leads west.

>x signatures
"laurence olivier, patrick stewart, steven fry, bob eggery IV. The full
range of theatrical legends. Footlights and all that."

>why am i here?
"That question has not yet been satisfactorily answered by man or machine,
but in your present situation, you are here for a poetry recital."

>examine table
There lies a sheet of paper.

>x sheet
Some of your best work is written here, pre-prepared for the recital in an
incompetent handwritten scrawl.

>get sheet
"Taken. [You score one point!!]"

>x mirror
You see a scruffy, unshaven bloke of between 18-30. You are wearing your
best white sunday-suit. Let's just hope no-one notices the tomato-soup
stain from last year's christmas party.

>who am i
Who can say? ;-)

There is a loud knock at the door.

"5 minutes." says a gruff voice. Footsteps recede down the corridor.

>open door
The door appears to be locked.

>knock on door.
"Sorry, the verb 'knock' is not implemented in the standard parser. ;-)

>damn
Now, now, this is a poetry recital, not an Eddie Izzard sketch.

>save
Filename?:Izzard1
Saved.

>wait
Time passes.

As you wait, you get butterflies in your stomach. Perhaps you're not doing
this quite right.

>wait
Time passes.

There is a knock at the door.
"You're on," says the same gruff voice. There is a click at the door and
footsteps recede down the corridor.

>open door
Opened.

>w
Hallway

You stand outside your dressing room, which is to the east. Wooden steps
lead up to the west onto a brightly-lit stage.  A corridor leads back
south.

>s
It's too late to chicken out now!!

>w
Your heart begins to beat wildly as you approach the stairs. Anxious, you
climb slowly and walk across the stage...

Onstage

Bright lights glare down at you as you stand center-stage. Mercifully, due
to the glare from the lights, you can only see a few members of the
audence; the rest might as well not exist. The stage leads off to the east
and west.

>x members
"As you scan the front row, you spot someone particularly attractive,
garbed in blue."

The audience begins to get restless. You hear unsatisfied murmurings.

>read poetry.
"You look down at the sheet. You see these first few lines:

"Autumn Gadgetry: 

The leaves pop from the trees in the autumn, like spring-loaded gadgets,
whilst the flies die off one by one, leaving only maggots."

Not bad. The poem goes on and on and on...

[You score one point!!]

The audience starts to cough and chatter amongst themselves. 
[Remember, this is a poetry RECITAL]

>recite poetry
You cough and approach the microphone, and read out the first line of your
poem, desperately trying not to sound too wooden. Sadly, the audience are
no longer listening. Perhaps you should try learning it next time.

>recite poetry
"Anxiety building, you recite some more poetry. The audience remains
indifferent."

As you notice the attractive stranger on the front row leaving in disgust,
a large, burly man climbs up onto the stage. As he approaches you, you
detect the strong smell of whisky on his breath from afar.

"Errrr. I payed 3 quid for this... rabbish... and you're c--p. You gonna
pay me back?"

>i
You have 5 quid and a sheet of poetry.

>pay man
"You hand over the fiver. The man scowls.

"That pays for me. Now what about me bird? This is a quid short."

The man prepares to land a hamfisted punch.

>e
"You quickly exit stage east... Your chances of ever getting published are
dashed. Back to lecturing English to indifferent genius halfbakes, I
suppose."

"You scored 2 out of 7, earning you the rank of Mumbling Bumbler. Restore,
Undo, Restart?"

>restore

Filename: Izzard1
Game Restored.

>wait
Time passes.

>learn poetry
"You run the simple verses through your mind several times until they're
clearly fixed in your mind."

>wait
Time passes.

Footsteps come up the corridor.
"You're on. Good luck." says a gruff voice through the door. You hear a
click from the door and receding footsteps.

>open door
Opened.

>drop sheet.
"You discard the sheet. You won't be needing it now, anyway."

>superbrief
Superbrief engaged.

>s
Hallway

>w
Onstage
You can barely see an attractive stranger near the front of the crowd
through the bright lights.

>recite poetry
"Summing up all your confidence, you clear your throat and approach the
mic.

"This is Autumn Gadgetry:" you begin, your voice booming across the room.

You read some lines:

'The leaves pop from the trees in the autumn, like spring-loaded gadgets,
whilst the flies die off one by one, leaving only maggots.'

You sense the audience's appreciation."

>examine stranger
"Looking up at you in fascination."

The atmosphere is crystallising as you stand around saying nothing.

>recite poetry
"Each leaf falls on another, until slowly they crumble, becoming as one in
the autumn tumble."

There is a muted silence. You've got them now.

>again
"The trees shed what they can, but we are all mortal."

That is all you can remember of the sheet.

>wait
Time passes.

The audience realises you have finished, and begins to applaud rapturously.
You feel a warm glow of satisfaction fill you. The attractive stranger on
the front row climbs up onto the stage, and embraces you.
"Let's go backstage..." says the stranger.

>w
You exit stage west. The attractive stranger follows. The applause recedes
into the distance.

Behind Curtains

>look

Behind Curtains

Here, offstage, and near the curtains, you feel anything can happen.

The attractive stranger is stood here, looking at you eagerly.

"That was a great recital. So moving and warm."

>kiss stranger
"You both reach to embrace, and engage in a bit of 'creative smooching'.
The material world recedes into the distance. You are now as one with the
stranger (in a spiritual sense...).

As the kiss grows in satisfaction, you open your eyes. And the world thumps
you back in the face.

Now that you come to think of it, the attractive stranger isn't really a
stranger at all...

>examine stranger

As you mentally remove the layers of make-up, the young lady metamorphoses
into someone several years younger. Recognition slowly dawns on you... One
of the young ladies from the English class you teach.

And looking over her shoulder, you see the Dean standing onstage, arms
folded, frowning in your general direction.

"Damn and s---." you murmur.
"Huh?" says Sandy.
"This isn't Eddie Izzard, you know." says the Dean, "But what the heck;
I've seen worse."

You breathe a sigh of relief. Looks like you get to keep the girl of your
dreams, your job AND get your poetry published.

So, rather a perfect time for the 30-foot curtain to decide to suddenly
fall on your head and put you in hospital for 3 weeks with  mild concussion
and miss the book signing session...

But maybe that's all for the best.

The End

You scored 7 out of 7, earning you the rank of Poet Laureate. Well done.

Restart, Undo, Restore?

>save

Internal Error #4

--  End of Session  --

> Thanks for reading.  And now back to our regular diet of linearity,
> Infotrivia, bug reports and ruthless Turkish Delight criticism...

Seriously though, good luck with your book!! I might take a look at it
myself, you know, out of interest...

BTW, your Pound sign comes out as a Hash. But I guess you know this.

J.Smith



From dmss100@york.ac.uk Mon Dec  1 17:59:28 MET 1997
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From: Den of Iniquity <dmss100@york.ac.uk>
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Subject: Re: New book by Graham Nelson
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On 29 Nov 1997, Look What the Cat Dragged in wrote:

>Howl
>An Interactive poetry reading
>By J.S.Alan
>Serial number 112997.
[...]
>"Autumn Gadgetry: 
>
>The leaves pop from the trees in the autumn, like spring-loaded gadgets,
>whilst the flies die off one by one, leaving only maggots."

Noooooo! NO! You can't start a poem with leaves like spring-loaded
gadgets! Nooooo!

(Hee hee, sorry, couldn't resist. :D )

Anyway, I'd have thought it should go more like this:


Purple Poetry
A POETASTER'S UNINTERACTIVE PETTIFOGGERY
Release 1 / Serial Number 971201

The long, slippery slope

Standing here on the path of good intentions you see seven
(Count them: seven) deadly sins. Standing on a rope above is Heaven.
Below, a single smudge of soul is reaching high
On tiny tiptoes stretching tall
Nearly reaching, not quite reaching.

Hope is here, cowering, small.

> EXAMINE SOUL

A bleeding heart, alone and cold,
Vulnerable, tender - yet petrified.

> TAKE IT
Taken.

> BREAK IT
Broken.

> DERIDE
So snide.

Swiftly, Hope, on tattered wing
Flees screaming up the rope.

> X HOPE

You can't see any such thing.

> TAKE PRIDE

    *** You have died ***


Pride, of all sins, is worst of all:
The more you have, the further you fall.
You'll be punished for acting without thought for what's fit...

Would you like to RESTART, RESTORE a saved game or QUIT?




From erkyrath@netcom.com Mon Dec  1 18:08:06 MET 1997
Article: 31463 of rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: erkyrath@netcom.com (Andrew Plotkin)
Subject: Re: [IF Theory]Graphics and sound in text adventures
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HairBrain (osb@bu.telia.no) wrote:

> Someone (darned if I can remember who) on this newsgroup said something like "I
> don't know how to make a _text_ adventure with graphics".  Does that
> necessarily have to be so?  For instance, if I was to make an adventure game
> which used text to describe the story, surroundings, action and all that, but
> had a map like a top-down view of the location, wouldn't it still be a text
> adventure?

The defining aspect of "classic text IF" (the Colossal Cave genre) is 
text *input*, plus enough text output to support the input structure.

Additional output (graphics, sound, music, animation) doesn't affect the 
core of the system at all. That was demonstrated perfectly well by 
Spellcasting 101, and Arthur and Shogun before that (hell, and The Wizard 
and the Princess before that.)

Nobody has explored the possibilities of a graphical base with text 
input, and the text output supplied by some other, non-primary method.
 
For example (just one possibility): the standard Myst interface, but with
a command line at the bottom, and if you click on an object in the display
image the object's name is pasted into the command line. You'd still need
a text output window, for text responses to many commands -- boilerplate,
detailed "you can't do that" responses, anything which can't be
graphically rendered. 

Unfortunately at that point you're caught in the game industry trap. You 
can't afford to do all the graphics rendering unless the game will sell
to a mass audience, and text IF just doesn't. I think this structure 
could be just as strong as current pure-text games, but it's impractical 
at this time.

--Z

-- 

"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the
borogoves..."


From mk270@cam.ac.uk Tue Dec  2 15:44:10 MET 1997
Article: 31538 of rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: Martin Keegan <mk270@cam.ac.uk>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction,rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Hard puzzles in IF?
Date: Tue, 02 Dec 1997 05:44:51 +0000
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Graham Nelson wrote:
> 
> In article <347A38CD.1D44E957@telegram.infi.net>, jack
> <URL:mailto:jacko11@telegram.infi.net> wrote:
> > I was reading the other day about the Rosetta stone, and how they
> > deciphered the actual alphabet of the egyptians. (Well, it's actually an
> > alphabet, a syllabary, and ideographic picture writing all at once)
> >
> > Anyway, I wonder what a hard puzzle in IF (not *that* hard) but
> > something involving decoding a message and figuring out hard stuff in a
> > scientific way, as one of the puzzles in an IF game?
> 
> Try Infocom's superb (if early and slightly primitive) game
> "Infidel", in which you have to decipher heiroglyphics.  Don't be
> deterred by the pointless and misleading title, or by the rather
> drab prologue to the game -- once you get into the Pyramid it
> becomes clear that you're playing a masterpiece.

The MUD, Island, had a fun quest where you had to decode a simple
cipher. You wandered round, listening to characters from Alice in
Wonderland talking utter gibberish, and, using frequency analysis and
inspired guesswork, could work out which letters were being substituted.

Not only did this allow one to read other clues elsewhere in the game,
but writing out the code in alphabetical order revealed ANOTHER message:

A was written as P, B as I, etc, so:

ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
PITFOURKNAVESBCDGHJLMQWXYZ

"pit four knaves" ('pitting' was a common activity in the game - it
involved
discarding objects for points), was what you had to do to complete the
quest.

How long it took to come up with a meaningful phrase with no repeated
letters
is not known ;)

Mk


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From: "Look What the Cat Dragged in" <news@lwtcdz.prestel.co.uk>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction,rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: New book by Graham Nelson
Date: 29 Nov 1997 19:24:41 GMT
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Graham Nelson <graham@gnelson.demon.co.uk> wrote in article
<ant2822210b0M+4%@gnelson.demon.co.uk>...
> 
> I should really apologise to regular readers of rec.*.int-fiction
> for an unwarranted helping of spam, because this post is just to let
> people know that my first honest-to-goodness book has been published.

So, you think you get the special treatment just because you wrote Inform,
eh?

No such luck...

(Sorry this is a bit long, but it's the best I could churn out in the time
available)

------

Ticking the little box marked 'Live performance' was a bad idea,
considering how prone you are to bouts of anxiety. But you'd never get your
book published otherwise...

Howl
An Interactive poetry reading
By J.S.Alan
Serial number 112997.

You are in a dressing room. There is a make-up table and a mirror with
flashing bulbs round the edges, and various signatures on the wall. A door
leads west.

>x signatures
"laurence olivier, patrick stewart, steven fry, bob eggery IV. The full
range of theatrical legends. Footlights and all that."

>why am i here?
"That question has not yet been satisfactorily answered by man or machine,
but in your present situation, you are here for a poetry recital."

>examine table
There lies a sheet of paper.

>x sheet
Some of your best work is written here, pre-prepared for the recital in an
incompetent handwritten scrawl.

>get sheet
"Taken. [You score one point!!]"

>x mirror
You see a scruffy, unshaven bloke of between 18-30. You are wearing your
best white sunday-suit. Let's just hope no-one notices the tomato-soup
stain from last year's christmas party.

>who am i
Who can say? ;-)

There is a loud knock at the door.

"5 minutes." says a gruff voice. Footsteps recede down the corridor.

>open door
The door appears to be locked.

>knock on door.
"Sorry, the verb 'knock' is not implemented in the standard parser. ;-)

>damn
Now, now, this is a poetry recital, not an Eddie Izzard sketch.

>save
Filename?:Izzard1
Saved.

>wait
Time passes.

As you wait, you get butterflies in your stomach. Perhaps you're not doing
this quite right.

>wait
Time passes.

There is a knock at the door.
"You're on," says the same gruff voice. There is a click at the door and
footsteps recede down the corridor.

>open door
Opened.

>w
Hallway

You stand outside your dressing room, which is to the east. Wooden steps
lead up to the west onto a brightly-lit stage.  A corridor leads back
south.

>s
It's too late to chicken out now!!

>w
Your heart begins to beat wildly as you approach the stairs. Anxious, you
climb slowly and walk across the stage...

Onstage

Bright lights glare down at you as you stand center-stage. Mercifully, due
to the glare from the lights, you can only see a few members of the
audence; the rest might as well not exist. The stage leads off to the east
and west.

>x members
"As you scan the front row, you spot someone particularly attractive,
garbed in blue."

The audience begins to get restless. You hear unsatisfied murmurings.

>read poetry.
"You look down at the sheet. You see these first few lines:

"Autumn Gadgetry: 

The leaves pop from the trees in the autumn, like spring-loaded gadgets,
whilst the flies die off one by one, leaving only maggots."

Not bad. The poem goes on and on and on...

[You score one point!!]

The audience starts to cough and chatter amongst themselves. 
[Remember, this is a poetry RECITAL]

>recite poetry
You cough and approach the microphone, and read out the first line of your
poem, desperately trying not to sound too wooden. Sadly, the audience are
no longer listening. Perhaps you should try learning it next time.

>recite poetry
"Anxiety building, you recite some more poetry. The audience remains
indifferent."

As you notice the attractive stranger on the front row leaving in disgust,
a large, burly man climbs up onto the stage. As he approaches you, you
detect the strong smell of whisky on his breath from afar.

"Errrr. I payed 3 quid for this... rabbish... and you're c--p. You gonna
pay me back?"

>i
You have 5 quid and a sheet of poetry.

>pay man
"You hand over the fiver. The man scowls.

"That pays for me. Now what about me bird? This is a quid short."

The man prepares to land a hamfisted punch.

>e
"You quickly exit stage east... Your chances of ever getting published are
dashed. Back to lecturing English to indifferent genius halfbakes, I
suppose."

"You scored 2 out of 7, earning you the rank of Mumbling Bumbler. Restore,
Undo, Restart?"

>restore

Filename: Izzard1
Game Restored.

>wait
Time passes.

>learn poetry
"You run the simple verses through your mind several times until they're
clearly fixed in your mind."

>wait
Time passes.

Footsteps come up the corridor.
"You're on. Good luck." says a gruff voice through the door. You hear a
click from the door and receding footsteps.

>open door
Opened.

>drop sheet.
"You discard the sheet. You won't be needing it now, anyway."

>superbrief
Superbrief engaged.

>s
Hallway

>w
Onstage
You can barely see an attractive stranger near the front of the crowd
through the bright lights.

>recite poetry
"Summing up all your confidence, you clear your throat and approach the
mic.

"This is Autumn Gadgetry:" you begin, your voice booming across the room.

You read some lines:

'The leaves pop from the trees in the autumn, like spring-loaded gadgets,
whilst the flies die off one by one, leaving only maggots.'

You sense the audience's appreciation."

>examine stranger
"Looking up at you in fascination."

The atmosphere is crystallising as you stand around saying nothing.

>recite poetry
"Each leaf falls on another, until slowly they crumble, becoming as one in
the autumn tumble."

There is a muted silence. You've got them now.

>again
"The trees shed what they can, but we are all mortal."

That is all you can remember of the sheet.

>wait
Time passes.

The audience realises you have finished, and begins to applaud rapturously.
You feel a warm glow of satisfaction fill you. The attractive stranger on
the front row climbs up onto the stage, and embraces you.
"Let's go backstage..." says the stranger.

>w
You exit stage west. The attractive stranger follows. The applause recedes
into the distance.

Behind Curtains

>look

Behind Curtains

Here, offstage, and near the curtains, you feel anything can happen.

The attractive stranger is stood here, looking at you eagerly.

"That was a great recital. So moving and warm."

>kiss stranger
"You both reach to embrace, and engage in a bit of 'creative smooching'.
The material world recedes into the distance. You are now as one with the
stranger (in a spiritual sense...).

As the kiss grows in satisfaction, you open your eyes. And the world thumps
you back in the face.

Now that you come to think of it, the attractive stranger isn't really a
stranger at all...

>examine stranger

As you mentally remove the layers of make-up, the young lady metamorphoses
into someone several years younger. Recognition slowly dawns on you... One
of the young ladies from the English class you teach.

And looking over her shoulder, you see the Dean standing onstage, arms
folded, frowning in your general direction.

"Damn and s---." you murmur.
"Huh?" says Sandy.
"This isn't Eddie Izzard, you know." says the Dean, "But what the heck;
I've seen worse."

You breathe a sigh of relief. Looks like you get to keep the girl of your
dreams, your job AND get your poetry published.

So, rather a perfect time for the 30-foot curtain to decide to suddenly
fall on your head and put you in hospital for 3 weeks with  mild concussion
and miss the book signing session...

But maybe that's all for the best.

The End

You scored 7 out of 7, earning you the rank of Poet Laureate. Well done.

Restart, Undo, Restore?

>save

Internal Error #4

--  End of Session  --

> Thanks for reading.  And now back to our regular diet of linearity,
> Infotrivia, bug reports and ruthless Turkish Delight criticism...

Seriously though, good luck with your book!! I might take a look at it
myself, you know, out of interest...

BTW, your Pound sign comes out as a Hash. But I guess you know this.

J.Smith



From news@lwtcdz.prestel.co.uk Wed Dec  3 14:39:16 MET 1997
Article: 31484 of rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: "Look What the Cat Dragged in" <news@lwtcdz.prestel.co.uk>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction,rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: New book by Graham Nelson
Date: 29 Nov 1997 19:24:41 GMT
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Graham Nelson <graham@gnelson.demon.co.uk> wrote in article
<ant2822210b0M+4%@gnelson.demon.co.uk>...
> 
> I should really apologise to regular readers of rec.*.int-fiction
> for an unwarranted helping of spam, because this post is just to let
> people know that my first honest-to-goodness book has been published.

So, you think you get the special treatment just because you wrote Inform,
eh?

No such luck...

(Sorry this is a bit long, but it's the best I could churn out in the time
available)

------

Ticking the little box marked 'Live performance' was a bad idea,
considering how prone you are to bouts of anxiety. But you'd never get your
book published otherwise...

Howl
An Interactive poetry reading
By J.S.Alan
Serial number 112997.

You are in a dressing room. There is a make-up table and a mirror with
flashing bulbs round the edges, and various signatures on the wall. A door
leads west.

>x signatures
"laurence olivier, patrick stewart, steven fry, bob eggery IV. The full
range of theatrical legends. Footlights and all that."

>why am i here?
"That question has not yet been satisfactorily answered by man or machine,
but in your present situation, you are here for a poetry recital."

>examine table
There lies a sheet of paper.

>x sheet
Some of your best work is written here, pre-prepared for the recital in an
incompetent handwritten scrawl.

>get sheet
"Taken. [You score one point!!]"

>x mirror
You see a scruffy, unshaven bloke of between 18-30. You are wearing your
best white sunday-suit. Let's just hope no-one notices the tomato-soup
stain from last year's christmas party.

>who am i
Who can say? ;-)

There is a loud knock at the door.

"5 minutes." says a gruff voice. Footsteps recede down the corridor.

>open door
The door appears to be locked.

>knock on door.
"Sorry, the verb 'knock' is not implemented in the standard parser. ;-)

>damn
Now, now, this is a poetry recital, not an Eddie Izzard sketch.

>save
Filename?:Izzard1
Saved.

>wait
Time passes.

As you wait, you get butterflies in your stomach. Perhaps you're not doing
this quite right.

>wait
Time passes.

There is a knock at the door.
"You're on," says the same gruff voice. There is a click at the door and
footsteps recede down the corridor.

>open door
Opened.

>w
Hallway

You stand outside your dressing room, which is to the east. Wooden steps
lead up to the west onto a brightly-lit stage.  A corridor leads back
south.

>s
It's too late to chicken out now!!

>w
Your heart begins to beat wildly as you approach the stairs. Anxious, you
climb slowly and walk across the stage...

Onstage

Bright lights glare down at you as you stand center-stage. Mercifully, due
to the glare from the lights, you can only see a few members of the
audence; the rest might as well not exist. The stage leads off to the east
and west.

>x members
"As you scan the front row, you spot someone particularly attractive,
garbed in blue."

The audience begins to get restless. You hear unsatisfied murmurings.

>read poetry.
"You look down at the sheet. You see these first few lines:

"Autumn Gadgetry: 

The leaves pop from the trees in the autumn, like spring-loaded gadgets,
whilst the flies die off one by one, leaving only maggots."

Not bad. The poem goes on and on and on...

[You score one point!!]

The audience starts to cough and chatter amongst themselves. 
[Remember, this is a poetry RECITAL]

>recite poetry
You cough and approach the microphone, and read out the first line of your
poem, desperately trying not to sound too wooden. Sadly, the audience are
no longer listening. Perhaps you should try learning it next time.

>recite poetry
"Anxiety building, you recite some more poetry. The audience remains
indifferent."

As you notice the attractive stranger on the front row leaving in disgust,
a large, burly man climbs up onto the stage. As he approaches you, you
detect the strong smell of whisky on his breath from afar.

"Errrr. I payed 3 quid for this... rabbish... and you're c--p. You gonna
pay me back?"

>i
You have 5 quid and a sheet of poetry.

>pay man
"You hand over the fiver. The man scowls.

"That pays for me. Now what about me bird? This is a quid short."

The man prepares to land a hamfisted punch.

>e
"You quickly exit stage east... Your chances of ever getting published are
dashed. Back to lecturing English to indifferent genius halfbakes, I
suppose."

"You scored 2 out of 7, earning you the rank of Mumbling Bumbler. Restore,
Undo, Restart?"

>restore

Filename: Izzard1
Game Restored.

>wait
Time passes.

>learn poetry
"You run the simple verses through your mind several times until they're
clearly fixed in your mind."

>wait
Time passes.

Footsteps come up the corridor.
"You're on. Good luck." says a gruff voice through the door. You hear a
click from the door and receding footsteps.

>open door
Opened.

>drop sheet.
"You discard the sheet. You won't be needing it now, anyway."

>superbrief
Superbrief engaged.

>s
Hallway

>w
Onstage
You can barely see an attractive stranger near the front of the crowd
through the bright lights.

>recite poetry
"Summing up all your confidence, you clear your throat and approach the
mic.

"This is Autumn Gadgetry:" you begin, your voice booming across the room.

You read some lines:

'The leaves pop from the trees in the autumn, like spring-loaded gadgets,
whilst the flies die off one by one, leaving only maggots.'

You sense the audience's appreciation."

>examine stranger
"Looking up at you in fascination."

The atmosphere is crystallising as you stand around saying nothing.

>recite poetry
"Each leaf falls on another, until slowly they crumble, becoming as one in
the autumn tumble."

There is a muted silence. You've got them now.

>again
"The trees shed what they can, but we are all mortal."

That is all you can remember of the sheet.

>wait
Time passes.

The audience realises you have finished, and begins to applaud rapturously.
You feel a warm glow of satisfaction fill you. The attractive stranger on
the front row climbs up onto the stage, and embraces you.
"Let's go backstage..." says the stranger.

>w
You exit stage west. The attractive stranger follows. The applause recedes
into the distance.

Behind Curtains

>look

Behind Curtains

Here, offstage, and near the curtains, you feel anything can happen.

The attractive stranger is stood here, looking at you eagerly.

"That was a great recital. So moving and warm."

>kiss stranger
"You both reach to embrace, and engage in a bit of 'creative smooching'.
The material world recedes into the distance. You are now as one with the
stranger (in a spiritual sense...).

As the kiss grows in satisfaction, you open your eyes. And the world thumps
you back in the face.

Now that you come to think of it, the attractive stranger isn't really a
stranger at all...

>examine stranger

As you mentally remove the layers of make-up, the young lady metamorphoses
into someone several years younger. Recognition slowly dawns on you... One
of the young ladies from the English class you teach.

And looking over her shoulder, you see the Dean standing onstage, arms
folded, frowning in your general direction.

"Damn and s---." you murmur.
"Huh?" says Sandy.
"This isn't Eddie Izzard, you know." says the Dean, "But what the heck;
I've seen worse."

You breathe a sigh of relief. Looks like you get to keep the girl of your
dreams, your job AND get your poetry published.

So, rather a perfect time for the 30-foot curtain to decide to suddenly
fall on your head and put you in hospital for 3 weeks with  mild concussion
and miss the book signing session...

But maybe that's all for the best.

The End

You scored 7 out of 7, earning you the rank of Poet Laureate. Well done.

Restart, Undo, Restore?

>save

Internal Error #4

--  End of Session  --

> Thanks for reading.  And now back to our regular diet of linearity,
> Infotrivia, bug reports and ruthless Turkish Delight criticism...

Seriously though, good luck with your book!! I might take a look at it
myself, you know, out of interest...

BTW, your Pound sign comes out as a Hash. But I guess you know this.

J.Smith



From dmss100@york.ac.uk Wed Dec  3 14:40:03 MET 1997
Article: 31542 of rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: Den of Iniquity <dmss100@york.ac.uk>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: New book by Graham Nelson
Date: Tue, 2 Dec 1997 12:29:45 +0000
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On 1 Dec 1997, Jeremy A.Smith wrote:

>Den of Iniquity <dmss100@york.ac.uk> wrote in article
>> Anyway, I'd have thought it should go more like this:
>
>Very nifty. But mine had more rooms.

Ah, but if only all IF were judged this way.

"The writing was excellent, the plot first class and the NPC's were so
believable I cried till it hurt. However there were only four locations so
I'm afraid I can only give a rating of 3/10." 

"Utter balderdash. Full of errors, both in the writing and in the way
commands were parsed. Incredibly frustrating. But it had literally
thousands of rooms. Huzzah! 10/10."

:)

--
Den



From dmss100@york.ac.uk Fri Dec  5 18:01:39 MET 1997
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From: Den of Iniquity <dmss100@york.ac.uk>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: "Thinking" in game under development
Date: Thu, 4 Dec 1997 11:54:54 +0000
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On Tue, 2 Dec 1997, Marshall T. Vandegrift wrote:

>In the game I'm working on (in Inform) I'm toying with a "thought system," 
>which works similarly to a normal inventory, but controls ideas instead of 
>objects.

>>think
>
>Your mind currently contains:
>  some thoughts on magic (which are currently condensed)
>  some thoughts on local items (which are currently uncondensed)
>    a small jewel
>    your diary
>  your greatest secret

I'm repulsed by this idea, though it's taken me some time to figure out
why. It seems so inhuman. It's not _that_ bad to make an inventory of
belongings, though even that is slightly artificial. Whether to include
clothing, for example, is up to the author, and the inclusion of clothing
almost always hints that it might be important in some way. And you often
secretly carry around an inventory of body parts which can be referred to.
But to itemise thoughts in this way... Most games rely on the player, not
the protagonist, to remember where they left the small jewel, or what it
looked like. (Of course with TADS and some interpretations of other
systems you can scroll back to find the text as it was.) I'm wary of this
other method of 'remembering'.

As for thoughts about your protagonist's past, their secrets and so on,
well you'd rather hope that they were introduced through the prose, in
much the way that you'd hope that you'd find out that Character A was a
grumpy chap with a weakness for alcohol through conversation or
straightforward implication rather than being told explicitly. Well,
that's the way I prefer it, otherwise the character is in danger of
becoming a cardboard cut-out alcoholic (a locked door for whom a bottle of
brandy is the key, perhaps?) as opposed to a character in a story.

I described the idea of itemising knowledge as inhuman - which means of
course that you might get away with it with a more novel protagonist, an
android, for instance, that cannot (for a very simple example) unlock a
door with a key until the correct procedures have been uploaded into RAM
or the android has witness another being performed such an action and
deduced the mechanism involved. Add to that the possibility of altering
the way the world is portrayed by upgrading one's sensor array (shades of
AMFV, perhaps) and I'm getting an idea about which I'm much more
enthusiastic.

As for think, well, I'd see it in a slightly different role, as a way of
augmenting the information that is available to the player in a given
situation, as if it were an 'authorised' hint. But I'd then have to ask if
that information should just be carried in the main body of text instead.

--
Den



From jeffhatch@juno.com Fri Dec  5 19:15:54 MET 1997
Article: 31637 of rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: Jeff Hatch <jeffhatch@juno.com>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Parser / story separation
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Barnaby Evans wrote:
> 
> Jeff Hatch wrote:
> > Though I don't see the point of Save prevention, like in Curses.
> 
> Because it's funny, of course.
> 
> I love it when the story and the maintenance procedures 'talk' to each
> other. It adds a certain self-awareness, I suppose. I wish people
> exploited this sort of thing more. Curses is brilliant for this - things
> like the game chastising you for swearing by making you eat a bar of
> soap before you can leave your location, or giving you five points for
> kissing your aunt and then changing its mind and taking them away again
> a few turns later - and it makes for a signifigantly richer experience,
> I think. Because, like, the game isn't *ashamed* of admitting that it's
> a game. Or something.

The five bonus points that got added and then taken away cracked me up. 
(Though I don't think I got them by kissing my aunt.)  I didn't even
crack a smile over the demon's save prevention, or over Beyond Zork's
message that "You start to mumble the spell of saving, but the sight of
the monster causes your mind to wander."  Seemed pointless to me.

I liked that stuff in Curses, and in Planetfall too, but I don't think
"serious" games should be so self-conscious.  And I for one wouldn't go
so far as to say that obtrusive maintenance procedures make for a
"significantly richer experience" in any game.  I consider them to be
nice little touches, and no more.  Obviously, this is a matter of
personal taste.

Did the Infocom writers intentionally choose to make "save" and
"restore" be part of the main game display simply for the sake of
humor?  I doubt it, though I'm glad they attached funny little messages
later.  If you like keeping the story separate, Save and Restore
shouldn't be part of the main game display at all.  If you don't, I
think you still may have neglected a few good opportunities by slavishly
following Infocom's example--you could, for instance, give a funny
message when a player tries to restore a game that isn't actually on the
disk.  :-)  (Or is there already a game like that that I haven't heard
of?)

-Rmil


From erkyrath@netcom.com Fri Dec  5 19:16:10 MET 1997
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Jeff Hatch (jeffhatch@juno.com) wrote:
> Did the Infocom writers intentionally choose to make "save" and
> "restore" be part of the main game display simply for the sake of
> humor? 

I'm sure they did it out of simple economy -- the prompts and filename
input and the resulting "Ok" or "Failed" message can be run through
existing I/O routines. The API was designed back in the ancient days,
remember, and had to run on tiny machines. 

(Also remember that the save/load routines *did* vary. The Apple II 
interpreters had that wacky "select slot, drive, game number" screen. 
But again the "Ok / Failed" message went through normal I/O.)

> If you like keeping the story separate, Save and Restore
> shouldn't be part of the main game display at all.  If you don't, I
> think you still may have neglected a few good opportunities by slavishly
> following Infocom's example--you could, for instance, give a funny
> message when a player tries to restore a game that isn't actually on the
> disk.  :-)

I like keeping the story mostly separate, particularly for save and 
restore options. But I'm used to Infocom's method, which can easily be 
adapted to specific platforms. (MaxZip pops up the usual Mac load/save 
dialog at the appropriate point.)

--Z

-- 

"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the
borogoves..."


From marsh@intrlink.com Sat Dec  6 19:30:58 MET 1997
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From: marsh@intrlink.com (Marshall T. Vandegrift)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: "Thinking" in game under development
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In article <Pine.SGI.3.95L.971204112343.29955A-100000@ebor.york.ac.uk>,
Den of Iniquity <dmss100@york.ac.uk> wrote:

>I'm repulsed by this idea, though it's taken me some time to figure out
>why. It seems so inhuman.

[SNIP]

Now that I look at it again, the way I currently have it implemented is rather 
unhuman. My original intent (clouded by my implementation) was to make a way 
so that the player *didn't* have to remember the secret code word, etc. and 
would have important world information or flash-backs stored so that they 
could be re-read. Reading the inscriptions about the terrible triggly-tork 
would reveal the information, but *also* add the information as an "idea."

My intent with "think about object X" was to split the physical description of 
an object from what the protaganist may know/think about it. The way I 
implemented it (listing "thinkable" objects), however, merely adds to the 
inhumanity of the system.

>As for thoughts about your protagonist's past, their secrets and so on,
>well you'd rather hope that they were introduced through the prose, in
>much the way that you'd hope that you'd find out that Character A was a
>grumpy chap with a weakness for alcohol through conversation or
>straightforward implication rather than being told explicitly. Well,
>that's the way I prefer it, otherwise the character is in danger of
>becoming a cardboard cut-out alcoholic (a locked door for whom a bottle of
>brandy is the key, perhaps?) as opposed to a character in a story.

The secret really was a bad example. But as for your example (with A being an 
alcoholic), what's the difference between talking to A and having it implied 
that A's an alcoholic and thinking about A and having it implied that A's an 
alchoholic? This is assuming the protagonist already knows A. If he doesn't, 
than I can quite readily see your viewpoint.

>I described the idea of itemising knowledge as inhuman - which means of
>course that you might get away with it with a more novel protagonist, an
>android, for instance, that cannot (for a very simple example) unlock a
>door with a key until the correct procedures have been uploaded into RAM
>or the android has witness another being performed such an action and
>deduced the mechanism involved. Add to that the possibility of altering
>the way the world is portrayed by upgrading one's sensor array (shades of
>AMFV, perhaps) and I'm getting an idea about which I'm much more
>enthusiastic.

Hmm. Now, that's interesting. If I end up deciding to cut my thought system 
>from my current game, my next game might be something along those lines. 
Thanks for the idea!

>As for think, well, I'd see it in a slightly different role, as a way of
>augmenting the information that is available to the player in a given
>situation, as if it were an 'authorised' hint. But I'd then have to ask if
>that information should just be carried in the main body of text instead.

The way I'm planning on restructuring it, the only part a player would 
absolutely have to use in order to win would be "think about object X" part. 
I already have a kind of "authorized hint system" in that when the player 
thinks about the player object, he's told if he's currently messing with a 
puzzle that can't be solved yet.

Thank you for the comments. I'll probably still include the concept, but 
I'll try to make it as low-profile as possible. (Starting with removing that 
list of thinkable objects...)

----------
Marshall T. Vandegrift (mailto:marsh@intrlink.com)
"Even in laughter, the heart is sorrowful." --Proverbs 14:13


From dmss100@york.ac.uk Sat Dec  6 19:32:26 MET 1997
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From: Den of Iniquity <dmss100@york.ac.uk>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: "Thinking" in game under development
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On Fri, 5 Dec 1997, Marshall T. Vandegrift wrote:

>Now that I look at it again, the way I currently have it implemented is rather 
>unhuman. My original intent (clouded by my implementation) was to make a way 
>so that the player *didn't* have to remember the secret code word, etc. and 
>would have important world information or flash-backs stored so that they 
>could be re-read.

Yes, I think it was definitely the 'itemisation' of thoughts that bothered
me. To these other points: secret code word - well, if you don't require
the player to have to remember it, why not just set a flag that the player
has learned it, such that a transcript goes like this:

-> OPEN DOOR

- You press a few keys randomly, to no avail. You'll never get through
- without the password.

[Huge chunk of play butchered]

-> READ DOCUMENT

- The password, it says, is 'Xyzzy'.

[Small chunk of one's return to the door removed]

-> OPEN DOOR

- You type 'Xyzzy' into the control pad then hit return. After a few
- paranoid seconds of silence, the door suddenly swishes open.


As for flashbacks, well, in static fiction, they're thrown in when the
plot calls for them. If you give the player the option to choose when to
reminisce, would you prevent the player from having a flashback too early
on in the development of the plot? 


>The secret really was a bad example. But as for your example (with A being an 
>alcoholic), what's the difference between talking to A and having it implied 
>that A's an alcoholic and thinking about A and having it implied that A's an 
>alchoholic? This is assuming the protagonist already knows A. If he doesn't, 
>than I can quite readily see your viewpoint.

Well, I suppose it all comes down to a matter of taste. What's wrong with
this?

-> JANE, HELLO
-
- Jane gives you a cold 'good evening'. Her attention is clearly on the
- behaviour of her husband, Jeremy, who is wolfing down as much of the
- liver pate as he can while he thinks her vegan back is turned.
-
- Over by the piano, Dr Alexis is leafing through Maggie's collection of
- sheet music. Well, that's what his hands are doing, but the old sot's
- eyes are clearly trained on Maggie's cleavage.

This second paragraph is thrown in no matter what the player's instruction
was (provided it involved staying in the room and wasn't too dramatic,
like lobbing a grenade into the room) and so we learn that Dr Alexis is a
lecherous old drunkard. (And that Maggie is probably wearing a low-cut
dress, not that it need be important. ;) 

Overall, I think it is a matter of taste as to whether the player should
be reminiscing to find out extra information. If very important
information is only provided in a 'thought about something' it would lose
its appeal. Instead of 'guess the verb' we'd have guess the
thought/flashback/reminiscence and stuck players may find themselves
trying to 'think' about everything. (Finally thinking of naturism and
learning that Maggie is an unstoppable nudist... Aargh!)

Done well, I can see that it could provide an extra dimension to a
player's interactions - but for the moment I wonder if most
implementations might well go in the main text.

--
Den



From erkyrath@netcom.com Sun Dec  7 00:55:35 MET 1997
Article: 31672 of rec.arts.int-fiction
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: erkyrath@netcom.com (Andrew Plotkin)
Subject: Re: [Inform] Sticky Pre-Parsing (Maybe) Problem
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Marshall T. Vandegrift (marsh@intrlink.com) wrote:
> At least I assume this is a sticky problem :-).

> I recently thought up a really neat way to implement magic in my IF game, the 
> only problem is the actual programing.

> I'm try to get it work something like this:

> >GET KEY WITH MAGIC
> The key flies to your hand.

> Where as "GET KEY" could be any command, but the "WITH MAGIC" causes the 
> command to be done, well, "with magic."

This isn't a bad thought. (Goofy D&D magic systems aside, a lot of 
fantasy does very well with a simple "apply your will to the task" rules 
of wizardry.)

In a sense this is the "add adverbs" suggestion, but you're adding exactly
*one* adverb to the game and it's well-advertised to the player. I think
it could work. 

First idea: change the syntax. 
> MAGICALLY GET KEY
(abbreviate to "MAGIC" or "MAG" if desired. Or, hell, just "M".)

I think you can do that with BeforeParsing more easily; set a flag, 
delete the first word entirely, and request a re-parse. 

Second idea: do it the bloody way and rewrite the entire grammar, 
duplicating every line and adding an extra "with magic" token on the 
duplicate. You could even use the same action routines (have the "with 
magic" token parser set a flag.) 

Sure it's a pain in the ass, but you know it will work.

> Next, I thought about having the BeforeParsing routine simply remove "WITH 
> MAGIC" and set a global magicflag to TRUE then setting up a GamePreRoutine or 
> floating object with a react_before rule to deal with it. However, this still 
> has problems with multiple commands

Maybe solve this by being careful about checking for periods? If "with 
magic" occurs before a period or other command-separator, set the flag 
only for that command. I haven't delved into the parser enough to know 
how that works.  

> and adds yet another routine that must be 
> run each time a turn is processed.

This is a very minor concern. All sorts of crap happens once per turn. 

> Idea three was to set up an add_to_scope-ed talkable object with the names 
> 'with' and 'magic', allowing the player to type "WITH MAGIC, GET THE KEY." My 
> problems with is are a) it *looks* kludgy

Yes, too icky. The comma is just a mess. You are legitimately adding to
the parser's functionality here; don't try to fit it into existing
mechanism. 

--Z

-- 

"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the
borogoves..."


From kjfair@midway.uchicago.edu.REMOVEME Sun Dec  7 00:55:44 MET 1997
Article: 31693 of rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: kjfair@midway.uchicago.edu.REMOVEME (Kenneth Fair)
Subject: Re: [Inform] Sticky Pre-Parsing (Maybe) Problem
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In article <erkyrathEKqpAD.JqB@netcom.com>, erkyrath@netcom.com (Andrew
Plotkin) wrote:

>Second idea: do it the bloody way and rewrite the entire grammar, 
>duplicating every line and adding an extra "with magic" token on the 
>duplicate. You could even use the same action routines (have the "with 
>magic" token parser set a flag.) 
>
>Sure it's a pain in the ass, but you know it will work.

Which raises amusing possibilities for commands like "save with magic"
and "undo with magic."

Actually, I like the idea of this magic system very much.

-- 
KEN FAIR - U. Chicago Law  | <http://student-www.uchicago.edu/users/kjfair>
Of Counsel, U. of Ediacara | Power Mac! | CABAL(tm) | I'm w/in McQ - R U?
      "Any smoothly functioning technology will be 
       indistinguishable from a rigged demo."  Isaac Asimov


From s7m6@romulus.sun.csd.unb.ca Mon Dec  8 15:10:43 MET 1997
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From: Brad O`Donnell <s7m6@romulus.sun.csd.unb.ca>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Readability (was Re: Inform Designer's Manual .pdf version)
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Neil K. wrote:
>  Do you think there can be an acceptable rationale
> for lengthy lumps of text, or that the length itself is damning beyond
> redemption?
> 

  In a text adventure, length itself is damning beyond redemption :)

  Well, realistically, there's no sure-fire
 way to say when text is getting 
 too long.  Or too short, for that matter. 
 In the current crop of games,
 the tendency has been toward more "English-like" output.
 I dislike this, as a point of personal aesthetics,
 mostly because it doesn't 
 stem the flow of "more-is-better" reasoning in authors. 
 
  i.e:
 More objects --Better.
 More puzzles --Better.
 More text   --Better.

  When all three of the above misconceptions are combined, 
 you end up searching 
 the same three-page block of text 
 (which contains not only 20 object descriptions,
 but also a hearty helping of drama and automatic actions)
 five times through for
 each of a half dozen puzzles, 
 each more contrived and meaningless than the last.
 (This is just a worst-case scenario, 
 I'm not talking about any existing game.)

  Heh.  Back in the old days (*my* old days), I used
 to play these games written in QuickBasic
 with two-word parsers that didn't care what order you
 put the words in.  
 I find it funny that I got (and still get, whenever 
 someone writes a new one of these beauties) such great
 satisfaction from any response that didn't start with 
 "I don't understand...".  

  Whoops. I see I've gotten a little off-post, and 
 started calling for an anit-mimesis movement. I'll
 stop now. (The anti-mimesis movement must be planned
 much more carefully than this...)


--
				Brad O'Donnell 
		"A story is a string of moments, held together by memory."


From cardinalt@cwia.com Mon Dec  8 18:15:51 MET 1997
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From: cardinalt@cwia.com (Cardinal Teulbachs)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: [All] The problem of default library messages
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One of the difficulties, it seems to me, in making one's text
adventure parser seem intelligent in its replies to the player, lies
in the area of default action failure messages, which most i-f systems
employ as a means of reducing the work involved in writing adventure
games. For instance, the familiar "You can't go that way" is a default
action failure message given in response to the "go <object>" command
in cases where "go <object>" doesn't yield a successful move. In the
universality of its application, it relieves the programmer of the
not-insignificant  burden of having to code separate responses for
every single <object> the player might attempt to "go" (to). Likewise,
"<act>ing the <object> has no effect" and "you can't <act> the
<object>" are extremely common responses found in the library of every
contemporary text adventure authoring system that has a library.
Indeed, it will be noted by anyone, I think, who has actually written
a few of these messages, that every default failure response is in
fact of one of these two forms: either the message says to the player
(in effect) that "that's unreasonable" or that "that's impossible,"
and all failure responses are finally only a variation or an
embellishment of one of these two fundamental judgments. (With the
word "unreasonable" I here mean to encompass the sense "useless" or
"fruitless" as well.) 

Note that I am not including in this characterization any responses
made in regard to administrative matters like "score" and "save" and
so on, but rather only those that are uttered by the parser in its
narrative, "storyteller" capacity. For every action a player might
unsuccessfully undertake within the game world, the parser can and
must reply either that the action is, as it were, ridiculous or that
it is impossible. And it is because there are these two potential
responses instead of just one that parsing engines can end up seeming
dumb, dumb, dumb, even when great care has been otherwise exercised to
make them seem smart, witty, and (deliver us, O Lord) even urbane. 

A good, clear example of this can be seen in the case of the verb
"read." In many instances, an author will want to refuse a "read"
action because it is being attempted against something that can't by
its nature ever be read--say, a pure spirit or a sound--but then too
he'll often want to refuse such an action simply because it's being
attempted against an object that has nothing on it or in it to read--a
newly whitewashed fence or a blank piece of newsprint or
what-have-you. When only one default message is available for use, it
can become quite a tricky matter to decide which sense should carry
the day. If the author goes with the "impossible" sense, then the
illusion of intellect he's trying to create for his parsing engine
will be destroyed when the player is told, in response to a "read the
newsprint"  command, that "that's impossible." Reading *blank
newsprint* is, of course, precisely impossible in the sense that it's
impossible to read words that aren't there. But reading *newsprint*,
which is what the player asked to do, isn't in itself impossible, and
for this reason our normal tendency as human beings is to respond with
something like "but there aren't any words on it" rather than the less
forthcoming and too-terse "that's impossible." Conversely, if we go
with the other sense when designing our response, we run into trouble
when the player tries to (for example) "read the idea," since the most
fundamental reason why a player can't read an idea isn't that there's
nothing written on it, but rather that nothing could ever be written
on an idea in the first place. 

The question, then, is what can an author do about this state of
affairs? One solution is to make extensive use of attributes--for
instance, to make objects that are not impossible to read "readable"
and then code up one failure message for the set of "readable" objects
and another one for the set of non-"readable" objects. But the problem
with this is that, a) practically every verb will require its own
corresponding attribute to be set aside for this singular purpose, and
b) a lot more condition testing will have to be done in the verb
routines in order to determine which message is appropriate to display
under which circumstance.  Alternately, one might perhaps be able to
code up the grammar tables in such a way as to do these tests "a
priori," but then in that case the number of distinct verb routines
will be exactly doubled, since there will be one routine for the case
in which the player reads a "readable" object and a separate one for
the case in which he reads a non-"readable" object. There are some
other possible approaches that have occurred to me as well, but since
I'm tired of typing and I want to hear from others on the
subject--that's the whole point of this exercise, believe it or
not--I'll shut up now and listen to what anyone who's interested in
replying has to say.

His Most Extreme Effluence,

--Cardinal T


From erkyrath@netcom.com Mon Dec  8 18:16:11 MET 1997
Article: 31745 of rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: erkyrath@netcom.com (Andrew Plotkin)
Subject: Re: [All] The problem of default library messages
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Cardinal Teulbachs (cardinalt@cwia.com) wrote:

> For every action a player might
> unsuccessfully undertake within the game world, the parser can and
> must reply either that the action is, as it were, ridiculous or that
> it is impossible. And it is because there are these two potential
> responses instead of just one that parsing engines can end up seeming
> dumb, dumb, dumb [...]
>
> Reading *blank
> newsprint* is, of course, precisely impossible in the sense that it's
> impossible to read words that aren't there. But reading *newsprint*,
> which is what the player asked to do, isn't in itself impossible, and
> for this reason our normal tendency as human beings is to respond with
> something like "but there aren't any words on it" rather than the less
> forthcoming and too-terse "that's impossible." Conversely, if we go
> with the other sense when designing our response, we run into trouble
> when the player tries to (for example) "read the idea," since the most
> fundamental reason why a player can't read an idea isn't that there's
> nothing written on it, but rather that nothing could ever be written
> on an idea in the first place. 

Well, my solution is to bite the bullet and write special messages for
every verb in common use and every object which could conceivably be
verbed. Don't rely on default messages at all. Leave the default message a
very terse "You can't" or "That makes no sense". Whenever I create an
object, I go through a quick checklist: the player will try to examine,
search, push, pull, turn, touch, rub, smell, hit, take, and probably put
something on or in it. Do any of those produce special responses? Then 
you make sure you have fanatical beta-testers.

One weakness with this system is that if you invent a new verb, you 
really have to go through every object in the game and decide whether to 
give it a special response. I hate that.

Your example of an "idea" is actually a bit misleading, I think. I expect 
most default responses to be meaningful for a featureless *physical* 
object -- the classic white cube. If I create an "idea", or even a 
"breeze", I'm going to override all the responses anyhow. 

(It is convenient in Inform that you can override *every* verb action, 
with specific exceptions. If you make every verb except "examine" respond 
"You can't do anything to an idea," you'll very often have acceptable
behavior.) 

Contrariwise, I expect most verbs to be applicable to all physical
objects. You can "touch" anything. If there's a special verb like "plug
in" or "write on", which applies to only a subset of the objects in the
world, then I'll use an attribute, property, or class membership test to
distinguish between "That's absurd" and "That doesn't work." There are
typically not many of these verbs. 

--Z

-- 

"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the
borogoves..."


From fake-mail@anti-spam.address Mon Dec  8 18:17:02 MET 1997
Article: 31732 of rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: fake-mail@anti-spam.address (Neil K.)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: [All] The problem of default library messages
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dbs@coyote.cs.wisc.edu (Daniel Shiovitz) wrote:

> Cardinal Teulbachs <cardinalt@cwia.com> wrote:
> >what-have-you. When only one default message is available for use, it
> >can become quite a tricky matter to decide which sense should carry
> >the day. If the author goes with the "impossible" sense, then the
> >illusion of intellect he's trying to create for his parsing engine
> >will be destroyed when the player is told, in response to a "read the
> >newsprint"  command, that "that's impossible." Reading *blank
> >newsprint* is, of course, precisely impossible in the sense that it's
> >impossible to read words that aren't there. But reading *newsprint*,
> >which is what the player asked to do, isn't in itself impossible, and
> >for this reason our normal tendency as human beings is to respond with
> >something like "but there aren't any words on it" rather than the less
> >forthcoming and too-terse "that's impossible." [...]
> >
> >The question, then, is what can an author do about this state of
> >affairs? One solution is to make extensive use of attributes--for
> >instance, to make objects that are not impossible to read "readable"
> [..]
> 
> Verbs are something TADS does very well. In this case, the way to
> handle it is something like this: 
> 
> The point here, I suppose, is that if the parser is written in proper
> OO style, most problems of this type become relatively trivial to
> solve.

 Agreed. Tedious to implement, but trivial. :) That's basically the
technique I've used in my TADS game in (sort of) progress - a combination
of setting attributes and defining new classes - for coming up with
appropriate error messages.

 Thus all liquids are, in theory, drinkable. But if the player tries to
drink something nasty like, say, battery acid, then a custom error message
could be defined - "you're not about to kill yourself today." or whatever.
Or the game could kill the player horribly if desired. Drinkable liquids
would simply call a drinkable code that would bump down the player's
internal thirst counter, then move the liquid into nil. (ie: make it
inaccessible) Drinking a solid would bring up the default error message
"You can only drink liquids."

 A whole ton of verbs get the same treatment and have appropriately
variable error messages. Read is another of course. So are listen, smell,
taste, throw, etc. The downside is that I have 580K of standard
definitions, versus the TADS adv.t 120K. Like anything, it really all
comes down to the amount of work you're willing to put into the thing.

 - Neil K.

-- 
 t e l a  computer consulting + design   *   Vancouver, BC, Canada
      web: http://www.tela.bc.ca/tela/   *   email: tela @ tela.bc.ca


From beej@ecst.csuchico.edu Thu Dec 11 09:51:30 MET 1997
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From: beej@ecst.csuchico.edu (Brian "Beej" Hall)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
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In article <kjfair-1012971702390001@ntcs-ip57.uchicago.edu>,
Kenneth Fair <kjfair@midway.uchicago.edu.REMOVEME> wrote:
>Shudder.  I'm trying to code up a general conversation routine that is
>a bit more complicated than the "ask X about Y" syntax, and am banging my
>head against the wall.

Heh, this reminds me--I just played Hitchhikers again (for the first
time in quite a number of years) and was thinking about this problem.
Rememember this from the book:

Ford: Excuse me!
Prosser: Hello, yes?  Has Mr. Dent come to his senses yet?
F: Can we assume for the moment that he hasn't?
P: Well?
F: Can we also assume that he'll be laying there all day?
P: And?
F: So your men will just be standing around here doing nothing.
P: Could be, could be...
F: Well, if you're resigned to doing that anyway, you might as well take
   it as read that he's here and he and I could pop down to the pub for
   a few minutes.  Does that sound reasonable?
P: I suppose...
F: And if you'd like to drop by the pub later yourself, we could cover
   for you in return.
P: Well, thank you...that's very kind!
F: So, if you'll just lie down here in front of the bulldozer.
P: What?
F: It's quite simple.  My client, Mr. Dent, will only leave on the sole
   condition that you take his place.
P: You want me to lie down over there?
F: Yes.
P: In front of the bulldozer?
F: Yes.
P: Instead of Mr. Dent?
F: Yes.
P: In the mud?
F: In, as you say, the mud.
P: In return for which, you will take Mr. Dent to the pub for a drink.
F: Yes.
P: Promise?
 
(Or something like that...)

Now, compare that to how you, as Ford, convince Mr. Prosser to lie down
in front of the bulldozer in the game:

> prosser, lie down

So, as you see, there is considerable conversation missing.

Of course, coding a parser to handle natural language conversation like
the Ford/Prosser exchange is, uh, "nontrivial".  Very very cool, and
even more difficult.  Let me know when it's done... ;-)

Cheers,
-Beej



From graham@gnelson.demon.co.uk Fri Dec 12 22:38:18 MET 1997
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From: Graham Nelson <graham@gnelson.demon.co.uk>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Dream Book Wanted: "Inform for Dummies"
Date: Fri, 12 Dec 1997 18:28:32 +0000 (GMT)
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In article <66ovls$ses$4@pump1.york.ac.uk>, Richard G Clegg
<URL:mailto:rgc2@york.ac.uk> wrote:
> 
>   What I _loathe_ is the people who get carried away with OO and 
> start "A decimal digit is a class inheriting properties from the
> binary digit class".  Or spend the first 3 weeks of any project
> rewriting their linked list class.  Eventually colleagues get together
> and hit the person's head off the wall repeatedly while shouting
> "For fuxakes - can we have more emphasis on the programming and less
> on the Object Oriented."

Steady on... I used to program in Smalltalk, you know.  I used to
send little messages to the Platonic concept of the number "3" to
ask it to add "5" to itself, letting me know which instance of the
class Integer would arise as a result.  It helped make me the well-
adjusted person I am today.

Just to dredge a serious point out of this, though, IF is naturally
OO: the fundamental assumptions of the text adventure's model world
are centred on name-able, usually indivisible objects.  This I
suspect arises from the ontological natural of language -- that is,
the tendency for English to be object-oriented because of its use
of specific nouns.

That being so, it's reasonable to program IF in an OO way.

-- 
Graham Nelson | graham@gnelson.demon.co.uk | Oxford, United Kingdom



From erkyrath@netcom.com Fri Dec 12 22:38:41 MET 1997
Article: 31917 of rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: erkyrath@netcom.com (Andrew Plotkin)
Subject: Re: Dream Book Wanted: "Inform for Dummies"
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David A. Cornelson (dcornelson@placet.com) wrote:

> 1. How many I-F fans think I-F is about programming a game? 

I'm very much afraid that the significant question is "How many IF 
*authors* -- those that have completed a game -- think that IF is about 
programming a game?"

> Writing I-F in an OO form may be great for very complicated puzzles and
> game layouts, but most of us would survive with a simpler tool.

I know what goes into even a simple game layout. The part that can be 
handled with a simpler tool *is not the hard part*. Nor is it the 
time-consuming part. Nor is it the part which took the majority of my 
learning time.

Now, I know that a simpler tool would be a waste of my time. How dare I 
say it would be a waste of yours? Obviously I can't say that.

I can only express my professional estimate, which is that someone who
uses Inform with a non-programming interface will either (A) go beyond it
within a few days, and give it up, or (B) spend unbounded time and effort
trying to force his ideas to fit within a tool not strong enough for them. 

--Z

-- 

"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the
borogoves..."


From erkyrath@netcom.com Sat Dec 13 14:29:15 MET 1997
Article: 31940 of rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: erkyrath@netcom.com (Andrew Plotkin)
Subject: Re: Dream Book Wanted: "Inform for Dummies"
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Graham Nelson (graham@gnelson.demon.co.uk) wrote:
> I believe that a game, in order to have some artistic worth or
> indeed playability, has to satisfy a form of Turing Test. 
> [...]
> I suggest that the analogous test is this.  The game has to be
> plausibly a simulation of a world in which many actions are
> possible.  The game will fail this test if it seems only a row
> of locations, with elementary connections between, and one or
> two passive objects in them.  The game will pass if it seems as
> rich with possibility as, say, the Zork I underground.

I don't even think you have to get that abstract. It's all the fiddly 
little details which require programming. 

I mean, you make a stone cube and give it a description: "You are
surprised to find that it's covered with hieroglyphs." And then you think,
well, it's dumb to be surprised every time you look at it; the player
should only be surprised the *first* time. This is the kind of detail 
which is, frankly, taken for granted nowadays. AGT writers may not have 
taken it for granted, but we do.

And this kind of logic is very easy to express in an imperative language
such as C or Inform or even Basic. It looks like

if (self.flag == 0) {
  self.flag = 1;
  print "You are surprised to find that it's covered with hieroglyphs.^";
}
else {
  print "It's covered with hieroglyphs.^";
}

If you know anything about programming, this is as easy as breathing -- 
bar matters of syntax, which can be annoying but are rarely fatal. If you 
*don't* know anything about programming, no tool can help you create 
this. The best that can be automated is a point-and-click interface to 
build an "if" statement out of component parts. Which is just miserable.

Now the original poster was complaining about "object-oriented" 
programming in particular, but I think that's a detail. Inform game 
programming uses a set of abstractions to define the world and its 
objects. That by itself makes it "object-oriented", and it has been since 
Inform 5 at least -- the extra pieces of OO syntax added in Inform 6 
aren't really used by the library at all.

--Z

-- 

"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the
borogoves..."


From sgranade@quark.phy.duke.edu Sat Dec 13 14:29:31 MET 1997
Article: 31914 of rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: Stephen Granade <sgranade@quark.phy.duke.edu>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Dream Book Wanted: "Inform for Dummies"
Date: Fri, 12 Dec 1997 11:13:39 -0500
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On Thu, 11 Dec 1997, David A. Cornelson wrote:

> Many of us that are involved in this genre began by sitting down in front
> of a computer and PLAYING A GAME. Many of us like to write short stories
> and poems and la-de-da, la-de-da, la-de-da, could give a rats ASS about
> programming correctly in an OO language or not.
> 
> <quieter....taking a breath>
> 
> We simply want to transfer some of our creativity to another form.
> Instead of writing another poem, (la-de-da), we would like to create a
> world and share it with others.

And I would like to take the melodies and counterpoints that I hear in my
head and turn them into songs. But until I sit down and learn composition
and how writing music works, it ain't gonna happen.

In _any_ artistic endeavor there is a certain amount of technique which
must be learned. With IF, there happens to be the double whammy of needing
to know how to write and needing to know how to program.

The short term answer for what you are complaining about is to take the
TV/movie/play approach: team up. Find a programmer and work with him/her.
Look at the IF collaborator's list
(http://homepages.ihug.co.nz/~saleys/ifcollab.html) and pick a partner.

The long term answer? I honestly don't know. I'd love to have a machine
which would take my ideas and turn them into <insert choice of art here>.
Until that happens, we're stuck with having to develop our ideas using
imperfect tools.

> Inform is probably as close as we're likely to get unless someone on YOUR
> side of the table gets it.

Gets what? Even the "Visual Inform" which you describe wouldn't alleviate
the problem you describe; it would merely hide it under the rug. Sure, it
would be nice to have such a system to make the cut-and-paste work (i.e.
copy a previously-written room, change things here, cut things there) more
visually appealing, but it wouldn't help with the nasty coding which
occurs any time you want to do something non-trivial. And if you want to
avoid that, why not use a system like AGT which is designed for such?

There's no cabal of programmers giggling maniacally at their successful
attempts to keep artists away from IF. You're dealing with people who are
_freely_ devoting their time to make tools for you. "Visual Inform" would
be a non-trivial task--think of the number of employees Borland or
Microsoft or Metrowerks have writing their nice compilers. _And_ we would 
want this done for free. _And_ we would want it ported to God only
knows how many machines, given our propensity for wanting IF tools to run
everywhere.

I'm not trying to belittle your complaints, honest. You've raised valid,
important issues. I'm trying to point out why a) such tools haven't been
written, b) why they're not likely to be written any time soon, and c) why
screaming at those who give of their time freely to write IF tools is a
non-optimal way to get what you want.

> Stop trying to turn poets into OO developers. If YOU'VE bridged the gap,
> fine, but don't toss that medicine ball this way. We're just going to
> duck....

Nobody's trying to turn poets into programmers other than the poets
themselves. Sorry to be harsh, but if you don't want to learn the
techniques, don't shout at those who do.

Stephen

--
  Stephen Granade                | Interested in adventure games?
  sgranade@phy.duke.edu          | Check out
  Duke University, Physics Dept  |   http://interactfiction.miningco.com



From erkyrath@netcom.com Sat Dec 13 14:30:03 MET 1997
Article: 31913 of rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: erkyrath@netcom.com (Andrew Plotkin)
Subject: Re: Dream Book Wanted: "Inform for Dummies"
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Lovecraft (lovecraft@aol.com) wrote:

> I myself am having a bitch of a time learning Inform. For me the idea is the
> interactive fiction, not the reading of a dry tome hundreds of pages in 
> length. 

To pick a not-insignificant nit, I find the Designer's Manual to be a 
lively, amusing tome hundreds of pages in length.

An IF system (the Inform language-plus-library), unlike a bare language,
is a very complicated thing when you *start* working with it. When you say
"the idea is the IF," and you want to start with the IF, you are
implicitly requiring hundreds of pages of knowledge. You can osmose that
in a lump or work up to it slowly, but it's waiting for you. 

It's probably best to start with a very tiny goal. Make a room. Make a 
button. Make the button go "ping" when you push it. That's not IF, but 
it's a start, and it's exactly what's in the first two chapters of the 
DM's Book Two (the book on "Designing."[*])

I'm not saying the DM is *the* way to start learning Inform. I think a 
"for dummies" or FAQ is great. 

I do think, however, that just about every FAQ entry is going to end
"...see section X of the Designer's Manual." 

I'm not going to volunteer to help with a FAQ, because I regard the DM as 
the ideal way (for me) to learn a system, and if I were writing a book on 
Inform I'd produce something very much like it. Which would be redundant.

[* You may want to start reading with "Designing", and skip Book One,
"Programming". That gets right into writing pieces of a sample game. On
the other hand, you may find yourself skipping back to look up bits of 
programming syntax in Book One. Is this a surprise?]

--Z

-- 

"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the
borogoves..."


From mkkuhner@phylo.genetics.washington.edu Sat Dec 13 19:27:24 MET 1997
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From: mkkuhner@phylo.genetics.washington.edu (Mary K. Kuhner)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Dream Book Wanted: "Inform for Dummies"
Date: 13 Dec 1997 16:16:49 GMT
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In article <34923C85.5CAE@hatch.net> jeff@hatch.net writes:

>Similarly, a "Visual Inform" with a handy
>little "Room Wizard" would still be able to define complex rooms--but
>would do the simple ones much more quickly.

I have not used a visual code writing interface, but I find this
assertion really surprising--can you write a bit about what it's
like?  I find doing simple rooms in Inform *extremely* fast, except
for typing in the descriptions, which no tool will help with.

When I do a room for my current game, I spend about thirty
seconds, I think, typing in keywords.  (If this bugged me I would
make a template and copy it in.)  Then I spend ten-fifteen
minutes getting the room descriptions right (the current game
has four, for dawn-day-twilight-night) and thinking of a good
"You can't go that way" for various directions. 

I guess the biggest speed-up would be that occasionally I want
to link to a room whose name I've forgotten; a visual map would
save me the bother of looking it up.  But making room-links
is really a trivial part of the coding.  I did all the rooms in
"Kirin's Garden" in one short coding session.  Everything since
then has been tinkering the object-interaction code.

Honestly, I look at room coding as a vacation; I have to restrain
myself from coding all the rooms right away in the larger of my
two projects, since I know if I do I'll never get all the
niggly stuff right.  (Anyone have advice for an Inform implementation
of a fence with a hole in it, where the player might put something
on the fence *or* in the hole?  I ended up with add_to_scope hole,
but it's clunky.)

Mary Kuhner mkkuhner@genetics.washington.edu


From graham@gnelson.demon.co.uk Sat Dec 13 22:55:12 MET 1997
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From: Graham Nelson <graham@gnelson.demon.co.uk>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: OO getting a bad rap?
Date: Sat, 13 Dec 1997 11:10:41 +0000 (GMT)
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In article <349242d7.57471966@news.accessone.com>, Alan Conroy
<URL:mailto:alan@accessone.com> wrote:
> 
> Now on a slightly different tangent.  Would it be useful for the IF
> FAQ to list authoring systems by category?  i.e. those which don't use
> any algorithmic programming, those which do not use/support OOP, those
> which support it but don't require it, and those for which it is
> integral.

I think this information is already available.  In any case I'd
hate it to be thought more significant than it is.  In the early
years of the TADS v. Inform wars, the banner of Object Orientation
was frequently held up as a battle-standard (Good grief this
extended metaphor is dying a death, but you get the idea); I don't
really think it affects much more than the perceived cleanliness
of the language, though, in the end.  Inform isn't terribly OO,
and the extent to which it is OO is optional.  The features are
sometimes nice, sometimes not worth troubling with.  That's about
all there is to say, I think.

-- 
Graham Nelson | graham@gnelson.demon.co.uk | Oxford, United Kingdom



From russotto@wanda.vf.pond.com Sun Dec 14 11:36:01 MET 1997
Article: 32022 of rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: russotto@wanda.vf.pond.com (Matthew T. Russotto)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: MaxZip complaint/question
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In article <EL3FnM.9o7@undergrad.math.uwaterloo.ca>,
Joe Mason <jcmason@undergrad.math.uwaterloo.ca> wrote:
}In article <erkyrathEKzo0q.E2r@netcom.com>,
}Andrew Plotkin <erkyrath@netcom.com> wrote:

}>On the other hand, I don't think any Mac interpreter supports running two 
}>different games at the same time. And the Mac OS is not kindly inclined 
}>towards having two processes running of the same program. A multi-session 
}
}Really?  I find that shocking.  In Windows you have to work at it to make sure
}your app DOESN'T allow multiple copies of itself.

This is for "Historical reasons".  The OS actually has very little to
do with it (and earlier versions could actually run the same program
twice).  It's just that few applications have historically been
written to allow it.  As it turns out, ZIP Infinity's only problem
would be contention over the preferences file, and I could work that
out, but the OS no longer allows it.  Presumably Rhapsody will, but
I'm not holding my breath for that.  My workaround, if I really want
to run the same program multiple times, is to duplicate the program.

As for X-windows, at work I have so many windows open that no one can
tell if I'm working, surfing the web, playing interactive fiction, or
forging steamy e-mail from the CEO to several employees.  I think this
is an advantage...
-- 
Matthew T. Russotto                                russotto@pond.com
"Extremism in defense of liberty is no vice, and moderation in pursuit
of justice is no virtue." 


From mol@bartlet.df.lth.se Mon Dec 15 10:32:02 MET 1997
Article: 32100 of rec.arts.int-fiction
Path: news.lth.se!not-for-mail
From: mol@bartlet.df.lth.se (Magnus Olsson)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Dream Book Wanted: "Inform for Dummies"
Date: 15 Dec 1997 10:25:04 +0100
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In article <672agq$ej6@wanda.vf.pond.com>,
Matthew T. Russotto <russotto@wanda.vf.pond.com> wrote:
>In article <670ci9$f1u$1@bartlet.df.lth.se>,
>Magnus Olsson <mol@bartlet.df.lth.se> wrote:
>
>}I'm exaggerating just slightly. Programmers do have a tendency to
>}re-invent the wheel, over and over again. Which costs their customers
>}billions of dollars each year. To be fair, the supposedly standard
>}wheels that managers optimistically think can be taken over from the
>}last project often turn out to be slightly square, which promnpts the
>}programmers to start inventing hexagonal wheels, when what is needed
>}really is a *round* wheel.
>
><Rant on>
>Yeah, yeah, yeah.  And in the time it takes for OO programmers to
>specify and design the interface for this round wheel, the procedural
>programmers have already written three new projects with custom
>shaped wheels that were easy to build (particularly when you took
>the code base from other wheels). 

This is really not a qeustion of OO vs. procedural, but of different
schools of rigid vs. not-so-rigid design methods. Mis-management,
over-design and overly rigid "waterfall" design methodologies (like:
"design everything first, and have the designs go up and down through
the chain of command, gaining stampsof approval from everybody, before
you write a single line of code) are deleterious to any project. 


And, to continue the "wheels" example, design doesn't really help.
Isn't it usually like this: Managers optimistically think that the
wheels from the last project can be re-used (especially since they've
heard a lot of hype about OO and reusability). The designers ignore
this and spend a lot of time designing new wheels, that turn out to be
square. The programmers try to implement this, find out that it won't
work, and make elliptical wheels instead. When these don't work
either, a frantic effort is made to reuse the wheels from the last
project - which takes five times as much time as predcited, and when
it's finished, these wheels turn out to octagonal. Programmers are
sent in to file of the corners of the octagons by had, which makes for
a bumpy ride but at least it works, sort of. Afterwards, everybody
agrees that they should have made round wheels from the
start. Everybody except for the customer, of course, who really wanted
caterpillar tracks.

Isn't that how software development really works? :-)


Some practical data points: the project I'm currently involved in is
now up to about 500k lines of C++. We've tried doing everything by the
book and following an incremental design model, with design meetings,
prototyping, reviews and everything. It turned out that the only way
to get things done was for everybody to sit down and start
programming. In effect, all attempts at formal software engineering
have just bogged the project down. The design has effectively been
delegated to the individual programmers (with frequent coordination
meetings, of course).

But this has nothing to do with OO vs. non-OO *programming* (as opposed
to design). In fact, our programmers seem unanimous in that OOP is
superior to procedural programming (for our project, at least) and
that without OO, we wouldn't have been able to pull it off. Of ocurse,
your mileage may vary. 


Fortunately for most readers of this group, these problems don't start
appearing until the project is several orders of magnitude larger than
even the most ambitious text adventure. I don't think IF programmers
need to worry about software engineering paradigms very much - yet.

But I'm firmly convinved that for IF programming, OOP is very natural
and serves to simplify things. OOP was invented for simulations, and
IF is basically about simulating a world. Simulation problems simply
map well to an OO formulation.


-- 
Magnus Olsson (mol@df.lth.se, zebulon@pobox.com)
------    http://www.pobox.com/~zebulon   ------
     Not officially connected to LU or LTH.


From jcmason@undergrad.math.uwaterloo.ca Tue Dec 16 09:42:38 MET 1997
Article: 32127 of rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: jcmason@undergrad.math.uwaterloo.ca (Joe Mason)
Subject: Re: OO getting a bad rap?
Sender: news@undergrad.math.uwaterloo.ca (news spool owner)
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In article <66rfqh$dvk$1@bartlet.df.lth.se>,
Magnus Olsson <mol@bartlet.df.lth.se> wrote:

>Am I the only one who thinks this is more than a little bit absurd?

No.  I was going to mention it too.

>True, to somebody who's new to OOP, the OO nature of languages like
>Inform adds a little to the conceptual threshold of getting started;
>there's a bunch of new terms and concepts to learn. This is especially
>true if all your previous exposure to programming is writing small
>programs in Basic or Pascal (the non-OO varieties, of course).

On the other hand, if you don't know ANY programming, then its my opinion that
you'll find yourself much more comfortable with OOP then with traditional
programming.  I've now become so used to modelling things in terms of objects
that I have a hard time forcing myself *not* to use OOP concepts - and my
Computer Science assignments this year, which were marked by TA's whose
knowledge of OOP I don't want to trust, show it.  It's much more natural to
write an object-oriented program then a procedural one, unless you're already
used to the latter.  Maybe not as efficient, but much more natural.

>So, please, don't blame OO for IF programming being difficult. (I get
>the feeling that people who don't understand OO, and who don't even
>want to understand it, use it as a catchphrase to lump everything they
>don't understand together under one conenient label.)

I'm definitely getting that impression.

I think the DM's real failing is the first section, the "here's how you program
part".  It definitely isn't as well-written as the rest of the book, and I
think that's where many people are choking.  I mean, I was surprised to see it
there at all - I would have assumed that was the kind of thing that you would
already have to KNOW before picking up something like Inform.  Now that I see
how many non-programmers are trying to pick up Inform, I see why Graham
included it - but I think a more in-depth look at the basic foundations of OOP
programming (with Inform targeted in particular) is needed.  A tutorial would
be perfect.

But the rest of the DM is one of the best I've ever read.
  
Joe



From erkyrath@netcom.com Wed Dec 17 09:41:43 MET 1997
Article: 32227 of rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: erkyrath@netcom.com (Andrew Plotkin)
Subject: Re: Off topic ranting
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Matthew T. Russotto (russotto@wanda.vf.pond.com) wrote:
> In article <882258882.209125390@dejanews.com>,
> David A. Cornelson  <dcornelson@placet.com> wrote:

> }So the argument is that you can write code 75% of the time, test it, and
> }complete it without much time for design.
> }
> }OR, you can design for 90% of the time and what you fail to understand is
> }that when a design is well done (or medium well, depending on your
> }tastebuds), testing is an afterthought and takes a very minimal amount of
> }time. Certainly the risk of surprises is decreased tremendously.

> Right, sure.  Such is the theory.  But design is so far removed from
> the actual system that it isn't the case. 

I have decided that this argument is an illusion.

I am a hacker. I spend 100% of my work time hacking. How much time do I
spend typing with my left hand, as opposed to my right hand? The question 
is pointless.

You may judge this approach on its theoretical merits, or on its results.

By the way, a friend was watching me type last week, and she pointed out
that I type with six fingers -- all five fingers on my left hand, and my
right index finger. I divide the keyboard in half in the usual
touch-typing way (although I don't in fact touch-type), but all the keys
on the right half are hit with my index finger. 

I was astounded. I've certainly had this habit for at least nine years,
more likely fifteen. The total *continuous* time I've spent in front of a
keyboard must certainly be measured in years. Once it was pointed out, it
was as plain as the, as, as the fingers on my right hand. And yet I never,
never noticed it on my own. 

A very Zen moment.

--Z

-- 

"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the
borogoves..."


From graham@gnelson.demon.co.uk Fri Dec 19 10:12:38 MET 1997
Article: 31927 of rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: Graham Nelson <graham@gnelson.demon.co.uk>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Dream Book Wanted: "Inform for Dummies"
Date: Fri, 12 Dec 1997 18:58:03 +0000 (GMT)
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In article <66r9qq$5un$1@bartlet.df.lth.se>, Magnus Olsson
<URL:mailto:mol@bartlet.df.lth.se> wrote:
> 
> The problem is just that it's very difficult to make such tools. In
> fact, the "IF for non-programmers" system is sort of the Holy Grail of
> IF - sought after by many, found by none.

I might say that, like Andrew elsewhere in this thread, I just don't
believe in this particular Grail.  The range of behaviour needed by
puzzles and activities in a game of any artistic worth exceeds
the range of behaviour which can be generated by a non-programming
system.

(This is to say nothing about Inform's ease of use, or lack of it,
_qua_ programming tool.)

I believe that a game, in order to have some artistic worth or
indeed playability, has to satisfy a form of Turing Test.  (It's an
old story, but for those who haven't heard it: Turing proposed that
a satisfactory definition of "an intelligent program" would be one
that seemed to be intelligent.  If you could talk to it via a
teletype without realising that it wasn't a human being, then it
would pass.  No program has yet passed this test, except under very
unnatural constraints.)

I suggest that the analogous test is this.  The game has to be
plausibly a simulation of a world in which many actions are
possible.  The game will fail this test if it seems only a row
of locations, with elementary connections between, and one or
two passive objects in them.  The game will pass if it seems as
rich with possibility as, say, the Zork I underground.

My point is just that a non-programming tool can only make the
first kind of "game", or else copies of what is essentially a
single original game.  The Scott Adams / Brian Howarth games,
for instance, are basically duplicates of "Adventureland", with
the essential puzzles -- light and the lamp, treasure collection --
programmed into the "hardware" of the format.  And yet even they
contain a substantial amount of quite cunning code, and I don't
think they could be assembled without programming.  For example,
suppose you drop the bees in "Adventureland":

 85)  18  23 [DRO BEE]
     ? HAS (26 = bees in a bottle)
     ? IS_in_AR (27 = large sleeping dragon)
    -> 53 = MOVE_INTO_AR (24 = large african bees)
    -> 53 = MOVE_INTO_AR (44 = *DRAGON EGGS* (very rare))
    -> 55 = REMOVE (27 = large sleeping dragon)
    -> 43 = PRINT(The bees attack the dragon ....

(I won't reveal what happens in this contingency.)  Even these
minor complexities would stretch the abilities of a purely
mechanical adventure-creator.

-- 
Graham Nelson | graham@gnelson.demon.co.uk | Oxford, United Kingdom



From jcmason@undergrad.math.uwaterloo.ca Fri Dec 19 10:14:40 MET 1997
Article: 32127 of rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: jcmason@undergrad.math.uwaterloo.ca (Joe Mason)
Subject: Re: OO getting a bad rap?
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In article <66rfqh$dvk$1@bartlet.df.lth.se>,
Magnus Olsson <mol@bartlet.df.lth.se> wrote:

>Am I the only one who thinks this is more than a little bit absurd?

No.  I was going to mention it too.

>True, to somebody who's new to OOP, the OO nature of languages like
>Inform adds a little to the conceptual threshold of getting started;
>there's a bunch of new terms and concepts to learn. This is especially
>true if all your previous exposure to programming is writing small
>programs in Basic or Pascal (the non-OO varieties, of course).

On the other hand, if you don't know ANY programming, then its my opinion that
you'll find yourself much more comfortable with OOP then with traditional
programming.  I've now become so used to modelling things in terms of objects
that I have a hard time forcing myself *not* to use OOP concepts - and my
Computer Science assignments this year, which were marked by TA's whose
knowledge of OOP I don't want to trust, show it.  It's much more natural to
write an object-oriented program then a procedural one, unless you're already
used to the latter.  Maybe not as efficient, but much more natural.

>So, please, don't blame OO for IF programming being difficult. (I get
>the feeling that people who don't understand OO, and who don't even
>want to understand it, use it as a catchphrase to lump everything they
>don't understand together under one conenient label.)

I'm definitely getting that impression.

I think the DM's real failing is the first section, the "here's how you program
part".  It definitely isn't as well-written as the rest of the book, and I
think that's where many people are choking.  I mean, I was surprised to see it
there at all - I would have assumed that was the kind of thing that you would
already have to KNOW before picking up something like Inform.  Now that I see
how many non-programmers are trying to pick up Inform, I see why Graham
included it - but I think a more in-depth look at the basic foundations of OOP
programming (with Inform targeted in particular) is needed.  A tutorial would
be perfect.

But the rest of the DM is one of the best I've ever read.
  
Joe



From graham@gnelson.demon.co.uk Fri Dec 19 10:16:00 MET 1997
Article: 32252 of rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: Graham Nelson <graham@gnelson.demon.co.uk>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: How to syntax-colour Inform
Date: Wed, 17 Dec 1997 18:46:34 +0000 (GMT)
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[This is going to be a new section in the Inform Technical Manual,
which seems as good a place to keep it as any, but in the mean time
it's been requested several times on the newsgroup, hence this
posting.  Comments welcome -- GN.]


How to syntax-colour Inform source code
---------------------------------------

"Syntax colouring" is an automatic process which some text editors apply
to the text being edited: the characters are displayed just as they are,
but with artificial colours added according to what the text editor thinks
they mean.  The editor is in the position of someone going through a book
colouring all the verbs in red and all the nouns in green: it can only do
so if it understands how to tell a verb or a noun from other words.
Many good text editors have been programmed to syntax colour for languages
such as C, and a few will allow users to reprogram them to other languages.

One such is the popular Acorn RISC OS text editor "Zap", for which the
author has written an extension mode called "ZapInform".  ZapInform
contributes colouring rules for the Inform language and as over a dozen
people have now asked me how it works, while the original is written
in ARM assembly (a language rather less widely spoken than Middle Egyptian)
it seems worth documenting the main algorithm.

(ZapInform does a number of other useful things, including pasting in
template objects and rooms when commanded from a mouse-accessed menu:
for instance, you can create a simple game with two or three mouse
clicks and a few object names typed in to a dialogue box, then click
to save and compile the result.  See the ZapInform manual for details.)


(a)  State values

ZapInform associates a 32-bit number called the "state" with every
character position.

The "state" is as follows.  11 of the upper 16 bits hold flags, the
rest being unused:

   32 31 30 29 28 27 26 25 24 23 22 21 20 19 18 17
                                                comment
                                             single-quoted text
                                          double-quoted text
                                       statement
                                    after marker
                                 highlight flag
                              highlight all flag
                           colour backtrack
                        after-restart-flag
                     wait-direct (waiting for a directive)
                  dont-know-flag

These flags make up the "outer state" while the lower 16 bits holds
a number pompously called the "inner state":

             0    after WS (WS = white space or start of line or comma)
             1    after WS then "-"
             2    after WS then "-" and ">" [terminal]
             3    after WS then "*" [terminal]

          0xFF    after junk
   0x100*N + S    after WS then an Inform identifier N+1 characters long
                  itself in state S:
                  101 w    202 wi   303 wit   404 with
                  111 h    212 ha   313 has
                  121 c    222 cl   323 cla   424 clas   525 class
 same + 0x8000    when complete [terminal]
   
In practice it would be madness to try to actually store the state
of every character position in memory (it would occupy four times as
much space as the file itself).  Instead, ZapInform caches just one
state value, the one most recently calculated, and uses a process
called "scanning" to determine new states.  That is, given that we
know the state at character X and want to know the state at character
Y, we can find out by scanning each character between X and Y,
altering the state according to each one.

It might possible save some time to cache more state values than
this (say, the state values at the start of every screen-visible
line of text, or some such) but the complexity of doing this doesn't
seem worthwhile on my implementation.  Scanning is a quick process
because the Zap text editor stores the entire file in almost contiguous
memory, easy to run through, and the state value can be kept in a
single CPU register while this is done.


(b)  Scanning text

Let us number the characters in a file 1, 2, 3, ...

The state before character 1 is always 0x02000000: that is, inner
state zero and outer state with only the waiting-for-directive flag set.
(One can think of this as the state of an imaginary "character 0".)
The state at character N+1 is then a function of the state at
character N and what character is actually there.  Thus,

       State(0) = 0x02000000

and for all N >= 0,

       State(N+1) = Scanning_function(State(N), Character(N+1))

And here is what the scanning function does:

    1.  Is the comment bit set?
           Is the character a new-line?
              If so, clear the comment bit.
              Stop.

    2.  Is the double-quote bit set?
           Is the character a double-quote?
              If so, clear the double-quote bit.
              Stop.

    3.  Is the single-quote bit set?
           Is the character a single-quote?
              If so, clear the single-quote bit.
              Stop.

    4.  Is the character a single quote?
           If so, set the single-quote bit and stop.

    5.  Is the character a double quote?
           If so, set the double-quote bit and stop.

    6.  Is the character an exclamation mark?
           If so, set the comment bit and stop.

    7.  Is the statement bit set?
           If so:
              Is the character "]"?
                 If so:
                    Clear the statement bit.
                    Stop.

              If the after-restart bit is clear, stop.

              Run the inner finite state machine.

              If it results in a keyword terminal (that is, a terminal
              which has inner state 0x100 or above):
                 Set colour-backtrack (and record the backtrack colour
                 as "function" colour).
                 Clear after-restart.

              Stop.

           If not:
              Is the character "["?
                 If so:
                    Set the statement bit.
                    If the after-marker bit is set, set after-restart.
                    Stop.

              Run the inner finite state machine.

              If it results in a terminal:
                 Is the inner state 2 [after "->"] or 3 [after "*"]?
                    If so:
                       Set after-marker.
                       Set colour-backtrack (and record the backtrack
                       colour as "directive" colour).
                       Zero the inner state.
                 [If not, the terminal must be from a keyword.]
                 Is the inner state 0x404 [after "with"]?
                    If so:
                       Set colour-backtrack (and record the backtrack
                       colour as "directive" colour).
                       Set after-marker.
                       Set highlight.
                       Clear highlight-all.
                 Is the inner state 0x313 ["has"] or 0x525 ["class"]?
                    If so:
                       Set colour-backtrack (and record the backtrack
                       colour as "directive" colour).
                       Set after-marker.
                       Clear highlight.
                       Set highlight-all.
                 If the inner state isn't one of these: [so that recent
                 text has formed some alphanumeric token which might or
                 might not be a reserved word of some kind]
                    If waiting for directive is set:
                          Set colour-backtrack (and record the backtrack
                          colour as "directive" colour)
                    If not, but highlight-all is set:
                          Set colour-backtrack (and record the backtrack
                          colour as "property" colour)
                    If not, but highlight is set:
                          Clear highlight.
                          Set colour-backtrack (and record the backtrack
                          colour as "property" colour).

                 Is the character ";"?
                    If so:
                       Set wait-direct.
                       Clear after-marker.
                       Clear after-restart.
                       Clear highlight.
                       Clear highlight-all.
                 Is the character ","?
                    If so:
                       Set after-marker.
                       Set highlight.

              Stop.

The "inner finite state machine" adjusts only the inner state, and
always preserves the outer state.  It not only changes an old inner
state to a new inner state, but sometimes returns a "terminal" flag
to signal that something interesting has been found.

          State      Condition      Go to state     Return terminal-flag?
          0          if "-"         1
                     if "*"         3               yes
                     if space, "#",
                        newline     0
                     if "_"         0x100
                     if "w"         0x101
                     if "h"         0x111
                     if "c"         0x121
                     other letters  0x100
                     otherwise      0xFF
          1          if ">"         2               yes
                     otherwise      0xFF
          2          always         0
          3          always         0
          0xFF       if space,
                        newline     0
                     otherwise      0xFF         

          all 0x100+ states:
                     if not alphanumeric, add
                        0x8000 to the state         yes
          then for the following states:
          0x101      if "i"         0x202
                     otherwise      0x200
          0x202      if "t"         0x303
                     otherwise      0x300
          0x303      if "h"         0x404
                     otherwise      0x400
          0x111      if "a"         0x212
                     otherwise      0x200
          0x212      if "s"         0x313
                     otherwise      0x300
          0x121      if "l"         0x222
                     otherwise      0x200
          0x222      if "a"         0x323
                     otherwise      0x300
          0x323      if "s"         0x424
                     otherwise      0x400
          0x424      if "s"         0x525
                     otherwise      0x500
          but for all other 0x100+ states:
                     if alphanumeric, add
                        0x100 to the state

          0x8000+    always         0

(Note that if your text editor stores tabs as characters in their own
right (usually 0x09) rather than rows of spaces, tab should be included
with space and newline in the above.)

Briefly, the finite state machine can be left running until it returns
a terminal, which means it has found "->", "*" or a completed Inform
identifier: and it detects "with", "has" and "class" as special keywords
amongst these identifiers.


(c)  Initial colouring

ZapInform colours one line of visible text at a time.  For instance, it
might be faced with this:

     Object -> bottle "~Heinz~ bottle"

And it outputs an array of colours for each character position in the
line, which the text editor can then use in actually displaying the text.

It works out the state before the first character of the line (the "O"),
then scans through the line.  For each character, it determines the
initial colour as a function of the state at that character:

  If single-quote or double-quote is set, then quoted text colour.
  If comment is set, then comment colour.
  If statement is set:
     Use code colour
        unless the character is "[" or "]", in which case use
           function colour,
        or is a single or double quote, in which case use quoted text
           colour.
  If not:
     Use foreground colour
        unless the character is "," or ";" or "*" or ">", in which
           case use directive colour,
        or the character is "[" or "]", in which case use
           function colour,
        or is a single or double quote, in which case use quoted text
           colour.
  
However, the scanning algorithm sometimes signals that a block of
text must be "backtracked" through and recoloured.  For instance,
this happens if the white space after the sequence "c", "l", "a",
"s" and "s" is detected when in a context where the keyword "class"
is legal.  The scanning algorithm does this by setting the "colour
backtrack" bit in the outer state.  Note that the number of characters
we need to recolour backwards from the current position has been
recorded in bits 9 to 16 of the inner state (which has been counting
up lengths of identifiers), while the scanning algorithm has also
recorded the colour to be used.  For instance, in

     Object -> bottle "~Heinz~ bottle"
           ^  ^      ^

backtracks of size 6, 2 and 6 are called for at the three marked
spaces.  Note that a backtrack never crosses a new-line.

ZapInform uses the following chart of colours:

    name                   default actual colour

    foreground             navy blue
    quoted text            grey
    comment                light green
    directive              black
    property               red
    function               red
    code                   navy blue
    codealpha              dark green
    assembly               gold
    escape character       red

but note that at this stage, we've only used the following:

    function colour        [ and ] as function brackets, plus function names
    comment colour         comments
    directive colour       initial directive keywords, plus "*",
                           "->", "with", "has" and "class" when used
                           in a directive context
    quoted text colour     singly- or doubly-quoted text
    foreground colour      code in directives
    code colour            code in statements
    property colour        property, attribute and class names when
                           used within "with", "has" and "class"

For instance,

     Object -> bottle "~Heinz~ bottle"

would give us the array

     DDDDDDDDDDFFFFFFFQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQ

(F being foreground colour; it doesn't really matter what colour
values the spaces have).


(d)  Colour refinement


The next operation is "colour refinement", which includes a number
of things.

Firstly, any characters with colour Q (quoted-text) which have special
meanings are given "escape-character colour" instead.  This applies
to "~", "^", "\" and "@" followed by (possibly) another "@" and a
number of digits.

Next we look for identifiers.  An identifier for these purposes includes
a number, for it is just a sequence of:

     "_" or "$" or "#" or "0" to "9" or "a" to "z" or "A" to "Z".

The initial colouring of an identifier tells us its context.  We're
only interested in those in foreground colour (these must be used
in the body of a directive) or code colour (used in statements).

If an identifier is in code colour, then:

    If it follows an "@", recolour the "@" and the identifier in
       assembly-language colour.
    Otherwise, unless it is one of the following:

      "box"  "break"  "child"  "children"  "continue"  "default"
      "do"  "elder"  "eldest"  "else"  "false"  "font"  "for"  "give"
      "has"  "hasnt"  "if"  "in"  "indirect"  "inversion"  "jump"
      "metaclass"  "move"  "new_line"  "nothing"  "notin"  "objectloop"
      "ofclass"  "or"  "parent"  "print"  "print_ret"  "provides"  "quit"
      "random"  "read"  "remove"  "restore"  "return"  "rfalse"  "rtrue"
      "save"  "sibling"  "spaces"  "string"  "style"  "switch"  "to"
      "true"  "until"  "while"  "younger"  "youngest"

    we recolour the identifier to "codealpha colour".

On the other hand, if an identifier is in foreground colour, then we
check it to see if it's one of the following interesting keywords:

      "first"  "last"  "meta"  "only"  "private"  "replace"  "reverse"
      "string"  "table"

If it is, we recolour it in directive colour.

Thus, after colour refinement we arrive at the final colour scheme:


    function colour        [ and ] as function brackets, plus function names
    comment colour         comments
    quoted text colour     singly- or doubly-quoted text
    directive colour       initial directive keywords, plus "*",
                              "->", "with", "has" and "class" when used
                              in a directive context, plus any of the
                              reserved directive keywords listed above
    property colour        property, attribute and class names when
                              used within "with", "has" and "class"
    foreground colour      everything else in directives
    code colour            operators, numerals, brackets and statement
                              keywords such as "if" or "else" occurring
                              inside routines
    codealpha colour       variable and constant names occurring inside
                              routines
    assembly colour        @ plus assembly language opcodes
    escape char colour     special or escape characters in quoted text


(e)  An example

Consider the following example stretch of code (which is not meant to
be functional or interesting, just colourful):

   ! Here's the bottle:
   
   Object -> bottle "bottle marked ~DRINK ME~"
     with name "bottle" "jar" "flask",
          initial "There is an empty bottle here.",
          before
          [; LetGo:                      ! For dealing with water
                if (noun in bottle)
                    "You're holding that already (in the bottle).";
          ],
     has  container;
   
   [ ReadableSpell i j k;
     if (scope_stage==1)
     {   if (action_to_be==##Examine) rfalse;
         rtrue;
     }
     @set_cursor 1 1;
   ];
   
   Extend "examine" first
                   * scope=ReadableSpell            -> Examine;

Here are the initial colourings:

   ! Here's the bottle:
   CCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCC
   
   Object -> bottle "bottle marked ~DRINK ME~"
   DDDDDDDDDDFFFFFFFQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQ
     with name "bottle" "jar" "flask",
   FFDDDDDPPPPPQQQQQQQQFQQQQQFQQQQQQQD
          initial "There is an empty bottle here.",
   FFFFFFFPPPPPPPPQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQD
          before
   FFFFFFFPPPPPP
          [; LetGo:                      ! For dealing with water
   FFFFFFFfSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCC
                if (noun in bottle)
   SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
                    "You're holding that already (in the bottle).";
   SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQS
          ],
   SSSSSSSfD
     has  container;
   FFDDDDDPPPPPPPPPD
   
   [ ReadableSpell i j k;
   fffffffffffffffSSSSSSS
     if (scope_stage==1)
   SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
     {   if (action_to_be==##Examine) rfalse;
   SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
         rtrue;
   SSSSSSSSSSSS
     }
   SSS
     @set_cursor 1 1;
   SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
   ];
   fD
   
   Extend "examine" first
   DDDDDDDQQQQQQQQQFFFFFF
                   * scope=ReadableSpell            -> Examine;
   FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFDDFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFDDDFFFFFFFD

(Here F=foreground, D=directive, f=function, S=code (S for
"statement"), C=comment, P=property, Q=quoted text.)  And here is
the refinement:

   ! Here's the bottle:
   CCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCC
   
   Object -> bottle "bottle marked ~DRINK ME~"
   DDDDDDDDDDFFFFFFFQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQEQQQQQQQQEQ
     with name "bottle" "jar" "flask",
   FFDDDDDPPPPPQQQQQQQQFQQQQQFQQQQQQQD
          initial "There is an empty bottle here.",
   FFFFFFFPPPPPPPPQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQD
          before
   FFFFFFFPPPPPP
          [; LetGo:                      ! For dealing with water
   FFFFFFFfSSIIIIISSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCC
                if (noun in bottle)
   SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSIIIISSSSIIIIIIS
                    "You're holding that already (in the bottle).";
   SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQS
          ],
   SSSSSSSfD
     has  container;
   FFDDDDDPPPPPPPPPD
   
   [ ReadableSpell i j k;
   fffffffffffffffSSSSSSS
     if (scope_stage==1)
   SSSSSSIIIIIIIIIIISSIS
     {   if (action_to_be==##Examine) rfalse;
   SSSSSSSSSSIIIIIIIIIIIISSIIIIIIIIISSSSSSSSS
         rtrue;
   SSSSSSSSSSSS
     }
   SSS
     @set_cursor 1 1;
   SSAAAAAAAAAAASISIS
   ];
   fD
   
   Extend "examine" first
   DDDDDDDQQQQQQQQQFDDDDD
                   * scope=ReadableSpell            -> Examine;
   FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFDDFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFDDDFFFFFFFD

(where E = escape characters, A = assembly and I = "codealpha", that
is, identifiers cited in statement code).



-- 
Graham Nelson | graham@gnelson.demon.co.uk | Oxford, United Kingdom



From jweinste@aludra.usc.edu Fri Dec 19 18:21:55 MET 1997
Article: 32343 of rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: jweinste@aludra.usc.edu (jweinste)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Love's labor lost (was Re: Inform for Dummies, OS Help Needed)
Date: 18 Dec 1997 15:01:28 -0800
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fake-mail@anti-spam.address (Neil K.) writes:

>Indeed. I've occasionally wondered what the ratio of single (and
>desperately available) nerds to happily involved nerds might be. I know
>I've done far more writing when I didn't have anyone to spend time with,
>and suspect the ratio might be heavily skewed towards the former.

You know, now that I think about it, there's an eerie correlation. I wrote
"Save Princeton" and "Modernism" when I had recently broken up with my
girlfriend, but that year, I don't think I wrote much fiction. Than I got
another steady girlfriend, and didn't write any IF, but did write a
full-length collection of short stories. 

Since my now-wife and I began living together two years ago, I've banged
out a screenplay, a play, a novel, and a few short stories, but I was
unable to finish my current mini-game. 

In othert words, a happy love life seems to be good for all kinds of
writing, except IF. This is correlated by the year during which I had a
girlfriend but we were in different parts of the country, leaving me in a
sort of in-between state in which I wrote one mini-game and a few short
stories.

Why is that?   And if I want to finish this damned mini-game in time for
next years competition, am I going to have to convince my better half to
walk out on me (or, at any rate, to stop making me so damned happy)?

-Jacob Weinstein




From rgs20@cam.ac.uk Sat Dec 20 10:21:28 MET 1997
Article: 32380 of rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: rgs20@cam.ac.uk (Richard Stamp)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Off topic ranting
Date: 19 Dec 1997 23:05:37 GMT
Organization: University of Cambridge, England
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Xref: news.lth.se rec.arts.int-fiction:32380

In article <ELG9Lq.5uu@world.std.com>,
Mark J Musante <olorin@world.std.com> wrote:
>
>Wow.  That's going back a bit, isn't it?  If memory serves, Henry Tudor of
>Wales actually conquered England, didn't he?  Battle of Bosworth or something.

You appear to be thinking of the Wars of the Roses, which was a battle
for succession to the English throne and not a war between England
and Wales.  Henry Tudor was indeed raised in Wales but he did not
"conquer" England on behalf of that country.

>Scotland came in later, but again it was
>a Scotish king (James IV?) who took over things.  That was early 17th
>century, again if memory serves.
>
>So it wasn't England's choice either time, was it.

A somewhat controversial remark, especially if voiced north of the Border.
Very few people would agree that Scotland chose the Union.

Hey, this thread is already a mile off topic.  One more article won't
hurt.  Here's a potted summary:

James VI of Scotland was indeed the same person as James I of England;
this is the "Union of the Crowns" in 1603.  This, however, was a far
looser and less formal union than exists today -- in particular, Scotland
retained its own Parliament.  Towards the end of the 1600s, the
Scottish parliament, which at that time had the right to elect the
Scottish king, declared its intent to end the Union of the Crowns
and move forward as a fully independent nation.

England was concerned by this, not because union with Scotland had
many benefits to England -- nor because Scotland presented a serious
military threat per se -- but because it had a historic alliance with
England's long-time enemy, France.  The combined might of France and
Scotland might have threatened England's security severely.

However, Scotland's economy was by that time considerably dependent
on England, under favourable trading conditions present during the
Union of the Crowns.  In the early 1700s, England passed the Act of
Aliens, which offered a choice to Scotland: full union with England,
or to be treated on the same terms as a foreign state.  Faced with
economic ruin, the Scottish parliament opted to unite with England;
it voted itself out of existence when it passed the Act of Union,
in 1707.  This is the "Union of the Parliaments".

The issue is muddied by a payment made from England to Scotland at
the time of the Union, notionally to compensate Scotland for accepting
a share of England's national debt.  There seems to be little doubt,
however, that this was a simple bribe, and it's generally said that
most of the money found its way into the pockets of Scotland's
legislators.

Many claim that Scotland was unfairly forced into the Union; others
point out that England merely proposed to treat Scotland as it did any
foreign state.  There is, however, no question that the 1707 Union of
the Parliaments was _not_, at that time, Scotland's preference or idea.

Cheers,
Richard
-- 
Richard Stamp
Churchill College, Cambridge


From fake-mail@anti-spam.address Sun Dec 21 13:54:34 MET 1997
Article: 32429 of rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: fake-mail@anti-spam.address (Neil K.)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction,rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: [TADS] Keyboards
Date: Sun, 21 Dec 1997 01:19:56 -0800
Organization: Cap'n Grocible's Discount Groceries
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Xref: news.lth.se rec.arts.int-fiction:32429 rec.games.int-fiction:28487

"Carter Linn" <mithee@internetland.no-spam.net> wrote:

> I have a keyboard object that I need the player to 'type' on.  Type is an
> action, but I don't know what class the keyboard object has to be set to be
> 'typeable'.  The object is there, and is interactive, but I just get 'I
> don't know how to type <string> on the console keyboard'.

 Take a look at the source code for Ditch Day Drifter or Deep Space
Drifter. Both contain computer keypads that allow numerical input. You
want to do the same thing, only you want to accept string input (strObj)
and not just numerical input (numObj). Here's a commented excerpt from
ditch.t:

/*
 *   The numObj object is used to convey a number to the game whenever
 *   the player uses a number in his command.  For example, "turn dial
 *   to 621" results in an indirect object of numObj, with its "value"
 *   property set to 621.  Just pick up the default definition from adv.t.
 */
numObj: basicNumObj;

/*
 *   strObj works like numObj, but for strings.  So, a player command of
 *     type "hello" on the keyboard
 *   will result in a direct object of strObj, with its "value" property
 *   set to the string 'hello'.
 *
 *   Note that, because a string direct object is used in the save, restore,
 *   and script commands, this object must handle those commands.  We'll just
 *   pick up the default definition from adv.t.
 */
strObj: basicStrObj;

 So that's basically it. Let's say you type 'Type "fnar" on keyboard.' The
keyboard object would be the indirect object and the string "fnar" would
be the direct object. The direct object is set automatically to be the
strObj item if you use the code above. Then you'd simply do a comparison
check in the keyboard object, using something like this:

    verIoTypeOn( actor ) = {}
    ioTypeOn( actor, dobj ) =
    {
        if ( dobj <> strObj )
           "Type the text you want to enter onto the keyboard using
quotation marks.
           For example, 'Type \"fnar\" on keyboard.' ";
        else if ( strObj.value = 'fnar' )
           "Fnar fnar fnar. ";
        else
           "Whatever. ";
    }

 If you have a lot of strings you want to check you should use a switch
statement instead of a million else ifs. And of course, to be fancy you
could add code to change everything to lower case first, remove trailing
or leading spaces - whatever you want.

 - Neil K.

-- 
 t e l a  computer consulting + design   *   Vancouver, BC, Canada
      web: http://www.tela.bc.ca/tela/   *   email: tela @ tela.bc.ca


From mol@bartlet.df.lth.se Sun Dec 21 14:27:55 MET 1997
Article: 32436 of rec.arts.int-fiction
Path: news.lth.se!not-for-mail
From: mol@bartlet.df.lth.se (Magnus Olsson)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: [Inform] Pronouns and objects with two genders
Date: 21 Dec 1997 14:22:52 +0100
Organization: Societas Datori Universitatis Lundensis
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(Posted to r.a.i-f, cc by mail to Graham)

In article <erkyrathELIo6I.C56@netcom.com>,
Andrew Plotkin <erkyrath@netcom.com> wrote:
>> :A suggestion that immediately raises its head is to allow multiple
>> :genders. An object like this:
>> :
>> :object rover "Rover"
>> :with
>> :    name 'rover' 'dog',
>> :has
>> :    animate neuter male
>> :;
>> :
>> :should be possible to refer to both as 'him' or 'it'. 
>
>Go up to Dec 6; I posted a message about how to get this effect (an 
>epicene gnome.)
>
>Post Message-ID: <erkyrathEKs7nH.I8B@netcom.com>

Thanks, that was just what the doctor ordered! (Or perhaps not - see
below). 

And, in case it may simplify other people's searches, the subject line
is "[INFORM] Coding pronouns for an epicene gnome or hermaphrodite".

However, while this solves my problem with the dog (which isn't
exactly epicene, but has different grammatic genders depending on
context), it still doesn't address the fundamental problem with the
concept of gender in Inform.

I've thought a little more about it, and it seems that the problem is
this: 

In Inform, gender is a property of an object. In most natural
languages, gender is a property of a noun that refers to the object.

An example: the young German woman, who may be referred to as "die Frau"
("the woman", feminine) or "das Maedchen" ("the girl", neuter).

The person referred to has of course a poperty sex=female (although
modern feminists prefer the word "gender" in this context as well,
I'll avoid that usage for clarity). The nouns referring to her (Frau,
Maedchen) have the properties gender=feminine and gender=neuter,
respecitvely. 

In Inform, however, there is a single attribute "female" which is
a property of the object representing the person.

A similar things holds for then number of nouns. And here we don't
need to go beyond the English language to see the problem. If I'm
allowed two Americanisms, we can have a single article of women's
clothing that's referred to both as "the panties" (plural) and "the
underwear" (singular, uncountable). And the concept of uncountable
nouns complicates things further.


-- 
Magnus Olsson (mol@df.lth.se, zebulon@pobox.com)
------    http://www.pobox.com/~zebulon   ------
     Not officially connected to LU or LTH.


From erkyrath@netcom.com Mon Dec 22 09:53:33 MET 1997
Article: 32457 of rec.arts.int-fiction
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: erkyrath@netcom.com (Andrew Plotkin)
Subject: Re: [Inform] Pronouns and objects with two genders
Message-ID: <erkyrathELKGD6.Los@netcom.com>
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Xref: news.lth.se rec.arts.int-fiction:32457

Magnus Olsson (mol@bartlet.df.lth.se) wrote:

> I've thought a little more about it, and it seems that the problem is
> this: 
>
> In Inform, gender is a property of an object. In most natural
> languages, gender is a property of a noun that refers to the object.

A lucid observation.

> An example: the young German woman, who may be referred to as "die Frau"
> ("the woman", feminine) or "das Maedchen" ("the girl", neuter).
> [...]
> A similar things holds for then number of nouns. And here we don't
> need to go beyond the English language to see the problem. If I'm
> allowed two Americanisms, we can have a single article of women's
> clothing that's referred to both as "the panties" (plural) and "the
> underwear" (singular, uncountable). And the concept of uncountable
> nouns complicates things further.

The hack I would really, really like for Inform is a "referrer object". 
When a grammar token matches your input on a referrer object, it doesn't 
add the referrer object to the list-of-objects-you-typed; instead it adds 
an arbitrary different object. Or *several* different objects. (This is 
critical; it would make some things much much easier...)

Note that I'm talking about a parser hack. You can't do what I want by 
fooling around with before or react_before properties.

Maybe I'll try to write it.

--Z

-- 

"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the
borogoves..."


From erkyrath@netcom.com Mon Dec 22 09:55:19 MET 1997
Article: 32464 of rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: erkyrath@netcom.com (Andrew Plotkin)
Subject: Re: [Inform] Deflecting a receive
Message-ID: <erkyrathELKqGE.FKA@netcom.com>
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andreww (awilliams@daikin.com.au) wrote:

> I want to "deflect" a receive so that if the player puts something in one
> object, it is deflected to another, eg if they put the bread in the
> toaster, it deflects the slice of bread to the toaster_slot; if they put
> the cork in the birdbath it actually goes into the birdbath_water, etc.

Pretty easy:

Object toaster
with
  before [;
    Receive:
      if (receive_action == ##Insert) {
        <<Insert noun toaster_slot>>;
      }
    Search:
      <<Search toaster_slot>>;
  ];

The toaster doesn't even have to have the "container" attribute. (But the 
toaster_slot does.)

The "if (receive_action == ##Insert)" test is to distinguish "put in" 
>from "put on". If the player types "put bread on toaster", the toaster's 
Receive action will still be called, but receive_action will be set to 
##PutOn instead.

Note that the Search action is also deflected (this covers "look in 
toaster" as well.) It's also good to grab Empty and EmptyT as well, 
although these are rarely used by real players.

--Z

-- 

"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the
borogoves..."


From c.brown@utoronto.ca Mon Dec 29 13:58:48 MET 1997
Article: 32545 of rec.arts.int-fiction
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: "Christopher James Brown" <c.brown@utoronto.ca>
Subject: Re: Wanted: The Pawn
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Mary Warren <mwarren@qlogicinc.com> wrote in article
<349F2C3A.33ADD689@qlogicinc.com>...
> I am looking for The Pawn by Magnetic Scrolls... I own this game, but
> the disks are bad.  I've checked several archives, but no one has the PC
> version.  Please help!!!


Okay, it's kind of a crazy process, but it is one way I know of getting The
Pawn, and every other Magnetic Scrolls (IE: Jixter, Corruption, Guild of
Thieves...) game on your PC...

Connect to: 

ftp://arnold.hiof.no:6502/games/

and find the games you want...for The Pawn specifically its:

ftp://arnold.hiof.no:6502/games/p/pawn.zip

This is a zip file of the original Commodore 64 version, so you will have
to grab another file to convert it and run the new version. That brilliant
piece of software is MAGNETIC by Niclas Karlson (sp?)...It can be found at:

ftp://ftp.gmd.de/if-archive/magnetic-scrolls/interpreters/magnetic/DosMagnet
ic10.zip

You will have to read the documentation as to how to convert the C64
file...then, one last stop for the GRAPHIC file at:

www2.rz.hu-berlin.de/inside/angl/people/pdd/advent.html

Scroll down to the MAGNETIC SCROLLS section and download THE PAWN graphics
files (or the GFX files for any other MS games...)Hints, scanned stuff from
the packaging, password protection lists, etc.. can be found at:

www.igd.fhg.de/~boerner/commodore/ms/mscrolls.html

Have Fun!


From graham@gnelson.demon.co.uk Tue Dec 30 12:18:41 MET 1997
Article: 32606 of rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: Graham Nelson <graham@gnelson.demon.co.uk>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Turkish Delight / Anagrams
Date: Mon, 29 Dec 1997 12:25:19 +0000 (GMT)
Organization: none
Message-ID: <ant291219b49M+4%@gnelson.demon.co.uk>
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In article <01bd10cc$bb7c4be0$LocalHost@default>,
Jeremy A.Smith (formerly Rancid the Elf) <URL:mailto:jeremyasmith@lwtcdz.prestel.co.uk> wrote:
> 
> Obsessed, me? 'Guess the celebrity anagram:'
> 
> lamer hangs on
> henna glamors
> mangles ran ho
> solar hangmen
> hangman loser

Hint: there's a clue elsewhere in this post.

Actually, I was once co-editor of the Archimedeans Newsletter (the
fortnightly broadsheet of the Cambridge University maths society),
which had a reputation for doing frightfully undergraduate-ish
silly things.  We produced one edition more or less entirely in
anagrams (though I recall that a certain Ian Redfern came out as
"I an red fern").  Ah, the golden days of the Amnesiac Herd.
Needs charisma, of course.

-- 
Graham Nelson | graham@gnelson.demon.co.uk | Oxford, United Kingdom



From graham@gnelson.demon.co.uk Thu Jan  1 23:00:35 MET 1998
Article: 32658 of rec.arts.int-fiction
Path: news.lth.se!feed1.news.luth.se!luth.se!cam-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!cpk-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!news.bbnplanet.com!dispose.news.demon.net!demon!news.demon.co.uk!demon!gnelson.demon.co.uk!graham
From: Graham Nelson <graham@gnelson.demon.co.uk>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Adventure games - but how to design them
Date: Wed, 31 Dec 1997 11:13:17 +0000 (GMT)
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In article <01bd1580$b6942040$LocalHost@n210016200>, Ola Sverre Bauge
<URL:mailto:osb@bu.telia.no> wrote:
> 
> Anyway, playing through lots of games including Curses (which I finally
> gave up on and plowed through with a walkthrough) I did notice one thing
> possibly of interest to r.a.i-f'ers:  At the beginning, one room
> description mentions various furniture lying around:
> 
> Old Furniture
> Scruffy old furniture is piled up here: armchairs with springs coming out,
> umbrella stands, a badly scratched cupboard, a table with one leg
> missing... You try to remember why you keep all this rubbish, and fail. 
> Anyway the attic continues to the southeast.
> 
> But when I examine any of the pieces of furniture except the cupboard more
> closely, I'm given the "that's not important" routine.  However, the
> cupboard contains several items vital to the game:

  As the author of the above room, I guess I should apologise, to a
small extent, but I think only to a small extent.  For one thing, it
was about my second room description, not counting a couple of odd test
locations with very early drafts of "zass" (as Inform was once
called) -- I think there was a cloister, and a football, and a
jacket, but that's all I can remember of those pioneering days.
Anyway, I was young and callow in those days.

  However.  One might also say that the cupboard is different in kind
>from the other furniture, in that it clearly has an interior and is
still functional (it is only scratched, not broken).  Under the
genre conventions that apply, it seems reasonable to try looking
inside, examining or opening it...  Another point is that I
intentionally wrote the attic rooms in "Curses" as locations which
would be returned to many times, and would only slowly reveal all
their secrets.  There are rather more puzzles hidden in the opening
locations than most starting-out players realise.  People solve
these in a variety of different ways and in different orders.

-- 
Graham Nelson | graham@gnelson.demon.co.uk | Oxford, United Kingdom



From erkyrath@netcom.com Wed Jan  7 09:56:28 MET 1998
Article: 32806 of rec.arts.int-fiction
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: erkyrath@netcom.com (Andrew Plotkin)
Subject: Re: [Inform] Evading the nine-character limit?
Message-ID: <erkyrathEMCHyE.93t@netcom.com>
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Adam Cadre (adamc@acpub.duke.edu) wrote:
> I never thought this would be a problem -- even Tweedledee and
> Tweedledum diverge by the ninth character.  But I've just hit the
> wall: I'd like to make the parser a bit more friendly by including
> "Aphrodite^s" in the name field for Aphrodite's possessions, but if
> Aphrodite's in the same room, the parser insists on asking if I'm sure
> I'm not referring to the gal herself.  I don't suppose there's any way
> to run a check on that tenth character, is there?

Yes. You'll have to write a parse_name routine which checks for the word
'aphrodite', and then calls WordAddress() and WordLength() to find the
position of that block of characters in the input buffer. Then you can
scan it yourself, char by char, to see how it ends. 

Another approach is to write a BeforeParsing() routine. This is called 
before the parsing starts work; you could jig through all the words, call 
WordAddress() and WordLength(), and if you find the word "aphrodite's" in 
the input buffer, change it to "aphro,s,,,," (the same number of 
characters, note) and change the equivalent entry in the parse buffer to 
'aphro,s,,,,'.

--Z

-- 

"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the
borogoves..."


From graham@gnelson.demon.co.uk Wed Jan  7 22:21:14 MET 1998
Article: 32783 of rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: Graham Nelson <graham@gnelson.demon.co.uk>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: [Inform] V6 Questions and such
Date: Mon, 05 Jan 1998 09:37:33 +0000 (GMT)
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In article <68q5b6$g56$1@neko.syix.com>, Patrick Kellum
<URL:mailto:patrick@syix.com> wrote:
> 
> Maybe someone could write a gif2inf file that converts giif files to the
> Infocom standard.  This would most likely be alot faster then waiting for
> Blorb format to finally become accepted (sad but most likely true).
> 
>  >interpreters that supported Blorb...
> 
> I despertly want Frotz for the Amiga to support Blorb.  Thing is, I doubt
> any interpreter authors are going to bother until there are some
> Blorb-style files available and game authors aren't going to bother until
> the nterpreters support it.  Kinda a endless cycle there :(

I'd like to see Blorb, too!  And I _don't_ think Blorb is difficult:
instead, it is Version 6 support that is difficult; Blorb is
simply a way to serve up pictures to it.

Blorb contains sound files as well as pictures, but the sound part
is optional.  Please, please, please, interpreter-writers, somebody
implement Blorb.  Your reward will be great in heaven.

-- 
Graham Nelson | graham@gnelson.demon.co.uk | Oxford, United Kingdom



From unavailable@this.time Thu Jan  8 15:30:00 MET 1998
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From: unavailable@this.time (support the smith bill)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: twisty little puzzles, all different
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On Fri, 2 Jan 1998 12:42:30 -0700, Paul O'Brian
<obrian@ucsu.Colorado.EDU> wrote:

>Now that there is no gaming dollar to speak of, perhaps we'll see a shift
>in approach? I would argue that we already have, to some degree, seen such
>a shift... witness such games as I-0. My own interest in IF is not really
>for the puzzle-solving. It's for the immersive fictional experience, so I
>hope that we see more games who focus on that side of the puzzle-to-story
>continuum. 

I've been interested in a while in this field from a game-playing
perspective, and I'm now trying to get a feel for it from the writing
perspective.. a lot of what's done lately with IF has convinced me of
its possibilities as a serious literary form.

It has some major differences from conventional fiction, of course.
For one, there's more of a learning curve- even the barest bit of IF
is not a trivial thing to code.  It requires a reasonable amount of
proficiency in two disciplines, and as such is I suppose a
multi-medium work of a different sort.  It's also a far, far more
restrictive field than conventional fiction, because the creative muse
is limited by two things- technical problems, and a enslavement to the
impulses of the player.  

It's fairly easy to do some things with IF; mazes, logic puzzles, and
the like.  It's damn near impossible to do other things, such as
convincingly deploy NPCs.  I've NEVER been convinced in a literary
sense by an NPC in IF.  Technical considerations have had an extremely
transparent effect on NPCs- call it "The Wizard of Frobozz Effect".
The latest incarnation that I can recall is the '97 comp's "Zero Sum
Game".  In this case, the coding framework serves as a setup for
endless repetition of stereotypes and genre marginalization.  This
might be one reason why satire is such a popular subject among IF
writers- satirizing the conventions of the genre allows you to get
away with repeating them.

As for the player, well, it's a dodgy proposition on both sides.  The
player doesn't get any actual control over the shape and development
of the narrative- you've written all that out well in advance- but
they want to FEEL like they do.  In contrast to printed writers, who
are able to make intuitive leaps and bounds with regard to plot and
character, and employ unconventional forms of interaction, an IF
writer is bound to the conventional, must expect the player to
ordinary things.  As frustrating, and likely to produce "code bloat",
as this can be, the dynamics of player/author "interaction" are
nevertheless fascinating.  The player works from within the framework
set up by the author, while the author tries to divine the nature of
the player from past experience.

For IF to really succeed artistically (I think we can just forget
about it ever succeeding financially) as a medium, though, it ought to
recognize its limitations.  BUT at the same time it shouldn't be bound
to tradition; it should differentiate natural human inclinations from
kludges that have gained acceptance in the minds of that subset known
as "IF players".  If the goal is to recast IF as an artistic medium
rather than a set of puzzles, the IF author should give thought to the
approach that would be taken by the first-time IF player.

While I'm rambling here, it's just occured to me that nouns tend to be
a fairly unrestricted element in IF games; that is, readers won't try
to use a noun unless it's explicitly mentioned in the game.  Of
course, this convention has been played about with (I recall one
little game where the only way to solve it was by using an article of
clothing which wasn't mentioned anywhere), but all in all I feel that
this convention is a good thing, since it provides an element of
rapport between reader and author.  Verbs however are much more
restricted...



From ravipind@fast.net Fri Jan  9 09:26:49 MET 1998
Article: 32928 of rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: ravipind@fast.net
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: "...doing a Dan Ravipinto..." [somewhat off-topic]
Date: 9 Jan 1998 03:49:49 GMT
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I've been unavoidably busy as of late and unfortunately missed the whole of 
the '97 competition (which *HA!* I had actually thought I'd have time to 
enter...).  However, just after the holidays I've managed a little time to 
look over some of the i-f projects I've put off.

Also, I finally managed to look at the newsgroup.

Being the egoist I am, I did a quick dejanews search of "Ravipinto" in r.*.i-
f, just to see if my name had shown up in passing. :)

I stumbled upon the following, posted by David Dyte:

"Note: I am probably not offering a good or workable definition of Novice
here, and the idea obviously flies out the window if someone does a Dan
Ravipinto again, but it's still a thought."

Oh dear god.  I have a verb named after me.

I'm really, really hoping "doing a Dan Ravipinto" isn't half as bad as 
"pulling a Homer" (ala The Simpsons).  Not to mention the fact the phrase is 
fraught with double entendres.

This is almost as bad as when CE Forman thought "Dan Ravipinto" was a 
pseudonym.  Or some of the wonderful misspellings I've seen (Ravapinto??) :)

Dan "It's REALLY not that weird of a name" Ravipinto

PS Sorry 'bout the off-topic post, folks.  This was only a test.  If this had 
been an actual on-topic post, you might have been vaguely interested.  We now 
return you to your regularly scheduled programming, already in progress.


From goetz@cs.buffalo.edu Fri Jan  9 09:27:27 MET 1998
Article: 32931 of rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: goetz@cs.buffalo.edu (Phil Goetz)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: FemaleDeer's Comp97 Reviews - Pt 3
Date: 9 Jan 1998 04:09:21 GMT
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In article <34B44DDE.943@pacbell.net>, Jim Aikin  <jaikin@pacbell.net> wrote:
>The question to ask is, would you say that to the author's face if
>he/she/it were standing in front of you?

A professor of mine was once asked at dinner what she thought of the Revised
Standard Version (I think) of the Bible, and she said, "I think that below
Dante's ninth level of Hell there is a special level reserved soley for the
editors of that edition."  The man sitting next to her was, of course,
one of the editors.

So, be careful out there.  :)

Phil Goetz@zoesis.com


From dylanw@demon.net Sun Jan 11 15:06:45 MET 1998
Article: 33025 of rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: dylanw@demon.net (Dylan O'Donnell)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: [INFORM] Meta and non-meta verbs, and unsetting pronouns
Date: 11 Jan 1998 12:51:21 -0000
Organization: Spod East
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In article <ant1110161cbM+4%@gnelson.demon.co.uk>,
Graham Nelson  <graham@gnelson.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>In article <699ce3$jdh$2@neko.syix.com>, Patrick Kellum
><URL:mailto:patrick@syix.com> wrote:
>> 
>>  >2. Is there any way to _unset_ pronouns, so that their entry in > PRONOUNS
>>  >gives "unset" as at the beginning of the game? SetPronoun ('him', nothing)
>>  >results in things like '"him" means the nothing'; what other approach
>>  >should I be taking?
>> 
>> No idea here, I haven't messed with pronouns yet.
>
>Try setting to NULL, not to "nothing".  (I think.)
>
>"SetPronoun" _is_ open to the public, and is preferable to messing
>with the old variables itobj and so on.

Works a treat. Thanks, Graham.

(As does setting meta true for appropriate action routines, for my other
question; looking back through DejaNews, it's been asked and answered
several times before. I should learn to do that kind of check _before_
I post :-)

-- 
:  Dylan O'Donnell               : "What scourge, what scourge I bear, from :
:  Southend Slave Deck,          :  what red star/ So near to happiness,    :
:  Demon Internet Ltd            :  and yet so far?"                        :
:  http://www.fysh.org/~psmith/  :           -- Andrew Plotkin, "So Far"    :


From 1O4312.22O6@compuserve.com Sun Jan 11 20:00:26 MET 1998
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On 10 Jan 1998 05:18:32 GMT, Patrick Kellum wrote:
> >> Simple in Inform but it looks impossible with Glk.
>  >
>  >Actually, if I can modify my earlier post, it's *not* safely possible in
>  >Inform in the story window, because if the story window / status window
>  >size differentiation which I've talked about before.
>  
> That was a problem with your interpreter, NOT with Inform.  Your
> interpreter can't set the header bits properly, fix the interpreter to
> support version 1.0 (or even 0.2 for that matter) of the Z-Machine
> standard and it will work fine.  The method s OK, it works on all
> standard-compatable interpreters.

No. No. No. You are reading guarantees into the standard which (IMHO) just 
aren't there. Let me try and explain how I understand the screen model, and 
how I ended up there.

The basic Z<6 model was based on fixed-width character-mapped displays. 
Given such a display, the screen-size recorded in the header reflects the 
screen size in characters. The height provides an upper bound on the size of 
the upper window. The width indicates how many characters can be printed 
across the upper window (in the status line, for example.) On such a 
display, the extend-overprint-shrink behaviour used to do block quotes is 
fairly natural: it just replaces the contents of some of the character cells 
which 'really' belong to the lower window.

Now, come the early 1990s there were a number of DOS/UNIX based interpreter 
cores around and folks were busy porting them to systems with proportional 
fonts. It turned out that this wasn't too hard: use a proportional font for 
the lower window where the interpreter controls the word-wrap, use a fixed 
font for the upper window. The screen-size still represents the geometry in 
terms of the fixed-font used for the upper window, because the the game 
still needs to know (a) how tall it can make the upper window and (b) how 
much it can print across the status-line. The size is *not* based on which 
window is currently selected since some games expect to read the geometry 
before selecting the upper window.

Block-quotes in this model are a pain because the upper and lower window are 
using different fonts. A variety of solutions are possible. Putting the 
status window in a separate host window is one. The proposed GLK-approach of 
deferring the 'shrink' until character input is another. In my case I plot 
the upper-window text over the flowed text in the lower window, keeping 
track of which character cells in the upper window are transparent (having 
never been printed.) It doesn't really matter which solution is used, 
because the fact the two windows use different fonts is enough to break your 
assumption that the screen-size tells you anything meaningful about the 
lower-window.

Still not convinced? Even if you insist that I *have* to use the same basic 
font for both windows, all you achieve is to make conformant interpreters 
impossible on machines with small screens. (The Z-machine requires a minimum 
upper window size of 64 columns by 16 rows. Some of the platforms which 
currently have interpreters cannot meet that requirement, even using the 
smallest font available. The only reasonable way to fake it is to make the 
upper window larger than physical screen (which is larger than the lower 
window) and to pan around the upper window. That breaks your assumption 
again.)

    Bryan




From femaledeer@aol.com Mon Jan 12 10:08:51 MET 1998
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From: femaledeer@aol.com (FemaleDeer)
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Subject: Re: A sampling of recent posts
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>Hmm. I'm beginning to fear that Female Deer is right, and the
>competition is bringing out the worst in us. On the other hand, the
>competition brings out the best in us as well: new game

Nasty reviews, authors' hurt feelings, assorted rants  -5
People actually WRITING new games, some new 
directions in IF...                                                            
          +7

+2  I think, maybe, we came out ahead. Maybe.

FD Lol
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
FemaleDeer@aol.com       "Good breeding consists in 
concealing how much we think of ourselves and how 
little we think of the other person."             Mark Twain


From jholder@io.frii.com Mon Jan 12 17:50:19 MET 1998
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Subject: Re: [Glk] Text styles and fonts
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Thus spake Patrick Kellum <patrick@syix.com>:
: In article <34B77CAD.MD-0.198.s590501@tfh-berlin.de>, Miron Schmidt was talking about:

:  >Uh, but he isn't talking about any lowest common denominator: He's talking
:  >about not allowing authors to do highly system-dependent stuff -- such as
:  >specifying font names, or formatted-font-specific-colored styles etc.

: No, he wants to dis-allow authors from using features of the Z-Machine.
: This is NOT system-dependent.

I'm afriad that after reading the spec, the only feature I see not implemented
is the (OPTIONAL) set_color support.  Since the definition of optional is
"not required" then there is nothing in the Z spec and the Inform model
that Glk can't support.  It may be supported a tiny bit differently in one 
case, but it _is_ all supported.  And besides, on all the disparate platforms
with proportional support, the differences between ports vary widely, but all
support the Z-machine model accurately.

: And he is talking lowest common denominator.  If the Mac doesn't support a
: feature then it is not allowed.  That is the basis of Glk as I read it.

<BZZZT> Wrong.

[major snippage of pointless arcade simulation]

: Acording to the author, he wants to incorporate Glk into Inform.  That
: makes it an authoring system.  

It appears you have completely misunderstood Glk.  Glk is an I/O library
specification, not dissimilar to the Curses library.  An interpreter
can choose to use it as an interface to the OS.  The Glk has nothing
to do with Inform, other than some people may port the Glk I/O Library
between systems, and once that is done, porting any interpreter that
has Glk I/O calls (Not just Zmachine interpreters, but TADS, AGT, Hugo,
etc) from platform to platform where the Glk code has been written once
with be exceedingly easy.  Now do you understand?

: This is already possable wthout Glk.  Do you really belive that every
: system out there handles bold text in the same manner?

No, we don't, and that is why a given OS's Glk I/O Library implementation
will be a package unto itself.

: And the author is not allowed to say what colour the text should be.
: Currently this is allowed in all properly-written interpreters.

Again, Color support is optional.  And my properly-written Jzip doesn't
support color in all cases.  Would you like to know why?  You probably
don't give a crap, but in UNIX and VMS, most terminal apps DO NOT SUPPORT 
COLOR.  And to be honest, even tho my 'terp can be compiled to output
ANSI color codes on UNIX, and I know where to get color supporting terminals
apps, I prefer to use the white-on blue xterms that I get to define - if
an author put too many ugly color into the game, I will either play it on
a mono interpreter, or not play it at all.

:  >Something like HTML, really. Only more restrained in order to *clarify* the
:  >situation for the author.

: This is my fear.  I can just see it now "This game is for MaxZip.  Go out
: and get a real interpreter.".

You will not see this.  The MaxZip core is a Zmachine emulator, as all other
Z-code supporting interpreters are.  What library the interpreter uses
when outputting the game info to the OS/Windowing System is the interpreter
writer's business.

Obviously, text formatting changes in Inform are not Andrew's to decide.
Graham is the guy who has the right, and no one is suggesting that anyone
else does.  The support in Glk for such critters are at the I/O library
level.  This mean that some future version of Z-code or some entirely new
game writing system would have the freedom to do so IF THE AUTHOR OF SAID
SYSTEM WANTED TO INCORPORATE IT.  Ie, the Glk I/O Library  would have 
features above and beyond what the Z-Machine would use.

Nobody said that Glk would be ideal for V6, either.

Okay.  Enough rant.  I have the feeling that a) you don't get it b)you
won't get it and c)you don't care.

-- 
John Holder (jholder@frii.com)         http://www.frii.com/~jholder/
Sr. Programmer Analyst, J.D.Edwards World Source Company, Denver, CO
http://www.jdedwards.com/


From mkkuhner@evolution.genetics.washington.edu Mon Jan 12 17:51:13 MET 1998
Article: 33108 of rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: mkkuhner@evolution.genetics.washington.edu (Mary K. Kuhner)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Question about describing room exits
Date: 12 Jan 1998 15:38:38 GMT
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Lelah Conrad <lconrad@lane.k12.or.us> wrote:

>	C.E. Forman disliked (I think!) obviously noted exits in a
>number of competition games.  On the other hand, I recall reading a
>response or two where people were complaining about the exits not
>being noted.  Which one is it?  Do people want exits just sort of
>"hinted at"?

I was one of the reviewers who complained about exits not being
noted, so I'll try to explain my preferences.

To my tastes, you can get away with not listing exits if the
geometry of the situation is quite clear.  For example, if you 
tell me I am on the south side of the house, looking at the
front door, I am happy to guess that it is north of me.  On
the other hand, if you just say "You are in front of your house"
I am *not* happy, as I'll have to blunder about trying to get
in, which breaks the mood something fierce.

The more time-critical the situation, the less subtle you can
afford to be with the exits:  in "Phred Phontious" I got very
frustrated with dying in the graveyard because I couldn't figure
out which ways I could go, not even how to get back where I was
before, and kept dying as a result.  In a more mellow situation
you don't have to be as explicit.

Conversely, I do understand Foreman's impatience with room
descriptions like "You are in the living room, with exits to
the east, south and west."  This is really bland, and if there
are a lot of rooms like this it becomes quite obtrusive--the
scenery turns into a minimalist map, not a real place.

Trying to give the player an overall grasp of the geometry can
help a lot.  "The hall runs off to the east, with doors on both
sides."  You don't have to say "A door in the north and a door
in the south".

Embedding the exits more imaginatively in the text can help too.
One idea is to write the description first, then look for ways to
incorporate the directional information.  If you write the directions
first and then try to hang text around them, it may not come out
as well (whatever you do first tends to determine tone).

You can also get some mileage out of non-directional commands
such as "ENTER DOOR", and the system in Madame L'Estrange is 
worth looking at--I was very happy not to have to map the city.

Mary Kuhner mkkuhner@genetics.washington.edu


From erkyrath@netcom.com Mon Jan 12 18:15:05 MET 1998
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From: erkyrath@netcom.com (Andrew Plotkin)
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Stephen Granade (sgranade@phy.duke.edu) wrote:
> On 12 Jan 1998, Paul David Doherty wrote:

> > Andrew's Glk proposal is his way of
> > fixing the bugs in his [ZIP] port: by declaring them to be features 
> > of a new, "easier" standard.

> I don't get this at all from the Glk spec. As I read it, Glk is a clean
> set of APIs which provides sufficient power for many IF systems (multiple
> windows, a reasonable framework for the addition of graphics) while making
> the task of porting a system easy. As such its power lies not in rewriting
> Z-machine I/O (which is already ported to many systems) but in offering an
> easy porting path for systems which are not as well ported (Hugo, AGT, and
> any future systems).

> Andrew, am I on target?

Yes. Thank you. 

> C'mon, folks, he's not leading a torch-weilding mob of villagers anxious
> to overthrow the Z-spec.

Secretly, of course, I *have* always wanted to lead a torch-wielding mob 
of villagers. Haven't we all? But there are lots of targets on the list 
above the Z-spec. 

--Z

-- 

"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the
borogoves..."


From erkyrath@netcom.com Mon Jan 12 19:10:46 MET 1998
Article: 33121 of rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: erkyrath@netcom.com (Andrew Plotkin)
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Patrick Kellum (patrick@syix.com) wrote:
> In article <erkyrathEMnGpH.6v1@netcom.com>, Andrew Plotkin was talking about:

>  >A Glk interpreter is not a Z-machine interpreter. In fact, the word 
>  >"interpreter" isn't even being used the same way in those two phrases.

> You did mention you were planning on having it form the bases of future
> Z-Machine releases. 

I mentioned that it is a *possible* basis for future Z-machine 
*versions*. Or -- more accurate -- a future Z-machine successor. There 
are other things that can be fixed besides the I/O system. A 32-bit 
memory space is top of the list.

But... one thing at a time, yes?

> Also, since it would form the basis for future GUI's for interpreters, it
> seems appropiate to consider it at least part of an interpreter.

>  >like the (crappy, terminal-window-style) Mac Agility I knocked off a few 

> So Macs can handle simple text output?  Then why all the seperate wndows?

The (crappy, terminal-window-style) I/O library I used for Mac Agility is 
called SIOUX. It's adequate for quick tools, from source code that uses 
stdin/stdout and printf. It is *not* adequate for a serious Mac program.

It's not even an adequate terminal emulator. It doesn't support cursor
movement -- you can only print at the end. The Mac Agility cheap port
doesn't have a status line. The Glk port does.

(There *are* adequate terminal emulator libraries for the Mac. I'm 
typing this in a VT320 emulator window. But I only put up with it because 
of the job at hand: interacting with a curses.h program running on the 
Unix machines at Netcom, over a modem link. From a Mac point of view, 
this interface is *hopeless*. You can't even click to move the insertion 
mark! You can't *cut*! It doesn't support proprtional fonts!)

By the way, it sounds like you're misinterpreting what I mean by 
"separate windows".

--Z

-- 

"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the
borogoves..."


From boutel1g@wcc.govt.nz Mon Jan 12 23:50:29 MET 1998
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FemaleDeer <femaledeer@aol.com> wrote in article
<19980111234500.SAA18987@ladder01.news.aol.com>...

> 
> Nasty reviews, authors' hurt feelings, assorted rants  -5
> People actually WRITING new games, some new 
> directions in IF...                                                      
     
>           +7
> 
> +2  I think, maybe, we came out ahead. Maybe.
> 
I seem to remember it being pretty similar in 96 (when I actually entered).
I think nasty reviews just stem from people taking the subject seriously -
and that's not a bad thing. No writer will escape the savage critic in
their career, and no savage critic speaks for everyone who reads. Hurt
feelings aside (people's feelings are their own responsibility IMHO), the
sheer volume of opinions expressed should provide a great deal of food for
thought.

I know I definitely came out ahead. Not only has Graham Nelson handily
redefined the concept of Runner-up (apparently if you don't get a prize,
you're a runner up, which means I was second runner-up last year, as
opposed to sixteenth - for some reason I like that idea, the pinch of salt
I took with it makes it taste quite sweet :-) but also my last-year game
got mentioned *twice* in people's reviews, once in the same breath as two
infocom games! Hey look, Ma, I'm an genre example! Whoo-hoo - and
congratulations to all the entrants who are now at least as famous as me
:-)

-Giles





From erkyrath@netcom.com Mon Jan 12 23:51:53 MET 1998
Article: 33138 of rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: erkyrath@netcom.com (Andrew Plotkin)
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Paul David Doherty (h0142kdd@joker.rz.hu-berlin.de) wrote:
> >And I believe that Andrew's MaxZip is probably Spec 0.2 compliant 
> >at least.

> And I believe Andrew has proudly stated on several occasions that MaxZIP
> is not Spec 0.x or 1.x compliant.

I think "gleefully" is more accurate than "proudly".

> (Besides, I'm not bashing the Glk proposal, which I admit I haven't
> read yet. It just seems odd that Andrew can't add Spec compliancy
> to MaxZIP - for a variety of reasons ranging from "I don't feel like
> it" to "I don't want to" but

I think this is a misrepresentation. I have not been able to *guarantee*
Spec compliancy. I think I have been as diligent as anybody in responding 
to and dealing with actual, reported problems in my interpreters.

For any given issue which I have been made aware of, I have either (1)
made MaxZip compliant, (2) decided that I could not do so without
compromising some important aspect of the interface, or (3) decided it was
not important enough to fix soon. 

(To my knowledge, group (2) is all issues that result from my decision 
that the player can resize the story window during play. In group (3), I 
can think of two things: you can't input a line of text in the status 
window (although you can input a key), and you can't nest stream-3 
print-to-memory operations.)

(Group (3) used to also include a total failure to set the header bits 
correctly. That *was* unacceptable, and it has been fixed, and I 
apologize for the fact that it took until version 1.6.)

Even if groups (2) and (3) were empty, I would still be very leery of 
*claiming* that it was Z-spec compliant. And honestly I think that other 
interpreter porters and supporters are in the same boat. We can all of us 
only fix the problem we know about. I may be, as I've said, just 
constitutionally paranoid about what I *don't* know about.

> has no problems proposing and
> implementing his own standards whenever it strikes his fancy.)

This is of course true. Standards are fun!

It is not really relevant, but I can brag anyway, that I can probably fix
the status-window-input problem soon. I didn't want a similar flaw in my
Mac Glk library, so I wrote a better status-window object from scratch,
which *does* allow line input. I should be able to transplant that code
back into MaxZip. Rag not upon what I choose to implement. :-)

--Z

-- 

"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the
borogoves..."


From jorn@mcs.com Tue Jan 13 17:15:46 MET 1998
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On raif, Thomas Aaron Insel <tinsel@jaka.ece.uiuc.edu> wrote, quoting
me:
> > Don't expect a game, yet.  It's still a research project.
> 
> I know I'm not a regular member of this community, but I feel I should
> defend Neil deMause's review.  For a product that's being advertised
> for sale, the Erasmatron is quite lacking in polish and value.  It's
> possible that an interesting piece of art could be made with it, but I
> don't expect to see one.

Now, be clear about the 'Tron vs the 'Ganza (vs Shattertown):

- The Erasmatron is the $200 tool for building worlds, and is highly
polished

- The Erasmaganza is the free story reader, and has some bugs

- Shattertown is the free sample storyworld, and has serious problems
still

> The ``best'' available storyworld, the product of months of work is
> just plain boring.  Perhaps it's my own stupidity which keeps me from
> solving the mystery, and I'm willing to overlook obvious bugs, such 
> as the murdered character (in an obvious non-Haunting encounter)
> asking me if I've solved the murder yet.  However, what's left is not
> very exciting -- watching the clock spin, seducing other characters
> to come pick berries, watching endless streams of characters repeat 
> ``I overheard Jed refuse May's chicken soup,'' and fondling a useless
> inventory menu.

One of my recommendations as their consultant was that they had to
'manage expectations' carefully, so that people wouldn't be put off by
this sort of problem.  As I see it, Shattertown is a teaching tool, that
points the way towards the first generation of playable storyworlds.

Writing storyworlds requires an absolutely *new* set of skills, that you
have to be prepared to spend not months but *years* refining, imho.
Without the 'Tron you can't even begin, though.

> I know that the author carries a good deal of credibility, and it's
> quite possible that the Erasmatron will develop into something good,
> most people don't sell their unfinished ``research projects'' for
> two hundred dollars.

Again, the 'Tron is quite polished, and provides a huge value to
researchers.  The Shattertown storyworld is unfinished... but it's free.



j


From neild@zorg.hitchhiker.org Wed Jan 14 09:48:12 MET 1998
Article: 33198 of rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: neild@zorg.hitchhiker.org (Damien Neil)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction,comp.ai.games
Subject: Re: Erasmatron-generated story sample
Date: Tue, 13 Jan 1998 13:18:01 -0800
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On Tue, 13 Jan 1998 13:30:18 -0500, Jorn Barger <jorn@mcs.com> wrote:
>My challenge to raif readers is: what do *you* think the next generation
>of IF will look like, if not like the E-tron???

Rather like the current one, but more so.  The commercial market will
spend increasing amounts of money on special effects (i.e., pretty
graphics).  The regulars of r.a.i-f will turn out text adventures --
most will be junk, some will be brilliant.

We've seen games in the past that take a simulationist approach to
characters.  While Chris's work is clearly far ahead of what has been
done before, it doesn't appear to be fundamentally different in character.
I'm certain you can get some interesting results out of it -- but I don't
feel it will produce a revolution.  Computer controlled personalities
are currently (and will remain for the forseeable future) a bundle of
variables which circumstances tweak.  They are a cheap copy of humanity,
and show this fact too glaringly.

Having said that, I'd be delighted if someone could come along and prove
me wrong.  I'm just not betting on it.

Are you and/or Chris aware of Selmer Bringsjord?  He's a philosophy
professor at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and has been working on
automated story generation for some time -- some of his work sounds
quite a bit like the Erasmatron.  Last I heard of, he was working on
modelling betrayal.  (Fascinating word, betrayal.  Such a slippery one
to define -- every time you get close, it twists off in another
direction.)

                        - Damien


From parrot@shell.highpowered.net.NOSPAM Wed Jan 14 09:50:48 MET 1998
Article: 33200 of rec.arts.int-fiction
From: parrot@shell.highpowered.net.NOSPAM (Gregory Falcon)
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction,rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: On the tone of Comp reviews and the group
Date: Wed, 14 Jan 1998 00:15:47 GMT
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On 12 Jan 1998 22:19:23 -0500, Dan Schmidt <dfan@thecia.net> wrote:

>Your sarcasm would be funnier if it were deserved.

I expected this deserved response, and would have addressed it ahead
of time if it wouldn't have made my reply lengthy to the point of
killing the sarcasm.

My point, which I was trying to make through exaggerated sarcasm, was
that I think the attitude about reviews lately has been way too
protective.  To put everything in context:

>> Just for example, take the instance of a game with spelling or grammatical
>> errors. I completely agree that these detract from the play experience, so it's
>> valid (in my opinion), to lower a rating because of them. And that should
>> certainly be mentioned in the review, something along the lines of "this piece
>> needed a pass through a spell checker", or "several grammatical errors
>> detracting from the play experience" would be appropriate. Providing quoted
>> examples (especially more than one) sounds patronizing, as is imitating the
>> error style in the text of the review "two maek thee point".

I disagreed with this point; I don't think the reviewer has any
obligation for "sensitivity" when dealing with something that can be
fixed with a simple pass of a spell-checker (or in the case of
grammar, a literate beta-tester).  While text adventure games are an
art, English is not a gray area -- there are such things as incorrect
English, poor spelling, and bad grammar.  These can detract from the
total experience heavily, and I feel it would be irresponsible for any
reviewer to play down this aspect of the game if it truly bothered
him.  While "incoperating poor speling in a reiview" to make a point
may be less than supreme wit, I don't see anything inherently evil
about it.  At least it gets the point across.

>> Could it be that
>> the reviewer(s) don't understand that some people have a serious problem with
>> this and aren't just being lazy, they actually think it's spelled correctly?

Whether misspellings are caused by laziness or merely by poor spelling
skills, the end result is the same.  I hope the reviewer(s) are
judging the final product, and not the authors themselves.

>> I also saw some fairly harsh statements based on points that were essentially
>> stylistic, and therefore highly subjective. It is the hubris of all critics,
>> probably, to think that others share their views, but please let's remember that
>> just because you hate game of type X or prose of style Y doesn't mean that
>> everyone does.

Here I feel much more defensive of my previous post, because my
original point stands -- how can you review art without being
subjective?

Let me emphasize that I *do* understand the meaning of this paragraph:
that a reviewer should not let his personal hatred of type X/Y games
cause an overly harsh review.

I just don't understand how this is to work in practice.  Almost
everything in a review will be subjective.  Whether a game was fun, or
unenjoyable, or too easy, or too hard, or too much like some other
game, or had a difficult-to-interact-with parser, or had shallow NCPs,
or had too many puzzles, or too few, or any one of a million other
such things is _a matter of opinion_.

Honesty really has a place in reviews, hurt egos or not.  Better for a
reviewer to share his honest views, in my opinion, than water down
everything he has to say on the off chance that someone, somewhere
might disagree with him.  Certainly, some people are afraid that
negative reviews will deter some first-time writers from trying their
hand at it again.  I understand this fear, but there have to be better
ways to deal with it.  Maybe the concerned parties can drop a quick
supportive e-mail to the authors who have received harsh reviews?
This is better than trying to force a politically-correct "every game
has its own special good points" tone on reviewers.

Anyway, let me go on record as saying that I never intended to make
rich appear to say something that he did not -- I had assumed everyone
had read the start of the thread (a dangerous assumption) -- and
seriously apologize for doing so..  But I also hope that this post
explains the meaning of my previous one, which I still stand by.

			Greg

PS. Watch out, people... I fear it's getting to the point where we're
going to be forced to change the reviewing scale, and you have to
assign writers a rating between 9.995 and 10, lest we be dubbed
insensitive......


From jfrancis@dungeon.engr.sgi.com Wed Jan 14 21:22:35 MET 1998
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From: jfrancis@dungeon.engr.sgi.com (John Francis)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Question about describing room exits
Date: 14 Jan 1998 19:17:57 GMT
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In article <Pine.A41.3.95L.980114085210.130186A-100000@login3.isis.unc.edu>,
Michael Straight  <straight@email.unc.edu> wrote:
>
>
>On Tue, 13 Jan 1998, Joe Mason wrote:
>
>> In article <erkyrathEMqHxn.K2t@netcom.com>,
>> Andrew Plotkin <erkyrath@netcom.com> wrote:
>> >> > GO TO KITCHEN
>> >> You walk down the halls past several junctions until you reach the kitchen.
>> >
>> >See, here's the problem. I look at this and I think "I have to type 
>> >*what*?" 
>> >
>> >Just about all games have some running around, and I'm used to doing that 
>> >with single keystrokes. If the keyload rises by a factor of ten, it will 
>> >bother me.
>> 
>> Hmm, I never even thought of that problem.  Of course, I like to use verbose
>> sentences in examples.  In the game it would be slimmed to "GO KITCHEN" or
>> even "KITCHEN".  But it certainly wouldn't be as quick as "N. N. E"  On the
>> other hand, it would be easier to remember WHERE you're going.
>
>Well, you could make it less of a problem if you allowed the player to
>type "go to kitchen" from anywhere in the building once the kitchen had
>been found.  That could be an improvment over
>"n.w.w.push button.enter elevator.push 1.exit elevator.e.e.s.e"

This seems, initially, like a really great idea.  In fact something like
this has been around for ages - in the original mainframe Zork, for example,
you could type "HOUSE" from many of the outside locations, and end up at
the house.  Even ADVENT had several additional travel verbs - did you know
that you could get into the secret canyon with 100% predictability if you
typed "SECRET", rather than the 8% (or whatever it was) probability of
ending up there if you just entered the move direction?

But, to get back to the original topic, you run into problems if you try
and add this as a general feature.  What if there is more than one path?
What if getting to the kitchen requires you to go through a security
gate, but you don't have the passcard?  What if the state of an obstacle
has changed, but the player doesn't know?

Up till now this can be handled by remembering the world in two states;
As it is now, and as it was the last time the player saw it. Side note;
this not only lets us type "GO KITCHEN" - it lets us type "GO BREADKNIFE".
Or, even more complicated, "FETCH BREADKNIFE", which will presumably take
us to where we last saw the breadknife, pick it up, and return here.

But I think this only ends up shifting the problem up one level (which
is an improvement, to be sure, but not a solution).  What if we have
never tried to go through the security gate without the passcard, but
we no longer have it?  What if we've been in a strong magnetic field,
so we've accidentally erased the passcard?  We need to keep track of
what the character *knows*, not just what he has seen.  This opens up
a whole new area of pitfalls for the unwary game designer. If you ever
played "Return To Zork", you will be familiar with the sort of thing
I mean - actions producing a particular result if and only if you
have discussed some particular topic with a specific NPC.  This can
lead to some odd responses if you accidentally try and do the right
something before the game expects you to.
-- 
John Francis  jfrancis@sgi.com       Silicon Graphics, Inc.
(650)933-8295                        2011 N. Shoreline Blvd. MS 43U-991
(650)933-4692 (Fax)                  Mountain View, CA   94043-1389
Unsolicited electronic mail will be subject to a $100 handling fee.


From dsanders@u.washington.edu Thu Jan 15 10:43:11 MET 1998
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From: dsanders@u.washington.edu (Dan Sanderson)
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction,rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: (repost) Re: On the tone of Comp reviews and the group
Date: 15 Jan 1998 08:24:37 GMT
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My apologies about that message being formatted weirdly for some people.  
That's the last time I use Netscape to read newsgroups.  Here it is again, 
hopefully easier on the eyes for most people.  :)

----

rich wrote:

> [...]  See, I wouldn't even have a problem with ignoring the points I made
> here I said criticisms for errors were valid, or that style is a point, but
> needs to be evaluated subjectively. That wouldn't bother me, if you had gone
> on to say "what I think we should do instead is this...". [...]


I am very surprised that the key phrase of this entire issue has yet to be 
used.  That phrase is "constructive criticism."

I have always seen raif and rgif to be very supportive communities.  
(Community, even.)  A supportive creative community helps us figure out what is 
right and what is wrong, and how to improve.  We build on each other, we learn 
>from each other, we improve each other.  Willingness to discuss simple 
implementation issues alone has always been impressive.  This is why I had 
expected much better, more constructive criticism from this group.  Indeed, 
I've seen some.

Some seem to see the task of reviewing a game (specifically, a competition 
entry) akin to reviewing a movie for a small newspaper.  This usually amounts 
to no more than encouragement to play for games the reviewer liked, and 
discouragement (even warning) against games the reviewer didn't like.  Movie 
reviews aren't meant for a filmmaking or film studies audience, but for 
moviegoers.  Many moviegoers don't care why a movie is bad or what the 
filmmaker could do to improve the work or produce better work in the future.  
Reviews of a movie or play can be harsh on the creators sometimes, but most 
often the creators are professionals that take that kind of thing in stride, 
and only read the reviews to see how much money they might make from the work, 
anyway.  (And, of course, this kind of review would also seek to be interesting 
to the moviegoer, and may or may not discuss reasons why the work is poor.)

For a review of a commercial game (or any game that costs consumers money), 
this would be an appropriate style.  Again, that comes with the territory.

To continue the comparison, however, I would hope a review in a small newspaper
about a group of high school students performing Shakespeare in the park for 
free (or better yet, as a benefit) would be given some slack.  As much as I 
disklike the Spokesman Review (Spokane, Washington, USA), reviewer Jim Kershner 
would always try to put a positive spin on local live theater, because Spokane 
needs a great deal of encouragement in that area.  I always appreciated that, 
even if he convinced me to attend live theater that I ultimately didn't enjoy. 
 (Because I love theater, and when living in Spokane felt it necessary to 
encourage a cultural community in the same way, I tended to enjoy most live 
theater by default.  Now that I live in Seattle, I feel I can afford to be more 
critical, particularly for touring shows that charge what I have to work 12 
hours to make.)

(Before I go back to talking about IF, I'd like to detract this comparison a 
little bit, repeating what others have already said.  I will *not* be asking 
for an "everybody wins" kind of competition.  Poor games should get low scores, 
I agree 100%, particularly when prizes are at stake.  [I'd put a smiley here, 
but I'm serious.])

IF writers in our community (r*if), particularly new ones, have the least 
possible amount of compensation for their efforts.  Learning a new programming 
language is hard enough.  Learning how to write well is a major (life-long, if 
one cares to take it that far) chore.  Learning how to design a game that 
involves both good programming and good prose (or what have you) is at least as 
difficult as the two combined, squared, because there is yet any reasonable 
theory behind the craft.  IF (and computer gaming in general) is so new, we 
have yet to develop any solid theorhetical material to learn the art from.  
After immitation of previous work that seemed good, we're all guessing.  Three 
cheers to *all* IF authors.  (Ya! Ya! Ya!)

For a community such as ours to continue (and encourage) its supportive nature 
of this noble cause, we must work to keep all criticism constructive.  This 
means: find at least one thing good to say, and then identify weak points, 
discuss why they are weak, give examples and *suggestions*.  I'm not just 
talking the kind of constructive criticism from junior high, but from any good 
solid Fiction class or workshop.  (But like that junior high introduction to 
constructive criticism, say good things about a terrible work, even if you're 
straining.  Be sincere; it doesn't help otherwise.)

Yes, some works will be so flawed, suggestions and details are difficult.  In 
those cases, the author is usually still learning, and the best advice is 
general, giving a little nudge in the right direction.  *Give such a work the 
low score it deserves*, as compared to high-scoring works.  That remains the 
only fair way, and the best way for the author to judge her/his own 
improvement.  (Don't forget to find a strong point, even if you feel you should 
include suggestions for improvement.)

Reviews in a setting such as this should be written to help the author.  We all 
know there's a wide range of quality out there in free IF.  You get what you 
paid for, and hopefully sometimes then some.  We don't need to be reminded that 
programming and fiction prose skills are very rarely possessed by one person, 
let alone game design ability.

An important thing to note, here, is that constructive criticism takes much 
more effort than destructive (or otherwise unhelpful) criticism.

It's worth it.

If you hated a game I wrote, but made the effort to give constructive 
criticism, I'd love you until death do us part, ten times more than the one who 
said, "Hey, pretty cool game," and nothing more.  (Perhaps only eight times 
more than the one who said, "Wow, your game KICKS ASS!!!"  But at least twice 
as more than the one who said, "I loved your game.  Can I send you money?")

I'm going to have to go as far as to say that if you can't say anything
constructive, don't say anything at all.  Sounds stupid and grade schoolish, 
but it's better than "This game sucked."

This also helps with the competitive atmosphere issue.  If you know you might 
get some good constructive criticism, you might love getting last place.  
(Hell, I'd hope even the grand prize winners would get some constructive 
criticism.  It only means better IF in the future.)

I'll go back to lurking, now.  Thanks for listening.

Dan Sanderson



From erkyrath@netcom.com Fri Jan 16 12:27:09 MET 1998
Article: 33351 of rec.arts.int-fiction
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: erkyrath@netcom.com (Andrew Plotkin)
Subject: Re: Erasmatron-generated story sample
Message-ID: <erkyrathEMuGoH.BGv@netcom.com>
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support the smith bill (unavailable@this.time) wrote:
> On Tue, 13 Jan 1998 20:35:18 GMT, erkyrath@netcom.com (Andrew Plotkin)
> wrote:

> >> My challenge to raif readers is: what do *you* think the next generation
> >> of IF will look like, if not like the E-tron???
> >
> >To me, this is like asking "What will the next generation of the novel 
> >look like?"
> >
> >It'll look like the current generation, but with different words between 
> >the covers.

> That's making the assumption that the mechanics of IF are fully
> perfected and that as far as mimesis, interaction, etc. this is as
> good as it's going to get.

Does it? You know, I think I *do* assume that. With the very strong 
caveat that I'm talking about "IF as we know it", Colossal Cave model IF.

I'm willing to be proven wrong, of course. But I don't know of any 
changes which can be made with available programming techniques. I do 
feel like we're at a local maximum. 

The E-tron is far, far away from this local maximum -- which means you
can't tell whether it's higher or lower; the question isn't even
meaningful. It changes so many things that it cannot be regarded as an
improvement or next generation of what we have now. 

>  IMO without more technological advances IF
> will quickly burn itself out as a literary form.

It already did. In the late 1980's. Doesn't seem to have stopped us.

> There are a LOT of
> frustrating technological limitations in writing IF that sharply limit
> the kind of stories that can be done in IF.

It is frustrating that we don't have AI, yes. 

On the other hand, does not the novel have just as many technological 
limitations? Limitations are the same thing as structure. We're a long 
way from exploiting all the possible things you can do with IF-structure-
as-we-know-it.

--Z

-- 

"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the
borogoves..."


From mkkuhner@evolution.genetics.washington.edu Fri Jan 16 12:27:34 MET 1998
Article: 33326 of rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: mkkuhner@evolution.genetics.washington.edu (Mary K. Kuhner)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Erasmatron-generated story sample
Date: 15 Jan 1998 21:28:55 GMT
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I spent an afternoon poking around on the Erasmatron
web site, and it's interesting stuff.  It strikes me,
though, that the biggest problem in getting playable,
interesting games (rather than alife exercises) out
of it will be focus.

In writing a story or a conventional IF game, the author
picks, out of the vast number of events that happen
"in the area of" the story, those that are at least
somewhat helpful in telling it--they work to show
plot, or character, or setting, or theme, or to control
pacing.

The Erasmatron doesn't really let you do this, because
(unless you script it really heavily, in which case there
is not much point--conventional IF seems easier) you
can't decide which of the actors' actions the player
should be presented with and which she shouldn't.  This
means that it's hard to prevent the player from
having to deal with long stretches of meaningless stuff
(hearing gossip that she's already heard, witnessing
interactions she doesn't care about, etc.) and that 
there is a real risk of the interesting stuff happening
off-stage and never being adequately communicated.

I would like to have a copy of the thing, though it's
not worth $200 to me at the moment, but I suspect it's
an art form for the amusement of the programmer, not
for the amusement of a player, at least not after the
initial novelty wears off.  Though maybe you could
overcome this to some extent by doing a very limited
scope game--the opposite direction from "Shattertown
Sky."  Something like "Who Goes There?" maybe, with
a small stage, few actors, and an intense overriding
preoccupation such that not very many boring things
are likely to happen.

Mary Kuhner mkkuhner@genetics.washington.edu


From cctdemon@erols.com Fri Jan 16 12:28:20 MET 1998
Article: 33340 of rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: "Russell \"Coconut Daemon\" Bailey" <cctdemon@erols.com>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Erasmatron-generated story sample
Date: Fri, 16 Jan 1998 00:10:27 -0500
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Hmmm...  so the issue is how to properly prune the choices.  I don't
know much about the Erasmatron in practice,  only owning a PC,  but I've
read Chris Crawford's essays,  and the following solution sounds like it
*might* be possible in a future E-Tron type system:

Like any other character,  the player is assumed to have attributes and
motivations.  Therefore,  the actions of the player could theoretically
be chosen in the same manner as the actions of an NPC.  In that way, 
the E-Tron could push a player linearly through a story.  This would be
the first step.  The second would be adjusting for more than one
possible choice for each scenario.  We could expand the number of
choices above one,  yet still maintain control,  by evaluating the
options by more than one attribute/motivation set,  each of which would
correspond to a certain player personality.  This would be clearer in an
example:

You are Javier Gyffes,  a guardsman at the Bastille.  There is one
prisoner who wears a mask of black velvet (or iron,  if you prefer
Alexander Dumas:)) at all times.  Orders have been given that if anyone,
prisoner or jailer,  sees the man's face without a mask,  that they both
be killed immediately.  One day,  the mask's fastening bursts,  and you
see his face.  He is the king's exact double.  This choice could be made
according to two obvious personalities:  Royalist or Revolutionary. 
That is,  a Royalist player would slay the man immediately.  A
Revolutionary would attempt to befriend him.  Neither would be
interested in the number of other actions associated with him,  such as
flirting,  telling him that prisoner 24609 has been imprisoned for
stealing a loaf of bread,  or casually that young Pierre has trampled
old woman Maria's prized garden.

I know this is all simplified,  and that it would probably require a lot
of revision,  but the essential notion of evaluating choices by multiple
personalities and then presenting the "winning" options to the player
would allow focus to be narrowed without over-scripting.

Russell


From fake-mail@anti-spam.address Sat Jan 17 22:26:31 MET 1998
Article: 33432 of rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: fake-mail@anti-spam.address (Neil K.)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: [TADS] Anybody want to help Dummy via email?
Date: Sat, 17 Jan 1998 12:51:47 -0800
Organization: Cap'n Grocible's Discount Groceries
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 lconrad@lane.k12.or.us (Lelah Conrad) wrote:

> 1)  I've seen this or a similar response before, and IMHO it's
> somewhat offputting.  It seems to say "Let's try to make this person
> post to the newsgroup", even though that option may already have been
> considered, and rejected.  Possibly the person slinks off, muttering,
> well, I TRIED to get started in this, on my own terms.

 Erm. Well. Let me offer my perspective on this.

 <begin long ramble. skip to halfway down if you want to see my main thesis :) >

 Although I haven't yet published a game, I nevertheless tend to make my
opinions known on this group with incessant posting. My name is also all
over the HTML conversion of the TADS manual and the unofficial TADS Web
site. And I usually make an effort to answer people's TADS questions on
the group. In short, I'm moderately high profile around here. And so I get
email from people asking for TADS help or whatever fairly often.

 This is basically what it boils down to: it takes just as long to answer
a private email as a newsgroup post, but the former helps one person and
the latter probably more than one. On top of which there have been some
people in the past (I'm *not* suggesting you're at all like this, Lelah)
who seemed to think that I'm some sort of private unpaid consultant and
have frankly demanded that I give them my time and free advice via email,
and that is more than offputting. I've had email in the past that
consisted of someone ordering me to write something for them or to fix
their broken code. Let's just say I'm somewhat disinclined to assist
someone under those circumstances.

 Also, it can sometimes take a surprisingly long time to go over someone's
code, looking for offending bugs. And since I've embarrassed myself in the
past by offering suggestions that themselves contain bugs, I tend to go
over my response over and over to make sure I haven't made any hideous
goofs myself. (another reason public posts are good - people can catch
*my* mistakes!) So a single reply can easily take 15 minutes, half an
hour, whatever, to write up. Time spent writing, grepping TADS source,
thinking, etc.

 That time adds up. Now, I'm not complaining about this. I freely choose
to offer my help, such as it is, simply because I like to see more people
using TADS or whatever. And because I ask a lot of Usenet questions
myself, and feel strongly that replying to other people's posts is my way
of giving back to the Net. But I decided a long time ago that I generally
prefer to offer help/opinions in the newsgroup than by email. That's how
I'd rather spend my time.

 Now this is hardly some fixed rule. Beta-testing other people's stuff,
for example, is something best done in private email. And there have been
lots of times when I've got into protracted email correspondence with
someone over a mysterious bug in their program. But on the whole, I'd
prefer seeing this newsgroup as a shared community resource and friendly,
supportive discussion forum than just a notice board advertising for
private tutors.

 There. I think that's kind of the crux of my whole post, really.

> [...] Once a person develops a bit of
> competence/understanding in an area, and can demonstrate a slightly
> intelligent understanding of it, they feel different.  You wouldn't
> believe how proud of themselves, and willing to participate, some of
> my kids are once they get the hang of reading.

 However, having said that, I quite understand your apprehension with
going public with your question. People on this group *can* be rather
savage when critiquing other people's work, and that can be daunting and a
fine way to crush someone else's hopes. It took me a while to get up the
courage to ask stuff in my early days here. And it does make me sad to
think that a lot of budding authors are being discouraged by all this
slagging from the know-it-alls. (yes, I know - I'm one myself sometimes.
Ah well.)

 It perhaps comes down to a matter of opinion as to what newsgroups are
all about. Do we take the nerd male view that you should be as blunt as
possible, and damn the other person's feelings? After all, shrinking
violets don't deserve to be wasting our time online, and nerds are never
people known for their social skills. Or do we take the more nurturing
view that people need to be encouraged and helped, when they ask it? And
so we should all devote lots of our time in helping and encouraging
beginners.

 Well I feel one extreme is immature and the other is desirable but
time-consuming. But regardless, I know I really feel the only way to get
into something like this is to plunge in. It's like learning to speak
another language - sometimes it can involve embarrassing yourself a bit in
public, but there's no other way to do it. If you're lucky enough to find
someone willing to spend lots of time guiding you around the tricky bits,
then great! But not everyone's going to want to volunteer lots of time to
mentor you in that way.

 Anyway. Blah blah. The thing is, I can't remember offhand anyone really
being slagged for asking "dumb questions." Certainly I recall posts that
seem to suggest the poster really hadn't made much of an effort to find
the answer him or herself, to which pointed replies of "read page X of the
manual" appeared. But generally I think people have been fairly decent to
newbie technical questions.

 Now maybe that's total crap and my memory has simply ignored the ruder
replies. Perhaps. If so maybe we should all consciously try to bring about
a more welcoming atmosphere for people starting out at this whole game.

 Certainly the Inform for Beginners initiative is a great step in this
direction, and it's cool to see people taking it on. Maybe we need a TADS
for Beginners site also. I'd like to think that my general TADS site is a
reasonably easy place to get around, and Mike Roberts did a good job of
writing an introductory section of the manual, but a whole site to newbies
would be great to see as well. I'd be happy to host the files, though I
can't really take on any more projects myself at this point. Anyone? :)

 <end long ramble>

 - Neil K.

-- 
 t e l a  computer consulting + design   *   Vancouver, BC, Canada
      web: http://www.tela.bc.ca/tela/   *   email: tela @ tela.bc.ca


From stuart.adair@stud.umist.ac.uk.flibble Mon Jan 19 10:13:28 MET 1998
Article: 33506 of rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: "Stuart Adair" <stuart.adair@stud.umist.ac.uk.flibble>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: adult text games
Date: Mon, 19 Jan 1998 03:56:37 -0000
Organization: Sirius Cybernetics Corporation
Lines: 27
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Jeremy A.Smith (not affiliated with Rancid the Elf) wrote in message
<01bd2462$0c885c60$LocalHost@default>...
>Stuart Adair <stuart.adair@stud.umist.ac.uk.flibble> wrote in article
><69st70$mua$1@yama.mcc.ac.uk>...
>>
>> Sounds ominous, whatever it is.
>>
>> So, who's going to port it to Inform then?
>
>Hmm... Sounds Quilled, I'll run it through my (here we go) Unquill output
>-> Inform thingy... It's in development.


Not so sure if it is Quilled... it doesn't accept "EXAM ALTA" for "EXAMINE
ALTAR" (which I assume a Quilled game would -- doesn't it shorten input to
the first four letters of each word? Hence the "BREAK WINDOW" / "SWEAR
NOT"-related 'hilarity' in Robin of Sherlock).

--
_____________________
\_ .:stuart adair:. /___   dubstar::moby:::scrawn&lard::eddieizzard| "this
 / / stu042@bigfoot.com \____________ :::::::interactivefiction::::|  is a
/ / stuart.adair@stud.umist.ac.uk   _) :::bigbeat:::drum&bass::::::|  fresh
\ \/\ c.floor homepage back up!    (_  /\ ::::quake::fatboyslim::::|  shop!"
 \__/ http://cfloor.home.ml.org [____)/  \_ :::zxspectrum::[frenzi]|  -(e.i)




From mol@bartlet.df.lth.se Tue Jan 20 09:20:21 MET 1998
Article: 33561 of rec.arts.int-fiction
Path: news.lth.se!not-for-mail
From: mol@bartlet.df.lth.se (Magnus Olsson)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Unexpected "bonus" syntax (was: [Inform] Unlock Gate With Key (this doesn't work))
Date: 19 Jan 1998 23:48:12 +0100
Organization: Societas Datori Universitatis Lundensis
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In article <ant1817361cbM+4%@gnelson.demon.co.uk>,
Graham Nelson  <graham@gnelson.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>In article <34C1DF34.5241@hatch.net>, Jeff Hatch
><URL:mailto:jeff@hatch.net> wrote:
>> Magnus Olsson wrote:
>> > This is actually an explicit philosophy of Graham's: it's acceptable
>> > if the parser accepts some unheard-of syntax as a consequence of
>> > having synonyms. That is, for the sake of simplicity the parser
>> > treats 'unwrap' and 'open' as synonyms, even though they aren't
>> > exact synonyms in all contexts ("unwrap parcel" and "open parcel"
>> > are synonymous; "unwrap door" and "open door" usually aren't).
>
>Yes, it would be easy not to do this.  (Indeed it is easy not
>to do this, if you don't want it: you can replace the grammar
>for 'unwrap' alone, leaving 'open' where it was.)  

I should have pointed this out in my post, lest anyone get the wrong
impression of Inform's flexibility. In fact, I think it is important
to point out to fledgling Inform programmers that not only _can_ they
easily split off synonyms (with "extend only"), but that they _should_
do this in many situations.

>Ultimately
>it saves a little memory in the parse tables, which was an
>important consideration in the early years of Inform.  

I suppose so; but even today it is (somewhat) helpful for the
programmer to minimize the number of actions. The extreme case of
having one action for each verb, and no synonyms, would lead to code
like this:

object mirror "mirror"
with
    before [ ;
	Break, Smash, Destroy, Shatter, Hit, Kick:
	    "That would mean seven years of bad luck!";
    ]
;

>These, then, are not typical examples of the Inform parser's
>philosophy,

I'd like to point out that I was using the word "philosophy" in a very
loose sense, and I didn't mean to imply that this is in any case a
fundamental philosophy of Inform in general, but rather just a
principle that's been used in writing grammar.h.

> which Jeff refers to below as "understanding nonsense".
>The sort of nonsense which the Inform parser intentionally allows
>would be something like this:
>
>   > PUT ELEPHANT INSIDE SHOEBOX
>
>or this:
>
>   > EAT RAINBOW
>
>In principle, the Inform parser should look after syntax, leaving
>the semantic interpretation to (i) the verb routines in the first
>instance, and (ii) the game itself (which is able to override (i)).

Indeed. The parser's domain is essentially syntax, not semantics. But
the boundary line between syntax and semantics is rather fuzzy in
natural langauges: some parsers (such as TADS') try to recognize
prepositional phrases, whereas others (such as Inform's) don't.

And I don't think this is "understanding nonsense"; it's rather
"trying to make sense of nonsense". And it should: if I type "unlock
elephant with me", then I want an appropriate response, not just "I
didn't understand that."

The observation that started this thread was that sometimes the parser
makes the _wrong_ sense of nonsense, as when it parses "unwrap door
with key" as synonymous with "unlock door with key".

>> #2. Using a synonym to avoid the trouble of creating a two-part object.
>> >EXAMINE DESK
>> The desk drawer is empty.
>
>This is, I would argue, a genre convention comparable to the "That's
>not something you need to refer to in this game." convention.  I don't
>find it bothersome, myself, except when the two parts of the object
>are each referred to in the game and distinguished between.

Agreed. There are cases where the programmer's been cutting too many
corners, turning what was intended as sensible replies into weird non
sequiturs (because the player was really referring to a different part
of the "multi-part" object in question).

But I don't think we can blame the parser for this, or even pronounce
the genre convention as harmful. We can only be wary of its misuse.

>> #3. Mindlessly matching a string of object words to parse an object
>> name.
>> >INVENTORY
>> You are carrying a ripe red tomato and a green tomato.
>> Red and Jennifer Carey enter the room.  "I'm hungry!" Red remarks.
>> >GIVE RED RED TOMATO
>> Who do you want to give the ripe red tomato to, Red Carey or Jennifer
>> Carey?
>> >GIVE RED CAREY RED TOMATO
>> Which tomato do you want to give to Red Carey, the ripe red tomato or
>> the green tomato?

This is actually Infocom's fault, isn't it?

>Well, as I mention above, you can easily override this behaviour
>in Inform.  The present arrangement is quick and convenient, while
>apparently not offending too many people in practice.  That seems
>a sensible compromise to me; 

It's sensible as long as the author avoids having situation where,
for example, nouns and adjectives can be confused, as above. Not all
authors are aware of this, though, or maybe they are, but they have
missed the exercise about adjectives in the Manual.

>Inform gives you the choice, but I don't
>think I've seen any Inform-written game where the author chose to
>split adjectives and nouns, so it can't matter all that much.
>(I could well be wrong about that.)

It matters to me, and when I finally get around to releasing any of
the Inform games I'm working on, you'll see that they do distinguish
between adjectives and nouns.



-- 
Magnus Olsson (mol@df.lth.se, zebulon@pobox.com)
------    http://www.pobox.com/~zebulon   ------
     Not officially connected to LU or LTH.


From graham@gnelson.demon.co.uk Tue Jan 20 11:08:46 MET 1998
Article: 33583 of rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: Graham Nelson <graham@gnelson.demon.co.uk>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Unexpected "bonus" syntax (was: [Inform] Unlock Gate With Key (this doesn't work))
Date: Mon, 19 Jan 1998 10:33:16 +0000 (GMT)
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In article <34C29491.4A25@hatch.net>, Jeff Hatch
<URL:mailto:jeff@hatch.net> wrote:
> 
> Essentially, I have a "universal disambiguator" that's part of my
> programming language, not my library.  It allows my parser to try every
> grammatically possibile interpretation of a sentence and use whichever
> one yields the most desirable result.

In your programming language?  But that's surely a set of syntactic
rules, not a part of the program.  Inform's disambiguation routines
are inside the parser, which seems the only place they could be, really.

There's nothing actually difficult about disambiguating sentence
structure, except with odd cases like interpreting "of" ("two of
clubs" meaning one object, or two?) and "in" ("put the fly in amber
in the hole"), and a few other particles such as numbers, pronouns
and articles.  It very seldom happens that there are two radically
different sentences which could be meant.

Instead, the art of disambiguation is deciding what object a
noun-phrase refers to.  It had better be said now that there is no
universally agreed, or transcendently obvious, way of doing this;
Inform basically has a pile of rules based on experience of what
mostly works best.  The situation only becomes really difficult
when there are plural objects in scope, and which cannot be
distinguished one from another by anything which the player could
type.  When adjudicating decisions like this, the Inform parser
has to divide the potential matched objects into equivalence
classes according to distinguishability, and then adjudicate
between the classes.

-- 
Graham Nelson | graham@gnelson.demon.co.uk | Oxford, United Kingdom



From mol@bartlet.df.lth.se Tue Jan 20 11:09:20 MET 1998
Article: 33585 of rec.arts.int-fiction
Path: news.lth.se!not-for-mail
From: mol@bartlet.df.lth.se (Magnus Olsson)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Unexpected "bonus" syntax (was: [Inform] Unlock Gate With Key (this doesn't work))
Date: 20 Jan 1998 09:23:28 +0100
Organization: Societas Datori Universitatis Lundensis
Lines: 37
Message-ID: <6a1mu0$npb$1@bartlet.df.lth.se>
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In article <34C4204C.CFB@hatch.net>, Jeff Hatch  <jeff@hatch.net> wrote:
>Magnus Olsson wrote:
>[snip]
>> I suppose so; but even today it is (somewhat) helpful for the
>> programmer to minimize the number of actions. The extreme case of
>> having one action for each verb, and no synonyms, would lead to code
>> like this:
>> 
>> object mirror "mirror"
>> with
>>     before [ ;
>>         Break, Smash, Destroy, Shatter, Hit, Kick:
>>             "That would mean seven years of bad luck!";
>>     ]
>> ;
>
>If there were no synonyms, there'd have to be another method of grouping
>actions, of course.

(...)

>Just because I don't think verbs shouldn't be indistinguisable doesn't
>mean I think they should require separate handling.

Of course not. I was being deliberately silly. 

I think the best way to think about Inform's grammar.h is as a
*default* set of grammar rules, that works OK with most simple games,
but which you not only *can*, but *should* modify if you want that
little extra from your game. For example, in a game where violence
*is* the answer :-), it's suboptimal to have all violent verbs treated
as synonyms.

-- 
Magnus Olsson (mol@df.lth.se, zebulon@pobox.com)
------    http://www.pobox.com/~zebulon   ------
     Not officially connected to LU or LTH.


From graham@gnelson.demon.co.uk Tue Jan 20 16:58:16 MET 1998
Article: 33602 of rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: Graham Nelson <graham@gnelson.demon.co.uk>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: [Inform] Safely ignorable stupid question
Date: Tue, 20 Jan 1998 11:10:32 +0000 (GMT)
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In article <u$3pcIVJ9GA.206@upnetnews04>, Brock Kevin Nambo
<URL:mailto:newsmaster@earthling.net> wrote:
> Ok.. I understand what z-version-3, z5, z6, and z8 files are basically for;
> 
> My question is, what's the point of z4 and z7? Were they like intermediate
> stages now obsolete, or something like that?
> 
> DM 169 says these "other versions ... are not useful to present-day game
> designers"..

Version 4 was invented by Infocom and one of the finest games ever
designed, "Trinity", makes use of it.  But it was an intermediate
state on the way to Version 5, which effectively supplanted it as
far as modern designers are concerned.  (Although V4 is arguably
the more clean and elegant.)

Version 7 is my fault, though there are historical factors I can
plead in mitigation.  I wanted an extended format but was very
nervous about what I could persuade interpreter-writers to implement,
so I devised two alternative types of extension, the idea being
that one of the two would be simple to implement on most interpreters.

Version 8 was the more sensible of the two and, in the event,
no Version 7 games were written.

-- 
Graham Nelson | graham@gnelson.demon.co.uk | Oxford, United Kingdom



From mkkuhner@evolution.genetics.washington.edu Tue Jan 20 20:19:04 MET 1998
Article: 33623 of rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: mkkuhner@evolution.genetics.washington.edu (Mary K. Kuhner)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Design - unnescessary rooms?
Date: 20 Jan 1998 18:44:21 GMT
Organization: University of Washington Genetics
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In article <6a2o38$c49$1@news.lth.se>,
Ola Hansson <dat96oha@ludat.lth.se> wrote:
>When designing a game, is it better to try to minimize the number of
>rooms, or to try to have a reasonable map?

>E.g.  If I have a house in my game, should I add a kitchen, although
>it does not serve any purpose in the game, so that it would be
>there only as background.

I think it depends very much on *why* there is a house in your
game.

If the house is there as a reflection of its inhabitant's
personality, for example, it would be appropriate to code the
kitchen--the player is going to be thinking about "How does
this person live?" and the kitchen is a clue to that.  The
eating area in Babel provides a good image of the scientists'
lives--their lab is plush but their dining room is spartan,
and not even working quite right.

On the other hand, if the focus is not on the house and its
inhabitants, it's probably better to block off unused areas.
Many of the competition games, in my opinion, spent a lot of
time coding bathrooms which were really of no interest--
also halls and offices.  If you are just passing through,
or just looking for an object, better to minimize
rooms to those which can be made interesting and meaningful.

>From the competition, I'd cite Glowgrass as a game which was
missing one needed room (the parents' bedroom) because trying
to make a mental model of how the long-ago folk lived was
important to the theme of the game.  On the other hand, I think
Savannah was perfectly correct to block off the bathrooms
and keep the player from going back to the hotel.  And
Madame L'Estrange's decision not to have bathrooms, most halls,
streets, etc. made perfect sense for the way the game worked.
Exploring Madame's bathroom would be a pure distraction.

Mary Kuhner mkkuhner@genetics.washington.edu


From jeff@hatch.net Thu Jan 22 10:04:17 MET 1998
Article: 33715 of rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: Jeff Hatch <jeff@hatch.net>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Unexpected "bonus" syntax (was: [Inform] Unlock Gate With Key (this doesn't work))
Date: Wed, 21 Jan 1998 15:41:00 -0800
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Den of Iniquity wrote:
> On 17 Jan 1998, Magnus Olsson wrote:
> 
> >>"Unwrap door with iron key" indeed!
> >
> >What do people think about this from the player's perspective?
> >Does it distrub you as a player if the parser recognizes strange
> >commands such as "unwrap door with key"?
> 
> It's absurd. If it's pretty certain that no sane player would use such
> command then there's no problem with it IMHO. This excepts the case in
> which the player tries out daft commands for the purpose of amusement
> because one has been told that they work. Like sticking Xyzzies throughout
> a command.
> 
> Sometimes, such a command might conceivably be useful - in which case the
> author should definitely take care of it - if one can "unwrap sardine tin
> with key" (OK, it's strained, but it's the best I can do) perhaps one
> should avoid mapping unwrap_with to anything else. I dunno. This is a
> slightly different question, I think.


I just thought of one more practical reason to disallow such strange
verb matchings.  This one doesn't apply to Inform at all, though.

No one would every try "unwrap door with key."  But consider this:
>EXAMINE CHEST
The chest is closed.  Sitting on the top of the chest is a beautifully
wrapped package.
>UNWRAP IT
You open the chest, and the package falls onto the floor.

Even my system would give this result if "unwrap" and "open" were
synonyms.  But my system will allows multiple possible matches for the
word "it," so if "unwrap chest" gave an error message, my system would
instead try to interpret the second command as "unwrap package."

My initial dislike for Mr Nelson's use of synonyms was mostly because I
value "clean" code as a programmer.  In most situations, the extra
synonym won't make a difference.  But (as always) it's much easier to
expand the program's capabilities if "clean" code is used.

As has been pointed out quite often, it would be easy to split verbs in
Inform.  But it would be even easier if Mr Nelson had done the splitting
and had provided "rejoining" functions like "IsViolent."  As it is, if
you want to split a verb for one specific situation, you'll have to make
sure that the verbs still do the same thing in all other situations. 
(No difficult task, certainly.  Any system is easy to modify as needed
-- which is why none of the reasons given for or against Graham's
philosophy are very compelling.)


-Rmil


From mkkuhner@evolution.genetics.washington.edu Thu Jan 22 10:16:57 MET 1998
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From: mkkuhner@evolution.genetics.washington.edu (Mary K. Kuhner)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Unexpected "bonus" syntax (was: [Inform] Unlock Gate With Key (this doesn't work))
Date: 22 Jan 1998 00:17:19 GMT
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In article <34C67554.68EA@hatch.net>, Jeff Hatch  <jeff@hatch.net> wrote:

>Once again, my parser's disambiguator could easily handle this problem. 
>It can allow the phrase "blow up" to have two possible meanings--either
>"explode" or "inflate."  In most situations, it would be quite obvious
>which one makes more sense, and the parser would interpret the command
>correctly.  No extra work would be required by the game designer.

>For a long-winded, detailed explanation of how this works, see my
>"Disambiguation tricks" post.  Briefly: My parser would try the entire
>command both ways and then do whichever one yielded the "most sensible"
>result.  (The most sensible result is defined by an error number in the
>library--for instance, "The raft is already inflated" would be
>considered a better result than "I don't know how to explode the raft.")

But suppose that you have a rubber raft, a bomb, and a pump?  Now 

>blow up raft

seems to me to be totally ambiguous--honestly, even a human being
can't be sure what it means.  Perhaps you really want to destroy the
raft--after all, there might be a treasure hidden inside--or perhaps
you really want to inflate it. 

At some point I think the player needs to be more clear--there is
no way to avoid silly responses if you try to deal with this statement.
No matter which way you assign the error numbers, you may not
catch the player's intended meaning.  Best to issue a
disambiguation message and leave it at that.  ("What do you want to
blow it up with?")

I do like the idea of your system, though.  My only worry is that in
getting rid of one class of errors, it may introduce another; because
it prefers "successful" responses, it may tend to do things that it
shouldn't.  For example, trying to blow up the raft when you are
*not* carrying the pump, it seems to me, runs a risk of getting
the bomb, rather than a complaint that you don't have anything to
blow it up with.  The parser *still* isn't really grasping the
situation.

Scoring those error messages is also going to be an interesting
design exercise all by itself.  I doubt you can do it all in the
library--seems like the author will have to contribute some
scoring, or how can you tell whether blowing up (in either sense)
the raft makes any sense at all?


Mary Kuhner mkkuhner@genetics.washington.edu


From mol@bartlet.df.lth.se Thu Jan 22 10:17:58 MET 1998
Article: 33745 of rec.arts.int-fiction
Path: news.lth.se!not-for-mail
From: mol@bartlet.df.lth.se (Magnus Olsson)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Unexpected "bonus" syntax (was: [Inform] Unlock Gate With Key (this doesn't work))
Date: 22 Jan 1998 10:15:45 +0100
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In article <34C67554.68EA@hatch.net>, Jeff Hatch  <jeff@hatch.net> wrote:
>Lynn Johannesen wrote:
>
>> Zork I has a rubber raft, and a pump with which to inflate it.
>> BLOW UP RAFT works as expected.  Zork II has an explosive brick,
>> and a safe that you need to open by exploding the brick.
>> BLOW UP BRICK and BLOW UP SAFE produce something like "you cannot
>> inflate the brick."
>> 
>> I find it amazing, actually, that a verb-preposition parser can
>> do as well as it does in practice.
>
>Once again, my parser's disambiguator could easily handle this problem. 
>It can allow the phrase "blow up" to have two possible meanings--either
>"explode" or "inflate."  In most situations, it would be quite obvious
>which one makes more sense, and the parser would interpret the command
>correctly.  No extra work would be required by the game designer.

You can do this in Inform as well, on the parser level. Suppose that
inflatable objects have the attribute "inflatable". Then you can
have the grammar productions

verb 'blow'
    * 'up' inflatable -> Inflate
    * 'up' noun -> Blast;

>For a long-winded, detailed explanation of how this works, see my
>"Disambiguation tricks" post.  Briefly: My parser would try the entire
>command both ways and then do whichever one yielded the "most sensible"
>result.  (The most sensible result is defined by an error number in the
>library--for instance, "The raft is already inflated" would be
>considered a better result than "I don't know how to explode the raft.")

This is a more flexible technique. I think the TADS parser works in this
way, though IIRC its definition of "sensible" is a Boolean one: it tries
various interpretations of the input sentence and accepts the first one
where the various "verify" methods don't print any error messages. 

>Magnus Olsson wrote:
>> Looking at verbs and prepositions is mostly syntactical analysis.
>> What is [needed] is *semantic* analysis. Which requires some form of
>> true understanding.
>
>All the games that are written already have some form of semantic
>analysis--enough to run the game, at least.  The easy way to give the
>parser more apparent intelligence is to let it access the rest of the
>game in making its decisions.

Of course. I didn't mean to imply otherwise. In fact, since naturla
languages are context sensitive in both the grammatical and the wider
sense (i.e. a word's meaning depends both on the rest of the sentence
and on the context in which the meaning was said), I think this is
necessary.


-- 
Magnus Olsson (mol@df.lth.se, zebulon@pobox.com)
------    http://www.pobox.com/~zebulon   ------
     Not officially connected to LU or LTH.


From ddyte@vaxc.cc.monash.edu.au Thu Jan 22 12:40:43 MET 1998
Article: 33708 of rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: ddyte@vaxc.cc.monash.edu.au (David Dyte)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: [Announce] Hall of Shame on www
Date: 22 Jan 98 08:43:37 +1100
Organization: Computer Centre, Monash University, Australia
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Ok, by unpopular demand, here it is! The r.a.i-f and ifMUD
Hall of Shame web page. With a number of pictures of all those
people who, up until now, you have only known from their text
output.

For the moment, it's at: http://zikzak.net/~ddyte/ifhos.html

This is an early (call it beta test) version. Please send me
details on how to add *your* photo! Please don't complain if
you find the connection slow and/or dead- this page will soon
be moving to faster pastures.

And no, it's not just an excuse to get people to download the
latest version of A Bear's Night Out.

- David Dyte



From jeff@hatch.net Fri Jan 23 09:52:40 MET 1998
Article: 33790 of rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: Jeff Hatch <jeff@hatch.net>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Unexpected "bonus" syntax (was: [Inform] Unlock Gate With Key (this doesn't work))
Date: Thu, 22 Jan 1998 17:01:46 -0800
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Magnus Olsson wrote:
> 
> In article <34C67554.68EA@hatch.net>, Jeff Hatch  <jeff@hatch.net> wrote:
> >Lynn Johannesen wrote:
> >
> >> Zork I has a rubber raft, and a pump with which to inflate it.
> >> BLOW UP RAFT works as expected.  Zork II has an explosive brick,
> >> and a safe that you need to open by exploding the brick.
> >> BLOW UP BRICK and BLOW UP SAFE produce something like "you cannot
> >> inflate the brick."
> >>
> >> I find it amazing, actually, that a verb-preposition parser can
> >> do as well as it does in practice.
> >
> >Once again, my parser's disambiguator could easily handle this problem.
> >It can allow the phrase "blow up" to have two possible meanings--either
> >"explode" or "inflate."  In most situations, it would be quite obvious
> >which one makes more sense, and the parser would interpret the command
> >correctly.  No extra work would be required by the game designer.
> 
> You can do this in Inform as well, on the parser level. Suppose that
> inflatable objects have the attribute "inflatable". Then you can
> have the grammar productions
> 
> verb 'blow'
>     * 'up' inflatable -> Inflate
>     * 'up' noun -> Blast;

Sure, that works.  Inform is a very good system, so it could easily be
adapted to handle most of my examples of sentences Inform "can't
handle."  My system will be better in this particular area--but it'll
need to be at least as good as Inform in many, many other ways before
anyone will even consider using it.


> 
> >For a long-winded, detailed explanation of how this works, see my
> >"Disambiguation tricks" post.  Briefly: My parser would try the entire
> >command both ways and then do whichever one yielded the "most sensible"
> >result.  (The most sensible result is defined by an error number in the
> >library--for instance, "The raft is already inflated" would be
> >considered a better result than "I don't know how to explode the raft.")
> 
> This is a more flexible technique. I think the TADS parser works in this
> way, though IIRC its definition of "sensible" is a Boolean one: it tries
> various interpretations of the input sentence and accepts the first one
> where the various "verify" methods don't print any error messages.

You recall correctly.

When I first read the TADS manual, I was amazed at how many of my ideas
Michael Roberts had almost but not quite implemented.  Namely, he
created "verify" methods, a multi-turn Undo feature, and a huge
scrollback buffer, but he didn't link these features together to allow
"verify" methods to safely change variables or to allow the Undo feature
to actually erase the last move from the screen.

-Rmil


From graham@gnelson.demon.co.uk Fri Jan 23 12:35:35 MET 1998
Article: 33816 of rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: Graham Nelson <graham@gnelson.demon.co.uk>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: .z3 or .z4 possible with Inform?
Date: Fri, 23 Jan 1998 00:05:53 +0000 (GMT)
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In article <885494530.1033895944@dejanews.com>,
<URL:mailto:macuming@gloria.cord.edu> wrote:
> > If you're prepared to expand your audience just a tiny bit,
> > a .z5 game in Latin ought to be just about possible (and rather
> > fun) -- you could write an Inform language definition file for
> > Latin and use the standard library.
> 
> That's the plan!  There, I've said it.  I've got quite the project going
> now, but I actually did plan in advance to create a definition file for
> Latin so I could write future games in Latin (Okay, so I'm a freak).

    > ECCE
    In triclinium est puella.  Puella est Cornelia.
    Cornelia est magna puella.

(that's about as far as I can remember the plot of my school Latin
textbook, which is not as racy as these opening words might promise,
though there is a scandalous incident involving a nude Senator in
about book 5).

Why not, though?  It would be an interesting exercise, and some Latin
teachers might even like it as a teaching aid.

> One question:  I haven't fully read the translator's guide, but you did
> mention casually examples from Hebrew.  I'd like to do a game in Hebrew
> someday (in the same way that I'd like a pony), but how could you make
> the input text go from right to left in an Inform game?  Would it
> necessarily have to be done in a v6?

This seems an odd way to like a pony.  The literal answer is no: with
enough messing about, you could do this using version 5 screen
capabilities, I think.  It wouldn't be easy!

However, at least Inform supports the ISO Hebrew character set
(if you use the -C8 switch), which is a start.

-- 
Graham Nelson | graham@gnelson.demon.co.uk | Oxford, United Kingdom



From erkyrath@netcom.com Sun Jan 25 16:25:16 MET 1998
Article: 33892 of rec.arts.int-fiction
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: erkyrath@netcom.com (Andrew Plotkin)
Subject: Re: [Inform] Two Questions
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Rick Dague (trikiw@geocities.com) wrote:

> (1) Is there a way to write a time delay routine in Inform? I'd like to
> make calls like "Delay(5);" which pauses the game for five seconds.

It's possible on most interpreters used nowadays, but not all of them.

First, test if it's possible:

Global can_pause;
Global dummychar;

  if (($0->1) & 128) 
    can_pause = true;
  else
    can_pause = false;

Then do a timed character-read with a five-second delay:

  if (can_pause) {
    @read_char 1 50 AbortRead dummychar;
  }

This waits for a character to be read in. Every five seconds (50 is the 
delay in tenths-of-a-second) it calls the function AbortRead. If the 
function returns true, the read operation will be aborted, so you want to 
define it to always return true.

[ AbortRead;
  return true;
];

The read operation will of course also halt if the player hits a key. 
This is probably good, because it's really annoying to wait five seconds 
if there's no way to jump out.

If you really want a mandatory five-second wait, call @read_char with a 
1-tenth-second interval, and change AbortRead to return true only after 
it's been called fifty times. Then the player will have to hit any key 
fifty times to abort the wait. Like I said, this is almost certainly a 
bad idea.

The key hit will be stored in dummychar. If it times out at five seconds, 
I think the value of dummychar is unreliable -- it will be set to zero in 
some interpreters, left unchanged in others. (If someone knows more about 
this, please post.) Actually dummychar can be a local variable instead of 
a global variable.

> (2) How do you tell if there's any light when trapping the Look action?
> My code so far is like this

>   object Room "Room"
>   with
>     description "In a room.",
>     after [;
>       Look:
>         if(location == TheDark) rfalse;
>         print "An eerie mist flows about.";
>     ];

> When there's light, that message should be printed after the contents of
> the room are printed normally. When there's no light, location is set to
> Room instead of TheDark. What gives?

I'm not sure. location *should* be set to TheDark when LookSub is called, 
and it's at the end of LookSub that the after clause for Look is run.

You could try checking "if (lightflag == 0)" instead "if (location == 
TheDark)", but that should produce the same result.

You could make the eerie mist an actual object -- the player is probably 
going to try to refer to it anyway. If you want it in several rooms, make 
it a floating object.

--Z

-- 

"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the
borogoves..."


From jeremyasmith@lwtcdz.prestel.co.uk Sun Jan 25 18:09:05 MET 1998
Article: 33882 of rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: "Jeremy A.Smith (not affiliated with Rancid the Elf)" <jeremyasmith@lwtcdz.prestel.co.uk>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: what's with (string)?
Date: 24 Jan 1998 22:39:21 GMT
Organization: LWTCDi Promotions
Lines: 26
Message-ID: <01bd2918$4474c860$LocalHost@default>
References: <34C6AE37.1D1@mail.utexas.edu> <uc9afcoekc8.fsf@Rama.DoCS.UU.SE> <6a83u0$ecg$1@joe.rice.edu>
NNTP-Posting-Host: modem95.bananaman.pol.co.uk
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Xref: news.lth.se rec.arts.int-fiction:33882

Okay, here's how you print the name of a Verb in Inform 6/7:

[ PrintVerb actiondo arrayit;
arrayit = #identifiers_table;
arrayit = arrayit + 2*(arrayit-->0) + 2*48;
print (string) arrayit-->actiondo;
];

And just PrintVerb(Action); whenever you want the verb.

That's it!! I nabbed this out of the stifling confines of the library ( so
you don't have to fiddle around in parser.h), also please bear in mind it
won't work in < Inform 6.7.
-- 
Jeremy A.Smith

To reply by Email, change the 'z' in lwtcdz to i

"I will not stop... I will not stop... I will not stop..."
		Robert De Niro to Al Pacino in Heat.

*What the hell?
*Read the hell?
http://www2.prestel.co.uk/lwtcdi/all/
*Z-code decompiler
http://www2.prestel.co.uk/lwtcdi/uninform/instruct.htm


From marsh@nettally.com Wed Jan 28 12:15:06 MET 1998
Article: 34004 of rec.arts.int-fiction
Path: news.lth.se!newsfeed.sunet.se!news99.sunet.se!news01.sunet.se!194.22.194.4.MISMATCH!masternews.telia.net!news-feed.inet.tele.dk!bofh.vszbr.cz!news.maxwell.syr.edu!news-peer.gip.net!news.gsl.net!gip.net!news-peer.sprintlink.net!news-backup-west.sprintlink.net!news-in-west.sprintlink.net!news.sprintlink.net!Sprint!204.117.192.21!news.utelfla.com!nntp2.sprintans.net!news
From: marsh@nettally.com (Steven Marsh)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction,rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Question for everyone: How many people play the games you make?
Date: Tue, 27 Jan 1998 16:46:10 GMT
Organization: Sprint ANS
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On 26 Jan 1998 21:21:26 GMT, "scovert" <scott@successinformation.com>
wrote:
	<snip>
>How many people have actually played Curses? Jigsaw? I-0? Time: ATCTAE?
>
>If you are aware of somewhat accurate figures of how many people have
>downloaded a game you or somebody else has made, please post them here.
>
	Y'know, I just had nightmares of:

>>>>>>>>> I've played Curses!
>>>>>>>> Me too!
>>>>>>> Me too!
>>>>>> Me too!
>>>>> Same here!
>>>> Count me in!
>>> I've played it!
>> Here!
> Me too!

etc. for 10,000 people.  Graham Nelson displeased, since all 10,000
posted binary copies of Curses to prove they've played it.  Graham
flips, kills all 10,000 fools, wiping out entire living interactive
fiction community.

In quasi-more seriousness, I -would- say that rec.*.int-fiction has
more than 1000 regular -readers-... many of whom (like myself) are
lurkers.  (Then again, these numbers are pulled from the ether, and
I've just learned that my beloved ether theory has been disproved.
Stoopid Einstein.)

I would say that 10,000 people is a reasonable guestimate for any
"fringe" art form.  I know that, in the world of
independant/alternative comics, 10,000 is a magical number to dream of
(3-4,000 are more realistic numbers).  Same thing for paper-based RPGs
(Steve Jackson actually published its numbers on on of its In Nomine
supplements... 16,606 copies.)  I imagine the world of literatary
fiction has comperable numbers (unless your name is Toni Morrison).
Ditto for independant records.  Poetry has to be even less.  (Graham?)
I'm not sure about movies (their distribution scheme is an enigma to
me) or TV for that matter.

OTOH, Interactive Fiction has a few advantages that other art forms
don't.  For one thing, unless you charge for your interactive fiction,
your potential audience is limitless.  Compare that to any other art
form; once it falls out of print, it's very difficult to get back -in-
print (especially for CDs, small press books, and the like).  So no
one would ever need to worry about being able to get a copy of, say,
Curses 10 years from now (while I'm still trying to complete my Big
Daddy CD collection).

So, yes, we're a fringe art form.   But we're an art form that has no
real growth limits.  (Assuming the continued graces of ftp.gmd.de
[does anyone know if they keep statistics for downloaded files?])

Steven Marsh
marsh@nettally.com
	Who realizes he didn't come close to answering the question,
but who hopes that what he -has- provided sheds some light.


From jools@arnod.demon.co.uk Thu Jan 29 23:20:24 MET 1998
Article: 34139 of rec.arts.int-fiction
Path: news.lth.se!feed1.news.luth.se!luth.se!cam-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!news.bbnplanet.com!news.idt.net!news-peer-east.sprintlink.net!news-peer.sprintlink.net!news.sprintlink.net!Sprint!news-peer.gip.net!news-lond.gip.net!news.gsl.net!gip.net!dispose.news.demon.net!demon!news.demon.co.uk!demon!arnod.demon.co.uk!jools
From: Julian Arnold <jools@arnod.demon.co.uk>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: More FTP numbers
Date: Thu, 29 Jan 1998 19:46:19 +0000 (GMT)
Organization: None, absolutely none
Message-ID: <ant2919190b0c4bn@arnod.demon.co.uk>
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These FTP stats for the if-archive are endlessly fascinating. Did you
know:

  * There's 1 person who consistently .tars everything before
    downloading, and whoever it is has been doing it since at least '94.
  * The most downloaded Hugo game in '97 was, bizarrely, Cardinal T's
    _SceptreQuest: Quest for the Sceptre_ (doesn't even work with Hugo
    2.x!). 2nd place goes to the Cardinal's _East of Eastwood_.
  * The least downloaded Hugo game in '97 was my own _Pirate Adventure_
    port (bastards). Mind, I'm not counting the separate source.
  * Only 1 person downloaded the Inform game BALT.z5 (haha).
  * A quick search for "acorn," "riscos," and "archimedes" followed by
    some careless and unreliable guestimation suggests there are
    currently about 100 Acorn users mucking about with IF. Probably
    less, given that much software is uploaded multiple times under the
    same filename (different versions, etc.).
  * Musus Umbra's excellent RISC OS port of Frotz remains sadly
    underused:
    ftp://ftp.gmd.de/if-archive/infocom/interpreters/frotz/RiscOSFrotz132.zip
  * 50-60 Acorn users like collecting outdated Z-code interpreters.
  * Amazingly, Questmaker was downloaded 476 times last year.

Jools
-- 
"For small erections may be finished by their first architects; grand
ones, true ones, ever leave the copestone to posterity. God keep me from
ever completing anything." -- Herman Melville, "Moby Dick"



From graham@gnelson.demon.co.uk Sat Jan 31 15:47:32 MET 1998
Article: 34186 of rec.arts.int-fiction
Path: news.lth.se!solace!mn6.swip.net!nntp.uio.no!news-spur1.maxwell.syr.edu!news.maxwell.syr.edu!dispose.news.demon.net!demon!news.demon.co.uk!demon!gnelson.demon.co.uk!graham
From: Graham Nelson <graham@gnelson.demon.co.uk>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Graham-generated Heinlein sample
Date: Fri, 30 Jan 1998 18:41:31 +0000 (GMT)
Organization: none
Message-ID: <ant301831345M+4%@gnelson.demon.co.uk>
References: <6apca1$5hb$2@neko.syix.com> <6ar8ep$9pbgn@fido.asd.sgi.com> 
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In article <6ar8ep$9pbgn@fido.asd.sgi.com>, John Francis
<URL:mailto:jfrancis@dungeon.engr.sgi.com> wrote:
> 
> The Xanth series is aimed, fair and square, at pubescent males.
> While it may not contain 'sex' in the form of explicit graphic
> descriptions of sexual intercourse, Piers Anthony appears to
> have the biggest breast fixation since Robert Heinlein, and
> adds to that a strange fascination with female undergarments.

  Commodore Hendricks looked up at the engraving of Mark Twain on the
wall.  "Seems to me, young Jones, you have a problem," he remarked
mildly as he ran his fingers over his father's belt.  "Passage to Mars
runs at a hundred fifty credits."

  So I took a job helping out grand old Silvie washing the dishes,
running errands, mucking out the Venusian slug-cows.  A
half-millicredit a day, but I saved it all.  Of course old Hendricks
could have fixed a trip in a moment, but I had to learn the hard way,
I knew that.  Mean time, he saddled me down with assignments -
history, lunar archaeology, bayonet practice, Absolute Moral Truth,
anything and everything - I figured I had to get myself an education. 
The calculus defeated me, though.  No matter how hard I tried, I just
could not prove by symbolic math that Socialism was evil.  "Don't
worry about it, son, and that's an order," said Hendricks late one
night, laying a hand on my shoulder.  "Go out and get some air."

  Out under the starry sky, while I was looking for old Sol, I saw a
new recruit beheaded at Hendricks's order.  Gretchen took my hand,
nervously - she did that a lot lately, and I liked it.  Shucks, I've
always liked girls.  "Uh, sir?" I asked.  "Wasn't he completely
innocent?"

  "Mmm?  Yes, I suppose so.  Certainly.  But there's only one captain
of a ship, only one Commodore of Free Venus."  Until that moment I had
hardly noticed the immense burden on his shoulders.

[I really must stop doing this.]

-- 
Graham Nelson | graham@gnelson.demon.co.uk | Oxford, United Kingdom



From graham@gnelson.demon.co.uk Sat Jan 31 16:50:31 MET 1998
Article: 34257 of rec.arts.int-fiction
Path: news.lth.se!feed1.news.luth.se!luth.se!cam-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!news.bbnplanet.com!news.maxwell.syr.edu!dispose.news.demon.net!demon!news.demon.co.uk!demon!gnelson.demon.co.uk!graham
From: Graham Nelson <graham@gnelson.demon.co.uk>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Graham-generated Piers Anthony sample
Date: Thu, 29 Jan 1998 15:06:52 +0000 (GMT)
Organization: none
Message-ID: <ant291552f7fM+4%@gnelson.demon.co.uk>
References: <6apca1$5hb$2@neko.syix.com> 
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In article <6apca1$5hb$2@neko.syix.com>, Patrick Kellum
<URL:mailto:patrick@syix.com> wrote:
> 
> I have to step in and say I am a very big fan of Piers Anthony.  Yes his
> books do sometimes have sex in them (Bio of a Space Tyrant being on of the
> bigest offenders) but they are well written and are original.  Personally,
> I think the Mode series was his greatest series yet, better then nearly
> anything else out there IMO.  Xanth is great, it contains little or no sex
> and is aimed at a wide range of readers ranging from young kids to old
> farts.  And last but not least the Authors Notes in his books are great.
> How many other authors go out of their way to not only attempt to answer
> their fan mail but also mention readers in the authors notes and use there
> ideas (in Xanth he goes a little overboard though.)  


  Wibble's half-brother Wobble looked down from the heights.  The game now
stood at four-three to Gerec the golem.  If he could just steer the ball
upwards, where the unicorn could give it a neat side-flick of her horn...
but under the rules of the Gaming Hall, that would only be allowed if he
could testify as to the colour of her underwear.

  "Believe me," he said, "I do respect you and regret the necessity for
this," as his hand slid over her flank and magically the unicorn's thigh
seemed to become human and female.  Strong magic indeed!  "You know that I
am oriented on my lady Saddama, rider of gold Baath -" but he stopped and
blushed.  She had become entirely human, and was naked, her honey-blonde
hair rippling in the light from the firepits!

  "Oh, Wobble," she said sadly, "I know you can never truly be mine, when
you will have to be Champion soon, but at least once and probably lots of
times, would it be so terrible if I performed utterly obliging and
submissive acts on your body under the pretext of a set of rules in which
you had no choice but to enjoy yourself without obligation?"

  Although he was a short man, he made up for it in passion, and she with
dexterity.  Afterwards, as he lay across some of her chest, they decided to
re-order the socio-political structure of society so that each person's daily
wage was paid by the cake-slicing method.  "If only every world had someone
of such brilliantly incisive social thought!  Shall we do it again?  You'll
never guess where my horn is now -"

  "Oy!" called Gerec, "Are you still playing?"

---

Amazingly, my publishers resisted when I first asked to include this
Afterword, though my thousands of fan letters every hour beg to hear more
details of my digestive disorder and of the little shack where I write out
in the woods, eating pancakes with syrup and never suffering once from a
lack of invention like some SF authors I could mention!  Why, only the other
day, after my second novel of the afternoon...


-- 
Graham Nelson | graham@gnelson.demon.co.uk | Oxford, United Kingdom



From adam@princeton.edu Sun Feb  1 10:16:16 MET 1998
Article: 34293 of rec.arts.int-fiction
Path: news.lth.se!feed1.news.luth.se!luth.se!feed2.news.erols.com!howland.erols.net!newspump.sol.net!sol.net!uwm.edu!news.cse.psu.edu!news3.cac.psu.edu!cnn.Princeton.EDU!not-for-mail
From: adam@princeton.edu (Adam J. Thornton)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Help creating toga puzzle
Date: 1 Feb 1998 03:35:49 GMT
Organization: Princeton University
Lines: 89
Message-ID: <6b0qil$873$1@cnn.Princeton.EDU>
References: <6a7jg0$idr@snews2.zippo.com> <6a8c05$ndj$1@bartlet.df.lth.se> <6a96tk$icv$1@cnn.Princeton.EDU> <kjfair-2601980059330001@ntcs-ip292.uchicago.edu>
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Xref: news.lth.se rec.arts.int-fiction:34293

In article <kjfair-2601980059330001@ntcs-ip292.uchicago.edu>,
Kenneth Fair <kjfair@midway.uchicago.edu.REMOVEME> wrote:
>In article <6a96tk$icv$1@cnn.Princeton.EDU>, adam@princeton.edu (Adam J.
>Thornton) wrote:
>>Alas, I'm drunk now, and so it's
>>tough to remember.  But let's see...
>I expect drinking should help bring back those memories.  But perhaps it 
>is bringing back memories of NOD instead, where wearing a toga is 
>overdressing.

The memories of NOD are far past reclamation.

Those that weren't drowned in a haze of NOD Punch (and, being a Wiessman, I
*know* the <<shudder>> secret ingredient), have been repressed as
horrifying beyond belief.

But there's an IF game in here somewhere...

Night of Decadence
 an interactive debauchery
 by Sarah Nelson-Crawford
 Release 1 / Serial 0069
 Inform library 6/9

Wiess Commons

You stand in the Wiess Commons.  Drunken, nearly naked couples grope
indiscriminately everywhere.  The smells of sex and sweat hang heavy in the
air.  The front entrance to Wiess is north, the back door south, and to the
west lies a smaller room where NOD Punch is being served.  Stairs, slick
with vomit and less-salubrious substances, lead up to the loft.

A young man wearing an elephant trunk over his penis staggers, slips to the
ground, and wallows in his own filth.

The band segues into "Gimme Some Lovin'."

Sparky hovers overhead.

> EXAMINE VOMIT

I think that's a Cheezy Poof!

> EXAMINE CHEEZY POOF

I don't know the word "Cheezy Poof."

> EXAMINE SPARKY

It's not every day that you get to see a twenty-five-foot paper mache'
penis.  You are the only one here who seems to consider it in questionable
taste. 

> I

You are carrying:
 a French Maid's outfit (being worn)
 a blue wristband (being worn)
 a cup
   NOD Punch
 $5.69
 Your Rice ID

> EXAMINE ID

The picture and writing are too blurry to make out.  Or maybe you're too
blurry to make them out.  Whatever.

> DRINK PUNCH

The NOD Punch hits you like a ton of citrus-flavored lead pipes, with a
pubic hair at the bottom.

You pick the hair out of your teeth and begin to dance.

Uncontrollably.

Somewhere your French Maid costume comes off, but by then it doesn't
matter.

The Campos are amused when they pick you up the following morning dangling
in a tree outside the RMC stark naked.  So is the _Thresher_ photographer.

*** You Have Won ***


Adam
-- 
adam@princeton.edu    Cynical and drunk and boring someone in some dark cafe


From vanfossen@compuserve.com Sun Feb  1 10:17:39 MET 1998
Article: 34304 of rec.arts.int-fiction
From: vanfossen@compuserve.com (Brent VanFossen)
Subject: Re: Design - unnescessary rooms?
Date: Sun, 01 Feb 1998 04:27:41 GMT
Message-ID: <34c98b47.15137149@news.compuserve.com>
References: <6a2o38$c49$1@news.lth.se> <6a877f$8eu$1@bartlet.df.lth.se>
X-Newsreader: Forte Free Agent 1.11/32.235
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Xref: news.lth.se rec.arts.int-fiction:34304

On 22 Jan 1998 20:38:23 +0100, mol@bartlet.df.lth.se (Magnus Olsson)
wrote:

>In article <6a2o38$c49$1@news.lth.se>,
>Ola Hansson <dat96oha@ludat.lth.se> wrote:
>>When designing a game, is it better to try to minimize the number of
>>rooms, or to try to have a reasonable map?

>My general answer is this: if a room (or some other element of a game)
>is truly unnecessary, then you shouldn't add it.
>
>However, rooms can be "necessary" for a lot of reasons. Rooms that
>have no function in the plot or in the puzzles can still be
>"necessary" to add atmosphere, or to give the player a feeling of
>size, or to add background or realism, or to avoid inconsistencies.

One of the things I did as Spring grew was to go through my map and
make a mental note of why each location was there.  If I could name
specifically why a room was necessary, it got to stay.  Otherwise, I
cut it and patched the map back together.

The reasons I found acceptable were not always related to puzzles or
even to hints.  Atmosphere was important.  The feeling of space in the
game in some places required moving through the landscape.  Hopefully,
though, the descriptions were sufficient to make the location feel
full without the player always thinking, I have to look at the fern, I
have to look at the walls of the canyon, I have to look at the . . .

On the subject of houses, I think many designers would do themselves a
favor by thinking about the house in Zork I.  The kitchen in that game
was important.  So was the living room and the attic.  But the elegant
white house had no bedrooms or bathrooms (What kind of a house was
it?) because those rooms didn't figure into the plot.  That game
wasn't about the house, really, and so those rooms didn't matter.

One technique I tried on the Mirror Lake Trail in "Spring" was

[SLIGHT SPOILER]
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
to disallow any command except "Look", "Inventory", movement commands,
and the meta commands (save, restore, quit . . .) .  The reason was
that I didn't want the player to feel obligated to spend any time
there.  The locations were there purely for effect.  Any disallowed
command resulted in a "There's nothing on this trail half as important
to you as . . ."  That technique would allow you to include a kitchen,
for instance, but not allow the player to waste his time fiddling with
the cupboards or the blender or whatever made its way into your
realistic room description.

For the most part, though, I think I'd prefer not even visiting the
kitchen if nothing happens there.

Brent VanFossen



From graham@gnelson.demon.co.uk Mon Feb  2 09:49:20 MET 1998
Article: 34347 of rec.arts.int-fiction
Path: news.lth.se!feed1.news.luth.se!luth.se!feed2.news.erols.com!newsfeed.direct.ca!dispose.news.demon.net!demon!news.demon.co.uk!demon!gnelson.demon.co.uk!graham
From: Graham Nelson <graham@gnelson.demon.co.uk>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Graham-generated Anne McCaffrey sample
Date: Sun, 01 Feb 1998 13:19:29 +0000 (GMT)
Organization: none
Message-ID: <ant0113290b0M+4%@gnelson.demon.co.uk>
References: <34d1dcb4.3714300@news.atl.bellsouth.net> <19980131201701.PAA02743@ladder03.news.aol.com> 
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In article <19980131201701.PAA02743@ladder03.news.aol.com>, FemaleDeer
<URL:mailto:femaledeer@aol.com> wrote:
> A few Piers Anthony books are interesting.
> 
> But ... Anne McCaffery ... much better ...


      As the old leader tossed
      All the riders of bronzes
      (And greens and blues)
      Found themselves unbossed
      And thought, who to choose?
        - from The Ballad of Plaque's Accession

  Plaque saw her fair of fire lizards humming slightly, their eyes
whirling with the pink of deep concern, tails twisting in anxiety. 
"What is it, you silly things?" she asked.  How grateful she was for
her special ability to hear all dolphins, but how much trouble it
brought her!

  In seconds the whole Weyr knew.  For days C'bain, the young
Weyrleader, had been wrapped in furs, sweating from a fever that not
even the powdered herbs flown in from Columbi Hold could abate.  At
the exact moment of his passing, his great bronze Chokedeth jumped
_between_, and the dragons chorused their noble keening in brassy
fifths.  How like one of the sweet old Teaching Songs, Plaque thought
to herself, as she gasped, dislodging her lazy old brown Stool from
her forearm, clutching at the side of the old grooved metal table (a
treasure, so her old foster-mother Scanty had once told her, of the
Ancients).  She was filled with an inexpressible yearning and screamed
out loud.

  "Hush, girl, you're only a girl, you silly girly little girl, what
can you possibly understand?  Making such a fuss of yourself, and you
a girl too!"  It was the head drudge Hoara, whose tunic still bore the
faded apprentice badges of the Mastercookhall, placed as it was in the
fierce heat of Bitra. "Now get me a sweet beer at once."

  "Don't be ridiculous Hoara, the child's terrified, and she knows
something we don't, I'll warrant," said F'coff, striding into the
kitchens wrapped only in a sleeping fur, his hair disarrayed, powerful
shoulders exuding the musk of dragons.  Oh no, thought Plaque, not you
too.  Why can't people just not notice me?  I mean I'm only a girl.  I
know my place.


-- 
Graham Nelson | graham@gnelson.demon.co.uk | Oxford, United Kingdom



From erkyrath@netcom.com Mon Feb  2 10:07:39 MET 1998
Article: 34316 of rec.arts.int-fiction
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: erkyrath@netcom.com (Andrew Plotkin)
Subject: Re: [Inform] ChangePlayer in Initialize (Graham!)
Message-ID: <erkyrathEnosDo.9J1@netcom.com>
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Joe Mason (jcmason@undergrad.math.uwaterloo.ca) wrote:
> Graham, can we have a ruling?

I can at least provide a hint.

> Some people think that, to set a new player object in the start of the game,
> you should use the ChangePlayer() routine in Initialize(), since this will
> make sure that any necessary side-effects of ChangePlayer() will be taken care
> of.

This is *currently* not true. The effects of ChangePlayer() are: (by 
inspection of the source code):

1. Set the old player object to be not concealed and transparent (see 
step 3), and set its name to "your former self".
2. Set the global variable "player" to the new player object.
3. Give the new player object transparent concealed animate proper, and 
take off the "your former self" name if it was there.
4. Set the location and real_location variables.
5. Move floating objects.
6. Check for darkness.

Now look at what happens just after Initialise() is called. There is code
which performs steps 4, 5, and 6. Step 1 is irrelevant, since there is no
old player object at the beginning of the game. If you copy the definition
of selfobj, your object is already set transparent concealed animate
proper. Therefore, if you do "player = my_selfobj;" in Initialise(), you
have covered all the necessary effects, in the 6/7 library. 

> Others say that you should just use player=<new_object> in Initialize(), since
> side-effects of ChangePlayer() may conflict with the normal initialization
> procedure.

Depends what you mean by "conflict". Steps 4, 5, and 6 will definitely be
performed twice. That *currently* has no harmful effects. If you want to
take it as evidence of implementor's intent, well, that's the wonderful
world of software design. 

> Since you [Graham] are the only one who has any idea at all what future 
> library versions will look like

I like to think that you can infer the entire mind of the Creator from 
the examination of a single pebble. 

(Hey, what's this dinosaur bone?)

--Z

-- 

"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the
borogoves..."


From erkyrath@netcom.com Mon Feb  2 12:03:51 MET 1998
Article: 34303 of rec.arts.int-fiction
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Patrick Kellum (patrick@syix.com) wrote:
>  >And in that case, geez, just do it. It's in the 
>  >nature of libraries to define more stuff than you need (for any single 
>  >game.) If the library defines a default player object you don't need, big 
>  >deal.

> It is a big deal if you grew up programming on computers where every byte
> counted.  I prefer to make the finale object code as small and compact as
> possable.

The waste in the case of selfobj is small -- a couple of hundred bytes, I
think. This is in 60K of library code. You can attempt to cut down the 
library for exactly your needs, in many ways, but I think you'll go nuts. 
This one isn't worth it.

Other cases are larger than a couple of hundred bytes. Notably the one you
mentioned (English.h if you replace very many library messages.)

An optimizing phase for Inform would certainly be nice. Cutting out 
objects that don't get mentioned, and routines and strings that occur in 
them, wouldn't be too hard -- if there's a good place for it in the 
Inform compilation process, which I'm not sure of. But I don't think 
you'd save significant space. The library doesn't define any large, 
optional objects.

Optimizing the library-message case isn't possible in the current library
setup. I can think of a couple of ways to set things up so that it is
possible, but they involve icky and confusing changes to Inform syntax 
(in addition to library changes.)

--Z


-- 

"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the
borogoves..."


From femaledeer@aol.com Mon Feb  2 13:04:25 MET 1998
Article: 34353 of rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: femaledeer@aol.com (FemaleDeer)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Graham-generated Anne McCaffrey sample
Date: 1 Feb 1998 20:12:23 GMT
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>From: Graham Nelson <graham@gnelson.demon.co.uk>
>Date: Sun, Feb 1, 1998 08:19 EST

> "Don't be ridiculous Hoara, the child's terrified, and she knows
>something we don't, I'll warrant," said F'coff, striding into the
>kitchens wrapped only in a sleeping fur, his hair disarrayed, powerful
>shoulders exuding the musk of dragons.  Oh no, thought Plaque, not you
>too.  Why can't people just not notice me?  I mean I'm only a girl.  I
>know my place.

LOL. I love Anne McCaffery, so I enjoyed this cute send up, a lot. Only nothing
she wrote was so sexist. But cute anyway. Also Anne wrote a lot more than the
Dragonworld series. I would say her earlier works are much better, more "sci-fi
like" and less "fantasy like". After all she's getting old too...

But there are now a lot of female sci-fi authors, relatively speaking, where
once there were none or only a  few. And many of them are very good. Over the
years (my longer than most of the people in raif, years), seeing this increase
has pleased me immensely. (Remember Andre Norton? She used to be about the only
one and her books are still good for teenagers and rousing fun.)

So it's an "honor", Graham, for you to parody Anne along with some of those old
male "stand-bys" of the sci-fi world.

FD :-)  Why don't you turn some of this parody into a game? You have definitely
have a flair for the ridiculous.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
FemaleDeer@aol.com       "Good breeding consists in 
concealing how much we think of ourselves and how 
little we think of the other person."             Mark Twain


From crosby@nag.cs.colorado.edu Thu Feb  5 09:55:22 MET 1998
Article: 34344 of rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: crosby@nag.cs.colorado.edu (Matthew Crosby)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: XYZZY Awards: online ceremony on February 5th
Date: 1 Feb 1998 18:38:46 GMT
Organization: University of Colorado, Boulder
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In article <19980131044500.XAA18586@ladder02.news.aol.com>,
LucFrench <lucfrench@aol.com> wrote:
>
>For example, 97 saw Tempest, 96 saw Delusions (with its many bugs), and 95 saw
>Comp95, with it's minimlistic wierdness. (How many players can say there was
>*one* fully ploted game, outside of Zebulon (and Weather is *not* a fully
>ploted game).)

You know, for those that worry about the potential for the contest always being 
won by the same clique (and hence the call for things like pseudonyms), 
history doesn't bear you our.  More to the point, so far
the winner of the contest has always done much worse the next year.
1995:  Andrew Plotkin & Magnus Olsson win with "A Change in the Weather" and
"Uncle Zebulon's Will".
1996:  Mr. Plotkin enters Lists which, while being an amazing piece of z-machine
hacking, nevertheless doesn't win.  And Magnus enters Aayela, which, while
being the first IF to explore major use of sense other then sight, and
in fact uses that superbly, is nevertheless perhaps a little weak on the story 
department.  They come 11th and 10th respectively.

1996:  Graham Nelson wins with "The Meteor, the Stone and A Long Glass of
Sherbet".  
1997:  Well, the Tempest doesn't win.  

Obviously, Graham, Magnus and Andrew all planned this out and deliberately
took a dive to let others win, right?  Of course, 3 is a small sample,
but it is 100% so far.

-- 
Matthew Crosby                                         crosby@cs.colorado.edu
Disclaimer:  It was in another country, and besides, the wench is dead.


From d91tan@rama.docs.uu.se Thu Feb  5 19:43:02 MET 1998
Article: 34386 of rec.arts.int-fiction
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction,rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Losing your Grip (discussion) (LONG)
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Xref: news.lth.se rec.arts.int-fiction:34386 rec.games.int-fiction:30376

On behalf of Magnus Olsson, dbs@mozzarella.cs.wisc.edu (Daniel
Shiovitz) wrote:

> >   - >NAME THE DOG "Rex"
> > 
> >   Cool. (IIRC this has been done before (Zork 0?) but I haven't played
> >   whichever game it was done before in.) 
> 
> At first, I found this a bit silly, like a gimmick, but after a while
> I realized that being able to name the dog makes me care more about
> it. This rather simple "gimmick" actually increases my involvement in
> the game a lot...

I agree, though at the same time it's a bit annoying that the game
keeps refering to Rover (as I named the dog) as "it" when I'm thinking
"he". Hmm... in fact, I'm going to put that in my next Grip
bug/feedback report, even though I'm not sure what could reasonably be
done about it.

Torbjrn


From fake-mail@anti-spam.address Fri Feb  6 15:20:52 MET 1998
Article: 34433 of rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: fake-mail@anti-spam.address (Neil K.)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Most Hated Puzzles and Other Things
Date: Fri, 06 Feb 1998 01:17:47 -0800
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 femaledeer@aol.com (FemaleDeer) wrote:

> Okay, I am rewriting, "The Family Legacy", making a lot of progress on Version
> 2. Let's see I have eating, drinking, sleeping in the game, which most people
> can't stand. I also have a code written down somewhere for something the
player
> can't proceed past until they find the code, some people really loathe that.
> 
> Hmmm, maybe I should stick in a little maze just to be on the safe side. So I
> will be sure to cover all the most hated items and puzzles found in IF games.

 Regarding the eating, sleeping and drinking business... I think what most
people hate is not necessarily dealing with basic bodily IF needs*, but
being summarily killed if they fail to do so. A game that lets you eat and
drink stuff is fine - it's a game that kills you if you don't drink and
eat every ten turns that will make players angry. It's pointless, and
thoroughly unrealistic. Fortunately in real life we can all go for long
periods without drink or water, though it may not be a particularly
enjoyable thing. :)

 * well... the more interesting ones anyway. Fortunately, breathing and
going to the toilet are rarely implemented in IF.

 Sleeping is a bit different. If your game tosses the player into
unconsciousness every few turns, then the same irritation factor
associated with drinking and eating crops up. But a game that makes you
sleep after some reasonable number of turns (at least in the hundreds)
isn't going to be so bad. Particularly if it's an integral part of the
story or forms part of a puzzle, as Enchanter did. At least, that's my
take.

 Codes... well. As Zarf (I think) points out in XyzzyNews, you want the
player to find a can and search for a can opener, not the other way
around. Same, I'd say, with codes and the like. Codes are simple variants
on the locked door and missing key puzzle, so they can be banal or fine
depending on how they're implemented.

 - Neil K.

-- 
 t e l a  computer consulting + design   *   Vancouver, BC, Canada
      web: http://www.tela.bc.ca/tela/   *   email: tela @ tela.bc.ca


From dcornelson@placet.com Mon Feb  9 10:12:26 MET 1998
Article: 34521 of rec.arts.int-fiction
From: David A. Cornelson <dcornelson@placet.com>
Subject: New Zork Interactive Fiction
Date: Sat, 07 Feb 1998 17:21:34 -0600
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I recall reading several threads over the past five months since I
started hanging around that using Activision's Zork trademarks was a
no-no and could be bring unwanted legal hassles.

Well, I asked Laird for a clarification on where Activision stands on
this and here is what he said...

********************************************************************
Basically, Activision holds all rights to the Zork franchise, games,
code and data files.  If these were being distributed for free in an
active manner other than what we already have on our website, we would
ask the parties to stop.

That being said, my position as head of the Zork franchise is that we
want to support interactive fiction as best we can.  I personally know
my start in computer games was with Zork I, and the first game I ever
wrote was a really bad adventure game on the Apple II.

As far as the use of Zork places in other games, I think this falls
under fair use, sort of like when a movie says something about another
movie.  Considering the freeware nature of IF, I don't see any problem
with this.  However, the best thing to do would be to include a line
saying that certain parts are from game (fill in the title) which is
owned by Activision.  I can also be a clearing house for specific
issues.

The area where Activision gets most upset is when people are selling
other products by using Activision property.  An example is the Palm
Pilot zcode program which was shown running Zork without permission from
us.  When this was pointed out to the author, I believe are graphic was
added and the problem went away.

So, what is this long winded email saying?  Basically, Activision is
protective of its rights, but wants to encourage support in the IF
groups.  (We sponsor the IF competition as an example of this.)

I hope this helps.

Laird
**********************************************************************

I interpret this as saying, making a Zork Story is okay, just don't sell
it and make sure you recognize Activision's ownership of whatever 'parts'
you use. For instance, the 'rezrov' spell might have a description that
includes 'the implementors of Activision have provided temporary use of
this spell and reserve all rights for the uses and copying of said
spell'.....

I think that's what he's saying. Just thought I would pass this on to
everyone. I personally liked Dungeon and the Enchanter series so I would
be inclined at some point to write my own Zork story. It seems as though
I can safely do this without the legal hassles that everyone seems to be
wary of...

David A. Cornelson, Chicago

-------------------==== Posted via Deja News ====-----------------------
      http://www.dejanews.com/     Search, Read, Post to Usenet


From pawprint@net.megastar Mon Feb  9 13:08:41 MET 1998
Article: 34489 of rec.arts.int-fiction
From: "Jeff Johnson" <pawprint@net.megastar>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
References: <19980206081301.DAA11426@ladder03.news.aol.com>
Subject: Re: Most Hated Puzzles and Other Things
Date: Sat, 7 Feb 1998 01:54:35 -0500
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FemaleDeer wrote in message
<19980206081301.DAA11426@ladder03.news.aol.com>...
>Okay, I am rewriting, "The Family Legacy", making a lot of progress on
Version
>2. Let's see I have eating, drinking, sleeping in the game, which most
people
>can't stand. I also have a code written down somewhere for something the
player
>can't proceed past until they find the code, some people really loathe
that.
>
>Hmmm, maybe I should stick in a little maze just to be on the safe side. So
I
>will be sure to cover all the most hated items and puzzles found in IF
games.
>
>Seriously, what else do you abhor? I would sort of like to keep the hate
level
>toward my game (when it is finally released) down to a dull roar.
Strangely, I
>prefer good vibes to thrown tomatoes.

I think in many ways it depends on the player. For instance, I have a knack
for languages, and when I played Infidel, one of the first things I did was
learn how to read the hieroglyphics. I think that helped me solve puzzles
faster than most people. (I solved Infidel blindingly fast in IF terms.) It
gave me a sense of accomplishment. Other people might not have gotten much
of a boost and subsequently probably didn't like the unintelligible symbols
everywhere.

Ditto with Starcross. I could tell immediately that the environmental
controls offered methane, oxygen, and some other gas (been a while since I
played) just by the description of the symbols. This was due to my chemistry
background.

However, in some ways certain genres of IF are going to be appealing to only
a select group of people. I've never played Plundered Hearts, but I know I'm
no reader of romance novels, and I'm not sure if it would appeal to me or
not. I can be pretty safe with any Sci-Fi IF I play, though.

Even when they make sense, as I will agree they did in Planet/Stationfall, I
find food puzzles bothersome. The sleep idea is okay. It made for a good
puzzle in Scott Adam's The Count, because you had to find a place to hide
items to keep them from being stolen while you slept.

Multipart puzzles, like getting the Babel fish, can be really cool if used
sparingly. However, once you've gotten three pieces of a four-piece puzzle
together, the fourth should not be next-to-impossible to solve. It can be
really frustrating to think, "Okay, now THIS TIME it's going to work," only
to find out that you still need to do one more thing.

(My apologies if this was posted twice. I tried to cancel the previous
message.)




From earendil@faeryland.TAMU-Commerce.edu Tue Feb 10 13:43:43 MET 1998
Article: 34593 of rec.arts.int-fiction
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: [Inform] What if Inform went away?
References: <01bd3517$8889e3e0$0f4c9ac0@station>
Reply-To: earendil@faeryland.TAMU-Commerce.edu
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Xref: news.lth.se rec.arts.int-fiction:34593

In article <01bd3517$8889e3e0$0f4c9ac0@station>,
Mike Smith <support@remedy.com> wrote:

    I pose the question--what if Inform went away? I am happy that
    someone developed Inform and made it create many non-proprietary
    text adventures.  However, if that developer were to stop making it,
    and all our platforms evolved so much as to not support the launching
    of an Inform-based app, what would the people who depend on it do?

It's hard to imagine platforms evolving that much.  Inform is written in
very standard C, and C has enough momentum that it will probably be used
for at least the next 30-50 years, though it may obtain the hated status
that Fortran and cobol hold today among programmers.

    PERL, for instance, is a so-called non-proprietary, multi-platform
    language. Its followers are addicted to it, I find. They also say
    that many contribute to its future design. Little do they know,
    however, that the original developer of PERL wrote most of the code
    for the interpreters on all the platforms it currently runs on. 

I think Larry Wall's role in the language is pretty well known.  He's
a hero to a generation of hackers.  And he wrote the most popular Perl
manual.

    So, when that PERL developer dies, we could end up with total mayhem
    because we have so many important Unix systems depending on this
    scripts written in this language. If these Unix systems evolve to
    not be able to support the launching of the PERL interpreter, then
    we would quickly see a lot of PERL scripts rewritten in Bourne shell.

It's inconceivable that Unix could evolve quickly enough to cause this kind
of chaos.  With little modification, most programs written in version 7
Unix can be made on most Unixes today.  Porting across platforms is trickier
than porting to descendants of platforms.  When Unix DOES evolve that far,
hopefully no one alive will have any memory of the Bourne shell *8-).

I'm reading the newsgroup with a program that has quite a bit of Larry Wall
legacy code.  It's trn, which was originally "nn" (and later "rn") back in the 
80's.  Mr. Wall gave up maintaining it long ago, and it was taken over by
a couple of other people with patches from lots of people over the years.
If he were to give up developing the language, or even die, it would not
be difficult for a few people to maintain the language by incremental patches
in years to come.  Perhaps there might be a problem if rival persons or
groups decided to develop the language in different directions, but that
wouldn't be fatal (think BSD v. AT&T). Since it is distributed under
the GNU license, any future releases, unless completely rewritten from
scratch, would still be required to have the source open and free.

If Graham were to be no more, to expire and go to meet his maker,
to shuffle off his mortal coil, to snuff it, to become an ex-Graham,
to ... uh oops, excuse that lapse... well, I think people could continue
to use his language for many years to come to write excellent adventures,
even without any more development. Something might eventually take its
place, perhaps Hugo.  It certainly wouldn't destroy IF.


-- 
Allen Garvin                                      kisses are a better fate
---------------------------------------------     than wisdom
earendil@faeryland.tamu-commerce.edu          
http://faeryland.tamu-commerce.edu/~earendil         	      e e cummings


From chewy@mcione.com Wed Feb 11 09:38:05 MET 1998
Article: 34596 of rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: chewy@mcione.com (Paul F. Snively)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: [Proposal] World Definition Format
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[Original message elided for brevity]

First, I must apologize to the group for not contributing on a regular
basis. On the other hand, it's not clear what I'd have to contribute. I
have not taken Inform/TADS/Hugo/et al and cranked out even a poor entry
into the annals of IF, let alone a good or brilliant one. I used to have
dreams of creating a world-class IF authoring language, but guess what?
Inform/TADS/Hugo/et al already are.

In my defense, I put my money where my mouth was years ago: I was project
leader on Dj Vu II: Lost in Las Vegas at ICOM Simulations, and I was one
of two programmers who ported "Spycraft: The Great Game" to the Macintosh
at Activision.

Now, there's been a surprising amount of discussion lately about
implementation and delivery vehicles. Surprising, I suppose, because as has
been pointed out by many who are much more articulate than I am, this is an
old conversation that inevitably degenerates into a) much well-intentioned
pleading by those who would like to see non-programmers able to author IF,
and/or b) much not-so-well-intentioned posturing, not to say
chest-thumping, by those who seem to believe that _their_ vaporous
authoring environment will prove the Second Coming and usher in a
renaissance of IF creativity.

While the goal of making IF authoring more accessible is certainly
laudable, I feel strongly that it's worth pointing out that there is no way
to author IF without programming. Without programming, you have no
behaviors other than those provided the author by the developer of the
authoring tool, which can't help but impose some extremely serious limits
on the expressive power of the authoring tool and, by extension, on the
creative flexibility of the author. I would go so far as to suggest that,
to be truly useful for authoring IF, a "language"--textual, visual,
imperative, object-oriented, functional, whatever--needs to be Turing
equivalent. Thankfully, that's not a particularly onerous requirement, but
it does give you enough rope to hang yourself (consider, for example, that
the version of Microsoft Basic built into every TRS-80 Model I computer
ever sold and ANSI C++ are both Turing equivalent. Or, perhaps more
dramatically, 8080 assembly language and Smalltalk-80 are both Turing
equivalent).

Both as a sometimes-professional-author of IF and as a programmer in
general, I'm always concerned with the ratio of expressive power in a
language to the complexity of using that language. Dj Vu II was written
in a language of our own creation that was specifically suited to the
creation of "that kind of graphical adventure game," and we ported its
runtime from the Mac to Amigas, Atari-ST's, and IBM PC's (OK, it was a long
time ago...), and I enjoyed using that language fairly much, although it
was never intended for use as a language in itself but rather as the
intermediate stage for a "real compiler" that was never written (it was
stack-oriented with no local variables and used RPN a la Forth or
PostScript). The point is that I didn't have to deal with the bookkeeping
of keeping track of stuff like windows, menu selections, etc.--all the
programming was at a much higher level of abstraction than that. Spycraft,
on the other hand, involved two things: an ostensibly "portable" game
engine written in C++ and the title-specific code, also written in C++.
That was an exercise in frustration, partially because the original code
was very poor, being the authors' first C++ effort, and partially because
the authors attempted to impose the semantics of a scripting language that
they were familiar with from another company onto C++. Ironically, this was
how Activision's story games _used_ to be developed, but that was because
they were written in a bytecode-compiled Lisp-derived scripting language!
It wasn't at all clear what the value of rewriting in C++ was. If we'd had
the opportunity to use that engine for any other titles, it might have
become apparent what the value of having to develop in C++ was, but I doubt
it--it's much more likely that we'd have evolved a better sense of what
code was title-specific and what code wasn't, but fundamentally we'd still
be bit-fiddling in the same language people write operating systems in
nowadays.

Among the principal reasons that it's worth using a tool like Inform or
TADS is because some very intelligent people have already dealt with the
platform specifics of creating a window, putting text into it, getting text
>from the user, managing memory, etc. as well as things that are more
specifically oriented to IF such as an English-parsing strategy (a
non-trivial feat in itself, as any student of computational linguistics
will gladly tell you. "A year spent in Artificial Intelligence is enough to
convince anyone of the existence of God," quipped the late Professor
Emeritus of Computer Science Alan Perlis of Yale University). That is, if
you write for Inform's or TADS' compiler, you're already working very close
to the proper level of abstraction for the realm of IF. Even if I started
with the single most parsimonious Turing-equivalent language for the task
at hand (e.g. Scheme), I would have to recreate a stupefying amount of work
just to break even with respect to where Inform or TADS are today. If I
were hell-bent on doing it visually, I'd probably feel compelled to start
with the only genuinely visual programming language I know, Prograph... and
I'd never wish Prograph on "non-programmers." If I seriously wanted to
advance the state of the art in allowing non-programmers to be authors, I
would somehow have to take the entirety of what we've learned about
computability, about representing functions, about data structures, about
algorithms, and craft a way to allow someone who has studied none of those
things to express as many aspects as they wished about all of them.

To me, that sounds like a very worthwhile interdisciplinary Ph.D. project
in Computer Science, Philosophy, Psychology, and/or Logic. It does _not_
sound even remotely feasible for delivery within my lifetime. Now, this
just begs the question as to whether we need the expressive power of full
Turing equivalence in IF authoring, and here I can only appeal to personal
opinion: I believe that we do. I believe that the best IF falls firmly into
the realm of discrete event simulation. I believe in the Naive Physics
Manifesto. Further, I believe that to adequately implement the Naive
Physics Manifesto requires Turing equivalence. I suspect the latter point
is even provable, but to do so would also probably make a nice Ph.D.
exercise.

I think we're stuck with programming being a necessary component of IF
authoring. To me, this doesn't mean that "non-programmers can never author
IF;" it means that we'd better work harder on making the activities of
programming more accessible. Alan Perlis also pointed out that "You can't
procede from the informal to the formal by formal means," and I agree, so
we'll probably have to construct systems that take a very informal approach
to "iterative specification," if you will: first, you describe how to solve
a problem in English. The computer takes a stab at translating your
description to pseudocode, asking questions of you along the way. You then
provide feedback as to "Yeah, that sounds like what I said" or "No, I
meant..." until you're satisfied with the pseudocode... which is close
enough to what the computer wants to be able to generate real code from.
Perhaps there are interactive pseudocode tutorials for you, and perhaps the
computer starts to "learn" about your idiomatic, idiosyncratic approach to
English, to say nothing of your problem-solving style!

It's still programming. It's just not programming the way we do it today,
as if we were still typing out FORTRAN on 80-column punch cards to
batch-feed into some IBM mainframe, praying to God we didn't make a typo so
the whole blasted stack of cards gets rejected--and all of this before
finding out whether we expressed our solution to the problem correctly!

We're not there yet. In the meantime, would-be IF authors at least don't
have to start with assembly language, Basic, C, C++, or even Common Lisp,
Scheme, ML, or Smalltalk: we have Inform, TADS, et al as well as some very
nice libraries for them. We have good (excellent, in some cases)
documentation for them, and perhaps most importantly, we have a supportive
community (although, true to the entirety of my experience as a programmer,
the "support" does frequently require the wearing of asbestos undies).

There are also excellent resources for anyone who bites the bullet and
decides "I'm gonna be a programmer." It's worth pointing out that more
different kinds of people are capable of it than most think. A good friend
and former coworker with at least three serious strikes against her in
terms of "who can be a programmer" stereotypes--she was a graphic artist,
29 years old, and a woman--is learning to program in C. Programming is,
after all, a creative endeavor, contrary to the popular perception of what
it means to be "a science." Programmers write, and people who read what
they write can often tell who wrote it without being told--that is,
programmers have individual styles and techniques that provide a
"signature" to their work. There is an aesthetics of programming (in fact,
I would argue that there are more aesthetics of programming than there are
of, say, painting).

So while I would encourage research into making programming more
accessible, in the meantime, I would encourage the creative community that
finds itself drawn to IF as a medium to dig in, pick up Inform or TADS or
Hugo or AGT or whatever strikes your fancy, and have at it! Crib liberally
>from the libraries of others: you can't learn to be a good writer without
reading a lot, and that goes for computer code as surely as for English.
Start small--just as a first-time writer can't reasonably expect to write
War and Peace, a first-time IFer can't reasonably expect to create the Zork
trilogy.

So welcome, writers, one and all. Grab a compiler; sit down around the
fire. There are war stories to swap and probably one or two grumpy old men
or women to act as a mentor. The next thing you know, you'll be one of the
old hands.

Paul Snively
<mailto:chewy@mcione.com>


From chewy@mcione.com Wed Feb 11 09:39:21 MET 1998
Article: 34604 of rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: chewy@mcione.com (Paul F. Snively)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: [Proposal] World Definition Format
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References: <01bd3527$1b180e80$0f4c9ac0@station> <chewy-ya02408000R0902981026080001@news.mci2000.com> <34DFB0F4.3984@hatch.net>
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In article <34DFB0F4.3984@hatch.net>, jeff@hatch.net wrote:

> There's also
> c) well-intentioned boasting by those who believe that _their_ vaporous
> authoring environment will be a nice small step up from Inform and
> TADS.  ;-)

Oh, sure... come along and play John the Baptist, will you! :-)

> [snip]
> > I would go so far as to suggest that,
> > to be truly useful for authoring IF, a "language"--textual, visual,
> > imperative, object-oriented, functional, whatever--needs to be Turing
> > equivalent.
> 
> I imagine that many years ago, people gave some of these same arguments
> against databases and spreadsheets.  If you really want a computer to do
> your payroll, or to keep track of the value of your comic book
> collection, or track demographics for your mailing list, you'll need to
> learn to program anyway, they said.  Databases were created anyway--but
> the most successful databases are all Turing-equivalent!

As are the spreadsheets--isn't Microsoft Excel also scripted in Visual
Basic for Applications these days? Word definitely is. And the principal
database language, SQL is, as you pointed out, also Turing equivalent. So
you really aren't contradicting my primary point, which was that everything
we know about computing, computability, combined with everything we know
about simulation (and I urge everyone to think of well-written IF as a
class of simulations), strongly suggests that Turing equivalence is an
important quality of IF authoring tools. Again, that's not to say we
shouldn't attempt to create easier-to-use Turing equivalent languages. We
should. But that's an MIT/Stanford/Xerox PARC/Berkeley/etc. level
undertaking.

> If you want to create your own authoring system, I wish you the best of
> luck!  But I myself didn't dare bring my ideas up in this newsgroup
> until I'd implemented if statements and for loops...and while loops,
> local variables, multiple inheritance, dynamic recompilation,
> incremental Undo buffers...well, you get the idea.

Yeah. It's funny how the feature-set of new IF authoring systems ends up
sounding a lot like EMACS. 1/2 ;-)

> My first post back in September was much like yours; I claimed that
> Inform and TADS were "good" but not "great" authoring systems because
> they weren't easy to use.  Perhaps I overstated my case.  I didn't
> realize I was rehashing an old, tired debate.  But when I made those
> claims, my system was better than TADS and Inform in a couple of ways,
> and just as good in most ways, and theoretically capable of doing almost
> anything they could.  I thought my system was 90% complete, but it
> turned out to be more like 75%, because the skeptics soon convinced me
> my first release would have to be at least as good as TADS and Inform in
> almost every way.

But look at the bright side: you took the input, went "hrm," went back to
your code, and decided to put forth the extra effort, as opposed to venting
your spleen at the community and insisting that their assertions were due
to their own lack of vision/flexibility/whatever. Kudos for that alone--I'm
now looking very much forward to seeing your system!

> You have a long road ahead of you.

Amen! Sing it, brother!

> -Rmil

Paul Snively
<mailto:chewy@mcione.com>


From rgo-anas@rgo.sun.ac.za Wed Feb 11 10:02:55 MET 1998
Article: 34643 of rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: Jean Jordaan <rgo-anas@rgo.sun.ac.za>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: [Inform] What if Inform went away?
Date: Tue, 10 Feb 1998 18:01:06 +0200
Organization: Stellenbosch University
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I'd just like to thank everyone for 
the barrage of common sense and clarity 
with which Mike Smith's rather dismaying
project is being met. I'd have defeated 
my own purpose with a flame a long time 
ago. And some interesting points are being 
made, and issues clarified.

My 2c: 

Mike Smith wrote:

> However, if that developer were to stop making it, and all our platforms
> evolved so much as to not support the launching of an Inform-based app,
> what would the people who depend on it do?

Another counter-argument in addition 
to the ones other people mentioned:

- obsolete programs like the original
Adventure source code has been / is
being ported, and will always be 
portable if anyone is interested, as
long as the original language was 
adequately documented.

- the IF archive contains many Spectrum
adventures. I loved playing Dragontorc 
for the Sinclair ZX Spectrum. Not only
is the program not being made anymore, the 
hardware is also quite obsolete in PC 
terms. Yet I can depend on my emulator to
play more comfortably than I could on the
original machine.

- the same goes for a whole slew of 
arcade machines, emulated by the M.A.M.E.
program.

The more our platforms evolve, the
less we will have to worry about them
supporting older stuff. The older 
platforms can always be implemented as
virtual machines, which can themselves
be portable (perhaps written in Java,
for example).

> One couldn't say that, however, about HTML.

Mike is also totally vague about HTML. 
Which is it to be? HTML 3.2? HTML 4.0 (not
yet approved)? With CSS? JSSS? DHTML? Javascript? 
VBscript? How will it eventually support VR? 
Will the tail (Netscape / M$) necessarily stop 
wagging the dog (W3)? Will a hypothetical 
future HTML standard ensure compliance in 
its interpretation among browsers? (NO.)

And removed to the end, where it belongs:

> In the interest of protecting my email address from being scanned and put
> on a Yellow Pages CDROM, please remove SPAM and click here
> (mailto://shortcut1SPAM@ntwrks.com) or use this newsgroup to reply.

yes OK already.

	* * *
Jean Jordaan
There is an underscore masquerading as a hyphen in my address.


From mol@bartlet.df.lth.se Wed Feb 11 10:03:50 MET 1998
Article: 34661 of rec.arts.int-fiction
Path: news.lth.se!not-for-mail
From: mol@bartlet.df.lth.se (Magnus Olsson)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: [Inform] What if Inform went away?
Date: 11 Feb 1998 09:51:04 +0100
Organization: The Computer Society at Lund University and Lund Institute of Technology
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In article <anson-1002981414170001@d-ma-fallriver-42.ici.net>,
Anson Turner <anson@ici.net> wrote:
>In article <34df20f7.0@news.tamu-commerce.edu>,
>earendil@faeryland.TAMU-Commerce.edu wrote:
>
>:In article <01bd3517$8889e3e0$0f4c9ac0@station>,
>:Mike Smith <support@remedy.com> wrote:
>:
>:    I pose the question--what if Inform went away? I am happy that
>:    someone developed Inform and made it create many non-proprietary
>:    text adventures.  However, if that developer were to stop making it,
>:    and all our platforms evolved so much as to not support the launching
>:    of an Inform-based app, what would the people who depend on it do?
>:
>:It's hard to imagine platforms evolving that much.  Inform is written in
>:very standard C, and C has enough momentum that it will probably be used
>:for at least the next 30-50 years, though it may obtain the hated status
>:that Fortran and cobol hold today among programmers.
>
>
>Yes, after all, platforms have hardly changed at all in the last 30 - 50
>years, and the pace of progress has only slowed since. As I sit here,
>trying to find enough punchcards to compose this message, and hoping that
>the vacuum tubes will hold up,

There's really no need to get that sarcastic over what Earendil wrote,
because he's right, you know. Not that you're wrong, of course :-). 

But let's go back to the early 1970's, when Adventure was written. Hardware
has changed tremendously since then. OS's as well. We have new programming
paradigms (though OO does actually date back to that time as well). We have
new languages, new UI's, new everything.

But the basic programming model - the von Neumann machine - hasn't changed
since then, or since 1952 for that matter. There are still Fortran compilers
around that can compile the original ADVENT sources (though some porting of
the PDP-10 specific parts are necessary).

In another 25 years, computing will probably have changed beyond our wildest
dreams. But I'd be surprised if there won't be some way of getting the
Inform compiler up and running on those platforms.

> I ask myself "What _if_ Inform went away?"
>The language that Infocom's games were written in is gone, and few have
>lost any sleep over it. Inform may be the most popular IF language in use
>today, but it is not the only one, and there will be more to come.

Good point. To be crass, we may not _want_ any Inform compilers in
2023, any more than we really want GAGS compilers today. (This is, of
course, said under the assumption that Inform development would be
frozen in the near future - if it continues to evolve for another 25
years, I'm sure Inform of 2023 will be just as amazing as the hardware
it will be running on). What we really will want is a way to play Inform
games 25 years from now.

And the Z-machine is *extremely* unlikely to just pack up and go
away. It's far too well documented for that. As long as people
will want to play text games, I'd say it's a fair bet that people will be
writing Z-code interpreters for the latest platforms.

-- 
Magnus Olsson (mol@df.lth.se, zebulon@pobox.com)
------    http://www.pobox.com/~zebulon   ------
     Not officially connected to LU or LTH.


From mythago@twisty-little-maze.com Wed Feb 11 21:43:31 MET 1998
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From: mythago@twisty-little-maze.com (Laurel Halbany)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Most Hated Puzzles and Other Things
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On Tue, 10 Feb 1998 05:09:36 GMT, chewy@mcione.com (Paul F. Snively)
wrote:

>How does everyone
>feel about the general class of puzzles that require some sort of knowledge
>that's outside the context of the game? 

Hm, I think there was a discussion about this a while back. At any
rate, I tend to dislike such puzzles unless the information is a) very
widely known, not specialist and/or b) easy to look up.

So perhaps you have a puzzle where you have to offer the correct wine
to a chef to match, say, grilled steak., and you have a wine cellar
full of bottles. Requiring the player to choose a Puligny-Montrachet
'94 is too specialized and not something you could find in a standard
reference book. (By which I mean a dictionary or basic encyclopedia.)
I don't think it would be too out of line, though, for the solution to
be choosing a red wine instead of a rose' or a white; that's a small
range of choices if guessing is necessary, and not very specialized
knowledge.

The trap is when the author thinks 'everybody knows' something that he
or she does. Examples would be the baseball diamond puzzle--even many
baseball-fan Americans didn't get that, let alone Brits--or the
passing-the-port puzzle in Christminster.

> Another example from yesteryear was a game in which you killed
>a monster and, later, the monster's mother, and before you could finish the
>game, you had to give the monster's name. At least if you got it wrong, the
>game would helpfully point out, "Beowulf disagrees..."

Which is  a good solution, IMO, because it's not that hard to locate a
copy of Beowulf or a reference work that mentions Beowulf. Asking the
player to name Zimri-Lim's little brother is out of line, though. 



From chewy@mcione.com Wed Feb 11 21:45:31 MET 1998
Article: 34693 of rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: chewy@mcione.com (Paul F. Snively)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: [Z-Machine] Compilers from TADS, Alan, HUGO into Z-Machine
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In article <6bsc0o$du5@drn.newsguy.com>, daryl@cogentex.com (Daryl
McCullough) wrote:

> The Z-machine, although designed to play Infocom adventures

Not entirely true. The Z-machine was designed to implement a virtual
processor for a significant proper subset of a language called MDL that
enjoyed some popularity within the Lincoln Laboratory at MIT. I believe it
was Stu Galley of Infocom who characterized MDL as "Lisp 1.5 with data
types," a bit of a joke based on the (now long archaic) notion that the
only data type Lisp has is the list, "Lisp" standing for "LISt Processing."

The comment is true, though, inasmuch as the motivation for constructing
this subset of MDL was to allow Zork to be reimplemented on small machines
such as the PDP-8, and the subset was indeed named "Zork Implementation
Language," or ZIL, and the runtime for it was called the "Zork Interpretive
Processor," or ZIP. The names are misleading, though, as (I'm led to
understand) the most significant differences between ZIL and its parent,
MDL, were ZIL's relative lack of sophisticated I/O features (MDL apparently
had them, passed them on to MacLisp, and MacLisp apparently passed them on
to Common Lisp, as anyone familiar with Common Lisp's "format" function can
tell you).

>has a
> pretty general machine language.

Exactly. MIT was a hotbed of Lisp activity, of course, and the Z-machine
should rightly be considered a "Virtual Lisp Chip." MIT would also create
literal hardware Lisp chips which went into Symbolics, Inc. and Lisp
Machines, Inc. workstations.

>I've heard tell that Tetris has been
> implemented in it (although that may be just a heroic legend).

Heroic legend that happens to be literally true; you can download it from
the IF archives, I believe as part of a larger collection of Mr. Andrew
Plotkin's work--including, incidentally, a not-half-bad interactive Lisp
tutorial.

>Is
> there anything (other than lack of time, interest or skill) standing
> in the way of writing compilers for non-Inform interactive fiction
> systems (TADS, Alan, HUGO) that produce Z-code?

Without having actually investigated the source code, having played a bit
with both Inform and TADS, I strongly suspect that such a thing could be
done for TADS (that is, the semantics of Inform and TADS strike me as being
very close to begin with). Not having played with Alan or Hugo at all, I
cannot comment either positively or negatively.

> Daryl McCullough
> CoGenTex, Inc.
> Ithaca, NY

Paul Snively
Former Activision Keeper-of-the-Flame
Member, Knights of the Lambda Calculus, Los Angeles Chapter
<mailto:chewy@mcione.com>


From sgranade@phy.duke.edu Thu Feb 12 16:01:55 MET 1998
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From: Stephen Granade <sgranade@phy.duke.edu>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
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On Mon, 9 Feb 1998 marcy_p@hotmail.com wrote:

> I mean besides the music quotes at the beginning of each fit (i
> guess they're all music quotes--anyone know who Trout Fishing in America
> is?).

Trout Fishing in America is a local band (at least, once-local for me) 
which has had some modicum of success, especially with their children's 
albums. Please see http://www.troutmusic.com/ for more information.

Stephen

--
  Stephen Granade                | Interested in adventure games?
  sgranade@phy.duke.edu          | Check out
  Duke University, Physics Dept  |   http://interactfiction.miningco.com



From jcmason@undergrad.math.uwaterloo.ca Fri Feb 13 09:48:25 MET 1998
Article: 34786 of rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: jcmason@undergrad.math.uwaterloo.ca (Joe Mason)
Subject: Re: Shakespeare in Esperanto
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>: You could. You could also write it in purely modern vernacular, at which
>: point you'd have a hard time getting any modern audience to sit still for
>: it.
>
>: Ham: [grimaces] Aw, man, Horatio. I used to know this Yorick, fellow. We
>: were like this [holds up crossed fingers]. Say..
>: Hor: What?
>: Ham: You think Alexander the Great looked this bad after he died?
>: Hor: Probably.
>: Ham: [waves a hand in front of his face] And smelled like shit? [throws
>: down the skull]
>: Hor: Yup.
>: Ham: Y'know, everything turns to crap sooner or later.

Juliet: Oh, Romeo, Romeo - what's this with "Romeo"?  Throw out your tag and
deny your old man... What's in a tag, anyway? A horn by any other name would
blow as cool...

-----

Marc Antony: Friends! Romans! Hipsters! Lend me your ears!  I come not to bury
Caesar, but to groove him... 


(From Mad Magazine's Shakespeare Up-To-Date.  Written in the 60's, so not
INCREDIBLY up-to-date.  Also from memory, so not incredibly good.  I wish I
could remember how the "And for this, we're told that Caesar's got big eyes"
part went.  Not to mention, "And Brutus is a real cool cat")

Joe



From mol@bartlet.df.lth.se Fri Feb 13 09:48:47 MET 1998
Article: 34780 of rec.arts.int-fiction
Path: news.lth.se!not-for-mail
From: mol@bartlet.df.lth.se (Magnus Olsson)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Shakespeare in Esperanto
Date: 12 Feb 1998 23:05:47 +0100
Organization: The Computer Society at Lund University and Lund Institute of Technology
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In article <34e278f8.8553703@news.efn.org>,
Lelah Conrad <lconrad@lane.k12.or.us> wrote:
>Could you write Shakespeare in Esperanto? 

Define "Shakespeare". You can certainly *translate* Shakespeare to
Esperanto, and had Esperanto been around in Shakespeare's time, he
could certainly have written his plays in that language.

> Would you want to?  

Why not?

>How would it be different if you did?

It would very definitely be different. Even though I'm reluctant to
accept the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis in its entirety, it seems as if
language does influence thought. If I write a story in English, it
will not come out the same as if I write it in Swedish and then
translate it. I suppose it's the same with Esperanto (which I don't
know). Or as you write:

>1)  What I can say is defined by the language I speak.  I like
>studying other languages because they open up new ways of seeing and
>of expression.

Indeed.

>  Learning an IF language opens up a new way of thinking
>for me.  What would I be my experience as an artist if all I had to do
>was point and shoot, fill in the blanks, etc?   In other words, this
>medium isn't just about getting a product to the reader/player -- it
>is also about the creation of the art itself - a way of being.

An interesting thought. Remember, though, that the consensus seems to
be that you *can't* reduce the writing of (reasonably complex) IF to
just "point and shoot, fill in the blanks". There will always be some
kind of algorithmic thinking involved.

>Will the simpler tools people are
>proposing allow for the creation of beautifully crafted,
>multidimensional worlds?  Or will they just simplify the product
>because they are simple themselves? 

There are two aspects of this:

1) A concern which I seem to share with most people on this group is
that really simple-to-use tools will not have enough expressive power
to build more than very simple worlds. In CS terms, my hypothesis is
this: an IF creation tool that has sufficient expressive power to
allow me to write a new "Curses" will necessarily have to be Turing
equivalent. But this doesn't necessarily mean that it will have to
be difficult to use!

2) Supposing new, easier-to-use IF writing tools with sufficient
expressive power appear. Will then the increased ease of use lead to a
lowering of standards? In other words: if it's so easy to write IF
that even a fool can do it, will we be swamped by IF written by fools?

This is a very elitist point of view, of course. I think - I hope - that
while there would certainly be a flood of very uninteresting, unoriginal
works, there would also be a flood of interesting stuff. Win a few,
lose a few.

> Will they just "flatten" things out again, the way TV has done?

I don't think this analogy is valid. TV doesn't have any less
expressive power than cinema or theatre. And TV programmes aren't that
much easier to make than films. The "flattening" you're speaking of
must have different causes.

>
>3) It may be that IF people need to have our little gray cells
>thoroughly challenged.  I suspect that if the IF world was simplified,
>the denizens would GOTO build complexity somewhere else. 

Perhaps. On the other hand, plotting and writing a piece of IF can be
quite challenging and stimulating even if you ignore the programming
challenges. And if they took the programming out of IF, I'd probably
satisfy my urge to write IF with the new tools, and my urge to program
by writing compilers or something.

-- 
Magnus Olsson (mol@df.lth.se, zebulon@pobox.com)
------    http://www.pobox.com/~zebulon   ------
     Not officially connected to LU or LTH.


From erkyrath@netcom.com Fri Feb 13 10:26:33 MET 1998
Article: 34791 of rec.arts.int-fiction
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: erkyrath@netcom.com (Andrew Plotkin)
Subject: Re: Inform: HasLightSource library bug?
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Alan Trewartha (alant@no.spam.demon.co.uk) wrote:
> What happens is that enterable objects have light if they contain an object
> that has light. In my version of the library ('parserm' serial number 97040
> release 6/5) the HasLightSource code reads:

>    if (i has enterable || IsSeeThrough(i)==1)
>    {   objectloop (i in i)
>            if (HasLightSource(i)==1) rtrue;
>    }
>    
> In otherwords enterable = transparent. Shurely shome mishtake?  I'm going to
> over-ride this so that OPEN enterables = transparent.

The reason for this is simple -- in the standard library, enterable 
objects can't be closed. It doesn't check the "open" attribute when 
deciding when to enter something, so it doesn't check it when deciding 
when light penetrates. (A bench, for example, doesn't have "open", but 
light still penetrates.)

Actually, that's not quite correct. What I said is true for supporters
and noncontainers. For things which are enterable *and* containers, the
library *does* check the "open" flag. So to make the library fully
consistent, you should say

    if ((i hasnt container && i has enterable) || IsSeeThrough(i)==1)

...the IsSeeThrough test will catch the case of an open, enterable 
container. 

It's worth noting that this is exactly the site of the damn 
@get_prop_addr 0 bug in the library. Fix the inside of the loop 
immediately to

    objectloop (j in i)
        if (HasLightSource(j)==1) rtrue;

In fact, everybody do this to your copy of the library. Right now. C'mon, 
hup hup hup.

(The four lines quoted above are legal, but if the loop runs all the way 
through, it leaves i set to 0. And then the next line:

    ad = i.&add_to_scope;

is an error.)

--Z

-- 

"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the
borogoves..."


From mol@bartlet.df.lth.se Fri Feb 13 13:28:22 MET 1998
Article: 34823 of rec.arts.int-fiction
Path: news.lth.se!not-for-mail
From: mol@bartlet.df.lth.se (Magnus Olsson)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: The Inform Programming Language
Date: 13 Feb 1998 13:23:34 +0100
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In article <19980213074901.CAA01203@ladder03.news.aol.com>,
NNelson334 <nnelson334@aol.com> wrote:
>  I was wondering if I could get a little advice here.  Particularly from you,
>Graham.  I've been wondering recently, why one needs an interpreter to play
>Inform games.  I realize of course why an interpreter _is_ used, but why is one
>_needed_?  

I suppose you mean: why doesn't the Inform compiler produce native
code, that can run directly on you machine, but rather Z-code, which
you need an interpreter to run?

This was really a design decision by Infocom, not by Graham (Graham
just followed in Infocom's footsteps). Infocom started out by porting
Zork to a lot of different home computers. Really different ones: not
just running different OS's, but on differrent hardware with different
processors and totally different instruction sets.

Now, Infocom didn't use Inform, but a language called ZIL, but the
same thing holds for both languages: it's much easier to write *one*
ZIL compiler that produces Z code, and then write a bunch of
interpreters for the different machines, than it is to write a whole
bunch of native-code-generating ZIL compilers. If you write a compiler
(for Inform, ZIL, C++ or whatever) that generates native code for a
PC, you have to rewrite a large portion of the compiler if you want it
to generate Macintosh native code instead.

It is much, much easier to write a Z-code interpreter which can be
re-compiled and ported for different machines (ask the people who've
ported Frotz to different platforms, for example).


And even if you *did* invest the time to write 69 different Infocm
compilers for every conceivable platform, you'd still have to
re-compile every single game for every platform.

Suppose that Infocom had 20 games (that's not the actual figure), and
wanted to sell them on 20 different platforms (again not the actual
figure). They'd have to choose between the following two approaches:

A: Write 20 ZIL-to-native-code compilers, one for each platform. Then
compile each of the 20 games with each compiler. This gives you 400
different game binaries.

B: Write *one* ZIL-to-Z-code compiler, and *one* interpreter which you
can port to 20 platforms. Then compile all the 20 games once. This
gives you 20 interpreter executables, and 20 game binaries. This is much,
much easier to handle.

Exactly the same thing holds for us amateurs and Inform.

>Why can't one code an interpreter in Inform?  Why not a compiler for
>that matter?

You seem to confuse two issues here, or maybe I just don't understand
your question correctly. I'll try to answer it as it stands.

Yes, you can write an interpreter in Inform, but what's the point?
You'd still need another interpreter to run it, wouldn't you?

Writing a compiler in Inform would simply be difficult (and you might
run into trouble fitting it into the limited memory model of the
Z-machine). But it would be neat.


-- 
Magnus Olsson (mol@df.lth.se, zebulon@pobox.com)
------    http://www.pobox.com/~zebulon   ------
     Not officially connected to LU or LTH.


From dancer@brisnet.org.au Fri Feb 13 16:04:38 MET 1998
Article: 34825 of rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: Dancer <dancer@brisnet.org.au>
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Subject: Re: Hey everybody, it's Gareth!
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Neil Brown wrote:

> At 19:34:37 on Wed, 11 Feb 1998, Dancer wrote:
> >It brought me back to the group as well. Never could resist that one.
> >
> >D
>
> (SQUINTING) Dancer? Is it really you?

In what passes for my flesh. Apparently, yes.

> Actually, I think you left before I arrived.

This is a question about time, isn't it? (Somebody write a game around "A
Question About Time - An Interactive Interval")Perhaps. Hard to say.

> Anyway, is there any
> decision on Flashback?

Imagine this. Saddam Whos-insane, leader of a small middle-eastern nation
starts a war with the rest of the world. He suffers a coronary, and while
the nation languishes - leaderless - an accident (or a series of them)
involving a jar of polish gherkins, an american 10-dollar bill, a
foccacia, and a novelty condom cause the nation's hierarchs to appoint
mister Bean (on holiday there) the religious and temporal leader of the
country, to see it through the conflict. He appoints S. Rushdie (who is
disguised as one of the Spice Girls) as his press secretary.

Now, think through the chain of events. Something of that very order of
magnitude happened to my source-code for Flashback. And to the on-machine
backup. And the two off-machine backups. And the three off-site backups.
Absurd. Embarassing. Disheartening.

I find it rather hard to envision picking that particular game up again,
and starting over.

Grrr. All those stupid and lame feelings aside, I may pick it up later
down the track, and craft something new from it's memory. In the meantime,
I'm working on a short piece: "With enemies like these...".

It's in mid-production at the moment (well towards completion), but be
warned...if some of the code doesn't work out, it's going to need a
name-change.

At this moment, I'm dealing with scrunching down a 150-line description
property for a class. The basics of the game are done, but there's a whole
batch of mechanics to be implemented in the background.

Oh, and NO DAMN PUZZLES. Zero. Zip. None. There _is_ a challenge, because
a story (by definition) needs something of that sort, but it's based
around a system that is logical and can be worked out by observation and
empiricism. (I hope). If someone handed you the 'key' to that system, the
game would provide little difficulty. It's a multi-part task, but solving
the _system_ is the key to accomplishing them all.

The other goal is to try to tell a (hopefully) satisfying short story. A
read. Pulp fiction.

Someone mentioned (a few messages ago) Asimov's Golden Age of Science
Fiction Collection. Lovely pulp SF. Interactive fiction isn't even _at_
that Renaissance yet. We're still bribing trolls, and waving starry rods
(for the most part) IMO. I figure there has to be some way to fuse
interactivity with story in some way that doesn't involve looking for oil
cans, magnets, gold-coins, keys, and white cubes (as much fun as those can
be in and of themselves).

D


--
Did you read the documentation AND the FAQ?
If not, I'll probably still answer your question, but my patience will
be limited, and you take the risk of sarcasm and ridicule.




From mol@bartlet.df.lth.se Sat Feb 14 16:04:30 MET 1998
Article: 34895 of rec.arts.int-fiction
Path: news.lth.se!not-for-mail
From: mol@bartlet.df.lth.se (Magnus Olsson)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: The Inform Programming Language
Date: 14 Feb 1998 16:01:23 +0100
Organization: The Computer Society at Lund University and Lund Institute of Technology
Lines: 102
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In article <19980213222301.RAA03966@ladder02.news.aol.com>,
NNelson334 <nnelson334@aol.com> wrote:
>Magnus Olsson <mol@bartlet.df.lth.se> wrote:
>>Yes, you can write an interpreter in Inform, but what's the point?
>
>  I don't know what the point is.  It'd just be neat.
>
>>You'd still need another interpreter to run it, wouldn't you?
>
>  No.  Not the way I'm thinking it could be done.  Read on.
>
>  The Inform 6.14 compiler will compile any syntactically correct Inform code,
>right?
>  Okay.  I have the C source code for MaxZip.  I also have the C source code
>for the Inform 6.14 compiler.  I also have a complete set of Apple and Symantec
>standard C/C++ libraries, which I use when I compile the source for MaxZip or
>Inform 6.14 on my platform.
>  Now, what if I successfully port my Apple and Symantec standard C libraries
>to Inform, the C source code for MaxZip to Inform, and the C source code for
>the Inform 6.14 compiler to Inform?  (Yeah, I'd compile them with the currently
>available C Inform 6.14 compiler, in case you're wondering.)

To begin with, you *can't* port the standard C libraries to Inform, because 
Inform has no low-level interface to OS functionality, the way the C library
has. Just one example: The C library has functions for checking and setting
such things as permissions and dates of files. These concepts simply
don't exist in Inform. 

Of course, you could modify the Inform language so it included such
functionality (the modifications to the language itself could be quite
small). We would then have to modify the Z machine so that it included
such concepts (like the Java VM does). Or we could make the Inform
compiler emit native code, but then we're back at square one.

But I take it you're talking about Inform and the Z machine in their
current incarnations.

>  You'd still have the "one-compiled-game-compatible-with-all-interpreters"
>situation.  If everyone has an interpreter coded in Inform, and a compiler,
>coded in Inform, then no one has to worry about porting the _games_.  They
>would still be written in Inform.

That is true. It is of course also true today.

> The only trouble a person would have is
>porting the Inform source code of the compiler and the interpreter to their
>platform.

In what way would this be different from porting the C code of the compiler
and the interpreter to their platform?

>  Does anyone have any ideas why it _wouldn't_ work?  If it could work, would
>it be innefficient?  If so, why? 

If I can follow your thoughts here, you are forgetting something quite basic:

As long as the Inform compiler emits Z code and not native code, an
interpreter written in Inform would be totally useless for your
purposes. Sure, you could compile it, but the result of the
compilation would be a Z code file. And to run a Z code file, you need
an interpreter. And you need an interpreter that actually runs on your
hardware. (Please don't say "but you can run the interpreter on
itself". You try that, then come back and tell us where the infinite
recursion bottomed out.)

>  The only good reason I can come up with for doing any of this, is that one
>could write stand-alone applications/executables/programs coded _entirely_ in
>Inform.  You can't do that currently, as far as I know.  Everything written in
>Inform requires some interpreter, written in C or something.

Unless you can work magic, to run a program on your computer, you must either

* compile the program to your computer's native code

or

* have an interpreter (written in native code, or itself being
interpreted by an interpreter written in native code, and so on ad
nauseam) that can interpret the program.

You can't get around this. Either you make Inform output native code, and then
you lose portability, or you make it output Z-code (or something equivalent),
and then you need interpreters written in another language than Inform.


A practical note: if you don't mind limiting your audience, and if you
think requiring them to have a working interpreter is too much of a
hassle, then an alternative to native-code generation is this:

Some interpreters can be bound together with the Z-code file into one
(native) executable. For MS-DOS, use Jzip together with the jzexe
utility.  For Macintosh, use MaxZip. 

These bound executables can of course only be played on one
platform. But as the interpreter is included in the same file as the
Z-code, the user doesn't even notice that he's really using an
interpreter.

-- 
Magnus Olsson (mol@df.lth.se, zebulon@pobox.com)
------    http://www.pobox.com/~zebulon   ------
     Not officially connected to LU or LTH.


From jpenney@cs.uml.edu Mon Feb 16 00:25:30 MET 1998
Article: 35035 of rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: jpenney@cs.uml.edu (Jason C Penney)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: [Z-Machine] Compilers from TADS, Alan, HUGO into Z-Machine
Date: 15 Feb 1998 21:54:09 GMT
Organization: UMass Lowell
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LucFrench (lucfrench@aol.com) wrote:
: If I might sort out a part of this arguement:

Ahhh!  Thanks for trying, but you seemed to have muddled it up a bit
more... :->

: People are confusing Inform with the Z-machine. The Z-machine has certain
: features that Inform refuses to do for good reasons; most notably windowing.
: Graphics as well, judging by the fact that a BLORB standard is even needed.

Inform does use both windows and graphics.  Inform will compile nice
wonderful grapicsl v6 games, and my text only v6 advent uses 2
windows.  One may emulate the status window, but it is a full fledged
separate Z-Machine V6 window.  In fact I've written an Inform library
to handle the V6 features (*plug* V6Lib *plug*).

The Blorb standard is an attempt to make all interpreters on whatever
platform use a standard image file format, which Infocom didn't do.
Hugo uses a bunch of JPG files (I think) and the Z-Machine will (hopefully) use
a single Blorb file.

Later,
Jay

----
Jason C Penney (jpenney@cs.uml.edu)  Xarton Dragon -=<UDIC>=-
<http://www.cs.uml.edu/~jpenney/>
"The trouble with computers of course, is that they're very 
sophisticated idiots."     -- The Doctor


From dancer@brisnet.org.au Mon Feb 16 09:13:08 MET 1998
Article: 35058 of rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: Dancer <dancer@brisnet.org.au>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: [Newbie] Veteran's arrogance
Date: Mon, 16 Feb 1998 14:10:33 +1000
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Neil Brown wrote:

> At 10:51:02 on Sun, 15 Feb 1998, Dancer wrote:
> >A question to the group at large. Why are misunderstandings so common over
> >electronic communications? Are we that reliant on body language and other
> >non-linguistic cues? This sort of thing crops up everywhere.
>
> I think it also depends on inflection. Something that is meant merely to
> be funny and *sounds* funny when spoken can come across as rude or
> insulting when written down, especially to people who aren't familiar
> with that person's particular brand of humour.

What, like australians habitually using 'bitch' and 'bastard' in polite
conversation (and possibly in somewhat reverential terms)?
They are sort of en-gendered labels for 'person' by australian common parlance,
and may be used as terms of affection. As the old quote goes, when the british
officer complained to the australian seargant, the sarge lined up his men and
demanded of them "Alright! Which one of you bastards called this bastard a
bastard?"

Consequently, words that have more than one meaning are _dangerous_, perhaps to
your health, perhaps to your good relations with people. I take some shelter in
that - being australian - I can use the casual profanity of my culture
(carefully), and know that allowances will be made.

**** WARNING CASUAL PROFANITY BELOW ****




Eg: At a business meeting yesterday, the conversation went like this:

"...they had to hire some dumb bastard fresh out of uni who had never done it
before, because they'd sacked all the people they had who knew anything about
it."
"Damn stupid bastards. How much are they paying him?"
"$4.25 an hour."
"Fuck, that's a sodding joke! Is he actually any bloody good?"
"He's not worth a cunt-full of cold-water, in my opinion."

(This is how many of us, educated bastards that we are, speak to each-other in
the streets and in meetings. We make little effort to modify our language,
because the terms have become overloaded with more mundane, less-offensive
meanings. I was familiar with most of this 'profanity' by the age of
six...Although my father _did_ give me a ding across the ear if I didn't use it
in a complete sentence)

D


--
Did you read the documentation AND the FAQ?
If not, I'll probably still answer your question, but my patience will
be limited, and you take the risk of sarcasm and ridicule.




From marcy_p@hotmail.com Mon Feb 16 11:59:31 MET 1998
Article: 35077 of rec.arts.int-fiction
From: marcy_p@hotmail.com
Subject: Re: Losing your Grip (discussion) (LONG)
Date: Mon, 09 Feb 1998 08:01:22 -0600
Message-ID: <887032503.385351681@dejanews.com>
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Xref: news.lth.se rec.arts.int-fiction:35077

I finally finished this wonderful, bizarre game, so I'll de-lurk long
enough to comment.


In article <6b3td3$9i8@spool.cs.wisc.edu>,
  dbs@mozzarella.cs.wisc.edu (Daniel Shiovitz) wrote:
> Plot:
>   - Good news: _Grip_ is good about providing multiple solutions to
>     problems, in some places (especially in fit 3, when you're grabbed
>     by the grey man and again when you're hanging on the cliff, but
>     also stuff like the different ways to interact with the head at the very
>     beginning.)
>     Bad news: It doesn't seem to matter which solution you choose.
>     Whether I kick the head or dig it out, I still go through the
>     same personality do-wop with it (er... speaking of which, the head
>     _is_ daddy dearest, isn't it? This is one of the things I'm not
>     clear on) Whether I climb up the cage, let myself fall, or open
>     the cage to let the faeries out, I'm still too afraid to cross the
>     bridge.

But it *does* make a difference, it just doesn't make an immediate
difference. When I got done I went back thru and played again, but this
time I didn't save buddy and I let the faeries die and all that stuff.
And it changes what Marie or Jeffrey say to you at the end of the 4th
fit. Plus it changes whether or not you hear the 'let go' stuff near the
end.

So I think your choices effect what kind of attitude you take in the game
though not the exact actions. (does that make sense?)

By the way, did nayone else notice how much music played a part in the
game? I mean besides the music quotes at the beginning of each fit (i
guess they're all music quotes--anyone know who Trout Fishing in America
is?). Like there's the radio, and the headphones that Eileen wears.
There's even a bit of muzak at the end, 38 special's "Hold On Loosely."
I'm guessing that that song ties back into the "Loosing Your Grip" title.

Anyway (got off track, sorry) I noticed that Terry's adviser was named
'Tom Dolby', i.e. Thomas DOlby, who wrote "She Blinded Me With Science."
I went looking for other musical tie-ins, but didn't find any right off.
I'm still looking though. Did anyone else find musical references?

Thx, Marcy

-------------------==== Posted via Deja News ====-----------------------
      http://www.dejanews.com/     Search, Read, Post to Usenet


From vanfossen@compuserve.com Mon Feb 16 18:18:41 MET 1998
Article: 35097 of rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: vanfossen@compuserve.com (Brent VanFossen)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: [Inform] Implementing mixed drinks
Date: Mon, 16 Feb 1998 10:23:21 GMT
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On Sun, 15 Feb 1998 16:19:58 -0400, whataguy@epix.net (Ben Schaffer)
wrote:

>Well, I've got a bar with some nice bottles and a glass. I want the player
>to be able to mix drinks.

[Text snipped]

>The problem is I want it to report how many "parts" of each liquid
>are there. Right now I'm gathering this information like this:
>
>objectloop (x in glass && x ofclass Vodka) vodkaCount = vodkaCount + 1;
>objectloop (x in glass && x ofclass Rum) rumCount = rumCount + 1;
>...
>            if (vodkaCount == 1) { vodkaString = "one part vodka"; }
>            if (vodkaCount > 1) { vodkaString = vodkaCount + " parts vodka"; }
>            if (rumCount == 1) { rumString = "one part rum"; }
>            if (rumCount > 1) { rumString = rumCount + " parts rum"; }
>...
>My idea was to have all these strings with each part of the desired
>result, and then concatenate them a la "WriteListFrom", but that only
>works on objects, and not strings. I want a nice neat list with commas,
>"and", etc. Something on the order of WriteListFrom seems likely, but I'm
>not exactly sure where to begin to develop my own string-based version.

Liquids are some of the hardest things to do well.  I think I would
implement each shot as a separate object.  Any time you pour a drink,
you create a new shot and move it to the glass.  Then, let the parser
take care of counting the number of shots.

The trick here that affects the way the parser lists similar objects
is in the "plural" property.  If you include that, the parser knows to
group similar objects.  That way, you can have any number of various
liquors, and the parser doesn't care.  And you don't have to write a
separate description of every possible case.  The following code is
compilable, and works okay.  There is a lot you could do to embellish
it.  It could be simplified by making a bottle class and a liquor
quantity class.

It's set up so there are 10 shots available of each of the rum and the
vodka.  The glass will hold 3 shots.  The verb is set up to POUR RUM
or POUR VODKA.  You can DRINK GLASS or DRINK RUM, etc.  The
ChooseObjects routine helps the parser default to the right object.


QUESTION TO RAIF:  
If there are more than two shots of rum, say, in the glass, DRINK RUM
asks for disambiguation of the shot, the bottle, or the quantity.  If
there is only one shot in the glass, ChooseObjects does the job right.
Did I miss something, or is this a bug?

Hope this helps.

Brent VanFossen



Constant Story "Pourable Liquids Test";
Constant Headline "^An Interactive Test^\
             by Brent VanFossen.^";

Constant Debug;

Include "Parser";
Include "VerbLib";
Attribute pourable;

Class Drinkable
  with name 'shot' 'shots' 'of' 'liquor' 'alcohol' 'spirit',
  before
  [i j;
    Drink:
     objectloop(i ofclass Drinkable)
     if(i in glass) {remove i; j++;}
     if(j==0) "But you have nothing to drink.";
     "You empty the glass.  Almost immediately,
        you begin to feel the effect.";
  ];

Class Vodka(10)     ! 10 shots available
  with name 'vodka',
  short_name "shot of vodka",
  plural "shots of vodka",  ! This affects grouping.  COOL!
  class Drinkable;

Class Rum(10)
  with name 'rum',
  short_name "shot of rum",
  plural "shots of rum",
  class Drinkable;

Object Bar "Bar"
  with description
    "This is the bar.",
  has light;

Object glass "glass" Bar
  with  name 'glass' 'tumbler' 'cup',
  before
  [i; 
    Examine: <<Search self>>;
    Drink: 
       objectloop(i ofclass Drinkable)
          if(i in glass) {<<Drink i>>;}
      "There is nothing in the glass.";
   ],
  capacity 3,  ! Can hold three shots, any combination.
               ! If you want to change this, you must also
               ! change the "if(j>=3)" in both the PourShot
               ! cases below.
  has container open;

Object RumBottle "bottle of rum" Bar
  with name 'bottle' 'of' 'rum',
  before 
  [; Examine: <<Search self>>;
     PourShot: <<PourShot RumQuantity>>;
     Drink: "You'll have to pour some first.";
  ],
  has container open;

Object RumQuantity "quantity of rum" RumBottle
  with name 'quantity' 'of' 'rum',
  before
  [i j;
     Take, Remove: <<PourShot self>>;
     Drink: "You'll have to pour some first.";
     PourShot:
       objectloop(i in glass) j++;
       if(j>=3) "The glass is already full.";
       i=Rum.create( );      ! Creates a shot of rum
       if(i~=0)              ! Make sure "create" was successful.
       { move i to glass;    ! If so, put it in the glass.
          PronounNotice(i);  ! So the player can DRINK IT
         "You pour a shot of rum into your glass.";
       }
       remove self;          ! If not, we're out of rum.
       "The bottle of rum is empty.";
  ],
  has pourable;

Object VodkaBottle "bottle of vodka" Bar
  with name 'bottle' 'of' 'vodka',
  before 
  [; Examine: <<Search self>>;
      PourShot: <<PourShot VodkaQuantity>>;
      Drink: "You'll have to pour some first.";
  ],
  has container open;

Object VodkaQuantity "quantity of vodka" VodkaBottle
  with name 'quantity' 'of' 'vodka',
  before
  [i j; 
     Take, Remove: <<PourShot self>>;
     Drink: "You'll have to pour some first.";
     PourShot:
       objectloop(i in glass) j++;
       if(j>=3) "The glass is already full.";
       i=Vodka.create( );
       if(i~=0)
       { move i to glass;
          PronounNotice(i);
         "You pour a shot of vodka into your glass.";
       }
       remove self;
       "The bottle of vodka is empty.";
  ],
  has pourable;

[ Initialise;
  location = Bar;
  print "^^^^^Welcome to the test...^^";
];

[ChooseObjects obj code;
!The higher the return value, the more likely the object will be
!chosen.
  if(code<2) rfalse;    ! See page 164 in Designer's Manual
  if(action_to_be==##PourShot)
  {if(obj has pourable) return 2;
  }
  if(action_to_be==##Drink or ##Examine)
  {if(obj ofclass Drinkable) return 3;
    if(obj has pourable) return 2;
  }
];

Include "Grammar";

[PourShotSub;
  "That's not something you can pour.";
];
verb 'pour'
     * pourable         -> PourShot
     * noun             -> PourShot;   ! Grammar can be
                                       ! separated, if desired.



From graham@gnelson.demon.co.uk Mon Feb 16 20:27:35 MET 1998
Article: 35100 of rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: Graham Nelson <graham@gnelson.demon.co.uk>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: The Inform Programming Language
Date: Mon, 16 Feb 1998 14:58:49 +0000 (GMT)
Organization: none
Message-ID: <ant1614491cbM+4%@gnelson.demon.co.uk>
References: <19980213074901.CAA01203@ladder03.news.aol.com> <6c1e06$1vn$1@bartlet.df.lth.se> <sihg63d6qs.fsf@cre.canon.co.uk> <ant151122313M+4%@gnelson.demon.co.uk> <34E7B3A9.4F435CC7@brisnet.org.au> <erkyrathEoGLHx.1An@netcom.com> 
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In article <erkyrathEoGLHx.1An@netcom.com>, Andrew Plotkin
<URL:mailto:erkyrath@netcom.com> wrote:
> Dancer (dancer@brisnet.org.au) wrote:
> > > My experiences with Inform have led me to giggle, and then fall
> > > off my chair screaming, whenever "C" and "portability" are
> > > mentioned in the same sentence.
> 
> > For something like inform, Graham, it's just a matter of coding style.
> 
> "This turns out not to be the case."
> 
> > Sure,
> > filesystems are the big sticking point
> 
> -- the *three* big sticking points are filesystems, input, and output. 
> The -- four, the four big sticking points are filesystems, input, output, 
> and process scheduling --

And of course data typing.  Ever tried to write fool-proof ANSI
code to guarantee a 32-bit signed integer?  Nope, sorry -- on a
strict reading of the standard this is impossible.  (Of course
you can write code which tells you if it is possible or not on
the given compiler, but this doesn't work, because for some
reason the part of the ANSI standard making definitions for
data type ranges is one of the least adhered to passages.  On
one version of VAX C, these definitions are set up with the right
names, but have the wrong values.)

On one of Inform's target compilers, "signed char" produces an
error.  On another one, "unsigned char" does.  Care to write some
ANSI code which will sort these two cases out, without human
intervention?  Bearing in mind that many poor C compilers call
themselves ANSI if can they parse ANSI-style function headers
and that's it.

And then let's talk about object code size.  Such as, no procedure
or table exceeding something like 16K for fear of offending one of
the Macintosh compilers.  Oh, and how about the malloc() function?
In a completely standard way, this is entirely allowed to reject
all requests to allocate more than 32K minus 5 bytes.  And guess
what!  On modern machines with 32 _M_ of memory, it sometimes does!
Now try allocating arrays of structures whose size you don't know
in advance because it depends on the implementation of the compiler,
and the size of int, and that sort of thing.  How will calloc()
work, for instance?  Will it be subject to the same constraints
as malloc(), or not?

Now giggle, fall off your chair, scream.  It's always worked for
me.

...No, look, I'm still not done here.  Consider this:

    printf("The answer is %d\n", 350*701);

Legal responses by fully ANSI standard-compliant C compilers to this
trivial piece of computing include, but are not limited to:

   (i)   Printing 245350.
   (ii)  Printing -16794.
   (iii) Producing a warning that the %d should be a %Ld
         at compilation time, and then (i).
   (iv)  Ditto, and then (ii).

Circumstances where compiler X produces a warning if you make choice
A, whereas compiler Y produces a warning if you make choice not-A,
are even more frequent.  Warnings are a law unto themselves.

-- 
Graham Nelson | graham@gnelson.demon.co.uk | Oxford, United Kingdom



From cardinalt@cwia.com Mon Feb 16 20:28:02 MET 1998
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From: cardinalt@cwia.com (Cardinal Teulbachs)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: [All]    Writin' Talk Only -- Take Tech Matters Elsewhere
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On Sun, 15 Feb 1998 23:53:44 -0800, Jonathan Petersen <enoto@ucla.edu>
made so bold as to state:

>Does it have to be an opening room?

No, although it would be an interesting study to compare all the
openings from all the (decent) Infocom stories and see how each was
adapted or not to its purpose. Part of the perfection of the Hilltop
description, in my opinion, comes from the fact that it *is* the
opening scene. The "epicness" of the player's quest, the sort of grand
sweep of the game's geography and story, the sense of mission--all
these are skillfully conveyed  in this simple initial camera shot from
the player's god-like vantage upon the hill. True, nothing like what
I've mentioned arises explicitly in the player's mind when he reads
the passage, as if he were to say to himself, "Alright, now I'm aware
of an epicness, a grand sweep, a sense of mission..."; I'm not
claiming that. But I do think that the suggestion of these things in
the author's word and image choices are the mark of great descriptive
prose.

And so I've found an excuse for blabbing on again, but the answer to
your question is no :)

>(Minor Trinity spoiler below.)
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>Earth Orbit
>
>You're five hundred miles above a sea of ice, hurtling in
>profound silence over the Arctic atmosphere.  Layers of
>crimson and violet describe the curve of the horizon, blending
>imperceptibly into a black sky crowded with stars.
>
>The white door drops away behind you.

Exquisite. Makes you feel all happy inside, doesn't it, as if you're
seeing inside of something rather than only seeing its surface? Lesser
writers would have said something like

"You're hundreds of miles above the Earth's atmosphere, shooting
silently over the north pole. The edge of the planet glows red and
purple where it meets the starry black sky.
The white door disappears in the darkness."

which isn't exactly horrible (ok, it's nearly so), but which is,
nonetheless, severely lacking in beauty when set over against the
original. Good choice. 

>Brian Moriarty.  Mmm, good.

As one who once pooh-poohed the idea of i-f writing having any
literary value, I'm with you. My admiration for Brian Moriarty's skill
only grows. 


--Cardinal T


From adamc@acpub.duke.edu Mon Feb 16 20:29:29 MET 1998
Article: 35107 of rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: Adam Cadre <adamc@acpub.duke.edu>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: [Newbie] Veteran's arrogance
Date: Mon, 16 Feb 1998 11:05:24 -0800
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Dancer wrote:
> I'll grant that emoticons are a _very_ useful tool (as is virtual
> underlining). It just seems that we tend to snap judge a few words,
> then rationalise the rest of the meaning without paying any real
> attention to the rest of the words. Emoticons tend to get lost then.

Some people don't use emoticons because they think that peppering
their posts with sideways smiley-faces looks dopey.  I am not one
of these people.  The reason I don't use emoticons is because to my
mind they translate to an exaggerated tone of voice, such as that
used by people who seem to be under the impression that no one will
understand that they're being sarcastic unless they sprain their throats
overplaying the line.  (For instance, during a driving rainstorm: "GEE,
***GREAT*** weather we're having, HUH??")  I'm not one of these people,
either.  I tend to be fairly deadpan whether I'm being serious or
ironic.  So I don't use emoticons, because they don't approximate my
speech.

I also don't use emoticons because an emoticon killed my dad.
 
  -----
 Adam Cadre, Anaheim, CA
 El Page del Me: http://www.retina.net/~grignr
 Channel 31337 News: http://www.retina.net/~grignr/31337
 "There is this guy named Adam Cadre that I've got to talk to about
 making me eat my own daughter." --Marrissa in "Marrissa's Revenge"


From erkyrath@netcom.com Tue Feb 17 09:50:40 MET 1998
Article: 35134 of rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: erkyrath@netcom.com (Andrew Plotkin)
Subject: Re: [Z-Machine] Compilers from TADS, Alan, HUGO into Z-Machine
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Julian Arnold (jools@arnod.demon.co.uk) wrote:
> > Well, I agree -- I'm *not* working on an anything-to-anything-else
> > compiler, I'm just speculating about it. I'm working on tools to make
> > porting systems easier. 

> OK, the two of you, why are you opposed to a universal format? This, I
> think, is the crux of this whole debate.

Simple: some of the possible future directions that people have talked 
about are projects written in Prolog and Scheme. Those don't fit well in 
a particular virtual machine. ("Lists" demonstrates that, I hope.) It's 
probably better to port the base language system (Prolog or Scheme) to 
run native.

And then there's Java, which is fine as a high-end portable virtual 
machine, although I don't like its interface library.

> I worry that if people make a
> load of ?-to-Z-code compilers Z-code will soon be perceived as such,
> even though it is not qualified.

There is no imminent danger of this. 

I have heard one (1) rumor (not official announcement) of a TADS-to-Zcode
compiler in the works. There's also the ScottAdams-to-Inform converter;
that's been around for so long that it doesn't work very well with Inform
6. That's it. 

--Z

-- 

"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the
borogoves..."


From sgranade@phy.duke.edu Tue Feb 17 12:08:50 MET 1998
Article: 35096 of rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: Stephen Granade <sgranade@phy.duke.edu>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: LyG ISO AOL
Date: Mon, 16 Feb 1998 11:06:51 -0500
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_Losing Your Grip_ text adventure, 1 mo. old, slightly hefty, seeking AOL 
member for short-term archival relationship. Reasonable bandwidth and 
willingness to upload a must. Smokers ok. Contact sgranade@phy.duke.edu.

Stephen

--
  Stephen Granade                | Interested in adventure games?
  sgranade@phy.duke.edu          | Check out
  Duke University, Physics Dept  |   http://interactfiction.miningco.com



From graham@gnelson.demon.co.uk Tue Feb 17 20:45:16 MET 1998
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From: Graham Nelson <graham@gnelson.demon.co.uk>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: [Z-Machine] Compilers from TADS, Alan, HUGO into Z-Machine
Date: Tue, 17 Feb 1998 11:19:01 +0000 (GMT)
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In article <6cbfno$2el$1@nnrp1.dejanews.com>, L. Ross Raszewski
<URL:mailto:rraszews@hotmail.com> wrote:
> ...
> Neither.  The Inform Standard Library (parser/m verblib/m grammar linklpa
> linklv english) has no high-level support for V6 internals, that is to say,
> if you want to use the Z-machine's ability to do grpahics, sound, windowing,
> menus, and soforth, the have to write the code in Z-machine assembly (which
> inform will compile.  You could write a whole game in Z-assembly, in fact, I
> think thats how Curses was first written)

...not quite: Inform 1 was primitive, but it did have braced "if"
statements, simple "for" loops and that kind of thing.

> THe new v6lib offers high-level frontends for this sort of thing

Indeed.

-- 
Graham Nelson | graham@gnelson.demon.co.uk | Oxford, United Kingdom



From pelak@trail.com Wed Feb 18 09:39:23 MET 1998
Article: 35259 of rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: pelak@trail.com (Robert A. Pelak)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: The Inform Programming Language
Date: Tue, 17 Feb 1998 22:49:31 -0700
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In article <erkyrathEoHn7x.Dru@netcom.com>, erkyrath@netcom.com (Andrew
Plotkin) wrote:

> Dancer (dancer@brisnet.org.au) wrote:
> 
> > Andrew Plotkin wrote:
> 
> > > Dancer (dancer@brisnet.org.au) wrote:
> > > > > My experiences with Inform have led me to giggle, and then fall
> > > > > off my chair screaming, whenever "C" and "portability" are
> > > > > mentioned in the same sentence.
> > >
> > > > For something like inform, Graham, it's just a matter of coding style.
> > >
> > > "This turns out not to be the case."
> 
> > I'll grant that in some cases it's not the case.
> 
> Ok, I think we're in the same wavelength. I like to think of Inform as an 
> example of an extremely portable pile of source code, because I've made 
> it work on different Unixes and Mac-with-ANSI-libraries with no changes 
> at all. 
> 
> I certainly won't say it's perfect. It's caused me less personal anguish
> than any other C source code for a real-world program I've had to deal
> with. But I agree with your other points.
> 

This is not by accident.  Graham and we porters have put a considerable amount
of effort into making Inform as portable as possible.  It was not a trivial
enterprise.

> > > (You think I'm kidding about process scheduling? Last night I was looking
> > > at the abbreviation-optimizing code in Inform. Total data-cruching stuff,
> > > no I/O at all, right? Should be completely portable? Well, there's a
> > > #ifdef MAC right in the middle, to check for cmd-period interrupts from
> > > the user. Which is necessary.)
> 
> > (deep breath) Ouch. Isn't that only an issue if there's a live serial 
> > link (the OS 
> > does baud-rate generation on the mac in timed software loops in the 
> > OS), and if you 
> > actually want to bother to have it interruptable?
> 
> You do want this interruptible, since there can be lots of computation 
> without any output. Last time I tried running the abbreviation code, the 
> thing took forever and I *had* to type cmd-period. 
> 

Not to mention the times when a semicolon is forgotten and 100 error messages
start streaming out to the console.

> And you certainly want a compiler to be able to run in the background
> while you use the modem. 
> 
> (I think SIOUX (the ANSI term-window library we use these days on the Mac)
> yields time to other processes, and checks for cmd-period, but only when
> you print to stdout or read from stdin. Come to think of it, I think
> Robert Pelak's MacInform doesn't use SIOUX.)

I wrote my own implementations of printf() and such so that I could more
easily customize the interface as well as control event processing.  While 
most, if not all, of this could have been done with SIOUX, it appeared difficult
to work with as the code for SIOUX is folded in with the rest of their
implementation of the ANSI library.  And believe me, it is far more
opaque than the code for Inform.

Robert


From lrs@earth.execnet.com Wed Feb 18 09:42:55 MET 1998
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From: "LRS" <lrs@earth.execnet.com>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: The Inform Programming Language
Date: Sat, 14 Feb 1998 18:49:50 -0500
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Magnus Olsson wrote in message <6c1e06$1vn$1@bartlet.df.lth.se>...
>Suppose that Infocom had 20 games (that's not the actual figure), and
>wanted to sell them on 20 different platforms (again not the actual
>figure). They'd have to choose between the following two approaches:
>
>A: Write 20 ZIL-to-native-code compilers, one for each platform. Then
>compile each of the 20 games with each compiler. This gives you 400
>different game binaries.
>
>B: Write *one* ZIL-to-Z-code compiler, and *one* interpreter which you
>can port to 20 platforms. Then compile all the 20 games once. This
>gives you 20 interpreter executables, and 20 game binaries. This is much,
>much easier to handle.


Speaking as one who was there, I remember when the first Infocom games for
the Mac came out. I was amazed. At that point there were 5-10 games already
out for CP/M (8080/Z80), Atari 400/800, etc.  So I wasn't overly surprised
when I first saw Zork I for the Mac. OK, they've ported it to the Mac (I
said to myself). And, not knowing how much effort it was to port these
games, I figured that Mac users, if they were lucky, would get another
Infocom game in, say, 6 months.

But then, over a small number of weeks, I saw Zork II. Then maybe Deadline.
And Starcross. And Zork III. And whatever.  And I couldn't understand it. It
didn't make business sense to delay releasing games until all of them were
converted to run on the Mac. And it also didn't seem to make sense that
they'd have invested the money to hire programmers to port all of them
simultaneously.

Then the penny dropped. I finally put 2 and 2 together. I'd already realized
that Infocom had written one interpreter for CP/M, one for the Atari, etc,
and that now they'd simply written one for the Mac. Suddenly all the games
game along for free!

I actually did something like that myself. The 16 bit 8088 CPU (the one in
the earliest IBM PCs) was a lot like the 8-bit 8080 chip. So much so that
there was a program available at that time to take assembler source for the
8080 and mechanically convert it to 8088 assembler. The translator even did
it's best to convert operating system calls from CP/M to PCDOS.

Well, at one point I'd disassembled to CP/M interpreter and had a version of
the program I could compile cleanly. So I fed it through the translator, and
got a version of the interpreter that would work on PCDOS. Well, that didn't
prove too much since Infocom was already shipping DOS versions, with their
own interpreters.

(Hmmm. Interesting aside -- If you took the interpreter for, say, ZORK I
(ZORK1.COM), you'd find an ASCII string inside it for ZORK1.DAT. If you
patched ZORK1.COM to point to, say, DEADLINE.DAT, then by running ZORK1.COM
you'd run Deadline instead. Also note that this doesn't always work. For
example, A Mind Forever Voyaging, Trinity, Zork Zero, and others, use an
enhanced version of the interpreter. Patching ZORK1.COM to point to the
Trinity file wouldn't work. But I digress.)

But I then took the interpreter source (for 8088 PCDOS), and changed the
operating system calls in it. Digital Research, the company that wrote CP/M,
had come out with it's own 16 bit operating system called CP/M-86. This hung
around for a couple of years, but never really went anywhere (other than to
Novell, which is a good definition of going nowhere).

So now I had an interpreter that ran on a different operating system. I'm
perhaps the only one who's ever played Zork on CP/M-86!

And all because Infocom *didn't* compile their games directly into native
machine languages.

Larry Smith
lrs@mail.execnet.com




From dancer@brisnet.org.au Wed Feb 18 16:38:45 MET 1998
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From: Dancer <dancer@brisnet.org.au>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: The Inform Programming Language
Date: Thu, 19 Feb 1998 01:32:18 +1000
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Matthew T. Russotto wrote:

> In article <erkyrathEoHn7x.Dru@netcom.com>,
> Andrew Plotkin <erkyrath@netcom.com> wrote:
> }Dancer (dancer@brisnet.org.au) wrote:
>
> }> (deep breath) Ouch. Isn't that only an issue if there's a live serial
> }> link (the OS does baud-rate generation on the mac in timed software
> }> loops in the OS)
>
> *YIPES*   It doesn't do that, thankfully -- that sort of stuff was left
> behind on the Apple II, which did do the cassette and disk interface
> with timed software loops.  You'll lose serial data if you don't yield to
> other processes, but only because you'll overflow the buffers, not
> because of timed loops to do baud-rate generation.

Err...My source for this was a developer at apple, way back when (pre-1989).
We had corroboratory evidence at the time:
1) Connect a Mac (either a Fat or a Thin, original or plus) to a DEC VAX
11/7xx series terminal port.
2) Login via MacTerm.
3) Close MacTerm (without logging out), and start doing something
processor-intensive.

Some _very_ interesting things start to develop. The baud-rate begins a heavy
drift, and the VAX begins to slow down. The effect on the VAX is particularly
gradual, but quite astonishing. After a few hours, it's so slow that just
about your only recourse is to turn the key, and reboot, because you can no
longer log into the beastie, and the tty's respond somewhat slower than 1
byte per ten minutes.

The first few times had us head-down in the kernel source, without result.
Then we discovered the common factor (the above sequence of events). Our
sysadmin of the era placed some calls to apple, and the information about
baud-rate generation came back to us. I believe that a proper UART was
installed in the MAC II's (about..umm..1987?). I'm only referring to machines
prior to that period.

D


--
Did you read the documentation AND the FAQ?
If not, I'll probably still answer your question, but my patience will
be limited, and you take the risk of sarcasm and ridicule.




From russotto@wanda.pond.com Thu Feb 19 12:40:16 MET 1998
Article: 35312 of rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: russotto@wanda.pond.com (Matthew T. Russotto)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Bra-box puzzle in RTZ
Date: 18 Feb 1998 22:38:50 GMT
Organization: Ghotinet
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In article <6cfe55$l3a$1@ha2.rdc1.sdca.home.com>,
Bill <bvolk@inetworld.net> wrote:
}... it's sole purpose was to slow down the game reviewers who had panned the
}previous game ... in large part due to the speed in which they solved the
}puzzles.  Yes, it's silly and dumb .... but it is tricky.
}
}Bill
}(who did the game engine and much of the user interface on RTZ).

<Phony British Accent Mode:on>
Oh....My....God...Magnum
<Phony British Accent Mode:off>

This means that the bra-box puzzle was created for... a KUNKEL!

-- 
Matthew T. Russotto                                russotto@pond.com
"Extremism in defense of liberty is no vice, and moderation in pursuit
of justice is no virtue." 


From jcmason@undergrad.math.uwaterloo.ca Thu Feb 19 12:40:44 MET 1998
Article: 35306 of rec.arts.int-fiction
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: jcmason@undergrad.math.uwaterloo.ca (Joe Mason)
Subject: Re: How to handle alcohol consumption in IF?
Sender: news@undergrad.math.uwaterloo.ca (news spool owner)
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In article <34E8E874.1F525FAC@-.->, Nicholas Daley  <daleys@ihug.co.nz> wrote:
>
>or 2-The game is in a scifi setting, so I may be able to provide a
>reason for the alcohol having no effect on the player.  This could also
>be the solution to a puzzle (eg Having to drink someone under the table
>to get something off them).

Personally, I wimped out in _In The End_ and just pretended it was water.
Somebody pounced on that in a review.  I'll do it better next time! :-)

If its in a cyberpunk setting (as you mentioned but I snipped - oops!) you
could give the player a Toxin Filter and give the player strange messages
like "You'll feel an odd buzzing behind your ears as your toxin filter kicks
in and purges the alcohol from your system."  Perhaps it could break down
occasionally and "The world swims for a moment."  It would let you code
occasional reactions to alcohol, adding atmosphere, without having to
implement game mechanics for the player walking around drunk for a long time.

(For a really mean trick, make it a bargain basement Toxin Filter.  Warn the
player that it stores up all the alcohol that's been drunk, and if it
overloads before there's a chance to purge it, it'll release it all into the
bloodstream at once.  That oughta be fun.)

Joe




From dancer@brisnet.org.au Thu Feb 19 13:14:46 MET 1998
Article: 35331 of rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: Dancer <dancer@brisnet.org.au>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: The Inform Programming Language
Date: Thu, 19 Feb 1998 14:11:30 +1000
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Graham Nelson wrote:

> In article <erkyrathEoGLHx.1An@netcom.com>, Andrew Plotkin
> <URL:mailto:erkyrath@netcom.com> wrote:
> > Dancer (dancer@brisnet.org.au) wrote:
> > > > My experiences with Inform have led me to giggle, and then fall
> > > > off my chair screaming, whenever "C" and "portability" are
> > > > mentioned in the same sentence.
> >
> > > For something like inform, Graham, it's just a matter of coding style.
> >
> > "This turns out not to be the case."
> >
> > > Sure,
> > > filesystems are the big sticking point
> >
> > -- the *three* big sticking points are filesystems, input, and output.
> > The -- four, the four big sticking points are filesystems, input, output,
> > and process scheduling --
>
> And of course data typing.  Ever tried to write fool-proof ANSI
> code to guarantee a 32-bit signed integer?  Nope, sorry -- on a
> strict reading of the standard this is impossible.  (Of course
> you can write code which tells you if it is possible or not on
> the given compiler, but this doesn't work, because for some
> reason the part of the ANSI standard making definitions for
> data type ranges is one of the least adhered to passages.  On
> one version of VAX C, these definitions are set up with the right
> names, but have the wrong values.)

Yup. Actually, here's another good one for you. It's a BSD/Ultrix C compiler (I
don't recall which version) but it's still in use in many sites:    if(expr)
/* comment */
        {
        always_executed_regardless_of_expr;
        }

It treats the comment as the statement block, if it occurs on the same line as
the expression. I spent a DAY looking for that one. :(

> On one of Inform's target compilers, "signed char" produces an
> error.  On another one, "unsigned char" does.  Care to write some
> ANSI code which will sort these two cases out, without human
> intervention?  Bearing in mind that many poor C compilers call
> themselves ANSI if can they parse ANSI-style function headers
> and that's it.

That's sort of why I'm thinking that a per-machine configuration header might
be better than the current one.

> And then let's talk about object code size.  Such as, no procedure
> or table exceeding something like 16K for fear of offending one of
> the Macintosh compilers.  Oh, and how about the malloc() function?
> In a completely standard way, this is entirely allowed to reject
> all requests to allocate more than 32K minus 5 bytes.  And guess
> what!  On modern machines with 32 _M_ of memory, it sometimes does!
> Now try allocating arrays of structures whose size you don't know
> in advance because it depends on the implementation of the compiler,
> and the size of int, and that sort of thing.  How will calloc()
> work, for instance?  Will it be subject to the same constraints
> as malloc(), or not?

calloc() may not be, since in some libraries calloc() is implemented with a
different mid-end, or even back-end in a couple extreme cases. There's at least
one compiler (early Microsoft, I think) where calloc() was just a macro.

I know the 16K object limit. I still write code to it...I get twitchy when
anything starts to get up around that size, and start a new module, even though
nothing I currently develop for has that problem. There were more things than
just a lone Mac compiler had trouble with that one.


> Now giggle, fall off your chair, scream.  It's always worked for
> me.

 Been there, done that..got the tee-shirt, eaten the ice-cream, shot the
stuffed toy :)

> ...No, look, I'm still not done here.  Consider this:
>
>     printf("The answer is %d\n", 350*701);
>
> Legal responses by fully ANSI standard-compliant C compilers to this
> trivial piece of computing include, but are not limited to:
>
>    (i)   Printing 245350.
>    (ii)  Printing -16794.
>    (iii) Producing a warning that the %d should be a %Ld
>          at compilation time, and then (i).
>    (iv)  Ditto, and then (ii).

My assumption here is to expect (ii), or (iv). With the exception of an 8-bit
architecture, I don't expect %d to reliably do more than signed 16 bit output
without a qualifier. I think it's unreasonable to expect it to print 32-bit
values without qualification.

> Circumstances where compiler X produces a warning if you make choice
> A, whereas compiler Y produces a warning if you make choice not-A,
> are even more frequent.  Warnings are a law unto themselves.

Oh, my yes:
MRI C compiler:

int    foo(char *p, char *q)
{
  if(!p)
        return 0;
    if(q)
        return 1;
    return 0;
}

The above code, under that compiler complains that nether p or q are 'used'.
Peering at the address does not count. Assigning the address to something else
does. Assigning the address to itself (p=p) doesn't. Dereferencing does.
Err..Sometimes (p[i] does. *p does. *(p+5) does not).

Compiler warnings are a true terror of the night.

D

--
Did you read the documentation AND the FAQ?
If not, I'll probably still answer your question, but my patience will
be limited, and you take the risk of sarcasm and ridicule.




From newsmaster@earthling.net Thu Feb 19 13:16:53 MET 1998
Article: 35328 of rec.arts.int-fiction
From: "Brock Kevin Nambo" <newsmaster@earthling.net>
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Subject: Re: The Inform Programming Language
Date: Wed, 18 Feb 1998 22:21:19 -0500
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Joe Mason wrote in message ...
>In article <OW$fhubO9GA.203@upnetnews03>,
>Brock Kevin Nambo <newsmaster@earthling.net> wrote:
>>Magnus Olsson wrote in message <6c4bk3$g5l$1@bartlet.df.lth.se>...
>>>(Please don't say "but you can run the interpreter on
>>>itself". You try that, then come back and tell us where the infinite
>>>recursion bottomed out.)
>>
>>Well, it bottoms out at infinity.
>>
>>After that, it starts running like mad!
>
>You don't fool me!  It's turtles all the way down!

LOLOL but what if the last turtle decides to walk somewhere?

>>BKNambo (deep questions that go "all the way down")
--

              http://come.to/brocks.place
            Hey look, it's the Roman Empire!







From anson@ici.net Thu Feb 19 13:34:11 MET 1998
Article: 35341 of rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: anson@ici.net (Anson Turner)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Please help me with this Inform coding challenge
Date: Thu, 19 Feb 1998 02:40:48 -0500
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In article <01bd3bf6$5e3d2120$6f33f8ce@default>, "S Covert"
<scovert@ptbo.igs.net> wrote:

:I have a "snooze" routine which is 9 "wait"s ( <z> ), each followed by
:the_time=the_time+1 (because the time does not increment automatically, for
:some reason).
:
:My question is, how can I have a snooze routine that lets all the daemons,
:timers and each_turns take effect DURING the 10 minutes of waiting
:implemented by the snooze verb.


Call InformLibrary.end_turn_sequence() for each turn you want to pass.



Anson.


From spatula@s p a t c h.net Thu Feb 19 13:36:36 MET 1998
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From: spatula@s p a t c h.net (tv's Spatch)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Painting IF (or how do YOU create IF)
Date: 18 Feb 1998 18:08:47 GMT
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Irene Callaci said "To hell with carpal tunnel!" and wrote: 
> I am just now writing my first i-f piece, and your description 
> pretty much describes how I've approached it. However, I don't
> think I'll do it this way again. My freewheeling "fill-in-the-
> details" later attitude has made for a LOT of rewriting. My
> biggest problem (among many) has been to recode the interactions
> between new objects and old ones. I think if I had planned
> things a little better, I could have anticipated these
> relationships and reduced some of my work.

One of the main reasons PUTPBAD 2 has yet to even be finished (other than
the fact that currently the source is in a computer that's missing a
processor) is that I started out writing it like its predecessor --
absolutely no forethought whatsoever.  Gradually I carved out the
geography, finalizing on a rough layout of the area after only a few
minutes' thought.  Then I wandered around aimlessly, implementing whatever
I could think of if only to prove I could. A lot of really bad ideas were
created this way; oddly enough, a few decent ideas also came about.
Work on the game mostly happened late at night / early in the morning,
when sleep deprivation removes a lot of mental inhibitions and lets one
come up with zany ideas like cow spit-encrusted grass and a
sheet-metal-throwing maniac (as well as lots of hyphens and sarcastic
responses doomed to be edited out the next day.)  Just when I thought I
was almost finished with the stuff I had planned out, neurons would
collide in exactly the wrong way and I'd furiously start coding an alien
ship.  

Some of the puzzles and concepts in the game gelled just nicely this way.
Others, however, continue to elude me.  There's nothing worse than writing
up to a certain destination and then realizing you have no idea what to
put in that destination.  Having a whizbang name and a small concept just
doesn't cut it, especially when you develop a nasty mental block and can
only work on solving THIS HERE PROBLEM RIGHT NOW.

That's the curse of the spontaneous author right there in a nutshell.
I'll eventually finish, beta, and release Booth 2; with any luck I'll be
satisfied with the end result.  With binaries and source safely locked
away in a nonfunctional computer, I turned towards planning things out for
the next game I had in mind.  Now I've got complete backstory and a map of
the area, plus the preliminary plot, primary/secondary/extra objectives,
NPC character outlines, even propaganda for the game.  I'm enjoying taking
the exact opposite creative approach here, yet I fear there is a good
chance I might get more interested in the backstory than in the actual
game itself.  Isn't life funny that way?

-- 
der Spatchel. spatula@s p a t c h.net. Proud to eat yummy red meat.
PUTPBAD is undergoing a facelift at http://www.spatch.net/booth. Soon!
"Tequila and nicotine. Like chewing on 2 of my 3 favorite things." - M. Laupin


From dancer@brisnet.org.au Thu Feb 19 13:50:26 MET 1998
Article: 35334 of rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: Dancer <dancer@brisnet.org.au>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: [Inform] Implementing mixed drinks
Date: Thu, 19 Feb 1998 15:25:33 +1000
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Joe Mason wrote:

> Allow me to take this opportunity to shift the thread into a purely theoretical
> discussion of how game mechanics can give character to the main PC in I-F.

Good plan. I'll even make an on-topic post, having been distracted by other things,
over the last several days.

> We know that, unlike in traditional fiction, we can't give personality to the
> main character by describing their thoughts, emotions, or conclusions.

I contest this point. I'll do that below.

>  Only
> the player has this right.  The entire character must be imparted through the
> author's description of what the character senses.  I think this is an example
> of how the definition of a game mechanic (in this case, how should I describe
> a mixed drink?) depends on what the author wants the character to be like.

I've spent portions of the last several weeks discussing "Interactive Fiction -
Where we've been, where we are, and where we're going", offline.

In regular fiction, the character of the protagonist is open to the examination of
the reader (usually). The protagonist is usually also able to be identified with by
the reader. I can think of cases where it is not so. I can also think of cases
where an otherwise easily identifiable-with character can make a choice that the
reader would not, due to his/her background/circumstances/beliefs. In many cases
this can underscore a choice, or be some element of growth (the character overcomes
a fear of water, or makes an effort to deal with it in some way, by the end of the
story...Or doesn't, and it's just an ongoing thing that must be worked around by
the characters).

I think this is a good bet for I-F as it stands. The personality of the main
character (whose actions you - as the player - guide) may be a challenge in and of
themselves.

Let's look at Christminster for a moment, and at our (presumably) attractive female
lead. Here we had an outstanding opportunity. We had a character with a specific
gender and background, confronting a mystery in the (virtually cloistered) walls of
what amounts to another culture. By her upbringing, background, and circumstances,
there are quite a number of things that the character _should_ never even consider
doing, excepting in extremis. The value system would not otherwise permit it.

Acts of vandalism, including stones and windows, or thefts of keys come immediately
to mind. Unless the macguffin was a lot stronger, it is hard to see the character
doing that. A friend sat down and played that one. Never got in the gate. She would
_not_ perform either of the above actions, because she felt the character (as
presented) would never do so. They were "inconceivable".

For an I-F author, this actually helps, somewhat. The personality, beliefs and
priorities of the protagonist limit the available choices. Access to the
character's thoughts and opinions allow us to pull away from the 'amnesiac
adventurer' model, and reveal key information, just from the character's opinions,
expressed in the prose.

Personally, I think we can get better 'fiction' using this model, for all that it's
still 'interactive'. Lemme quote a moment...
(Oh, btw, I _am_ using an amnesiac as the protagonist, but that's just a plot
gimmick. The story itself could be rewritten with a firm personality with a set of
personal standards, codes, and opinions that would colour the game, the
descriptions, and limit courses of action)

##########
 You remember the blood-pounding surge of accelleration, and the sickening instant
of weightlessness and the scream of tortured structural components that comes with
an impact.

 You were awake, perhaps once or twice..Or was that all just a dream?
Whatever...either you couldn't move, or you dreamed that you couldn't. The end
result was about the same. Perhaps you are dreaming now. Dreaming of thirst, and
maybe hunger and that same nightmare, that it is dark, and you cannot move.

 Then, far in the distance, a massive flare of light. Red. Gone. Again. Again. Like
a heartbeat, warm and friendly. You blink with crusted eyes and focus on the
compassionate star wondering if it will make things right. Then everything twists
and it resolves into something small. Small and blinking just in front of your
face. You manage to shift your head a fraction, frustrated that you seem to have
some sort of helmet on, and it is jammed against things, unable to move much.

 Again, you focus on the little light, and you can make out small white letters
underneath it. P. P-something. R....





     P  R  O  X  I  M  I  T  Y  A  L  E  R..





 And there is a sudden and terrifying noise, and riding it comes the darkness
again....



With Enemies Like These...
An Interactive Incident
Copyright (c) 1997, 1998 by Andrew "Dancer" Vesperman. (dancer@brisnet.org.au)
Release 1 / Serial number 961216 / Inform v6.11 Library 6/4 D
Standard interpreter 1.0


 You hazily waken, uncertain of your senses. A brief examination shows you to be in
some kind of spacecraft cockpit (or at least what one would look like after being
crushed or wrecked), suited, and still strapped to the ..whatever it is called.
Control chair? Something.
 The buckle has clearly marked arrows, and you twist it, freeing yourself.

Cockpit
 The small light that you thought so friendly is gone now, lost among the trash and
shattered panels. Even the glass of the cockpit window has had the sense to abandon
it's post - the unlucky bits remaining inside - edges lit weirdly by a wavering
blue glow.

>LOOK AT BUCKLE
 A heavy metal buckle marked with arrows showing how to open and close it. There
are slots for three clips to slot in around it, and the fourth edge has about a
half metre of heavy belt affixed to it.

>GET IT
Taken.

>WHO AM I
 Honestly, you don't know who or where you are, exactly. You know the words. Jamais
vous. The feeling that you've never been here before. You should probably know
everything about everything...or at least something about everything, but it's all
a blank, lurking like a grue in the dark, buried somewhere beneath shock, trauma or
injury.

>WHAT IS A GRUE
 A grue is umm..Something that lurks. In the dark. Probably some kind of fish or
man-eating banana that lurks in shady pools or dark rivers or something. You feel
vaguely confident about that memory. A banana, yes.

>U
 The indicator display inside your helmet changes.

 You float up..and then up suddenly has no meaning. It is merely out and away.

 Bereft of anything to hold or clutch at, your stomach does slow rolls at the
prospect of a snail's-pace journey toward the uncaring stars.

 Then a tug and your movement is arrested. Well...transformed, anyway. Some wiring
was snagged around your foot. It is gone now, and you collide with the hull. The
impact is almost stunning, considering your lack of apparent weight.

 Desperately, your gloved hands skitter over the surface as you start to bounce
back. A handle or rung comes under your left hand, and you seize it, as you and the
wiring part from your brief association.

Hull
 You hold onto the recessed handle. It is a firm anchor-point in the starry night.
Buckled metal curves away from you on all sides, but nothing affords any surface to
prevent you following the coloured wires to the far galaxies.

 From what you can see, this metal structure seems to intersect a very different
one, but by starlight there isn't much to make out. The bluish glow seems to be
coming from behind both structures somewhere but you cannot see the cause.

>D
 To let go is to die. The hard slow way. Your primal fears gather in your mind for
a council of war. The vote is handed down. You hang on.

#############
The choice here is simple. The character won't let go. The character won't
knowingly contribute to his/her own death, unless there is sufficient cause...Some
characters would be such that no cause was sufficient. Some characters might never
fight. Others might never steal.

Realistically speaking, we've been doing this in rudimentary fashion for a long
time.

'That belongs to the bishop.'
'Don't you think you should ask the devil first?'
'That would be stealing!'
'No way!'

We already hint at _something_ that restricts a character's actions. Doesn't it
make more sense for that to (demonstrably) be the character's own personality and
views, rather than just a voice from above?

And it certainly makes it a heck of a lot easier to write fiction..

D




From mkkuhner@evolution.genetics.washington.edu Thu Feb 19 14:44:08 MET 1998
Article: 35346 of rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: mkkuhner@evolution.genetics.washington.edu (Mary K. Kuhner)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Why not split the competition into Long and Short divisions? [long post]
Date: 17 Feb 1998 19:14:26 GMT
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In article <34E91FB9.1D1AA65B@midway.uchicago.edu>,

[dividing the competition into "long" and "short"]

>1) This division would most likely be accompanied by an inherent
>division between veterans and newbies.
>    Long games usually imply dedication and therefore veteranship.
>Granted, there are ambitious newbies as evidenced by Travels Through
>Erden, but I believe the majority of newbie entries would still be
>winnable within the two hour limit. I know personally that if I were to
>present an entry, it would fit in the short category. This is due to
>unfamiliarity with the code and to time constraints since I am a college
>student and cannot possibly find enough time to create a large game.
>This is probably true of many others who are students or posses
>demanding jobs which force IF writing to be only a passing hobby. I'm
>quite certain the "legends" would pour their hearts much more into a
>game no matter their schedule. They are also much more skilled in
>coding.

I think history fails to support this statement.  Yes, "Sherbet"
was a very long game.  However, "A Change in the Weather" won its
competition, and it's tiny--maybe eight or ten rooms, a 
handful of objects, one NPC.  "Uncle Zebulon's Will" is medium-
sized.  Both of these are by very experienced authors.  Conversely,
the longest games in Comp97 were probably "Erden" and "Madame 
L'Estrange", both by newcomers.

Games by experienced coders tend to be more densely coded,
therefore the game files tend to be longer (bearing in mind the
TADS/Inform difference).  But this is not the same thing as being
a long game, or a big one.  "Bear's Night Out" has a *huge* amount
of code in it, but it's not a huge game--it's got less than
a dozen rooms, one NPC, and maybe a dozen puzzles.

There's nothing wrong as far as I can see with the idea of having
a long-games and a short-games competition, but don't kid yourself
that it will equate to an experts/beginners split.  Long games
will include both "Sherbet" and "Erden" and short ones both
"Change in the Weather" and "Glowgrass".  The length of a game has
more to do with its subject matter and narrative style than 
anything else.

Mary Kuhner mkkuhner@genetics.washington.edu


From mythago@twisty-little-maze.com Thu Feb 19 14:44:49 MET 1998
Article: 35347 of rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: mythago@twisty-little-maze.com (Laurel Halbany)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Why not split the competition into Long and Short divisions? [long post]
Date: Tue, 17 Feb 1998 19:18:28 GMT
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On Tue, 17 Feb 1998 05:27:24 GMT, Lawrence Kwong
<lnkwong@midway.uchicago.edu> wrote:

>1) This division would most likely be accompanied by an inherent
>division between veterans and newbies.

Not necessarily. In some ways shorter games are harder; you have less
room to be dull and make mistakes. It would also lead to a lot of
second-guessing: "Okay, I'm a newbie, so if I write a long game I'll
probably be up against the big guys. But no, they're busy, maybe
they'll only write short games, so I should write a long game..."

>2) This gives the competitors the decision on who their opponents will
>be.

No, it doesn't. See above. Even if it did, that would be a Bad Idea,
IMO. Why are we 'protecting' people? From what? Having to be really
good?


>3) More quality games would be produced.
>    This is not to say that previous entries are of low quality. Far
>from it, I have played and enjoyed many of them. However, the division
>would give the option of perhaps writing one long game in preparation
>fot the _following_ year's competetion, and maybe even one short game
>for the coming one.

That option already exists. You can write games years in advance, if
you like, and issue long games anytime.

>4) This solves complaints against the two hour limit.

Complaints? I thought most of the complaints were about the number of
entries.

> 2) Music videos,
>documentaries, novels, and various other competitions have a similar
>division.

They also have screening and nominations processes.



From jcmason@undergrad.math.uwaterloo.ca Thu Feb 19 14:45:36 MET 1998
Article: 35310 of rec.arts.int-fiction
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: jcmason@undergrad.math.uwaterloo.ca (Joe Mason)
Subject: Re: [All]    Writin' Talk Only -- Take Tech Matters Elsewhere
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In article <34e7610d.8947230@news.cwia.com>,
Cardinal Teulbachs <cardinalt@cwia.com> wrote:
>
>Hilltop
>The horizon is lost in the glare of morning upon the Great Sea. You
>shield your eyes to sweep the shore below, where a village lies
>nestled beside a quiet cove. 
>A stunted oak tree shades the inland  road.
>
>
>Beautiful. Stupendous. A work of art. Has this opening room

I agree.

>My one complaint is with the use of the word "beside" instead of
>"inside" to describe the village's relationship with the cove. Other
>than that...

I don't know - to me, "inside the cove" would imply "in the water".

>What do you think? Am I all wet? Why is this passage good, or why does
>it suck? And do you have a better one--a favorite piece of i-f prose
>that you read over and over just for the joy of it? Then post it here.
>Let's talk writing for once, instead of computer instructions!

This is good because it is punchy.  The most important nouns and ONLY the
most important nouns are listed.  What is there is vivid, detailed, but what
is not is left completely to the player to imagine.  Everything is either
described with enough spark to be memorable, or not bothered with: nothing
half-assed.

Thanks for reminding me: I'd forgotten how good the writing in Beyond Zork
is.

Joe


From dancer@brisnet.org.au Fri Feb 20 12:10:59 MET 1998
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Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: character - to have or not to have (was Re: [Inform] Implementing mixed drinks)
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Andrew Plotkin wrote:

> Joe Mason wrote:
>
> > We know that, unlike in traditional fiction, we can't give personality
> > to the  main character by describing their thoughts, emotions, or
> > conclusions.
>
> Some objections to this have already been covered. Here's another:  you
> can have non-interactive scenes, where the protagonist acts under the
> control of the author.
>
> This does not have to be "cut scenes" in the main game flow. There could
> be offstage action before the game starts, or between chapters. They
> don't even have to be explicitly written out as prose; the player could
> just come in and discover the protagonist's actions by their consequences.
>
> _Infidel_ is one kind of example of this. The pre-game intro sets up the
> protagonist's personality by the diary, and then the game starts with the
> player in a bind which results directly from his (assholish) character.

Umm, yes. That was another one. Of course once the game got past the first few
moves, the personality of the character was hardly relevant to what happened.
Only to how they got there.

Still, I won't complain. Personality was there, at the beginning and at the
end.

D


--
Did you read the documentation AND the FAQ?
If not, I'll probably still answer your question, but my patience will
be limited, and you take the risk of sarcasm and ridicule.




From jpenney@cs.uml.edu Fri Feb 20 12:14:19 MET 1998
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From: jpenney@cs.uml.edu (Jason C Penney)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: [INFORM] Input colour
Date: 20 Feb 1998 03:14:57 GMT
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Gunther Schmidl (sothoth@xxx.usa.net) wrote:
: Is there a way of changing the colour of the input line (i. e. what the
: player types) without messing around in the standard library?

: The only way I can think of is to trap Prompt in LibraryMessages, then
: remove 'DrawStatusLine' from the line (parserm.h)
: #IFV5; @read a_buffer a_table DrawStatusLine; #ENDIF;
: Then change the colour back to normal and call DrawStatusLine.

: However, this looks like a pretty heavy hack...
: Is there another way?


How about this...


[ AfterPrompt ;
    @set_colour 8 0;  !or whatever...
];

[ BeforeParsing ;
    @set_colour 1 0;  !or whatever...
];

Include "Parser";

...


Jay

----
Jason C Penney (jpenney@cs.uml.edu)  Xarton Dragon -=<UDIC>=-
<http://www.cs.uml.edu/~jpenney/>
"The trouble with computers of course, is that they're very 
sophisticated idiots."     -- The Doctor


From im@cs.york.ac.uk Fri Feb 20 12:58:05 MET 1998
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From: Iain Merrick <im@cs.york.ac.uk>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: How to handle alcohol consumption in IF?
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Russell "Coconut Daemon" Bailey wrote:

> > (who did the game engine and much of the user interface on RTZ).
> 
> Really.  I rather liked that interface.  One of the better GUI-IF approaches
> I've seen.  The other one I really like is the Legend game engine used in
> Shannara,  Deathgate,  Companions of Xanth,  etc...
> 
> Curiousity:  Those of you on this group who aren't opposed to GUI-IF:  what type
> of interaction implementation do you favor?
> 
> Russell

I think that 'Myst' and 'Riven' have better interfaces than any similar
game I've played (this doesn't include any of the ones you mention,
though).

Perhaps this is merely the 'mac user effect', but I loved the fact that
you used _just the mouse_ and nothing else: no keypresses, no status bar
or 'action buttons' cluttering up the screen, no multiple/modified
clicks to perform different actions. No muss, no fuss.

To me, it almost felt like I was actually using my hands to manipulate
the various levers, buttons etc - though Myst was better in this respect
because it ran faster on my sluggish mac clone. :)

The weakness of Myst, of course, was that you could only hold one object
at a time, but the puzzles were designed such that this didn't really
matter (except that if you wanted to see _everything_ you had to go
traipsing around every level _twice_...)

Riven fixed this problem very nicely - when you move the cursor to the
bottom of the screen, clickable icons representing the objects in your
possession appear. Even so, there are less than half-a-dozen objects to
pick up in the whole game!

I guess there's a tentative analogy with textual IF, where the keyboard
rather than the mouse is the sole means of interaction; this
(potentially) makes it easier to model interaction with NPCs. I'm
eagerly awaiting Starship Titanic, which promises to merge these two
paradigms in a novel way - Douglas Adams is even more of a mac-freak
than I am. :)

Geesh, that turned out longer than I anticipated. Better stop there.

Iain Merrick

PS - Well, just one more paragraph. I've seen a couple of references to
a review of Riven which states that it 'breaks every law of gameplay and
user-interface design' (presumably in the bad sense). Has anyone seen
the original? How did the critic justify this statement?


From vanfossen@compuserve.com Mon Feb 23 13:18:22 MET 1998
Article: 35514 of rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: vanfossen@compuserve.com (Brent VanFossen)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: [Inform] Newbie plea for help with dynamic object creation
Date: Mon, 23 Feb 1998 08:46:25 GMT
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On Mon, 23 Feb 1998 00:53:59 GMT, bywater@zetnet.co.uk (J. Kerr)
wrote:

>and this in the beach's Before routine:
>
>		Before
>		[i; Take: i=stone.create(); if(i~=0) move i to player;
>		"You pick up a single stone.";
>		],

There's a problem here.  ANYTHING you try to take while at the beach
will result in a new stone being added to your inventory.  That's not
what you want.  What you need to do is create a decoy stone object on
the beach, that, when the player tries to take it, triggers the
creation of a new stone.  Like so:

Object StoneDecoy "stones on the beach" Beach
  with name 'stone' 'stones' 'on' 'the' 'beach',
  before
  [; Take, Remove:
      i=stone.create();
      if(i~=0)
      { move i to player;
        PronounNotice(i);   ! So the player can EXAMINE IT
        "You pick up a single stone.";
      }
      "You have already taken all the best stones.";
  ],
  has concealed;  ! Prevents the parser from listing it.

This creates a new problem.  Once the player has taken the first
stone, the next time she types TAKE STONE, the game will think you
mean the one you're already holding.  To fix that, add this just
before your 'include "Grammar";' line:

[ ChooseObjects obj code;
  if(code<2) rfalse;
  if(action_to_be==##Take or ##Remove)
  { if(obj==StoneDecoy) return 3;     ! StoneDecoy is more likely
                                      ! because 3 is greater than 2.
    if(obj ofclass stone) return 2;
  }
];

Joe Mason suggested you add a short_name property to the stone class.
You should also add a plural property to tell the parser what to call
more than one stone:

plural "stones",

>(What I'd really like the code to do is list the number of stones of
>different colours carried by the player.)

This becomes harder, because the parser defaults to grouping objects
of the same class together in the player's inventory.  Since all your
stones are ofclass stone, they will all be listed together regardless
of color.  Take a look at the Designer's Manual and search for the
property list_together.  Study the example of the gold and silver
coins.  What you may have to do is make a GreyStone class, a
BrownStone class, and a WhiteStone class.  That's what Graham did for
the silver and gold coins.

Good luck!

Brent VanFossen


From gkw@pobox.com Tue Feb 24 11:16:34 MET 1998
Article: 35486 of rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: gkw@pobox.com (Gerry Kevin Wilson)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction,rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: [IF-COMP 97] Prize Distribution difficulties on my end.
Date: 22 Feb 1998 10:55:04 GMT
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Dear Contest Entrants and Prize Donors,

	I've had difficulty getting prize donors together with their prize
winners this year.  I apologize for the delays, but the truth is, I've been
busy looking for work, and I've had to push the contest (among other things)
further down on my list of priorities.  I'm trying to get things organized as
well as I can, but it would aid me greatly if prize winners could contact the
donors via email and give them their addresses directly in that manner (or
vice versa, even.)
	I've been delayed in getting this done (I have to coordinate a
large number of email addresses and snail mail addresses to do prize
organization.) and when I sat down at last to get to it, many (more than 10)
authors had neglected to include their addresses with their prize picks.
I just don't have the time to straighten all this out.  I'm here if there's
difficulty in reaching a particular author/donor, but I need help this year
if everything is going to get sorted and sent out.

	As you may have noticed, I've been spending a lot less time
doing things for the IF community lately.  I've retired as editor of SPAG,
and yes, I have my replacement lined up for this year's contest as well.
I hope to continue to be able to provide enjoyable games to the IF
community, both short and long, but monetary troubles and flagging
endurance are forcing me to concentrate my efforts more if I'm going to
remain involved at all.  So, I am passing on my obligations as best I
can, apologizing for the inconvenience, and getting on with matters
that I have to attend to.

	Yours Respectfully,
	Whizzard

---
G. Kevin Wilson: Freelance Writer and Game Designer.  Resumes on demand.


From erkyrath@netcom.com Tue Feb 24 21:48:11 MET 1998
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From: erkyrath@netcom.com (Andrew Plotkin)
Subject: Re: [Inform] "objectloop" doesn't!
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Torbj|rn Andersson (d91tan@rama.docs.uu.se) wrote:
> (Though would it really take more than another temporary variable and
> a few extra instructions to generate code that still traverses the
> objects like Inform 5 did, without misbehaving when that part of the
> object tree changes?)

Yes. That solution works if the *current* object is moved, but there are
still cases where it fails. (For example, if you move a different object,
which happens to be the next one in the linked list. Or one farther down
the list.)

(I'd actually rather have a statement that always fails in a well-known 
common circumstance, than one which fails in a rare and 
hard-to-understand circumstance. At least this way you can explain it in 
a simple rule of thumb.)

Rule of Thumb, chapter 97, verses 1 through 4:

I. Don't move or remove objects inside an 
   objectloop (x in y) {...
II. Other forms of the objectloop statement are safe, but also much 
   slower, because they loop over every object in the game.
III. So if you want to achieve this effect safely, use 
   objectloop (x) { if (x in y) {...
IV. If you want to achieve this effect efficiently, learn about linked 
   lists. 

--Z


-- 

"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the
borogoves..."


From osb@bu.telia.no Thu Feb 26 22:28:50 MET 1998
Article: 35615 of rec.arts.int-fiction
From: "Ola Sverre Bauge" <osb@bu.telia.no>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
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Subject: Re: Help me with my CGDC Presentation?
Date: Wed, 25 Feb 1998 20:29:11 +0100
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Bill wrote in message <6cveqp$8ks$1@ha2.rdc1.sdca.home.com>...
>At the next CGDC in May I'll be giving a talk titled:


What exactly is CGDC?  Computer Game Developers' Con or something like
that?  Cool.

>"The Interface Is The Game" (Yeah, I did this in '94)
>
>Which will cover the role of the interface in game design, history of
>game interfaces, video game vs. computer interfaces, some stuff
>on Adventure Games etc... blah, blah, blah ...
>
>BUT I figured that YOU might want me to cover some issues that are
>important to YOUR game design efforts.
>
>So let me know what you think... and what I should cover.
>
>Bill Volk

For the record, you asked.  You've only got yourself to blame.
<prepares to launch two-megabyte rant on interfaces in adventure games>

"The Interface Is The Game".  <smacks tongue>  I like that.  Consider,
for instance, the current graphical adventure vs. the current text
adventure.  The sort of ideas you can express in both are linked
intimately with the interface.  Most obvious is perhaps the way most
graphical adventures contain all possible actions within a set of icons
which is growing smaller by the processor cycle, sometimes being only a
cursor with some permutations of right and left buttons and single and
double clicking creating all possible input.

This has a tendency to create adventures where everything is heavily
object oriented. (not in the programming sense, and paleez let's not
start the OO thread again)  Let me bring on an example from a game I
just played, Curse of Monkey Island; when you gain a book on
ventriloquism, you can play tricks on various characters with it as well
as doing the "useful" thing that advances the plot.

This is carried out by using the ventriloqution book on the object you
want to throw your voice at.  When you lose the book later on, you are
unable to do any further ventriloqution.  However, in a text adventure
it could have been carried out by typing "throw voice at object" or
"ventriloqute [1] object".  In fact, I do know one text adventure has
featured ventriloquism, "Phlegm" by "Adjacent Drooler" from the 96
compo.

And that game illustrates another point on how interfaces shape games;
it features Leo, a lemming which the main character carries around in
his breast pocket.  He's the one who knows how to ventriloqute, and at
the point where it's useful in the game, you have to ask him to do so,
in the form of "Leo, throw your voice at ...".  This never occured to
me, probably for two reasons:  I didn't think of using ventriloqution to
solve the problem, and I didn't know the expression "to throw your voice
at something" for ventriloqution, as I'm not a native English player.

In Curse of Monkey Island, I was well aware of the possibility of
ventriloqution, because I only had to drag'n'drop the ventriloquism book
on objects in order to do so, and since it often elicited an amusing
sequence, I did so frequently.  Although in the situation where the
ventriloqution came in useful I definitely think I would have thought of
it if all the "useless" responses hadn't been there, it did speed up the
association process a bit.  And it was fun, going around spoofing
everyone.

And this, ladies and gentlemen, demonstrates how a point&click interface
can make a game easier and more intuitive, and it demonstrates that all
adventure games should ideally reward ideas that are not strictly
necessary to the advancement of the plot, but which are logical (by the
game's own logic at least) or fun.  And of course that it's a virtue to
include synonyms to an absurd degree.

You could argue that text adventures aren't *that* much better than
point&click ones in the simplicity department; once you figure out the
Inform library verbs and try them one after one on every object you can
find, where exactly is the difference from trying every icon and
inventory object on every other object?  <- I think this point was made
some time earlier here in raif, sorry for ripping you off, whoever it
was.

Another thing about the Monkey Island games is the masterful way in
which they sometimes disrupt the regular working of the interface; the
sequence in Monkey 1 for instance, where Guybrush goes behind a wall the
player can't see behind and the action line begins to display all sorts
of insane commands like "hypnotize quarreling rhinoceros", to great
amusement and annoyance to the player (for not being able to see behind
the wall).

Or the effect that recurs all throughout the Monkey Island series:  In
conversations, you choose lines from a collection at the bottom of the
screen.  Usually, Guybrush speaks the line you choose.  In most cases
that is, but not all:  For instance in Monkey 2, when he is captured by
LeChuck and asked if he has anything to say for himself, you may choose
several witty replies, but all Guybrush can bring himself to say is
"(gulp)".  Great use of the interface to surprise the player, not to
mention simulating the way you sometimes just want to say something but
can't quite bring yourself to saying it.

And video game interfaces...  well, most of them have been a fraggin'
nightmare since consoles have typically only carried a basic joypad with
fire, select and start buttons in addition to the four directional ones.
But the interesting thing is that the interfaces of computer games have
moved towards the simplicity of that of the consoles, with everything
being covered by wiggling the mouse and clicking.  What does that say of
us, the players?

Maybe I should construct a morale for IF authors from this...  <begins
wagging moral index finger>  OK, maybe we should all look to create text
adventures where abstract concepts are an integral part, and not just as
objects you can pick up either. (though that's fun too, as in Den's
poetic transcript back when Nelson announced his poetry book)

Geez, that's two rants on Monkey 3 in two days...  (the other was in
comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.adventure)  I really should get a life.
    Ola Sverre Bauge
    osb@bu.telia.no
    http://w1.2327.telia.com/~u232700165/
My news server cannot be trusted; please CC me if you reply.

[1]  I don't know if "ventriloqute" is a valid verb and I don't really
care.  It sounds cool and to hell with the BBC English Dictionary.

He never promised me a new life
He never gave me second thoughts
Now they cut me up with their knives
And I'm bleeding for their cause
                -Disco Judas, "Some Day"




From erkyrath@netcom.com Tue Mar  3 21:45:58 MET 1998
Article: 35821 of rec.arts.int-fiction
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: erkyrath@netcom.com (Andrew Plotkin)
Subject: Re: I-F competition
Message-ID: <erkyrathEp9DnJ.E0I@netcom.com>
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jbarlow@earthling.net wrote:
> In article <erkyrathEp7Jrv.L6p@netcom.com>,
>   erkyrath@netcom.com (Andrew Plotkin) wrote:

> > The primary and original purpose of the competition is to get people
> > writing games. It works, and it works better each year.

>      Would the competition not work just as well if it was divided into
> quarters, with each quarter acting as a sort of 'semi-finalist' round? 

In some ways, yes. In some ways, no.

In particular this would be five times as much work for the maintainer.
It would also be varying playing times, and up to a year before you got 
finals results on your game. One of the things I disliked this year was 
the very long dwell time; three months is way too long for a competition. 
The momentum falls.

(I understand it'll be reduced again this year.)

(And I don't think the long voting period caused people to play more 
games. I played 26 in the first month, and zero in the rest of the voting 
period. Anecdotal evidence suggests this pattern is common. Six weeks 
feels like the right length of time, even for 30-odd games.)

> Most importantly (at least to
> me), it would also prevent a glut of 30-some new games from appearing all at
> once, since I (and assumedly many others) can't possibly play all of them
> within the comparitively short voting period.

If this is the key point, there's probably no real solution. Some people 
couldn't play 30 games in a year, either. 

>      Not in itself, no... but my point is, there's a drought of new releases
> in the weeks immediately prior to the competition... after which we drown in
> them.  And anyone who releases a non-competition game during this period runs
> the risk of having it get lost in the shuffle.

This is one reason I want to keep the competition a *short* affair, as 
opposed to a year-round schedule. With a six-week voting period, you have 
to worry about this sort of thing for about two months of the year. With 
a 12-week voting period, the competition was an issue for about *four* 
months, and I didn't like that. I worry that if there was a deadline 
every three months, it would cause a drought/glut effect *constantly*.

> > You can play the games after the voting deadline, yes?

>      Sure, but I can't vote on them... which defeats the whole purpose of
> calling the thing a competition.

No it doesn't. The purpose of calling it a competition is for the authors
to get votes, not for the players to vote. That is, if not every IF fan
has time to vote, it doesn't make it not a competition. (The voting system
and Comp9*.z5 tool allows players to vote for as many as they have time to
play; this is accepted to be "not necessarily all".)

> > There's also a certain levelness to the playing field which the
> > competition provides, which a best-of-year award does not.

>      Could you elaborate on this, please?  Apart from all entries being
> anonymous, I'm not sure how the competition provides a level playing field.

Just what I said. Timing, length of play, and independence of judgement.

> (Anonymity being a great idea for the contest, by the way... I'm sure all of
> us have our favorite I-F authors.)

There are some technical problems with mandatory anonymity. Optional 
anonymity is a good thing.

--Z

-- 

"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the
borogoves..."


From gkw@pobox.com Wed Mar  4 11:33:43 MET 1998
Article: 35835 of rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: gkw@pobox.com (Gerry Kevin Wilson)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: [Design] Keeping a lid on things...
Date: 4 Mar 1998 03:33:12 GMT
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In article <6di9ol$27o$1@news1.fast.net>
ravipind@fast.net wrote:

[snip 8 months panic]

> What if the player does this before that thing and then tries the other one?  
> Or what if he ignores all three and totally messes everything up?
> 
> Am I being a perfectionist attempting to cover every possible path?  Should 
> all of that come out in alpha/beta/gamma-testing?  
> 
> I'm just curious the level of detail others have tried (at least initially) in 
> designing their own works.
> 
> *sigh*  Well, back to it.  Maybe I can finish a whole FOUR rooms today...

First of all, 8 months is nothing.  Don't even begin to sweat it.  I could do
8 months standing on my head.  (grin)  When you are a one man team, and
life gets hectic, simply nothing will get done.

Second of all, unless your game is extremely short and fairly barren, you
aren't going to cover every contingency.  I wrote an article on this some
time ago that used an umbrella in an example.  The gist was, real life is
infinite.  If you try to, soon you too will be able to do 8 months standing on
your head.

I had one last article I meant to write called Length vs. Breadth.  It was
going to discuss the adventages of exclusive plot branches vs. length.
There weren't many.  Some people really enjoy that sort of thing, as
shown by Adam Cadre's I-0 and the success it has enjoyed.  It makes the
game more realistic, and so on.  Unfortunately, each exclusive branch in
the plot effectively increases your work by 10-100% depending on how
early the plot branch is and how quickly it converges with the other
branches.  Be aware of the amount of work this is and that not all players
are ever going to notice.

Personally, I would only bother if it is a major point of the game, like a
moral dilemma or something that the player is forced to decide upon.
I'm not going to code every floor of a hotel for realism, nor am I going to
implement 20 solutions to a locked door.

But hey, if you want to, and you have the time and inclination to go to
that extremes, go for it.  Once you've been working on a game for 3 years
running, I'll show you the secret handshake.

G. Kevin Wilson: Freelance Writer and Game Designer.  Resumes on demand.



From erkyrath@netcom.com Wed Mar  4 11:33:58 MET 1998
Article: 35840 of rec.arts.int-fiction
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: erkyrath@netcom.com (Andrew Plotkin)
Subject: Re: [Design] Keeping a lid on things...
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ravipind@fast.net wrote:

> Now part of the problem I'm running into is the 'stetson that works like a 
> stetson' problem (those of you who read XYZZYNews should know what I mean) ... 
> trying to implement objects/rooms/NPCs in a manner that doesn't totally 
> destroy the suspension of disbelief.
>
> I'll make a few rooms, set up the through-line that I want to happen, put 
> objects, etc...
>
> And then wander around and realize that X affects Y affects Z affects...
>
> What if the player does this before that thing and then tries the other one?  
> Or what if he ignores all three and totally messes everything up?

Well, this is a good statement of The Problem. (Not just the IF problem: 
programming in general.) 

> Am I being a perfectionist attempting to cover every possible path?  Should 
> all of that come out in alpha/beta/gamma-testing?  

Yes, you're being a perfectionist. This is the right approach. Never 
"leave anything for testing". Testers find errors by stumbling into them.
You know how your code works, and you can check for errors much more 
efficiently. 

(I may have changed the subject, but I don't think so: things affecting 
others things is always a potential error, until you look at the 
interaction and decide it works right.)

Let's see...

In my humble experience, you have to consider everything. This means 
either looking at each possible interaction, or creating constraints to 
handle or wipe out huge swathes of them. We know zillions of ways to do 
this: don't give access to A until B has happened, divide your game into 
chapters or worlds or timezones, etc, etc.

I think I've instinctively avoided the really wide-open style of game 
that exacerbates this problem most. _So Far_, for example, was divided 
into worlds *and* had very few takable objects *and* had uncomplicated 
NPC behavior. 

--Z

-- 

"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the
borogoves..."


From mol@bartlet.df.lth.se Thu Mar  5 15:29:37 MET 1998
Article: 35901 of rec.arts.int-fiction
Path: news.lth.se!not-for-mail
From: mol@bartlet.df.lth.se (Magnus Olsson)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: [Inform] Precedence of ~~ (logical NOT)
Date: 5 Mar 1998 15:11:53 +0100
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In article <34FE5E52.45EECA06@alcyone.com>,
Erik Max Francis  <max@alcyone.com> wrote:
>Rick Dague wrote:
>
>> Broken, sure. But not serious. If a boolean experession is so
>> complicated that this bug pops up, the experession will probably be
>> impossible to understand anyway.
>
>Even though this is a good counterpoint, whether one would even consider
>the issue a "bug" in the first place is debatable.  Granted, C/C++
>considers logical disjunction to have lower precedence than logical
>conjunction, but calling that a "de-facto standard" and insisting that
>lack of conformity to that convention seems far from a "bug" to me.

I called it a de-facto standard because not only C, but every language
I know (correction: every language that has binary Boolean operators)
gives conjunction a higher precedence than disjunction.

If we leave the domain of programming languages, there seems to be two
distinct traditions in logic and mathematics. Some texts let
disjunction and conjunction have the same priorities, like Graham
does. Others make Boolean algebra a direct analogue of ordinary
algebra, by using the "*" (or "x", or dot) operator for the "and"
operation, and the "+" operator for "or". Some texts even use the
terms "multiplication" and "addition". In this latter case, it is very
natural to let "and" have a higher precedence than "or".


>Not that I would have necessarily done it that way, but it seems a
>stretch to _require_ it of a totally separate language.

This would be true if Inform were a "totally separate language", but
it isn't.  It borrows most of its syntax from C. Borrowing syntax, but
then having radically different semantics, is a Bad Thing in my book.

Of course, none of this makes Inform *buggy*. I'm certainly not
"insisting" that "lack of conformity" is a bug. It's just damn
inconvenient and confusing.


-- 
Magnus Olsson (mol@df.lth.se, zebulon@pobox.com)
------    http://www.pobox.com/~zebulon   ------


From jcmason@undergrad.math.uwaterloo.ca Wed Mar 11 14:19:34 MET 1998
Article: 36062 of rec.arts.int-fiction
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: jcmason@undergrad.math.uwaterloo.ca (Joe Mason)
Subject: Re: Commonplace Objects
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***   SPOILERS:  Spider and Web   ***











               This space intentionally left blank.











In article <6e4jp0$om4@gcs.delta-air.com>,
Dennis Matheson  <"Dennis..Matheson@"@transquest..com> wrote:
>A puzzle design question.  I am working on a game (which may see the
>light of day before the millenium) and one of the puzzles I had come up
>with involves an electrical outlet.
>
>  OK, electrical outlets are everwhere.  The room you are reading this
>in probably has more than a few.  Now, how do I include the outlet in
>the game without making it obvious that it is part of the puzzle?  I
>can't have every room description include "There are electrical outlets
>on the north, east and south walls."  I don't want to include them in
>the description of just this one room (since it makes it obvious they
>are there for a reason).  And, not mentioning them at all seems unfair
>(even though, as I pointed out earlier, they *are* everywhere).
>
>  Any suggestions?  Or should I just re-design or drop the puzzle?

Spider and Web has a puzzle (two in fact) involving ventilation grilles.  There
are grilles in almost every room of the game.  Here's the solution used there:

The grilles aren't actually mentioned in the room descriptions.  However,
before starting, I'd gotten advice (either from the "ABOUT" section or from a
stray post here, I can't remember) to "over-use examine" when playing.  As a
result, I was keyed up to examine EVERYTHING, and when the first room described
in general detail the walls and ceiling, I immediately typed "x walls. x floor.
x ceiling" and was rewarded with a longish description of the walls including
the presence of a ventilation grille.  Each room would give the same
description.

Now, if I hadn't type "x walls" I would never have know they were there.
However, there was one other clue, which was that in one location "the ever-
present hiss of the ventilation system" was mentioned.

I think the Spider and Web solution worked well (although as soon as I saw the
first grille, I knew I'd have to use them sooner or later.  It's a sneaking-
into-places cliche).  Here's what I'd do in your case:

1. Do what Zarf did and don't mention them unless someone specifically looks
at a wall, or some other object which could be connected.

2. Draw attention to them in some other scene.  For instance, have a very
obvious electrical item in a different room, which begs to be examined.  When
the player examines it, casually mention that "a long black cord snakes across
the room to one of the ever-present electrical sockets".  That way the player
will notice one of them, and have fair warning that they're everywhere.
(Remember that if the device is portable, players will want to plug them into
any of the sockets.)

3. Implement some other ubiquitous thing.  Light fixtures and switches, for
instance.  That way it won't be too obvious that the outlets "were implemented,
so they're important".

OR

4. Add a separate puzzle.  For instance, make that above item portable and
pluggable anywhere.  However, in the one place it must be used, the only place
to set it down won't let the cord reach the socket.  That way it'll be
obvious that outlets are important (and that's why they were implemented), but
not that they're important TWICE.

Just a couple of suggestions.  Maybe they're overkill.  Take 'em or leave 'em.
Joe 


From erkyrath@netcom.com Wed Mar 11 20:18:56 MET 1998
Article: 36105 of rec.arts.int-fiction
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: erkyrath@netcom.com (Andrew Plotkin)
Subject: Re: Visual effects in IF
Message-ID: <erkyrathEpo42x.LF4@netcom.com>
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Ola Sverre Bauge (osb@bu.telia.no) wrote:
[viciously genericized :-)]
> Imagine [GAME], if, in addition to just printing
> -- glaring light...
> the screen actually faded to white, then changed the screen colors
> [...] then faded to
> white and changed back to the other colors when you returned to [...]

> This could not only have been a bit of a
> surprise to the player, it could also make them feel more like they were
> there, not to mention alleviate the confusion some players apparently
> experienced regarding what was real in the game and what was memory
> reconstruction.

> Troll Disclaimer:  I'm not trying to criticize Mr. Plotkin for not doing
> something like this [...] (especially since it's impossible in Inform
> and today's interpreters):  I just thought it was a good example of a
> game in which such an effect could have added to the content and not
> just be flashy window dressing as it was in Breath.

> I understand that there is pressure building to include (optional)
> sounds and graphics in Z-machine interpreters, and may I humbly ask for
> something like what I mentioned above too? 

This winds up being directed to me anyway, since one of the things I'm 
trying to do (besides writing games) is create an interface standard for 
*all* output. And I'm deliberately making that standard as abstract as 
possible, which means *not* telling the interpreter how to implement 
things. 

One of the (many) decisions I've made in the course of this is to not 
allow any style features (color, font, etc) to change in a window. In 
other words, I'm proposing that your idea be impossible, not just in 
current games, but in most of the game systems which are written or 
ported in the next several years. :-)

>From one point of view, this is a stupid attitude on my part -- why not
allow as many display capabilities as possible, as long as they're all
completely optional? That doesn't put any additional *mandotory* workload
on interpreter writers. 

Maybe. But I think that it's better to focus on simplicity and common 
capabilities before worrying about complicated and rarely-used ones. 
Text-window fades are (1) impossible on most terminal-window systems 
*and* most existing graphics-window text widgets. (It would probably only 
be possible on hand-coded text widgets, and one of my goals is to allow 
interpreters to use standard widgets as much as possible.) They're also 
(2) unlikely to be used by most authors. And they also (3) in the class 
of things that intrudes heavily on the player's ability to make the text 
look the way he wants to look; some fraction of players will want to turn 
this off, and I venture to estimate this fraction is more than half.

Between those concerns, it seems to me that this effect would almost 
never get used in real life. And since both the Blorb movement and the 
Glk movement are still in their infancy, I don't want to look at 
something this specialized. Wait until we have a solid base of 
interpreters, players, and games. (Glk, at least, is designed so that new 
features can be added later without breaking backwards compatibility.)

I hope this doesn't sound like I'm criticizing *you*. I have nothing 
against this particular feature, as opposed to any of the other thousand 
features that a text game might have.

I wanted to take the space to lay out how I think about these things,
because, well, I *have* been thinking about them carefully for several
months. 

--Z

-- 

"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the
borogoves..."


From david_lebling@avid.com Wed Mar 11 22:51:22 MET 1998
Article: 36110 of rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: David Lebling <david_lebling@avid.com>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Hitch Hikers Guide 2???
Date: Wed, 11 Mar 1998 14:49:31 -0500
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Iain Merrick wrote:
> 
> athol-brose wrote:
> > According to my, er, source (I work with someone who worked at Infocom
> > for years), no, it's not nearly that much. In fact, it was mostly
> > someone else Douglas Adams sent over from England who was involved in
> > the game's writing. I seem to remember something in the archive
> > documents on the Masterpieces CD supporting this, but I don't really
> > remember. I have no reason to doubt her in any case.
> 
> Are you sure you're not thinking of HHG 2?
> 
> > "Bureaucracy" was much the same deal, apparently.

I think your source is confused, or you misunderstood her.

Douglas wrote quite a lot of the text in _HHGTTG_.  Steve wrote the
rest.  Douglas also contributed a lot to the puzzles, but so did Steve.

Douglas wrote some of the text for _Bureaucracy_, and came up with the
original plot skeleton.  The "someone ... sent over from England" filled
in for Douglas after he got bored.  He wrote most of the text, and other
Infocom people wrote the rest and wrote all the code.  One particular
person who wishes to remain nameless did most of it, although lots of us
did some of it.

Very little ever got done on _HHGTTG 2_.  Douglas did some of that very
little, and various Infocom people did the rest of the very little.  The
only enthusiasm for the project came from outside the "creative
department," and at various times every writer at Infocom was pencilled
in as the co-author.

> > Too bad he hasn't done anything really excellent in the last few years.
> 
> Out of interest: what _has_ he done recently, excellent or otherwise?

Recently, Steve wrote _The Space Bar_.  _The Space Bar_ is a funny
mystery game, visually designed by Ron Cobb.  Before that, he wrote
_Hodj 'n' Podj_, a puzzle game.  Both were from Boffo Games.  Before
that, he wrote _Superhero League of Hoboken_, and before that the three
_Spellcasting_ games, all for Legend.  He probably would like to forget
that he wrote _LGOP 2_ for Activision in there somewhere.

     Dave Lebling,
     Orig. Imp.


From adamc@acpub.duke.edu Thu Mar 12 10:24:36 MET 1998
Article: 36128 of rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: Adam Cadre <adamc@acpub.duke.edu>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: I-F competition, Judging (Part II)
Date: Thu, 12 Mar 1998 00:23:01 -0500
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David Cornelson wrote:
> I don't make any assumptions. It is my contention that if the number
> of entries increases and the number of judges stays static or fearing
> the larger number of games, is reduced, it will a) reduce the chance
> of any given judge rating all games, b) increase the chance that any
> given game is not rated accordingly.

You're positing an awful lot here.  First, you're assuming that the
IF authorship pool is going to grow dramatically -- enough to strain
a system that isn't even close to breaking -- but the playership pool
isn't going to grow along with it, and may well shrink.  Why might this
be the case?  You never say.  What's more, despite the fact that many
people have posted that the strictures you propose would be the very
thing that would drive them away, you continue to argue that an
additional mechanism is needed -- one that would involve you and your
web site or your algorithm.  Why the insistence that the competition
bear your personal stamp?

> You believe that four votes compared to twenty is fair? In a
> perfect world, maybe, but these games are being reviewed by varying
> personalities with varying tastes in IF.

There's precisely zero chance that a game will end up with an
"inaccurate" score based on the votes of a few eccentrics, thanks to
the minimum threshold -- a threshold, I might add, that has never
come close to excluding a game.  Even "The Family Legacy", a game
which was almost immediately withdrawn, met the minimum threshold
to qualify on that count.  What was the smallest number of votes
received by an eligible entry?  34?  You could halve that and the
system would still be working and working well.

> It's not broken, but if there are more than 50 entries and less
> judges, some poor author may very well get screwed.

Some poor author whose game didn't do very well and who thinks it's
because it was overlooked rather than simply not being very good,
perchance?

  -----
 Adam Cadre, Anaheim, CA
 http://www.retina.net/~grignr
 "Isn't Adam a girl?" --ifMUD's "Heaven"


From cinnamon@shell.one.net Thu Mar 12 11:17:01 MET 1998
Article: 36127 of rec.arts.int-fiction
From: cinnamon@shell.one.net (athol-brose)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Hitch Hikers Guide 2???
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Xref: news.lth.se rec.arts.int-fiction:36127

In article <3506EACB.68F6@avid.com>, David Lebling wrote:
>I think your source is confused, or you misunderstood her.

Sorry. Every so often, I *do* get confused, and now I am very
embarrassed. I almost did not send the post and wish I hadn't now, for
just this reason: well, what if David Lebling or Stu Galley or someone
else that lurks here from time to time is still lurking?

I apologize...

>Douglas wrote quite a lot of the text in _HHGTTG_.  Steve wrote the
>rest.  Douglas also contributed a lot to the puzzles, but so did Steve.

...and I stand corrected.

>Douglas wrote some of the text for _Bureaucracy_, and came up with the
>original plot skeleton.  The "someone ... sent over from England" filled
>in for Douglas after he got bored.  He wrote most of the text, and other
>Infocom people wrote the rest and wrote all the code.  One particular
>person who wishes to remain nameless did most of it, although lots of us
>did some of it.

And the reason I got my stories confused shows up...

>> > Too bad he hasn't done anything really excellent in the last few years.
>> Out of interest: what _has_ he done recently, excellent or otherwise?
>Recently, Steve wrote _The Space Bar_.  _The Space Bar_ is a funny
>mystery game, visually designed by Ron Cobb.  Before that, he wrote
>_Hodj 'n' Podj_, a puzzle game.  Both were from Boffo Games.  Before
>that, he wrote _Superhero League of Hoboken_, and before that the three
>_Spellcasting_ games, all for Legend.  He probably would like to forget
>that he wrote _LGOP 2_ for Activision in there somewhere.

Superhero League of Hoboken was lots of fun. The Space Bar...well, I
just kind of lost patience. Hodj was neat for what it was. I wish he'd
do another serious sci-fi game, however.

-- 
r. n. dominick -- cinnamon@one.net


From sgranade@phy.duke.edu Fri Mar 13 17:01:10 MET 1998
Article: 36199 of rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: Stephen Granade <sgranade@phy.duke.edu>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Originality in IF
Date: Fri, 13 Mar 1998 10:24:28 -0500
Organization: Duke University, Durham, NC, USA
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A while back I wrote a column on cliched IF. I got the following reply 
>from Craxton (sbellotti@loyola.edu), who asked that I post it here to 
encourage discussion.

--
>We have held our tongues in the face of fans chanting for more remakes of
>their favorite series, another rehashing of the same old plot and genre.

I'll agree with you here. Case in point: the Discworld games. The first one
angered me with atrocious read-my-mind puzzles and a wafer-thin
collect-necessary-items, kill-the-dragon plot. (More on Dragons in a
minute.) I played it through to the end, however, because it was
rip-roaringly funny. The Amazon in the Town Square and the Dining Hall
Reparte come to mind as examples. Would have been fine to leave it there,
but they didn't, did they? The second game was more original than the first
in terms of plot, and the puzzles were much more managable, but the Humor-
which was what endeared me to the first game- was bland. (As if that wasn't
enough, it ran slow. But that may just be my system.) The most likely
reason for this is that the second game was forced. With a first effort,
there is always inspiration, vision, a reason for the project. While this
vision can sometimes be present in a sequel as well, more often then not a
sequel turns out to be hack work, an attempt to re-hash the same stuff for
more money. The problem, as you've said, is that the business is driven by
the market, which is often dominated by maniacal fans. Which basically
means that until the fans have had enough (look at how long Star Trek
worship lasted. *groan*), the sequels continue.

>I ask you, how many times must we endure games set on a college campus?
>How many games involving time travel, suburban houses, or needless
>surrealism will we force ourselves to play?

These are two seperate issues. I, for one, hate college-based games, but
there is a very good reason why people keep making them. Many of today's
great amature I-F writers are college students themselves and, as the
saying goes, "Write what you know." Time-travel is a plot tool. What that
means is that it can be done in a good way (Jigsaw comes to mind.) Or a bad
way. (Time: All Things Come To An End. Ugh.) Surrealism is even more
cumbersome, in that it's a thematic tool, and games are typically somewhat
light on theme. But it can be used with good results too. (So Far, for
example. Or that new game, what's it called... Losing Your Grip? *Grin*)
The bottom line is this: If you can use an idea well, do it. Otherwise,
scrap it. You'll just wind up turning out another low-quality game.

>What you must realize is that we did not create this problem. They
>created this problem. With their insatiable appetite for the same tired
>cliches, their endless fascination with the worn re-treads peeled from
>the tires of IF, they have forced us to this pass.

Who exactly are _they_? I hate to sound like an English teacher, but you
have to clarify this point.

>No more paper-thin plots, worn shiny by countless tellings and
>retellings.

There's no question about plots. In my opinion, if you don't have a good
story to start with, forget it. Alternatively, if you can build a set of
rooms and puzzles around a common theme or idea (So Far again. There's a
Masters thesis in that game, I'm telling you.) then you might have
something workable. The biggest problem here is tacked-on plots, i.e. plots
invented as an excuse to string puzzles together. I find these
uninteresting, and a waste of puzzles that could have been put in good
games.

>If you begin a piece of interactive fiction and it employs a fantasy
>setting, mention Colossal Cave and Zork to the author and explain that
>they can never ever top those games and should move on to greener
>pastures.

That is simply not true. Granted, the "Dungeon Crawl" is the most overused
idea in the genre, but the problem is that it's been done for so long,
people have forgotten how to do it differently. If you could make something
unique (like Wearing the Claw, for instance.) it could turn out to be quite
good.

>Authors must be discouraged from using the big four: science fiction,
>fantasy, horror, and mystery. That ground has been strip-mined, all of
>its fresh ideas ripped out and pressed into an endless shuffling
>half-life of game after game, each copy a little more worn, a little more
>faded.

You just effectively alienated 95% of the ideas in Interactive Fiction. I
think your problem is not with the genres, but with what they condense
into. Fantasy means set in a world or enviroment where the normal rules of
everyday living do not apply. Science Fiction means set in the future,
where technology or discovery has changed the world. Horror means a tale
designed to evoke suspense, fear, and fright. Mystery means centering
around some puzzle or strange occurance, with the protagonist searching for
an explanation. These fundamentals have almost limitless potential. The
problem is that, through repetition and duplication of ideas, they turn
into cliches. Every Sci-Fi story becomes a space opera. Every Mystery
becomes a whodunit or film noir. The trick is to break the mold. Take an
genre, and move it in an unconventional direction. Curses!, for example,
makes what is basically another magic-filled fantasy scavanger hunt, and
makes it unique by way of contemporary setting and an intrigueing mix of
the logical (i.e. getting the watch) and the fantastic (the tarot box).

>If, on top of these sins, a game introduces a dragon, e-mail the author a
>copy of the Oxford English Dictionary with the word 'dragon' omitted from
>every page.

You struck a raw nerve here. I LOVE Dragons, in a way that I can't fully
explain. Furthermore, I think they deserve more respect then I-F tends to
give them. Dragons are marvellous creatures, full of thousands of
possibilities. They could be warriors or sages, monstrosities or
benefactors, human-like or feral... the possibilities are limitless. (If
you check out www.draconic.com -especially the links section- you'll see
what I mean.) But in the world of I-F, they are constantly being used as
paper villians, set down as minor foes or, even worse, focal points of
hackneyed and unoriginal plots. Their potential is squandered. One day, I
plan to write a game centered around Dragons as noble and spiritual
creatures. I'm going to make the game center around the exploration of a
lost Draconic city, and the characteristics that make a dragon a Dragon. I
plan to start writing it in the near future. (Then again, I also plan to
paint the garage in the near future.)

I guess what I'm trying to say here is that, while your premise is correct,
your pointing the finger in the wrong direction. The problem isn't with
genres, puzzles, or settings. The problem is narrow-mindedness. The problem
is that people are blind to the limitless possibilities. The problem is
lack of imagination. Anyone who is willing to explore new ideas, and give
things an interesting new twist, can make an excellent game. Otherwise, you
can make something which is decent, but ultimately a cliche.


From bradds@concentric.net Mon Mar 16 12:37:06 MET 1998
Article: 36229 of rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: "Bradd W. Szonye" <bradds@concentric.net>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Originality in IF
Date: Sat, 14 Mar 1998 01:02:08 -0500
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Stephen Granade wrote:
> 
> Fast-forward to now. It seems like every discussion of a game begins
> with, "Well, it's [sci-fi/fantasy/surrealism/got 'Dragon' in the
> title] and that put me off...." Are we all so jaded that the first
> thing we do is pigeonhole a game and force it to claw its way out of
> that category? Must we hit every beginner over the head like an IF
> version of Whack-A-Mole if their game doesn't live up to some
> standard of originality?
> 
> Hence my column.

For some reason this reminds me of the old "shock value" stories which
challenge our preconceptions, like:

    A boy and his father are nearly killed in a car wreck; at the ER
    the doctor says, "I can't operate on this boy! He's my son!"

Doug Hofstaedter wrote a lot on this subject too. In the story/joke, the
doctor of course is the boy's mother, but the image of doctor as father
figure interferes. There are disconcerting stories that work the other
way too, such as describing a black woman in a ghetto setting... then
mentioning that she's a doctor. Even open-minded folks (of all races and
both sexes) fall into these mental stereotype traps occasionally.

The usual way to avoid sexist preconceptions or other types of
prejudging a character is to mention both roles at the same time. For
example, if you introduce my second "character" above as Julie Jones,
the successful doctor who helps the people in the slum neighborhood she
grew up in--all in one breath or so--folks see the whole picture rather
than (a) black woman, (b) in ghetto, (c) as doctor--whoops! mental image
collapse.

Now, this isn't the same problem that a Swords & Sorcery IF game has.
Perhaps I'm being naive, but once you get past the initial shock that
"Julie Jones" is a successful doctor and philantrophist, it's easy to
believe. People can usually get past sexist and racist stereotypes with
a little prodding.

The aversion to "stock genre" IF is worse, I think. You know from the
title that "Off to Slay the Dragon" is S&S fantasy. You hear from News
that it's actually quite good, but that doesn't change the fact that
you're sick of S&S fantasy. You can just imagine the cliches and worn
plots (if any) it must boast. You grudginly play the prologue, and,
while it shows some promise, it's still S&S fantasy and you just don't
want to play it. You can believe that the black ghetto woman is a
doctor, but you can't believe that S&S could possibly entertain you.

So if I were to write a S&S fantasy game, I would do my best not to
advertise that's what it was. Instead, I would set up the prologue to
downplay the fantastic elements long enough to suck in those gamers who
might like the game but would avoid it just because it's fantasy.

There's a danger in this, that you might seriously alienate people who
feel "tricked" into playing it, but I consider this fair trickery, if
the game really is good enough to stand out from the crowd of fantasy
drivel. What do you think? Is it dishonesty, or is it a useful approach?
I think it's useful, because downplaying the fantasy element at first,
then slowly introducing it will help greatly with suspension of
disbelief as well.

An example: I'm very tentatively considering a story, possibly humorous,
that involves a pair of con men. The duo (a front man and a strongarm-
slash-straight-man) are a bit loose ethically but far from ruthless. One
of their "marks" figures out the scam and decides to give them "honest"
work, by performing some minor but difficult mission (like rescuing a
kidnapped spouse).

Now, that doesn't sound like a cliche fantasy story; it doesn't
especially sound like a fantasy at all, cliche or otherwise. I see the
prologue involving the "straight" man (the PC) walking up to a shell
game as a plant to help his partner in the hustle. The mark is a young
woman of some (good) repute whose husband and money is missing. The duo
hustles her out of her last few coins, provoking a sob story. Being good
at heart, the resourceful parnters let her "con" them into helping out.

Only now does the actual genre setting start to creep in: you start to
realize that this isn't a "normal" setting but rather a fantasy
village/space station/time travel romp/college campus/whatever. For a
while, too, the genre remains backdrop. The magic/blasters/time
machine/monsters in the campus tunnels don't show up until much later.
The genre gimmicks are there for effect and setting; the reader's
interest is drawn by the NPC characterization and strong plot, not the
gimmicks.

And really, this is how great fantasy literature and IF works too. The
Hobbit is just about an "ordinary guy" who gets pulled into a fantasy
adventure. Zork starts out simply West of House in a forest--the
treasure hunting and magic doesn't start till you get in the basement.

You may ask, why make it fantasy at all then? Why not just put the con
men in the ghetto and have Dr. Julie Jones be the supplicant looking for
her lost husband? Well, you could do that too. But I see it as an
opportunity to take advantage of the wondrous and entertaining elements
of fantasy (or science fiction, or college campuses) without resorting
to a string of wimpy dragons, steamy brothels, and unconnected puzzles
on the way to the trophy case.

Public comments and e-mail are both welcome, but please don't CC: me on
newsgroup articles; post or mail but not both.
-- 
Bradd W. Szonye
bradds@concentric.net
http://www.concentric.net/~Bradds

My reply address is correct as-is. The courtesy of providing a correct
reply address is more important to me than time spent deleting spam.


From bradds@concentric.net Mon Mar 16 12:38:05 MET 1998
Article: 36324 of rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: "Bradd W. Szonye" <bradds@concentric.net>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Originality in IF
Date: Sun, 15 Mar 1998 23:23:34 -0500
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> I wrote:
> >So if I were to write a S&S fantasy game, I would do my best not to
> >advertise that's what it was. Instead, I would set up the prologue to
> >downplay the fantastic elements long enough to suck in those gamers
> >who might like the game but would avoid it just because it's fantasy.
> 
Joe Mason wrote:
> I'm not sure I'd put it this way.  It's not that you want to avoid
> fantasy elements in your prologue, its that you want your prologue to
> stand out. So in the opening you should emphasize the things that are
> UNIQUE, which by definition is not the fantasy cliches.

Thanks, that's really what I was trying to say. If you're going to write
a story about a couple of lovable con men trying to help out one of
their marks out of sympathy--and the setting is a fantasy world--you'd
do better to emphasize the character and plot elements before making a
big deal out of the genre setting itself.

Same goes for any story; the scenery comes second to plot,
characterization, mood, and other important elements. Now, the fantasy
setting is fertile ground for certain effects and occurrences, but if
you come out of the gate with big scenery and no quality story elements,
it'll get written off as "yet another fantasy hack job."

I'd be careful with the most common settings, however; the reason I
considered actually downplaying the setting was to avoid being
pigeonholed just for mentioning it. It's like the fellow who downgraded
works in the 97 competition just because they were in overused settings,
regardless of how good they were. Somebody like that might pass on the
game at the first mention of, say, dragons or peasants unless the good
hook comes first.
 
> The best way to do this is, as you did with the con men, start the
> game with a story you want to tell.  A DETAILED story, not just "the
> player has to kill a dragon/demon/evil wizard".  Do this, and not only
> will the prologue write itself, so will a lot of the game.

Of course, there's the possibility that my idea is a "lovable con men as
main characters" cliche, which would probably get passed over in
Hollywood. However, it's not an IF cliche per se, so with good
characterization and plotting it might not turn as many people off as,
say, a blatant "kill the dragon" adventure.
-- 
Bradd W. Szonye
bradds@concentric.net
http://www.concentric.net/~Bradds

My reply address is correct as-is. The courtesy of providing a correct
reply address is more important to me than time spent deleting spam.


From michael.gentry@ey.com Mon Mar 16 12:39:30 MET 1998
Article: 36216 of rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: michael.gentry@ey.com
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Originality in IF
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> >What you must realize is that we did not create this problem. They
> >created this problem. With their insatiable appetite for the same tired
> >cliches, their endless fascination with the worn re-treads peeled from
> >the tires of IF, they have forced us to this pass.

Er... yeah, all those rabid IF fans bursting into my house late at night,
dog-piling me when I'm asleep and defenseless, putting a flashlight in my face
and threatening to drown my cats if I don't whip up some insipid, hackneyed
college treasure hunt in the next hour... yeah, they get on my nerves, too.

In other words: What are you talking about? And not to put too fine a point on
it, but get over yourself, why don't you?

"They" did not create any problem. "They" are certainly not forcing you or
anyone else to write unoriginal games. "They," to put it bluntly, do not
exist. There is a community of people out there who really, really enjoy
playing interactive fiction games. Some of them have little taste or
discretion; some of them have plenty of both. Some of them are disappointed
and frustrated with the dearth of original material to be had; some of them
are grateful that anyone is writing anything at all. But NONE of them -- not a
single solitary low-browed tasteless one of them -- have anything to do with
what types of games are being produced.

This is not a buyer's market. These people are your "fan base" only by virtue
of the fact that you're one of the fifty or so people on the planet who
bothers to write games. They don't pay you; you receive no royalties; your
livelihood does not depend on how well your games sell. They don't "sell" at
all. So the opinions of the unwashed masses can't really be all that relevant
to you, can they?

The source and cause of unoriginal text adventure games is nothing more or
less than unoriginal text adventure game writers. End of story. The fans
simply play what is available. If you are concerned with the amount of
original material out there, it is up to you to create more; not up to them to
change their tastes.

And for that matter, do they really need to?

When I peruse the rec.*.if newsgroups, I never read any giddily drooling
praise for "All Quiet on the Library Front" or "Travels in the Land of Erden."
I read about "Jigsaw" (which has time travel in it), or "So Far" (which has
both fantasy and surrealist elements in it), or "Christminster" (which takes
place on a college campus).

I don't mean to sound overly hostile, but I do think Mr. Granade's comment was
very ill-conceived and tactlessly elitist. I happen to think he is a very good
-- and original -- writer, and I think "Losing Your Grip" is a fantastic game.
I also think it contains much needless surrealism. And one dragon.

> >If you begin a piece of interactive fiction and it employs a fantasy
> >setting, mention Colossal Cave and Zork to the author and explain that
> >they can never ever top those games and should move on to greener
> >pastures.

I'm going to catch a lot of flack for this one, but I think Colossal Cave and
Zork both sucked. In the same way that the first season of "The Simpsons"
sucked -- I am very glad that they generated enough enthusiasm to keep the
idea going, but I am even more glad that we have finally moved beyond what was
really a primitive, shoddy product.

> >Authors must be discouraged from using the big four: science fiction,
> >fantasy, horror, and mystery. That ground has been strip-mined, all of
> >its fresh ideas ripped out and pressed into an endless shuffling
> >half-life of game after game, each copy a little more worn, a little more
> >faded.

Authors must be discouraged from making sweeping, kneejerk judgments regarding
what authors should or shouldn't write. What you have just outlined is an
excellent recipe for suppressing originality of all types.

I, too, am four-square against *bad* genre fiction -- the pulp that swells 90%
of the bookstore shelves with words like "Quest" and "Beyond" and "<blank> of
Darkness" in the titles, and Tolkien-clone elves and unicorns cavorting across
the covers. But to condemn the genre itself along with anyone who attempts to
write in it... In one breath you're lynching Harlan Ellison, Ursula K. LeGuin,
Damon Knight, Ray Bradbury -- some of the most brilliant, original writers of
this century, who happened to choose these genres as their avenues of
expression.

Your own game was criticized by many for being yet another of the
"lost-inside-your-own-head" genre -- and yet it contains a flair of real
originality and a thematic unity which sets it apart from most other games.
What you find to be "good" depends a great deal on what you're looking for.
Perhaps you should stop blaming your frustrations on the faceless masses, and
start writing what you know to be good. After all, ultimately, you're only
required to please yourself.

--M

-----== Posted via Deja News, The Leader in Internet Discussion ==-----
http://www.dejanews.com/   Now offering spam-free web-based newsreading


From erkyrath@netcom.com Wed Mar 18 12:52:19 MET 1998
Article: 36436 of rec.arts.int-fiction
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: erkyrath@netcom.com (Andrew Plotkin)
Subject: Re: [Inform] Difference between noun/second and inp1/inp2?
Message-ID: <erkyrathEpzIvK.2wo@netcom.com>
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J. Kerr (bywater@zetnet.co.uk) wrote:
> erkyrath@netcom.com (Andrew Plotkin) wrote:

> >Such a test may also be useful in a before or react_before clause that 
> >affects many actions, some of which take numbers and some of which take 
> >objects. (This happens in exercise 82, for example.)

> The answer to Exercise 12 in the DM, which is the macrame bag
> containing objects that the player can examine, smell, hear etc. but
> not take, says:

>  > Note the careful use of inp1 and inp2 rather than noun or second:  

> What's the significance of this? Wouldn't noun and second work
> perfectly well in this case?

> (Here's the bag's react_before, in case you don't have your DM handy):

>         react_before
>         [;  Examine, Search, Listen, Smell: ;
>             default:
>                 if (inp1>1 && inp1 in self)
>                     print_ret (The) inp1, " is tucked away in the
> bag.";
>                 if (inp2>1 && inp2 in self)
>                     print_ret (The) inp2, " is tucked away in the
> bag.";
>         ],

No, you have to use inp1 and inp2 in this case, because this clause 
handles *all* actions except Examine, Search, Listen, and Smell.

That includes actions which take numbers as arguments. For example, if 
the player typed 'set dial to 75', then this default clause would be run 
with 
  noun = the dial
  inp1 = the dial
  second = 75
  inp2 = 1

If you tested (second in self), and object id 75 was a plover's egg the
size of an emerald, and the egg *was* in the bag, the clause would
trigger. It would print "The plover's egg is tucked away in the bag,"  and
prevent the action. Even though the player really didn't refer to the egg
at all. 

The code above avoids this bug.

--Z

-- 

"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the
borogoves..."


From max@alcyone.com Mon Mar 23 11:21:23 MET 1998
Article: 36594 of rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: Erik Max Francis <max@alcyone.com>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction,rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: [ANNOUNCE] MST3K Version of "Stiffy Makane"
Date: Sun, 22 Mar 1998 15:41:38 -0800
Organization: Alcyone Systems
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Damien Neil wrote:

> >P.S. Did you know that the longest word you can type with your left
> > hand
> >in English is "stewardesses"?
> 
> Well, if you intend to allow plurals, "aftereffects" also fits. :>

I ran it on some of the dictionaries I have lying around, and I got
these for the top scorers:

13 tetrastearate
13 tesseradecade
13 devertebrated
13 aftercataract
12 watercresses
12 stewardesses
12 reverberates
12 reverberated
12 reasseverate
12 reaggravates
12 extravastate
12 desegregates
12 desegregated
12 aftereffects

I did the same thing for right-handed keys, and got these:

13 phyllophyllin
12 illuminopoly
12 hypophyllium
11 polyphonium
11 hypophyllum

Some of these are variations on verb tenses (e.g., "desegregates,"
"desegregated").  Some of them probably wouldn't qualify as being words
at all.

> (Amazing what you learn with some idle time and a bit of perl code.)

For me it was C, with a touch of cat, awk, and sort.

-- 
         Erik Max Francis, &tSftDotIotE / mailto:max@alcyone.com
                       Alcyone Systems / http://www.alcyone.com/max/
  San Jose, California, United States / icbm:+37.20.07/-121.53.38
                                     \
        "I've got the fever for the / flavor of a cracker"
                                   / Ice Cube


From dns361@merle.acns.nwu.edu Mon Mar 30 15:29:42 MET DST 1998
Article: 36720 of rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: Second April <dns361@merle.acns.nwu.edu>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: interesting article on game design (or: does Colossal Cave really suck?)
Date: Wed, 25 Mar 1998 13:19:05 -0600
Organization: Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, US
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> Do I still think they're poor games? I don't know. I guess it depends on how
> nostalgic you are, and on what you're looking to get out of interactive
> fiction. Me, I prefer to think of them as rough drafts. We've revised. We've
> preserved the gems and expunged the dross, we've written as far as we can go
> in certain directions and we've moved on. I guess I feel more comfortable with
> where we've ended up than with where we started from. The big, pointless maze
> may have been an interesting exercise in problem-solving skills, but I don't
> feel like it stands up to much repeat performance.

Fair enough. I certainly don't think I would point anyone who asked "show
me what this IF stuff is" toward CC or Dungeon, because there are much
better examples. (Matter of fact, I just responded to a post along those
lines in rgif, and I didn't mention those, nor did I even think of doing
it.) There are good things about those games--good writing, some clever
puzzles--but those good things certainly aren't peculiar to them.
Likewise, for mazes, there are better examples of mazes to point out--the
badger hole in "Arthur," the glass maze in "Sorcerer", to name a few--than
drop-an-object. If those early games came out today, I still think they'd
get put in the fairly large competent-but-nothing-special file, which is
actually pretty remarkable considering how many of their successors,
including commercial games, would be relegated to the don't-bother
category.

> I would like to point out that video games, like Greek plays (and unlike fine
> wines) don't get any better by sitting around gathering dust. They get better
> by withstanding criticism. What was good about them to begin with might still
> be good today -- but we still have to know *why* they're good.

Sure. I don't think anyone should argue that CC or Zork should be
slavishly copied now--merely that we can learn from what they do well,
most importantly the writing.

Duncan Stevens
d-stevens@nwu.edu
312-654-0280

The room is as you left it; your last touch--
A thoughtless pressure, knowing not itself
As saintly--hallows now each simple thing,
Hallows and glorifies, and glows between
The dust's gray fingers, like a shielded light.

--from "Interim," by Edna St. Vincent Millay




From marsh@nettally.com Tue Mar 31 22:31:20 MET DST 1998
Article: 36865 of rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: marsh@nettally.com (Steven Marsh)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: The Sounds of IF
Date: Tue, 31 Mar 1998 11:26:47 GMT
Organization: CMDS News machine
Lines: 57
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On Tue, 31 Mar 1998 13:05:55 GMT, rudejohn@ptd.net (JohnG) wrote:

>On Mon, 30 Mar 1998 20:46:31 -0700, "Karl Low"
><kwil@deletethis.cadvision.com> wrote:
	<snip>
>>
>>Basically, the thread was based around the idea of designing an "audio-only"
>>computer game. By that meaning that some situation was presented (brain in a
>>jar?) where all you had was sound. The game itself would be voice
>>activated/controlled and all the puzzles and things would be revolve around
>>sound.
	<snip>
>>Could this possible done as a choose your own adventure idea with a CD? Ie..
>>play track one, then have a little booklet which gives choices about what to
>>do and which track to skip to..
>>
>>More importantly.. would it be fun?
	<snip>
>   Would it be fun? Why do you even have to ask? Of COURSE it would be
>fun! Well, depending upon the talent behind the project, of course.
>And I imagine that visually-challenged gamers would appreciate it.
>Heck, it'd be an interesting experience for anyone to play an
>audio-based game in a darkened room, don't you think? It sounds like
>good group sport, as well. Like Radio Mystery Theatre, eh?

	Yes, it -would- be fun.  But something similar has already
been done, with limited commercial success.
	TSR (the folks who make Dungeons & Dragons [before they were
bought by Wizards of the Coast]) made a couple of CD adventure games
in 1994 called "Terror T.R.A.X."
	They released two of these: one called "Track of the
Werewolf", the other "Track of the Vampire".  They revolved around the
idea of "Where do the really odd calls to 911 go?"  You played the
role of one of these -special- 911 operators, and you needed to
dispatch agents from your bureau to deal with these calls; it all
occurred in near-real time (with gaps for dramatic license), which
meant that the agents demanded to know what to do immediately.  They
were really well-done and very scary; darkened room, headphones (it
had full stereo)... wow.
	On the other hand, they were also pretty expensive,
comparitively speaking; they cost the same as a regular CD (about
$13), but were really only listened to a few times until the "correct"
path was chosen; then the appeal wore off.  (Though it's been years,
and I've forgotten the right thing to do... I may have to replay them
tonight.)
	The other drawback is the limited time of play.  Each CD was
right around 73 minutes... about as much as you can realistically put
on a standard CD.  The "correct" path obviously didn't make use of all
of these minutes, since many minutes needed to be set aside for
"wrong" events.  By comparison, your average Fighting Fantasy book
took hours to read and complete, for a fraction of the price.
	So there's a definite appeal to these kind of games (IMO), but
there's also a few technical problems to be overcome.

Steven Marsh
marsh@nettally.com



From dicks@math.ohio-state.NO.SPAM.edu Thu Apr  2 15:37:15 MET DST 1998
Article: 36907 of rec.arts.int-fiction
From: dicks@math.ohio-state.NO.SPAM.edu (Ethan Dicks)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Dungeon AKA Mainframe Zork
Date: 1 Apr 1998 19:48:41 GMT
Organization: Department of Mathematics, The Ohio State University
Lines: 44
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Xref: news.lth.se rec.arts.int-fiction:36907

In article <6fsqb3$pq6$1@neko.syix.com>,
Patrick Kellum <patrick@syix.com> wrote:
>In article <6fsgqm$2vu$1@nnrp1.dejanews.com>, weird_beard@prodigy.net
>was talking about:
> >I ready today that Dungeon, which evolved from mainframe Zork, is in the
> >public domain. Is this true, or is my source mistaken? And if it is true,

It is not PD.  The source I have is copyrighted to MIT (where the
founders of Infocom worked), but according to Stu Galley, MIT did not
want any royalties when they took the code with them to found Infocom.
Nevertheless, there are many incarnations of the code, most of which stem
>from the port of the MDL original to FORTRAN.

> >then why hasn't this version (to my knowledge) been converted to the
> >z-machine format, while Collossal Cave (AKA Original Adventure) has?

Time, mostly, copyrights partially (cf. previous necro-equine flagellation).

>Well, last I heard there where three different people porting it to
>z-machine :-)  I'm one of those people but my port is currently on hold
>while I piece together part of my life.  But, I do intend to get back to
>work on it soon.

I am another one of those three people.  My port is progressing nicely.
Recently, I exceeded the default number of actions and had to up the
$MAX_ACTIONS parameter, and just this week had to up $MAX_VERBS.  The
map is done as are many puzzles.  Combat was a bear to implement; for
as little bearing as fighting has on the whole game, the code to handle
it is amazingly sophisticated.  I am just starting to work on vehicles.
The raft inflates, but I'm not sailing anywhere yet.  The biggest stuff
remaining are the Bank and the Endgame.  I am continually amazed at all
the little stuff, the non-obvious joke verbs, the subtle interaction of
seemingly unrelated objects, the one-liners and throwaways.  A couple
of small examples: the pointy stick is a viable weapon, and the "machine"
can be referred to as a PDP-10.

For the curious, I'm doing the development under Solaris, running xzip.

-ethan
-- 
Ethan Dicks                                      http://www.infinet.com/~erd/
(dicks) at (math) . (ohio-state) . (edu)       sellto: postmaster@[127.0.0.1]

harvestbot fodder: president@whitehouse.gov fccinfo@fcc.gov root@[127.0.0.1]


From alan@accessone.com Fri Apr  3 12:20:20 MET DST 1998
Article: 36931 of rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: alan@accessone.com (Alan Conroy)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Dungeon AKA Mainframe Zork
Date: Thu, 02 Apr 1998 07:20:42 GMT
Organization: All USENET -- http://www.Supernews.com
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On Wed, 1 Apr 1998 13:09:28 GMT, olorin@world.std.com (Mark J Musante)
wrote:

>Alan Conroy (alan@accessone.com) wrote:
>> I have the source code to Dungeon and it carries a copyright notice.
>
>So who owns the copyright, then?

The following was extracted from the various FORTRAN sources (VAX VMS
version):

COPYRIGHT 1980, 1990, INFOCOM COMPUTERS AND COMMUNICATIONS, CAMBRIDGE
MA.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, COMMERCIAL USAGE STRICTLY PROHIBITED
WRITTEN BY R. M. SUPNIK 


          - Alan Conroy

The views expressed in this post are mine and not necessarily those of my spouse, employer, government, or God.
But then again...


From weird_beard@prodigy.net Fri Apr  3 12:21:40 MET DST 1998
Article: 36977 of rec.arts.int-fiction
From: weird_beard@prodigy.net
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Dungeon AKA Mainframe Zork
Date: Thu, 02 Apr 1998 23:47:29 -0600
Organization: Deja News - The Leader in Internet Discussion
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Xref: news.lth.se rec.arts.int-fiction:36977

In article <6fsgqm$2vu$1@nnrp1.dejanews.com>,
  weird_beard@prodigy.net wrote:
>
> I ready today that Dungeon, which evolved from mainframe Zork, is in the
> public domain. Is this true, or is my source mistaken? And if it is true,
> then why hasn't this version (to my knowledge) been converted to the
> z-machine format, while Collossal Cave (AKA Original Adventure) has?
>
> -----== Posted via Deja News, The Leader in Internet Discussion ==-----
> http://www.dejanews.com/   Now offering spam-free web-based newsreading
>
Read the source myself and it says that Infocom owns it.

However, *nobody* has a legal copyright on the FORTRAN version, since this
version was written based on stolen source (this was before Infocom) and the
writer's decided that if the person was smart enough to get it, he deserved
it. They were also surprised that it was possible to do in FORTRAN (one of
the reasons they wrote Zork was because Adventure was written in a language
they considered to be inferior to the one they used).

Most of this was taken from the New Zork Times (which *was* sued for
violations by a lesser-known newspaer) 1985 editions.

-----== Posted via Deja News, The Leader in Internet Discussion ==-----
http://www.dejanews.com/   Now offering spam-free web-based newsreading


From jfrancis@dungeon.engr.sgi.com Fri Apr  3 15:59:00 MET DST 1998
Article: 36986 of rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: jfrancis@dungeon.engr.sgi.com (John Francis)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Dungeon AKA Mainframe Zork
Date: 2 Apr 1998 18:35:37 GMT
Organization: Silicon Graphics, Inc., Mountain View, CA
Lines: 30
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In article <35233bcd.7929627@news.accessone.com>,
Alan Conroy <alan@accessone.com> wrote:
>On Wed, 1 Apr 1998 13:09:28 GMT, olorin@world.std.com (Mark J Musante)
>wrote:
>
>>Alan Conroy (alan@accessone.com) wrote:
>>> I have the source code to Dungeon and it carries a copyright notice.
>>
>>So who owns the copyright, then?
>
>The following was extracted from the various FORTRAN sources (VAX VMS
>version):
>
>COPYRIGHT 1980, 1990, INFOCOM COMPUTERS AND COMMUNICATIONS, CAMBRIDGE
>MA.
>ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, COMMERCIAL USAGE STRICTLY PROHIBITED
>WRITTEN BY R. M. SUPNIK 

Bob Supnik was a DEC employee (in the PDP-11 group) who ported the game
>from MDL to (PDP-11) DEC FORTRAN.
Original versions on the DECUS tapes credit the port to "a somewhat
paranoid DEC engineer who prefers to remain anonymous".  His actual
identity, although not a very closely held secret, was not widely
published for many years.  I happened to know because I knew the
engineer who built the MDL versions on the DECSystem-10.
-- 
John Francis  jfrancis@sgi.com       Silicon Graphics, Inc.
(650)933-8295                        2011 N. Shoreline Blvd. MS 43U-991
(650)933-4692 (Fax)                  Mountain View, CA   94043-1389
Unsolicited electronic mail will be subject to a $100 handling fee.


From obrian@ucsu.Colorado.EDU Fri Apr  3 16:47:04 MET DST 1998
Article: 36956 of rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: Paul O'Brian <obrian@ucsu.Colorado.EDU>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction,rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Competition
Date: Thu, 2 Apr 1998 13:00:47 -0700
Organization: University of Colorado at Boulder
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Hi Steve --

Thanks for the thoughtful, careful post on the competition. I'm not going
to respond to all of your points, but I'm sure there will be a number of
responses, and between us we should more or less cover the field.

First, though, a few words on the purpose of the competition: As I
remember it, when people first started tossing around the idea of having a
competition, the intent was to encourage the creation of more quality
pieces of IF. Shortly thereafter, it was agreed upon that short games
would be the best format for such a competition, since they would be
easier to play through and judge in a group. Now, whether that should
still be the goal of the competition may be in question, but there is no
doubt in my mind that the 3 competitions so far have been *resounding*
successes in encouraging the creation of more pieces of more quality IF.

In fact, the first competition was such a success that Activision grabbed
the top 3 games in both categories (back then the competition had only an
Inform division and a TADS division), paid the authors, and published the
games in their latest re-bundling of Infocom classics. This, among other
factors, contributed to an explosion of quantity in the next competition,
which saw something like 25 games entered (the first competition had 11, I
think? Will someone correct my facts if I'm wrong here?). Around this
time, it was recognized that the competition was getting *so* much
attention that in fact longer works were now being slighted, whereas
before the long games got all the attention because they were (pardon the
pun) the only game in town. Thus the XYZZY awards were born. This award
functions more like an Academy Award, judging all the games that come out
in a particular year based upon certain specific categories. As a result,
Andrew Plotkin's So Far (one of the most hailed games of 1996) won a
proper "Best Game of the Year" award, and thus escaped any danger of being
eclipsed by the competition.

The 3rd annual IF competition (with 35 entrants) was just held, as were
the 2nd annual XYZZY awards -- obviously these are both rather new
institutions, and still evolving. However, as I see it they serve
complementary purposes: the competition still spurs the production of
great new short IF, perhaps more successfully than anyone (certainly I)
expected. The XYZZY awards pay tribute to all the best IF, long and short,
that has come out during the year, bringing important attention to
praiseworthy games that may not have been in the competition. In fact, as
it turns out, the "Best Game" winners from both XYZZY awards so far were
*not* competition entries. 

These are things to bear in mind as we think about what (if any) changes
are necessary to keep both institutions positive and beneficial for IF and
the IF community in general.

Now, on to a couple of your points:

On Thu, 2 Apr 1998, Steve Young wrote:

> I have played adventures since the early 80's and over the years have
> played many of them, and recently have started playing games made for the
> new programming languages like Inform. Although I was interested in the
> competition I was not a judge in it, and with the present rules in place I
> have no intention of being one in the future.

You know, that's OK. We're such a small community that sometimes it feels
like it's incumbent upon all of us to be judging, writing, testing, or
reviewing something all the time "for the good of the cause." But to my
mind there's absolutely *nothing* wrong with letting others do all that
stuff and just having fun as a player. There is a great deal of quality IF
out on the archive, and as a player you can just let XYZZY awards,
competition results, and reviews guide you to what you're most interested
in playing. We don't *all* have to be judges or authors.

> I will give my reasons for this:
> [5 good points about how he likes to experience IF]

This is further evidence that being a competition judge is not for you.
Moreover, I hear a little bit of an implication that you prefer longer
games to shorter ones. Nothing wrong with this -- there are plenty of
great long games out there to enjoy, and if you don't like the time
restriction placed on competition judges, then you have the luxury of
playing the games without voting on them, or (better yet) waiting until
the competition is over and then playing the ones you're most interested
in based on reviews and ratings.

Now, that being said, you might ask why not change the competition rules
so that they're more amenable to judges with your particular turn of mind?
Here are the reasons I can think of: 

1) Several people have mentioned that one of the prime things about the
competition that helped them create their masterwork was the sense of a
looming deadline. I would argue that without that deadline, some of the
very good competition games would never have been produced, or would have
endured an unnecessary delay. (Of course, there are also those games that
get released in buggy, unproofed form because of the deadline, but in my
opinion that's caused by an author's poor judgement rather than the
deadline itself). However, one by-product of a deadline is that a lot of
games get released at once, which leads me to my next point.

2) Because most of the people who judge the competition are regular
readers of the IF newsgroups, it is generally felt (though with some
dissent) that discussion of competition games is best left off the
newsgroup until the voting deadline has passed. Unfortunately, this leads
some feedback-hungry authors starving for a long period of time. If we
keep the deadline, but elongate the judging period too far, this situation
becomes a bigger and bigger problem. 

3) Consequently, we come back to the old solutions: Authors, submit short
games. Judges, play as many games as you can. To accomplish these goals,
I think it's helpful to have some arbitrary period of time in mind, a
maximum limit that a judge will play your game before voting on it. This
helps an author set the game at the proper length, and helps the judge
establish a basic metric of fairness. I think that 2 hours is just about
right -- long enough for the average player to complete the average
short game (yes, this estimation is based on no scientific evidence
whatsoever... the perils of arbitrariness), but not so long that it's
impossible to play more than a few games during the judging period. Now,
lately it's come to pass that the competition's overwhelming success has
made it difficult for judges to play all the games. But I think it's
appropriate to remember that judges are not *required* to play all the
games -- only as many as they can.

4) This is a point that always comes up in these discussions, so I'll just
say it and get it out of the way: This whole shebang is a volunteer effort
>from top to bottom. With the exception of the lucky 1995 winners, no one
has gotten paid for their participation in the competition. Consequently,
simple rules are best, and we have seen from experience that both authors
and judges will bend or break even these. So, ultimately, if you want to
be a judge, but want to play the games your way and only finish as many as
you finish by your methods... go ahead! What are we going to do, fire you?

As to your suggestions... I think they come fairly close to describing the
already extant structure of the XYZZY awards. I'm of the mind that
changing the competition to more closely resemble the XYZZYs would erode
the complementarity that makes each so valuable to the other. 

Again, this is meant as discussion, not flamage. Thanks for your
contribution to the ongoing dialogue.

Paul O'Brian
obrian@colorado.edu
http://ucsu.colorado.edu/~obrian






From obrian@ucsu.Colorado.EDU Fri Apr  3 16:51:08 MET DST 1998
Article: 36956 of rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: Paul O'Brian <obrian@ucsu.Colorado.EDU>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction,rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Competition
Date: Thu, 2 Apr 1998 13:00:47 -0700
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Hi Steve --

Thanks for the thoughtful, careful post on the competition. I'm not going
to respond to all of your points, but I'm sure there will be a number of
responses, and between us we should more or less cover the field.

First, though, a few words on the purpose of the competition: As I
remember it, when people first started tossing around the idea of having a
competition, the intent was to encourage the creation of more quality
pieces of IF. Shortly thereafter, it was agreed upon that short games
would be the best format for such a competition, since they would be
easier to play through and judge in a group. Now, whether that should
still be the goal of the competition may be in question, but there is no
doubt in my mind that the 3 competitions so far have been *resounding*
successes in encouraging the creation of more pieces of more quality IF.

In fact, the first competition was such a success that Activision grabbed
the top 3 games in both categories (back then the competition had only an
Inform division and a TADS division), paid the authors, and published the
games in their latest re-bundling of Infocom classics. This, among other
factors, contributed to an explosion of quantity in the next competition,
which saw something like 25 games entered (the first competition had 11, I
think? Will someone correct my facts if I'm wrong here?). Around this
time, it was recognized that the competition was getting *so* much
attention that in fact longer works were now being slighted, whereas
before the long games got all the attention because they were (pardon the
pun) the only game in town. Thus the XYZZY awards were born. This award
functions more like an Academy Award, judging all the games that come out
in a particular year based upon certain specific categories. As a result,
Andrew Plotkin's So Far (one of the most hailed games of 1996) won a
proper "Best Game of the Year" award, and thus escaped any danger of being
eclipsed by the competition.

The 3rd annual IF competition (with 35 entrants) was just held, as were
the 2nd annual XYZZY awards -- obviously these are both rather new
institutions, and still evolving. However, as I see it they serve
complementary purposes: the competition still spurs the production of
great new short IF, perhaps more successfully than anyone (certainly I)
expected. The XYZZY awards pay tribute to all the best IF, long and short,
that has come out during the year, bringing important attention to
praiseworthy games that may not have been in the competition. In fact, as
it turns out, the "Best Game" winners from both XYZZY awards so far were
*not* competition entries. 

These are things to bear in mind as we think about what (if any) changes
are necessary to keep both institutions positive and beneficial for IF and
the IF community in general.

Now, on to a couple of your points:

On Thu, 2 Apr 1998, Steve Young wrote:

> I have played adventures since the early 80's and over the years have
> played many of them, and recently have started playing games made for the
> new programming languages like Inform. Although I was interested in the
> competition I was not a judge in it, and with the present rules in place I
> have no intention of being one in the future.

You know, that's OK. We're such a small community that sometimes it feels
like it's incumbent upon all of us to be judging, writing, testing, or
reviewing something all the time "for the good of the cause." But to my
mind there's absolutely *nothing* wrong with letting others do all that
stuff and just having fun as a player. There is a great deal of quality IF
out on the archive, and as a player you can just let XYZZY awards,
competition results, and reviews guide you to what you're most interested
in playing. We don't *all* have to be judges or authors.

> I will give my reasons for this:
> [5 good points about how he likes to experience IF]

This is further evidence that being a competition judge is not for you.
Moreover, I hear a little bit of an implication that you prefer longer
games to shorter ones. Nothing wrong with this -- there are plenty of
great long games out there to enjoy, and if you don't like the time
restriction placed on competition judges, then you have the luxury of
playing the games without voting on them, or (better yet) waiting until
the competition is over and then playing the ones you're most interested
in based on reviews and ratings.

Now, that being said, you might ask why not change the competition rules
so that they're more amenable to judges with your particular turn of mind?
Here are the reasons I can think of: 

1) Several people have mentioned that one of the prime things about the
competition that helped them create their masterwork was the sense of a
looming deadline. I would argue that without that deadline, some of the
very good competition games would never have been produced, or would have
endured an unnecessary delay. (Of course, there are also those games that
get released in buggy, unproofed form because of the deadline, but in my
opinion that's caused by an author's poor judgement rather than the
deadline itself). However, one by-product of a deadline is that a lot of
games get released at once, which leads me to my next point.

2) Because most of the people who judge the competition are regular
readers of the IF newsgroups, it is generally felt (though with some
dissent) that discussion of competition games is best left off the
newsgroup until the voting deadline has passed. Unfortunately, this leads
some feedback-hungry authors starving for a long period of time. If we
keep the deadline, but elongate the judging period too far, this situation
becomes a bigger and bigger problem. 

3) Consequently, we come back to the old solutions: Authors, submit short
games. Judges, play as many games as you can. To accomplish these goals,
I think it's helpful to have some arbitrary period of time in mind, a
maximum limit that a judge will play your game before voting on it. This
helps an author set the game at the proper length, and helps the judge
establish a basic metric of fairness. I think that 2 hours is just about
right -- long enough for the average player to complete the average
short game (yes, this estimation is based on no scientific evidence
whatsoever... the perils of arbitrariness), but not so long that it's
impossible to play more than a few games during the judging period. Now,
lately it's come to pass that the competition's overwhelming success has
made it difficult for judges to play all the games. But I think it's
appropriate to remember that judges are not *required* to play all the
games -- only as many as they can.

4) This is a point that always comes up in these discussions, so I'll just
say it and get it out of the way: This whole shebang is a volunteer effort
>from top to bottom. With the exception of the lucky 1995 winners, no one
has gotten paid for their participation in the competition. Consequently,
simple rules are best, and we have seen from experience that both authors
and judges will bend or break even these. So, ultimately, if you want to
be a judge, but want to play the games your way and only finish as many as
you finish by your methods... go ahead! What are we going to do, fire you?

As to your suggestions... I think they come fairly close to describing the
already extant structure of the XYZZY awards. I'm of the mind that
changing the competition to more closely resemble the XYZZYs would erode
the complementarity that makes each so valuable to the other. 

Again, this is meant as discussion, not flamage. Thanks for your
contribution to the ongoing dialogue.

Paul O'Brian
obrian@colorado.edu
http://ucsu.colorado.edu/~obrian






From dns361@merle.acns.nwu.edu Sat Apr  4 15:34:00 MET DST 1998
Article: 37014 of rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: Second April <dns361@merle.acns.nwu.edu>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction,rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Competition
Date: Fri, 3 Apr 1998 18:29:01 -0600
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Paul had a very good reply, so just a few things:

> I will give my reasons for this:
> 1. Whenever I play an adventure I always try to complete it, and although I
> might have 4-5 on the go at any time, I will not usually start another
> until one of them has been finished. What I am saying is that to do the
> competition properly I would have probably dozens of unfinished games all
> over the place. You may say that by using the walkthroughs and help
> available this would not be a problem, but I disagree, and this brings me
> to my second point.

Understandable, but remember that you're only supposed to rate the games
after 2 hours--there's nothing preventing you from going on and finishing
any given game before you start a new one, and if you don't get to all the
games because of that, well, that's all right. Many judges don't get to
all the games. Help is provided for those who want to be sure of finishing
(or want to come close) within two hours, but no one is required to use
it. In fact, when I played Tempest, I gave it my rating after 2 hours but
spent several days after that trying to get through it; granted, it would
have been a lot quicker if help had been provided, but because I didn't
want to have a backlog, I stopped judging until I was done with that game.

> 4. Why max. 2 hours. Many games evolve the longer you get into them, and
> this time limit seem to be biased against bigger games. Even though I class
> myself as an experienced adventurer, I would probably still take a day or
> two too play even a relatively easy game. Mainly, because I like to find
> out
> and explore everything that is in it.

Maybe, though the competition winners have all been fairly elaborate games
that took close to two hours, if not more, to get through. But as Paul
said, there's recognition elsewhere for full-length games like So Far.

> 5. Why have the games got to be played over such a limited time period,
> particurlarly around christmas time when many people have other things to
> think of besides games. I hate limits like this. If I'm going to do
> anything I like to make a good job of
> it.

I think there's value in separating out the competitions every year, as in
setting a small time period for playing and judging, then discussion, in
that authors who are learning IF get pointers and ideas for their next
games in the next year's competition. If playing went on for most of the
year, and discussion were still restricted (which seems only fair), no one
would be able to discuss anything until the eve of the next competition,
which would be too late to give the authors useful feedback. Yes, players
can send private e-mail to the authors, but in practice they rarely do,
I'm afraid, and much of the feedback comes from discussion and reviews
posted after the end of the competition. Plus, under the current format,
the few months when people are playing the competition games are sort of
quiet otherwise; very few other games are released because it's sort of
assumed that people are busy with the competition. That, to my mind, is
good; it encourages players to take the competition seriously and give it
all their attention. I understand it can be a pain for those who decide
not to judge and want to wait for reviews and discussion, but, hey, GMD's
full of good stuff; try something older.

Indicating how many times a game has been judged is okay in theory,
but...well, I know I adjusted my ratings later on because I realized my
scale wasn't consistent (as in, a whole passel of substandard games might
lead me to rate an average one high simply because I was glad to have
logic and sense back), and therefore I wouldn't submit my ratings until
I'd rated all the games. I dunno if that's a common approach, but I'm not
sure--unless the competition REALLY grows--that people are going to want
to play games and then carve their ratings in stone on a Web site.

> I like the principle of what you are trying to do here, but remember this
> is not the Oscars. Computer games, particurlarly adventures, are not like
> Films and Music. You get to see the whole Film in a set period of time,
> usually around 1hour 30min, which enables you to find out all the
> information about that film, but an adventure only gives up most of its
> secrets when completed and even then you might not find everything about
> it.

Good point. But part of what any good work of IF should do is intrigue the
player from the beginning, and Easter eggs and multiple solutions and
such, while enhancing enjoyment, shouldn't be the best thing about a game.
Certainly, the real dimensions of some games aren't apparent after the
first few hours of play--Losing Your Grip, for example--but those are
games that don't fit in the competition. What the competition has done is
encourage smaller games that can be finished in a few sittings, and it's
produced some terrific examples--Delusions, Change in the Weather, Sunset
Over Savannah, Babel, Edifice, and plenty more. And as a law student
without the time to spend on So Far or Jigsaw, I applaud that trend; if
everything produced was Infocom-length, I wouldn't play much. Then again,
maybe I'd write more, but that's another story.

Anyway, thanks for your contributions. I think that perhaps judging the
competition might not be for you, but then again it might be--just don't
take the 2-hour limit as a limit on how long you can actually play the
game.

Duncan Stevens
d-stevens@nwu.edu
312-654-0280

The room is as you left it; your last touch--
A thoughtless pressure, knowing not itself
As saintly--hallows now each simple thing,
Hallows and glorifies, and glows between
The dust's gray fingers, like a shielded light.

--from "Interim," by Edna St. Vincent Millay




From dicks@math.ohio-state.NO.SPAM.edu Sat Apr  4 23:33:14 MET DST 1998
Article: 37037 of rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: dicks@math.ohio-state.NO.SPAM.edu (Ethan Dicks)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Dungeon AKA Mainframe Zork
Date: 3 Apr 1998 22:26:47 GMT
Organization: Department of Mathematics, The Ohio State University
Lines: 43
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References: <6fsgqm$2vu$1@nnrp1.dejanews.com> <6fu5mp$blu$1@mathserv.mps.ohio-state.edu> <6fv9ch$gu7$1@nnrp1.dejanews.com> <6g0ssf$gqe$1@cnn.Princeton.EDU>
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Xref: news.lth.se rec.arts.int-fiction:37037

In article <6g0ssf$gqe$1@cnn.Princeton.EDU>,
Adam J. Thornton <adam@princeton.edu> wrote:
>In article <6fv9ch$gu7$1@nnrp1.dejanews.com>,  <weird_beard@prodigy.net> wrote:
>>> I am another one of those three people...
>>Good luck. If you finish by Frobuary '99, it'll be in time for the 20th
>>anniversary of the last addition to the mainframe.

I expect to be done long before that, but you know how side-projects go...

>But make sure the palantiri puzzle and the chute puzzle (red palantir!) are
>in it!
>
>Adam

But of course.  That was, in fact, one of the motivating factors.  I noticed
that those puzzles (and the brochure!) were missing from Dungeon 2.7 (and
it's C descendents).  It wasn't until after I had begun that I found out
that FORTRAN dungeon 3.2 and later had those in there, but I was too far
along to stop.

I've been wrestling with the differentness of concepts of scope, today. In
the old days, we didn't have scope when writing adventures on PETs and
TRASH-80's and the like.  An item was in your hand, or in the room or
anywhere but the room '0', and that was about the end of it.  Now that
I understand the work that Graham has put into Inform to implement scope, I'm
glad it exists, but the old code was visibly coerced into achieving similar
results.  "Find" has been the trickiest verb to implement because the
player routinely wants to find things that are not, as such, in scope.  You
can type "FIND HOUSE" and get one of four reponses, depending on if you
are next to the house, in the woods, in the clearing or far away.  The
Implementors wrote a couple of tricks to clear the hurdles, but, alas, those
tricks are not portable across languages.  I have had to resort to a few
new tricks to implement "find" without adding my own convolutions in the
Object methods.

At least now I have a raft that sails.  For my next trick: water!

-ethan
-- 
Ethan Dicks                                      http://www.infinet.com/~erd/
(dicks) at (math) . (ohio-state) . (edu)       sellto: postmaster@[127.0.0.1]

harvestbot fodder: president@whitehouse.gov fccinfo@fcc.gov root@[127.0.0.1]


From jfrancis@dungeon.engr.sgi.com Sun Apr  5 12:43:32 MET DST 1998
Article: 37048 of rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: jfrancis@dungeon.engr.sgi.com (John Francis)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Dungeon AKA Mainframe Zork
Date: 4 Apr 1998 01:40:44 GMT
Organization: Silicon Graphics, Inc., Mountain View, CA
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Xref: news.lth.se rec.arts.int-fiction:37048

In article <6g3qck$ud8$1@nnrp1.dejanews.com>,  <weird_beard@prodigy.net> wrote:
>In article <6g0ssf$gqe$1@cnn.Princeton.EDU>,
>  adam@princeton.edu (Adam J. Thornton) wrote:
>>
>> In article <6fv9ch$gu7$1@nnrp1.dejanews.com>,  <weird_beard@prodigy.net> wrote:
>> >> I am another one of those three people.  My port is progressing nicely.
>> >> Recently, I exceeded the default number of actions and had to up the
>> >> $MAX_ACTIONS parameter, and just this week had to up $MAX_VERBS.  The
>> >> map is done as are many puzzles.  Combat was a bear to implement; for
>> >> as little bearing as fighting has on the whole game, the code to handle
>> >> it is amazingly sophisticated.  I am just starting to work on vehicles.
>>
>> >> seemingly unrelated objects, the one-liners and throwaways.  A couple
>> >> of small examples: the pointy stick is a viable weapon, and the "machine"
>> >> can be referred to as a PDP-10.
>>
>> >Good luck. If you finish by Frobuary '99, it'll be in time for the 20th
>> >anniversary of the last addition to the mainframe.
>>
>> But make sure the palantiri puzzle and the chute puzzle (red palantir!) are
>> in it!
>>
>> Adam
>
>The palantiri were only used in Zork 2, which Activision still sells
>commercialy.

Nope - mainframe Zork *did* contain the palantiri, and the last lousy point.
That version may not have been widely available, but I played it on the
DECSystem-2020 in the Federal Systems Group at DEC - the machine that Infocom
rented time on to do some of the initial porting.
I've still got the printout of a walkthrough.
-- 
John Francis  jfrancis@sgi.com       Silicon Graphics, Inc.
(650)933-8295                        2011 N. Shoreline Blvd. MS 43U-991
(650)933-4692 (Fax)                  Mountain View, CA   94043-1389
Unsolicited electronic mail will be subject to a $100 handling fee.


From weird_beard@prodigy.net Sun Apr  5 12:43:54 MET DST 1998
Article: 37061 of rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: weird_beard@prodigy.net
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Dungeon AKA Mainframe Zork
Date: Sat, 04 Apr 1998 11:45:15 -0600
Organization: Deja News - The Leader in Internet Discussion
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In article <tvysonuo3fi.fsf@cn1.connectnet.com>,
  Darin Johnson <darin@usa.net.removethis> wrote:
>
> weird_beard@prodigy.net writes:
>
> > Good luck. If you finish by Frobuary '99, it'll be in time for the 20th
> > anniversary of the last addition to the mainframe.
>
> What anniversary is this?  Dungeon itself has been evolving continuously.
>


The FORTRAN version is not the original version. The original version was
finished in Frobuary 1979. The FORTRAN version is derived from stolen source
code of the original game, but the authors decided not to do anything since
they were impressed that a) that anyone could find their source and that b)
it could be ported into FORTRAN, which they considered an inferior language.

This information is take from 1985 editions of The New Zork Times (which
changed its name to The Status Line after be threatened legally by a
lesser-known newspaper).

-----== Posted via Deja News, The Leader in Internet Discussion ==-----
http://www.dejanews.com/   Now offering spam-free web-based newsreading


From gkw@pobox.com Mon Apr  6 22:40:37 MET DST 1998
Article: 37100 of rec.arts.int-fiction
Path: news.lth.se!newsfeed.sunet.se!news99.sunet.se!news01.sunet.se!newscore.univie.ac.at!news-spur1.maxwell.syr.edu!news.maxwell.syr.edu!newsfeed1.earthlink.net!nntp.earthlink.net!usenet
From: gkw@pobox.com (Gerry Kevin Wilson)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: [ANNOUNCE] Avalon to release July 6th.
Date: 6 Apr 1998 08:18:19 GMT
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Hi folks,

	I'm close enough to finishing that I feel I can safely post a release
date now for Avalon.  July 6th of this year.  It was originally going to be July
4th, but then someone mentioned to me that the Church of the Subgenius
have stated the world will end on July 5th, and considering the jokes that
have floated around about Avalon's release signifying the end of the world,
I figured, why should the Subgenius be the only ones to get to play it?

So, either we all die and nobody gets to play Avalon, or we live, the
Subgenii push X-day back, and everyone gets a shot at playing the
game. :)  Or, as Dan Shiovitz put it:

  "Those who have Ruptured will be on the X-ist Pleasure Saucers in an orgy
of carnal delight ... but they won't be playing Avalon."

----
G. Kevin Wilson: Freelance Writer and Game Designer.  Resumes on demand.



From edharel@romulus.rutgers.edu Tue Apr  7 14:40:17 MET DST 1998
Article: 36916 of rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: edharel@romulus.rutgers.edu (Edan Harel)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: TextFire? (was Re: Commercial possibilties with IF
Date: 1 Apr 1998 18:34:02 -0500
Organization: Rutgers University LCSR
Lines: 45
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<quote on>

Thank you for downloading the TextFire 12-PACK, the first in a series of
annual demonstration packages by TextFire, Inc.  This package should include
readme.txt (this file) and the following game demos, arranged by
programming language.

<snip list of inform, tads and hugo games>

*******************UPCOMING EVENTS********************

To commemorate the relase of the 12-PACK and the successful incorporation
of TextFire, we are proud to announce a series of upcoming events and
happenings.

--the June 30th unveiling of http://www.textfire.com, an on-line store that
offers game gear, free giveaways, the tip-of-the-week, and registration of
TextFire products.

--a booth at the first annual Festival of Interactive Fiction in Piedmont,
California. Dates and times TBA.

<snip>

Just in!  The QVC shopping network and the Association of Independent
Bookstores have agreed to distribute TextFire products.  Watch for our games
in stores and televisions near you!

<quote off>

You know, I just might have fallen for this, had there been fewer games of
larger size. (though I hadn't an interpreter to check them out)  I mean, a 
.z8 file thats 55k?  Come on.  (And what company would use three seperate 
creation systems?).  Still, the first time I read it I think I actually 
got down to the booth at the festival when I knew I was being suckered 
(and the fact that there was a thread about commercial IF made it sting all 
the more :)).  So, how many other people got (partly) fooled?

Any way, good joke.

Edan Harel
-- 
Edan Harel	       edharel@remus.rutgers.edu	     McCormick 6201
Research Assistant     edharel@eden.rutgers.edu	    Math and Comp Sci Major
USACS Member	       					Math Club Secretary


From trikiw@geocities.com Tue Apr  7 14:42:12 MET DST 1998
Article: 37105 of rec.arts.int-fiction
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Justin Brent Green wrote:
> Just wanted to mention there's an article on interactive fiction in the
> New York Times today (4/6).

Here's the article (from www.nytimes.com). I hope it's okay to post it.
:)

 


April 6, 1998

CONNECTIONS / By EDWARD ROTHSTEIN 

In a Text Game, No Object Is Superfluous

XYZZY. That may look like a desperate attempt to finagle a
great score in Scrabble. But try entering the nonsense word in
an Internet search engine and see how seriously thousands of sites
take it. 

One home page displays a license plate "XYZZY." A Web-zine is
called XYZZY News. The word has even inspired its own site, a
XYZZY page. 

But the unexpected, the quirky
and the whimsical are part of the
point of XYZZY. According to
Eric S. Raymond's "New Hacker's
Dictionary," a book plundered all
over the World Wide Web, the
word XYZZY -- whose
pronunciations include "zizzy" and
"ik-zizzy" -- came into its own in a 1970s mainframe computer game
known as Advent, short for Adventure. 

That game, which can be downloaded by following links on the
XYZZY page, was inspired by an actual network of underground
caves in Kentucky. Will Crowther, a programmer, devised textual
descriptions for many of its "rooms" and gave the impression that the
user could move from place to place in the cave by typing in directions
("east," for example, or "up") and reading the new descriptions. 

A colleague, Don Woods, then filled that textual cave with odd
objects and magical puzzles; the player could pick up objects, use
them in other places and disclose new regions of the cave. "XYZZY"
was a spell that could instantly transport a spelunking nerd from one
part of the cave to another. 

This imagined universe soon inspired a slew of textual adventure
games, notably Zork, which was commercially released by Infocom, a
company later purchased by Activision, which has recently begun
rereleasing some of those early text games in their pristine primitive
form. 

In Zork the player came across wizards and trolls, had to figure out
how to keep a lantern lighted, how to prevent objects from being
stolen, and how to operate odd-looking contraptions -- all by using
simple textual commands. 

Many of these early games were whimsical fantasies. Others were
murder mysteries, like Witness, in which the player was a hard-boiled
detective reacting to typed descriptions and dialogue. 

But by the mid-'80s, graphics and windows were beginning to thrive
on the Macintosh, color monitors began to proliferate, and
video-game systems started taking off. What power could XYZZY
have when a mouse click could send a player careering from one
room to another without odd magic spells, and where sword battles
didn't require typing commands on a keyboard? 

Yet somehow, in a world beneath the thriving universe of video-game
commerce, these text adventures thrived. In fact, they are still being
written and are far different from the more precious experiments in
participatory fiction that ask the reader to use hyperlinks to create
variations in the plot. 

Now called interactive fiction, these puzzle novels inhabit an intricate
network on the Internet, an almost cavelike series of linked sites
where the metaphor is taken seriously. 

There are Usenet newsgroups for players and creators. Hundreds of
new games are available for downloading at the encyclopedic archive,
along with several in Java form for easy play right off Web sites. There
is even an annual competition for the best new interactive fiction
games. 

There are advocates who seek ways to use interactive fiction in the
classroom. There are sites that include reviews of nearly every major
game written. There are also links of links and two zines devoted to
IF: XYZZY News and SPAG (the Society for the Preservation of
Adventure Games). 

The amount of energy expended in filling those sites is
extraordinary. New programming languages are developed; tens
of thousands of words are written as guides for creators. And while
the numbers of advocates are far from gargantuan -- some sites get
just a few hundred hits a month, others a few thousand -- the devotion
is palpable, all apparently with no profit sought. 

Why? To what end? The awkwardness of the form is daunting. In the
words of one of the best current practitioners, Graham Nelson, "an
adventure game is a crossword at war with a narrative." It isn't really
a
novel, because the plot is broken up with odd demands that the player
pick up keys or drink water or turn a dial to get some other
mechanized piece of the textual puzzle to fall into place. 

But read Nelson's own encomium, and one gets some idea of what is
being sought. Nelson is a British mathematician who played Advent as
a child in the 1970s, created his own text-game programming
language, and in the last few years has written two acclaimed games --
Curses and Jigsaw -- each freely available on the Internet. 

He is also one of the more ornately literate creators of interactive
fiction. His guide begins with an invocation of Tom Stoppard. The
epigram for Jigsaw is from T.S. Eliot. And any player who manages to
solve its problems will find untranslated Latin mottos and puzzles
involving Proust and Lenin. 

Nelson seems to love the intricate machinery of a text game, the way
no object is superfluous to its unfolding and nothing required is
missing. It is a mathematician's construction, a tightly knit universe
of
text and symbol. 

But Nelson also has high ambitions -- that in this weird, stilted form
of
prose broken by puzzle, there may also be a sense of something more
powerful and as yet rarely realized in interactive fiction, the powers
of
language to magically transport or transform. Something like XYZZY.


From adam@princeton.edu Mon Apr 13 23:05:32 MET DST 1998
Article: 37298 of rec.arts.int-fiction
From: adam@princeton.edu (Adam J. Thornton)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction,rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Textfire proved or disproved
Date: 12 Apr 1998 17:38:46 GMT
Organization: Princeton University
Lines: 15
Message-ID: <6gqu76$gj9$1@cnn.Princeton.EDU>
References: <6gqnr5$shv$1@ha2.rdc1.nj.home.com>
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Xref: news.lth.se rec.arts.int-fiction:37298 rec.games.int-fiction:32521

In article <6gqnr5$shv$1@ha2.rdc1.nj.home.com>, Heaven <Heaven@home.com> wrote:
>To commemorate the relase of the 12-PACK and the successful incorporation
>of TextFire, we are proud to announce a series of upcoming events and
>happenings.
>Textfire says they are incorporated. So then there should be a record of
>that. No record-- No Textfire. Anyone willing to go that far to find out the
>truth?

Hey, now there's an idea.

I'd chip in $5 or so.

Adam
-- 
adam@princeton.edu    Cynical and drunk and boring someone in some dark cafe


From jfrancis@dungeon.engr.sgi.com Tue Apr 14 01:05:40 MET DST 1998
Article: 37261 of rec.arts.int-fiction
From: jfrancis@dungeon.engr.sgi.com (John Francis)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Palantir?? (WAS: Re: Dungeon AKA Mainframe Zork)
Date: 10 Apr 1998 21:04:31 GMT
Organization: Silicon Graphics, Inc., Mountain View, CA
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Xref: news.lth.se rec.arts.int-fiction:37261

In article <6glt23$rcn@news.auaracom.net>,
Chris Renshaw <wrenshaw@mail.auracom.com> wrote:
>Palmer Davis <palmer@secant.com> wrote:
>
>>B) IIRC, nowhere in the text are they actually called "palantiri";
>>the parser just happens to accept "palantir" as a synonym for
>>"crystal ball".
>
>Well, IMHO, "palantiri" is an acceptable plural for "palantir"

True, but irrelevant.  The game never produces the words "palantir"
or "palantiri" as output.  All descriptions are couched in other
words.  This is what was meant by saying that nowhere in the text
are they actually called "palantiri".

If the *player* types in the word "palantir", the game will accept
this as a synonym for "crystal ball", but it will still continue
to refer to "crystal balls", not "palantiri".

This matches my recollection;  the first time I realised that the
word PALANTIR could be used to refer to the balls was when I took
a look at the source.

One final nitpick:  The Zork trilogy wouldn't be able to tell the
difference between "palantir" and "palantiri", anyway.
-- 
John Francis  jfrancis@sgi.com       Silicon Graphics, Inc.
(650)933-8295                        2011 N. Shoreline Blvd. MS 43U-991
(650)933-4692 (Fax)                  Mountain View, CA   94043-1389
Unsolicited electronic mail will be subject to a $100 handling fee.


From erkyrath@netcom.com Tue Apr 14 11:02:20 MET DST 1998
Article: 37335 of rec.arts.int-fiction
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Path: news.lth.se!newsfeed.sunet.se!news99.sunet.se!news01.sunet.se!masternews.telia.net!news-nyc.telia.net!nntp.abs.net!howland.erols.net!ix.netcom.com!erkyrath
From: erkyrath@netcom.com (Andrew Plotkin)
Subject: Re: Status Line Weirdness
Message-ID: <erkyrathErC6CM.4z7@netcom.com>
Organization: Netcom On-Line Services
X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.2 PL2]
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Joe Mason (jcmason@undergrad.math.uwaterloo.ca) wrote:
> >What is the historical reason behind the way the status line works in
> >Version 5 games in the Inform libraries?
> >
> >If ((0->1)&2 == 0) then you get the normal score/turns display.  When this
> >is not true, you get time rather than score/turns.  
> >
> >What is stored in 0->1 ?  And why, on Brian Scattergood's Psion
> >interpreter, does changing fonts trigger this change?

> 0->x refers to the header bytes which are used to store information about the
> environment of the game. [...]
> 0->1 is a bitmask containing
> various flag bits.  (0->1)&2 returns the state of the second bit, which tells
> the interpreter whether to display time or score/turns. (I believe this is a
> holdover from Version 3, which had no way to override the Statusline.

Correct, but your phrasing confused me at first. In V3, that second bit
does mean that. In V4 and above, that bit is unused. As Adam noticed, in
V5, the Inform library DrawStatusLine() routine imitates the V3 hardwired
behavior. 

(I'm not sure what would happen if you built a V4 game with the Inform
library. Good thing nobody bothers.)

> Presumably, in Version 5+ using Inform's DrawStatusLine() entry point will make
> the status of this bit irrelevent.)

In V5, it's only the library DrawStatusLine() routine that checks that 
bit at all. If you Replace it, yes, the bit becomes meaningless. 

(Also, it's not an entry point. It's a routine, which you have to 
Replace.) 

Yours in nitpicking... :-)

--Z

-- 

"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the
borogoves..."


From jcompton@typhoon.xnet.com Wed Apr 15 17:34:27 MET DST 1998
Article: 37420 of rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: jcompton@typhoon.xnet.com (Jason Compton)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction,rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Textfire proved or disproved
Followup-To: rec.arts.int-fiction,rec.games.int-fiction
Date: 15 Apr 1998 14:42:26 GMT
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Stacy the Procrastinating (sc467@zebra.columbia.edu) wrote:
: Well, with my somewhat limited academic NEXIS access, I dug through their
: "Company News" databases, and turned up nada.  There's no SEC Registration
: Statement or any other legal-looking filings and no news hits.  

SEC filings aren't the thing to look for since they only apply to publicly
traded companies.  (If TextFire had claimed to be that I really would have
written them off immediately)

Besides which, new public companies don't usually show up as having SEC
filings, you have to wait until they do something first.

Honestly, I'm not sure what you guys are looking for in Lexis/Nexis.  Are
you saying you can find state records of business and corporation
registrations?

-- 
Jason Compton                                jcompton@xnet.com
Editor-in-Chief, Amiga Report Magazine       VP, Legacy Maker Inc.
http://www.cucug.org/ar/                     http://www.xnet.com/~jcompton/
Choose and renounce...                       throwing chains to the floor. 


From espen.aarseth@hf.uib.no Sat Apr 18 16:11:22 MET DST 1998
Article: 37561 of rec.arts.int-fiction
From: espen.aarseth@hf.uib.no (Espen Aarseth)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Book: "Cybertext: Perspectives on Ergodic Literaure"
Date: Sat, 18 Apr 1998 14:02:58 +0200
Organization: University of Bergen
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Xref: news.lth.se rec.arts.int-fiction:37561

In article <6ha1bv$vb9$1@bartlet.df.lth.se>, mol@bartlet.df.lth.se (Magnus
Olsson) wrote:

> In article <espen.aarseth-1804980842310001@129.177.159.50>,
> Espen Aarseth <espen.aarseth@hf.uib.no> wrote:
> >In article <01bd69af$4da51660$190da8c0@andrew.daikin.com.au>, "andreww"
> ><awilliams@daikin.com.au> wrote:
> >> He doesn't even mention Avalon...!
> >
> >I wouldn't be so sure if I were you... 
> >
> >Have you tried reading the book backwards?
> 
> You mean you mention "Nolava"? :-)

"No Lava" is one of my favourite games! (Better known as "One fine day in
Pompeii", for those who haven't played it..)


_____________________________________________________________________
espen aarseth                                          aarseth@uib.no


From espen.aarseth@hf.uib.no Mon Apr 20 10:12:55 MET DST 1998
Article: 37331 of rec.arts.int-fiction
From: espen.aarseth@hf.uib.no (Espen Aarseth)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Book: "Cybertext: Perspectives on Ergodic Literaure"
Date: Mon, 13 Apr 1998 11:37:48 +0200
Organization: University of Bergen
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Xref: news.lth.se rec.arts.int-fiction:37331

Hi all,

It's of course very flattering to receive all this attention from this
group. RAIF has been very valuable to my work, and I hope I have given
somthing back in my book by showing the classic adventure games'
importance to literary and aesthetic theory as underestimated and
theoretically challenging works of art. Let me just comment briefly on
some of the remarks made in this thread.

In article <erkyrathEr61v1.IJ2@netcom.com>, Andrew Plotkin
<erkyrath@netcom.com> wrote:
>
>> In _Cybertext_, Espen Aarseth explores the aesthetics oand textual dynamics
>> of digital literature and its diverse genres, including hypertext fiction,
>> computer games, computer-generated poetry and prose, and collaborative
>> Internet texts such as MUDs. 
>> [...]
>
> Wasn't this one of the many people who showed up on this newsgroup... ah,
> briefly? 

To repeat something I wrote here a few years back, I have been reading
rec.arts.int-fiction regularly since 1989 (way back when David Graves
maintained the FAQ!), and have contributed irregularly up through the
ages. 

> One of those interactions that, shall we say, resolved into a
> point of view non-commuting with the points of view held by many RAIF
> regulars. 

No doubt you are thinking of the "IF - Game or Novel" thread, where you,
as I recall, were one of the "many". Still, it is nice to be remembered.

> I wonder how our little culture will be portrayed.

Live in curiosity no longer:

"There is also an active, noncommercial movement on the Internet that
cultivates the traditional adventure game structure and continues to
create free or shareware adventure games (se the Usenet group
rec.arts.int-fiction and the ftp archive at ftp.gmd.de.). Despite this
creative and vigorous community, however, the chances for a popular
revival of the textual adventure game seem less than promising at this
moment." (_Cybertext_, p.102)


In article <6gjjtr$ic$1@cnn.Princeton.EDU>, adam@princeton.edu (Adam J.
Thornton) wrote:

> I read at least one of Aarseth's papers in a collection of IF/Hypertext
> criticism about a year ago, I think (as I recall, the authors were
> predominantly Scandinavian--I don't have a reference here, although I could
> probably look it up again if I were in the library; dim memory suggest he
> might have edited it?). 

Unless you are thinking of a Norwegian or French anthology, this must have
been _Hyper/Text/Theory_, edited by George Landow (also published by The
Johns Hopkins UP, in 1994). The authors were predominantly American (9 of
11), and mine was the only chapter not focussed mainly on
hypertext/hyperfiction. 

In article <ant1013341cbc4bn@arnod.demon.co.uk>, Julian Arnold
<jools@arnod.demon.co.uk> wrote:

[..]
> Seriously, I'll not be impressed if he didn't refer to the new,
> non-commercial IF, such as So Far, The Legend Lives!, etc. A single
> mention each of Inform, Graham, and rai-f ain't enough.

I finished the manuscript in Dec. 1995, so perhaps I can be forgiven for
not including references to works that was released the same year, or
later? In the Paper World, things take time..

Needless to say, I welcome critical and corrective comments on the book
(http://www.hf.uib.no/cybertext/), and will try to stay out of the
discussion, unless explicitly invited..


_____________________________________________________________________
espen aarseth                                          aarseth@uib.no


From espen.aarseth@hf.uib.no Mon Apr 20 13:10:20 MET DST 1998
Article: 37331 of rec.arts.int-fiction
From: espen.aarseth@hf.uib.no (Espen Aarseth)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Book: "Cybertext: Perspectives on Ergodic Literaure"
Date: Mon, 13 Apr 1998 11:37:48 +0200
Organization: University of Bergen
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Hi all,

It's of course very flattering to receive all this attention from this
group. RAIF has been very valuable to my work, and I hope I have given
somthing back in my book by showing the classic adventure games'
importance to literary and aesthetic theory as underestimated and
theoretically challenging works of art. Let me just comment briefly on
some of the remarks made in this thread.

In article <erkyrathEr61v1.IJ2@netcom.com>, Andrew Plotkin
<erkyrath@netcom.com> wrote:
>
>> In _Cybertext_, Espen Aarseth explores the aesthetics oand textual dynamics
>> of digital literature and its diverse genres, including hypertext fiction,
>> computer games, computer-generated poetry and prose, and collaborative
>> Internet texts such as MUDs. 
>> [...]
>
> Wasn't this one of the many people who showed up on this newsgroup... ah,
> briefly? 

To repeat something I wrote here a few years back, I have been reading
rec.arts.int-fiction regularly since 1989 (way back when David Graves
maintained the FAQ!), and have contributed irregularly up through the
ages. 

> One of those interactions that, shall we say, resolved into a
> point of view non-commuting with the points of view held by many RAIF
> regulars. 

No doubt you are thinking of the "IF - Game or Novel" thread, where you,
as I recall, were one of the "many". Still, it is nice to be remembered.

> I wonder how our little culture will be portrayed.

Live in curiosity no longer:

"There is also an active, noncommercial movement on the Internet that
cultivates the traditional adventure game structure and continues to
create free or shareware adventure games (se the Usenet group
rec.arts.int-fiction and the ftp archive at ftp.gmd.de.). Despite this
creative and vigorous community, however, the chances for a popular
revival of the textual adventure game seem less than promising at this
moment." (_Cybertext_, p.102)


In article <6gjjtr$ic$1@cnn.Princeton.EDU>, adam@princeton.edu (Adam J.
Thornton) wrote:

> I read at least one of Aarseth's papers in a collection of IF/Hypertext
> criticism about a year ago, I think (as I recall, the authors were
> predominantly Scandinavian--I don't have a reference here, although I could
> probably look it up again if I were in the library; dim memory suggest he
> might have edited it?). 

Unless you are thinking of a Norwegian or French anthology, this must have
been _Hyper/Text/Theory_, edited by George Landow (also published by The
Johns Hopkins UP, in 1994). The authors were predominantly American (9 of
11), and mine was the only chapter not focussed mainly on
hypertext/hyperfiction. 

In article <ant1013341cbc4bn@arnod.demon.co.uk>, Julian Arnold
<jools@arnod.demon.co.uk> wrote:

[..]
> Seriously, I'll not be impressed if he didn't refer to the new,
> non-commercial IF, such as So Far, The Legend Lives!, etc. A single
> mention each of Inform, Graham, and rai-f ain't enough.

I finished the manuscript in Dec. 1995, so perhaps I can be forgiven for
not including references to works that was released the same year, or
later? In the Paper World, things take time..

Needless to say, I welcome critical and corrective comments on the book
(http://www.hf.uib.no/cybertext/), and will try to stay out of the
discussion, unless explicitly invited..


_____________________________________________________________________
espen aarseth                                          aarseth@uib.no


From gkw@pobox.com Mon Apr 20 21:05:59 MET DST 1998
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Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Starship Titanic: A First Look
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In article <6h2lcp$130@drn.newsguy.com>
daryl@cogentex.com (Daryl McCullough) wrote:

> My impression is that most people working on noncommercial
> interactive fiction today have decided that natural language
> understanding is beyond the state of the art, and they don't
> even try to put it into their games. Instead, they structure
> the plot so that the interaction between the player and
> nonplayer characters don't need to be very complicated.

	Well, now that I'm actually releasing the thing on July 6th, I
feel like it's okay for me to talk (and yes, hype) Avalon just a bit.  I think
the original poster was just sad because most NPCs don't have much
to say.  A good exception is Edward in Christminster.  I consider him an
excellent NPC.
	As for Avalon, I've banked a large part of the game (and the
code) on NPCs.  There are something like 40 NPCs.  Of those, about half
are heavily coded, with an average of 30 askabout topics.  There are
about 3 NPCs who will follow you around and react to most important
actions you take.  Just for fun, I coded in responses to philosophical
topics like 'god', and 'life'.
	More importantly, these NPCs often change the outcomes of
your actions.  They help protect you against death in many places, and
when multiple NPCs are following you, they will keep up a reasonably
steady stream of conversation with each other.  I'm hoping to show that,
like in a novel or movie, good characters depend on good characterization
and dialogue, not solving the AI problem.  I also hope to show that this
can be done in a game with effort, simply by hardcoding in responses to
a good number of things.  NPCs will never be totally realistic, but players
don't expect them to be, and it can be a great treat for them when the NPCs
exceed their expectations even a little bit.  Just because we haven't got
AI doesn't mean we should give up one of the most potent literary
devices: other characters.
	Hmm, now when did that soapbox appear.  I meant this to just
be a straightforward hype post.  Oh well. :)

---
G. Kevin Wilson: Freelance Writer and Game Designer.  Resumes on demand.



From mol@bartlet.df.lth.se Tue Apr 21 22:13:39 MET DST 1998
Article: 37713 of rec.arts.int-fiction
Path: news.lth.se!not-for-mail
From: mol@bartlet.df.lth.se (Magnus Olsson)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Inform - curious about experienced game coders' thoughts.
Date: 21 Apr 1998 21:07:57 +0200
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In article <Pine.LNX.3.96.980421115849.15139D-100000@adamant.res.wpi.net>,
George Caswell  <timbuktu@wpi.edu> wrote:
>On 21 Apr 1998, Magnus Olsson wrote:
>> An interesting point: in his original article, George writes about
>> "large projects".
>> 
>> My take on this is that there are no large Inform projects.  The
>> scaling properties of OO desing and programming are such that a
>> project doesn't even approach being large unless it employs dozens of
>> programmers and comprises hundreds of thousands of lines of codes.
>> 
>   Right.  But that's assuming you can easily split the project into modules,
>in which case maintenance becomes simpler. A medium sized game will typically
>have lots of modules with very ugly coupling issues because of how everything
>needs to work together

That is an extremely important point. IF games scale differently than
most textbook examples, because you have a tendency of needing special
rules for the interaction of every single object with every other
object in the game. Also, typical IF objects tend to be singletons -
instead of having, say, a "chair" class with hundreds of (almost)
identical instances (as in an "ordinary" simulation program), you
typically get a small number of chairs that are quite different from
each other.

But this is a property of the problem domain. By its very nature, IF
is not just a simulation, but a simulation of a number of individual,
specialized entities with often rather quirky behaviour, all of which
will (in an ideal world) need to interact with every other object in
special ways (the player will sooner or later try out every
conceivable action on every object in the game, using every other
object as a tool).

So I don't really think the fundamental problem here is in the Inform
language, but in the "reality" we're trying to simulate. Don't
misunderstand me: Inform is not the ideal IF language (though none of
the current alternatives is much better), but I don't think that *any*
advance in programming languages will solve this problem, as long as
we stick to the basic paradigm of programming all the objects more or
less "manually".

But let's take another tack. What I've written above refers to the
Inform *language* - basic issues like object orientation,
modularization, and so on.

When it comes to the design of the Inform library, I'm more optimistic
in regard to the possibilities for improvement. As I've said before,
the Inform library simply isn't very OO. It has grown organically from
non-OO beginnings, and it is somewhat lacking in solid foundations
in the form of, for example, a proper OO analysis of the modelling of
actions.

It *does* have such foundations in some cases. It appears that Graham
has done a rather impressive analysis of how to model the notions of
light and visibility, for example: see the discussion in the
Designer's Manual of light sources inside closed but transparent
containers, etc. However, other concepts that are just as complex in
real life are modelled in an ad hoc and hard-to-modify way.

A very promising attempt at an IF library is WorldClass, which,
unfortunately, seems to have been abandonded halfway through. But
WorldClass has a huge potential which is largely missing from the
standard TADS library or from the Inform library. 

I'm aware that these issues are more about extensibility than about
modularity. However, I think that many of the problems you seem to
have experienced could be at least be ameliorated by re-design of the
library. The basic problem: the combinatorial explosion of every
object interacting with every other object will remain, though,
until we can reach such a sophistication of modelling that supplying a
CAD drawing of each object, plus the basic laws of physics, will
suffice to specify all possible interactions :-).

>(and because there's no all-knowing "reality" object to
>deal with the ways objects work together in standardized rules.  -That- would
>be a 'large project' in any system.)

If I understand you correctly, such a design would be rather the
antithesis of OO, wouldn't it? That's not to say that it may not be a
good idea to make at least *some* such rules global (or part of a
global singleton "world object). In fact, Inform's Action routines and
grammar rules fit the description in some asepcts. But it's not very
OO. 

>I think of the average game as a 'large
>project' because, with the ugly coupling issues involved, and the fact that
>the project almost invariably seems to result in a single monolithic block of
>code and text, and that kind of coupling with so many modules always results
>in something hard to manage.  (an O(n!) scaling problem.  Not like your
>average OO program.)

Granted, counting the number of lines or the number of objects is not
a good metric in this case, when we have different scaling laws. So
lets count man-months instead (and yes, I've read "The Mythical
Man-Month"). Which is the most ambitions IF project to date? Let's say
it's "Avalon". Even if Whizzard had been working full time on the
project since he announced it, it would only be six man-years or so.
In a "large" project, we're talking about hundreds or thousands of
man-years.

>> But that's not my point at all. My point is that you shouldn't judge
>> Inform by the standards used to judge, say, a professional C++
>> compiler. 
>> 
>   I think you're the only one who's done that.

Oh, have I, and am I?

OK, I was formulating myself a bit clumsily. I simply wanted to point
out a thing which might otherwise be overlooked. I didn't mean to
imply that you - or anybody else - was applying the wrong standards,
just that there was a risk of doing it.

>By 'large project' I meant a
>large I-F project, or a large personal programming project.  I'm trying to
>figure out how to resolve what I learn in software engineering class with
>Inform and other uses of spare time.  Key word here is 'context'.

Of course. No quarrel there. Would you believe me if I considered
writing something in my eralier post about the meaning of "large"
being very relative?

>   Part of the reason for my post is that, (to restate the issue) it seems to
>me as though, by most Inform coding conventions I've seen

I think it's important to specify just which "coding conventions"
you're talking about here, and in what way they derive from inherent
limitations of the language, or of the Library, or whether they are
just conventions. And we should bear in mind that much of the Inform
code we see is in the nature of quick hacks by amateur programmers.


Finally, to get back to what I perceive your original question to be:

Some limitations of Inform that are obstacles to modularization have
to do with grammar and actions.

Suppose that I want to write code for handling liquids (I do, and I've
done it). I can write a set of classes that form a self-contained
module, with a nice, clearly delineated interface to the rest of the
system. However, while this "module" will have to be included at the
beginning of the program (it is not a true module, since it's not
separately compiled, but for the programmer it acts like one), any
new, liquid-related, grammar productions that I would like to add
(such as "drink", "pour") will have to be included at the end. This
makes the code much mode confusing.

Another problem, which seems to have more to do with the problem
domain than with Inform itself is that Inform verbs are global objects
that are orthogonal to everything else, in the sense that adding a new
verb can mean having to add before routines for that verb to every
object in the game. Perhaps somebody can find a better way to model
verbs, but I'm pessimistic about that.

-- 
Magnus Olsson (mol@df.lth.se, zebulon@pobox.com)
------    http://www.pobox.com/~zebulon   ------


From mkkuhner@evolution.genetics.washington.edu Wed Apr 22 11:55:00 MET DST 1998
Article: 37747 of rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: mkkuhner@evolution.genetics.washington.edu (Mary K. Kuhner)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Are we wasting our time?
Date: 21 Apr 1998 16:55:53 GMT
Organization: University of Washington Genetics
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In article <6hgkh2$3em$1@prometheus.acsu.buffalo.edu>,
Phil Goetz <goetz@cs.buffalo.edu> wrote:

>But if you agree with the statements above about drama vs. narrative,
>it seems that all the advantages narrative has over drama are advantages
>that interactive narrative cannot use.  Presenting a person's thoughts
>doesn't work if it's not the viewpoint character, and if it is the
>viewpoint character, you're forcing opinions on the player.
>Cut scenes and time dilation disorient the player and remove any sense of
>control.  That leaves us with commentary, which in drama can be provided
>by other characters.

Umph.  It seems to me that every single one of your "can't be done"
statements has a stunning counterexample (or three) in the IF
archives.  "Spider and Web" and "Babel" between them cover most of
the bases already, and both have been extremely successful games.

"Presenting a person's thoughts doesn't work if it's not the
viewpoint character" strikes me as particularly odd:  it's a standard
tactic in one form of roleplaying for each player to provide a
certain amount of commentary on their character's thoughts and
feelings for the benefit of the other players, as audience.

This same kind of argument comes up on the roleplaying-theory
newsgroup rec.games.frp.advocacy pretty regularly, and is always
met by a resounding chorus of "It may not work in *your* games,
but it works fine in mine."  (I did a two-session arc in the
middle of a longer campaign where the players were playing both
their usual characters and those characters' magically-corrupted
doubles.  Worked beautifully, more credit to the players than to
me--I hardly had to do anything but sit back and watch.)

Mary Kuhner mkkuhner@genetics.washington.edu


From erkyrath@netcom.com Wed Apr 22 12:19:24 MET DST 1998
Article: 37757 of rec.arts.int-fiction
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
From: erkyrath@netcom.com (Andrew Plotkin)
Subject: Re: Are we wasting our time?
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Lelah Conrad (lac@nu-world.com) wrote:

> (  I think there IS definitely a difference between primarily
> graphical communication and communication in words.   I would even
> guess that different parts of the brain are used for the two
> modalities. IF can be either, so the distinction to me is between
> graphical and textual IF, and not (aritificially) between "dramatic"
> and "narrative" forms of it.)

In Greg Egan's terrific science fiction stories about the Diaspora -- 
civilizations of post-humans living as software, running in silicon 
instead of organic bodies -- he postulates two basic informational senses 
which the well-developed citizen uses to deal with his virtual world. 
They're called "linear" and "gestalt", and the correspond roughly to 
hearing and sight. Linear information comes in a sequence, and you 
concentrate on one sequence at a time; gestalt information comes in a 
splat, although you filter it with various filters of attention and 
processing. 

There are a few other important differences for our poor organic brains,
of course. (For one thing, when we read words, it's much closer to
"linear"  hearing than it is to seeing a scene, even though the eyes are
the sensory path.  But I trust that's obvious. :-)

Words are learned and low-bandwidth; they rely on associated symbols 
already in your brain. Sight is *partially* learned, but also relies on a 
whole lot of hardwired processing. 

I don't have any particular point.

--Z

-- 

"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the
borogoves..."


From mol@bartlet.df.lth.se Wed Apr 22 12:19:49 MET DST 1998
Article: 37769 of rec.arts.int-fiction
Path: news.lth.se!not-for-mail
From: mol@bartlet.df.lth.se (Magnus Olsson)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Are we wasting our time?
Date: 22 Apr 1998 11:48:09 +0200
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In article <6hgkh2$3em$1@prometheus.acsu.buffalo.edu>,
Phil Goetz <goetz@cs.buffalo.edu> wrote:
>This group concerns itself with interactive fiction.  Brenda Laurel
>(_Computers as Theatre_) divides interactive fiction into two classes:
>interactive drama, and interactive narrative.
>
>Interactive drama is what I would call the more primitive of the forms.
>The word "drama" tells you it is about spectacles that provide dramatic
>experiences.  No head pieces by Jorge Luis Borges here; these are classic
>stories about the conflict of a protagonist the reader identifies with.
>Drama happens in real time, is acted out, and has a unity of action
>(by which I mean that the viewer doesn't suddenly jump from one
>time or place to another).
>
>Interactive narrative is what we're doing with TADS, Inform, Hugo, AGT, etc.
>Narratives can switch between multiple simultaneous stories, can give us
>voice-over commentary, can span years in a single sentence, or can expand
>one moment in time to an entire paragraph.  I think of it as an art form
>that allows annotation of life.

(...)

>I have for a long time thought of interactive drama and interactive
>narrative as different, equally valid forms of interactive fiction.
>Interactive drama is what videogames try to provide.  Interactive narrative
>is the headier stuff of Infocom.
>
>But if you agree with the statements above about drama vs. narrative,

I don't. Reality isn't as simple as that. Art isn't as simple as that.
You can't just divide everything into two compartments with a
watertight partition in between.

>it seems that all the advantages narrative has over drama are advantages
>that interactive narrative cannot use.  Presenting a person's thoughts
>doesn't work if it's not the viewpoint character, 

Why? 

>and if it is the
>viewpoint character, you're forcing opinions on the player.

This is precisely why I don't think the binary distinction between "drama"
and "narrative" isn't valid. By placing the player inside the head of a
more or less well-defined character, rather than just a characterless
dummy, you're not "forcing opinions on the player", you're making the
player play a part. Which makes the game takes on the aspects of a drama,
rather than straight narrative.

A game like "I-0" can be thought of as "interactive theatre", rather
than an interactive short story. You're put in (or outside of :-))
Tracy Valencia's clothes.

>Cut scenes and time dilation disorient the player and remove any sense of
>control.  

They *can* do, if they are used ineptly. They don't *have* to.

>So, once the technical problems are overcome (as they will be, most
>perhaps within ten years), and we can write textless 3D interactive dramas
>with voice input, will there be any reason to still have text-only
>interactive fiction?

Now that we have cars, is there any reason to still have bicycles?

>Is this inability of anything interactive to use the advantages of narrative

I think this is a non sequitur, resulting from confusing the map with
the terrain: you have a theoretical model that says that interactive
works of art can't "use the advantages of narrative", and from that
you draw far-reaching conclusions about the validity of an art
form. Go ask the audience instead: do they appreciate playing IF? If
not, why?

>the reason why interactive narrative is, outside of this newsgroup, dead?

I think this has quite other reasons. And, besides, graphical
adventure games continue to sell, despite being just as much
"interactive narrative" as text IF.

-- 
Magnus Olsson (mol@df.lth.se, zebulon@pobox.com)
------    http://www.pobox.com/~zebulon   ------


From mol@bartlet.df.lth.se Wed Apr 22 12:26:45 MET DST 1998
Article: 37774 of rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: mol@bartlet.df.lth.se (Magnus Olsson)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Inform - curious about experienced game coders' thoughts.
Date: 22 Apr 1998 12:25:59 +0200
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In article <Pine.LNX.3.96.980421151809.15686B-100000@adamant.res.wpi.net>,
George Caswell  <timbuktu@wpi.edu> wrote:
>> >(and because there's no all-knowing "reality" object to
>> >deal with the ways objects work together in standardized rules.  -That- would
>> >be a 'large project' in any system.)
>> 
>> If I understand you correctly, such a design would be rather the
>> antithesis of OO, wouldn't it? That's not to say that it may not be a
>
>   Why?  Right now everything's wired to everything else in most IF games.

I think that's a bit of an exaggeration.

>If you have a set of rules that define the (general) environment of the game,
>and put them in an object, that's not violating any OO principles.  The object
>has its own, well-defined responsibility- define and enforce the general rules
>of object interaction.

We might very well be talking about different things here, so I
shouldn't say too much, but I think this depends very much on a) to
what level you take these "general rules", and b) how the other
objects interact with the "world object". 

But perhaps you could concretize your thoughts about the "world
object"? What "general rules" would it enforce? How would it do so?

>> >> But that's not my point at all. My point is that you shouldn't judge
>> >> Inform by the standards used to judge, say, a professional C++
>> >> compiler. 
>> >> 
>> >   I think you're the only one who's done that.
>> 
>> Oh, have I, and am I?
>> 
>   If you try to measure an IF project size in terms of other project sizes,
>quite possibly, yes.

I was merely comparing the sizes of the projects to draw the
conclusion that standard Software Engineering practice (which was,
after all, developed for projects two or three orders of magnitude
larger than your typical IF project) don't necessarily apply to
Inform. 

>> I think it's important to specify just which "coding conventions"
>> you're talking about here, and in what way they derive from inherent
>> limitations of the language, or of the Library, or whether they are
>> just conventions. And we should bear in mind that much of the Inform
>> code we see is in the nature of quick hacks by amateur programmers.
>> 
>   I'm referring to the coding style used in every Inform program I've ever
>seen.  The game is made up of a monolithic block of purely disposable code.
>Everything fiddles around with everything else's data, 

This could have three causes:

1) Bad design, or absence of design. This is not surprising,
considering that most Inform programmers are not professional
programmers, and that most Inform projects are hobby projects that have
grown organically by addition of ad-hoc features and patching of
problems. OK, this sounds very pompous, but what I mean is simply that
very few Inform programmers seem to give much thought to the issues
you're raising, such as modularity, so perhaps it's not so surprising
that their programs don't exhibit much modularity etc.

(Oh, BTW, I'm not trying to pass judgement on these programmers. I
know that many of the r.a.i-f regulars started Inform programming as
complete novices, with the Designer's Manual as their only source of
information. I'm deeply impressed that you people have managed to
write so many wonderful games despite this "handicap" - for Inform is
a difficult language!)

2) Properties of the problem domain. You're complaining that every
object seems to be interacting with every other object. OK, the fact
that they haphazardly access each other's data is probably due to bad
design or sloppy programming, but the fact that the objects need to
interact may be due to the problem domain, viz. that the game tries to
simulate a world of objects that interact with each other. 

3) Shortcomings of a) the Inform language or b) the Inform library.

>conditions are based on
>unscalable criteria (like saying 'is it the red ball you had as a child' when
>what you're really asking is 'is it a red ball')

Sorry, I'm not sure I follow you there. Could you please elaborate a
little? Do you think this is a problem with Inform, or with those
particular programs? 

>   I understand there are inherent problems involved, that's not my point.  My
>point is that I'm trying to figure out how to use inform to deal with these
>problems, and deal with them well.

With all respect, this is not how I've interpreted your earlier
posts. I got the impression that you wanted to discuss the suitability
of Inform for IF programming, and whether these perceived defects in
the programs you've seen were due to shortcomings in the Inform
language or library. 

I was merely trying to define the problem properly. If the structural
deficiencies of the code you're referring to are due to causes 1) or
2) in my little list above, then it not only makes no sense blaming
them on shortcomings in the Inform language, but it's downright
counterproductive doing so. 

>> Suppose that I want to write code for handling liquids (I do, and I've
>> done it). I can write a set of classes that form a self-contained
>> module, with a nice, clearly delineated interface to the rest of the
>> system. However, while this "module" will have to be included at the
>> beginning of the program (it is not a true module, since it's not
>> separately compiled, but for the programmer it acts like one), any
>> new, liquid-related, grammar productions that I would like to add
>> (such as "drink", "pour") will have to be included at the end. This
>> makes the code much mode confusing.
>> 
>   Sounds like a language (or library) problem.  

It is.

>And there's no stone tablet
>from god that says a module is separately compiled.  

You'd be surprised at how many people actually do seem to think that
their particular definitions are actually written on such stone
tablets...

>> Another problem, which seems to have more to do with the problem
>> domain than with Inform itself is that Inform verbs are global objects
>> that are orthogonal to everything else, in the sense that adding a new
>> verb can mean having to add before routines for that verb to every
>> object in the game. Perhaps somebody can find a better way to model
>> verbs, but I'm pessimistic about that.
>> 
>   What kinds of verbs do you find the most troublesome?

It's not so much the kind of the verb, as the level of detail of the
modelling. Suppose that I add a new "drink" verb. Then it will
probably be necessary to provide detailed modelling of liquids, while
it suffices to give a default response "You can't drink that" for
everything non-liquid. In this case, I simply have the DrinkSub
routine print "You can't drink that", put a "before Drink:" case in my
liquid class, and override that case a small number of cases.

This is quite OK, I think.

However, if I implement a "pour <liquid> on <noun>" verb, then the
players will probably expect interesting things to happen when they
pour water, oil, acetone or sulphuric acid on quite a lot of different
things. It's quite a disappointment when you get things like

>pour water on cat
The cat gets wet.

not to speak of the break of mimesis caused by

>pour water on fire
The fire gets wet.

In this case, I'll either have to add "before PourOn:" cases to a lot
of objects (potentially, to every object in the game), which
non-modular, or make a big switch statement in the PourOnSub routine,
which is even more non-modular, plus a big no-no from an OO point of
view.

As I said, I don't think this is a particular shortcoming of
Inform. In fact, I can't see a much better way of doing it.

--Message-Boundary-7342--

-- 
Magnus Olsson (mol@df.lth.se, zebulon@pobox.com)
------    http://www.pobox.com/~zebulon   ------


From mol@bartlet.df.lth.se Thu Apr 23 11:03:18 MET DST 1998
Article: 37817 of rec.arts.int-fiction
Path: news.lth.se!not-for-mail
From: mol@bartlet.df.lth.se (Magnus Olsson)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Are we wasting our time?
Date: 23 Apr 1998 10:40:44 +0200
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In article <6hlq0e$n8b$1@nnrp1.dejanews.com>,
 <macuming@gloria.cord.edu> wrote:
>In article <6hkeo0$2a9$1@bartlet.df.lth.se>,
>  mol@bartlet.df.lth.se (Magnus Olsson) wrote:
>>
>> >I.e. trying to come up with
>> >Star Wars, but end up with Buck Rogers.
>>
>> A rather curious comparison, when put in the same paragraph as
>> "engaging the mind" and "artistic".
>
>Genre does not necessarily impose limits upon artistic value,

Friend, you're talking to a life-long SF fan here. No need to bash
in open doors.

> and that
>is the point here:

Is it? If you think that I'm looking down my nose on "Star Wars" because
it's space opera, then you're very very wrong.

> "Star Wars" is engaging and artistic on a very basic
>human level, which I believe was responsible for its high popularity.

Engaging, yes. *Emotionally* engaging. Great fun. Etc, etc.  But
"engaging the mind"? To me, part of the attraction of films like "Star
Wars" is that I can *disengage* my mind and just enjoy it, without
having to think about difficult moral issues or who's *really* the
good guys.

As for "artistic", well, "Star Wars" makes no pretense at being Great
Art. I flatly refuse being drawn into a flame war of whether it is
anyway. 

>"Buck Rogers" would be an example of something that while perhaps
>exciting, does not communicate on that human level.

I think we can agree on the relative merits of "Star Wars" and "Buck
Rogers".

>This was precisely the case with "Star Wars;" not only did it provide
>the standard science fiction-y kind of wonder (which had been around for
>a while but was still effective) but it also went beyond itself by
>invoking archetypes common to the whole of human art and literature.

Not that I'm slamming "Star Wars" or anything (I think it's a great
film, if you take it for what it is, and don't try to read great
depths that simply aren't there into it), but "invoking archetypes" is
standard Hollywood practice. Scriptwriters are full of Jung up to
their ears. "Star Wars" just happens to be good at it.

-- 
Magnus Olsson (mol@df.lth.se, zebulon@pobox.com)
------    http://www.pobox.com/~zebulon   ------


From fake-mail@anti-spam.address Thu Apr 23 11:04:29 MET DST 1998
Article: 37801 of rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: fake-mail@anti-spam.address (Neil K.)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: WorldClass speed (was: Re: Inform - curious about experienced game coders' thoughts.)
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 erik@cafe.berkeley.edu (Erik Hetzner) wrote:

> I've checked this out, but the word on the street is that it never caught
> on because it was s l o w. Way slow. Real slow like. Like pouring molasses
> in winter, if you will. So I'm going to have to watch out for that, even
> if most of us have whiz-bang Frotz machines, I'm going to test this
> puppy on my C64 (well, okay, I'll just emulate it, but I'll make it slow).

 Well. When WorldClass came out, it was rightly criticized for its poor
performance on the typical machine of the day.

 The irony is that the typical machine of today is more than capable of
running a WorldClass game at a decent speed. It's only slow on older
machines because WorldClass examines all possible objects when responding
to user input, not just the ones within scope. Dave Baggett designed it
this way because of the power and flexibility this lends you, arguing that
we shouldn't allow the speed of older machines to get in the way of
innovation. Of course, he was coding on big whacking-fast UNIX boxes at
MIT, so his perspective may have been a little different from someone
running TADS on a Mac Plus or IBM AT...

 Anyway. It's a shame he got burnt out on IF and moved on to other things,
because it would've been nice to see WorldClass expanded and more widely
adopted. Still, the thing is on GMD in its entirety for those who want to
experiment.

 - Neil K.

-- 
 t e l a  computer consulting + design   *   Vancouver, BC, Canada
      web: http://www.tela.bc.ca/tela/   *   email: tela @ tela.bc.ca


From erkyrath@netcom.com Mon Apr 27 21:05:51 MET DST 1998
Article: 37907 of rec.arts.int-fiction
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: erkyrath@netcom.com (Andrew Plotkin)
Subject: [Glk] GlkTerm 0.1 alpha
Message-ID: <erkyrathEryH0M.3F1@netcom.com>
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I have just uploaded a first, well, zeroth release of the first 
fully-functional Glk library. This is GlkTerm; it runs in a terminal 
window, and it should compile on any system that has a curses.h library. 
Meaning just about all Unixes. I don't know about Windows yet, but 
evin@ifmud suggested compiling it with DJGPP.

http://www.edoc.com/zarf/glk/

Grab the GlkTerm package, untar and uncompress, and type "make". That
builds the model.c program as a demonstration. If you have problems, see
readme.txt and gtoption.h. 

It seems to work fine on SunOS, Solaris, IRIX, and Linux. 

Things not obvious:

Rather a lot of control keys are implemented. TAB switches to a different
window, but since you can't do anything in the status window, this isn't
very exciting. Up and down arrow scroll the story window by lines; ctrl-V
and ctrl-Y scroll it by pages. During line input, you can use left and
right arrow, ctrl-A and ctrl-E (go to beginning and end of line), delete,
ctrl-D (delete forward one char), ctrl-K (kill to end of line), ctrl-U
(kill entire line.) Emacs control equivalents for arrow keys work 
(ctrl-F, B, N, P.)

Known problems:

Automatic scrolling to the bottom isn't implemented. Use the scrolling 
keys. 

If you resize the window during play, it gets horribly confused. 
Apparently I don't understand the interaction of curses.h and SIGWINCH. 
Will work on this further.

This *is* an alpha test release. I want to know whether it compiles on 
lots of systems, and whether I'm doing anything horribly wrong (like 
SIGWINCH.) There are lot of changes yet to make.

Finally, in keeping with the Software Legalities thread currently 
stomping around this newsgroup, I am using the following permission 
statement:

"The source code in this package is copyright 1998 by Andrew Plotkin. You
may copy and distribute it freely, by any means and under any
conditions, as long as the code and documentation is not changed. You
may also modify this code and incorporate it into your own programs, as
long as you retain a notice in your program or documentation which
mentions my name and the URL shown above."

That look good?

--Z

-- 

"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the
borogoves..."


From pharm@hexagen.co.uk Tue Apr 28 19:08:10 MET DST 1998
Article: 38017 of rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: pharm@hexagen.co.uk (Philip Armstrong)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: [Glk] GlkTerm 0.1 alpha
Date: 28 Apr 1998 12:50:27 GMT
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In article <Pine.SGI.3.95L.980428105322.10879C-100000@ebor.york.ac.uk>,
Den of Iniquity  <dmss100@york.ac.uk> wrote:
>On 28 Apr 1998, J. Holder wrote:
>
>>THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE AUTHOR ``AS IS'' AND ANY EXPRESS OR
>
>[snip]
>
>Out of curiosity, why exactly do these 'get-out' warranty clauses always
>appear in capital letters? Is there some law against using lower case? Is
>it an esteemed custom? Is it something they teach you when you reach the
>third level of some sort of copyright law masonism?
>
According to discussions I've seen elsewhere, its because disclaimers
of liability must STAND OUT from the rest of the text of the license.
Don't ask me why, cos I don't know :-) Anyway, you can't make standard
ascii text bold or underlined or whatever, so the easiest way is to
put it in all-caps.

*shrug*

thing is, you never think these things are important until some bloody
lawyer comes and bites you from behind...

cheers,

Phil





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From: coxr@altavista.net
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: The "Nostalgia Market" for new IF (was Re: If you -really- wanted to try to sell IF)
Date: Tue, 05 May 1998 11:50:16 -0600
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In article <354f6ac5.8682078@news2.nettally.com>#1/1,
  marsh@nettally.com (Steven Marsh) wrote:
>
> Damn good idea, 'cept I think anyone who'd care about "Infocom" is
> here, reading this right now.
>

I think you might be surprised at the number of people who enjoyed IF games
10 years ago who simply don't know it still exists.

Case in point: Last weekend I visited my in-laws.  Mom-in-law bought a new PC
last year, but Pop-in-law has barely touched it.  I thought he might be the
kind of person to enjoy IF, so I took along a floppy with WinFrotz and a few
games--Spider & Web, Adventure (for the IF history lesson), and a few others--
planning to do a little IF evangelism.  I started explaining the concept to
him when something appeared to "click".  He told me that they used to have a
TI99/4A on which they played those sorts of adventure games.  He mentioned
"Pirate Adventure" and "The Count" specifically, and reminisced about how the
whole family sat in front of the TV trying to figure out the puzzles.  After
a few moments of scrounging under the bed, he produced a box containing the
computer and an "Adventure" cartridge (the interpreter) along with the
cassettes containing the game files.  Looking through the manual, I
recognized the other games listed as Scott Adams games, and I told him that I
could get those games for him to play on the new computer.  He was amazed and
excited--especially since they never finished "The Count" (he still had his
hand-drawn maps).

My point is that there really *are* people out there who enjoyed IF in the
past, but for one reason or another haven't seen it in years.  If these
people were made aware of the existence of new, high-quality IF, there may
just be a (admittedly not huge) commercial market for it.

Until then, I will keep feeding Pop-in-law new games and hints (they do not
have Internet access, and have no future plans to get it).

By the way, would anyone like to buy original TI99 Scott Adams adventure
games?

--Randy Cox
--ifMUD's Bojangles

-----== Posted via Deja News, The Leader in Internet Discussion ==-----
http://www.dejanews.com/   Now offering spam-free web-based newsreading


From beej@ecst.csuchico.edu Wed May  6 23:40:46 MET DST 1998
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From: beej@ecst.csuchico.edu (Brian 'Beej' Hall)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Spring-loaded infocom
Date: 5 May 1998 19:17:17 GMT
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In article <Pine.SGI.3.95L.980505142240.27935C-100000@ebor.york.ac.uk>,
Den of Iniquity  <dmss100@york.ac.uk> wrote:
>>I didn't say it would make the product fly off the shelves.
>Hmm, perhaps some sort of spring-loaded packaging would be in order, then?

At De Anza College where I used to work as a computer operator, we had
scores of tape racks.  Each rack was about 5' high by 3' wide and held
hundreds of tapes.

Now, these were those Kewl cartridge tapes (not the old 9-track
reel-to-reels--we had those too) and they each fit snugly in an
individual slot.  To remove a tape, you would press the base with your
finger and raise it.  There was a spring behind the tape that would then
push it out of the slot.

This was very cool, as long as your hand was there to catch it.

This was not the case during the '89 SF earthquake.  The shelves started
undulating, springs compressed, and tapes starting shooting all over the
room.  In the end we were left with a pile of tapes, numbered 1000 to
20000 covering the floor of the machine room.

Spring-loaded tape holders?  I suggest you vote NO if you live in
Silicon Valley.

OTOH, it might be applicable to IF. :)

Here is anoter possible distribution method that has the added benefit
that the new user need not even know that IF exists: the IF Virus.  It
will infect your machine and randomly install IF software.

<SERIOUS=+2>
Another: my new Iron Maiden CD came with 50 free hours of AOL on it, of
all things.  What about bundling IF on music CDs?
</SERIOUS>

-Beej



From marsh@nettally.com Wed May  6 23:41:10 MET DST 1998
Article: 38424 of rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: marsh@nettally.com (Steven Marsh)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Spring-loaded infocom
Date: Wed, 06 May 1998 02:18:47 GMT
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On 5 May 1998 19:17:17 GMT, beej@ecst.csuchico.edu (Brian 'Beej' Hall)
wrote:

	<snip great anecdote>
>
><SERIOUS=+2>
>Another: my new Iron Maiden CD came with 50 free hours of AOL on it, of
>all things.  What about bundling IF on music CDs?
></SERIOUS>
>
	Dude, 50 free hours of AOL is, like, as rare as milkweed
pollen.
	OTOH, you may have an interesting point.  Envisioning "They
Might Be Giants: The Interactive Story" or "Graham Nelson's Nine Inch
Nails" is a little scary, but if you found a fairly compu-minded
musician out there, and a few pieces worthy enough, that could be
really keen, and (it seems) easy to do.  I could easily envision, for
example, Andrew Plotkin's "Space Beneath the Window" on, say, a Sarah
McLachlan CD.

Steven Marsh
marsh@nettally.com
	Who never realized how damn difficult it is to spell
"McLachlan" until he found the CD.  It's like it's Gaelic Esperanto or
something.


From adam@princeton.edu Wed May  6 23:41:39 MET DST 1998
Article: 38384 of rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: adam@princeton.edu (Adam J. Thornton)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: If you -really- wanted to try to sell IF
Date: 5 May 1998 17:40:20 GMT
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In article <Pine.GSO.3.96.980505084311.19630A-100000@bohr.phy.duke.edu>,
Stephen Granade  <sgranade@bohr.phy.duke.edu> wrote:
>These things are still available in shareware games (albeit with the
>emphasis on paper goodies as other kinds are horribly expensive to produce
>in small quantities). However, it doesn't seem to have made much
>difference. Most of the registrations I've gotten have fallen into one of
>two categories: 1) "Here's your money because I want to support IF."
>2) "Here's your money because I want the hints."

To be fair, I had *NO* idea the _LYG_ goodies would be of such
exceptionally high quality.  I'd expected something along the lines of,
say, _The Horror of Rylvania_, which was a nice enough manual but nothing
to write home about.

I got a lot more.

Adam
-- 
adam@princeton.edu 
"There's a border to somewhere waiting, and a tank full of time." - J. Steinman


From okblacke@usa.net Wed May 13 10:19:44 MET DST 1998
Article: 38776 of rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: okblacke@usa.net
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Licensing & StoryHarp entries to '98 IF competition
Date: Tue, 12 May 1998 20:36:26 GMT
Organization: Deja News - The Leader in Internet Discussion
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Look, I have a lot of empathy for what you're trying to do and I wish you the
best of luck, but I'm not going to buy StoryHarp in the near future. I doubt
I'll even have time to try it out, the doubt coming from reasons I'll explain
shortly.

Historically, charging the user for a runtime library (which is more-or-less
what this falls into) has been a terminal condition for programming tools.
With good reason.  If I buy StoryHarp from you, our business is through until
the next upgrade. I don't want you talking to my customers, anymore than I
would want my customers calling Microsoft because I had written a program in
(some MS language that didn't suck horribly) and they had a problem.  I sure
don't want them paying you money to use my program.

I'm generalizing here from what many, many others have told me.  I've
investigated some companies that charged run-time royalties (or flat-fees,
which is what you're talking about) for users, and whenever I talked to others
about using these tools, they universally pointed to this overhead being a
problem.  (My point here is this has little to do with how I feel, only to do
with what I've discovered.)

As a user, I don't want to be a StoryHarp editor, no matter how much fun it
is.  I don't want to pay for it.  And I really don't want to pay $80 when I
can get a "real" game for $45.  (Again, I'm talking about other people's
perceptions.)

At this point, the only thing that would impel me to invest my time to even
try it, would be if you sold enough copies to create a "critical mass" whereby
 an author had some chance to reach a substantial audience who already owned
the product.  (Welcome to the joys of developing a new platform. :-/)

If I were you, I'd investigate StoryHarp as an educational tool. If I were a
school teacher and it were exceptionally easy to use, I might use it.  Of
course, I'd only buy one or two licenses (one for working at home, and one for
the school PC).

I'm sure you'll take this in the spirit intended: You know you have a rough
road; you know you're probably in the wrong audience. I hope this helps you
find the right one.

[ok]

-----== Posted via Deja News, The Leader in Internet Discussion ==-----
http://www.dejanews.com/   Now offering spam-free web-based newsreading


From marsh@nettally.com Wed May 13 17:26:00 MET DST 1998
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From: marsh@nettally.com (Steven Marsh)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: [HUMOR] r.a.if -- For those who've come in late
Date: Sun, 10 May 1998 00:56:43 GMT
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[The following is an attempt at humor.  Take it seriously at your own
risk.]

For those who've not read for a while, or for those who'd like a
summery of what's been going on in rec.arts.int-fiction, here's an
attempt to tie all the threads together into a single, simple whole.

Scientists are still debating over the existance of CU-Amiga magazine,
a magazine that is supposedly carried by one store in the United
States.  The Amiga, of course, is a computer, designed by the ancient
Myans, that once took the contents of an entire TREASURE ROOM to
purchase, but has since dipped in price steadily by $100 per year,
until it has reached the price of $30, the cost of a paperback book.

The issue in question has articles about interactive fiction, and is
commercially available.  Less available are the offerings of the
upstart company TextFire, a company that released as jokes programs
more innovative than 90% of the commerical releases this year.  They
were not as innovative, however, as Starship Titanic, which features
stunning graphics, huge disk space requirements, a sense of humor, and
has an innovative text parsering system that accepts as input full
english sentences, and outputs variations of "I don't understand."
Starship Titanic also contains 3 bytes of Douglas Adam's original game
Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, in that it uses the word "hit" at
one point.  It does not, however, contain Shogun, an Infocom game
produced during their "Infinite Monkeys at Infinite Typewriters" phase
of software development.

Meanwhile, the debate over whether or not IF should be sold
commercially has raged again.  On the one hand, it's argued that, if
folks can get paid to write IF, they will no longer release free IF.
On the other hand, others have pointed out that Andrew Plotkin has
charged money in the past for software (like System's Twilight, a
great game that works well on Macintosh Emulators, except it formats
your hard drive and changes the freshness dates on your Pepsi so it
reads 8/27/56), yet still writes free IF, so free IF should still be
available.

But, after more responses than a "Free warez sites list!  Just reply
with your e-mail address!" post, a few conclusions have been
definitely reached.

1)  This software should be released on CD, or maybe 3 1/2" disks.
Irregardless, Isolinear Optical Chips have been largely discarded as
prohibitively expensive, and too nonexistant.

2)  This CD (or floppy) should have 1 professional quality game.  Or
10 lesser games.  Or 10 professional quality games.  Or everything on
ftp.gme.de, plus Quarterstaff, InfoComics, and Doom 1 Shareware.

3)  The cost of this package should range from $5-$50 dollars, and be
the size of a CD jewel case paperback book software suite.  It will be
least unnoticed on the Audio section of bookstores, who will be as
eager to sell this software as they are to sell CU-Amiga.

4) The market for IF is nostalgic teenage N64 playing book-readers who
own personal computers but don't have access to ftp.gmd.de.

Of course, once this software goes to be written for inclusion on this
CD (or floppy), we have to decide on which programming language to
write it in. Unfortunately, this question is a little more problematic
to answer than walking into downtown Jeruselem and yelling out,
"HEY!!! Anyone know which religion is right?"  Inform has some
advantages, and so does TADS.  Both are free, powerful programming
languages, but neither one cures cancer; StoryHarp, on the other hand,
is Shareware.

Since StoryHarp is Shareware, it may or may not be ineligible to enter
into the '98 IF competition.  Currently, all entries must have a
disclaimer that says, "It's unlikely this work breaks many laws."
Unfortunately, this disclaimer is not good enough for many people,
like Linux users, decendants of the original Myans who built the Amiga
millenia ago.

Unfortunately, the IF competition is also plagued by questions of what
the hell IF is anyway.  For example, if Zork had graphics, and a
point-and-click interface that allowed simple navigation through the
fully-rendered 3D graphic environment with real-time LAN-supported
Deathmatch combat, would it be IF?  On the one hand, games like Myst
sell more copies than Sarah McLachlan CDs (which may or may be
appropriate, and may or may not contain IF); since IF isn't
commercially viable, that seems to preclude Myst being IF.  On the
other hand, if we convice people that Myst -is- IF, then the odds of
them buying -our- IF for $55 become that much better.

Besides, you can't buy Myst at the Audio section of Waldenbooks,
right?

Steven Marsh
marsh@nettally.com
	"There are those who don't love their fellow man and I HATE
people like that." -- Tom Lehrer


From jcompton@typhoon.xnet.com Thu May 14 09:32:23 MET DST 1998
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From: jcompton@typhoon.xnet.com (Jason Compton)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: CU Amiga - sharp eyes needed!
Date: 13 May 1998 14:24:22 GMT
Organization: XNet - The Midwest's Leading Network Service Provider - (630) 983-6064
Message-ID: <6jcaem$q2u$1@flood.xnet.com>
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Magnus Olsson (mol@bartlet.df.lth.se) wrote:
: Jason's article was quite good (though a trifle Inform-centric, isn't
: it?).

Guilty as charged.

: So then I switched modes :-) and started looking for the fluorescent
: orange colour that Jason had mentioned. I found one magazine after a
: while, with *some* (not very much) orange colour on the cover. But it
: wasn't called "CU Amiga", it was called "Amiga Magazine". Bummer. But
: wait a minute - there's a snowboarder on the cover (and Jason mentioned
: that as well in his post). And it actually said "Interactive Fiction"
: on the cover as well!
: 
: And then I saw the relatively tiny "CU" up in the top left corner...
: 
: So, if you're having trouble finding the issue: don't scan the shelves
: for "CU Amiga"; scan for "Amiga Magazine" (with a tiny "CU" logo)
: instead.

This is a very good point and one I completely overlooked...and there HAVE
been issues where that "little overlay thing in the corner" has obscured
the CU completely.  I'm just used to it, I guess.  (The reason it's so
incredibly small should be clear if you read the other thread where I
defined what "CU" meant--"Commodore User", which is something of a defunct
term since Commodore is defunct...)

-- 
Jason Compton                                jcompton@xnet.com
Editor-in-Chief, Amiga Report Magazine       VP, Legacy Maker Inc.
http://www.cucug.org/ar/                     http://www.xnet.com/~jcompton/
If you're gonna cross..                      ..better start doing it right.


From jcompton@typhoon.xnet.com Thu May 14 09:36:32 MET DST 1998
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From: jcompton@typhoon.xnet.com (Jason Compton)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: CU Amiga - sharp eyes needed!
Date: 13 May 1998 14:27:19 GMT
Organization: XNet - The Midwest's Leading Network Service Provider - (630) 983-6064
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Den of Iniquity (dmss100@york.ac.uk) wrote:
: 
: Isn't it just! But I put that down to Jason wanting to avoid being too
: general while at the same time having to keep the article down to a
: certain size. Also, Frotz is the only Amiga interpreter with bells and
: whistles (all the others being little more than terminal output) so until
: we get a port of MaxTADS or something it's always going to be the Inform
: games that look best. 

In the original version of the article I actually went into TADS in
substantially more detail but it fell victim to "This is a bit too long,
Jason" and I had to make cuts somewhere.  (Given how little text is on
page 1 of the article I'm a bit disappointed that I had to make the cuts
in the first place, but...)

: I'd have loved to have seen more detail in other areas - like more info on
: the competition (which would be more of an incentive for the magazine's
: readers to look beyond the games themselves) but I realise that that might
: be asking a lot. Mind you, they're always on the look-out for web-sites to
: include on the CD so could we get the competition site on to a future CD? 

I had hoped to be able to take the article in that direction--doesn't
Graham actually do a tutorial series on Inform in an Acorn magazine?--but
it was hard enough to sell the article and CD idea.

: (Got my June issue yesterday. Naa naa n'naa na. The main feature is about
: Making Your Own Games. Alongside other tools on the CD: Inform & TADS...)

Good for that, at least, although I think (not having seen the article
yet, but having talked with the guys) that they gave text authoring less
airtime than they should have.

-- 
Jason Compton                                jcompton@xnet.com
Editor-in-Chief, Amiga Report Magazine       VP, Legacy Maker Inc.
http://www.cucug.org/ar/                     http://www.xnet.com/~jcompton/
If you're gonna cross..                      ..better start doing it right.


From michael.gentry@ey.com Thu May 14 09:37:45 MET DST 1998
Article: 38802 of rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: michael.gentry@ey.com
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction,rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: [Announce] new game!
Date: Wed, 13 May 1998 13:54:09 GMT
Organization: Deja News - The Leader in Internet Discussion
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In article <6jad36$18v$1@news1.fast.net>,
  ravipind@fast.net wrote:

> Hiyas.  Reactions after about 10 minutes of playing (about all I can spare
at
> the moment, unfortunately. :(
>
> Well, since I'm working (HA!  He said working!) on a Lovecraftian based
piece
> of IF, I suppose I should comment on the references I noticed.
>
> The glyphs at the center of town, of course, scream Lovecraft, as does the
New
> England setting.  But the Miskaton?  Did you change the name to avoid
> copyright infringement?  I don't think names can be copyrighted (shades of
the
> COPYRIGHT REDUX thread...) so I think you can get away with the full
> 'MISKATONIC'.  But then, that'd make the town Arkham...wouldn't it? (evil
> grin)

I'm actually fairly sure that you can use any Lovecraftian name you damn well
please (including Cthulhu, Yog-Sothoth, etc.) with impunity. I just didn't
want to. The Miskatonic became the Miskaton simply because I couldn't think of
another name for the river that satisfied me, so I knocked off the last two
letters and called it a compromise. Arkham, if you read closely and ask
Michael the right questions, turns out to be only a short drive away from
Anchorhead. Danvers (the asylum) and Whateley (the bridge) are both minor
names taken directly from Lovecraft stories.

> The side-alley reminded me very much of that short story about the
> violinist...Eric Zahn?  Yes?  Is that the reference?  The violinist and the
> wall that can't be seen over?

The story is called "The Music of Erich Zann" and it's appropriate that you're
reminded of it.

> The bubbling by the lighthouse -- Dagon?  Illsmouth?  The Deep Ones?
>
> The asylum, of course.  Everybody goes mad in Lovecraft eventually. :)
>
> I think that's about it.  I'm really hoping all of them end up paying off.
A
> story that does cross-tale Lovecraft (Eric Zahn versus the Deep Ones???
> Charles Dexter Ward in the Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath???) sounds
> interesting.

The stories which had the largest influence on Anchorhead are "The Shadow Over
Innsmouth", "The Thing on the Doorstep", "The Dunwich Horror", and "The
Haunter of the Dark". Erich Zann is pretty much an Easter Egg.

--M.

-----== Posted via Deja News, The Leader in Internet Discussion ==-----
http://www.dejanews.com/   Now offering spam-free web-based newsreading


From dmss100@york.ac.uk Thu May 14 12:48:16 MET DST 1998
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From: Den of Iniquity <dmss100@york.ac.uk>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: CU Amiga - sharp eyes needed!
Date: Wed, 13 May 1998 11:19:36 +0100
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On 13 May 1998, Magnus Olsson wrote:

>I finally found a copy, at the newsagent at Malmo central station.
>It's a nice collection of games, and Jason's article was quite good
>(though a trifle Inform-centric, isn't it?).

Isn't it just! But I put that down to Jason wanting to avoid being too
general while at the same time having to keep the article down to a
certain size. Also, Frotz is the only Amiga interpreter with bells and
whistles (all the others being little more than terminal output) so until
we get a port of MaxTADS or something it's always going to be the Inform
games that look best. 

I'd have loved to have seen more detail in other areas - like more info on
the competition (which would be more of an incentive for the magazine's
readers to look beyond the games themselves) but I realise that that might
be asking a lot. Mind you, they're always on the look-out for web-sites to
include on the CD so could we get the competition site on to a future CD? 

>There's a cautionary tale here, though: I was scanning the shelves for
>the text "CU Amiga", and didn't find it...
>scan for "Amiga Magazine" (with a tiny "CU" logo) instead.

Ah, thanks for that Magnus. Now that you mention it, yes, that is what it
says, but one gets so used to a logo that one forgets what it actually
looks like. :)  It's good that you've brought attention to that. 

--
Den

(Got my June issue yesterday. Naa naa n'naa na. The main feature is about
Making Your Own Games. Alongside other tools on the CD: Inform & TADS...)



From cafard@brainlink.com Thu May 14 20:06:57 MET DST 1998
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From: cafard@brainlink.com (Chris [Steve] Piuma)
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction,rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Choose your own adventure system?
Date: Thu, 14 May 1998 11:20:15 -0400
Organization: The Sven Bolougnaise Society
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In article <3559BB27.3689D690@alcyone.com>, Erik Max Francis
<max@alcyone.com> wrote:
> HarryH wrote:
> > Maybe we should make a distinction between stateless CYOA and normal
> > (stately?) CYOA.
> I would question your referring to stately Choose-Your-Own-Adventure
> games as "normal."  I have a number of the original CYOA books, and none
> of them are stately games.  (One of them has a solution which you cannot
> reach by playing normally, but it's an out-of-bounds puzzle, rather than
> a stately puzzle.)

It's the one where there's some sort of paradise, which in the story is
described as someplace you can't choose to go to or be forced to go to,
right? And then one of the pages has a description of you arriving at the
paradise.

I went through the entire book several times looking for the link that
would take you to that page. Of course, after about four careful searches,
I (and I was about 9 at the time, I think) realized that of course there
isn't a link to it -- any movement from section to section in one of those
books requires a choice ("If you want to feezle the bognigogs, go to page
21.") or being forced ("You have lost the grangly bangle. Turn to page
34.")

This conceit has always stuck with me for its sheer "out-of-bounds"-ness.
The coolest part of the book is something you can't find out about by
playing the game by the rules.

I wonder if this could really be done in a standard IF game. I mean, unless
you're going to do a text dump on each game you play... Well, actually,
wasn't there a footnote in Hitchhiker's that you could only read by just
plugging in numbers? Not exactly the same thing, but still cool.

-- 
Chris [Steve] Piuma, etc.    Nothing is at: http://www.brainlink.com/~cafard
[Editor of _flim_, Keeper of the R.E.M. Lyric Annotations FAQ, MST3K #43136]
order your copy of rec.tribute.rem v.2 now, dammit! email: jcb@u.arizona.edu
Would you like to read the story of the three clever peas?


From adam@princeton.edu Thu May 14 22:51:20 MET DST 1998
Article: 38841 of rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: adam@princeton.edu (Adam J. Thornton)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Clients, servers, and cheating
Date: 14 May 1998 20:26:29 GMT
Organization: Princeton University
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In article <slrn6ljp96.t39.cinnamon@shell.one.net>,
athol-brose <cinnamon@shell.one.net> wrote:
>In article <6j8ot5$pn9$2@cnn.Princeton.EDU>, Adam J. Thornton wrote:
>>I'm even toying with the idea of making the client open-source.  This would
>>let it be cross-platform a lot faster.
>I don't even WANT to think what this will do for the cheating
>clientele all on-line games currently have. Don't fool yourself: you
>will have cheaters, and if you give them the source to the client it
>will make it just that much easier for them to cheat, and thus ruin
>the game for everyone else.

Not if I'm careful about what state lives on the player's machine and what
lives on the servers.  If I download mostly-static map data to the client
and allow in-room navigation based on that--checking with the server if the
player tries to open or go through a door, then there really isn't a lot
the player can do besides randomly change his position and velocity within
the room.  And even that will be subjected to periodic (every few seconds)
sanity checks, and if the player's reported position is very different from
what is predicted from his last known position and velocity, we'll snap him
back to where we think he should be.

I can't keep the communication protocol secret forever, so I might as well
publish it.  You'll get the DES (or whatever encryption method I choose)
key to connect as an effect of the transaction that gives the server your
payment information and establishes your account.  Or I may go with a
public-key strategy--until I get the demo working I'm not going to worry
about encrypted transactions in any event.  The point being, the protocol
is open to analysis, so I may as well let players write clients that
implement it.  If I'm reasonably careful, it won't be possible to harm the
state of the world from the client.

All object data will reside on the server; the player can attempt to get
everything from everywhere, but since I'm going to be doing position, bulk,
and ownership checks in the DB, this will fail.

I'm only going to allow three commands a second to control the advantage
those on fast, low-latency links would otherwise enjoy, anyway, so the
player can't send zillions of commands per second (well, he can send them,
they will just be ignored).

The problem with a thin client, of course, is that more bandwidth is
needed.  And I'm not yet far enough along to see how much bandwidth a
typical player connection consumes.

If I'm careful about my protocols and separating the various implementation
layers, I don't think cheating via the client will be a problem any more
than a hacked telnet client is a problem for MUDs.

I have a social model that will address many of the problems with
society-as-it-occurs-in-UO-and-friends.  Random pkilling will not be much
of a problem; methodical, repeated pkilling as a behavioral strategy will
have severe disincentives.  More, eventually, at http://www.fsf.net. 

Adam
-- 
adam@princeton.edu 
"There's a border to somewhere waiting, and a tank full of time." - J. Steinman


From mkkuhner@evolution.genetics.washington.edu Sat May 16 08:56:23 MET DST 1998
Article: 38856 of rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: mkkuhner@evolution.genetics.washington.edu (Mary K. Kuhner)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Choose your own adventure system?
Date: 14 May 1998 18:53:20 GMT
Organization: University of Washington Genetics
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In article <cafard-ya02408000R1405981120150001@news.micro-net.com>,
Chris [Steve] Piuma <cafard@brainlink.com> wrote:

>This conceit has always stuck with me for its sheer "out-of-bounds"-ness.
>The coolest part of the book is something you can't find out about by
>playing the game by the rules.

>I wonder if this could really be done in a standard IF game. I mean, unless
>you're going to do a text dump on each game you play... Well, actually,
>wasn't there a footnote in Hitchhiker's that you could only read by just
>plugging in numbers? Not exactly the same thing, but still cool.

_Jigsaw_ has sarcastic definitions of several Latin terms which
do not, in fact, appear in the game:  you'd have to notice them
in the menu which lets you look up definitions, then ask for the
definition even though you hadn't seen the term.  (Which I did,
because I was going to write down all the definitions so that I
wouldn't break game flow by looking up footnotes....)

My game-in-progress has a room you can't reach (I use it to store
objects not currently in use) and I'm tempted to put in a 
sarcastic room description, just in case anyone somehow gets there.
(I've gotten there, actually, due to bugs--it was a shock the
first time!)

Mary Kuhner mkkuhner@genetics.washington.edu


From mkkuhner@evolution.genetics.washington.edu Mon May 18 09:58:15 MET DST 1998
Article: 38954 of rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: mkkuhner@evolution.genetics.washington.edu (Mary K. Kuhner)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Conversation trees vs. 'ask X about ...'
Date: 17 May 1998 14:44:28 GMT
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Some people find conversation trees to break their identification
with the character.  No matter how many times you tell these
people they are wrong, they will still find that to be the case.

Other people find ask/tell to break their suspension of disbelief.
No matter how many times you tell *these* people they are wrong, they
will still find that to be the case.

Can we knock it off, please?  Saying "You're wrong, conversation
trees really work better *for you* than A/T does" is downright
stupid:  it's like saying "You really like asparagus, never mind
that you say you don't."  Equally stupid is letting the fact
that someone else doesn't like asparagus keep you from getting
some--we could certainly use some conversation-tree IF around
here, since some of us clearly like it.

Me, I am still stunned by the conversation in _Spider and Web_
and wondering if there is any way to get that effect in a less
tightly structured (I'd say "gimmicky" but that sounds
perjorative) context.

(And yes, for me a little tree saying "Say yes" "Say no" "Say nothing"
would have been slightly distracting.  As it was, having the "You
must answer yes or no" stricture in my head rather than visible on
the screen allowed me to get into character surprisingly well,
and chew over what "I" was going to say.)

Mary Kuhner mkkuhner@genetics.washington.edu


From bnewell@gobblernet.dynip.com Mon May 18 13:00:25 MET DST 1998
Article: 38961 of rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: bnewell@gobblernet.dynip.com (Bob Newell)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: [StoryHarp] Detailed Review
Date: Sun, 17 May 1998 21:19:25 GMT
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The authoring system 'Story Harp' has been much advertised by its
author on this newsgroup.  I found myself being initially critical of
the product without having had a thorough look.  This was certainly
unfair, and so, I downloaded version 1.1 and spent some hours
evaluating and testing, in order to be fair about the whole thing.
I'd like to present a summary of my findings.  These findings are
purely my own opinion.  You are encouraged to make your own
evaluations before finalizing your opinions about Story Harp.
 
Story Harp presents itself as a certain type of text-based story
authoring and playing system.  (The player and composer are part of an
integrated package.)  Story Harp runs only under Windows 95; it is a
shareware product with a $79.95 license fee, payable if you use the
authoring system for more than 24 hours of on-line time.  There is at
this point no limitations on the unpaid use of the player portion of
the system.

Story Harp allows rapid assembly of "choose your own adventure" (CYOA)
style text games.  A much touted feature of Story Harp is its
incorporation of text-to-speech and speech recognition features in the
player component.  I did not test these features, but as will be seen,
this would not much affect my evaluation of the authoring component.

Story Harp comes with a few sample "worlds", or stories, and a
Windows-help based tutorial.  My first action was to play a few of
the sample stories.

The player interface is very intuitive.  I had no difficulty at all in
starting up the stories and going through them.  The visual interface
is a small split window.  Story text appears in the top window, and a
multiple-choice style list of options appear in the lower window.
Clicking the mouse on one of the options selects it and moves the
story forward.  Nothing could be simpler.
 
Indeed, that was my first impression.  Nothing could be simpler than
playing a Story Harp CYOA; in fact, it was so simple as to be
incredibly dull.  This would surely be improved by the presence of
extended text (not part of the sample worlds) with more interesting
themes.  It might be improved had I used text-to-speech and speech
recognition; or it might actually be worse, since then controlling the
pace would have been difficult (something like the annoyance of books
on tape).  I have, in the past, enjoyed numerous printed CYOAs;
however, the printed book experience seemed far superior to the Story
Harp experience.
 
Especially annoying was the lack of a clean termination to the
stories.  When the end of a story is reached, the program continues to
offer the last frame of the story until you actually exit the program,
independently of the story.
 
I then moved on to looking at the authoring system.  I first read
through the tutorial.  I must say that the tutorial is of very high
quality.  It is very easy to follow, quite complete, and sequenced in
a logical manner.  15 minutes with the tutorial and I felt fully
qualified to start working with the authoring system.

The authoring system presents several "views" of the story space.
Story locations are referred to as "contexts" and "rules" or choices
appear for these contexts.  Each choice in a multiple choice set is
expressed by a separate rule under a given context.  Rules may have
conditions which refer to simple boolean-valued variables; rules also
may define a new context (move) to which control is transferred.
These principles are the sum and substance of Story Harp.  (I have
omitted playing sounds and music.)
 
I immediately started to compose a simple CYOA story.  I had no
difficulty at all; the learning curve is really flat.  I suspect
someone with some programming experience could become a Story Harp
expert in about an hour.
 
There are some annoyances in the text interface to the authoring
system.  Multiple choice options are forced to lower case, giving an
illiterate appearance to the list of choices presented to the player.
This is really detrimental to the CYOA style.  For instance, if one of
the options is, "Would you like to ask Fred a question?" it would
appear as "would you like to ask fred a question".  Reply text can't
be seen all at once; the input form has a height of one line, and text
just continues off the end of that line.

There are alternate text-input methods.  There are "wizards" which
supposedly help create contexts, rules, etc.  However, they do so in a
piecemeal manner that makes it hard to keep things together.  The
"wizards" use a text-editor like interface, which is actually superior
to the form-based interface, but not as well integrated.
 
I was most disappointed by the "map" view.  I had expected a graphical
input capability that might have made producing a CYOA location
skeleton very rapid.  Instead, the default mapping of a story is a
real mess.  My prototype story, which had about 6 contexts or
locations, was strewn seemingly at random around the screen.  I had to
spend a little while rearranging the graphical display just to make it
legible.  And, then, I found there was precious little I was able to
do with it.  In the Windows 95 environment, I would expect to be able
to right-click on an item in the graphical display and pop-up a menu
of choices.  This would be very useful; for instance, clicking on a
context should give me the option of adding or editing rules, etc.
All that happens is that left-clicking on a context selects that
context for use by the forms-based text input interface.  Improvement
of the graphical capabilities should be a high priority for the
authors; they should refer to the GUEmap shareware package for an
example of how this can be done well.  For instance, it would be nice
to be able to click on a rule, drag the mouse, and have it create a
"move" to a new or existing context.  Alas.....it isn't so.
 
Story Harp has extensive testing and debugging features.  I didn't
spend a lot of time with these, but they appear to be very helpful and
rather easy to use.

So, finally, we come to some sort of evaluation.  Story Harp should
not be evaluated one-to-one against the broad authoring systems such
as TADS and Inform (except for suitability of intended purpose).
Story Harp should be compared to other means of generating CYOA
stories, however.

To do this I took a look at the TADS contributed library for CYOA
style stories.  (I believe there is a similar one for Inform but I
didn't look for it.)  The TADS library works in conjunction with the
TADS compiler and runtime and thus shares all the advantages (and
drawbacks) of TADS.  Input is via text editor; I prefer this but my
preference may not be universal.  The player is not integrated;
however, run-times exist for a wide variety of computer systems.
 
TADS-CYOA is also very easy to learn and use.  It is a bit more
"syntactical" than Story Harp, but if I were to use it, I would write
a simple Perl preprocessor which would do the syntactical bits for me,
and would make it a very rapid authoring tool.  There are no graphical
representations for TADS-CYOA, but on the other hand, the entire text
file is in front of you at all times.  (In any event, no authoring
system will obviate the need to pre-plan and pre-diagram your story.)
The TADS debugger is very powerful and reasonably easy to use.

In addition, the added features of TADS are available should you
decide to expand CYOA into something larger or more complex--- or, if
you should simply need an advanced feature at a critical location.
(Story Harp deals with the random number issue by simply not having
them.)
 
I would be hard-pressed to recommend Story Harp over TADS-CYOA. Here
is a brief summary of my findings.
 
Advantages of Story Harp:
-Very easy to learn
-Excellent tutorial
-Truly suitable for non-programmers as an introduction to CYOA
authoring
 
Complaints about Story Harp:
-"illiterate" and boring feel to the player component
-Very limited capabilities
-Unpleasant text interfaces to authoring system
-Disappointing graphical interface (which, if developed, would
markedly improve the product)
-Limited "target" platforms (Windows 95 only) for potential story
players
-Very expensive license for a system this limited
 
At this point there is simply no way I can recommend Story Harp over
TADS (or Inform) even for CYOA stories.  There is just nothing
compelling enough about it to justify the license fee.  In fact, even
if it were freeware, it wouldn't be my choice for CYOA authoring.

Bob Newell
 


From jholder@io.frii.com Mon May 18 14:59:49 MET DST 1998
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From: J. Holder <jholder@io.frii.com>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Which 3D Accelerator?
Date: 17 May 1998 14:20:03 GMT
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Thus spake Cardinal Teulbachs <cardinal@cwia.com>:
: Hallo,

: I new to this country and don't know somethings. I played
: interattr...integral...um, some reading games with Voodoo 2 video and
: cant see nothing difference. Whassup, d00dz? Is Riva maybe your better
: choice, or Frotz 3D for reading adventure? Please no fights around
: this (Inform beats up to TADS, etc.). I just likes to know answer.

: And since you talking about stuff, too, which joystick o.k.? Microsoft
: Force Feedback doesn't works nothing in Spider Web game, and I'm too
: much pissed off. Gamepads your better choice, maybe? I starting to not
: like technologies...

: Thank you then talking back to me,

: CardinalT
: Archbishop of Frith and Funeral Barker to the Stars

*ROTFLMAO*  This is the best laugh I've had this weekend... Thanks,
Cardinal!
-- 
John Holder (jholder@frii.com)         http://www.frii.com/~jholder/
Sr. Programmer Analyst, J.D.Edwards World Source Company, Denver, CO
http://www.jdedwards.com/


From darin@usa.net.removethis Tue May 26 12:00:57 MET DST 1998
Article: 39358 of rec.arts.int-fiction
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Subject: Re: Inform port of Dungeon in if-archive incoming
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From: Darin Johnson <darin@usa.net.removethis>
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pkellum@hotmail.com writes:

> And in case anyone's wondering about the status of the Inform port, nearly
> everything's done except that anoying combat code.  I really wish the
> original implementers had thought about it before adding that whole combat
> system to Zork/Dungeon, I don't see how it adds anything to the game except
> to make it hard to port :-(

It's a simple idea at its heart, but pervertedly complex in its
implementation.

It appears to be a rude attempt at adding an RPG style combat system.
However, it's completely pointless.  There just aren't enough combats
to justify it, or to even allow the player to notice things aren't
completely random.  At the time, a lot of people were enamored of D&D,
and many thought the complex number keeping and calculations were
important (amazingly, some people still think that even today).

So that's my theory on why there were combat tables and the like
embedded in the Fortran code.  So, instead of just assigning a 2%
chance or so to having you drop your weapon, 5% to stun the opponent,
etc, it goes through all the rigamorole of deciding hits and misses
and such.  Too tedious.

> I've examined the TADS source (fight.t) and
> Fortran source (among other sources) line by line trying to make sense of it
> all but have failed to comprehend what it is supposed to do.

I apologize, but I was trying very hard to make the TADS code do
exactly what the Fortran code did, but with a little structure and
object orientedness.  Unfortunately, the system itself is just to
obfuscated, even when cleaned up, and there are too many special
cases, etc.  However, I *hope* it's clearer than the Fortran version,
with its common blocks :-)

The trouble is, if you muck with it too much, it gets off balance, and
players may notice (ie, the cyclops is too wimpy, etc).  Basically,
the higher the score you have, the better a fighter you are, some
weapons are better against some opponents, and some opponents are
tougher than others.

-- 
Darin Johnson
darin@usa.net.delete_me


From dicks@math.ohio-state.NO.SPAM.edu Thu May 28 17:11:58 MET DST 1998
Article: 39460 of rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: dicks@math.ohio-state.NO.SPAM.edu (Ethan Dicks)
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction,rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Inform port of Dungeon in if-archive incoming
Date: 27 May 1998 21:58:13 GMT
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In article <6k5qu2$7ne$1@nnrp1.dejanews.com>,  <pkellum@hotmail.com> wrote:
>In article <3565cb3f.0@news.tamu-commerce.edu>,
>  earendil@faeryland.TAMU-Commerce.edu wrote:
>>
>> Please ignore it.  It is a very old version, nowhere near finished...
>
>And in case anyone's wondering about the status of the Inform port, nearly
>everything's done except that anoying combat code.

Having been down that road, it was a bear.

>I really wish the
>original implementers had thought about it before adding that whole combat
>system to Zork/Dungeon, I don't see how it adds anything to the game except
>to make it hard to port :-( 

It was some sort of homage to the compexity and pseudorandom-determinism
of D&D.  I found the internal complexity fascinating (maddening, but
fascinating).  I never knew how subtle the fighting code was while simply
playing the game.  There's attack strengths, defense strengths, tables
of tables to crossreference the outcomes, attacks possible while one
party or the other is unconsious, and, the biggest surprise, spontaneous
first strikes.  I had never had the troll attack me first, I guess, because
I must have always attacked _him_ first.

Besides, a bunch of college hackers in 1978 thinking about porting?  They
were already on the ultimate system of all time (just ask anybody).  Why
you'd have to be paranoid to want to port to something else.

> I've examined the TADS source (fight.t) and
>Fortran source (among other sources) line by line trying to make sense of it
>all but have failed to comprehend what it is supposed to do.  I even
>flowcharted the TADS source and wrote an Inform version that should work, but
>to no avail.

I didn't flowchart the combat, but I did spent _lots_ of time poring over
the sources.  After three weeks of coding, it was a thrill to have it all
work, especially when I was knocked out and the Troll _didn't_ kill me.

>  Once this is done I should have a playable port of Dungeon.

I'm finishing up the Thief, and have just a couple things left to implement
before turning my port over to the first round of testing.  The egg and
songbirds are as yet undone, as is the metal box in the volcano.  Just
for reference, my z5 file is 168K.  There will _not_ be a version for the C-64.

-ethan
-- 
Ethan Dicks                                      http://www.infinet.com/~erd/
(dicks) at (math) . (ohio-state) . (edu)       sellto: postmaster@[127.0.0.1]

harvestbot fodder: president@whitehouse.gov fccinfo@fcc.gov root@[127.0.0.1]


From Volker.Blasius@gmd.de Thu May 28 21:38:43 MET DST 1998
Article: 39513 of rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: Volker Blasius <Volker.Blasius@gmd.de>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: [Announce] IF Pico-Comp Starts!
Date: Thu, 28 May 1998 13:46:33 +0200
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Michael Straight <straight@email.unc.edu> wrote:

    Come up with a name for an NPC in an adventure game in which the
    protagonist is strapped to a chair and forced to listen to passages
    from the Necronomicon in order to help him quit smoking.  The name
    must have at least two vowels and contain the letter 'v'.

Hey; careful there!

Volker and David

:)


From jonadab@bright.net Tue Jun  2 10:55:47 MET DST 1998
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From: "Jonadab" <jonadab@bright.net>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Ten warning signs you've been spending too much time on r.a.i.f.
Date: 29 May 1998 17:48:35 GMT
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Ten warning signs you've been spending too much time on r.a.i.f...

   10.  You are amazed that your coworkers have never heard
        of Graham Nelson.

    9.  You can name at least five major differences between
        TADS and Inform.

    8.  You can name at least a dozen other adventure game
        design systems.

    7.  While on break at work, you think up your next post,
        like I did with this one ;-)

    6.  You have actually considered writing your own adventure
        game system in your favourite obscure language, even
        though you know it would be inferior to several that are
        already available, just to prove that it is possible.

    5.  547 messages, 3 unread.
        You become excited, but then you realize that
        those are the three you just posted.
        You read them anyway.

    4.  You reply to 2 of them.
        You catch yourself almost becoming excited when
        you see the "2 unread" message.

    3.  In real-world conversations you find yourself saying
        things like, "Zarf said that ..."

    2.  You are deeply suspicious of anyone who doesn't have
        a strong opinion about conversation trees.

    1.  You live in constant worry that some idiot will
        crosspost something inflammatory to all the groups and
        spam the whole works.



-- 
>From 501 uses for peanut butter:
200. Design an aerobic workout fitness machine called the
PB2000 that uses peanut butter in its hydrolic systems
and enables the user to "burn the equivalent of 2000
grams of peanut butter in a 45-minute workout!"  Hold
an infomercial featuring a dozen extremely thin and
scantily clad models (most of them female) eating loads
of peanut butter while exercising on the PB2000.
Explain that the PB2000 folds nicely and fits in a
standard-size breifcase.  Cut me in on the
profits.
  
  My Current Quote:     "I'm sorry, sir, but we're all out of Beanie
Babies."

  "I" /\ \I /\ I\ /\ I) /\ I) I) 1 /_ II "I"   \I [" "I"
  \I  \/ I\ II I/ II I) \a I) I\ 1 \/ TT  I  o I\ [_  I



From WEIRD_BEARD@prodigy.net Tue Jun  2 13:02:37 MET DST 1998
Article: 39776 of rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: "Paul A Krueger" <WEIRD_BEARD@prodigy.net>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Dungeon Inform ports - question
Date: Mon, 1 Jun 1998 23:42:45 -0000
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Greg Ewing wrote in message <3573707F.126D@cosc.canterbury.ac.nz>...

>...what would be the result of FROTZ GRUE?



Play Sorcerer and see for yourself you'll get something like...

There's a flash of light nearby, and you glimpse a horrible, multi-fanged
creature, a look of sheer terror on its face. It charges away, gurgling in
agony, tearing at its glowing fur.





From kumo@intercenter.net Tue Jun  9 11:00:52 MET DST 1998
Article: 40206 of rec.arts.int-fiction
From: David Rush <kumo@intercenter.net>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Proposed:  Grossly Inappropriate Language Competition (GILC)
Date: 08 Jun 1998 16:30:43 -0400
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"Jonadab" <jonadab@bright.net> writes:
> [Crossover from rec.games.int-fiction]
> Matt Kimball <mkimball@xmission.com> wrote in article
> <6kv8ev$dpq$1@news.xmission.com>...
> > I feel a new competition in the works: The First Annual IF Competition
> > for Works Written in Non-Turing Equivalent Languages which Weren't
> > Designed for IF.  No winner, no deadline, enter whenever you like.
> > Each contestant gets my personal admiration for entering.
> 
> That has tremendous hack value.  I suppose GW-BASIC would be considered too
> powerful to allow an entry?

Yes.

> > Maybe after a while I will rename it simply to the "First Annual IF
> > Competition for Works Implemented with Grossly Inappropriate
> > Technology" to include Turing-equivalent languages that are still
> > grossly inappropriate.  This would allow an Intercal entry, for
> > instance.

If anyone can write a *parser* in Intercal, I think they should be
given a rai-f "Lifetime Achievement Award"...and then get quietly
tucked into bed while wearing one of those nice pajamas with the
really long sleeves...

As far as I can recall, they were still trying to write floating point
addition routines...

> Any volunteers to try RPG?

In Intercal?

david rush
--
Waiting for someone to ask about the language with the totally
unpronounceable acronym...


From gkw@pobox.com Wed Jun 17 12:26:48 MET DST 1998
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From: gkw@pobox.com (Gerry Kevin Wilson)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: madlibs.txt: A quick game generation method.
Date: 16 Jun 1998 06:58:38 GMT
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Hard up for ideas?  Grab your dice and you can get a rough outline at
random.  This is more or less the system used to generate Lesson of
the Tortoise, except that Dan Shiovitz just pulled the Chinese Fantasy
thing out of his hat.

-------------

		    Rules for Mad Libs I-F Creation

Step 1: Determine the Overall Plot.
	Roll a die, consult the appropriate chart below (From the 36 Basic
Plots, for more explanation, see my Guide to Authoring IF.):

You rolled 1: roll again and consult this chart
    1. Supplication
    2. Deliverence
    3. Revenge
    4. Vengeance by Family Upon Family
    5. Pursuit
    6. Victim of Cruelty or Misfortune

You rolled 2: roll again and consult this chart
    1. Disaster
    2. Revolt
    3. Daring Enterprise
    4. Abduction
    5. Enigma
    6. Obtaining

You rolled 3: roll again and consult this chart
    1. Familial Hatred
    2. Familial Rivalry
    3. Murderous Adultery
    4. Madness
    5. Fatal Imprudence
    6. Involuntary Crimes of Love

You rolled 4: roll again and consult this chart
    1. Kinsman Kills Unrecognized Kinsman
    2. Self Sacrifice for an Ideal
    3. Self Sacrifice for Kindred
    4. All Sacrifice for Passion
    5. Sacrifice of Loved Ones
    6. Rivalry between Superior and Inferior

You rolled 5: roll again and consult this chart
    1. Adultery
    2. Crimes of Love 
    3. Discovery of Dishonor of a Loved One
    4. Obstacles to Love
    5. An Enemy Loved
    6. Ambition

You rolled 6: roll again and consult this chart
    1. Conflict With a God
    2. Mistaken Jealousy
    3. Faulty Judgement
    4. Remorse
    5. Recovery of a Lost One
    6. Loss of Loved Ones

Step 2: Determine Number of Rooms and NPCs:

Roll two dice and add them together: That's the number of rooms.
Roll a die and subtract 1: That's the number of NPCs.

Step 3: Determine Genre:

Roll a die: Consult the Appropriate Chart Below:

1. Adventure: Roll again to see which kind/setting:
   1. Aerial / Underwater
   2. Desert / Tundra
   3. Espionage
   4. Jungle
   5. Mountain
   6. War.

2. Comedy: Roll again to see which kind:
  1-2: Situational
  3-4: Slapstick
  5-6: Wordplay

3. Fantasy: Roll again to select a type:
  1. European
  2. High (Swords and Sorcery)
  3. Scientific
  4. Renaissance
  5. Mayan/Incan/Aztec/Slavic/Other Exotic Type
  6. Comedic

4. Mystery: Roll again to select a type:
  1. Hardboiled
  2. Pulp
  3. Horror
  4. Housewife
  5. Thriller
  6. Psychological

5. Romance: Roll again to select a type:
  1-2: Harlequin
  3-4: Lyric
  5-6: Idealized

6. Science Fiction: roll and consult chart to select a plot device:
1-3: roll again and consult this chart
  1. Aliens
  2. Immortality
  3. Post-holocaust
  4. Psionics
  5. Pulp
  6. Robot

4-6: roll again and consult this chart
  1. Space Travel
  2. Time Travel
  3. Twilight Zonesque
  4. Comedic
  5. Cyberpunk
  6. Horror Sci-Fi

-------------

That's it.  Go write the game now.  And of course, don't feel compelled to
follow the dice if you don't want to.

----
G. Kevin Wilson: Freelance Writer and Game Designer.  Resumes on demand.



From rog@shaw.wave.ca Wed Jun 17 13:00:25 MET DST 1998
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From: Roger Carbol <rog@shaw.wave.ca>
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Great!

Except there is no puzzle generator! 

Off the top of my head:


Puzzles:  Roll 1 die and subtract 1.  That is the number of puzzles
in the game.  For each puzzle, roll another die and consult the chart
below.

1.  Locked Door.  The door must be unlocked with:
  1.  Hidden but obvious key
  2.  Non-hidden but unobvious key
  3.  Broken with weapon
  4.  Circumvented
  5.  Opened by an NPC
  6.  Opened with password/combination/player knowledge.


2.  Troublesome NPC.  The NPC must be mollified with:
  1.  The giving of an object
  2.  The telling of information
  3.  Attacked with weapon
  4.  The solving of NPC's problem
  5.  Waiting, eg, for the NPC to fall asleep
  6.  Running away from NPC



3.  Maze.  The maze must be solved by:
  1.  Brute force exhaustive trial-and-error
  2.  Clever use of map
  3.  Alteration of maze's characteristics
  4.  Alteration of player's characteristics
  5.  Interaction with NPC
  6.  Avoided


4.  Ill.  The player must restore his health by:
  1.  Eating
  2.  Sleeping
  3.  Finding a cure for his illness
  4.  Escaping from dangerous/noxious environment
  5.  Receiving healing from NPC
  6.  Dying.




...and I can't think of any others off the top of my head.  Anyone?





.. Roger Carbol .. rog@shaw.wave.ca .. oooh 'campus' IF


From darin@usa.net.removethis Wed Jun 17 17:01:23 MET DST 1998
Article: 40688 of rec.arts.int-fiction
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Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction,rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Something New...
References: <3586DA58.59CCA9ED@ix.netcom.com>
From: Darin Johnson <darin@usa.net.removethis>
Message-ID: <tvyogvtuif3.fsf@cn1.connectnet.com>
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Xref: news.lth.se rec.games.int-fiction:34209 rec.arts.int-fiction:40688

IF <mordacai@ix.netcom.com> writes:

> Concept:
>     Two people agree to play.  One creates a scenario, in the form of an
> opening scene, involving two characters, and mails it to the other.

Here's an example that's already been done.  The problems inherent in
this approach should be obvious :-)

>> RECEIVED FROM AN ENGLISH PROFESSOR:
>>      
>> You know that book Men are from Mars, Women from Venus? Well, here's
>> a prime example of that. This assignment was actually turned in by  
>> two of my English students: Rebecca (last name deleted) and Gary  
>> (last name deleted).
>>      
>> English 44A
>> SMU
>> Creative Writing
>> Prof. Miller
>> In-class Assignment for Wednesday
>>      
>> Today we will experiment with a new form called the tandem story.  
>> The process is simple.  Each person will pair off with the person  
>> sitting to his or her immediate right.  One of you will then write  
>> the first paragraph of a short story.  The partner will read the  
>> first paragraph and then add another paragraph to the story.  The  
>> first person will then add a third paragraph, and so on back and  
>> forth. 
>>      
>> Remember to re-read what has been written each time in order to keep
>> the story coherent.  The story is over when both agree a conclusion
>> has been reached.
>> ------------------------------------------------------------
>> At first, Laurie couldn't decide which kind of tea she wanted. The  
>> chamomile, which used to be her favorite for lazy evenings at home,
>> now reminded her too much of Carl, who once said, in happier times,
>> that he liked chamomile. But she felt she must now, at all costs,  
>> keep her mind off Carl.  His possessiveness was suffocating, and if
>> she thought about him too much her Asthma started acting up again.
>> So chamomile was out of the question.  
>> ------------------------------------------------------------  
>> Meanwhile, Advance Sergeant Carl Harris, leader of the attack
>> squadron now in orbit over Skylon 4, had more important things to  think
>> about than the neuroses of an air-headed asthmatic bimbo named  Laurie
>> with whom he had spent one sweaty night over a year ago. 
>>      
>> "A.S. Harris to Geostation 17," he said into his trans-galactic  
>> communicator.  "Polar orbit established.  No sign of resistance so  
>> far..." But before he could sign off a bluish particle beam flashed
>> out of nowhere and blasted a hole through his ship's cargo bay. The
>> jolt from the direct hit sent him flying out of his seat and across
>> the cockpit.
>> ------------------------------------------------------------
>> He bumped his head and died almost immediately, but not before he  
>> felt one last pang of regret for psychically brutalizing the one 
>> woman who had ever had feelings for him.  Soon afterwards, Earth  
>> stopped its pointless hostilities towards the peaceful farmers of  
>> Skylon 4.
>>      
>> "Congress Passes Law Permanently Abolishing War and Space  
>> Travel." Laurie read in her newspaper one morning. The news  
>> simultaneously excited her and bored her. 
>>      
>> She stared out the window, dreaming of her youth  -- when the days
>> had passed unhurriedly and carefree, with no newspapers to read, no 
>> television to distract her from her sense of innocent wonder at all
>> the beautiful things around her.  "Why must one lose one's innocence
>> to become a woman?" she pondered wistfully.  
>> ------------------------------------------------------------
>> Little did she know, but she has less than 10 seconds to live.  
>> Thousands of miles above the city, the Anu'udrian mothership  
>> launched the first of its lithium fusion missiles.  The dim-witted  
>> wimpy peaceniks who pushed the Unilateral Aerospace Disarmament  
>> Treaty through Congress had left Earth a defenseless target for the
>> hostile alien empires who were determined to destroy the human race.
>>      
>> Within two hours after the passage of the treaty the Anu'udrian
>> ships were on course for Earth, carrying enough firepower to pulverize the
>> entire planet. With no one to stop them, they swiftly initiated
>> their diabolical plan. The lithium fusion missile entered the  
>> atmosphere unimpeded.  The President, in his top-secret mobile  
>> submarine headquarters on the ocean floor off the coast of Guam,
>> felt the inconceivably massive explosion which vaporized Laurie and 85  
>> million other Americans. 
>>      
>> The President slammed his fist on the conference table.  "We can't  
>> allow this! I'm going to veto that treaty!  Let's blow 'em out of
>> the sky!" 
>> ------------------------------------------------------------
>> This is absurd.  I refuse to continue this mockery of literature.  
>> My writing partner is a violent, chauvinistic, semi-literate  
>> adolescent.
>> ------------------------------------------------------------
>> Yeah? Well, you're a self-centered tedious neurotic whose attempts  
>> at writing are the literary equivalent of Valium. 
>> ------------------------------------------------------------  
>> Asshole. 
>> ------------------------------------------------------------  
>> Bitch.

-- 
Darin Johnson
darin@usa.net.delete_me


From russotto@wanda.pond.com Thu Jun 18 16:46:05 MET DST 1998
Article: 40815 of rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: russotto@wanda.pond.com (Matthew T. Russotto)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: The Villian in games
Date: 18 Jun 1998 02:58:44 GMT
Organization: Ghotinet
Lines: 38
Message-ID: <6m9vp4$bnh@netaxs.com>
References: <6m5c7f$cch$1@guysmiley.blarg.net> <35874da7.5453081@nntp.tsoft.com> <6m8vni$1cc$1@guysmiley.blarg.net> <3587821d.16151135@news.theramp.net>
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Xref: news.lth.se rec.arts.int-fiction:40815

In article <3587821d.16151135@news.theramp.net>,
Bryant Berggren (Vox Ludator) <voxel@theramp.net> wrote:
}
}More fun for you, perhaps. Some people may *like* playing heroes. I
}deal every day with moral amiguities -- it's nice to step into a
}situation once in a while where I'm *definitely* on the side of the
}angels.

Ahh.  And here I was all set to propose a set of games loosely based
on a popular movie series:

Game 1) 
  You play a reactionary terrorist, participating in a vain attempt to
  re-establish a monarchy.  You recieve training from one of the last
  of the old soldiers, and with that training, destroy a space station
  belonging to the legitimate government.

Game 2)
  While continuing to assist in the terrorist operations, you recieve
  further training in the old ways of combat.  You cut your training
  short to assist your terrorist allies (including your love interest)
  who are on the verge of capture.  You are met there by the
  government's chief enforcement officer, who is also a master of the
  old ways.  He engages you in single combat, and wins -- but gives
  you a second chance to join the legitimate government and quickly
  attain a high position in it.  Together, the two of you kill the
  present leader and take over the government.

Game 3)
  You double-cross the man who gave you everything (fair enough, as he
  was planning to do the same to you), and split the government into
  warring sects.  Taking advantage of the disturbance, your old
  monarchist allies, led by your old flame, stage an full-scale
  insurrection -- you must defeat them as well.
-- 
Matthew T. Russotto                                russotto@pond.com
"Extremism in defense of liberty is no vice, and moderation in pursuit
of justice is no virtue." 


From lazuli@gte.net Thu Jun 18 16:46:28 MET DST 1998
Article: 40820 of rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: lazuli@gte.net (Fred M. Sloniker)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: The Villian in games
Date: Thu, 18 Jun 1998 04:33:45 GMT
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On 18 Jun 1998 02:58:44 GMT, russotto@wanda.pond.com (Matthew T.
Russotto) wrote:


>Ahh.  And here I was all set to propose a set of games loosely based
>on a popular movie series:

[snip]

>  who are on the verge of capture.  You are met there by the
>  government's chief enforcement officer, who is also a master of the
>  old ways.  He engages you in single combat, and wins -- but gives
>  you a second chance to join the legitimate government and quickly
>  attain a high position in it.

You forgot to mention the enforcement officer's revelation of the way
the terrorist was manipulated into joining the cause on a quest to
avenge his blood relative who was, in fact, alive and well.  (:3

I take it you agree with Jason Fox that farm-boy was a wuss for not
taking that deal?



From lpsmith@rice.edu Wed Jun 24 12:21:40 MET DST 1998
Article: 41161 of rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: lpsmith@rice.edu (Lucian Paul Smith)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Is [BVE] a Troll?
Date: 23 Jun 1998 14:49:22 GMT
Organization: Rice University, Houston, Texas
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Brandon Van Every (vanevery@blarg.net) wrote:

: Doeadeer3 wrote in message
: >

[I wrote this bit:]

: >>The answer, Luc, is no, BVE is not a troll.  He is, IMHO, a Strongly
: >>Opinionated Idealist (TM).
: >[ snip ]
: >
: >Well said.


: Not sure I agree, I don't think of myself as an Idealist, rather I have a
: tendency to forcefully express my ideas at times.  Sometimes at the expense
: of other ideas, but not always.

The reason I pinned you as an Idealist is that, here in raif, at least, I
have never heard you talk about how, practically, one might actually
implement these ideas of yours.  You also have never held up an example of
what you *do* like--in any medium--choosing instead to hold up
counter-example after counter-example of games that failed you.  I don't
think you've posted one single positive comment on *any* game here, let
alone a work of IF.

: >>But you can understand why ng veterans tend not to reply to his posts.

: You must mean rec.arts.int-fiction veterans.  

Yes, that's who I was referring to.

: I have no problem getting
: responses to my posts from people in general.  In fact I've successfully
: penned 7 RFDs and a Call For Votes for the comp.games.development.*
: hierarchy, a monumental feat of negotiation, diplomacy, and patience with
: the rec.games.programmer crowd if I do say so myself.  

I've actually followed and posted to said RFD, and I agree.

: I guess I'm not
: always on my best behavior here, but hey, communication is a two-way street.
: I'm aware that some of my ideas are not favored by IF traditionalists, so it
: doesn't surprise me if we don't always have something to discuss.  This does
: not concern me as invariably, there is someone willing to discuss anything I
: post on.  Why?  Because even if I don't say things in the kindest way all
: the time, I'm always genuinely after some "big idea."  Other people have
: their own big ideas and many are willing to discuss matters in a
: constructive manner.

The implication here is that you are *not* willing to discuss matters in a
constructive manner.  While this may not be what you meant, it is the way
you sometimes come across.  One might also reverse the statement, and say
that it seems you are not willing to discuss manners in a constructive
matter.

It takes effort on the responder's part to set aside outright and
implied slanders and insults in someone's post, and respond, instead, to
the ideas therein.  If you can agree to meet us halfway and put the same
amount of effort into not putting them in in the first place, a much more
productive discussion might result.

And if you're already doing that, I applaud your efforts.  It is,
admittedly, impossible for the listener to know what might have been said.

-Lucian Smith


From erkyrath@netcom.com Mon Jun 29 22:04:26 MET DST 1998
Article: 41454 of rec.arts.int-fiction
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction,rec.games.int-fiction
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From: erkyrath@netcom.com (Andrew Plotkin)
Subject: Re: How important is UNDO?
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Eric O'Dell (eodell@pobox.com) wrote:
> The best way I can think of to handle undo is to maintain
> a linked list of actions that must be executed to backtrack to a
> previous state, e.g. a player command that changes the value of
> variable x from 52 to 67 creates a series of undo commands something
> like
>
>     set addr x to 52
>     [followed by many instructions to roll back daemons and fuses]
>     decrement turn counter
>
> Which is no biggie. However, CAVE is going to generate actual
> executable code rather than bytecode for a virtual machine,

TADS uses this scheme. It's a *tremendous* pain in the source code, and 
it has led to some long-standing and subtle bugs. The infamous 
"delword" bug is caused by the undo information about word-lists not 
being properly updated.

Presumably you're going to *also* need state-dumping code for every
possible piece of information. To implement save and restore, I mean. Are
you sure you don't want to just use that? You're proposing two complicated
and bug-prone subsystems, whose primary design goal is that they behave
identically. 

> so this
> involves involves explicitly storing undo information if you add some
> special routine that won't fit into the API's scheme of supported
> types and data structures. I can see this being a real nightmare if
> the special routine you implemented involved some relatively complex
> AI subsystem.

That's another problem. The advantage of a programming langauge (over a 
fixed library API) is largely negated if programmers have to write code 
*and* save code *and* undo code. I think a lot of people would leave it 
for last, and then things would slip through the cracks.

(Followups to RAIF only.)

--Z

-- 

"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the
borogoves..."


From dg@ Tue Jun 30 15:38:29 MET DST 1998
Article: 41499 of rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: dg@ (David Given)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Can't we all just get along?
Date: Sat, 27 Jun 1998 20:26:43 GMT
Organization: I'm organised? Wow!
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In article <6n208v$n2s$1@winter.news.erols.com>,
Jim Becker  <jbecker@er*ls.c*m> wrote:
>Damien Neil wrote:
>> 
>> Once upon a time, Usenet was a kind and gentle place, free of vitriol
>> and flames.  Peace reigned, all were happy, and life was good.
>> 
>> I wasn't around at the time, but by all reports this lasted for about
>> a day.

In the beginning was the Word. And then it got flamed for inproper
netiquette.

>However, there are still groups out there that are civil and
>interesting, and this group isn't too far gone. I think the 
>recipe for success is:
[...]
>3) Have a core of polite and helpful regulars who can help
>maintain the group's tone.

This is the important one.

Others are:

5) Don't have an alt group. That'll cut done on spam.
6) Don't have a comp group. That'll cut done in people posting idiot
questions about Windows 95 ALL IN CAPITAL LETTERS.
7) Have a relatively small readership so that most people know most of the
other people at least by name.

>Frankly, r.a.i scores fairly well on those first two points
>(this is NOT a complaint!), and it does pretty well on the
>third. Maybe the fourth point is a bit of a problem these 
>days, but I've seen far worse.

r.a.i-f is one the best newsgroups I read. Coherent, intelligent,
interesting; not too big, not too small, not too spammed. Even the flame
wars are fun...

-- 
+- David Given ----------------+ 
|  Work: dg@tao.co.uk          | Truth is stranger than fiction, because
|  Play: dgiven@iname.com      | fiction has to make sense.        
+- http://wiredsoc.ml.org/~dg -+ 


From jbecker@er*ls.c*m Tue Jun 30 15:39:04 MET DST 1998
Article: 41446 of rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: Jim Becker <jbecker@er*ls.c*m>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Can't we all just get along?
Date: Sat, 27 Jun 1998 01:32:38 -0400
Organization: Erol's Internet Services
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Damien Neil wrote:
> 
> Once upon a time, Usenet was a kind and gentle place, free of vitriol
> and flames.  Peace reigned, all were happy, and life was good.
> 
> I wasn't around at the time, but by all reports this lasted for about
> a day.
[snip]

A sigh of partial agreement. More than once, I've seen a group
ruined by a few cranks.

However, there are still groups out there that are civil and
interesting, and this group isn't too far gone. I think the 
recipe for success is:
1) Have a topic the average Internet user considers
EXCRUCIATINGLY dull, so it's less attractive to random trolls.
2) Have a topic so arcane that members are desparately
happy to finally have someone to share the subject with.
3) Have a core of polite and helpful regulars who can help
maintain the group's tone.
4) Cross your fingers that the occasional trolls and idiots 
will lose interest and either tone down or leave.

Frankly, r.a.i scores fairly well on those first two points
(this is NOT a complaint!), and it does pretty well on the
third. Maybe the fourth point is a bit of a problem these 
days, but I've seen far worse.

Bottom line: I'm still enjoying this group.
Keep up the good work, folks!

Jim Becker
Bowie, MD, USA


From fake-mail@anti-spam.address Tue Jun 30 19:55:37 MET DST 1998
Article: 41543 of rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: fake-mail@anti-spam.address (Neil K.)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Mac Port of TADS HTML
Message-ID: <fake-mail-2706981948460001@dialup03.nettwerk.com>
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 (Andrew Pontious) wrote:

> Has anybody else started a Mac port of TADS HTML?

 To my knowledge nobody has formally declared their intention to work on
one, although a couple of people have expressed some interest at looking
into it.

> For those Mac people, I'll say--I'm going to want to rely on the
> Appearance Manager, which while it's an OS 8 component, can be installed
> on older systems including *all* versions from 7.1 on, from 68020 chips on
> up. Does that seem like enough backward compatibility for everyone? What
> Macs use the 68000 chip?

 The only Macs that used a 68000 chip were the original Mac, Mac 512, Mac
Plus, Mac SE, Mac Classic, Mac Portable and PowerBook 100. They don't
support Colour QuickDraw and usually have very limited RAM, so I don't
think it'd be much of an issue to abandon those machines. I can see
adoption resistance to the Appearance Manager from *some* pre 8 users, but
if it's painlessly installed with the runtime I don't see it as a massive
issue.

> I'd like to use the Appearance Manager, and use QuickTime 2.5 or even
> possibly 3.0, since in addition to this being a service to the community,
> this is a programming exercise for me and I'd like to use the latest
> tools.

 Hm. I'd be inclined to support something as far back as QuickTime 2.1, if
possible. There will be people out there with older machines who may not
want to or may not be able to (no disk space, no access to a CD-ROM drive,
etc.) put the latest and greatest stuff on their machine, and it'd be kind
of unfair to shut them out altogether. Maybe have the feature set decline
gracefully depending on what version of QT is installed. (eg: 2.1 can do
JPEGs, 2.5 can do JPEGs, WAVs and MIDI, 3 can do JPEGs, WAVs, better MIDI
and PNG) The only problem I can see with that is that PNG support, which
logically should be (along with JPEG) part of the ideal minimum feature
set.

> Any feedback?

 All I can really say is YES! PLEASE! Or something like that. It's so
aggravating developing HTML TADS games on a Mac then having to test them
under Windows or an emulator. I'd definitely send Kinder Eggs if you were
to pull it off. :)

> (And *ideally*, I'll start working on the Yellow Box soon, which means I
> could hand Michael Roberts back a fully-functional Windows version of his
> software in addition to a Rhapsody and Mac port, but that's a dream since
> I don't know if there'll be a Yellow Box libraries port to the regular Mac
> OS anytime soon. Plus I don't even *have* Rhapsody yet.)

 Well, Apple is definitely going easy with the Yellow Box strategy, having
basically given up on Rhapsody (and incorporating Rhapsody's technology
into its new OS models). But hey - if it runs under 7.x and is Carbon
compliant, I think that'd be fabulous in and of itself!

 - Neil K.

-- 
 t e l a  computer consulting + design   *   Vancouver, BC, Canada
      web: http://www.tela.bc.ca/tela/   *   email: tela @ tela.bc.ca


From jonadab@zerospam.com Wed Jul  1 21:19:48 MET DST 1998
Article: 41769 of rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: "Jonadab" <jonadab@zerospam.com>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: [Kool-Aid] Re: Can't we all just get along?
Date: 30 Jun 1998 21:09:47 GMT
Organization: Belly Laugh Software
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David Given <dg@> wrote in article 

> Would somebody like to enlighten me on what exactly this stuff is? 
> If it's
> made it to Britain, it isn't called Kool-Aid (I hope we'd have 
> more taste
> than to use a name like that).

I would hope so, as well, but not necessarily.  Anyway, it looks worse in
print than it sounds spoken.  (More like Coolade, emphasis on first
syllable.)


Anyway, you mix a packet of Kool-Aid with 2 quarts of water and a cup of
sugar and you get flavoured sugar water.  Kids drink it by the pitcherfull
in summer (we did, at least), and if you make it with less water and freeze
it -- voila, popsicles.  It originally came in flavours like orange and
grape, but now youll see Blastin Berry Cherry and even worse flavour
titles.  (Fortunately, Sharkleberry Fin is defunct.  I am not sure about
Grape Bluedini)  Kool-Aid has been around as long as I can remember, and
every chain of groceries has its own off-brand equivalent, with names like
Flavor-Aid.  There is also a national competitor known as Wylers.
 
> On the other hand, we do have Irn-Bru.

Of this I have not (previously) heard.



From fake-mail@anti-spam.address Thu Jul  2 14:06:09 MET DST 1998
Article: 41796 of rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: fake-mail@anti-spam.address (Neil K.)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Mac Port of TADS HTML
Message-ID: <fake-mail-0107980804180001@van-52-0824.direct.ca>
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 "Julian Fleetwood" <mfleetwo@pcug.org.au> wrote:

> Hey! I use a Mac Classic and it runs fine. Even the Infocom Masterpieces
> games work on it!

 True. However, none of the Infocom games contained big JPEG, PNG and WAV
files. Thanks for the correction on System 7 and colour QuickDraw, folks,
(I was under the impression that System 7 added sort of stub routines for
the various colour calls, not actual support... when colour QuickDraw came
out I think Apple said it relied on 68020 opcodes, as I recall) but I
maintain that the 4 Mb RAM ceiling on most of the 68000 machines, their
tiny (20-40 Mb) hard drives plus their inability to do even greyscale
essentially precludes them from being useful HTML TADS machines. I have a
Mac Plus and a PowerBook 100. The latter has more than 4 Mb of RAM, and I
can run MacWeb on it, but it's a somewhat painful experience.

 68000 users aren't completely shut out, as you can run regular TADS games
on them just fine. (although it's an exercise in patience to play
WorldClass games like Legend on a sluggish Mac Plus) I think it's entirely
reasonable to set, say, 68020, 8 Mb RAM and System 7.x as the absolute
bare minimum for HTML TADS.

 Of course, this rambling really is a moot point as it comes down to how
much work Andrew wants to put into making sure his code works on old
machines. :) For instance, it might turn out to be a lot of extra labour
to get code that's both Carbon compliant on PPCs and yet workable under
System 7 on 68K legacy systems... I have no idea.

 - Neil K.

-- 
 t e l a  computer consulting + design   *   Vancouver, BC, Canada
      web: http://www.tela.bc.ca/tela/   *   email: tela @ tela.bc.ca


From lac@nu-world.com Fri Jul  3 18:16:17 MET DST 1998
Article: 41840 of rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: lac@nu-world.com (Lelah Conrad)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: The Game of Mallor needs players!
Date: Wed, 01 Jul 1998 22:35:39 GMT
Organization: The World's Usenet -- http://www.Supernews.com
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On 1 Jul 98 07:40:52 +0200, "Miron Schmidt" <s590501@tfh-berlin.de>
wrote:

>And while we're at it: Have you heard much from Neil deMause lately?  

I forwarded your question to Neil.  Here's his response:

[Neil wrote]:

If you like, you can pass this along to my, er, adoring public:

Re Miron's question of where I've gotten to: My on-again off-again
newsserver finally coughed, sputtered, and died a couple of months
back,
and DejaNews is just too much of a pain, so I've given up reading the
newsgroups entirely. Given what I've heard about recent threads,
though, I
have to day it doesn't sound like I'm missing much.

I've far from given up on I-F, though. I'm still a regular on the
ifMUD
(where I think a lot of the more intelligent discussion that used to
fill
up r*if has migrated recently), and have no fewer than four
works-in-progress in various stages of non-completion. I'm still
around
and at work.

Jacob Weinstein, now *he's* a slacker.

Neil





From mol@bartlet.df.lth.se Fri Jul  3 18:18:45 MET DST 1998
Article: 41940 of rec.arts.int-fiction
Path: news.lth.se!not-for-mail
From: mol@bartlet.df.lth.se (Magnus Olsson)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Reasons for my absence (was: The Game of Mallor needs players!)
Date: 3 Jul 1998 18:15:31 +0200
Organization: The Computer Society at Lund
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In article <3599E804.MD-0.198.s590501@tfh-berlin.de>,
Miron Schmidt <s590501@tfh-berlin.de> wrote:
>And while we're at it: Have you heard much from Neil deMause lately? Dave
>Baggett? Gareth Rees? Magnus Olsson? Jacob Weinstein?
>If anyone (including the mentioned persons themselves) can explain those
>absences, I'd be really happy. As it stands, I'm seeing kind of a pattern
>there.

I can only speak for my self, of course, but I can list at least three
reasons for my virtual (in the sence of "almost") absence from the IF
scene lately (I don't think I've done very much IF-related things since
the release of SPAG #14).

1) Lots of things to do at work.

2) A bit of a temporary decline in my interest for IF - these things
go in waves, and maybe I was a bit satiated with IF after last year's
competition, plus beta testing "Losing Your Grip", plus the TextFire
business.

3) The state of this newsgroup.
   
I don't think it's primarily the flamage. OK, r.a.i-f isn't as pleasant
and friendly as it used to be. Not that it was ever as nice and friendly
as we like to think it was - there were very heated arguments on this
group, and feelings running high, even several years ago (anybody
remember the "+=3" debate?). But those quarrels were more like
quarrels among friends and colleagues rather than your typical Usenet
flamewar. But I think there was a marked turn to the worse just before
last year's competition started - maybe the people who had misgivings
were right, and competitions bring out the worst in people.

But no, it's not primarily the flamage. R.a.i-f is still quite a nice
group by Usenet standards, and one can always killfile the flamewars.

It's rather that I don't feel at home here anymore. There's been a
change of guards, so to speak, where the old regulars (and "old" in
this context means "more than a year's presence on the newsgroup) have
been replaced by new people.

This is not a Bad Thing in itself, of course. Au contraire, the IF
communit needs a constant influx of new blood, new ideas, new faces if
it's not to stagnate. And it's inevitable that people move on to other
interests. And if you look at the archives of the group, you'll see
that the group's "active membership" has always been in a constant
flux. 

But what has happened lately is that there's a change not only in the
set of people populating the group, but in the set of ideas that make
up the IF community on a more abstract level, the tone of the
discourse, the things people discuss, the atmosphere...

I'm not saying that we ever had a total consensus on this group, far
>from it, but people on this group at least knew most of the arguments,
even if they didn't agree on them, and at least we had common frames
of reference, so to speak. I think this was because the IF Community
grew relatively slowly: newcomers had time to assimilate ideas and get
used to the way the regulars thought about things.

Perhaps what happened last autumn was simply that the influx of
"newbies" reached some sort of critical level: in any discussion,
especially those of a controversial nature, the sheer number of posts
by comparatively "new" people would drown out the old "consensus".

Please note that I am *not* saying that this is a bad thing. On the
contrary, it is only healthy to get an influx of new ideas and to have
the old "truths" questioned (a somewhat trivial example: somebody started a
minor flamewarette some time ago by questioning the "Infocom Worship"
that seemed to dominate the group - part of the old "consensus" was
that Infocom was the acme of IF, a lost golden age - and anybody can
see that such iconoclasm can be very useful).

I'm only saying that much of the old community feeling is gone. To be
replaced, I hope, by a new community feeling, but still it makes at
least me feel a bit like an outsider, a grumpy old fart whom nobody
listens to anymore.



On a far more down-to-earth tack, there's also the discussion
itself. On all newsgroups, some topics seem to recur over and over
again, as new people find the group. Take our perennial chestnut "Can
one write IF in 'ordinary' languages like Basic or C, and why should
we bother with Inform and TADS anyway?", that seems to recur every
three months or so. Any such debate can be immensely stimulating the
first time around, interesting the second time, and still worth
consideration the third. But when you see the same tired old arguments
being presented again for the umpteenth time, it's hard to come up
with anything worth the effort of typing it.

And, of course, the flamage and generally irritated atmosphere doesn't
help.

-- 
Magnus Olsson (mol@df.lth.se, zebulon@pobox.com)
------    http://www.pobox.com/~zebulon   ------


From erkyrath@netcom.com Fri Jul  3 21:17:19 MET DST 1998
Article: 41836 of rec.arts.int-fiction
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: erkyrath@netcom.com (Andrew Plotkin)
Subject: Re: [Inform] Adding Room Subtitle
Message-ID: <erkyrathEvFn0q.CIs@netcom.com>
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Xref: news.lth.se rec.arts.int-fiction:41836

derekf@tfn.net wrote:

> At any rate, my current game-in-progress employs a rather judicious use of
> darkness (read: multiple thedark locations).  In effort to avoid the
> maze-like vertigo oft inspired by a lengthy string of "Darkness" room titles,
> I've given each of the dark locations a more conspicuous title, such as
> "Junction", "Tight Space", "Narrow Hall", etc.	This I've managed with little
> travail.

> But I'd also like to include the subtitle "(in the dark)" alongside each of
> them, as a token reminder, without having to write it directly into the
> thedark.short_name routine.

There's no direct way to do this in the libraries.

You can do it obscurely by setting print_player_flag to 1 and overriding 
the library message ##Look, 3. (This essentially hijacks the message "(as 
Zaphod Beeblebrox)" that appears if you use ChangePlayer to turn into 
Zaphod. Don't try to use this trick in a game that really does use 
ChangePlayer that way.)

Or, put in a leetle library hack at verblibm line 1342 or thereabouts. 

--Z


-- 

"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the
borogoves..."


From marsh@nettally.com Fri Jul  3 21:17:49 MET DST 1998
Article: 41853 of rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: marsh@nettally.com (Steven Marsh)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Zork Zero Demo mode?
Date: Thu, 02 Jul 1998 00:35:25 GMT
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	I just found a C program in the incoming directory of the
if-archive, apparently written originally for the Amiga, that turns
Zork Zero into a version that's in Demo Mode.  That strikes me as
being pretty darn interesting; unfortunately, I can't get it to
compile (on my IBM compatable).  If anyone knows of a way either for
it to compile right, or, preferrably, a simpler means of converting it
(a HEX edit, an MS-DOS executable, whatever), I'd be thankful.

Steven Marsh
marsh@nettally.com
	Who's -really- waiting for the patch that turns the english
version of Zork into the german beta.  :b	 


From sothoth@xxx.usa.net Fri Jul  3 21:17:51 MET DST 1998
Article: 41855 of rec.arts.int-fiction
From: "Gunther Schmidl" <sothoth@xxx.usa.net>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
References: <359ad4da.2618433@news2.nettally.com>
Subject: Re: Zork Zero Demo mode?
Date: Thu, 2 Jul 1998 08:00:35 +0200
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Xref: news.lth.se rec.arts.int-fiction:41855

> Who's -really- waiting for the patch that turns the english
>version of Zork into the german beta.  :b

Uploaded to GMD.

Patch it with the DECRYPT.EXE that's in /infocom/patches/patch.zip (IIRC)
with Zork 1 version 88.840726 (which should be the one that's freely
available, and comes with masterpieces and LTOI 1)

--
+------------------------+----------------------------------------------+
| Gunther Schmidl        | "I couldn't help it. I can resist everything |
| Ferd.-Markl-Str. 39/16 |  except temptation"           -- Oscar Wilde |
| A-4040 LINZ            +----------------------------------------------+
| Tel: 0732 25 28 57     | http://gschmidl.home.ml.org - new & improved |
+------------------------+---+------------------------------------------+
| sothoth (at) usa (dot) net | please remove the "xxx." before replying |
+----------------------------+------------------------------------------+




From marsh@nettally.com Fri Jul  3 21:18:07 MET DST 1998
Article: 41904 of rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: marsh@nettally.com (Steven Marsh)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Zork Zero Demo mode?
Date: Thu, 02 Jul 1998 23:42:27 GMT
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On Thu, 2 Jul 1998 21:13:35 -0000, "Weird Beard"
<WEIRD_BEARD@prodigy.net> wrote:

>
>Steven Marsh wrote in message <359cdff4.5652473@news2.nettally.com>...
>> Y'know, -this- is why I love the interactive fiction
>>community.  The day after my request (and it's been a long day today,
>>let me tell you), I find an answer to not only my main question, -but-
>>my trivial (and not at all requested) aside.  Now I have the coolest
>>Infocom oddity ever.   Thanks, Gunther!  Thanks, IF community!
>
>What was the answer to your main question? (IE Zork 0 Demo Mode)
>
Allen Garvin, creator of the original C program, replied to me via
e-mail, and I -thought- he also sent this reply to the newsgroup... it
just may not have gotten here yet.  Anyway, here's the relevant part
(and I hope that Allen didn't want his words to be public):


> To get the address you want to change, do an infodump on the
> header, get the "Global Variable Address".  Release 366 and 393
> use global variable 6.  Release 296 uses variable 107.  The
> variables are 2 byte words, so just add 2 * (variable number) to
> the global variable address.  If the variables are non-zero, it'll
> go into Demo mode.  

After a few minutes of headscratching, I figured it out, modified a
copy of my Zork Zero data file, and played the demo.  Neat!

Steven Marsh
marsh@nettally.com



From WEIRD_BEARD@prodigy.net Fri Jul  3 21:20:53 MET DST 1998
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From: "Weird Beard" <WEIRD_BEARD@prodigy.net>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: 100% off topic
Date: Fri, 3 Jul 1998 11:41:08 -0000
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Iain Merrick wrote in message <359CF476.6113@cs.york.ac.uk>...
>A.E.Wright wrote:
>
>> Den of Iniquity (dmss100@york.ac.uk) wrote:
>> : On Fri, 3 Jul 1998, Rybread Celsius wrote:
>> :
>> : >Well, I'm not sure to ask, so I'll ask you peeps:
>> : >
>> : >Why is there no channel 1 on televisions?
>> : >This may be a U.S. only thing
>> :
>> : Older Brits and ex-Brits:
>> :
>> : Before ITV, was BBC1 called BBC?
>>
>> AFAIK it was just BBC, until BBC2 went on air.
>> A bit before my time, though.
>
>Just as Zork I was (presumably) simply called Zork until the sequels
>came along?


            From the current (issue 15) edition of "XYZZY News"

1. ZORK 4 - A NEW HOPE?: The title of Zork 1 was changed after its
commercial release. Originally the name "The Great Underground Empire"
applied to the series as a whole, and Zork 1 was called "ZORK: THE GREAT
UNDERGROUND EMPIRE - Part 1," in Versions 5 and 15. From Version 20 onward,
the roman numeral "I" was added to the game, and "The Great Underground
Empire" applied to Zork 1 only.


4. FINITO?: The game's final message also changed. Here is the original
message, as it appeared in versions 5 and 15:


As you enter the barrow, the door closes inexorably
behind you. Around you it is dark, but ahead is an
enormous cavern, brightly lit. Through its center runs a
wide stream. Spanning the stream is a small wooden
footbridge, and beyond a path leads into a dark tunnel.
Above the bridge, floating in the air, is a large sign. It
reads: All ye who stand before this bridge have
completed a great and perilous adventure which has
tested your wit and courage. You have gained the
mastery of the first part of the Great Underground
Empire. Those who pass over this bridge must be
prepared to undertake an even greater adventure that
will severely test your skill and bravery!
Play "ZORK: The Great Underground Empire, Part II".
In version 20, the final sentence was changed to:


Play "ZORK II: The Wizard of Frobozz".
In versions 23, 25, 26, 28, and 30, the phrase "You have gained the mastery
of...." was changed to "You have mastered the first part of..."

In version 75 and 76, "You have mastered the first part of the Great
Underground Empire," was changed to "You have mastered the first part of the
Zork Trilogy,", and "Play "ZORK II: The Wizard of Frobozz"." was changed to:


The ZORK trilogy continues with "ZORK II: The Wizard of
Frobozz" and is completed in "ZORK III: The Dungeon
Master," available now at fine stores everywhere.
In versions 88 and the Solid Gold version (version 52), the phrase
"available now at fine stores everywhere" was deleted.





From jfrancis@dungeon.engr.sgi.com Sat Jul  4 14:43:48 MET DST 1998
Article: 41808 of rec.arts.int-fiction
Path: news.lth.se!feed1.news.luth.se!luth.se!fu-berlin.de!cpk-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!news.bbnplanet.com!netnews.com!priori!logbridge.uoregon.edu!enews.sgi.com!fido.asd.sgi.com!dungeon.engr.sgi.com!jfrancis
From: jfrancis@dungeon.engr.sgi.com (John Francis)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Chicken Philosophy
Date: 1 Jul 1998 18:56:07 GMT
Organization: Silicon Graphics, Inc., Mountain View, CA
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Xref: news.lth.se rec.arts.int-fiction:41808

This recently turned up on a humo(u)r newsgroup.

It reminded me of a couple of the chicken comp games.

>
> Answers to the question:  "Why did the chicken cross the road?"
>
> KINDERGARTEN TEACHER:  To get to the other side.
>
> PLATO:  For the greater good.
>
> ARISTOTLE:  It is the nature of chickens to cross roads.
>
> KARL MARX:  Historical inevitability.
>
> TIMOTHY LEARY:  Because that's the only trip the establishment would
> let it take.
>
> SADDAM HUSSEIN:  This was an unprovoked act of rebellion and we were
> quite justified in dropping 50 tons of nerve gas on it.
>
> RONALD REAGAN:  I forget.
>
> CAPTAIN JAMES T. KIRK:  To boldly go where no chicken has gone
> before.
>
> HIPPOCRATES:  Because of an excess of phlegm in its pancreas.
>
> ANDERSEN CONSULTING:  Deregulation of the chicken's side of the road
> was threatening its dominant market position.  The chicken was faced
> with significant challenges to create and develop the competencies
> required for the newly competitive market.  Andersen Consulting, in a
> partnering relationship with the client, helped the chicken by
> rethinking its physical distribution strategy and implementation
> processes.  Using the Poultry Integration Model (PIM), Andersen helped
> the chicken use its skills, methodologies, knowledge, capital and
> experiences to align the chicken's people, processes and technology in
> support of its overall strategy within a Program Management
> framework.  Andersen Consulting convened a diverse cross-spectrum of
> road analysts and best chickens along with Anderson consultants with
> deep skills in the transportation industry to engage in a two-day
> itinerary of meetings in order to leverage their personal knowledge
> capital, both tacit and explicit, and to enable them to synergize with
> each other in order to achieve the implicit goals of delivering and
> successfully architecting and implementing an enterprise-wide value
> framework across the continuum of poultry cross-median processes.  The
> meeting was held in a park-like setting, enabling and creating an
> impactful environment which was strategically based, industry-focused,
> and built upon a consistent, clear, and unified market message and
> aligned with the chicken's mission, vision, and core values.  This was
> conducive towards the creation of a total business integration
> solution.  Andersen Consulting helped the chicken change to become
> more successful.
>
> LOUIS FARRAKHAN:  The road, you see, represents the black man. The
> chicken 'crossed' the black man in order to trample him and keep him
> down.
>
> MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR.:  I envision a world where all chickens will
> be free to cross roads without having their motives called into
> question.
>
> MOSES:  And God came down from the Heavens, and He said unto the
> chicken, "Thou shalt cross the road."  And the chicken crossed the
> road, and there was much rejoicing.
>
> FOX MULDER:  You saw it cross the road with your own eyes. How many
> more chickens have to cross the road before you believe it?
>
> RICHARD M. NIXON:  The chicken did not cross the road. I repeat, the
> chicken did NOT cross the road.
>
> MACHIAVELLI:  The point is that the chicken crossed the road. Who
> cares why? The end of crossing the road justifies whatever motive
> there was.
>
> JERRY SEINFELD:  Why does anyone cross a road?  I mean, why doesn't
> anyone ever think to ask, "What the heck was this chicken doing
> walking around all over the place, anyway?"
>
> FREUD:  The fact that you are at all concerned that the chicken
> crossed the road reveals your underlying sexual insecurity.
>
> BILL GATES:  I have just released the new Chicken Office 2000, which
> will not only cross roads, but will lay eggs, file your important
> documents, and balance your checkbook.
>
> OLIVER STONE:  The question is not, "Why did the chicken cross the
> road?" Rather, it is, "Who was crossing the road at the same time,
> whom we overlooked in our haste to observe the chicken crossing?"
>
> DARWIN:  Chickens, over great periods of time, have been naturally
> selected in such a way that they are now genetically disposed to cross
> roads.
>
> EINSTEIN:  Whether the chicken crossed the road or the road moved
> beneath the chicken depends upon your frame of reference.
>
> BUDDHA: Asking this question denies your own chicken nature.
>
> RALPH WALDO EMERSON:  The chicken did not cross the road .. it
> transcended it.
>
> ERNEST HEMINGWAY:  To die.  In the rain.
>
> COLONEL SANDERS:  I missed one?
>
-- 
John Francis  jfrancis@sgi.com       Silicon Graphics, Inc.
(650)933-8295                        2011 N. Shoreline Blvd. MS 43U-991
(650)933-4692 (Fax)                  Mountain View, CA   94043-1389
Hello.   My name is Darth Vader.   I am your father.   Prepare to die.


From jfrancis@dungeon.engr.sgi.com Sat Jul  4 14:45:39 MET DST 1998
Article: 41808 of rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: jfrancis@dungeon.engr.sgi.com (John Francis)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Chicken Philosophy
Date: 1 Jul 1998 18:56:07 GMT
Organization: Silicon Graphics, Inc., Mountain View, CA
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NNTP-Posting-Host: dungeon.engr.sgi.com
Xref: news.lth.se rec.arts.int-fiction:41808

This recently turned up on a humo(u)r newsgroup.

It reminded me of a couple of the chicken comp games.

>
> Answers to the question:  "Why did the chicken cross the road?"
>
> KINDERGARTEN TEACHER:  To get to the other side.
>
> PLATO:  For the greater good.
>
> ARISTOTLE:  It is the nature of chickens to cross roads.
>
> KARL MARX:  Historical inevitability.
>
> TIMOTHY LEARY:  Because that's the only trip the establishment would
> let it take.
>
> SADDAM HUSSEIN:  This was an unprovoked act of rebellion and we were
> quite justified in dropping 50 tons of nerve gas on it.
>
> RONALD REAGAN:  I forget.
>
> CAPTAIN JAMES T. KIRK:  To boldly go where no chicken has gone
> before.
>
> HIPPOCRATES:  Because of an excess of phlegm in its pancreas.
>
> ANDERSEN CONSULTING:  Deregulation of the chicken's side of the road
> was threatening its dominant market position.  The chicken was faced
> with significant challenges to create and develop the competencies
> required for the newly competitive market.  Andersen Consulting, in a
> partnering relationship with the client, helped the chicken by
> rethinking its physical distribution strategy and implementation
> processes.  Using the Poultry Integration Model (PIM), Andersen helped
> the chicken use its skills, methodologies, knowledge, capital and
> experiences to align the chicken's people, processes and technology in
> support of its overall strategy within a Program Management
> framework.  Andersen Consulting convened a diverse cross-spectrum of
> road analysts and best chickens along with Anderson consultants with
> deep skills in the transportation industry to engage in a two-day
> itinerary of meetings in order to leverage their personal knowledge
> capital, both tacit and explicit, and to enable them to synergize with
> each other in order to achieve the implicit goals of delivering and
> successfully architecting and implementing an enterprise-wide value
> framework across the continuum of poultry cross-median processes.  The
> meeting was held in a park-like setting, enabling and creating an
> impactful environment which was strategically based, industry-focused,
> and built upon a consistent, clear, and unified market message and
> aligned with the chicken's mission, vision, and core values.  This was
> conducive towards the creation of a total business integration
> solution.  Andersen Consulting helped the chicken change to become
> more successful.
>
> LOUIS FARRAKHAN:  The road, you see, represents the black man. The
> chicken 'crossed' the black man in order to trample him and keep him
> down.
>
> MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR.:  I envision a world where all chickens will
> be free to cross roads without having their motives called into
> question.
>
> MOSES:  And God came down from the Heavens, and He said unto the
> chicken, "Thou shalt cross the road."  And the chicken crossed the
> road, and there was much rejoicing.
>
> FOX MULDER:  You saw it cross the road with your own eyes. How many
> more chickens have to cross the road before you believe it?
>
> RICHARD M. NIXON:  The chicken did not cross the road. I repeat, the
> chicken did NOT cross the road.
>
> MACHIAVELLI:  The point is that the chicken crossed the road. Who
> cares why? The end of crossing the road justifies whatever motive
> there was.
>
> JERRY SEINFELD:  Why does anyone cross a road?  I mean, why doesn't
> anyone ever think to ask, "What the heck was this chicken doing
> walking around all over the place, anyway?"
>
> FREUD:  The fact that you are at all concerned that the chicken
> crossed the road reveals your underlying sexual insecurity.
>
> BILL GATES:  I have just released the new Chicken Office 2000, which
> will not only cross roads, but will lay eggs, file your important
> documents, and balance your checkbook.
>
> OLIVER STONE:  The question is not, "Why did the chicken cross the
> road?" Rather, it is, "Who was crossing the road at the same time,
> whom we overlooked in our haste to observe the chicken crossing?"
>
> DARWIN:  Chickens, over great periods of time, have been naturally
> selected in such a way that they are now genetically disposed to cross
> roads.
>
> EINSTEIN:  Whether the chicken crossed the road or the road moved
> beneath the chicken depends upon your frame of reference.
>
> BUDDHA: Asking this question denies your own chicken nature.
>
> RALPH WALDO EMERSON:  The chicken did not cross the road .. it
> transcended it.
>
> ERNEST HEMINGWAY:  To die.  In the rain.
>
> COLONEL SANDERS:  I missed one?
>
-- 
John Francis  jfrancis@sgi.com       Silicon Graphics, Inc.
(650)933-8295                        2011 N. Shoreline Blvd. MS 43U-991
(650)933-4692 (Fax)                  Mountain View, CA   94043-1389
Hello.   My name is Darth Vader.   I am your father.   Prepare to die.


From ffilz@raleigh.ibm.com Sat Jul  4 14:45:41 MET DST 1998
Article: 41869 of rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: Frank Filz <ffilz@raleigh.ibm.com>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Chicken Philosophy
Date: Wed, 01 Jul 1998 17:05:02 -0400
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And here's some from Visual Developer June/July 1996 in the Breakpoint
column titled Chicken Joke Compiler:

The Windows NT chicken will cross the road in June.  No, August,
September for sure.

The OS/2 chickem: It crossed the road in style years ago, but it was so
quiet nobody noticed.

The Windows 95 chicken: You see different colored feathers while it
crosses, but cook it and it still tastes like...chicken.

Microsoft Chicken (TM): It's already on both sides of the road.  And it
just bought the road.

The OOP chicken: It doesn't need to cross the road, it just sends a
message.

The Assembler chicken: First it builds the road...

The C chicken: It crosses the road without looking both ways.

The C++ chicken: The chicken wouldn't have to cross the road, you simply
refer to him on the other side.

The Prolog chicken: How it crosses the road doesn't matter - but ask it
why and it will tell you.

VB: USHighways!TheRoad.Cross(aChicken)

The Delphi chicken: The chicken is dragged across the road and dropped
on the other side.

The Java chicken: If your road needs to be crossed by a chicken, the
server will download one to the other side (of course those are
chicklets).

The Web chicken: Jumps out onto the road, turns right, and just keeps on
running.

The Gopher chicken: Tried to run, but got flattened by the Web chicken.

The Newton chicken: Can't cluck, can't fly, and can't lay eggs, but you
can carry it across the road in your pocket.

The Cray chickem: Crosses the road faster than any other chicken, but if
you don't dip it in liquid nitrogen first, it arrives on the other side
fully cooked.

The Quantum Logic chicken: The chicken is distributed probabalistically
on all sides of the road until you observe it on the side of your
choice.

The Esther Dyson chicken: You can cross the road with her for only
$3,000 - but also have to listen to her talk about how she went to
Harvard.

The Lotus chicken: Don't you DARE try to cross the road the same way we
do!

The Byte chicken: It's started talking about all the great roads it
crossed ten and fifteen years ago.

The MacChicken: No reasonable chicken owner would want a chicken to
cross the road, so there's no way to rell it to.

The Al Gore chicken: Waiting for completion of NCI (the National
Chicken-crossing Infrastructure) and will cross as soon as it's
finished, assuming he's re-elected and the Republicans don't gut the
program.

The adventure chicken: "CROSS the road WITH the LIGHTS." "I can't do
that."

The COBOL chicken:

   0001-CHICKEN-CROSSING.
   IF NO-MORE-VEHICLES THEN
      PERFORM 0010-CROSS-THE-ROAD
      VARYING STEPS FROM 1 BY 1 UNTIL ON-THE-OTHER-SIDE
   ELSE GO TO 0001-CHICKEN-CROSSING.

The Turbo Vision chicken:

   Begin
      AChicken := New(PAnimal, Init(atChicken, No Eggs);
      If AChicken <> nil then
         Begin
            AChicken^.Travel(tfAcrossTheRoad);
            Dispose(AChicken, Done);
         End;
   End;


From earendil@faeryland.TAMU-Commerce.edu Sat Jul  4 14:48:33 MET DST 1998
Article: 41819 of rec.arts.int-fiction
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Chicken Philosophy
References: <6ne0o7$8637n@fido.engr.sgi.com> <359AA47E.446B@raleigh.ibm.com>
Reply-To: earendil@faeryland.TAMU-Commerce.edu
Organization: Gee Library, Texas A&M at Commerce
From: earendil@faeryland.tamu-commerce.edu (Allen Garvin)
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Xref: news.lth.se rec.arts.int-fiction:41819

Here's one I got a few years ago from a Star Trek list:

                    Why Did the Chicken Cross the Road?
                             Star Trek Version

   Chakotay: Whatever its reason, whatever its goals, we should respect
   its right to cross the road and seek its own spiritual awareness.

   Neelix: Actually, Captain, I'm not really familiar with the chickens
   in this system. But, if you can catch it, I can cook it.

   Riker: I don't know why, but I know how: with pleasure, sir.

   Worf: KLINGON chickens do NOT cross roads.

   HoloDoc: How should I know? No one tells me anything around here. I
   didn't even know we added chickens to the crew. All I know is that it
   would have been nice, BEFORE the chicken went off to the cross the
   road, if it had remembered to turn me off!

   Dr. Crusher: If there's nothing wrong with the chicken, there must be
   something wrong with the universe.

   Dr. Soran: His heart just wasn't in it. (Scenes of chicken torture
   with nanoprobes have been edited out.)

   Scotty: Because she couldna take much morrrrrre.

   Odo: I don't know, but I'm sure it must be Quark's fault.

   Quark: Who, me?

   Charlie X: Because it didn't want to STAY...STAY...STAY...

   Kirk: You chicken bastard, you killed my son...YOU chicken BASTARD,
   you killed...my SON...you CHICKEN bastard....you killed my...son!

   Troi: I feel the chicken's pain!

   Kira: It was probably being chased by those cursed Cardassians.

   Bones: Darnit, Jim! I'm a doctor, not an ornithologist!

   Data: The chicken, in observing that it was on the opposite side of
   the 20th century Terran paved roadway, was aware that its immediate
   goal should have been to traverse the distance without interception by
   an kind of combustion-propelled personal transport vehicle, but I am
   unclear as to why any kind of domesticated fowl should desire to
   perambulate upon a conveyance normally reserved for the usage of......
   yes, sir.

   Dr. Bashir: It probably heard about my amazing medical skill, not to
   mention my sexual prowess and came to get some pointers.

   The Borg: Crossing the road is futile. The chicken will be
   assimilated.

   Hugh the Borg: Maybe it just needed a big hug!

   B'Elanna: I'm sure it felt suffocated by all the bleeping regulations
   of bleeping Starfleet and just couldn't stand it any longer!

   Picard: There are four lights!

   Q: Wouldn't you like to know? Too bad your puny human brain wouldn't
   be able to comprehend the answer.

   Uhura: Shall I open hailing frequencies so you can ask it, sir?

   Tasha: That depends...was it fully functional?

   Chekov: Chicken intercept course entered, Keptan...

   Khan: With my last breath I spit at the chicken...

   Harry: I don't know, it's my first mission.

   Paris: Well, I think that...say, that's a lovely shirt you're wearing.

   Harvey Mudd: Chicken? I don't remember any chicken. No no no, there's
   been a terrible misunderstanding.

   Janeway: Its primary goal was no doubt to get back to the Alpha
   Quadrant...and it probably misses its dog.

   Nurse Chapel: Oh, Spock!

   Lwaxana: Oh, Jean-Luc!

   Spock: Fascinating, Captain.

   V'Ger: To join with the Creator.

   The Grand Nagus: Stupid chicken! You don't cross the road all at once!
   You sneak across it quietly, without anyone noticing!

   Gul Dukat: Well, that's a very interesting question...I'm sure we can
   work out some kind of arrangement to obtain that information that will
   be to everyone's satisfaction.

   Kes: It was remembering back to the times when its ancestors crossed
   roads all the time! They lost those abilities because they stopped
   using them!

   O'Brien: No problem, Commander, I'll get right on it.

   Wesley: I'm not sure, but I can figure it out if I reroute these
   systems and reconfigure the warp field and run a complete internal
   whootchacallit on the computers and...

   Sisko: It was seeking deeper meaning. Jake, do you see what we've
   learned from all this?

   Jake: Check out the babe that just came off that transport!

   Geordi: Well, wherever it's going, I'm sure it'll have more luck with
   women than I do.

   Sulu: Don't call me Tiny!

   Sarek: Sometimes logic fails me where chickens are concerned.

   Mr. Homn:

   Dax: To get to the other side. Kurzon might have disagreed with me,
   Tobin I'm sure wouldn't have had a clue, and then there's...

   Tuvok: That's not a question we'd prefer to hear from a senior
   officer. It makes the junior officers nervous.

   Gene Roddenberry: To boldly go where no chicken had gone before.



-- 
Allen Garvin                                      kisses are a better fate
---------------------------------------------     than wisdom
earendil@faeryland.tamu-commerce.edu          
http://faeryland.tamu-commerce.edu/~earendil         	      e e cummings


From dmss100@york.ac.uk Sat Jul  4 14:49:02 MET DST 1998
Article: 41895 of rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: Den of Iniquity <dmss100@york.ac.uk>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Chicken Philosophy
Date: Thu, 2 Jul 1998 20:01:12 +0100
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On 1 Jul 1998, John Francis wrote:

>> Answers to the question:  "Why did the chicken cross the road?"

GRAHAM    You don't need to refer to that in the course of the game.

ZARF      Yes, it's deliberate.

Anybody else?

--
DEN

          Didn't Mars market a 'chocolate chicken bar' in the early 80's?
(or maybe No! No! Nooooo! You can't start a story with a chicken! Noooo!)





From mkimball@xmission.com Sat Jul  4 14:49:19 MET DST 1998
Article: 41892 of rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: Matt Kimball <mkimball@xmission.com>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Chicken Philosophy
Date: 3 Jul 1998 02:11:28 GMT
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Den of Iniquity <dmss100@york.ac.uk> wrote:
: On 1 Jul 1998, John Francis wrote:

:>> Answers to the question:  "Why did the chicken cross the road?"

: GRAHAM    You don't need to refer to that in the course of the game.

: ZARF      Yes, it's deliberate.

Adam Cadre	The next version has six more euphemisms for the chicken
		crossing the road.  

Joe Mason	To go home and kill himself.

C.E. Forman	Because I didn't get any feedback on PTF.

Ian Finley	He forgot God in his pursuit of science and crossed the 
		forbidden road.

Michael Gentry	This unspeakable act can never be understood.  The chicken
		is now in Danvers Asylum.

Rybread Celsius	The chiken pulls its mask off.  It's really yore friend!

Miron Schmidt	You are now on the other side of the road.
		>

-- 
Matt Kimball  ("I really wish we had a 32-bit chicken")
mkimball@xmission.com


From jcmason@uwaterloo.ca Sat Jul  4 14:49:41 MET DST 1998
Article: 41984 of rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: Joe Mason <jcmason@execulink.com>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Chicken Philosophy
Date: Fri, 03 Jul 1998 20:52:04 -0400
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Matt Kimball wrote:
> 
> :>> Answers to the question:  "Why did the chicken cross the road?"
> 
> : GRAHAM    You don't need to refer to that in the course of the game.
> 
> : ZARF      Yes, it's deliberate.
> 
> Adam Cadre      The next version has six more euphemisms for the chicken
>                 crossing the road.
> 
> Joe Mason       To go home and kill himself.
> 
> C.E. Forman     Because I didn't get any feedback on PTF.
> 
> Ian Finley      He forgot God in his pursuit of science and crossed the
>                 forbidden road.
> 
> Michael Gentry  This unspeakable act can never be understood.  The chicken
>                 is now in Danvers Asylum.
> 
> Rybread Celsius The chiken pulls its mask off.  It's really yore friend!
> 
> Miron Schmidt   You are now on the other side of the road.
>                 >

Matt Barringer:  You cross the road.  It is full of gangsters.  They
shoot you.

Daniel Ravapinto:  When the chicken crossed the road, it made a choice.

David Dyte:  To get to the Rubber Chickens' Picnic.

Brent VanFossen:  From the north, an eerie crowing rises above the wind
and the rattling of the leaves in the surrounding trees. The large
rooster in front of you lifts his head, as if to listen, but does not
move.

Whizzard:  It'll cross the road soon!  I swear!

Kent Tessman:  Won't somebody PLEASE port the chicken to the Mac?

Rumil:  The chicken can try to cross the road in many different
directions and come back if it doesn't like what it finds.

Ivan Cockrum:  As you behold the majestic sight of the chicken floating
gracefully across the road, a sense of wonder settles in your heart. 
You decide that you hate your job.

Brian Moriarty:  All chickens lead to Kensington Gardens.

Harry M. Hardjono:  It crosses flip-flop.

Joe


From vanfossen@compuserve.com Sat Jul  4 14:50:07 MET DST 1998
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From: vanfossen@compuserve.com (Brent VanFossen)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Chicken Philosophy
Date: Sat, 04 Jul 1998 04:05:39 GMT
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On Fri, 03 Jul 1998 20:52:04 -0400, Joe Mason <jcmason@execulink.com>
wrote:

>Brent VanFossen:  From the north, an eerie crowing rises above the wind
>and the rattling of the leaves in the surrounding trees. The large
>rooster in front of you lifts his head, as if to listen, but does not
>move.


Joe Mason:  The asphalt underfoot is slick with water, reflecting the
unbroken black clouds above.  The road is deserted at this time of
night, but you can dimly hear the clucking from the opposite side,
beyond a high chain-link fence.  There, a chicken paces, wet from the
incessant rain, unable to surmount the barrier which prevents its
crossing.


Joe Mason, you have made my day.  I'm back online again after a long
absence.  And you thought I wasn't listening <G>.

Brent VanFossen


From lpsmith@rice.edu Sat Jul  4 14:52:10 MET DST 1998
Article: 41753 of rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: lpsmith@rice.edu (Lucian Paul Smith)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Feedback (was: Re: [COMP 98] Judging Time Limit)
Date: 30 Jun 1998 18:01:45 GMT
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Doeadeer3 (doeadeer3@aol.com) wrote:

: All that is very nice to know. I have really been wondering. Since we don't
: charge for our games, feedback is our only pay.

: So not getting it or only getting one or two responsse,  would *hurt*.

: I wonder what other authors experience is concerning feedback?

I received quite a bit of feedback at competition time regarding
'Edifice'.  Since then, I haven't done anything to try to promote it more,
so I haven't gotten much more (though this might change with it being
included with AdventureBlaster--we'll see.)

I believe that the large volume of feedback I received, however, is
directly related to how well it did.  I know there were people out there
who didn't like Edifice (ct told me it received every number from 1 to
10), yet the feedback I got personally was invariably positive. (Not that
people didn't include some criticisms, just that these were far outweighed
by plaudits).

In fact, the main critical (not critical in the sense of 'insightful';
critical in the sense of 'negative') feedback I received was from the
newsgroup, usually from people that posted at least *something* about
every single game.

And this makes sense.  If you didn't like a gave very much, you're
unlikely to e-mail the author and them them so.  One of the boons of the
competition is that it gives us an acceptable forum for discussing
negative aspects of games we would be less likely to mention otherwise.

I think this is because critical criticism is hard.  Not flaming of
course; that's easy.  It's hard to gently point out flaws in something
while trying to maintain a positive spin on things.  However, it is
precisely this kind of review that is most helpful for the IF author.

I think I'm rambling, but I'll end with a general plea:  If you're
considering giving someone feedback for their game, but are unsure if you
can think of enough positive things to say, please send it anyway.  From
my perspective, at least, *some* feedback is better than *no* feedback,
and negative reviews are often more helpful than postive ones.  Certainly,
if you're one of those people who gave Edifice a 1, send me comments!

-Lucian


From chewy@mcione.com Mon Jul  6 18:49:51 MET DST 1998
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From: chewy@mcione.com (Paul F. Snively)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: [Lelah's Beginner's IF Writing Tool]
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Hi, Lelah!

First of all, let me compliment you on the clarity of the exposition of 
your idea.

> 1.  This is impressionistic only.  I obviously did not work out the
> logical or syntactic problems even with the example.  I was just
> trying to give a general idea of a way that I could more easily work
> on IF writing.  (The popup menu idea is so that when you say something
> is an item, the subclasses then pop up for you to choose between,
> etc.)

If your goal is to simplify the creation of objects and their attributes, 
then I think this could be a very useful system.

> 2.  I don't expect you to write it.  I just want to know if it would
> be possible.

Yes, with some caveats that I'll get to in a moment.

> 3.  This is (I think) less graphical than some other suggestions that
> have been suggested on raif.  The basic idea is for something that
> would work on top of a language like TADS or Inform, the way Windows
> works over DOS.  The point was to help a writer get over the syntax
> hurdle, so they :) could focus on the logical problems.

Well, the only thing that really seems to be addressed here in terms of 
"logic" is helping the writer to ensure that, where there are multiple 
choices of descriptions of things, they're all filled out. Of course, this 
alone is probably quite helpful to an IF writer!

> What does Connie look like? You are Constance Stevens, a young,
> strongly muscled, overworked coffee shop waitress.

It might not be clear to a novice user that the text here should be in the 
second person.

>         Does Baby Joey ever do anything different?  Yes no
> (Yes) How many turns go by before Baby Joey does something different?
> 3
> What does Baby Joey do after 3 turns?  Baby Joey waves and throws the
> spork wildly, but it flops over behind the booth next to where he is
> sitting.

One of the questions I would have here is "how do you make objects respond 
to more stimuli than just the passage of time?" This is the hard part; 
there's no obvious mechanism for actually providing logic that defines the 
interactions of various objects in the world.

>         Can the player see the box? Yes no
> (no) Does the player have light to see by? Yes [so no visibility
> prompt string needed, which would run along the lines of "What does
> the player need to have in order to see the box?" a torch.  Does the
> player have the torch?  yes no etc.]

Does the torch burn the box? Or is it that other kind of "torch?" ;-)

> What will Connie see when she finds the box?  You look behind the
> booth where baby Joey threw his spork and see an old cardboard box you
> hadn't noticed before.

This points up a logic problem already: this description presumes that Baby 
Joey threw his spork already. This happens after three turns. But what if, 
by accident, our experienced adventurer sees the initial room description 
and immediately says "look behind booth?" Also, shouldn't there be a spork 
behind the booth as well? :-)

Ideally, there'd be a spork in the world. Initially it'd be nowhere, after 
three turns Joey's "throw spork action" would be taken which would 
generate the description *and move the spork object from nowhere to behind 
the booth*. That way the object isn't there when it shouldn't be, and is 
when it should. But we've now already moved into programming, in some 
sense, even for something as trivial as moving an object into a place.

> 1) Does something happen to Connie when the stick of dynamite 1) is
> lit? yes no
> (Yes) You gasp, and lean over for a closer look -- this can't be a
> real stick of dynamite, can it?
>         Can Connie take the stick of dynamite?  Yes no
> (Yes) What happens when Connie takes the stick of dynamite? As you
> pick up the stick of dynamite, it explodes with a fearsome blast and
> destroys everything in the coffee shop.
>                 What happens to Connie now?  You have died.
>                         What happens to the game?  Game over.  
> What options does Connie have now?  Restore, restart, undo last move.

The problem I see with this is that there's no a priori reason why the 
player's manipulating an object should only affect the object or the 
player. For example, perhaps the object in question is a switch, and the 
player's manipulating it in some fashion causes a change in some other 
object, an object not even necessarily in the same room. Will this tool 
literally ask the author about every object in the game? How will it 
accomodate objects that the author hasn't written about at all yet?

> [etc etc ad nearly infinitum, basically repeating with pop-ups and yes
> no options the various options and qualities of objects characters and
> actions]

It's the lack of means for specifying anything much beyond multiple 
descriptions, coupled with the "ad infinitum" part, that bothers me about 
this. I see a huge combinatorial explosion occurring in practice. Having 
said that, I do see value in this in assisting the writer precisely in 
ensuring that everything that needs describing is described, and the 
business about having the tool extract alternatives by number, e.g. 1) lit 2) 
unlit, from the author's provided text seems clever.

A concern that I have about the general idea of these kinds of tools, 
however, is that they shield the would-be IF author from the (at least 
currently) inescapable need to either be a programmer in the sense that we 
currently understand that term, or to at least have access to one, to see 
their creative vision come to fruition. Having been the programmer dealing 
with the writer(s) on more than one professional occassion, I can assure 
you firsthand that it's a nerve-wracking experience for all concerned, and 
unfortunately, some would-be authors are likely to throw up their hands in 
despair if they go from something like the above directly into the gaping 
maws of Inform or TADS. :-)

Still, we have to start somewhere, and I imagine the notions of multiple 
story branches and time-delayed non-player actions would be a sufficiently 
novel beginning to writers coming from non-interactive genres.

Paul Snively


From goetz@cs.buffalo.edu Fri Jul 31 16:09:22 MET DST 1998
Article: 43444 of rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: goetz@cs.buffalo.edu (Phil Goetz)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Wired article on IF
Date: 30 Jul 1998 23:37:03 GMT
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Wired did an article in 1995 on IF, which I found in their archives online:

http://www.wired.com/collections/robots_ai/3.09_stories_interact1.html

It has a heavy Cambridge emphasis: Janet Murray, Walt Freitag, Tinsley Galyean,
Bruce Blumberg, and Joseph Bates (my boss) are all in Boston.

It hits on just about everybody who is anybody in the interactive fiction
industry.  Note that none of them are on or more than marginally aware of
rec.arts.int-fiction .  Why do we suck at publicity?

None of the approaches given to interactive fiction aspire to letting the
reader be a co-author -- they all amount to either versions of choose-your-
own-adventure, or PETZ-style undirected, plotless interaction.
Charles Platt (the author) concludes that interactive fiction may have to
discard traditional ideas of plot and character, and develop other ways
of entertaining.

PETZ is an amazing product -- I recommend rushing out and buying Petz III
or finding a demo; it has by far the best autonomous agents I've ever
seen (though we at Zoesis hope to change that) -- but I am not willing to
give up on narrative and interactive story.

Phil goetz@zoesis.com

"In our experiment," says Laurel, "the main thing we proved is that it
takes about 15 seconds to make grown people act silly."


From gkw@pobox.com Tue Aug  4 14:42:43 MET DST 1998
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From: gkw@pobox.com (Gerry Kevin Wilson)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: RAIF Exposure (was: Wired article on IF)
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In article <35c38a52.13358283@news>
eodell@pobox.com (Eric O'Dell) wrote:

> That would be me. Actually, I spoke on the phone today to CMP's PR
> agency, and they will definitely be getting as much coverage as I can
> give them. I'm definitely looking forward to playtesting and reviewing
> their offerings, which go well beyond IF --- an interesting company on
> the whole.

Ahem.  Yay!
 
[snip]

> I'm not saying this to boast, just to point out that I am offering a
> substantial publicity boost to anyone in the IF community who wants
> it, *if* anyone wants it, which doesn't much appear to be the case. I
> love IF, I want to help boost it, and I have lucked into the ability
> to do so.
> 
> Part of the reason I crufted Adventure Blaster together was to see for
> myself if the situation was really as dire as the pessimistic
> conversations here seemed to suggest. It's not. AB is now getting an
> average of 350 downloads a day from the GG site; I dunno what kind of
> traffic the GMD copy is getting. It just got a four (out of five) star
> review at ZDNet. AB is nothing special --- it's just a slick-looking
> program launcher consisting of less than 100 lines of Delphi code,
> plus a decent help file. I just put it where the general public could
> see it and made it easy for the post-DOS population to use. There are
> a lot of people who like IF, a lot more than I think anyone realizes.
> And probably a lot more who would like it if they were introduced to
> it.
> 
> The potential is out there. We just have to actively reach out and
> grab it. It will not come to us.

If I might say this without offending anyone, Eric is dead, and I mean dead, on.
Let me list a few points that are noteworthy to us at this time:

1. The commercial adventure game genre is in a slump.  This is all the
better for us.  Magazine readers will be clamoring for new adventure
games, which they may not be receiving thanks to the exorbitant costs
of production.  Commercial companies seem to be abandoning the genre
for the most part, leaving a huge number of fans adrift.

2. All indicators point to a sizeable population of IF fans, numbering in the
thousands (that are aware of GMD and frequent it.)  The overall number
of IF fans can reasonably be extrapolated to be over 10,000.  It could be
reasonably be estimated much higher than that if you include England,
Germany, Australia, and other non-US countries.  However, if you can
reach 10,000 customers, you easily can make enough money to support
a company.

3. Nobody in the business community is stupid enough to believe that
customers will beat a path to your door, better mousetrap or not, if they
don't know about the product you're selling.  Advertising and publicity
is very, very important.  If you don't take care of that end of your business,
don't cry when you don't sell anything.  You'll only have yourself to
thank.

4. We have a number of people around raif willing and able to help you
promote your games.  Stephen Granade at the Mining Co, Eric at Gadget
Guru, SPAG, XYZZYnews, etc, etc.  Resources not used are wasted.

5. In the general media, we have recent precedents indicating that
opportunities to promote IF are waiting and ready for us.  The New York
Times ran an article on IF.  PC Gamer mentioned the contest.  PC Zone
had a big article on IF.  Michael Berlyn has given us the chance to be
professionally published through Cascade Mountain Publishing.  There's
a good deal of nostalgia out there right now.  We have a chance to really
revive our hobby.  Pay attention, and don't throw it away.

It can't be said too much.  Salesmanship is just as much effort and work
as authorship.  Your job is not over when the game is written.  At least, not
if you want to sell the game.

----
G. Kevin Wilson: Freelance Writer and Game Designer.  Resumes on demand.



From mol@bartlet.df.lth.se Wed Aug  5 10:42:14 MET DST 1998
Article: 43671 of rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: mol@bartlet.df.lth.se (Magnus Olsson)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Is HTML TADS A Bad Idea?
Date: 5 Aug 1998 10:40:21 +0200
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In article <1998080506544501.CAA19915@ladder03.news.aol.com>,
LucFrench <lucfrench@aol.com> wrote:

> 1. MIDI (HTML and HTADS main device in the way of music) isn't as versitile as
> MODules.
> 2. HTML is a poor, crockish "language".
> 3. TADS is a poor "future of IF" design anyway. (Not that I'm claiming Inform
> would be a better choice.)
> 4. Sound, not visuals, is a better way to head towards the "future of IF".
> [This is intended to lead to point 5.]
> 5. HTML and the WWW are visual mediums, rather then textual or sound-based
> ones.
> 
> Point 1 is the most difficult to explain for its value. If people are truely
> interested, I'll explain it elsewhere. Suffice it to say that a MODule (no
> matter if it is a XM, IT, S3M, WOW, or plain ol' MOD) is guarenteed to sound
> *roughly* like what it does on your system (some loss of quality due to
> inferior sound systems is inevitable), while a MIDI is not.

This is a valid point that has been raised in the discussions of
extended Z-machine formats (BLORB, IIRC). But it can hardly be used as
an argument that HTADS is a "step in the wrong direction" - surely
HTADS can be modified to use MOD rather than (or in addition to) MIDI?

> Point 2 is argued for me, by a method as simple as looking at HTML's revision
> history. >BLOCKQUOTE< anyone? (As a secondary point, go to
> http://www.stev0.com, and select the "Tribute to NetScape and Internet
> Explorer. Prepare to be horrified.)

I think this point will have to rest until people have been using
HTADS for a while. My suspicion is that a typical HTADS program would
use HTML in quite a different way from a typical Web page design, and
that the HTADS author may not encounter the "crockishness" of HTML in
the ways that a web designer does.

> Point 3 centers around the status line. A bad status line model is inherent in 
> TADS (especially if you're going for backwords compatability with plain ol'
> TADS...)

When I read the first part of your point 3 - that TADS is a poor
"future of IF design" - I expected a reopening of the "current IF
languages can't do what I want; I want a visual do-what-I-mean
development system" debate, to which I would have replied that sure,
we all know that, but those ideal "future of IF" languages don't
exist, while TADS does, and has a proven record.

But then I read the sentence about the status line, and I'm
confused. Sure, TADS's status line model is a bit rigid, but is that
really reason enough to condemn the entire HTADS project? If you want
to do fancy things with the status line, can't you use the HTML
features instead? But I'm afraid I don't know enough about what you
want to do with the status line, and why this point (which to me seems
very minor) is so central to your argument.

> Point 4 is an old arguement. It goes something like this: sound is closer to
> the emotion circuts then the eye. And most story telling is about emotion.

Says you.

OK, more people than you say it. But there is no consensus on
this. I'd like to sharpen my point a bit: to me, there seems to be
far more interest in - and actual demand for - enhancing text
adventures with fancy visual formatting and images than for enhancing
them with sounds. HTADS addresses this demand.

Furthermore, even granted your point (and I'm not saying that you're
wrong, just that different people want to do different things: some
want to use pictures, others want sounds), you seem to be saying that
"The future of IF is in sound; therefore any addition of graphic
capabilities is a step in the wrong direction". This, to put it
bluntly, is an extremely narrow-minded way of looking at things. 

> Point 5 can be argued by looking at Cool Links from Yahoo!, NetScape, Cool Site
> of The Day, etc.; most are selected for 'looking cool', rather then the
> content.

I'd say that point 5 is utterly irrelevant; you're barking up the
wrong tree. HTADS is not about the web. The web and HTADS are two
entirely different universes that just happen to share a common markup
language. 

And HTML is not a medium - it's a language. The Web is a medium. IF is
a different medium. That doesn't mean that they can't both use the
same markup language. Of course, that may mean that the language is
sub-optimal for one - or both - of the media. But if that's your
point, you'll need to back it up with concrete evidence.

> My final, and most important point, is that hypertext model was designed for
> static texts, while a good piece of Interactive Fiction is a dynamic, changing
> text.

Again, you're barking up the wrong tree. Who said anything about
hypertext? HTML was designed for hypertext, just as C was designed for
writing operating systems. That doesn't mean you can't use those
languages for IF. It seems to me that a good piece of HTML IF can use
HTML for *formatting* its output, while remaining a "dynamic, changing
text".

That said, some people may very well find it convenient to add some
hypertext features to IF. For example, in the Gold Skull Demo, you can
click on the names of objects and get the same effect as if you typed
"examine object" (personally, I find this feature of that particular
demo rather clunky, but that may be the implementation), but that does
*not* turn the entire game into a hypertext.

-- 
Magnus Olsson (mol@df.lth.se, zebulon@pobox.com)
------    http://www.pobox.com/~zebulon   ------


From dmss100@york.ac.uk Wed Aug  5 15:13:07 MET DST 1998
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From: Den of Iniquity <dmss100@york.ac.uk>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Is LUC FRENCH A Bad Idea?
Date: Wed, 5 Aug 1998 13:41:09 +0100
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Xref: news.lth.se rec.arts.int-fiction:43677

[This was written a few moments hence. I've decided to post it in an
attempt to inject some 'humour' into rai-f. Please forgive the obvious
derivation from another letter and poor arguments but I'm constrained by
the format and this is not intended to be any slight against Luc himself.
I just thought it would be funny, though I admit that it is about one in
the afternoon. I know I'm making a fool out of hisself but WTH, he only
lives twice. -DS]


                  WHY I THINK LUC 
                  FRENCH IS A STEP
               IN THE WRONG DIRECTION

                 A SHAMELESS LAMPOON


My rant breaks down as follows:

1. LUCFRENCH isn't as versitile as GRAHam NELson, for example.

2. LUCFRENCH uses poor, crockish "language".

3. LUCFRENCH is a poor "future of humankind" design anyway. (Not that I'm
claiming Graham Nelson would be a better choice.

4. Science, not spirituality, is a better way to head towards the "future
of humankind". [This is intended to lead to point 5.]

5. LUCFRENCH is a spiritual medium.

Point 1 is the most difficult to explain for its value. If people are
truely interested, I'll explain it elsewhere. Suffice it to say that
Graham Nelson, whether mathematician, poet, mountain-climber, computer
scientist or plain ol' 'Nellie') is guarenteed to meet some of your
expectations (some loss of quality due to inferior imaginations is
inevitable), while Luc French's behaviour is more erratic and less likely
to conform to your standards.

Point 2 is argued for me, by a method as simple as looking at LucFrench's 
revision history. The 'Babylon 5 incident' anyone? Narn Bat Squads? (As a
secondary point, go to http://www.stev0.com, and select the "Tribute to 
LucFrench". Prepare to be horrified.)

Point 3 centers around his status line. A bad status line model
is inherent in LucFrench (especially if you're going for backwords
compatability with plain ol' Luc, the kindergarten kid...)

Point 4 is an old arguement. It goes something like this: science and
reason and philosophical advancement cover the whole spiritual thing and
more besides. Spirituality alone can only advance us so far.

Point 5 can be argued by looking at mediums. Mediums are chosen for their
looks as much as anything and not on inherent abilities. Yeah, I'm
definitely losing it at this point. But hey, would you go to a medium who
looked like, say, Jim Carrey?

My final, and most important point, is that 'LucFrench' was designed
for static visual media emission interception, while a good piece of human
being is a dynamic, changing conception engineer.


>Thanks
>Luc "Overly Prone To Ranting" French

Sorry Luc. I'm overly prone to ribbing. Smileys all round.

-- 
Den




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From: Den of Iniquity <dmss100@york.ac.uk>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Is HTML TADS A Bad Idea?
Date: Wed, 5 Aug 1998 20:28:43 +0100
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On 5 Aug 1998, LucFrench wrote:
>1. MIDI (HTML and HTADS main device in the way of music) isn't as versitile as
>MODules.

OK. This one is the strongest part of your argument. There are fairly
clear advantages and disadvantages to both forms. 

MODs will indeed sound more like the originally intended music. But
they're big. MIDI files are small. Admittedly, most of the size of MODs is
instrument data, so once that's accounted for, the rest of the module
won't be that much bigger than a corresponding MIDI file.

I've got a module - Maple Leaf Rag - perhaps appropriate for some classier
joint with some guy rattling out Joplin numbers on the old ivories. It's
one and a half minutes, and 200k. A midi file version of the same would be
8k or so. OK, now if you had 30 minutes of piano music, the two formats
are going to increase by about the same amount - say another 50k, allowing
some repetition - the midi is still far preferable in size but now the
difference isn't quite so great. 

Then of course Luc's right to consider the sound card. Perhaps you've got
a non-midi card, with just a few voices and no real processing power of
its own (maybe like me you've got a 4-voice 14-bit sound chip called
'Paula' from the mid-eighties in your computer. Love her to bits,
honestly). Not only will the music sound much tinnier, but mixing the
waveforms together to squeeze them out of your sound output is also
hogging your processor (thank heavens for hardware preemptive
multitasking. Phew! Paula need not retire just yet). Of course in such
cases those 16 channel XM's and S3M's are going to be just as problematic
- not quite as tinny and chip-music-like but just as processor intensive. 

So basically I can't for the life of me choose between the two
different systems. And as has been said already, it wouldn't be so hard to
implement MOD playing at some future date.

But are you going to play music throughout the game? Think about it. A
'short' game is going to have someone playing it for over an hour,
possibly two hours. If music is involved throughout, then you've either
got to produce a heck of a lot of it, or you're going to irritate the
player with repetition. I'm pretty sure sound-effects would play a bigger
role in HTML-TADS sound production than music - apart from anything else
they require a lot less musical talent on the part of the author. How
about a heavy heart-beat track for those horror moments, the odd crack of
thunder, heavy steps as you hide from your adversary - or ambient
background noise whether it be standing by the interstate (cars rushing
past), or the dull conversational throb of a bar. The rasp of your scuba
gear as you dive to find treasures on the sea bed. Perhaps you've just
entered your apartment, you might hear your phone ringing and that'd give
you a much stronger impulsion to answer the damned thing than a text
message (though you'd still need the text, I suppose, in case your
audience isn't getting the sound). 

I can't remember the HTML-TADS specifications but I'd
be surprised if there wasn't a WAV or AIFF compatability in there
somewhere.

Mind you, let's suppose you wanted your ambient 'interstate background
noises' track to have the occasional 'Buckaw!' of a chicken thrust into it
at irregular intervals. Now there's a good case for a MOD format. Easier
to do that way, and I don't think I remember 'chicken call' as being in
amongst my midi wave-files (then again, I do seem to remember 'helicopter'
so I suppose it isn't _that_ unlikely, though I suspect that 'helicopter'
is only included so people can write midi versions of the Airwolf theme
tune).

I'd be interested to see the way Guilty Bastards uses the media of
graphics and sound. But I'm still awaiting that Amiga port of the Hugo
engine. Is anyone working on that?

-- 
Den



From mccall@erols.com Wed Aug  5 22:33:03 MET DST 1998
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From: mccall@erols.com (TenthStone)
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Subject: Re: Is HTML TADS A Bad Idea?
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lucfrench@aol.com (LucFrench) caused this to appear in our collective minds on 5 Aug 1998 06:54:45 GMT:
>1. MIDI (HTML and HTADS main device in the way of music) isn't as versitile as
>MODules.

No.  Because of the smaller size of MIDI modules, they are far more versatile.  What
they are not is especially good-sounding.  Case in point, the piano.  But they are more
versatile, as they can be used nearly anywhere without inspiring extreme pain to the
listener.

>2. HTML is a poor, crockish "language".

If you mean as a programming language, yes.  If you mean as a document-formatting
language, no.  It is not as efficient as, say, WordPerfect;  it is not as adaptable as the
same;  it is not as elegant as the same.  But it is an easily writable markup language
allowing a sizable range of design choices, provided that the author has at least some
degree of taste.  And that is not something that can be handled by an easier language.

Well, no.  I think that any poor Joe on the planet could type something into WordPerfect
and it would probably come out looking good.  The problem is that formatting for a screen
is much harder than formatting for the printed page.

>3. TADS is a poor "future of IF" design anyway. (Not that I'm claiming Inform
>would be a better choice.)

No;  I think TADS has the potential to be elegantly simple enough for anyone, yet complex
enough to make room for extensive customization.  I do not think HTML TADS has been
implemented very well;   I think that MJR has taken some steps in the wrong direction
by pushing on us things that we shouldn't need to deal with, such as character encoding, and
I think the TADS source code should consist entirely of objects, functions and a small
family of directives (#include).  I do not believe that #IFDEF is the right way to go.  I,
personally, will continue to program what little output I make in TADS 2.2.3, keeping a
minimalist copy of 2.2.4 in a directory on the disk should I need it someday.

>4. Sound, not visuals, is a better way to head towards the "future of IF".
>[This is intended to lead to point 5.]

I disagree completely.  I read much faster than I listen.  To me, the future of IF will be
a long series of consistently superior parsers, as the artistic side holds almost nothing that
we cannot accomplish already (outside of the development of said superior parsers).

>5. HTML and the WWW are visual mediums, rather then textual or sound-based
>ones.

This is matter of opinion, completely defined by one's usage of the web.  If you are
performing research, that is (largely) a textual matter, and the parts of the internet
that you chance upon will be so.  If you are idly browsing, you will probably find a
great deal of pictures -- but I find that even then, my attention is held by the text, not
the flashy graphics.  But you are right in that the web is not sound-based.

>Point 1 is the most difficult to explain for its value. If people are truely
>interested, I'll explain it elsewhere. Suffice it to say that a MODule (no
>matter if it is a XM, IT, S3M, WOW, or plain ol' MOD) is guarenteed to sound
>*roughly* like what it does on your system (some loss of quality due to
>inferior sound systems is inevitable), while a MIDI is not.

Except that MODs do not support speech very well.  MIDI, of course, doesn't support
it at all, but the lack of speech support casts doubt on the ability of a MOD to 'advance'
the IF medium to a auditory focus.

>Point 2 is argued for me, by a method as simple as looking at HTML's revision
>history. >BLOCKQUOTE< anyone? (As a secondary point, go to
>http://www.stev0.com, and select the "Tribute to NetScape and Internet
>Explorer. Prepare to be horrified.)

I use blockquote;  in fact, I find it often one of the most useful tags.  And I find frames
to be quite helpful in site formatting (the use of frames being one of the things stev0 berated).
I also find that even such things as JavaScript can be an enormous boon to a site
(see www.odu.edu for an especially attractive page).

>Point 3 centers around the status line. A bad status line model is inherent in 
>TADS (especially if you're going for backwords compatability with plain ol'
>TADS...)

The only problems I see with the status line are that the TADS status line can
only be one line, and that line is always defined in two sections.  Either side
is completely customizable.

>Point 4 is an old arguement. It goes something like this: sound is closer to
>the emotion circuts then the eye. And most story telling is about emotion.

Proximity defines magnitude and thus effect?  That's questionable.
Additionally, which segments of the 'emotion circuits'?  I'm certain that
seperate emotions are handled differently, in one section of the brain versus
another.  Intellectual emotions?  Fear, love, and jealousy seem, to me, to come
>from another portion entirely than desire and calm.

>Point 5 can be argued by looking at Cool Links from Yahoo!, NetScape, Cool Site
>of The Day, etc.; most are selected for 'looking cool', rather then the
>content.

It can be, but not very well.  I wouldn't say that the "most popular" sites are by any
means representative of the whole.  If they were, wouldn't we be playing Quake II
right now?

>My final, and most important point, is that hypertext model was designed for
>static texts, while a good piece of Interactive Fiction is a dynamic, changing
>text.

That's an interesting point.  I haven't actually played HTML-TADS, not having the
required Windows 95 (I felt comfortable arguing the point since I have looked at
the libraries for 2.2.4, and I have experienced both TADS and HTML in their glory
and their lack thereof), but would you care to inform me how it handles output?
I was under the impression that it was a long, scrollable document, much like current
TADS, except with fancier formatting and audio/visual support.  Perhaps it's not.

Promising I won't hold the rant against you, I am always,
				--  TenthStone


-----------

The inperturbable TenthStone
tenthstone@hotmail.com          mccall@erols.com        mccallr@gsgis.k12.va.us


From fake-mail@anti-spam.address Thu Aug  6 11:06:55 MET DST 1998
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From: fake-mail@anti-spam.address (Neil K.)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Is HTML TADS A Bad Idea?
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 Den of Iniquity <dmss100@york.ac.uk> wrote:

> I can't remember the HTML-TADS specifications but I'd
> be surprised if there wasn't a WAV or AIFF compatability in there
> somewhere.

 It does indeed support WAV format digitized sound. At least, it does if
your computer has such audio capabilities.

> Mind you, let's suppose you wanted your ambient 'interstate background
> noises' track to have the occasional 'Buckaw!' of a chicken thrust into it
> at irregular intervals. Now there's a good case for a MOD format. [...]

 Actually, HTML TADS has a terrific way of addressing this case. You can
specify a sound to be played in a background ambient layer with a
randomness value set. I use this in my "Golden Skull" demo game. I have
the looped sound of crickets that repeats constantly at a low volume, with
a bird call being repeated over top at random intervals.

 The idea is you can have a moderately small looping background sound
(naturally you choose and edit the sound such that there are no obvious
looping points for the ear to catch) with a random layer over top. This
means you don't have to have a gigantic sample; the only other way to get
a good background sound that doesn't repeat in an obvious and annoying
fashion. Another example would be to have a loop of waves crashing on a
beach and then sticking in the sound of a seagull over top at a low random
interval.

 Done well, this kind of ambient sound can be very evocative thing. Done
poorly, and you simply turn the interpreter's sound option off. :)

 - Neil K.

-- 
 t e l a  computer consulting + design   *   Vancouver, BC, Canada
      web: http://www.tela.bc.ca/tela/   *   email: tela @ tela.bc.ca


From djello@well.com Thu Aug  6 17:15:03 MET DST 1998
Article: 43722 of rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: djello@well.com (Darius Bacon)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: VM Background
Date: 6 Aug 1998 03:33:50 GMT
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nr@labrador.cs.virginia.edu (Norman Ramsey) writes:

>In article <6pt6ms$ad5$1@nnrp1.dejanews.com>,  <okblacke@usa.net> wrote:
>>All this talk about Virtual Machines has made me hungry.
>>
>>Anyone have any good, generic resources on VMs?

>I'd love to find some, but they are hard to come by.

>My current favorite is `Smalltalk-80: The Language and its
>Implementation', by Goldberg and Robson.  The last part of the book is
>about the VM.

In the same series there's _Smalltalk-80: Bits of History, Words of
Advice_ edited by Glenn Krasner -- it's mostly a bunch of reports by 
people who took the above reference as a starting point for real
implementations.

Anton Ertl's PhD thesis ``Implementation of stack-based languages on
register machines'' at
http://www.complang.tuwien.ac.at/papers/ertl96diss.ps.gz has good info
and the best set of references on interpreters and virtual machines I
can remember seeing.

A couple more references not given there:

Christopher Fraser and Todd Proebsting, ``Custom instruction sets for
code compression''.

Robert Lee Walton, ``R-code: a very capable virtual computer''.

I got them both off the web but don't have the URLs handy.

Oh yeah, and ``Back to the Future: The Story of Squeak, A Practical
Smalltalk Written in Itself'' at
ftp://st.cs.uiuc.edu/Smalltalk/Squeak/docs/OOPSLA.Squeak.html

-- 
Darius Bacon    http://www.well.com/~djello


From mattack@area.com Sat Aug  8 20:32:26 MET DST 1998
Article: 43790 of rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: mattack@area.com (Matt Ackeret)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Is HTML TADS A Bad Idea?
Date: 7 Aug 1998 15:36:42 -0700
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In article <1998080506544501.CAA19915@ladder03.news.aol.com>,
LucFrench <lucfrench@aol.com> wrote:
>My rant breaks down as follows:
>
>1. MIDI (HTML and HTADS main device in the way of music) isn't as versitile as
>MODules.

Really?  I was under the impression that MODs are *very very very* 
simplistic, and are based upon some limited IBM PC sound card's original 
formats.  (Or was it something on the Amiga?  I admittedly can't remember..)

But they're like limited to 4 channels, *in the format itself*..  So then to
get past that limit, there kept being new hacked versions of MOD players, and
MOD files, so some players would play some sounds, but not all..  not at all
well designed like the MIDI format.

>2. HTML is a poor, crockish "language".

Really?  It works pretty damn well at what it was _intended_ for.. More on
that later.

>3. TADS is a poor "future of IF" design anyway. (Not that I'm claiming Inform
>would be a better choice.)

I don't know much about TADS so can't comment..

>4. Sound, not visuals, is a better way to head towards the "future of IF".
>[This is intended to lead to point 5.]

Arguable either way.

>5. HTML and the WWW are visual mediums, rather then textual or sound-based
>ones.

That is absolutely a crock, using your own terminology.

HTML is a *markup language* for text, and was simply designed for 
display-independant rendering of the same *static* documents.   The WWW is just
a collective term for the HTML pages and HTTP servers that dish up the stuff.

The fact that people have bastardized web pages into being page layout
programs, with lots of live pictures and programs and such, does not mean
that HTML is a "visual medium".    The fact that you can still use the
vast majority of web pages at least adequately with Lynx (a completely text-
based web browser, that (1) doesn't crash [like IE keeps doing today] and
(2) is fast [like none of the GUI ones are]) puts up one point in favor of
this argument.
-- 
mattack@area.com


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Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Is HTML TADS A Bad Idea?
Date: Sat, 08 Aug 1998 02:03:46 GMT
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In article <6qfvhq$kvd$1@vax.area.com>,
  mattack@area.com (Matt Ackeret) wrote:
> In article <1998080506544501.CAA19915@ladder03.news.aol.com>,
> LucFrench <lucfrench@aol.com> wrote:
> >My rant breaks down as follows:
> >
> >1. MIDI (HTML and HTADS main device in the way of music) isn't as versitile
as
> >MODules.
>
> Really?  I was under the impression that MODs are *very very very*
> simplistic, and are based upon some limited IBM PC sound card's original
> formats.  (Or was it something on the Amiga?  I admittedly can't remember..)
>
> But they're like limited to 4 channels, *in the format itself*..  So then to
> get past that limit, there kept being new hacked versions of MOD players, and
> MOD files, so some players would play some sounds, but not all..  not at all
> well designed like the MIDI format.
>

Well...... kinda...sorta.... maybe.  MOD was designed for Paula, the Amiga's
sound chip. And yes, it's primitive, but it's also a completely different
sort of beast from midi. MIDI music is "generated" by the sound card; it's
akin to having an orchestra (the sound card) and giving it some sheet music
(the midi file) A MOD is more like beign given both the sheet music, and the
orchestra. Now, MIDI is more elegant, _but_ two different sound cards, or
even two different configuatations on the same sound card, can lead to a midi
file sounding very, very different. A MOD will sound the same on any piece of
equipment capable of playing it properly (in theory; YMMV) MOD is also more
versitile; you could include a lyric track in a MOD file (this would lead to
an awfuly huge mod, but you could do it. Actually, you could do it without
bloating the size topo much for certain effects; I have a very cool mod which
occasionally features the famous Terminator quote "I'll be back" in the
background. ALso, An X-files remix which features several quotes from the
series. Very Cool)  MOD and MIDI are suited to different things. It would be
nice to support both, and a sample format as well -- WAV, AIF,MP3,whatnot (in
the running analogy, this would be like a recording of the orchestra, and
owuld have roughly ther same benefits and weaknesses - you can record any
sound, but a recording hte same quality as the orchestra requires expensive
(ie large) equipment (filesize), though hiring an orchestra every time you
want ot hear a song is also expensive(CPU intensive)), but if you haver to
cut one of these, I personally would cut MIDI (as the sort of music _I
personally_ want to do sounds better in MOD. YMMV)


What I want ot know is why no one's discussed the important issue: Which FMV
format are we gonna adopt :-)  (Actually, I'd kind of like to be able to do
animations on occasion. Really. I'm serious.)



-----== Posted via Deja News, The Leader in Internet Discussion ==-----
http://www.dejanews.com/rg_mkgrp.xp   Create Your Own Free Member Forum


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On Wed, 05 Aug 1998 16:48:02 +0100, Kevin Bracey wrote:
> For example, Z-Machine filetypes on RISC OS are something of a mess. One of
> the first (the first?) RISC OS interpreters, Brian Scattergood's Infocom,
> used an unallocated filetype &061 for Z-code files, and &062 for save files.
>
> ...
>
> A later interpreter, Eduard Poor's Zip port, used &061 to &065 for
> Version 1-5 files. This was pretty heinous, as these were still unallocated,
> clashed with Infocom's use of &062, and the nobbling of 5 filetypes is 
> totally unnecessary - you only need one filetype for Z-Code (assuming the
> same program handles all versions).

I'd *like* to have been first, but as far as I recall the history goes 
something like

1. Frank Lancaster releases his ZIP (which was a pure ARM code Z3 interpreter 
running outside the desktop). If it works on the StrongARM, it is probably the 
fastest Z3 interpreter in the world.

2. Bryan gets annoyed that he can't run the Z5 version of Planetfall natively, 
so grabs the ITF sources and produces a non-desktop port. Never released much 
outside Oxford.

3. Just as Bryan is experimenting with a desktop version, Eduard release his 
first interpreter (not IIRC a Zip port) which already runs in the desktop.

4. Bryan switches his attention to the Psion since the SDK has just arrived.

5. Six months later the Psion version is 'finished' and Eduard's current 
Zip-based interpreter is still incapable of displaying a caret or using outline 
fonts. Bryan ports the cleaned up ITF sources to the Acorn.

6. Time passes.

7. Kevin produces a spec-compliant interpreter with Z6 support. Bryan drops his 
interpreter to 'maintenance only' status.

So, the credits are:

First RISCOS interpreter: Frank Lancaster.
First desktop interpreter: Eduard Poor.
First desktop interpreter with outline fonts: Bryan Scattergood.
First spec-compliant interpreter: Kevin Bracey.

> So I'll then have an application claiming 11 filetypes, 9 of which are
> pretty well equivalent, and is fully capable of autodetecting what kind
> of file it is being given anyway...

I'm not sure who exactly is to blame for the filetypes. I think Eduard started 
by using &61-&65, and then I added desktop support and reused &62 for 
savefiles. I didn't understand *why* Eduard was using 5 filetypes until it was 
too late. Even then, I didn't think the ability to have different icons for 
different Z-revision was worth it. As you note, users appear to disagree.

Out of curiosity, why do you think it is worth having a filetype for Blorb 
files? I think I was the first to support double-click on save files 
automatically loading the corresponding story, so Quetzal files I can 
understand, but for Blorb I don't see the motivation.

    Bryan



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From: "Anssi Porttikivi" <porttikivi+usenet@dlc.fi>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction,comp.os.inferno
Subject: Re: IF VM (Inferno)
Date: Fri, 7 Aug 1998 09:33:58 +0300
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Norman Ramsey <nr@labrador.cs.virginia.edu> wrote in message
6q2edt$f6n$1@murdoch.acc.Virginia.EDU...
...
>Stack machines are great.  It's just that there's this intriguing
>claim coming out of Bell Labs that 3-address code is much better for
>translation to good native code

You are referring to "The design of the Inferno virtual machine"
http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/cs/who/rob/hotchips.html, which has a lot of
information on the subject. For more info see the not-so-good Lucent Inferno
Web site http://www.lucent-inferno.com/. Inferno is the best thing since
Unix. There are also comp.os.inferno and comp.lang.limbo, if you are
interested in the "data dial tone" and "future of computing",  to paraphrase
their marketing literature.



From earendil@faeryland.TAMU-Commerce.edu Mon Aug 10 17:27:42 MET DST 1998
Article: 43862 of rec.arts.int-fiction
Newsgroups: rec.arts.drwho,rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: programming wizzard (Re: Graham Nelson: Sex symbol of the millenium or demigod?)
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    Jonadab the Unsightly One <jonadab@zerospam.com> wrote:

    Seriously, though, I would have to say Graham Nelson is a programming
    wizzard.

Interestingly, he claimed that he wasn't much of a real programmer when
he first released Inform.  There is a lot of very elegant code (and some
cute touches of whimsy scattered here and there in the code) in Inform,
though, probably a result of his background in pure mathematics (both
the whimsy and the elegance).


-- 
Allen Garvin                                      I think I'll
---------------------------------------------     Let the mystery be
earendil@faeryland.tamu-commerce.edu          
http://faeryland.tamu-commerce.edu/~earendil         	    Iris Dement


From jcmason@undergrad.math.uwaterloo.ca Mon Aug 10 17:29:51 MET DST 1998
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In article <6qgcg5$fv7@newsops.execpc.com>,
David A. Cornelson <dcornelson@placet.com> wrote:
>Over the last six months or so, Jeff Hatch has riddled our comfy little
>environment with various discussions on his upcoming IF IDE development
>including a new language and parser. This environment, fittingly dubbed
>"Inscribe", was originally designed in C++ and has recently been ported to
>Java. A few days ago I received, at my own request, a copy of his first Beta
>in order to perform some rudentary examination.

I think it may be a little premature to be reviewing it.  It does look very
nice, but its a long way from being complete.

>I first tried to run it with the JDK 1.1.6, but I can't figure out how to
>get DOS under Win98 to see the long filenames. I'm sure there's a tool or
>something, help me here if you know of how to get by this.

Can't help you with that - I had no problems at all under Linux.

>My first impression was a good one. The interface is very simple, with an
>object tree in a lefthand frame, children in the upper-right and code in the
>lower-right. You click on an object that has children, then you select one
>of these, and code appears in the lower right window. Simple enough.

It does need some work, though.  For instance, it can be confusing what level
of an object tree you're looking at, since you can select unchangeable items
but the display won't alter - it would still show the parent of that item.
Also, it's annoying adding new items because all the fields start out blank,
and you have to click on each in turn.  It would be better if hitting Enter
would automatically jump to the next field.

>A note here, running the program was extraordinarily slow. I don't know if
>this is the Win89 VM, VAJ, or what. Running it as I can, it's not usable.

It was also fairly slow on my machine (a P90 running Red Hat Linux 5.0, with
Steve Byrne's port of the JDK 1.1.6).  Java takes up about 30% of my memory
and 25% of my CPU resources, with almost no change between Java-ICQ and
Inscribe (the only Java programs I've tried).  The difference is that Inscribe
moves slowly, but ICQ moves just fine - it's the rest of my system that slows
down while I run ICQ.

Anyway, this is the UI which is slow, the Inscribe compiler etc. seem to run
fine.  I'm not sure how much optimization is going to be able to affect this -
it may just be Java's fault.  Is there a faster VM available?  Anyone try with
Kaffe?

I should mention that the first time I ran it, it was unusably slow.  It's only
been a bit sluggish since, never that bad.  It could be because I had Netscape
running at the same time the first time I ran it...

>Here's where some syntax-checking and coloring would go a long way. Maybe
>I'm dreaming, but it would be an excellent addition to what I see as an up
>and coming rival to Inform and TADS.

Yes, that'd be nice.  But there are other things to get done first - like
stability.  It crashes very often at the moment.  And a lot of standard UI
stuff is unimplemented - there's no Search, no window management (Cascade/Tile
etc), no wat to find-and-replace (although the tokenization should take care
of some that, it would still be necessary for, say, changing the name of a
character in all the game text).

Speaking of tokenization, the idea seems to work well.  And if you save a
program in text format instead of as a tokenized binary, it seems very readable
(although I don't like the indentation style - but it should be possible to
run it through a beautifier).  The one drawback is that when you load a text
file, you have to wait while it compiles.  You get this back when you try to
run it, of course, since that starts up instantly.  Seems like we get the best
of both worlds here.

>Well overall I liked the metaphor. I think Jeff is taking a lot of the great
>flexibility that TADS and Inform have, adding some of the features that
>people like I crave (an IDE that allows you to worry about logic more than
>object syntax), and throwing in his own creativity to expand the genre.

I agree!  It looks like a great system.

>My wish list:
>
>1) Speed it up.

1.1) Make it more stable.

>2) Documentation on parser usage, language syntax, etc.

Yes, that'll obviously be coming.  He hasn't even rewritten the DOS readme for
the Java version yet.

2.1) Reworking of the object tree display and input methods
2.2) More standard UI features.
2.3) UNDO

>3) Syntax Checking and Highlighting.

And this is just the UI.  I haven't even begun to look at the Inscribe language
itself, since the UI crashes on me every time I try to do something complex.

>Very excellent work Jeff and I hope you continue with your project until we
>have Inscribe games in the annual competition or a major game release.

Hear, hear!

Joe


From graham@gnelson.demon.co.uk Tue Aug 11 17:46:59 MET DST 1998
Article: 43915 of rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: Graham Nelson <graham@gnelson.demon.co.uk>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Graham Nelson: Sex symbol of the millenium or demigod?
Date: Tue, 11 Aug 1998 10:19:42 +0100
Organization: none
Message-ID: <ant110942d07M+4%@gnelson.demon.co.uk>
References: <6qgmnv$3ct@newsops.execpc.com> <6qifjn$pda$1@bartlet.df.lth.se> <35ccf590.1104800@hermes.rdrop.com> <6qj6qj$f9t@senator-bedfellow.MIT.EDU> <35cf681c.21712888@news.earthlink.net> <01bdc3ec$35d82da0$LocalHost@prsfsnwd>
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In article <01bdc3ec$35d82da0$LocalHost@prsfsnwd>, Jeremy A.Smith
<URL:mailto:xeremyasmith@geocities.com> wrote:
> I think he got sick of the 'Graham' backlash that happened in November or
> so, when everyone slagged off his 'game' 'The Tempest'. He put a lot of
> work into that and came 32nd (2nd last) in the compo.

No, not at all. With due respect and gratitude for the XYZZY Award
medal for "The Tempest", which is sitting on my desk in front of me
as I type, I think it probably wasn't a very good game, all told;
a worthwhile experiment is I think as much as I would claim for it.
And what people said about it at the time was entirely legitimate
and fair (I was particularly amused by Andrew's review ending
"I split, I split, I split").

I've been lurking rather than posting, but to lurk is not to sulk.

-- 



From graham@gnelson.demon.co.uk Tue Aug 11 20:13:19 MET DST 1998
Article: 43873 of rec.arts.int-fiction
From: Graham Nelson <graham@gnelson.demon.co.uk>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Graham Nelson: Sex symbol of the millenium or demigod? (was Re: Dr. Who?)
Date: Mon, 10 Aug 1998 19:10:45 +0100
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Xref: news.lth.se rec.arts.int-fiction:43873

In article <35cddd56.2249977@hermes.rdrop.com>, Laurel Halbany
<URL:mailto:mythago@twisty-little-maze.com> wrote:
> 
> Well, you could still call him a sex symbol without saying that you,
> personally, find him sexy, a la Leonardo diCaprio.

Leonardo diCaprio calls me a sex symbol?  Golly.  At least
he doesn't personally find me sexy.

Anyway, let's see:

My parents are a thoroughly respectable electronics engineer
called Peter, who does things with valves (the pre-transistor
things), and an equally upstanding school secretary called
Christine.  They live in Chelmsford, not Olympus, and seldom
metamorphose into swans or showers of golden coins.  I think
that probably rules out the "demigod" option.

So I'm afraid I've just got to vote for "sex symbol of the
millennium".  Can't actually recall the last time I went on
a date as such, but I'm sure I just radiate animal magnetism
all the same.

-- 
Graham Nelson | graham@gnelson.demon.co.uk | Oxford, United Kingdom



From spatula@spatch.net.nospam Wed Aug 12 10:24:30 MET DST 1998
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Subject: Re: Dr. Who?
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On Tue, 11 Aug 1998 10:16:10 +0100, Graham Nelson
<graham@gnelson.demon.co.uk> wrote:

>In article <35cf8a27.897151@hermes.rdrop.com>, Laurel Halbany
><URL:mailto:mythago@twisty-little-maze.com> wrote:
>> 
>> Yeah, but imagine having a sex symbol *smarter* than a grapefruit.
>> That would be new, and Graham more than qualifies.
>
>I was holding out for "faster than a speeding bullet", but
>I suppose "smarter than a grapefruit" will just have to do. 

Well, let's see, then:

Graham vs. Grapefruit -- Round 1

Grapefruit: Tangy citrus fruit grown in Florida.
Graham    : Tangy IF guru grown in England.

Graham    : Radiates animal magnetism, if you'll believe other threads
Grapefruit: Radiates Vitamin C, if you'll believe the Florida Sunshine

            Tree
 
Grapefruit: A good breakfast.
Graham    : Had nothing to do with A Good Breakfast, other than
            developing Inform.

Graham    : Once wrote a game where you travelled through the 20th
            Century and stuff.
Grapefruit: Can't write anything cause it lacks the motor skills.

Grapefruit: Will squirt in your eye if you poke it with a pointy
            spoon.
Graham    : Would probably just look at you funny and try to move
            away.

Graham    : Well-versed in iambic pentameter.
Grapefruit: Delicious in iambic pentameter (this citrus fruit is but  
            too sour for me!)



I don't know.  The jury's still out.


--
der spatchel                                          reading, mass 01867
resident cranky                                     fovea.retina.net 4000

"i just wanted to carve a little z on your forehead -- nothing serious."


From mjr-SEENOTE@hotmail.com Thu Aug 13 21:10:03 MET DST 1998
Article: 44000 of rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: "Mike Roberts" <mjr-SEENOTE@hotmail.com>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: [TADS] non-floating Me
Date: Thu, 13 Aug 1998 10:53:54 -0700
Organization: Oracle Corporation. Redwood Shores, CA
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Message-ID: <6qv98j$9vv$1@inet16.us.oracle.com>
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Dan Shiovitz wrote in message <6qth26$kfe@spool.cs.wisc.edu>...
>It would be much more convenient for me if I were to make the Me object
>non-floating (and just move it around like any other actor or item).
>Would doing this break anything weird, like nestedrooms or something?

Investigating this issue is on my to-do list -- the new feature that allows
you to change the Me object dynamically would be easier to use if Me were
for the most part an ordinary Actor object.

I haven't looked into this in any detail yet, but a couple of small adv.t
changes come to mind.  One is that Me.moveInto should be changed to work
like any other moveInto, in that it needs to add the object to the contents
list of its new container and remove it from the old one.

As I recall, the only reason that Me was floating in the first place was to
remove Me as a special case from a number of routines that do something to
everything in a room: list the contents of a room, expand "all" into a list
of objects, get a default object, and so on.  Since Me was never in a room's
contents list, there was never any need to skip it in these situations.  I
suspect that improvements made to adv.t since the early versions will make
it fairly straightforward to eliminate Me from these enumerations without a
lot of special case code, but there will probably be at least a little
tweaking needed to make everything work the same way it does with a floating
Me.

If you look into this before I do, I'd appreciate hearing about any problems
or subtleties you encounter.

--Mike Roberts
Note: to reply by email, please remove the "-SEENOTE" suffix (including the
hyphen) from my username, and replace it with a single underscore.





From erkyrath@netcom.com Sat Aug 15 15:55:24 MET DST 1998
Article: 44020 of rec.arts.int-fiction
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Path: news.lth.se!feed1.news.luth.se!luth.se!news-peer-europe.sprintlink.net!news.sprintlink.net!Sprint!howland.erols.net!ix.netcom.com!erkyrath
From: erkyrath@netcom.com (Andrew Plotkin)
Subject: Re: Grignr in So Far?
Message-ID: <erkyrathExoK59.G4n@netcom.com>
Organization: Netcom On-Line Services
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Joe Mason (jcmason@undergrad.math.uwaterloo.ca) wrote:
> Just replaying So Far, and I noticed something that I missed the first time
> around:

> The formless shadows above you resolve for a moment, into six silhouettes
> sitting in a circle, in a plush room. One is reading out loud, from a book. It
> turns a page and passes the book to its right, and that figure continues the
> reading. There is a distant air of solemnity, until one reader grimaces, and
> seems to laugh ruefully. It begins again.

> Eye of Argon, anyone?

Actually that's not what I was thinking of, but it fits pretty well anyway.

--Z

-- 

"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the
borogoves..."


From sgranade@bohr.phy.duke.edu Mon Aug 17 21:46:37 MET DST 1998
Article: 44091 of rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: Stephen Granade <sgranade@bohr.phy.duke.edu>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Consult syntax in TADS, Inform (was Re: NPC Conversation ideas)
Date: Mon, 17 Aug 1998 13:02:11 -0400
Organization: Duke University, Durham, NC, USA
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On Mon, 17 Aug 1998, J. Robinson Wheeler wrote:

> Today I decided to replace this generic routine with something that used
> the original doAskAbout for Actors in ADV.T, and when my compiler crashed,
> I realized that TADS did the same thing -- gave you a list of strings with
> which to make comparisons, instead of objects that had properties that
> one could distinguish.

Er? It sounds like you're working with askWord, which does receive a list
of strings, rather than doAskAbout. The relevant code in adv.t is:

    doAskAbout(actor, iobj) =
    {
	local lst, i, tot;

	lst := objwords(2);       // get actual words asked about
	tot := length(lst);
[snip]
	// try to find a response for each word
	for (i := 1 ; i <= tot ; ++i)
	{
	    if (self.askWord(lst[i], lst))
	        return;
        }

	// didn't find anything to talk about
	self.disavow;
    }

doAskAbout gets handed the object being talked about via the iobj
parameter. In the adv.t default version, doAskAbout then gets all the
vocabulary words associated with that object and passes them to askWord.

I made a somewhat baroque implementation of what you seem to be wanting
for my Actor.t module.

    doAskAbout(actor, io) = {
        if (datatype(self.askme) == 13)
            switch (proptype(io, self.askme)) {
                case 3:			// askme is a 'string'
                    "\^<<self.thedesc>> says, \"<<io.(self.askme)>>\" ";
                    return;
                case 6:			// askme is a "string" or
                case 9:			//  a function
                    io.(self.askme);
                    return;
                default:
                    self.disavow;	// askme is defined, but I
                    return;		//  don't know how to deal
            }				//  with it
        pass doAskAbout;
    }

In the actor object, define a property called 'askme', as follows:

tomActor: Actor
    askme = &tomdesc
;

(Notice that askme is a pointer to a property.) Then, in every object you
want the actor to have something to say, define a 'tomdesc' property.
'tomdesc' can be a string, a double-quoted string, or a function. The code
above evaluates double-quoted strings and functions, and wraps a simple
sentence around single-quoted strings. For example,

squash: item
    tomdesc = 'Yuck. I hate squash.'
;

tomato: item
    tomdesc = "\"Aren't tomatoes poisonous?\" asks Tom."
;

kumquat: item
    tomdesc = {
        "\"Get that away from me!\" Tom says, grabbing the kumquat and
            throwing it away. ";
        self.moveInto(nil);
    }
;

If you ask Tom about each of these items, you'll get the following
responses:

>ASK TOM ABOUT SQUASH
Tom says, "Yuck. I hate squash."

>ASK TOM ABOUT TOMATO
"Aren't tomatoes poisonous?" asks Tom.

>ASK TOM ABOUT KUMQUAT
"Get that away from me!" Tom says, grabbing the kumquat and throwing it
away.
[The kumquat is moved into nil]

Stephen

--
  Stephen Granade                | Interested in adventure games?
  sgranade@phy.duke.edu          | Check out
  Duke University, Physics Dept  |   http://interactfiction.miningco.com



From mjr-SEENOTE@hotmail.com Mon Aug 17 21:47:39 MET DST 1998
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From: "Mike Roberts" <mjr-SEENOTE@hotmail.com>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Consult syntax in TADS, Inform (was Re: NPC Conversation ideas)
Date: Mon, 17 Aug 1998 11:14:37 -0700
Organization: Oracle Corporation. Redwood Shores, CA
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J. Robinson Wheeler wrote in message <35D81B8B.8B3F7CF5@jump.net>...
>I have a general purpose sort of question for both TADS and Inform in
>the way they set up "ask NPC about X" processing.
>
>[In essence, they just look at the actual words you're asking about,
>rather than trying to resolve the words to game objects.]
>
>My question is, why do it this way?    Doesn't this entail checking every
>noun and adjective in the game to match topics?
The original TADS approach was, in fact, to resolve the words to objects,
and then base the response on the objects.  You can still do this with the
current adv.t by overriding doAskAbout in your actors.

The problem with the object approach, and the reason most people prefer the
word-based approach instead, is that disambiguation is so difficult when
asking about something.  The adv.t approach to disambiguation for the
indirect object of "ask" and "tell" is simply to pick an object at random
that matches all of the words that the player uses.  This works fine for
words that only exist in the game as topics to ask about, but the rest of
the time it's pretty bad, since there are often wildly different objects in
a game that happen to have a noun or two in common.

To make the object-based system work, you'd have to come up with a way to
resolve the indirect object noun phrase to an object.  I haven't been able
to find a good way to do this in general for "ask" and "telL"; it seems
easier to just let each actor do the resolution individally, which is really
what the string-matching approach boils down to.

I agree with you, though, that this isn't a wonderful solution -- I'd like
to find a better way.

--Mike Roberts
Note: to reply by email, please remove the "-SEENOTE" suffix (including the
hyphen) from my username, and replace it with a single underscore.





From erkyrath@netcom.com Tue Aug 18 09:42:30 MET DST 1998
Article: 44121 of rec.arts.int-fiction
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: erkyrath@netcom.com (Andrew Plotkin)
Subject: Re: [Inform-OO] The Light Dawns...
Message-ID: <erkyrathExv9pE.KL2@netcom.com>
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Adam J. Thornton (adam@princeton.edu) wrote:

> Can someone explain something to me?

> I see what Doe means here; that if you want Taking the Mogelschnitzer to do
> something radically different from Taking Anything Else in your game, you
> should override Take in the Mogelschnitzer methods, not have a special case
> in your Take verb code to see if the direct object is Mogelschnitzer.

> But doesn't the rest of OO--and even this, too, if you think about it--just
> boil down to using an Abstract Data Type model in your code and forcing
> yourself to go through your access functions to get to that data?

I regard ADT and OO as different. More accurately, OO = ADT + inheritance.

Data abstraction is when you divide your data into objects, and each 
type of object has a well-defined interface, and you always manipulate 
the object through its interface. Promises and guarantees.

Object orientation is when some of your types are derived from other
types. A derived type has the same interface as the parent type, with
additions. (Or changes, but the scope of the changes are known to the
parent, so you might as well call them additions.)

An even higher-level definition which I like: ADT is what lets other
people reuse your code. OO is what lets *you* use *other* people's code
*even if it hasn't been written yet.*

--Z

-- 

"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the
borogoves..."


From mol@bartlet.df.lth.se Tue Aug 18 09:42:49 MET DST 1998
Article: 44133 of rec.arts.int-fiction
Path: news.lth.se!not-for-mail
From: mol@bartlet.df.lth.se (Magnus Olsson)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: [Inform-OO] The Light Dawns...
Date: 18 Aug 1998 09:36:39 +0200
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In article <6ramt9$lol$2@cnn.Princeton.EDU>,
Adam J. Thornton <adam@princeton.edu> wrote:
>Can someone explain something to me?

Of course; always glad to be of service to the community!

>I see what Doe means here; that if you want Taking the Mogelschnitzer to do
>something radically different from Taking Anything Else in your game, you
>should override Take in the Mogelschnitzer methods, not have a special case
>in your Take verb code to see if the direct object is Mogelschnitzer.
>
>But doesn't the rest of OO--and even this, too, if you think about it--just
>boil down to using an Abstract Data Type model in your code and forcing
>yourself to go through your access functions to get to that data?

Well, OO can be viewed as an extension of the ADT model, with the difference
that the operations on an ADT (its member functions/methods/messages) are
syntactically kept together with the data.

However, there's more to OO than that: inheritance and polymorphism
are even more important (especially in languages such as TADS that
don't have any data hiding), and go beyond the ADT model.

In fact, I'd say that for smallish projects like a typical Inform or
TADS game, information hiding is relatively less important; the great
advantage of using an OO language for IF and other simulations is that
you can, say, implement the King's Magical Throne by inheriting from
an ordinary chair, and have the program automatically treat it as a
chair for all purposes where you haven't changed its behaviour
(polymorphism).

-- 
Magnus Olsson (mol@df.lth.se, zebulon@pobox.com)
------    http://www.pobox.com/~zebulon   ------


From erkyrath@netcom.com Tue Aug 18 09:42:58 MET DST 1998
Article: 44120 of rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: erkyrath@netcom.com (Andrew Plotkin)
Subject: Re: [Inform-OO] The Light Dawns...
Message-ID: <erkyrathExv5Ds.3Bt@netcom.com>
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Doeadeer3 (doeadeer3@aol.com) wrote:
> In article <6r9sfa$kfh@newsops.execpc.com>, "David A. Cornelson"
> <dcornelson@placet.com> writes:

> >Lights are going off all over the place and instead of constantly saying to
> >myself, "Okay, where do I handle THIS little piece of logic", I'm thinking,
> >"This goes right HERE!", and it's all making a lot more sense.
   
> OO IS nifty, isn't it? Once the light dawns one tends to fall in love with it.
> Feel free to fire away your questions. Inform isn't THAT OOish (hmm, not a 
> word, but you get the idea). It only has about 5 or so REAL OO type of
> commands, so I doubt you will need to ask that much. 

Actually, I disagree. There's lots of OO in Inform (plus libraries.)

The fun part is that there are about five or six different *mechanisms* to
do object-oriented design -- added at different times, for different
purposes, with different limitations and degrees of hackishness and
concepts of "object".  All different, all twisty. 

--Z

-- 

"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the
borogoves..."


From erkyrath@netcom.com Tue Aug 18 17:48:57 MET DST 1998
Article: 44051 of rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: erkyrath@netcom.com (Andrew Plotkin)
Subject: Re: SUTWIN style game creation
Message-ID: <erkyrathExrLL7.IFz@netcom.com>
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Brent VanFossen (vanfossen@compuserve.com) wrote:
> After enjoying Andrew Plotkin's "Space Under the Window" and Lucian
> Smith's "Chicken Under the Window", I downloaded the source for
> CUTWIND.inf and read it through.

> I was curious if either of you (or anyone else) would comment on your
> thought process for putting together a narrative like that.  It seems
> to me that the text is quite a complex piece of work, and keeping
> everything straight would be difficult.

Would be, if it had to make any sense. :-)

> Did you write out the "optimal" story first and program the pieces?
> Did you use index cards for the description of each object and move
> them around on the dining table as the narrative changed?  Or was the
> designing more interactive and on-the-fly?

I wrote out several "finished" story versions, each approximately the end 
of a major branch. Each is annotated with possible alternatives within 
that version (usualy several possibilities at the end, but also a few 
throughout.)

Then I wrote each branch more or less independently, adding crosslinks 
and variations as I came to them. Each branch is linear enough that this 
wasn't impossible. (I don't mean you could only go forward, but rather 
that most of the changes at any spot involved either adding to the end, 
or going back to an "uncle" version I'd already written code for.)

This is pretty vague -- sorry.

--Z

-- 

"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the
borogoves..."


From lpsmith@rice.edu Tue Aug 18 17:50:01 MET DST 1998
Article: 44069 of rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: lpsmith@rice.edu (Lucian Paul Smith)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: SUTWIN style game creation
Date: 17 Aug 1998 03:03:45 GMT
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Brent VanFossen (vanfossen@compuserve.com) wrote:
: After enjoying Andrew Plotkin's "Space Under the Window" and Lucian
: Smith's "Chicken Under the Window", I downloaded the source for
: CUTWIND.inf and read it through.

: I was curious if either of you (or anyone else) would comment on your
: thought process for putting together a narrative like that.  It seems
: to me that the text is quite a complex piece of work, and keeping
: everything straight would be difficult.

Hee!

I have to agree with Zarf here--if it had to make any sense, it would be
somewhat difficult ;-)  Going for the cheap laugh certainly made it
simpler.

If it's at all instructive, here's the way I created it:  I started off
with a sentence (or an opening sequence bit--I don't recall precisely).
It had two parts, and each part would cause a different bit of new text to
appear.  So, in my file, I typed out the two options, with A: and B: in
front of them.  Then I went to section A, and split *that* text into two
sections, and created a new A and B.  Then I'd go to the next A, split
that again, and so on.  I messed with that format now and again, splitting
the sections into three bits, or four, or,...other stuff, but the basic
format was A -> A&B; New A -> New A&B, New A -> New A&B, etc., until both
A and B were 'ending' texts.  Then I'd back up and do the last B, and so
on.

Hmmm, I think I actually might have a copy of the final text document
around here somewhere,...

Hey, here it is!  Whaddya know.  In an effort to expand the usenet
bandwidth, here it is, in all its glory:

--------
The cars zoom by, so the chicken can't cross.

The cars zoom by, but an opening appears.
                                       A               B
The chicken darts into the traffic, cars surging left and right.
                        A           B               
A:              , faceless cars surging all around.
                                 A              B
   A: <alternate> , a swirling maelstrom of faceless cars
                                 C              D
   B: <alternate> surging, twisting, encroaching on all sides.
							A		   B 
      A, C:  <add or remove new paragraph>: Lost in the raging current, confusion.
					A			B
	 A: <add/remove>: A quagmire of decisions, each more hopeless than the last.
		A:  Time seems to slow down as step by step the chicken
		advances,... [end].
		B:  Paralyzed, frozen mid-stream, never to be able to
		get to where,... [end].
				A			B 		  C            <p> 
	 B: <add/remove>: Where to turn?  The small avian brain, stretched to its limit .
		A:  , finally turns perpendicular, following endless
		dotted lines to the horizon itself, where,... [end]
		B:  Outmoded, out-evolved, and out-classed, but driven
		by Desire, finally darting towards the Other
		Side,...[end]
		C:  A half-hearted flutter of atrophied wings, but
		heartlessly mown down, the impact flinging the chicken
		towards the Other Side,...[end]
						A 			  B 
      B:  <add or remove new paragraph>: A generic chessboard: a game all too often lost.
				A				B
	 A: The chicken: The pawn, unable to do anything but progress,
	 one step at a time.
	 	A: .  The cars: Too busy to care that <i> en passant, </i> [end]
	 	B: .  The road: A two-toned variation over which, [end]
	 B: A stacked deck: Unrealistic, really, to believe that it
	 could ever make it to where [end]
                                 A              B
      D:  <add/remove new p>: Too close!  The chicken is hit!
                               A                   B
         A: <exchange latter> Too close!  The chicken is smashed!
               A: <back>
               B: <new P> Days later, the sweeper washes it away. [end]
         B: Buffeted by a car, then grazed by a truck; a flighless
         fowl flung in a wide arc toward the Other Side,... [end]

			A
B:  , cars surging left, right, left, right,...
          B
   A pattern begins to form.
   A:  [back]
               A                    B                 C            D
   B: A pattern begins to form: spinning tires, screaming wheels in an artless dance.

      A: [back]
      B:  <alternate> spinning freeform tires
      C:  <alternate> screaming, singing wheels
      D:  <alternate> in an endless hypnotic dance.

      [Any 2 of the above yield a new paragraph, starting:]
               A                       B
      Assimilating the dance, the chicken moves forward.
                                 A                    B
         A:  [add]:  , the self-expression freeing its inner chick.
               [again]: [back]
               A: [add]  into the joyous waltz of freedom,... [end].
               B: [add]  which leads it
                  [freely/singing/hypnotically/trancendantly] towards the
                  Other Side,... [end]
                                         A                        B
         B:  [add]: relentlessly, almost a blur amidst the tango of traffic.
               A:  as it spins in a feathered cyclone towards the Other
                     Side,... [end]
               B:  which, though ever present, seems to magically part
               wenever the chicken approaches,... [end]

-------

At any rate, the above was the 'design document' I came up with before I
started coding anything.  And, unlike Edifice, the final product pretty
much exactly followed that design.

If that's helpful I'll be amazed, but it would be fun to see some more IF
like that.  It was an interesting thing to write.

-Lucian


From vanfossen@compuserve.com Tue Aug 18 17:50:18 MET DST 1998
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From: vanfossen@compuserve.com (Brent VanFossen)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: SUTWIN style game creation
Date: Tue, 18 Aug 1998 04:37:26 GMT
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On 17 Aug 1998 03:03:45 GMT, lpsmith@rice.edu (Lucian Paul Smith)
wrote:

>If it's at all instructive, here's the way I created it:  I started off
>with a sentence (or an opening sequence bit--I don't recall precisely).
>It had two parts, and each part would cause a different bit of new text to
>appear.  So, in my file, I typed out the two options, with A: and B: in
>front of them.  Then I went to section A, and split *that* text into two
>sections, and created a new A and B.  Then I'd go to the next A, split
>that again, and so on.  I messed with that format now and again, splitting
>the sections into three bits, or four, or,...other stuff, but the basic
>format was A -> A&B; New A -> New A&B, New A -> New A&B, etc., until both
>A and B were 'ending' texts.  Then I'd back up and do the last B, and so
>on.

Yes, that's instructive.  It's exactly what I was asking for.  You
wrote your entire story line out, on paper and including all the
branches, before you started coding.  That would guarantee the
smallest number of errors and the most predictable result.  The story
was planned.

>If that's helpful I'll be amazed, but it would be fun to see some more IF
>like that.  It was an interesting thing to write.

You look amazed ;).  I have a project in mind to use a similar method
to tell a short, coherent story.  I think I would try to control
sentences and perhaps paragraphs at a time instead of the smaller
parts.  I haven't finished thinking it through, but I love the way the
player can steer the story with a simple input.

It looks like it was interesting to write, and the fun in playing it
for me is to see where I can take the story line.  I haven't, for
instance, successfully killed the chicken (my evil side is showing).
But I haven't seriously studied the game with that in mind, only that
in the times I have played, I have (err, the chicken has) always made
it across.  Guess I'll have to try again.

Brent VanFossen


From erkyrath@netcom.com Tue Aug 18 18:18:19 MET DST 1998
Article: 44147 of rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: erkyrath@netcom.com (Andrew Plotkin)
Subject: Re: [Inform-OO] The Light Dawns...
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Adam J. Thornton (adam@princeton.edu) wrote:
> In article <erkyrathExv9pE.KL2@netcom.com>,
> Andrew Plotkin <erkyrath@netcom.com> wrote:
> >An even higher-level definition which I like: ADT is what lets other
> >people reuse your code. OO is what lets *you* use *other* people's code
> >*even if it hasn't been written yet.*
>
> I thought that was "a well-specified interface."

That's what I meant by "letting other people reuse your code."

What I mean by "you using other people's code" is, you can write code now
which uses a class of objects, and people can *later* come along and write
more objects which work with your existing program. Not just other 
implementation of the same interface, but an extended interface.

The usual example is a view object. You write a display system that 
displays objects of class View. You handle redraw events, resize events, 
key and mouse events, etc. Then you're done. Other people can write 
GIFView, TextWidgetView, CompassRoseView, all inheriting from your View 
class (with added or changed behavior.) These new types all work with 
your display system, even if you've retired and moved to Tahiti.

--Z




-- 

"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the
borogoves..."


From jcmason@undergrad.math.uwaterloo.ca Tue Aug 18 23:15:01 MET DST 1998
Article: 44173 of rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: jcmason@undergrad.math.uwaterloo.ca (Joe Mason)
Subject: Re: [IFFF] We have a winnah...
Sender: news@undergrad.math.uwaterloo.ca (news spool owner)
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In article <6rcd09$31c$1@cnn.Princeton.EDU>,
Adam J. Thornton <adam@princeton.edu> wrote:
>
>I enjoy Joe's contributions to raif.  I just didn't enjoy _ITE_ at all.
>I hope he doesn't take my game too personally; I don't want to make fun of
>*him*, just his game.  (Which distinguishes my effort from, say, the
>MiSTings of Detective or Stiffy.)

Well, I didn't take it personally, but because of ITE2, I've stopped working on
ITE R2.  I had hoped to get a "fixed-up" version of ITE together for the
Millenia Anthology, so I spent a while going through the reviews in SPAG an
on DejaNews, getting a list of things I'd want to do differently in hindsight.

It was a pretty big list.

I was just starting to get back into it, when along came ITE2, which doubled 
the size of that list.  That, along with some advice I read on
rec.arts.sf.creative ("You can't spend your whole life working on one thing -
you'll never get anything else done") persuaded me to drop the idea.  I'm going
to try to finish something else instead.

(BTW, I  voted for it.  And I laughed my ass off at the toaster.  Annoyed me 
that I couldn't find a fork to stick into it, though.  Hmmm...)

Joe


From erkyrath@netcom.com Thu Aug 20 11:00:49 MET DST 1998
Article: 44182 of rec.arts.int-fiction
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: erkyrath@netcom.com (Andrew Plotkin)
Subject: Re: [Inform] multiple objects
Message-ID: <erkyrathExw0sM.L1I@netcom.com>
Organization: ICGNetcom
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References: <487771108edljhaslam@argonet.co.uk>
Date: Tue, 18 Aug 1998 13:43:33 GMT
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Joyce Haslam (dljhaslam@argonet.co.uk) wrote:

> > Let me reply to myself by confessing that it seems that my disappearing
> > objects were disappearing because they had 'concealed'.  So I took away
> > 'concealed' after the player touched them, and now they seem to work
> > fine!  Who knew?  Live and learn....

> Concealed has lovely little traps for the user. I've been in one or two.

I refuse to use "concealed" at all. It is never, ever what I want. If I 
don't want the player to know about an object, I *don't put the object 
there.*

--Z

-- 

"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the
borogoves..."


From erkyrath@netcom.com Thu Aug 20 11:01:38 MET DST 1998
Article: 44178 of rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: erkyrath@netcom.com (Andrew Plotkin)
Subject: Re: [Inform] multiple objects
Message-ID: <erkyrathExwLnD.Dw1@netcom.com>
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Date: Tue, 18 Aug 1998 21:14:01 GMT
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Laurel Halbany (mythago@twisty-little-maze.com) wrote:
> On Tue, 18 Aug 1998 13:43:33 GMT, erkyrath@netcom.com (Andrew Plotkin)
> wrote:

> >I refuse to use "concealed" at all. It is never, ever what I want. If I 
> >don't want the player to know about an object, I *don't put the object 
> >there.*

> Isn't the point of concealed not to hide the object, but to avoid
> repeating item descriptions that are in the room description?

No, that's "scenery".

"Concealed" does that, but it also makes it harder (maybe impossible?) 
for the player to refer to the object.

I'd rather deal with those aspects separately. If I want the object 
un-referable-to, I change the name or remove the ojbect. If I want the 
description to not appear, I use scenery or the describe property.

--Z

-- 

"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the
borogoves..."


From erkyrath@netcom.com Thu Aug 20 11:02:25 MET DST 1998
Article: 44191 of rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: erkyrath@netcom.com (Andrew Plotkin)
Subject: Re: [Inform] multiple objects
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Michael Gentry (edromia@email.msn.com) wrote:

> Andrew Plotkin wrote in (an earlier) message ...

> >> >I refuse to use "concealed" at all. It is never, ever what I want. If I
> >> >don't want the player to know about an object, I *don't put the object
> >> >there.*

> If that's the case, I'm curious as to how you coded a few of the objects in
> "So Far" -- for example, the ring 
> [spoilers trimmed -- watch that, please]
> You know, where if you attempt, using prior knowledge, to
> interact with the ring without having actually looked for it, you get this
> clever retort:

Good question. Let me look at my code.

Code following is partial and names have been changed, obviously.

Object glittering "ring" pile
with
  description [;
    if (self hasnt moved) {
      print "What, that glint in the pile? ";
      give self moved;
    }
    "It's a plain ring.";
  ];

Object pile "pile of stuff"
with
  description [;
    print "It's a pile of stuff.^";
    if (glittering in self) {
      if (glittering hasnt moved)
        print "^Something glints in the pile.^"; 
      else
        print "^There's a ring in the pile.^";
    }
    rtrue;
  ],
  before [;
    Search:
      if (glittering in self) {
        give glittering moved;
        "You see a ring in the pile.";
      }
      "Just a pile.";
  ],
  after [;
    LetGo:
      if (noun == glittering) {
        if (glittering hasnt moved)
          print "What, that glint in the pile? ";
        "You reach in and snag the ring.";
      }
  ],
has scenery container open;

As you see, I'm not interfering with *referring* to the ring at all. As 
far as the parser's concerned, it's a normal object in a normal open 
container. 

It's not mentioned in the room description, because the contents of 
scenery containers aren't listed by default. 

Then I just use the "moved"  flag to check whether it's been seen. This
isn't what "moved" was meant for, but since I'm not using object scoring
or an "initial" property, it doesn't screw anything up. 

If you want to try this, remember that this was written and built with 
library 5/12 (Inform 5.5). No guarantees for modern environments.

--Z

-- 

"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the
borogoves..."


From edromia@email.msn.com Thu Aug 20 11:02:51 MET DST 1998
Article: 44246 of rec.arts.int-fiction
From: "Michael Gentry" <edromia@email.msn.com>
References: <487771108edljhaslam@argonet.co.uk> <erkyrathExw0sM.L1I@netcom.com> <35d9d46d.84648@hermes.rdrop.com> <erkyrathExwLnD.Dw1@netcom.com> <eHsZebxy9GA.211@upnetnews03> <erkyrathExx6oM.7qv@netcom.com>
Subject: Re: [Inform] multiple objects
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Xref: news.lth.se rec.arts.int-fiction:44246


Andrew Plotkin wrote in message ...

>Good question. Let me look at my code.


[code snipped]

>As you see, I'm not interfering with *referring* to the ring at all. As
>far as the parser's concerned, it's a normal object in a normal open
>container.


Ah-ha. That makes sense.

I wasn't aware that "concealed" interfered with the player's referring to to
the object, though. If I recall correctly, my own code looked like this:

Object "nickel" with
  name "coin" "nickel" "money",
  description "It's got a buffalo on one side and
     a human head on the other.",
  before
     [; if (self has concealed)
           "Nickel? What nickel?"
           ! This belays any interaction with the nickel until the player
           ! specifically looks for it (and yes, it's supposed to give away
           ! that something's there). But notice it's not the "concealed"
           ! attribute that gets in the way, but rather the "before" routine
           ! that checks the attribute to see if it should interfere.
        else rfalse;
      ],
  has concealed;

Object "vending machine" with
   name "vending" "machine",
   description "A coin-operated vending machine.",
   before
      [; LookUnder:
            if (nickel has concealed)
               {  give nickel ~concealed;
                  "You notice a nickel on the floor, just underneath the
                  vending machine.";
                }
            if (nickel hasnt moved)
               "That nickel's still there.";
      ],
   has static;

This worked just fine for my purposes. It's not in the game anymore, but
only because my purposes changed.

I've also noticed, while perusing the TakeSub routine in the standard
library, that taking/removing an object automatically removes the
"concealed" attribute along with assigning the "moved" attribute. So you
don't have to explicitly do it yourself.

I don't actually use it very often, myself -- but it does come in handy
occassionally.

--M

"If you don't eat your meat, you can't have any pudding.
How can you have any pudding if you don't eat your meat?"





From dmm@turing.cs.hmc.edu Thu Aug 20 20:30:16 MET DST 1998
Article: 44298 of rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: dmm@turing.cs.hmc.edu (Denis M. Moskowitz)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Chris Taylor on game-stoppers
Date: 20 Aug 1998 17:29:59 GMT
Organization: Harvey Mudd College, Claremont, CA
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[Dennis Matheson]
>  The Seventh Guest also had something similar.  If you used the book in the
>library three times on a puzzle it solved it for you and let you continue.  I
>had to use it to get past the blob game.

Was that the one based on Attaxx/Spot?  I have a funny story about that 
game.  Some friends of mine with a nice computer were having trouble with 
that one, but they found out I had Spot on my computer.  Spot was a 7-up
marketing effort that was a reasonably good implementation of that game 
as a 2-4 player game, with configurable computer opponents.  We wheeled
my PC into their dorm room, ran Spot with the smartest computer opponent
we could, and set up 1st player to be whatever it wasn't in 7th Guest.
Then we just played Stauf's moves as ours in Spot, and Spot's moves as
ours in 7G.  It came down to the last move, but Spot won by 1 point
(allowing my friends to continue in the game).
Best moment: at the last move, we simultaneously hear Stauf scream "Nooo!"
or something of the sort, and see an animated Spot spring up from the 
middle of the board to stick its tongue out at us.
(Sorry; I'll now post something on-topic.)
ObIF: was that "cheating"?
--
Denis M Moskowitz            Jen feroca malbona kuniklo; rigardu liajn
dmm@cs.hmc.edu               sovagxajn vangharojn, kaj liajn ungojn kaj
This Is Realtime!   -><-     lian faldan voston.
<a href="http://www.cs.hmc.edu/~dmm/dmm.html">My WWW page</a>


From daryl@cogentex.com Thu Aug 20 20:30:35 MET DST 1998
Article: 44297 of rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: daryl@cogentex.com (Daryl McCullough)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Chris Taylor on game-stoppers
Date: 20 Aug 1998 07:46:41 -0700
Organization: CoGenTex, Inc.
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Kevin says...

>With IF either the story unfolds as you go, or it is a series of
>treasure-finding expeditions, but they usually bottle-neck in places,
>leaving the player to try everything, which can sometimes feel like an
>exercise in combinatorics.

Such puzzles annoy me, too. What I like is a puzzle for which solving it
is a moment of revelation; afterwards you feel like you have learned
something valuable about the imaginary world you are exploring. Other
good puzzles are ones for which solving them is a thrill in itself. The
point is that, after its over, the player should be glad to have
encountered the puzzle, instead of irritated that it took so long.
I found some of the magical puzzles in Infocom's "Enchanter" to be
good puzzles in this sense. And certainly the puzzle of the stranger
in the award-winning "Edifice".

>Psychologically the problem is that in IF there is a tendency toward a
>"wining is everything" philosophy. Unlike other games (chess, checkers, most
>board games, cards) where you may end up losing, yet can still walk away
>with a feeling of fulfillment.

Yeah, but it's *real* hard to come up with games like that.

Daryl McCullough
CoGenTex, Inc.
Ithaca, NY


From edromia@email.msn.com Mon Aug 24 16:42:58 MET DST 1998
Article: 44253 of rec.arts.int-fiction
From: "Michael Gentry" <edromia@email.msn.com>
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Subject: Re: NPC Conversation ideas
Date: Wed, 19 Aug 1998 20:12:12 -0400
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John Francis wrote in message <6rfn05$78t7m@fido.engr.sgi.com>...

>I'm still not convinced.  All this means is that the simple routine of
>"EXAMINE every object in the room description" needs to be replaced by
>"EXAMINE every object; SEARCH every object".
>No more challenging, intellectually - just a little more tiresome.
>And most of the time you don't get any additional information.
>And generally there's no way for you to know whether SEARCH will reveal
>any additional information unless you try it.

There isn't? I have always taken SEARCH to mean "look in" or "look
through" -- partly because I know that's how the Inform library code defines
it, but mostly because that's essentially what the word means in the English
language. Therefore, as a player, I know I'm only going to have to SEARCH
something that a) is a container or b) is a pile of stuff such as laundry or
dirt that can be dug through.

Conversely, as an author, I try to consistently make SEARCH only applicable
to such objects.

If you find yourself having to search every object in a game -- SEARCH
CHAIR, SEARCH CLOCK, SEARCH CUCUMBER -- then what you have is a rather
warped set of expectations about the game world, which may well have been
caused by a poorly designed game.

In other words, this:

> EXAMINE CUCUMBER
The cucumber is long and green.
> SEARCH CUCUMBER
You find a small wart on one end of the cucumber.

-- is a poor way to write a game. Which, I think, is what you were saying.
Which is where I agree with you.

Where I DON'T agree with you is here:

> SEARCH DUMPSTER
>Poking around in the dumpster reveals a small wickerwork hamper
>partially hidden beneath a roll of carpet.
>
>At this point you could:
>  EXAMINE the hamper
>  EXAMINE the carpet
>  MOVE the carpet
>
>All of these actions (and several others, no doubt) are now reasonable,
>because of the additional information you got by your earlier actions.
>But none of these actions would work until you had looked in the dumpster.


Yes, but EXAMINE shouldn't necessarily give you the same thing (in regards
to the dumpster).

A big, smelly dumpster is something that I might want to check out from a
relative distance before I go poking my head into it. (Your dumpster seems
to have a rather clean, harmless assortment of furniture in it; my original
example, if you'll remember, was "full of stinking refuse" -- something you
might find behind a Cantonese restaurant in the depths of Chinatown after a
heavy rain.) I might, in this example, appreciate something like this:

>EXAMINE DUMPSTER
The rusted, hulking dumpster is filled to the brim with eye-watering
refuse -- soggy newspaper wrapped around revolting bits of rotting meat
by-products and other such pleasantries. And that's just what you can see
>from where you're standing.
>SEARCH DUMPSTER
Holding your breath, you climb up the dumpster's metal side and plunge your
arm into the damp, fly-blown filth. After rooting around for a few minutes,
you discover a rolled-up carpet, partially buried beneath what appears to be
a half-eaten dog carcass.
>AGAIN
You can't bring yourself to go digging in there again. The very thought
makes you gag.

Usually, if EXAMINING something could easily involve looking inside it as
well in a single glance -- for example, in the case of a coffee mug or a
kitchen sink -- I will go ahead and make the verbs synonymous *for that
object.* Something that can't be intuitively searched gets the default "You
see nothing special" message.

But if looking at an object and looking inside (or pawing through) that
object seem like they would involve different physical actions in the real
world, I'll make the verbs separate.

--M

"If you don't eat your meat, you can't have any pudding.
How can you have any pudding if you don't eat your meat?"




From ffilz@mindspring.com Mon Aug 24 16:43:10 MET DST 1998
Article: 44296 of rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: Frank Filz <ffilz@mindspring.com>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: NPC Conversation ideas
Date: Thu, 20 Aug 1998 12:07:20 -0400
Organization: IBM Austin 
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I have to agree with Michael on this one.  Another reason to separate
them, I would expect the following to happen:

> EXAMINE POLICE CAR

The police car is a North Carolina State Highway Patrol Car.  An officer
is sitting in the front seat eating a dougnut and reading the paper.

> SEARCH POLICE CAR

The officer says "Excuse me mister, but just what do you think you're
doing?"

Now if you really needed to find something in the police car, the dialog
might go something like:

> EXAMINE POLICE CAR

The police car is a North Carolina State Highway Patrol Car.  An officer
is sitting in the front seat eating a dougnut and reading the paper.

> Z

The officer gets out of the police car and goes into the building.

> SEARCH POLICE CAR

Under the newspaper you find a folded note.

> READ NOTE
(Taken)
"Meet me under the bridge at 5:00.  Signed Mr. X"


-- 
Frank Filz

-----------------------------
Work: mailto:ffilz@us.ibm.com
Home: mailto:ffilz@mindspring.com


From mberlyn@cascadepublishing.com Tue Aug 25 07:59:48 MET DST 1998
Article: 44634 of rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: "Mike Berlyn" <mberlyn@cascadepublishing.com>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction,rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: [AVALON] Name change announcement / Reservations ending soon.
Date: Mon, 24 Aug 1998 15:59:46 -0700
Organization: Cascade Mountain Publishing
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Hi, all.

I'd like to take a moment to explain the pricing for Once and Future (nee
Avalon).

1. Let me start off by saying that anyone who has pre-ordered is NOT
compelled to buy the product. All the pre-ordering accomplished was to get
you a discount. Of you pre-ordered, you will be informed by e-mail on the
procedure for getting OAF with the discount.

2. CMP is selling OAF for $24.00 US to all who pre-ordered, which is a
"thank you" to all who want to show their support for the tremendous amount
of work which went into this project. This works out to about 20% off.

3. The hintbook and map contain art, which is professionally done, and that
has to be paid for. In addition, we're currently exploring the "invisiclues"
format. If this is reasonably priced for manufacturing, CMP will be selling
them for around $10. Of course, no one _needs_ the hint book and map, right?
:) But seriously, there are real-world costs for these materials, both in
art, laying out, and printing. We weren't even thinking of doing a hint book
and map until recently.

4. We are implementing an 800 number for order taking, as well as on-line
secure order taking. These things are conveniences, and are not free.
Ordering will be possible 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. As
I said, convenience costs.

5. This is _not_ a small game.

6. Whizzard did not set the price, and he was not thrilled to hear it would
be so high. Don't be mad at him -- be mad at me. (Well, you don't have to be
mad at me either.)

As far as the trademark issue is concerned, and why we had to change the
name, perhaps I can explain a little further: My lawyer (the copyright and
trademark lawyer) told me that I was certain to be sued by one of several
companies who used the name Avalon.

The issue is not whether or not they would win a suit -- the issue is
whether or not I want to spend large amounts of cash defending the name.
They all had prior use (commercial use) and I would have been doomed to
lose -- whether it was Avalon Software or a line of software called Avalon.
It was just prudent to change the name to protect the innocent. Or not so
innocent. Kevin was the least happy of all of you about the name change.

As an aside, I'd like to thank all of you who have been so supportive in
getting this whole company going, and especially Whizzard who trusted me to
make it all happen, and Ivan for his web magic.

Best wishes,
-- Mike Berlyn
mailto:mberlyn@cascadepublishing.com
http://www.cascadepublishing.com







From c.nebel@apple.com Tue Aug 25 11:32:27 MET DST 1998
Article: 44625 of rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: c.nebel@apple.com (Chris Nebel)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: [TADS] room.lookAround()
Date: Mon, 24 Aug 1998 15:20:29 -0700
Organization: Apple Computer, Inc.
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In article <35E1060C.B7DE634C@jump.net>, wheeler@jump.net wrote:

>For whatever reason, I decided I wanted the player to be able to type
>"examine room" and have that act the same as typing "look".  I added
>this code:
>
>modify room
>        noun = 'room'
>        verDoInspect( actor ) = {}
>        doInspect( actor ) =
>        {
>                self.lookAround( true );
>        }
>
>If I start the game, it prints the statusLine (accented, as above) and
>the room description as normal.  If I type look, it prints the same thing.
>However, when I type "x room," it prints the statusLine in some default
>format (non-accented), with one addition: that I'm on the floor!
>
>        In the woods, on the floor
>        
>        You are standing in the middle of lush and verdant woods,
>        with exits in all directions.
>        
>Does anyone know why the room.lookAround() command would be processed
>differently just from being called via the inspect command?

OK, setting aside any concerns about how inappropriate this feature might
be if you're standing in a forest, not an actual room...

This turns out to be surprisingly subtle.  There are two major problems:
first, inspectVerb's validDo and validDoList screen out top-level room
objects: validDoList doesn't include the top-level room, and even if it
didn't, validDo only allows objects that pass isVisible(actor).  The first
thing isVisible does is to check that obj.location is not nil, and this
fails for any top-level room.  Therefore, startroom.doInspect doesn't get
called.

So, why does it seem to work, except for the "on the floor" part?  This
brings us to problem two: the class room gets used for lots of things
other than top-level rooms -- nestedrooms, chairitems, beditems, and (you
guessed it!) theFloor.  So when you say "x room", it finds that there's an
object named "room" which is visible, but it's not the room, it's the
floor.  However, the floor simply prints the top-level room's description,
plus "on the floor", so it seems to almost work.

You'll get major trouble, however, if you put other room descendents in
your game.  For instance, try putting a simple chair in the room, like so:

chair: chairitem
   noun = 'chair'
   sdesc = "chair"
   location = startroom   
   islisted = true   // force it to be listed -- chairitem is a fixeditem.
;

You get the following:

In the woods
   You are standing in the middle of lush and verdant woods, with exits in
all directions.
   You see a chair here.

>x chair
In the woods, in the chair
   You are standing in the middle of lush and verdant woods, with exits in
all directions.
   You see a chair here.

>x room
Which room do you mean, the chair, or the ground?

This is, shall we say, less than optimal.

I'd suggest not changing the room class, since too many things inherit
>from it that shouldn't have the special "x room" behavior.  Instead,
define another class (say, "realroom") that has the inspect behavior, and
make your locations of that type.  Note that you'll have to modify
darkroom as well, and override some behaviors of inspectVerb.  The code
should look something like this:

/* Modify rooms so they're visible if you're inside them. */
modify room
   isVisible(vantage) =
   {
      if (vantage.location = self)
         return true;
      else
         pass isVisible;
   }
;

/* Modify inspectVerb so it allows the room the actor is in. */
modify inspectVerb
   validDoList(actor, prep, iobj) =
   {
      local loc;
      
      loc := actor.location;
      while (loc.location) loc := loc.location;
      return inherited.validDoList(actor, prep, iobj) + loc;
   }
;

/* New classes for top-level rooms. */
class realroom: room
   noun = 'room'
   doInspect(actor) = { self.lookAround(true); }
;

class realdarkroom: darkroom
   noun = 'room'
   doInspect(actor) = { self.lookAround(true); }
;

startroom: realroom
   ....


-Chris Nebel


From mjr-SEENOTE@hotmail.com Tue Aug 25 11:32:46 MET DST 1998
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From: "Mike Roberts" <mjr-SEENOTE@hotmail.com>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: [TADS] room.lookAround()
Date: Mon, 24 Aug 1998 17:39:46 -0700
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Chris Nebel wrote in message ...
>In article <35E1060C.B7DE634C@jump.net>, wheeler@jump.net wrote:
>
>>For whatever reason, I decided I wanted the player to be able to type
>>"examine room" and have that act the same as typing "look".
>>...
>>However, when I type "x room," it prints the statusLine in some default
>>format (non-accented), with one addition: that I'm on the floor!
>
> [there followed Chris's excellent analysis and solution to the
> unbelievably subtle problem]

I can think of an alternative solution that may be a little simpler to
implement.  What I'd do is create a new floating object, similar to
"theFloor" from adv.t, that's "theRoom".  It would look something like this:

theRoom: fixeditem, floatingItem
    sdesc = "room"
    noun = 'room'
    location = { return parserGetMe().location; }
    verDoInspect(actor) = { }
    doInspect(actor) = { actor.location.lookAround(true); }
;

This avoids the need to modify room or any of its derived classes.  It also
might be less prone to unexpected default messages for things like "eat
room," in that its "thedesc" will simply be "the room".

You could make this more sophisticated by creating a tag class that you'd
attach to any room that can properly be referred to as a room, and not to
outdoor locations or other locations where this doesn't make sense.  You'd
change theRoom.location to read

   location =
   {
       if (isclass(parserGetMe().location, indoorRoom))
           return parserGetMe().location;
       else
           return nil;
   }

The tag class would be trivial:

class indoorRoom: object ;

and you'd simply multiply-inherit it in your indoor room definitions:

livingRoom: room, indoorRoom
   // etc.
;

--Mike Roberts
Note: to reply by email, please remove the "-SEENOTE" suffix (including the
hyphen) from my username, and replace it with a single underscore.





From spatula@spatch.net.nospam Tue Aug 25 11:38:49 MET DST 1998
Article: 44629 of rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: spatula@spatch.net.nospam (tv's Spatch)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: NPC Conversation ideas
Date: Mon, 24 Aug 1998 23:16:02 GMT
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References: <6q4rng$gn1$1@nnrp1.dejanews.com> <35DC49B8.167E@mindspring.com> <1998Aug24.111821@hobbit> <35E196BF.32960C05@jump.net> <35E19790.A4E7629@jump.net>
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On Mon, 24 Aug 1998 11:40:48 -0500, "J. Robinson Wheeler"
<wheeler@jump.net> wrote:

>J. Robinson Wheeler wrote:
>> 
>> R. Alan Monroe wrote:
>> 
>> > Frank Filz <ffilz@mindspring.com> writes:
>> > I'd HATE to actually play a game that ran like this.
>> > How could the player possibly have any clue to wait for the officer
>> > to leave the car?
>
>
>Whoops, wait a minute.  Maybe what you were talking about was how you
>would know that WAITing for the officer to leave was the solution to
>the obstacle, as opposed to actively getting the officer to go away. 
>In which case, never mind, I agree that would be bad writing.

Using WAIT as a command to solve a puzzle indeed is bad writing.  But
what if the author let the cop sit in the car for a prescribed number
of turns, adding a small daemon that produces cop-like actions (such
as checking his watch, listening to the cop radio, yawning, checking
his watch again, ultimately getting up to leave.)  That gives the
player time enough to try different ways to get the cop to leave, only
to be filled with a feeling of futility as, quite anti-climactically,
the cop gets up and leaves himself.  That makes the puzzle a
non-puzzle still.  Completely passive, and the player hasn't done a
single thing to interact successfully with the cop.  If anything, the
only thing this "puzzle" does is add atmosphere, however contrived, to
the situation.  The player's -got- to do something to get that cop
out... running up the clock tower and making the clock chime early,
patch into the cop radio and telling the cop to go home, or even
(gasp!) create some form of disturbance worth checking out.  I have
yet to see a satisfying puzzle that is solved only by the player doing
nothing, Wargames mantra notwithstanding.

Hmm. I think I'll go downtown and watch a cop in his car and when he
gets up to leave, jump up and down and shout "I win! I win!"  If you
get a call at 2AM asking for bail, please don't hesitate to say "We
told you so" and hang up.




--
der spatchel                                          reading, mass 01867
resident cranky                                     fovea.retina.net 4000
                    "I feel like we're in a Noel Coward play. 
                     Someone should be making martinis."  -   Woody Allen


From goetz@cs.buffalo.edu Tue Aug 25 11:39:38 MET DST 1998
Article: 44626 of rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: goetz@cs.buffalo.edu (Phil Goetz)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Search/Ex -> Puzzle vs. story again (Re: NPC Conversation ideas)
Date: 24 Aug 1998 22:19:55 GMT
Organization: State University of New York at Buffalo/Computer Science
Lines: 94
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In article <1998Aug24.111821@hobbit>,
R. Alan Monroe <monroe1@marshall.edu> wrote:
>In article <35DC49B8.167E@mindspring.com>, Frank Filz <ffilz@mindspring.com> writes:
>
>> Now if you really needed to find something in the police car, the dialog
>> might go something like:
>> 
>>> EXAMINE POLICE CAR
>> 
>> The police car is a North Carolina State Highway Patrol Car.  An officer
>> is sitting in the front seat eating a dougnut and reading the paper.
>> 
>>> Z
>> 
>> The officer gets out of the police car and goes into the building.
>> 
>>> SEARCH POLICE CAR
>> 
>> Under the newspaper you find a folded note.
>> 
>>> READ NOTE
>> (Taken)
>> "Meet me under the bridge at 5:00.  Signed Mr. X"
>
>I'd HATE to actually play a game that ran like this.
>How could the player possibly have any clue to wait for the officer
>to leave the car?

I think the example is good; the objection is also.
The key thing is to provide clues what to examine or search.
If your game requires me to examine or search everything in the game,
I will never finish it unless it's very small.

There is a type of adventure game in which the entire game is one tight
logical puzzle, and the convention is that everything in the game must
be used somewhere -- with the possible (and dubious) exception of one or two
deliberately provocative red herrings.  We might call these "classic
adventures".  I think Colossal Caverns and Zork fit in here, as do
all the Scott Adams adventures.

There is another type of interactive fiction which tries to tell a story
and create a dramatic atmosphere and a suspension of disbelief.
Ex: A Change in the Weather, A Mind Forever Voyaging, Tapestry.
A story (usually) takes place in a large world, and the plot focuses the
reader's attention on a small part of it.  Thus, when playing an interactive
story, I don't expect to have to search anything unless the plot suggests
it to me.

A lot of games are hybrids of these two types; most of the post-Zork III
Infocom games, for instance.

I think these two forms are in tension with each other.
In the puzzle game, you have to consider all possible interactions of
different objects, and so the game's complexity scales exponentially as
the number of objects in the game.  A story is more of a narrative than a
jigsaw puzzle, so its complexity scales linearly, allowing the narrative
to expand.  (No criticism of Jigsaw intended! :)  It's possible to
write tightly interlocked narratives, like a Tim Powers novel, but it's harder
for both writer and reader; probably more so in IF than in linear fiction.
In the puzzle game, the notion that everything is significant is part of
the aesthetics; in the interactive story, the convention that everything
is significant threatens the suspension of disbelief and prevents the
author from providing a thorough, believable world.

My personal preference is for either one or the other form.
I find that interactive stories are generally crippled by the interactive
puzzle conventions.  If an interactive story fails to convince me, or if
I'm unable to finish it, it's usually due to puzzle-like aspects.
The search/examine everything issue is a common example, as is the
note-taking issue we just talked about in another thread.  Asking me
the player to search everything, or to write down notes, breaks my suspension
of disbelief.  It also either limits the author to working in small,
abstract, sparse worlds, or places unreasonable demands on the player.
Amnesia, for example, was supposed to be a story, and in order to be
realistic it provided a large world (4000 locations).  It ruined the game
for me because there were enough puzzle-like aspects to the game (primarily,
me getting stuck by obviously deliberate puzzles) that I felt it was
necessary to explore all 4000 locations.  So I gave up.

So I think that having separate examine and search commands is good for a
story, because it's more realistic, but too cumbersome for a puzzle,
because you know you're going to have to search AND examine everything.

As a player, I ask that, whatever you write, be aware of what conventions
you are using, and make them clear to the player early on.  Most
importantly, if you are writing an interactive story, and you don't want
the player to have to search/examine/explore everything, localize the
puzzles somehow (letting the player know that the solution is to be found
in a certain subset of the game) so the player doesn't feel compelled to go
into Classic Adventurer mode when he/she gets stuck.

Phil Goetz

goetz@zoesis.com


From jfrancis@dungeon.engr.sgi.com Tue Aug 25 11:40:25 MET DST 1998
Article: 44623 of rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: jfrancis@dungeon.engr.sgi.com (John Francis)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: NPC Conversation ideas
Date: 24 Aug 1998 20:39:57 GMT
Organization: Silicon Graphics, Inc., Mountain View, CA
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In article <eSSqV88y9GA.315@upnetnews05>,
Michael Gentry <edromia@email.msn.com> wrote:
>
>John Francis wrote in message <6rfn05$78t7m@fido.engr.sgi.com>...
>
>>I'm still not convinced.  All this means is that the simple routine of
>>"EXAMINE every object in the room description" needs to be replaced by
>>"EXAMINE every object; SEARCH every object".
>>No more challenging, intellectually - just a little more tiresome.
>>And most of the time you don't get any additional information.
>>And generally there's no way for you to know whether SEARCH will reveal
>>any additional information unless you try it.
>
>There isn't? I have always taken SEARCH to mean "look in" or "look
>through" -- partly because I know that's how the Inform library code defines
>it, but mostly because that's essentially what the word means in the English
>language. Therefore, as a player, I know I'm only going to have to SEARCH
>something that a) is a container or b) is a pile of stuff such as laundry or
>dirt that can be dug through.

OK - I agree that SEARCH and EXAMINE are different.
>
>Conversely, as an author, I try to consistently make SEARCH only applicable
>to such objects.
>
>If you find yourself having to search every object in a game -- SEARCH
>CHAIR, SEARCH CLOCK, SEARCH CUCUMBER -- then what you have is a rather
>warped set of expectations about the game world, which may well have been
>caused by a poorly designed game.

I think this is at least partially the case.   I've come across a couple
of games where something beyond EXAMINE was necessary (either SEARCH or
TOUCH or LOOK BEHIND or similar verbs) with:

 1) Absolutely no clue from either the original description or the
    result of the EXAMINE that further manipulation was necessary.

 2) The end result being a kind of "guess the verb" game.
    One verb would work, while another (nearly synonymous) would not.

What I really object to is (1) above.  It's perfectly fair to require
me to SEARCH an object if there is some indication, no matter how subtle,
to suggest it may be useful.  But if SEARCH gives additional information
for some objects (with no hint that it might do so) then you have to
SEARCH every object in the game to avoid missing a vital clue.

-- 
John Francis  jfrancis@sgi.com       Silicon Graphics, Inc.
(650)933-8295                        2011 N. Shoreline Blvd. MS 43U-991
(650)933-4692 (Fax)                  Mountain View, CA   94043-1389
Hello.   My name is Darth Vader.   I am your father.   Prepare to die.


From jcmason@undergrad.math.uwaterloo.ca Tue Aug 25 13:56:15 MET DST 1998
Article: 44495 of rec.arts.int-fiction
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: jcmason@undergrad.math.uwaterloo.ca (Joe Mason)
Subject: [Inform] Slight library changes
Sender: news@undergrad.math.uwaterloo.ca (news spool owner)
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Date: Sun, 23 Aug 1998 05:54:54 GMT
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Xref: news.lth.se rec.arts.int-fiction:44495

These are some changes to the library which I've found to be very
convenient, as well as very trivial.


English.h:

Change all the Constant defined words to Default.  This allows a game to
easily replace them.  For instance, changing AMUSING__WD from 'amusing'
to 'word', to get _In The End_'s "view the final WORD" instead of "see some
AMUSING things to do".  The other one I changed was QKEY1__TX, from "  Q =
resume game" to "  Q = resume story".  The rest don't actually look that
useful to change, but you might as well be consistent.    

  
Verblibm.h:
  
Replace DropSub with the following:


[ DropSub;
!-- added code begins --
  receive_action=##Drop;
!-- added code ends --

  if (noun == player) return L__M(##PutOn, 4);
  if (noun in parent(player)) return L__M(##Drop,1,noun); 
  if (noun notin player) return L__M(##Drop,2,noun);
  if (noun has worn) 
  {   L__M(##Drop,3,noun);
      <Disrobe noun>;
      if (noun has worn) rtrue;
  }

!-- added code begins --
  if ((location == TheDark && parent(player) != real_location) ||
      (location ~= TheDark && parent(player) != location))
  {
    action=##Receive;
    if (RunRoutines(parent(player), before)~=0) { action=##Drop; return; }
    else action = ##Drop;
  }

!-- added code begins --
  if ((location == TheDark && parent(player) != real_location) ||
      (location ~= TheDark && parent(player) != location))
  {
    action=##Receive;
    if (RunRoutines(parent(player), before)~=0) { action=##Drop; return; }
    else action = ##Drop;
  }
!-- added code ends --

  move noun to parent(player);
  if (AfterRoutines()==1) rtrue;
      
!-- added code begins --
  if ((location == TheDark && parent(player) != real_location) ||
      (location ~= TheDark && parent(player) != location))
  {
    action=##Receive;
    if (RunRoutines(parent(player), after)~=0) { action=##Drop; return; }
    else action=##Drop;
  }
!-- added code ends
      
  if (keep_silent==1) rtrue;
  return L__M(##Drop,4,noun);
];
   
    
The effect of this change (basically copied from PutOnSub) is to cause a 
Receive action when the player drops an item while standing in/on a
supporter/container.  That way any code you write to trap the player
putting an object in/on that container/supporter won't be bypassed by
entering it.


Joe
-- 
I think OO is great...  It's no coincidence that "woohoo" contains "oo" twice.
-- GLYPH


From mol@bartlet.df.lth.se Tue Aug 25 13:58:35 MET DST 1998
Article: 44663 of rec.arts.int-fiction
Path: news.lth.se!not-for-mail
From: mol@bartlet.df.lth.se (Magnus Olsson)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Mimesis vs. Suspension of Disbelief (was: mimesis? mimesis?)
Date: 25 Aug 1998 09:54:09 +0200
Organization: The Computer Society at Lund
Lines: 48
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In article <6rk8u5$34c$1@prometheus.acsu.buffalo.edu>,
Phil Goetz <goetz@cs.buffalo.edu> wrote:
>I think a lot of people here regularly use "mimesis" to mean what is
>usually called "suspension of disbelief".  "mimetic" is used to mean
>something that reenacts life; it's a drama term.  

People here uses "mimesis" in slightly different senses, yes.
However, I think your definition is overly narrow (at least for
the field of IF; I'm not sure what's the usage in the theatre world).

To me, a game breaks mimesis if I'm suddenly jarred out of the illusion
of actually experiencing something beyond a game; when the game
interface suddenly becomes too obvious or restrictive. 

Or, to use movies as an example, a movie achieves mimesis when 
I forget that I'm watching flickering images on a screen and rather
feel that I'm experiencing something first-hand. It does not have
to be realistic or reenact *real* life - it could just as well
be reenact an *imaginary* life, as long as it's sufficiently life-like.

To me, this is quite distinct from - but related to - the phenomenon of 
suspension of disbelief. 

To use a movie example again: Suppose you're watching one of the Star
Trek films, and you keep saying to yourself: "The science here is
bogus. There's no way a spaceship could maneuver that way." Then you
can't suspend your disbelief (of course, this may lead to a break of
mimesis as well, if your next thought is "Well, it's only as stupid
film anyway").

However, suppose you suddenly notice that the starship Enterprise is
really a model hanging from threads. This is a break of mimesis (in
the sense we're using it here on this newsgroup). It may or may not
break your suspension of dispbelief: it's conceivable that you
continue to believe in the film world: "OK, they used a tacky special
effect, but I still buy the existence of superluminal spaceships".

>Of course, none of
>our text adventures ever reenact life, unless you live in Middle Earth
>or on Rigel.

With all due respect, this is bordering on the ridiculous. Very few
works of art - if any - ever "reenact life" in the strict sense.
Even the most realist drama is blatantly unrealistic if you compare it
to real life.
-- 
Magnus Olsson (mol@df.lth.se, zebulon@pobox.com)
------    http://www.pobox.com/~zebulon   ------


From gkw@pobox.com Tue Aug 25 21:52:36 MET DST 1998
Article: 44321 of rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: gkw@pobox.com (Gerry Kevin Wilson)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction,rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: [AVALON] Name change announcement / Reservations ending soon.
Date: 20 Aug 1998 20:03:06 GMT
Organization: None
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Xref: news.lth.se rec.arts.int-fiction:44321 rec.games.int-fiction:35960

Hi folks,

	We're almost ready to release Avalon...err...rather, "Once and
Future."  (Changed the name to avoid trademark infringement.  Messy
lawsuits bad.)  Once again, Avalon is now retitled "Once and Future."
Oh, and thanks to Zarf and Drone for the new name suggestion.  Good
one, guys.

	In other news, reservations for O&F will be closing shortly.  If
you want to reserve a copy (and save 10%) swing by the redesigned
Cascade Mountain Publishing website at http://www.cascadepublishing.com.
O&F will probably still be listed under Avalon for a few days until we
get it changed.  Oh, and lest I forget, a big thanks to Ivan Cockrum for
the very elegant redesign of the website.  Great job.

	Just to warn you guys, because of costs, the price is $29.95,
but if you get in on the reservation thing, it's closer to $27 or so, which
is pretty close to the $25 I'd originally hoped to offer O&F at.  

	That gets you a huge game (the .gam file is about 910,000K or
so.) written in TADS by yours truly over the span of about 5 years.  (One of
my esteemed betatesters told me that the output from the walkthrough, in a 
10 pt font, comes out to nearly 130 pages.)

	You also get nice packaging, a real box (with a neat cover.), and
all sorts of stuff.  Plus, you'll be helping to support CMP, the first company
to offer commercial IF in rather a while.  And, best of all, if enough of you
buy O&F, I can pay off my college loans!  Woo hoo!  

	The packaging I've been hearing about and seeing is great.  I
feel that all that time spent writing the game has been well spent, as it's
resulting in a very nice looking game that I'm quite proud of.  It's much
better than Lesson of the Tortoise.  Honest, I swear.

	CMP'll also probably be offering a hint book later on, replete with
maps and (hopefully) illustrations of scenes in or related to the game, but
we'll have to see.

How's that for a sales pitch. ;-}

----
G. Kevin Wilson: Freelance Writer and Game Designer.  Resumes on demand.



From lpsmith@rice.edu Fri Aug 28 12:46:53 MET DST 1998
Ed Stauff (ed_stauff@_REMOVE_THIS_SPAMGUARD_avid.com) wrote:

: I had to modify it to get rid of its default LanguageToInformese
: routine so I could provide my own.  

This is an oddness with LanguageToInformese, and nothing specifically that
you did wrong.  The trick is to do the following (in order!):

Replace LanguageToInformese;

[ LanguageToInformese; <your code here> ];

Include "parser";
Include "verblib";

<etc.>

In other words, you have to make sure that it's defined *before* you
include the standard libraries.

<technical>
There's an '#ifdef LanguageToInformese' in the parser (parserm.h, to be
specific) that only calls the routine (and Tokenize) if it's defined.
And, if you've only told it that it should be Replaced, the compiler
thinks its undefined.  Or something.  Oops, didn't </technical> soon
enough.

-Lucian


From dmss100@york.ac.uk Sat Aug 29 20:06:53 MET DST 1998
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From: Den of Iniquity <dmss100@york.ac.uk>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: [Silly and Off-topic] green grass [Doggerel warning]
Date: Tue, 25 Aug 1998 18:40:52 +0100
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On Sun, 23 Aug 1998, David Given wrote:

>Jonadab the Unsightly One <jonadab@zerospam.com> wrote:
[of grass's natural yellow tint, turned green by Pepsi's polluted water]
>>The question I am unable to answer is, (Den, please enlighten us) 
>>where does the yellow tint come from?

>Sunlight, of course. All those yellow photons raining down from the sky
>have to end up *somewhere*.

Nice theory, but alas the yellow photons are the ones that the grass
_doesn't_ absorb, otherwise it couldn't appear to your eyes as yellow.
And the, um, /uric/ suggestion is easily disproved by experimentation.

I'm a sucker for your attention, so I shall indeed attempt to enlighten
you. It's a fine observation you make, and have you noticed that aquatic
plants are especially dark green? All that extra blueness, you see.

But for an explanation, we have to go right back to creation itself. I'm
sure the story can be found in any old bible. Here I have my unrevised
nonstandard version (the UNV) to hand. I seem to remember almost the same
passage in an old local version (the OLV), and although it was less
critical of Pepsi it didn't scan so well, hard though that is to believe. 

So we must turn to Genesis, the post-Phil-Collins chapters...

==========================================================================

'Twas Tuesday, Week Zero, when God looked around
At the newly-born sky and the sea and the ground,
Distinguished afar by the first innovation:
"Let there be Electro-Magnetic Radiation!"

God pondered the mauve-prints (for such was their hue
Before Pepsico came and changed them to blue);
Inorganic and Physical by divine interjection -
As easy as... some future thing that would serve as confection.

But SOULS - they would take some time to beget,
So God summoned angels by ethereal net
And giving each seraph a tiny pipette,
A page from the mauve-prints, a chemistry set,
Said "Go out, My agents, and for Me create
'Creatures' - organics that self-replicate."

So Gabriel was handed the mightiest scroll.
He marvelled as outlines began to unroll
The inscrutable, paramount, omniscient compiler
Had put him in charge of plants of all phyla.

Laid flat, the mauve-prints stretched well out of sight,
Surveying them all took him well into night.
He finally bred creatures that grew from the stone
But dawn showed him something, turned grin to a groan,
And he laboured on longer with tormented frown -
He'd been making his prototype plants upside-down.

At last he stood back and called on his boss,
Who'd been tending some other part of the cosmos.
"All shades of grey, and strong, Oh Most Holy."
"But they're meant to be eaten, and grow much too slowly.

"But your works, my good angel, are useful to Me:
We'll put them in caves for Adventurers to see;
When they work out a way to carry their lights -
They'll bypass stalagmites, and duck stalactites."

So Gabriel looked over the prints from the air
And hatched up a plan to make palatable fare:
>From strawberry jelly, with a little anxiety,
He nurtured fine pinkery with endless variety.

"The diversity's great," God told him, quite pleased,
"Algae and grass, protophyta and trees...
But they're too soft, they'd never survive adverse weather
Can't hold their weight, can't hold together.
We'd better just let them decay in this field
I'll hide them by setting them all to 'concealed'.

"Try one more time, I know you'll do right."
God munched a rose. "Mmmm! Turkish Delight!"

Gabriel pondered the things that he'd grown
The richness of jelly and structure of stone,
And using this knowledge he quickly gave birth
To life sprung from fertile brown goodness of earth.

The branches and trunks were dense with soil's colour,
Though thin stems and leaves were translucent and duller -
A yellowish tint that God said quite suited
The land (before all became blue-rinse polluted).
And as all the herbivores began to converge,
God exclaimed, "Well done, My fine demiurge!"

==========================================================================

-- 
Den



From afn55673@afn.org Sun Aug 30 17:17:21 MET DST 1998
Article: 44737 of rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: afn55673@afn.org (Jason Melancon)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Hints
Date: Tue, 25 Aug 1998 23:01:03 GMT
Organization: gte.net
Lines: 31
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On 25 Aug 1998 16:00:53 GMT, goetz@cs.buffalo.edu (Phil Goetz) wrote:
>In article <erkyrathEy82FG.BJL@netcom.com>,
>Andrew Plotkin <erkyrath@netcom.com> wrote:
>>I believe that hints *detract* from the game [ . . . .]  That's 
>>hints as a solitary activity. People working together *increase*
>>the fun. 

>But begging hints from RGIF isn't working together with other people.
>I don't see much distinction between reading a hint off of RGIF,
>and reading it from a hint book.  When I ask for a hint from RGIF,
>I'm not interacting much more with the people on the group
>than I would be if I wrote to the publisher and said
>"Please send me a hint book".  It just takes longer.

Really?  You can't specify much more to *people* on rgif than you can
to a hint file exactly what it is that you need help with, what kind
of help you need, how gentle to nudge you, etc.?  Of course, a useful
reply will be well thought-out rather than a knee-jerk spoiler, just
as a useful hint menu will.  But all else being equal, it seems to me
that having only a community of players is preferable to having only
hints.

Having said this, I think all games that aspire to broad audiences
should have hints, unless each game should have explicit instructions
on how to connect to the internet, how to configure a news reader, and
the rest.  Sure, you can say that these games come from the net in the
first place, but I thought we wanted to start casting wider nets.
Look what happened to the winners of the first competition, for
example.

Jason Melancon


From jholder@io.frii.com Mon Aug 31 09:43:27 MET DST 1998
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From: "J. Holder" <jholder@io.frii.com>
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction,rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Z-code aka ZIL?
Date: 31 Aug 1998 04:52:45 GMT
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Darin Johnson <darin@usa.net.removethis> wrote:
> (if anyone has a MDL interpreter of any variety or age, let me know.
> I'm sorta tempted to write a stripped down version, as an exercise
> in retro-Zork-ing.)

You can still order some MDL info from MIT.  Here is a relevant email:


>From plreid@MIT.EDU  Wed May 14 14:22:09 1997
Date: Wed, 14 May 1997 16:22:38 -0400
To: jholder@frii.com (John Holder)
From: trish reid <plreid@MIT.EDU>
Subject: Re: LCS papers
Cc: docs@MIT.EDU

          AUTHOR :Galley, Stuart Wilbur.
           TITLE :MDL primer and manual : for versions 54 and 104 / S. W. Galley
                  and Greg Pfister.
        LANGUAGE :ENGLISH
       PUBLISHED :Cambridge : Laboratory for Computer Science, Massachusetts
                  Institute of Technology, 1977.
   PHYSICAL DESC :270 p. ; 28 cm.
           NOTES :Title from cover.
                  Includes index.
    FUNDING INFO :Office of Naval Research contract N00014-75-C-0661
    BIBLIOGRAPHY :Bibliography: p. 260.
    OTHER AUTHOR :Pfister, Greg.

---------------------------------------------------------------------

          AUTHOR :Galley, S. W.
           TITLE :The MDL programming language / S.W. Galley and Greg Pfister.
        LANGUAGE :ENGLISH
       PUBLISHED :Cambridge, Mass. : Laboratory for Computer Science,
                  Massachusetts Institute of Technology, c1979.
   PHYSICAL DESC :276 p. : ill. ; 28 cm.
          SERIES :MIT/LCS/TR; 293
    FUNDING INFO :Supported by the Advanced Research Projects Agency of the
                  Dept. of Defense. N00014-75-C-0661
    BIBLIOGRAPHY :Includes bibliographical references.
    OTHER AUTHOR :Pfister, Gregory F.
    OTHER AUTHOR :Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Laboratory for Computer
                  Science.
     OTHER TITLE :Programming language, The MDL.

-------------------------------------------------------------------

          AUTHOR :Lebling, P. David.
           TITLE :The MDL programming environment / P. David Lebling.
        LANGUAGE :ENGLISH
       PUBLISHED :Cambridge, Mass. : Laboratory for Computer Science,
                  Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1980.
   PHYSICAL DESC :iv, 137 p. ; 28 cm.
          SERIES :MIT/LCS/TR; 294
    BIBLIOGRAPHY :Includes bibliographical references and index.
    OTHER AUTHOR :Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Laboratory for Computer
                  Science.
     OTHER TITLE :Programming environment, The MDL.


Dear John,

These documents are available for $24 each, including airmail shipment.  The
first title on your list did not show up on our database, I have given the
cite of the closest title. If you would like to purchase a copy, please
reply with your VISA, MasterCard or American Express number with expiration
date and name as it appears on the card.  Or, if you prefer, you may fax
that information to us at 617-253-1690.  I have included ordering and price
information at the end of this message.

Thank you,

-Trish Reid
MIT Document Services
docs@mit.edu

MIT LIBRARIES				
DOCUMENT SERVICES			
Room 14-0551				
Cambridge, MA USA 02139-4307
(voice) 617-253-5668
(fax) 617-253-1690
(e.mail) docs@MIT.EDU
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DOCUMENT DELIVERY SERVICE
Domestic Rates

Journal Article / $12
  (price per article up to 30 pages; overage add $.25/page)
RUSH SERVICE:   ***Note: Does not include transmission charges***
 SAME DAY: $10.00 extra
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NEXT DAY:  $5.00 extra

MIT Thesis
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     Abstract only / $12
     
MIT Technical Report/Working Paper                
$12 / $17 / $24 each
(1-30 pages / 31-100 pages / 101-400 pages / 401+ add $.25/page)       

MIT Press Out-of-Print Books	                      
$51 up to 400 pages				  
Add $.25/pg 401+
 
ALL PRICES INCLUDE AIRMAIL POSTAGE        

 DELIVERY OPTIONS
     1st Class/Airmail  (included in ALL prices)
     Ariel Electronic Document Transmission System (no additional charge)
     Fax ($8.00 first 30 pages, add $.50/page overage)
     Federal Express Overnight Delivery (must supply your own FedEx account
number)
     DHL Express Courier ($25.00 for first 5 items)

 ORDERING OPTIONS
     Fax (617-253-1690)
     E-Mail (docs@MIT.EDU)
     OCLC (symbol MYG)
     Mail (address above)
     Telephone (617-253-5668)

PAYMENT OPTIONS
     Invoice (domestic institutions only, not individuals)
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date & name as it appears on card
     Prepayment check -must be in U.S. funds & drawn on U.S. bank; check
payable to MIT


-- 
John Holder (jholder@frii.com)         http://www.frii.com/~jholder/


From max@alcyone.com Mon Aug 31 13:17:54 MET DST 1998
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From: Erik Max Francis <max@alcyone.com>
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction,rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Copyright Issues (Interactive Friction)
Date: Mon, 31 Aug 1998 02:21:16 -0700
Organization: Alcyone Systems
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Magnus Olsson wrote:

> But the key word is "get away with". I don't know about the crime
> statistics in the US, but over here there's something like a 90%
> chance of getting away with burglary. Still, if you don't get away
> with it (burglary, that is, not copyright infringement), you can look
> forward to several years in prison.

Indeed.  The question potential infringers (especially when they're
aware of what they're about to do) is not so much whether they think
they can get away with it, but rather will they be satisfied with the
consequences if the copyright owner decides to press the issue.  Because
-- and this is the important point -- they can selectively choose when
to bring suit, and will almost certainly win in cases of clear
infringement, regardless of how much money the infringer is willing to
spend for lawyers in his defense.

Another point not mentioned so far is that it's wholly conceivable that
if the infringer decides to bring suit, posts to Usenet asking "Is this
infringement?" (and answers indicating that it is) could conceivably be
brought up in court, indicating that the defendant knowingly commited
infringement.  To my knowledge this hasn't happened (with respect to
Usenet; it has in other media), but it's certainly not beyond the realm
of possibility.  And in cases where there is some admission of knowledge
of the act, the defense is pretty much hopeless.

> I can think of scenario that's not entirely unlikely: Suppose Adams is
> working on a new, commercial, game based on "Restaurant". In that
> case,
> he may not be very happy at all to hear about your competing effort -
> if it's good, it will spoil his market, if it's bad it may reflect
> badly
> on his own game.

Further indeed.  The question to keep in one's mind when treading in
these waters is not whether or not one suspects the copyright holder
will actually bring suit; the real question is whether or not one is
prepared to deal with the consequences, which will almost never be
pleasant.  Often the owner will begin with a cease-and-desist order
(which merely means that all your work is for naught), but nothing says
they have to -- they can go directly to court.

-- 
Erik Max Francis / email max@alcyone.com / whois mf303 / icq 16063900 
Alcyone Systems / irc maxxon (efnet) / finger max@sade.alcyone.com
  San Jose, CA / languages En, Eo / web http://www.alcyone.com/max/
          USA / icbm 37 20 07 N 121 53 38 W / &tSftDotIotE
             \
            / Many situations can be clarified by the passing of time.
           / Theodore Isaac Rubin


From max@alcyone.com Mon Aug 31 23:24:56 MET DST 1998
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From: Erik Max Francis <max@alcyone.com>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Copyright Issues (Interactive Friction)
Date: Mon, 31 Aug 1998 13:50:49 -0700
Organization: Alcyone Systems
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Doeadeer3 wrote:

> Okay, okay, I just think some suffer from "lawyer paranoia" (although
> that is
> prefectly understandable).

A little paranoia is generally healthy.

> Are routines and snippets of code posted to raif considered
> copyrighted?

In short, yes.  Any fixed work is automatically copyrighted at the time
of its creation.

> The typical situation:  someone has a problem and someone else posts a
> response, using a snippet of code (or complete routine or maybe more)
> to show
> how to do it. In some instances, the responder also says, "I use this
> in all my
> games".
> 
> I have always considered these responses to now be in the public
> domain.

They're not in the public domain unless the copyright has expired
(obviously not an issue here) or if the owner explicitly releases them
into the public domain.

What you're really asking about is the _license_ for use here.  On
Usenet there is an implicit license, namely that articles can be copied
to news servers without violating the author's wishes, since that's
clearly what the author intended to happen.

In the particular case of someone on this newsgroup posting a code
snippet, say, as the answer to a question, then I'd say the license
probably leans toward free use for that purpose.  I would think that the
author would have a really difficult time proving before a judge that
there was infringement.

> A while back, Lelah said she would like to do a "best of" for Alan,
> since they
> are few source examples at gmd.de. Culling routines from old posts to
> raif.
> Someone responded by saying they are "published" and "copyrighted".

They are technically correct.

Although, one could argue that you were excerpting for literary or
critical reasons, but then it would be hard to argue that if the whole
work consisted of nothing but those excerpts.

> I was considering doing a "best of raif 98" as regards Inform. The
> best
> routines shared this past year. (I would be polite enough to ask the
> authors
> involved, but I would be asking out of politeness, not out of worry
> about
> copyright infringement).

But, it would solve both problems.

If you're interested in doing something which you think might be
coypright, the safest way to proceed is to ask the copyright holder.  If
they sound favorable, then you can take the steps to pursue whatever
work is taken to get written permission.  If the author doesn't sound
favorable, then you know that if you had done it you might have gotten
yourself into some legal trouble.

> It seems to me a snippet or routine without the copyright notice is in
> the
> public domain. It seems to me that posting to raif is not the same as
> "publishing".

Copyright is not granted upon publication, it's granted upon fixation --
that is, when the work is fixed into some tangible form.  For writing,
it's when you've written it, not when it's posted to Usenet.  (Often, of
course, Usenet articles are written, and thus fixed, just before they're
posted.)

A work is only released into the public domain when the author
explicitly does so.  The lack of a copyright notice does not change the
fact that it is by its very nature copyrighted.

> We are all trying to help each other here, so this shouldn't be a BIG
> issue.
> But after the negative responses to Lelah's idea, I am now puzzled.

Again, the safest way to proceed is to ask permission.

> Doe :-) (Not a complete game, not uploaded to gmd.de, no copyright
> notice, not
> "published".)

(But still fixed and thus protected by copyright.)

-- 
Erik Max Francis / email max@alcyone.com / whois mf303 / icq 16063900 
Alcyone Systems / irc maxxon (efnet) / finger max@sade.alcyone.com
  San Jose, CA / languages En, Eo / web http://www.alcyone.com/max/
          USA / icbm 37 20 07 N 121 53 38 W / &tSftDotIotE
             \
            / War is like love, it always finds a way.
           / Bertolt Brecht


From enoto@ucla.edu Tue Sep  1 09:54:12 MET DST 1998
Article: 45201 of rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: Jon Petersen <enoto@ucla.edu>
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction,rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Copyright Issues (Interactive Friction)
Date: Mon, 31 Aug 1998 21:57:16 -0700
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Erik Max Francis wrote:
> 
> Laurel Halbany wrote:
> 
> > Activision currently holds all the copyrights and trademarks
> > surrounding Zork, yes? I'd be much more comfortable seeing an official
> > statement by an Activision rep (who is corporately empowered to say
> > so) telling us that Zork "fan IF" is OK.

Oops. I actually meant an Activision rep, not an Infocom rep, in my
earlier post.  My bad.

> 
> But, unfortunately, even a corporate resentative giving oral permission
> will not guarantee safety from an infringement suit.  You'd need written
> permission.

I know nothing about law, so I will merely repost the article, which I
happened to save.  Perhaps the article merits inclusion in the newsgroup
FAQ?

						Jon

--

>From - Sun Feb 08 22:48:11 1998
From: David A. Cornelson <dcornelson@placet.com>
Subject: New Zork Interactive Fiction
Date: Sat, 07 Feb 1998 17:21:34 -0600
Message-ID: <886893159.258474000@dejanews.com>
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Organization: Deja News Posting Service
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Xref: news.ucla.edu rec.arts.int-fiction:29915

I recall reading several threads over the past five months since I
started hanging around that using Activision's Zork trademarks was a
no-no and could be bring unwanted legal hassles.

Well, I asked Laird for a clarification on where Activision stands on
this and here is what he said...

********************************************************************
Basically, Activision holds all rights to the Zork franchise, games,
code and data files.  If these were being distributed for free in an
active manner other than what we already have on our website, we would
ask the parties to stop.

That being said, my position as head of the Zork franchise is that we
want to support interactive fiction as best we can.  I personally know
my start in computer games was with Zork I, and the first game I ever
wrote was a really bad adventure game on the Apple II.

As far as the use of Zork places in other games, I think this falls
under fair use, sort of like when a movie says something about another
movie.  Considering the freeware nature of IF, I don't see any problem
with this.  However, the best thing to do would be to include a line
saying that certain parts are from game (fill in the title) which is
owned by Activision.  I can also be a clearing house for specific
issues.

The area where Activision gets most upset is when people are selling
other products by using Activision property.  An example is the Palm
Pilot zcode program which was shown running Zork without permission from
us.  When this was pointed out to the author, I believe are graphic was
added and the problem went away.

So, what is this long winded email saying?  Basically, Activision is
protective of its rights, but wants to encourage support in the IF
groups.  (We sponsor the IF competition as an example of this.)

I hope this helps.

Laird
**********************************************************************

I interpret this as saying, making a Zork Story is okay, just don't sell
it and make sure you recognize Activision's ownership of whatever
'parts'
you use. For instance, the 'rezrov' spell might have a description that
includes 'the implementors of Activision have provided temporary use of
this spell and reserve all rights for the uses and copying of said
spell'.....

I think that's what he's saying. Just thought I would pass this on to
everyone. I personally liked Dungeon and the Enchanter series so I would
be inclined at some point to write my own Zork story. It seems as though
I can safely do this without the legal hassles that everyone seems to be
wary of...

David A. Cornelson, Chicago

-------------------==== Posted via Deja News ====-----------------------
      http://www.dejanews.com/     Search, Read, Post to Usenet


From rraszews@hotmail.com Wed Sep  2 10:08:13 MET DST 1998
Article: 45251 of rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: L. Ross Raszewski <rraszews@hotmail.com>
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.adventure,rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: What should an adventure be like then?
Date: Wed, 02 Sep 1998 02:14:45 GMT
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In article <35EC0DDD.B5021640@adventuresoft.com>,
  Simon Woodroffe <simon@adventuresoft.com> wrote:

> Then we thought, lets ask the experts and the people we are actually
> writing games for!
>
> If you have ideas about what should constitute an adventure game then
> please mail me with your suggestions and ideas. We are totally willing
> to listen to what the true gamers think about this declining genre.
>

It's really very simple; a lot of people will probably give you a lot of
conflicting answers, but it's really just a matter of taste. THe only thing
that it's really essential to keep in mind is this:

Make it make sense.

Simple, huh?  You can have fighting if you like, you can kill the player, you
can have puzzles, or no puzzles, object puzzles or logic puzzles, heavy NPC
interaction or no NPCs, FMV as a major component, a minor component, or not a
component at all; you can have action segments, you can write a game in 2D,
or 3D, or Myst-style pseudo3d,you can have gore, violence, sex, furry animals
(though probably not sex _with_ furry animals), cartoon graphics,
photorealistic graphics, no graphics, you can even include alpacas, crack,
and corn. Just so long as it makes SENSE.

Here's what you can't do: Fighting just for the sake of pulling in the action
game audience -- no crazed man standing in the back room of the record store
who bites your head off for no very good reason. Killing the player just to
be mean, or without some sort of fair warning -- If the player jumps off a
cliff, they deserve what they get coming to them, but if they walk near a
cliff, it's reasonable to assume that they've got enough dexterity not to
stumble over the edge without explcitly wanting to Logic puzzles just for the
sake of making the game hard. If, say, you're penetrating the lair of a mad
inventor, with a fetish for puzzles, it makes sense. it does not make sense
that the town barber locks his door with a tower of hanoi puzzle. And sliding
tile puzzles are NEVER a good idea. :-)

Write a good story. Have compelling characters, if you use them. Make it fun.
Make it long, if you could, I can't afford to keep spending like this.

That said, I hope I've gained _some_ respect here, and I'll promptly go and
fritter it away by telling you what _I_ have liked.

I don't generally like fighting, though I've not minded it in some games. I do
object if fighting _isn't_ an option, even when it makes sense.
I like having the ability to die -- so long as it's sensible, again, and
save/restore isn't a pain. If an undo is provided, I'm downright okay with
death, again, if it's reasonable. I DON'T like being able to render the game
unsolvable, without finding out immediately. If you're in fierce competition
with an enemy where every second counts, not being able to die sort of
eliminates the element of suspense. The worst thing I have ever seen is where
no-death games try to recreate the suspense by adding a system whereby if you
fail, you do not die, but are forced to repeat some tedious task. the player's
suspense is not fear of death but the fear of being bored. Quite frankly, I
don't want to play a  game where my "fear"  is the fear of being bored.

I prefer object-based puzzles to logic ones, though a combination thereof is
also perfectly understandable. I rather enjoyed at least one game which had
all logic puzzles, but this game had a particularly compelling story. A
compelling story will, at least with me, save your game's place in my esteem
even if you do one or several things that aren't my cup of tea. I don't like
particularly difficult puzzles.

I dislike bad NPCs. If you can't do NPCs well, then don't do them. NPCs are
the hardest thing to program well, and it may be better ultimately to use few
or no NPCs, devoting those efforts to some other area. However, again, it has
to make sense -- a city should be peopled, unless there's a darn good reason
it's not.

I enjoy games with FMV. I don't think the technology currently exists to use
FMV well as a major component, however, and I've considered most
intensive-FMV games to be more enjoyable as novelties than as games in their
own right. FMV cutscenes as a minor component, however, can be very moving.
And if you've got some brilliant new technique up your sleeve that will make
FMV viable, PLEASE don't be put off by the naysayers. I think it's got a lot
more potential than even 3-D.

In general, I prefer the 2-D third person perspective in graphical games,
though, paradoxically, my 3 of my 5 favorite games have used myst-style 3d.
True 3d is impressive, though I do not like it for characters (see below)
True 3d is also exceptionally processor-intensive. Many do not have 3d cards.
Many do not wish to upgrade their processors. Fusion games tend to sit well
with me -- a 3d engine cound certainly be adapte to use photographed
characters and photorealistic backdrops, which may even prove less processor
intensive.

I vastly prefer photorealistic graphics to cartoon graphics. Just a matter of
taste. No graphics at all is also PERFECTLY valid; a text or sound based
adventure can tell as entertaining and involving a story as a graphical one
(note I do NOT say "or better", because I'm talking about an "ideal" graphical
game, and an "idea" text game could only be "as good as", not "better" than an
ideal graphical game; there's no inherant superiority of one format over the
ohter)

As for the plot... well, being an open-minded person, I tend to like a variety
of plots, though I'm not quite so kindly disposed toward games in which the
characters are furry animals.


-----== Posted via Deja News, The Leader in Internet Discussion ==-----
http://www.dejanews.com/rg_mkgrp.xp   Create Your Own Free Member Forum


From erkyrath@netcom.com Wed Sep  2 17:27:46 MET DST 1998
Article: 45243 of rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: erkyrath@netcom.com (Andrew Plotkin)
Subject: Re: [CMP] Feedback needed
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Mike Berlyn (mberlyn@cascadepublishing.com) wrote:

> I need your feedback on how to best prepare the hints for the hint booklets.
> I've seen a lot of discussion on them lately, and would appreciate you
> opinions on how they should work -- not on whether you'd buy one, or think
> they're a sign of the coming downfall of civilization as we know it.

Oh, a *practical* question. :) 

> Invisiclues style (invisible ink) books, including the marker, will cost CMP
> about $8.00 each, so unless you are willing to pay $19.95 for the map & hint
> book, we'd better come up with a better solution.

Damn. Well, I would probably lose the pen anyway.

> Please vote on one of the following options:
> 1. Print the questions rightside up, the answers upside down, on the same
> page.
> 2. Print the questions rightside up, the answers upside down, on a "jump"
> page.
> 3. Print the questions rightside up, the answers upside down on the back of
> the questions page.
> 4. Print all the questions in one section, with a number telling you where
> to read each of the more-revealing answers.
> 5. Your suggestion here...

Hm. I want to avoid seeing an answer except when I've asked the question.
That means that not only should the answers be occulted when you're
reading the question, they should be occulted when you're reading earlier
*answers*.

So, for example, 1 and 3 aren't too good -- you turn the page around and
there are all the answers staring at you. Easy to read one too far.

I'm not sure what you mean by a "jump page". Like, "The answers to these
questions are all on page 37, upside down?" That would have the same
problem. 

One possibility is to have all the questions in the first half of the
book, and all the answers in the second, but have the answers in *random*
order. The whole game's list of answers, intermixed. That way if you
glance at the answers above or below the one you want, you probably can't
make any sense of it. Especially if the questions and answers are sentence
fragments with lots of pronouns.

I can't open the egg. (79)
Who is, then?         (256)
How do I get it back? (141)
But I never succeed!  (430)

253: Under the rug.
254: Try waving it.
255: What are its exact dimensions?
256: The thief.
257: Maybe he'd like to wash it down.

and so on. (I trust the other matching questions and answers are
obvious...)

Generating such a list is a semi-trivial Perl script or something. :)

> Things we thought of that might work, but we're waiting for the printers'
> quotes:
> 1. Ink you rub with a coin which makes the answers appear. Similar to
> invisiclues method requiring no pen.
> 2. A die-cut window which shows blocks out unwanted letters making the
> answer appear in a block of seemingly random letters.
> 3. A red cellophane film which reveals the answers.

I prefer 3. Rub-away ink is messy. The die-cut thing tears or gets lost
(and wastes huge amount of page space). Red cellophane also gets lost, but
you can buy some more. Should be cheap. You have to print the booklet with
two colors, but that doesn't sound too bad.

If the red cellophane solution is available, I prefer it overall.

--Z

-- 

"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the
borogoves..."


From mjr-SEENOTE@hotmail.com Wed Sep  2 17:29:20 MET DST 1998
Article: 45241 of rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: "Mike Roberts" <mjr-SEENOTE@hotmail.com>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: [CMP] Feedback needed
Date: Tue, 1 Sep 1998 14:15:38 -0700
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Mike Berlyn wrote in message <6sh9b0$r9h@enews1.newsguy.com>...
>I need your feedback on how to best prepare the hints for the hint
booklets.
>4. Print all the questions in one section, with a number telling you where

This is pretty much how we did the Deep Space Drifter and Perdition's Flames
hint books; I think it worked pretty well, but I guess you'd have to ask
someone who used the hint books how they liked it.

The specific way we did it was to have a section of questions and a separate
section of answers.  The questions were grouped according to part of the
game, topic, and so on, so that you could home in on the question without
reading too many other questions.

Each question took you to the first hint for that question; the hints were
all numbered and randomly arranged.  Each hint included the number of the
next hint for the same question - essentially a linked list.  The first hint
was the least specific and each subsequent hint for the same question was
more specific.

We had a third section as well, for "spoilers."  This section contained the
final one or two hints for each question.  The link from the last
non-spoiler hint always said that the next hint was going to be a spoiler,
so you'd know not to follow the link if you didn't want the flat-out answer.
We thought it was worthwhile to segregate the spoilers into a separate
section so that your eyes wouldn't accidentally take in a spoiler while you
were reading an ordinary hint to another question - this seemed important
because the spoilers would spell out in detail the complete steps necessary
to solve the problem, so they might give something away even without knowing
what question they went with.

[question section]

Q. How do I steal the demon's ring?  See hint: 114.

[hint section]

19. Have you seen the family tree yet?  Don't go on until you have.  Next
hint: 72.
...
72.  It's his grandmother's.  Next hint: 60.
...
113.  You need something from the store.  Next hint: 202.
114.  Have you tried asking for it?  Next hint: 19
115.  It's hidden somewhere in the same room.  Next hint: Spoiler 305.
...

[spoiler section]

...
305.  Look under the doormat.
...

--Mike Roberts
Note: to reply by email, please remove the "-SEENOTE" suffix (including the
hyphen) from my username, and replace it with a single underscore.





From lpsmith@rice.edu Wed Sep  2 17:39:33 MET DST 1998
Article: 45240 of rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: lpsmith@rice.edu (Lucian Paul Smith)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: [CMP] Feedback needed
Date: 1 Sep 1998 21:34:08 GMT
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Mike Berlyn (mberlyn@cascadepublishing.com) wrote:

: I need your feedback on how to best prepare the hints for the hint booklets.

<snip>

: Please vote on one of the following options:
: 1. Print the questions rightside up, the answers upside down, on the same
: page.
: 2. Print the questions rightside up, the answers upside down, on a "jump"
: page.
: 3. Print the questions rightside up, the answers upside down on the back of
: the questions page.

All of these options suffer from the 'wandering eye' scenario--the problem
is not separating the question from the answers, but separating the first
answer from the second answer from the third answer, etc., etc.

: 4. Print all the questions in one section, with a number telling you where
: to read each of the more-revealing answers.

Some company did this way back when, to fairly good effect (I'm told,
having never used the system myself.)  Magnetic Scrolls, maybe?  At any
rate, I like this better than my reading of the first three.

: 5. Your suggestion here...

Glad you asked!

There are many, many options that you could use.  There was a thread on
raif I found once that mentioned several of them, but Steven Van Egmond's
raif archives seem to either be down or moved, and I can't find it, but
the URL *used* to be:

http://www.truespectra.com/~svanegmo/raif/05/msg00202.html

(This was pre-deja, so it can't be found there, either.)

At any rate, one method I remember was used by another company which
instead of encoding whole phrases, encoded words, so the answer "Put the
lemon in the cuisinart" might be encoded "221 - 10 - 93 - 56 - 10 - 624".

Another method thought up was encoding the answers 'in plain sight' by
either reversing the entire phrase ("tranisiuc eht ni nomel eht tuP"),
individual words ("tuP eht nomel ni eht tranisiuc") or pairs of letters
("uP tht eelom nnit ehc iuisantr"). (note that I flipped the spaces in
that last one as well--they could be even be left out entirely, if
needed/desired.)  A simple computer program could be written to do this,
too (and probably should be--too much chance of error otherwise.)

Alternatively, you could always do a simple letter-substitution cipher--A
becomes B, B becomes C, and so on.

If you want to go the electronic route, there are a variety of options
available to you.  You could have in-game hints (although I think TADS is
a little lacking in terms of menus, etc.), or even a separate game
'module' that was only hints (and use Inform for it, even).  You could
give the user a bunch of html files, and have them use their browser as a
'decoder' (you could style them as individual .html files as I did with my
So Far hints, do funky things with the colors like Paul Krueger did with
those selfsame hints, at http://pages.prodigy.net/weird_beard/sofar.htm,
or do something with cgi scripts which I know nothing about.)

There are also a couple proprietary formats you might license; UHS
(Universal Hint System) at http://www.uhs-hints.com/, or THL (The Hint
Library), at ftp://ftp.gmd.de/if-archive/solutions/thl/.  UHS is avaiable
for a variety of windows platforms, as well as an old version for the Mac;
THL is only available for Win95.


Whatever route you take, here are the forces at work (as I see them):

-The easier it is to get another hint, the more likely they are to go
ahead and get one, before thinking about the last clue.

-The harder it is to get another hint, the more likely they are to either
quit in frustration or skip directly to the walkthrough/final
hint/whatever.  Or even just be annoyed.

If the player sees a hint they didn't want to, they'll be annoyed at you.
This should be avoided at all costs. If they see a hint and realize they
could have figured it out themselves from the previous hint, they'll be
annoyed at themselves--but there are things you can do to make this
scenario less likely (namely--making it more difficult to get the next
clue.)  Still, if you make it extremely difficult, the player starts to
get annoyed at you again.  And heck, from the tone of some of the recent
posts here, some people will be annoyed at you at virtually the first
hurdle you throw at them.  So striking the right balance is important.
Personally, I wouldn't mind doing the letter-substitution cipher thing
myself, but I know there are others for which this would be too much.


: Things we thought of that might work, but we're waiting for the printers'
: quotes:
: 1. Ink you rub with a coin which makes the answers appear. Similar to
: invisiclues method requiring no pen.
: 2. A die-cut window which shows blocks out unwanted letters making the
: answer appear in a block of seemingly random letters.

Both of these options would be fine, if I'm envisioning them correctly.
Just make sure you can't accidentally see an answer before you want it.

: 3. A red cellophane film which reveals the answers.

I've seen a variety of games that use this, with mixed results.  If you go
this route, make sure you do it well.  Too often, again, it's easy to see
the answer without using the cellophane.  (And this might be differently
true for different people--see the 'colorblind' thread ;-)

Some other random hint links:

"Cheat, Beg, Wheedle, Cajole" from XYZZYnews #12, at:

http://www.xyzzynews.com/xyzzy.12f.html

My own "IntFicHints" pattern at:

http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?IntFicHints


Wow.  If that doesn't answer your question, I don't know what will! ;-)

-Lucian Smith


: BTW, finished goods for _Once_and_Future_ will be in soon, so pre-orders
: will stop within a week or so.

Yay!


From erkyrath@netcom.com Fri Sep  4 11:01:36 MET DST 1998
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From: erkyrath@netcom.com (Andrew Plotkin)
Subject: Re: [ZMachine] Interpreter for Linux
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Joe Mason (jcmason@undergrad.math.uwaterloo.ca) wrote:

> X - Zarf's XZip looks very nice (especially once you get used to the split-off
> status line, which I hated at first but actually prefer now).  It's missing a
> few things which I would consider necessary in a GUI, though, like dialogue
> boxes for Save/Restore. 

Is there a widely available, free library for this? X file dialog boxes, I
mean. I'm willing to put in a localized #ifdef for it, for people what
want.

Keep in mind that XZip doesn't use any X toolkits; it's raw XLib. It's too
big a deal to subjugate the entire thing to a toolkit, just for this
optional feature. But if I can call XStandardGetFile and get back a
filename, no other changes necessary, I can easily put in a hook for that.

> Also missing everything Frotz is, but (if I'm not
> mistaken) there are no entry points for it in the basic Zip code, so it
> would be tougher to graft on then in Frotz.

XZip isn't going to do game-controlled color (it's against my religion.) 
What else was on the list? It won't do V6. Sound would be nice, but it'd
have to be OS-dependent. I don't know anything about sound on Linux, much
less Ultrix, Solaris, Irix... but there *are* entry points in Zip for
sound; it's just the implementation of the sound opcode, whose interface
is defined by the z-machine.
  
> 3) Get a good graphical interpreter which supports V6.  I think it would
> probably be better to port Frotz to X instead of working to extend XZip.

Much easier that way, trust me. 

> For 3 - I think our best bet would be to wait for XGlk, and then use that to
> create XFrotz.  Zarf - need anyone to help you with XGlk?

No, I can do it as fast as anyone; I've ported this code a lot. :) 

But remember: even after Glk is extended to handle graphics, I'm not
guaranteeing that it will be optimized for *Z-machine* graphics. If it's a
choice between ease of porting and supporting weird-ass 20-year-old design
decisions, I will choose the former.

(Ask me about "paletteless images". :-)

> As for features of the X interpreter, I think it should (like WinFrotz) allow
> Save/Restore/Restart/etc. from the menus, to avoid having to go back to the
> command line and restart the thing every time.

Go back to the command line? Should you be distinguishing between "switch
game file" menu commands and save/restore/restart? 

--Z

-- 

"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the
borogoves..."


From dylanw@demon.net Fri Sep  4 14:26:45 MET DST 1998
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From: dylanw@demon.net (Dylan O'Donnell)
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction,rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Copyright Issues (Interactive Friction)
Date: 04 Sep 1998 13:02:37 +0100
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"Jonadab the Unsightly One" <jonadab@zerospam.com> writes:
> Erik Max Francis <max@alcyone.com> wrote in article
> <35EB0887.5514F71A@alcyone.com>...
> > Laurel Halbany wrote:
> > 
> > > Activision currently holds all the copyrights and trademarks
> > > surrounding Zork, yes? I'd be much more comfortable seeing an official
> > > statement by an Activision rep (who is corporately empowered to say
> > > so) telling us that Zork "fan IF" is OK.
> > 
> > But, unfortunately, even a corporate resentative giving oral permission
> > will not guarantee safety from an infringement suit.  You'd need written
> > permission.
> > 
> I face this issue myself, since Diary of a Text Adventurer by necessity 
> includes creatures that lurk about in the dark and can eat adventurers
> under certain circumstances.  I don't call them grue in the game text, but
> the player can refer to them as such.  
> 
> My solution will be to email the Activision rep and wait for a reply
> before distributing.  

This is what I did with Zork: A Troll's Eye View (well, after
uploading to GMD, but as soon as Laird posted to the newsgroup stating
Activision's position). He replied asking me to include the statement
"Zork is a registered trademark of Activision, Inc. and is used with
permission." at the beginning, which I duly did in the next release. 

As far as I'm concerned, that puts me in the clear unless and until 
Activision withdraw that permission, which they can do at any time, 
I imagine. Why they would is another matter...

(Yes, I realise there's a different issue here; I use a _trademark_
in the title, as well as copyrighted locations/characters, which is
a distinct area of law. But it's the way things went in this particular
instance. Whether things would have been different if Z:ATEV had been
a real game, I don't know.)

-- 
: Dylan O'Donnell              :  "This particularly rapid, unintelligible  :
: Demon Internet Ltd           :   patter / Isn't generally heard, and if   :
: Southend slave deck          :   it is it doesn't matter!"                :
: http://www.fysh.org/~psmith/ :       -- W.S. Gilbert, "Ruddigore"         :


From dbs@cs.wisc.edu Sun Sep  6 21:43:38 MET DST 1998
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From: dbs@cs.wisc.edu (Dan Shiovitz)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: [Inform] Inform mode- emacs
Date: 5 Sep 1998 03:59:58 GMT
Organization: U of Wisconsin CS Dept
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In article <6spldq$gg$1@heliodor.xara.net>,
Sam Powell <spweb@globalnet.co.uk> wrote:
>Please help - I am very new to emacs.
>
>I have downloaded and installed emacs  (20.3.1 - i386) and the
>inform-mode.el file from gmd - and what I want to know is - where do I put
>the .el file - what is my .emacs file and what else should i do to install
>the file.
>
>And once I have done all of this - howw do I get into inform mode - i
>presume i type M-x inform-mode.

Your .emacs file should be in your home directory. It tells emacs what
user-specific configuration you want. To get the inform mode working,
you should put the following lines in your .emacs file:

(autoload 'inform-mode "path to inform-mode.el, with no '.el' suffix")
(setq auto-mode-alist (cons '("\\.inf$" . inform-mode) auto-mode-alist))

This'll make it load inform-mode when emacs starts, and any file that
ends in .inf will automatically make emacs enter inform mode.

-- 
Dan Shiovitz || dbs@cs.wisc.edu || http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~dbs 
"...Incensed by some crack he had made about modern enlightened
thought, modern enlightened thought being practically a personal buddy
of hers, Florence gave him the swift heave-ho and--much against my
will, but she seemed to wish it--became betrothed to me." - PGW, J.a.t.F.S. 


From edromia@email.msn.com Mon Sep  7 13:23:05 MET DST 1998
Article: 45577 of rec.arts.int-fiction
From: "Michael Gentry" <edromia@email.msn.com>
References: <6sp6cq$ggn$1@server-b.cs.interbusiness.it><1998090421320200.RAA24951@ladder03.news.aol.com> <qkww7i3o0t.fsf@sos.support.demon.net> <u$SrgsR29GA.235@upnetnews05> <6stnfv$hv3$1@server-b.cs.interbusiness.it>
Subject: Re: Character questions in Anchorhead [spoilers]
Date: Sun, 6 Sep 1998 13:22:25 -0400
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[cross-posted from rec.games.int-fiction]

Luka wrote in message <6stnfv$hv3$1@server-b.cs.interbusiness.it>...
>In other words, the circumstances (strange town, creepy mist,

>What I did find strange is that on the morning of the third day, in order
to
>progress in the game, you must avoid following Michael (who actually
mumbles
>about being left alone), and go in the secret corridors to peep at him
>spying him instead.
>*That* was a thing which could not occur to me in a hundred years. I had
>noticed the function of the holes in the corridor, but I thought they were
>meant for spying someone else. I felt the right thing to do was to chase
>Michael and compel him to speak.
>


That's an interesting point, and one I'm going to act on (see last
paragraph). I might argue, though, that even in real life, the right thing
to do is not always the thing that will get you results.

Obviously, any spouse worth her salt is going to go for the direct approach
first.

(I know my wife would. In fact, the only REAL characterization problem here
is that my wife (on whom the main character is largely based) wouldn't have
put up with that creepy town for more than a couple of hours or so. She
would have gotten about as far as the library scene on day one, kicked the
crap out of me, read the book right there, and then dragged the both of us
all the way back to Texas.)

But the direct approach doesn't work: Michael won't talk to you no matter
what, and eventually he'll scream at you and storm out the door. So what do
you do? Ordinarily, you'd never stoop to spying on your husband, but here
you are, all alone in this town with no friends or resources, not even a car
to drive Mike to a doctor, your husband seems to be falling under a VERY
unhealthy psychic influence, and he won't talk to you.

You might find yourself forced to do something you'd find otherwise
distateful, even morally wrong, to save this guy you love from a fate worse
than death. To save him from turning into someone who ISN'T this guy you
love.

See, I WANT people to feel uncomfortable when they're forced to spy on their
husband. As a writer, that's a sign that that I've done something right.

What I think I'm going to do is add some text to the spying scene describing
your own reluctance and guilt, sort of like what happens if you rummage
through his pants. Something about the horror of watching the very person
you're trying to protect turn against you. Hopefully that will help keep the
characterization consistent, and allow players to better get into the agony
of having to make those kind of choices.

--M
================================================
"If you don't eat your meat, you can't have any pudding.
How can you have any pudding if you don't eat your meat?"





From lpsmith@rice.edu Wed Sep  9 10:28:56 MET DST 1998
Article: 45827 of rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: lpsmith@rice.edu (Lucian Paul Smith)
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction,rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Character questions in Anchorhead [spoilers]
Followup-To: rec.games.int-fiction,rec.arts.int-fiction
Date: 9 Sep 1998 04:08:55 GMT
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Michael Gentry (edromia@email.msn.com) wrote:

: Craxton wrote in message <35F4A61A.796D@erols.com>...
: >
: >Pardon me for barging in, but IIRC, you can't spy on Michael after your
: >attempts at conversation drive him from the house, making this
: >essentially a save-restore puzzle. Isn't that considered a no-no in the
: >IF community? Not trying to flame here, but...

: Consider me frosty. I have two defenses: one, you have to really henpeck
: Michael before he'll go -- for the re-release, I'm upping his temper limit
: to ten or twelve nagging questions, with a warning at the next to last ("I'm
: warning you, Alice, one more question and BANG-ZOOM!"). Two, Spying on
: Michael is not completely necessary to solve the game (or at least, it won't
: be in the re-release); it just tells you where to look for a very
: well-hidden clue.

If I may present a differing opinion here--I *loved* the fact that Michael
stormed off if I pestered him too much.  That was actually one of the
areas where I purposely tested the limits of the game, and I loved the way
it responded.  I thought it was a great example of the game allowing me to
do what I wanted and thought would be in character (pester Michael until
he gave in or something gave way (I loved the response to me pointing out
the mud on his shoes, for example)), while still steering me towards the
course of the rest of the story.  Seriously, every time I replayed that
scene, I replaed it the same way, and it was surprisingly emotional for
me--I really felt with the protagonist as I had her plead with Michael to
listen, and he just wouldn't.  And, actually, his 'temper' seemed about
right to me; I don't think I would up it.  Much more, and the illusion of
interactivity would have been even more strained.

But I would have liked it better if the game had not become unwinnable at
that point.

[Spoilers for this scene below.]
















If Michael storms out of the house, he never opens that passage, and
therefore never leaves his fingerprints on the bottle, no?  Perhaps you
could allow the player to still see Michael open the passage through the
knothole, mentioning that he mush have snuck back in the house while you
were upstairs?  Just a thought.

-Lucian



From neilc@norwich.edu Wed Sep  9 10:39:00 MET DST 1998
Article: 45745 of rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: neilc@norwich.edu
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction,rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Character questions in Anchorhead [spoilers]
Date: Tue, 08 Sep 1998 16:35:24 GMT
Organization: Deja News - The Leader in Internet Discussion
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In article <e2VZ4qb29GA.316@upnetnews05>,
  "Michael Gentry" <edromia@email.msn.com> wrote:
> [cross-posted from rec.games.int-fiction]
>
> Luka wrote in message <6stnfv$hv3$1@server-b.cs.interbusiness.it>...
> >In other words, the circumstances (strange town, creepy mist,
>
> >What I did find strange is that on the morning of the third day, in order
> to
> >progress in the game, you must avoid following Michael (who actually
> mumbles
> >about being left alone), and go in the secret corridors to peep at him
> >spying him instead.
> >*That* was a thing which could not occur to me in a hundred years. I had
> >noticed the function of the holes in the corridor, but I thought they were
> >meant for spying someone else. I felt the right thing to do was to chase
> >Michael and compel him to speak.
> >
>
> That's an interesting point, and one I'm going to act on (see last
> paragraph). I might argue, though, that even in real life, the right thing
> to do is not always the thing that will get you results.
>
> Obviously, any spouse worth her salt is going to go for the direct approach
> first.
>
> (I know my wife would. In fact, the only REAL characterization problem here
> is that my wife (on whom the main character is largely based) wouldn't have
> put up with that creepy town for more than a couple of hours or so. She
> would have gotten about as far as the library scene on day one, kicked the
> crap out of me, read the book right there, and then dragged the both of us
> all the way back to Texas.)
>
> But the direct approach doesn't work: Michael won't talk to you no matter
> what, and eventually he'll scream at you and storm out the door. So what do
> you do? Ordinarily, you'd never stoop to spying on your husband, but here
> you are, all alone in this town with no friends or resources, not even a car
> to drive Mike to a doctor, your husband seems to be falling under a VERY
> unhealthy psychic influence, and he won't talk to you.
>
> You might find yourself forced to do something you'd find otherwise
> distateful, even morally wrong, to save this guy you love from a fate worse
> than death. To save him from turning into someone who ISN'T this guy you
> love.

Undoubtedly. Or you might be so scared shitless that matters of guilt seem
insignificant. That was my reaction to the scene in the study.

Does Michael bolting from the house make the game un-winnable? That would be
too bad. I was stuck here for a very long time and only stumbled onto the
solution after fiddling around fruitlessly with the orderly and librarian for
hours.

> See, I WANT people to feel uncomfortable when they're forced to spy on their
> husband. As a writer, that's a sign that that I've done something right.

I was mostly disturbed by the odd, twisty nature of the secret passages, and
the unworldly angles that the spy- holes pointed. It was scarey. The things
Michael did were scarey. Contemplating the questions of the impropriety of
spying on my husband seem strongly out of place here. Maybe in retrospect, I
might feel icky about it (the same way you handled the stealing of Michael's
private property), but certainly not at the time.

For me, spying on him was unintentional anyway, as I just happened to be
experimenting with the peep-holes at the right time. Should I feel guilt under
those circumstances?

> What I think I'm going to do is add some text to the spying scene describing
> your own reluctance and guilt, sort of like what happens if you rummage
> through his pants. Something about the horror of watching the very person
> you're trying to protect turn against you. Hopefully that will help keep the
> characterization consistent, and allow players to better get into the agony
> of having to make those kind of choices.

As I said earlier, it may not have been a choice for all players. I certainly
never chose it. It just happened to me.

Regarding the re-release:

Spoiler space?


















The post-asylum third day is the only part of the game that
needs much work if you ask me. The second meeting with William?

I wish there could be a mad chase from cultists and a train-hopping sequence
at the end - even if it isn't interactive - pretty please with unconsecrated
emmulsions from Ashoth Arkhezad's pestilent slave caravan on top?

Anyway, best of luck on the re-release. This big fan of Anchorhead can't wait
to go back and experience a new and improved Anchorhead (and then escape
again ASAP -- <shiver>).

--
Neil Cerutti
neilc@norwich.edu

-----== Posted via Deja News, The Leader in Internet Discussion ==-----
http://www.dejanews.com/rg_mkgrp.xp   Create Your Own Free Member Forum


From jasonw@tdv.com Wed Sep  9 14:52:15 MET DST 1998
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From: "Jason Williams" <jasonw@tdv.com>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Starship Titanic parser revolutionary?
Date: Wed, 9 Sep 1998 13:08:07 +0100
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>>> > Is this borne out at all in actual play? Can anyone give me a quickie
>>> > comparison of Inform/TADS parsers at their best with this "revotionary
>>> > tool"?
>>>
>>> It's a keyword-based system which has the annoying tendancy of missing
the
>>> true context of your sentences. For my full opinions, please see
>>> http://interactfiction.miningco.com/library/weekly/aa052598.htm.
>
>>Thanks. I found it informative.
>
>>So when you say you ended up playing "guess the keyword", you mean it
>>degenerated into typing single words at the prompt looking for a reaction?
>
>I didn't find that you had to actually type too much to play the
>game. You only really need to type in four or five places (and the
>first nothing more than drudgery answering questions that I suppose
>would be a randomizer routine) during the game unless you start asking
>for help, or prompting the robots to do something to amuse you. You
>can prompt them, but they'll probably go off about something that
>doesn't really help you.
>I wouldn't even think it was a full parser, since I found as well that
>it was just looking for keywords to trigger some response from a
>robot. It took a few times for example to make Kraig do his thing for
>me, to find out what sequence to type to key him to do it.


Actually, the problem in providing the user with a natural language parsing
system is that as soon as you try to do any real-world testing, you find
that people just grunt single words at it and expect it to understand - a
lot of people simply can't be bothered typing long sentences, or are used to
noun-verb parsers, so they enter very terse commands rather than natural
language (quite naturally - I am highly resistant to typing more than is
absolutely necessary).

We therefore found it necessary to match some inputs very loosely in order
to cope with people not being very conversational.

For example, you can ask a LiftBot
  "would you be so kind as to take me to the fifteenth floor good sir?"
But 99.9% of people type:
  "floor 15"
or even
  "15"

>From my point of view, as a programmer who worked on the ST Dialogue system,
the revolutionary aspect of the game is that we have a vocabulary of 3,500
words and 12,000 quotes, can answer in excess of 100,000 questions using 14
hours of pre-recorded dialogue totalling over 11,000 different answers.

The parser could have been a *lot* better than it is, but we unfortunately
had to work with real-world restrictions.

---
Jason Williams - http://www.geocities.com/MotorCity/Speedway/2034/
jasonw@tdv.com - This message was sent with 100% recycled electrons





From mol@bartlet.df.lth.se Thu Sep 10 09:25:10 MET DST 1998
Article: 45900 of rec.arts.int-fiction
Path: news.lth.se!not-for-mail
From: mol@bartlet.df.lth.se (Magnus Olsson)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Starship Titanic parser revolutionary?
Date: 9 Sep 1998 22:37:50 +0200
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In article <905343009.5009.0.nnrp-03.c3ad61dc@news.demon.co.uk>,
Jason Williams <jasonw@tdv.com> wrote:
>Actually, the problem in providing the user with a natural language parsing
>system is that as soon as you try to do any real-world testing, you find
>that people just grunt single words at it and expect it to understand - a
>lot of people simply can't be bothered typing long sentences, or are used to
>noun-verb parsers, so they enter very terse commands rather than natural
>language (quite naturally - I am highly resistant to typing more than is
>absolutely necessary).
>
>We therefore found it necessary to match some inputs very loosely in order
>to cope with people not being very conversational.
>
>For example, you can ask a LiftBot
>  "would you be so kind as to take me to the fifteenth floor good sir?"
>But 99.9% of people type:
>  "floor 15"
>or even
>  "15"

And you shouldn't have been surprised (of course, that's easy for me to
say with a 100% hindsight), because people do talk like that most of
the time in real life as well. If you enter a lift with a person operating
it (assuming such things still exist; I don't think they do in Sweden),
you don't say "Would you be so kind as to take me to the 15th floor?",
you say "15, please" or something like that. If you enter a shop, you 
don't usually ask the salesperson "Could you pray tell me where the
computer magazines are shelved?", you ask "Excuse me, where are the computer
mags?".

I have the feeling that people only start using complete sentences and
complicated syntax when they're either making conversation, or explaining
or asking about something (reasonably) complicated (giving orders implies
having to explain the order).

>From my point of view, as a programmer who worked on the ST Dialogue system,
>the revolutionary aspect of the game is that we have a vocabulary of 3,500
>words and 12,000 quotes, can answer in excess of 100,000 questions using 14
>hours of pre-recorded dialogue totalling over 11,000 different answers.

But this is, in a sense, worse than useless as long as the parser doesn't
have any deeper semantic capabilities. I mean, as long as the commands and
questions you understand aren't semantically more complicated than those
handled by, say, the TADS parser, then people will tend to use very simple
syntax. Partly our of habit (I suppose a total newcomer to text IF may be
more likely to use complex syntax), but partly out of convenience. 

What I mean by "worse than useless" is that if the user finds out that 
the parser can accept very complex syntax, he'll attempt to use that
syntax the way he'd do to a human. "Go north through the forest, then
take the fourth turn left, and you'll see a small red cottage on your
right hand. Knock at the door, and ask the woman who opens if she needs
any help." Or, perhaps, a more realistic case: "Wizard, could you please
explain how I should get past the angry dog who's guarding the bridge?"

A game that could handle *that* kind of input would be truly
revolutionary, but it would require *semantic* understanding (plus a
lot of AI), not just a good parser. 

I guess my point boils down to: an advanced parser is only useful if
people can use it to do advanced things. Otherwise it will just
confuse them, because they will think it understands much more than it
does.
-- 
Magnus Olsson (mol@df.lth.se, zebulon@pobox.com)
------    http://www.pobox.com/~zebulon   ------


From dmss100@york.ac.uk Fri Sep 11 16:07:29 MET DST 1998
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From: Den of Iniquity <dmss100@york.ac.uk>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: [dangerously off topic and headed further still...]
Date: Fri, 11 Sep 1998 13:50:22 +0100
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On Thu, 10 Sep 1998, it was written (by David Given):

>>On Tue, 8 Sep 1998 18:51:54 +0100, Den of Iniquity pondered:
>>
>>> [Interactive Old Testament anyone?]
>>
>>Hmm, interesting idea...
>
>...but the wrong point of view.
>
>You are in heaven. It's a bit bland.
>
>> D
>
>You are now floating above the Earth...
Noah is here.

-> NOAH, BUILD ARK
Noah builds an ark to your design specifications.

-> NOAH, PUT ALL ANIMALS ON ARK
Noah puts two of each animal on the ark.

-> U
Heaven.

-> LOOK CONTEMPLATIVELY AT FLOOD CONTROL RESERVOIR #3

-- 
Den



From adam@princeton.edu Fri Sep 11 16:08:52 MET DST 1998
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From: adam@princeton.edu (Adam J. Thornton)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: [OT] Holy War [Was: Re: [POLL] - What OS do YOU use???]
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In article <tvy90jtvscv.fsf@cn1.connectnet.com>,
Darin Johnson  <darin@usa.net.removethis> wrote:
>CTSS versus ITSS?  Symbolics versus Xerox?  RTS versus RSX?  TPU/EVE
>versus TPU/EDT?  Teco versus everyone else?

Teco?  Bah.

I think the following appears somewhere in the Emacs source tree.  It's
been floating around the net for a while:



When I log into my Xenix system with my
110 baud teletype, both vi *and* Emacs
are just too damn slow.  They print
useless messages like, 'C-h for help' and
'"foo" File is read only'.  So I use the
editor that doesn't waste my VALUABLE
time.

Ed, man!  !man ed


ED(1)               UNIX Programmer's Manual               ED(1)

NAME
     ed - text editor

SYNOPSIS
     ed [ - ] [ -x ] [ name ]
DESCRIPTION
     Ed is the standard text editor.
---

Computer Scientists love ed, not just
because it comes first alphabetically,
but because it's the standard.  Everyone
else loves ed because it's ED!

"Ed is the standard text editor."

And ed doesn't waste space on my Timex
Sinclair.  Just look:

-rwxr-xr-x  1 root          24 Oct 29  1929 /bin/ed
-rwxr-xr-t  4 root     1310720 Jan  1  1970 /usr/ucb/vi
-rwxr-xr-x  1 root  5.89824e37 Oct 22  1990 /usr/bin/emacs

Of course, on the system *I* administrate,
vi is symlinked to ed. Emacs has been
replaced by a shell script which 
1) Generates a syslog message at level LOG_EMERG; 
2) reduces the user's disk quota by 100K; and 
3) RUNS ED!!!!!!

"Ed is the standard text editor."

Let's look at a typical novice's session
with the mighty ed:

golem> ed

?
help
?
?
?
quit
?
exit
?
bye
?
hello? 
?
eat flaming death
?
^C
?
^C
?
^D
golem> 

---
Note the consistent user interface
and error reportage.  Ed is generous
enough to flag errors, yet prudent enough
not to overwhelm the novice with
verbosity.

"Ed is the standard text editor."

Ed, the greatest WYGIWYG editor of all.

ED IS THE TRUE PATH TO NIRVANA!  ED HAS
BEEN THE CHOICE OF EDUCATED AND IGNORANT
ALIKE FOR CENTURIES!  ED WILL NOT CORRUPT
YOUR PRECIOUS BODILY FLUIDS!!  ED IS THE
STANDARD TEXT EDITOR!  ED MAKES THE SUN
SHINE AND THE BIRDS SING AND THE GRASS
GREEN!!

When I use an editor, I don't want eight
extra KILOBYTES of worthless help screens
and cursor positioning code!  I just want
an EDitor!! Not a "viitor".  Not a
"emacsitor".  Those aren't even WORDS!!!!
ED! ED! ED IS THE STANDARD!!!

TEXT EDITOR.

When IBM, in its ever-present
omnipotence, needed to base their "edlin"
on a UNIX standard, did they mimic vi? 
No.  Emacs?  Surely you jest.  They chose
the most karmic editor of all.  The
standard.

Ed is for those who can *remember* what
they are working on.  If you are an
idiot, you should use Emacs.  If you are
an Emacs, you should not be vi.  If you
use ED, you are on THE PATH TO
REDEMPTION.  THE SO-CALLED "VISUAL"
EDITORS HAVE BEEN PLACED HERE BY ED TO
TEMPT THE FAITHLESS.  DO NOT GIVE IN!!! 
THE MIGHTY ED HAS SPOKEN!!!

?



So there.
Adam
-- 
adam@princeton.edu 
"There's a border to somewhere waiting, and a tank full of time." - J. Steinman


From !!!see-the-sig!!!@false.com Fri Sep 11 16:12:57 MET DST 1998
Article: 45889 of rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: !!!see-the-sig!!!@false.com (Alex Warren)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: [dangerously off topic and headed further still...] GUI (Re: [POLL] - What OS do YOU use??? (though these subject titles really have little relevance any more)
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On Tue, 8 Sep 1998 18:51:54 +0100, Den of Iniquity pondered:

> Yes. I think. Sometimes it might mean Old Testament but that would
> normally be off-topic too, so that's OK. [Interactive Old Testament
> anyone?]

Hmm, interesting idea...


You are standing on a mountain, eating your sandwiches. All of a sudden, there
is a huge flash of lightning and a booming voice cries "This is God - to you,
Moses, I present the Ten Commandments". Two STONE TABLETS are thrown down at
you, narrowly missing your head.

> THROW STONE TABLETS BACK INTO THE HEAVENS

A booming voice cries "Stop it! You're supposed to keep those - read them to
your people, and live by them. Or else".

> RUN AWAY

You run away. After running for several days, and several nights, stopping off
at a Bed & Breakfast, and running for a bit longer, stopping of course at the
pub on the way, you arrive at the RED SEA.

> PART THE RED SEA.

The sea neatly splits in two, confusing several nearby sailors.





Alex Warren 
email: alexwarren@writeme.com  ICQ: 4043750

http://come.to/axe           - Axe Software: freeware for DOS & Windows
http://come.to/basixfanzine  - Basix Fanzine: magazine for BASIC programmers
http://members.tripod.com/~perditionproductions           - mods (IT format)
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
(please reply to the newsgroup - if you must reply by email, change the anti-
spam rubbish to the email address above)


From dg@ Fri Sep 11 16:13:44 MET DST 1998
Article: 45975 of rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: dg@ (David Given)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: [dangerously off topic and headed further still...] GUI (Re: [POLL] - What OS do YOU use??? (though these subject titles really have little relevance any more)
Date: Thu, 10 Sep 1998 12:46:03 GMT
Organization: I'm organised? Wow!
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In article <35f6d226.8162376@read.news.global.net.uk>,
Alex Warren <!!!see-the-sig!!!@false.com> wrote:
>On Tue, 8 Sep 1998 18:51:54 +0100, Den of Iniquity pondered:
>
>> Yes. I think. Sometimes it might mean Old Testament but that would
>> normally be off-topic too, so that's OK. [Interactive Old Testament
>> anyone?]
>
>Hmm, interesting idea...

...but the wrong point of view.

You are in heaven. It's a bit bland.

> D

You are now floating above the Earth. There's a big mountain below You.

> X MOUNTAIN

Large and rocky. Extremely rocky. It's covered in rocks. There are also
some sheep.

An Israelite is wandering around the mountain, looking suspiciously at the
sheep.

> SAY HELLO

The Israelite's too far away. He can't hear You.

> SHOUT HELLO

The Israelite looks up in panic at the awesome noise, and then runs away.

Another Israelite comes onto the mountain.

> GET ISRAELITE

You pick the Israelite up in the palm of Your hand and take him bodily up
into heaven. He sees Your face! He screams! He goes mad.

> SAY HELLO

He gibbers meaninglessly.

> DROP ISRAELITE

What, from here?

> YES

The screams die away quickly.

Another Israelite comes onto the mountain.

> X MOUNTAIN

Large and rocky. Extremely rocky. It's covered in rocks. There are also
some sheep.

An Israelite is wandering around the mountain, looking suspiciously at the
sheep.

> GET ROCK

You carefully remove a few massive boulders. The Israelite somehow fails
to notice.

> CARVE ROCK

You now have a rather nicely-made carved stone tablet (even if you say so 
Yourself), covered in authentic Greek curliques.

> WRITE HELLO ON TABLET

Done.

> DROP TABLET

Splat!

You're sure there was an Israelite there not long ago.

Another Israelite comes onto the mountain.

-- 
+- David Given ----------------+ 
|  Work: dg@tao.co.uk          | FNORD                            
|  Play: dgiven@iname.com      | 
+- http://wiredsoc.ml.org/~dg -+ 


From erkyrath@netcom.com Sat Sep 12 08:15:01 MET DST 1998
Article: 46174 of rec.arts.int-fiction
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: erkyrath@netcom.com (Andrew Plotkin)
Subject: Re: Starship Titanic parser revolutionary?
Message-ID: <erkyrathEz5I66.8yE@netcom.com>
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Richard G. Clegg (richard@manor.york.ac.uk) wrote:
> In article <erkyrathEz0tGp.JGI@netcom.com>, Andrew Plotkin wrote:
> >I wouldn't say restrictions. Real-world recognition of the problem space.
> [...]
>   Hmm... I would say that the main "restriction" on starship titanic
> which other NLP projects haven't had was the requirement that all the
> robot dialogue be "speech"
>
> >It's silly to talk about a parser being "better" if it doesn't do the task
> >required of it.
>
>   The parser in Zork was better than that in Scott Adams games although
> neither did the task of recognising natural language.

I agree. Infocom's parser was better at the task.

> > Nobody *wants* to type complete natural language sentences. 
>
>   Typed Andrew, without a trace of irony using a complete natural
> language sentence. 

If you really want, I can explain the unstated assumptions that make the
difference there. (But no matter how much you want, I can't explain them
to a copy of Zork. Nuff said?)

> I _want_ to type complete natural language
> sentences.  That's why I spent longer talking to the bots in
> Titanic than I did to any character in a conventional text
> adventure.  They were (occasionally) able to give the impression that
> they could understand sentences - and were more chatty and varied than
> any I-F character I've come across.

Ok, then we have two styles of play here. I would like to play around with
a system where natural language is well-understood (hell, we all would.)
But, since we don't have any way to make games whose *domain* is rich
enough to require natural langauge, I think natural language is just
not called for. More, I think people recognize that when such a feature
gives no advantage in playing, and takes extra typing, then it doesn't add
to the fun. (I'm making assumptions about "most people" here. That's
life.)

I much prefer an input system that I can feel the boundaries of, and where
the boundaries match the boundaries of the system it's inputting to. Then
I know where I am. I'm a tactile sort of person. 

"The Infocom-standard parser is the inner ear of interactive fiction." :-)
Ok, never mind that.

--Z

-- 

"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the
borogoves..."


From spatula@spatch.net.nospam Sat Sep 12 22:03:50 MET DST 1998
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Subject: Re: [dangerously off topic and headed further still...]
Date: Sat, 12 Sep 1998 19:45:43 GMT
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On Fri, 11 Sep 1998 13:50:22 +0100, Den of Iniquity
<dmss100@york.ac.uk> wrote:
>Noah is here.
>
>-> NOAH, BUILD ARK
>Noah builds an ark to your design specifications.
>
>-> NOAH, PUT ALL ANIMALS ON ARK
>Noah puts two of each animal on the ark.
>
>-> U
>Heaven.
>
>-> LOOK CONTEMPLATIVELY AT FLOOD CONTROL RESERVOIR #3

Here begins the shameful confession.
In 6th grade I attended a combination computer/Bible camp and got
promptly hauled into the "advanced" section.  This meant that we
didn't get to sit around watching a counselor attempt to teach us
Applesoft Basic; no, we got to sit at our own computer and attempt to
come up with an original program of our own.  And it had to be vaguely
Bible-themed as well.

So naturally, I came up with the ingenious title of "Bible Adventure".
It was an Apple game with lo-res graphics and the amazing premise that
you got stuck in a magic Bible and witnessed three, yes, three amazing
stories COME TO LIFE -- Adam and Eve's curious FALL FROM GRACE (where
you controlled the snake bringing the apple to Adam and Eve, with
primitive object collision), Moses' strange visit from the BURNING
BUSH (which, if I recall correctly, was nothing more than an excuse
for me to see how fast I could animate two lo-res scenes in BASIC) and
the pretty and twisted BIRTH OF BABY JESUS (which started off as a
search-for-the-spot-on-the-100x100-grid chase -- "The manger is NORTH
and WEST from here!" -- and then mutated into dancing sheep and
camels.)  Apparently Baby Jesus takes a shine to you and *bam* you're
back in your own weird sinful world, no Twilight Zone ending or
nothing (a pity, really, since I was just developing the concept of
self-cynicism then.)

Of course, the game was not without flaws.  Sure, you could handle the
Fruit of Knowledge, but when you were asked to eat it or not, a YES
answer would LOOOOOSE THE GAME.  Also, Moses seemed to receive the Ten
Commandments from that burning bush, so I guess we weren't being
marked for accuracy here.  

Coming from a displaced Yankee in the heart of fundamentalist
Pennsylvania, the game seemed to go over well.  Of course, if I had
the chance to redesign the game today (shudder!) I'd scrap the Baby
Jesus Lambada and go straight to Revelations, animating the wacky
rivers of blood and four horsemen with aplomb.  I'd also include a
crazy NPC in the form of all twelve apostles, and maybe, as an
interlude, a bit of the ol' Song of Solomon (Dads like it, too!)

That camp was really strange.  We couldn't play any form of computer
games except for one night when each computer had but one game loaded,
you couldn't switch games on computers but every 10 minutes had to
switch computers so that someone else could play.  And it only lasted
for 30-45 minutes.  Real strange camp director we had there.  I also
remember one kid making an animation to the tune of "Everybody Wang
Chung Tonight" (perfectly synchronized if he pressed PLAY on his tape
recorder and ENTER at the same time) and, when asked about the
religious content involved, said "Well, it's got crosses in it."

What's the point?  Oh, the point is that there can be
religiously-themed programs; they're just not usually VERY WELL DONE,
or made by, well, 6th-graders.  Trying to present religious material
in a mostly-secular medium never works; unless you've got a very
specific audience (a Bible camp, for instance) the whole concept will
very well fall flat and accomplish nothing.  So there.  Pfah!




--
der spatchel                                          reading, mass 01867
resident cranky                                     fovea.retina.net 4000
                    "I feel like we're in a Noel Coward play. 
                     Someone should be making martinis."  -   Woody Allen


From erkyrath@netcom.com Tue Sep 15 17:25:12 MET DST 1998
Article: 46297 of rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: erkyrath@netcom.com (Andrew Plotkin)
Subject: You Are a Twisty Little Maze of Passages, All Corn
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On Saturday, we drove out to eastern Pennsylvania, to investigate the
(sorry) "Amazing Maize Maze". It was terrific. Zarf Seal of Approval.

A brief synopsis: *Corn grows taller than your head*. See the
possibilities? There are now several places around the world that are
into this. The one we visited was something like three linear miles of
pathway... in a cornfield. 

This is not a theoretical sort of maze. You get lost. There are ten-foot
green walls on either side of you, and sky above you, and a dirt
pathway. That's it. You can try to peer between the stalks, but since
the other side of the wall is generally another pathway full of lost
people, it does you very little good. (Sometimes you can see the
outside, or the goal, or a significant maze point -- but you probably
can't get there from here.) For two and a half hours, I was immersed in
a real, live (!) interactive puzzle.

Let me spend some time describing details. I promise not to spoil any
secrets, but I do want to talk about the maze from a game designer's
point of view.

The theme for the maze was Noah's Ark. The general outline of the paths
forms a boat, with waves below, styled animals on desk, and a dove
above. (There are aerial photographs of the maze; take a look.
Memorizing such a thing is quite impossible, so don't worry about that.)
(Footnote: Besides, I just noticed, all the aerial photographs and
souvenir t-shirts are *lies*. They left several connections undug until
the last minute, and you can't tell from the photographs where they'll
go.)

Upon entry, you may take a flag on a ten-foot pole, and a blank map
divided into fifteen squares. They give you a quick lecture (no crashing
walls, no running, don't eat the corn, etc.) Then they time-stamp your
ticket and kick you through a passage. That's the east edge of the maze.
You can go north or south. Now what?

Heh.

The maze is divided into sectors, marked by colored ribbon strung along
the corn walls. Blue, green, orange, red, pink, black, white -- they
correspond to sections of the theme image (sky, sea, boat-hull, etc.)
This gives you a rough idea how you're doing. Orange on the left!
Progress! (Getting *into* the orange sector, so that there are orange
ribbons on both sides, is much harder.)

You can fill in the map as you go. There are fifteen stations scattered
around the maze, each with a supply of map squares (and sticky tape). If
you find them all, you can make a complete map. Without a map, can you
find them all? Well, that's your problem.

The left-hand and right-hand rules don't work. The goal is *inside*, and
there's a bridge from there to the exit. So if you follow one wall from
the beginning, you return to the beginning, not the goal. A second
bridge confuses matters further, over on the west side. Of course paths
go under the bridges too. The bridges are significant landmarks; other
landmarks are a view of a thousand-foot flower rainbow (planted across a
hillside above the maze), several water coolers, and a single
portapotty. ("Hope you find it in time," say the rules.)

The flag? Hint system. "Noah", the maze supervisor, sits at the top of a
tower with a PA microphone. Wave your flag, and he'll be able to see it
(although nobody else at ground level can.) Emergency help can be
dispatched. There are also a couple of speaking tubes at different
spots; you can pray for hints or a miracle. ("Want out? Tired of seeing
nothing but corn? Pray to Noah. Noah understands, believe me.")

Well. We collected map pieces, and used the map, and reached the exit in
exactly 59 minutes. Then we doubled back to find the seven or so pieces
we'd missed. That took another 90 minutes. By that time, we'd walked
just about every pathway in the field.

(One of our friends did it solo, *without* the map pieces, in about 90
minutes total. He claims it was too easy. We claim he got lucky.)

The design impressed me greatly. It was *not* designed for maximum
confusion; that would have been deadly. On paper, a path can wrap three
times around the maze and then dead-end; but if you dug that into a
cornfield, people would riot. In this maze, dead-end paths are short.
There are dead-end *sections*, but these loop back on themselves, so
that you feel you've explored somewhere interesting, not just wasted
time.

The landmarks are properly elusive. You can see the flower rainbow if
you're crossing a bridge, and from one garden spot on the north edge of
the maze, and *sometimes* from within the maze (if there's a long
pathway aligned with the hill.) But you only see it for a moment. In one
spot there's a pile of rocks; who knows what it's for? (We joked about
the ejection seat.) But if you pass it twice, you say "Hey, I know that
pile of rocks!" Other paths are entirely featureless.

To win, you don't have to see every section of the maze. The
highest-level description would be a pair-of-eyeglasses shape. You
start, there's a major branch point, the branches come back together,
there's another branch point, the branches come back together, and then
the goal. I can say this without spoilers, because you'll only recognize
the branch points in retrospect. But it means that if you solve the maze
quickly, you've walked about half of it. If you want to explore the
rest, you can do the other half. I like that layout. (For us, it turned
out we'd explored one of those four major branch-sections, *missed* the
path that led onwards, and backtracked to do the other alternative.
Oops. But we didn't realize this until we got the whole map.)

Oh yes, there's a slide. Sadly, you can't put a real one-way valve slide
in a corn maze. There have to be signs pointing out the ground-level
pathway from bottom to top, because Mom and Dad may want to send the
kids down and then walk around to meet them. (*We* went down the slide,
of course.)

And there was just something generally right about the maze. Some
sections were twisty and knotted; others had long rectilinear paths;
others were Grand Curves around the boat hull. The outside zones felt
distant and unfriendly; the inside zones felt full of energy. I'm not
sure what it was. A combination of the colored ribbons (we knew blue and
green were the outside), and the distribution of people (people
generally knew when they were getting close, and the vibes went around.)
Very pleasing.

So what are the lessons for game designers?

Pacing: Interface details are critical in determining whether a maze
works or not. How long does it take to go from one intersection to the
next? Are long paths slower, or more boring, than long ones? Is
backtracking slow or immediate? Do you see neat things along the way?
These factors affect what you can do without honking off your players.
Frustration is not challenge.

The Zen View: Let players get glimpses of something interesting. Don't
let them see it often, or for long stretches. (This is a design pattern
>from _A Pattern Language_, in fact.)

Small Victories: In the corn-maze, seeing a new sector color is
exciting; getting into a new sector is even more so. Even if it turns
out not to go anywhere. Don't make a maze which is a homogenous,
undifferentiated experience of lostness.

Rules are Nifty: Outside the main corn-maze, there are several small
ones -- not corn mazes; they're made of hay bales and ribbons and such.
These use some wackier ideas, to make up for being able to see over the
walls. One has colored paths, and you have to follow paths in the order
yellow, red, blue. Another -- surprisingly difficult -- allows only
right turns, never left. (Sound like a simple rule? The consequences
take some time to work out, and then there's a new shape in your head.
That's what puzzles are *for*.)

Go Find Out: "Write what you know," they say. When you do something, you
know it from the inside. Now I know what it's like to be in a maze.
(From the inside -- ahem.) I really can't recommend it highly enough.
Ok, it's not the all-time enlightenment experience of my life, but a
game designer should try it.

Dehydration: Simulated heatstroke in a computer game? Well, maybe not.
In real life, I sucked down a liter of water over two hours, and later
ate a packet of salt from the concession stand. Really. It tasted okay,
which proved it was a good idea.

Yes, I'm rambling now.

Next year, I'm not using the map pieces at all.

The Maize Maze is at Cherry Crest Farm, 150 Cherry Hill Rd, Paradise, PA
17572. Web site at http://www.800padutch.com/. Phone 717-687-6843. It's
open this year until October 10. Hours are 10 am to sunset, Fridays and
Saturdays.

The maze was designed by Adrian Fisher, http://www.mazemaker.com/. (Not
to be confused with David Russo at http://www.mazemaster.com/.) Fisher
has designed several corn mazes this year; his web site has a list. Go
looking.

(This essay, and a couple more, are on my web site at
http://www.edoc.com/zarf/essays/index.html. I hope to grow the collection
over time.)

--Z

-- 

"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the
borogoves..."


From erkyrath@netcom.com Thu Sep 17 10:15:39 MET DST 1998
Article: 46425 of rec.arts.int-fiction
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: erkyrath@netcom.com (Andrew Plotkin)
Subject: Re: Possible Inform library bug with add_to_scope?
Message-ID: <erkyrathEzDrow.7I@netcom.com>
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Thomas Aaron Insel (tinsel@jaka.ece.uiuc.edu) wrote:
> I'm having a bit of trouble with add_to_scope as demonstrated by 
> this very short program (tested with Inform 6.13 and Library 6/7):

>   Include "Parser"; Include "VerbLib"; Include "Grammar";
>   Object StartRoom "Room" with description "A room." has light;
>   Object -> "letter" with add_to_scope stamp;
>   Object stamp "stamp" with name 'stamp';
>   [ Initialise; location = StartRoom; ];

> When I type "take stamp",  I get these warnings:

>   Warning: @test_attr called with object 0 (PC = 9231) (occurrence 1)
>   Warning: @test_attr called with object 0 (PC = 9235) (occurrence 2)

> How dangerous are errors like this? 

They indicate that the program is doing something you definitely don't
want it to. In this case, testing the attributes of a null pointer (the
"nothing" object value, which is not a valid object.) This means it's
reading some random bit in memory and doing something with the result.

Realistically, this has very rarely caused problems. *Also* realistically,
it *can* cause problems, and you should eradicate such bugs if at all
possible. And it's always possible. I mean, whatever you want your code to
do, it's not testing attributes on 0.

> It seems likely that this is a
> library bug. 

Lemme see... well, your program looks correct, so I agree.

Further testing: Ok, got it compiled. I get the same warnings, and I'm
using Inform 6.15.

My first guess is the ObjectScopedBySomething() routine, but I stick in
print statements and the warnings occur after that.

My second guess is that the take action reaches the lines:

  i=parent(item);
  if (i ~= ancestor && (i has container || i has supporter))

without checking that i might be zero.

Ding! Print statements prove me correct! Obviously the stamp's parent is
zero, and ancestor is (correctly) set to StartRoom, so that line of code
is pretty darn meaningless.

Now, is this a library bug? Well, the greta thing about the Inform
libraries is that they're not perfectly specified. Maybe you're doing
something illegal, and maybe not.

In this case, you're making one clear mistake that I didn't catch the
first time: it's silly to have a takeable object which is in something's
add_to_scope property. This is because, after you take it, it'll *still*
be scoped from the letter. Even if you carry the stamp to the next room,
drop it, and walk back to the letter.

So there are several possible approaches now.

1) Don't use add_to_scope for this case. Make the letter a container and
put the stamp in it. You'll have to override the Receive action to make
sure the player doesn't put anything else in it, and maybe a few other
things so it looks less like a normal container.

2) Don't use add_to_scope for this case. Make the stamp part of the letter
-- that is, put it inside, but don't give the letter the container
attribute. You'll have to write a before:Take routine for the stamp, which
moves it to the player's inventory (because the library Take won't remove
parts of objects.) This is probably the easiest approach.

(The disadvantage of 1) and 2) is that they interfere with making the
letter a *normal* container -- as an envelope normally would be.)

3) Do what you're doing now, but write a before:Take routine for the
stamp, which moves it to the player's inventory *and* sets
letter.add_to_scope to NULL. That bypasses the code that's causing the
error; it also prevents the stamp-still-scoped bug.

4) Patch the code that's causing the error, in verblibm.h. It should be
sufficient to add "if (i ~= 0)" to the test. You'll still have to fix the
stamp-still-scoped bug, by setting letter.add_to_scope to NULL at some
point.

That cover it?

--Z

-- 

"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the
borogoves..."


From michael.baum@nist.gov Thu Sep 17 19:36:07 MET DST 1998
Article: 46424 of rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: michael.baum@nist.gov (Michael Baum)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: You Are In a Twisty Little Maze of Passages, All Corn
Date: Wed, 16 Sep 1998 12:57:51 GMT
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On Tue, 15 Sep 1998 10:26:38 -0500, "J. Robinson Wheeler"
<wheeler@jump.net> wrote:

>Somewhere else these principles are applied is at the Disney theme parks.
>They always have the entrance to the ride in plain view when you get in
>place at the back of the line.  It makes you think, despite the sign
>which says, "Wait time - 1 hour" that it probably won't take very long
>at all.  Then you turn a corner, and see that the line in fact snakes
>back and forth in a twisty way that takes you really, really far away
>from the "goal" before you get back to it.  But when you start, it's
>just ten or twenty feet from you.

Another thing the Disney organization generally does quite well, a
philosophy which perhaps also has some application to IF design, is
that they entertain you while you're waiting on line. By comparing
their rides of different vintages, you can even see the development of
the idea. The snaky, time-killing line to the "Haunted House",
attraction, for example, let's you amuse yourself with various little
spooky vignettes and gags while you're waiting to get to the ride
itself. The more recent Muppet attraction at their Florida MGM co-park
has such an entertaining pre-attraction show (done on video monitors)
that I've actually regretted seeing the main doors open for me because
I wanted to catch a bit more of the time-killer. Now THAT'S diversion.

A game I'm working on has a variant of the traditional maze puzzle
(and no, I don't want to hear why I shouldn't) that I've tried to
liven up with an array of randomly scattered locations in the maze
that have entertaining (I hope) or amusing (well, _I_ laughed) or
somehow enaging descriptions or features. 'Course on the downside it
requires more of that $#%@$ creative writing. (:

maab
michael.baum@nist.gov


From erkyrath@netcom.com Thu Sep 17 19:40:08 MET DST 1998
Article: 46470 of rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: erkyrath@netcom.com (Andrew Plotkin)
Subject: Re: You Are a Twisty Little Maze of Passages, All Corn
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Trevor Barrie (tbarrie@ibm.net) wrote:
> You know, I've got to say that this post was a lot less interesting than 
> the subject led me to believe. Can I assume there was supposed to be an 
> "In" up there? (I missed the corn part.)

I'm afraid so. I felt really silly when I saw the post come up without
that "in". (I've corrected it on the web page.)

I hope it was at least a *bit* interesting anyway. :)

> On Tue, 15 Sep 1998 01:38:12 GMT, Andrew Plotkin <erkyrath@netcom.com> wrote:

> >Upon entry, you may take a flag on a ten-foot pole, and a blank map
> >divided into fifteen squares. They give you a quick lecture (no crashing
> >walls, no running, don't eat the corn, etc.)
>
> Ahhhh... Did they at least have corn that you could eat for sale?

Yes. And chicken sandwiches, and hot dogs. Although one of my friends had
an impressively bad digestive reaction after eating a hot dog.
Fortunately, this was after he got out of the maze.

> >The flag? Hint system. "Noah", the maze supervisor, sits at the top of a
> >tower with a PA microphone. Wave your flag, and he'll be able to see it
> >(although nobody else at ground level can.) Emergency help can be
> >dispatched. There are also a couple of speaking tubes at different
> >spots; you can pray for hints or a miracle. ("Want out? Tired of seeing
> >nothing but corn? Pray to Noah. Noah understands, believe me.")
>
> Praying to Noah is an odd concept. Why not just call him God?

We just *had* the religious discussion... heh. Anyway, I suspect people
would object.

> >The Zen View: Let players get glimpses of something interesting. Don't
> >let them see it often, or for long stretches. (This is a design pattern
> >from _A Pattern Language_, in fact.)
>
> What's that?

A truly delightful book on architecture, construction, and civil
engineering. It somehow spawned a movement in computer programming -- I'm
still not sure how, but there's been discussion here on design patterns in
IF, and the whole "pattern" concept started with _APL_ and its prequel,
_The Timeless Way of Building_.

Basically, they say "Let us look over the environments humans have
constructed for themselves over the past N thousand years. Let us look at
the ones that *work*, and that by god is not a judgement call -- some
places are better to live in than others. Let us see if we can abstract
out some patterns common to the good places, which are lacking in the bad
places, and boil them down to a simple statement. Then we might have a
better idea how to build more places that don't suck to be in. We could
also start to figure out what problems those patterns solve, or rather
what problems arise when those patterns are lacking."

I'm afraid I don't have the biblio data here.

--Z

-- 

"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the
borogoves..."


From edharel@remus.rutgers.edu Thu Sep 17 19:40:41 MET DST 1998
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From: edharel@remus.rutgers.edu (Edan Harel)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: You Are a Twisty Little Maze of Passages, All Corn
Date: 17 Sep 1998 11:33:21 -0400
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You are a twisty little maze of passages.  An adventurer enters you.

>Look at adventurer.

A strange little man, lost within your corridors.

>Open passage to east.

The adventurer notices the opening to the east, and walk down that way.

>Open passage to the south.

The adventurer notices the opening to the south, and walks down that way. 
Fearing that he will get further lost, he drops a lamp, to mark his
way.

>Pick up lamp

You pick up the lamp and place it in your treasure trove at the center of
the maze.
[+1 point]
The adventurer backtracks and finds his lamp gone.  He curses out loud.

>Close exit to maze

You close the exit to the maze.
[+1 point]

>Close enterance to maze

You close the enterance to the maze.
[+1 point]

Congratulations.  You have won the rank of Labrinth.  The adventurer will now
spend his remaining days trying to find the way out.



From graham@gnelson.demon.co.uk Fri Sep 18 15:05:52 MET DST 1998
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From: Graham Nelson <graham@gnelson.demon.co.uk>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: [SILLY] RAIF Random NPC's
Date: Fri, 18 Sep 1998 12:45:14 +0100
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In article <6trm0k$hq4$1@nnrp1.dejanews.com>, <URL:mailto:neilc@norwich.edu>
wrote:
> As a demonstration of my innimitable random name generator, I set it up to
> create some new members for the RAIF forum, complete with superficial
> personalities! Some of them look like they would make intersting
> contributions.

...yes.  Gareth Rees got all of the idiotic surnames carried by
the academics in "Christminster" by browsing through the Cambridge
University telephone book.  There really is a "Wilderspin"
somewhere, for instance.

-- 
Graham Nelson | graham@gnelson.demon.co.uk | Oxford, United Kingdom



From erkyrath@netcom.com Fri Sep 18 16:15:20 MET DST 1998
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From: erkyrath@netcom.com (Andrew Plotkin)
Subject: Re: [Inform] another pet peeve
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Michael S Gentry (edromia@sprynet.com) wrote:
> I've got another pet peeve about the Inform parser.

> [... transcript]

> I do this all the time: it's the natural way I would respond to such a
> question. The game always burns me because it reads the total input as SHOOT
> BENSON WITH WITH PISTOL. ("'With pistol'?" thinks the parser, "What's a
> 'with pistol'? I'll check the name properties of everything in scope, I
> guess, but I'm pretty sure there's no such thing as a 'with pistol'.")
>
> I'd like to tweak it so that whenever the game asks the player to provide an
> indirect object, it will allow the player to type the preposition as the
> first word of the input. (Basically, if the first word of the player's
> answer is identical to the word used at the end of the computer's question,
> then skip over that word and start parsing from there.)

Good idea. You're also correct that it's a headache. (You may have to
check more than the most recent word; if the grammar line is "get noun out
of second", you'd have to allow "get fork" / "out of drawer". And so on.
Awkward example, but the principle holds.)

The relevant piece of library -- search for calls of "Keyboard" in
parserm.h. There are three: the main command entry, the "Which you do
mean, the A or the B...?" entry, and the "What do want to verb...?" entry. 
Obviously, you want the third.

Checking the first word is easy; there's already code there to check if
the first word is a verb (so it can accept it as a full command, instead
of a disambiguation.)

The tricky part will be figuring out the last N prepositions in the
grammar line. The parser jumps *to* that Keyboard() call with the line

  if (match_from > num_words) jump Incomplete;

So you could probably work with match_from... except I think match_from
counts words in the player's input, not the grammar line. Maybe look at
the code a little lower down that talks aobut "gluing in a pronoun".

Oh, heck, maybe you'll want to hack the second Keyboard() call as well.
(The "Which you do mean, the A or the B...?" entry.)

Have fun.

--Z

-- 

"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the
borogoves..."


From chewy@mcione.com Sun Sep 20 10:05:46 MET DST 1998
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From: chewy@mcione.com (Paul F. Snively)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: 3D?  Re: You Are a Twisty Little Maze of Passages, All Corn
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In article <01bde31f$61721640$38118fd1@jonadab>, "Jonadab the Unsightly
One" <jonadab@zerospam.com> wrote:

>I'll admit not knowing about Quake, but 2.5D is an extremely 
>generous assessment of Doom 2.  It's 3DOF, in any case.

Right. I call the DOOM/DOOM 2/Hexen engine "a raycaster with an attitude."
Not, as Jerry Seinfeld would say, that there's anything wrong with
"raycasters with an attitude:" Dark Forces was such a beast, and I still
find Dark Forces an *extremely* playable game, probably owing to the fact
that LucasArts hired several students out of Berkeley's architecture
school, where they had used 3D CAD software etc. so they were versed both
in design and computer graphics technology.

Still, there weren't really any "rooms above rooms," and that was
definitely a limiting factor vs. Quake: I'll never forget the time I was
playing a Quake deathmatch, made my way out to a ledge that I just plain
couldn't see down well enough to satisfy me, but I could *hear* two other
players below me duking it out and I could *see* flashes from their rocket
launchers etc. So, figuring that I had the element of surprise on my side,
I jumped. Nailed both opponents with well-placed rockets before they knew
what hit 'em, and literally heard yells of surprise from the human players
in the next room. That was only possible due to Quake's use of a 6DOF
engine, as opposed to a 3DOF engine with Y-shearing.

>I had assumed that Quake was similarly limited, but I 
>haven't actually played it to know -- I was only going 
>by the reviews, which call it 3D in the same sense that
>they call Doom 3D, which has only to do with the POV
>and not the game itself.

Not true. The Quake engine is honest-to-God 6DOF, although it makes a set
of possibly-visible-set computation trade-offs that are still slanted
heavily toward walking-through-largely-static-enclosed-spaces (I'm still
trying to figure out why everyone's so hot and bothered about BSP trees)
vs. Descent's engine, which is also 6DOF but is more heavily optimized for
not showing nasty artifacts when you take advantage of pitch, roll, and yaw
and, in particular, for not having truly odd things happen when you get
*really close* to walls etc.

Ob. RAIF comment: I remember the transition from the Scott Adams adventures
to Zork being like the transition from DOOM to Quake in impact, not merely
for the obvious reason of going from "verb noun" to the more complex
sentence structure, but also because there were interesting semantics to go
along with the syntax, and no small portion of the semantics were spatial:
there was now a meaningful concept of "on," "behind," "beneath," "around,"
and so on. At one point, when discussing development of our own text-based
adventure system (and who hasn't, at least once?) with a friend, we spent
no small amount of time trying to ascertain the proper "generic" behavior
of putting something behind something else: should the player be able to
see the "behind" object at all? In its entirety? Partially? Not at all? If
not, how do they find it? By searching the room? By searching the object
it's behind? etc. etc. etc. No new news to anyone who's authored IF with a
system that supports these spatial metaphors, of course.

>-- 
>
>Dyslexic email address:  ten.thgirb@badanoj

Paul Snively
<mailto:chewy@mcione.com>

-- 
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"I had the sense, too, of the illicit side of the casbah, of a kind of
trade in human (or, in this case, executive) flesh." -- Michael Wolff,
"Burn Rate"


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From: mark@sonance.demon.co.uk (Mark Stevens)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: You Are a Twisty Little Maze of Passages, All Corn
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On Tue, 15 Sep 1998 12:57:02 -0700, Erik Max Francis <max@alcyone.com>
wrote:

>Quake/Quake II missions are in general well-designed enough that (if 
>you're a frequent player) you generally have an idea where you are, 
>whereas mazes imply to me uniform boringness.

I think this is one of the reasons why Doom (rather than Wolf3D) was
generally reckoned to be the first of the great first-person shooters
-- for that heightened sense of spatial awareness and geography.

Wolf3D was more of a uniform maze-like environment, with all the
corridors and rooms looking pretty much identical. But Doom's engine
allowed for a lot more variety in the architecture and thus the
player's spatial awareness increased. Ask someone playing Wolf3D,
"Where are you?" and at best they'll answer, "Somewhere in a castle!".
Ask someone playing Doom the same question and they could quite easily
say, "Oh, down in the sewer, hiding behind a crate just beyond the
overflow pipe."

Of course, Quake's 'proper' 3D environment increased the player's
sense of placement within the game even further.

Can such a high level of spatial awareness work within the confines of
a text-based piece of interactive fiction? It certainly can, but this
is something a few authors can overlook. In their haste to present
something truly poetic and literary, the player's given less of an
opportunity to become absorbed into the world of the game.


/\/)ark

http://www.sonance.demon.co.uk/



From rraszews@hotmail.com Wed Sep 23 10:34:47 MET DST 1998
Article: 47078 of rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: L. Ross Raszewski <rraszews@hotmail.com>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Colours and the Z-Machine
Date: Tue, 22 Sep 1998 19:23:17 GMT
Organization: Deja News - The Leader in Internet Discussion
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In article <01bde63d$0c284080$LocalHost@jonadab>,
  "Jonadab the Unsightly One" <jonadab@zerospam.com> wrote:
> L. Ross Raszewski <rraszews@hotmail.com> wrote in article
>
> > > Yellow isn't a possible background colour in text mode on a PC.
> >
> > Unless you're clever enough to have turned off Evil Satanic
> Blinking, which
> > (IIRC) Frotz does.
>
> I'm not sure what that has to do with anything.  There are only
> seven
> possible background colours in text mode on a PC.
> 0 - Black
> 1 - Blue
> 2 - Green
> 3 - Cyan
> 4 - Red
> 5 - Magenta
> 6 - Brown
> 7 - Light Grey.
>
> The high-intensity colours, such as 14 (yellow) are only available
> in the foreground.
>
> In graphics modes you can get any background colour you want,
> but graphics modes are slower and harder to program (especially
> portably).  You have to provide your own font, for example.
>
>

No. THere's a video driver switch which will deactivate blinking, and use the
color combinations which usually indicate blinking to indicate high-intensity
backgrounds, then you CAN use colors 8 through 0xF in the background (the
reason this is normally disabled is because the default setting treats the
backbround color as an octal number, with the last bit used to indicate that
the foreground should blink) Which is why if you run Paint And Corners on
dosfrotz, the background is bright white.

-----== Posted via Deja News, The Leader in Internet Discussion ==-----
http://www.dejanews.com/rg_mkgrp.xp   Create Your Own Free Member Forum


From erkyrath@netcom.com Wed Sep 23 10:36:02 MET DST 1998
Article: 46893 of rec.arts.int-fiction
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Path: news.lth.se!feed1.news.luth.se!luth.se!cam-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!news.bbnplanet.com!newsfeed.xcom.net!ix.netcom.com!erkyrath
From: erkyrath@netcom.com (Andrew Plotkin)
Subject: Re: Colours and the Z-Machine
Message-ID: <erkyrathEzM5Iy.Ltq@netcom.com>
Organization: ICGNetcom
X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.2 PL2]
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Date: Mon, 21 Sep 1998 02:56:58 GMT
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Xref: news.lth.se rec.arts.int-fiction:46893

Dr. Peter Kalthare (kalthare@mad.scientist.com) wrote:
> Okay, this is my first usenet post in my entire life, so bear with me.

Die! die! die!

I mean, uh, hey, how ya doin?

I think people have already covered all the important points. I can fill
in a few details...

> I was wondering what the general opinion is of the use of colours in
> interactive fiction.

I think there's a general opinion of "if nothing else, the player should
be able to turn them off."

> In my experience with the @set_colour I realized how little the thing
> was actually specified. The spec only lists the colours.

Your perception is accurate :)

> Then to my even deeper horror I found that WZip sets the background of
> the entire window to the new colour! Of course, when multiple background
> colours are used this made a great deal of the text unreadable. I ended
> up implementing a separate colour mode just for WZip.

I think this is a holdover from the behavior of Infocom's Amiga
interpreter. (Which was mandated by the way the Amiga did text colors.)

> The next one I tried was Zplet. It crashed. Bad opcode. I didn't think
> that was very polite of it.

Did it say "bad opcode", or "bad colour"? There's a known bug in the
original ZIP source, which is the basis of many interpreters, which barfs
on a "0" value in @set_color opcode. 

I actually don't think it's really a bug; I think Infocom used only values
1 through 9 (for V5 games) and so ZIP does a sanity-check to make sure the
values are in that range. Zero is flagged as an error. Later, someone
(Graham?) decided that zero was a valid value. Net result: people wrote
games that crashed under some interpreters. You can argue for years where
the blame lies, but that was the outcome.

*Never* let anyone tell you that extending a standard is safe. :-)

> Hmm. I suppose I really ought to have a point here. Maybe I'm getting at
> the fact that not much attention seems to have been payed to the humble
> @set_colour opcode.. should it be more strictly specified? I'm not sure
> that would do any good, considering how badly the interpreters I've
> tried have handled what little specification there already is..

It's easier to handle a strict specification than an incomplete one.
*Trust me*.

Note, however, that the Z-machine does not *mandate* that the @set_color
opcode do anything. It's an optional capability; there's a header bit you
can check to see if the interpreter supports it.

So when my MaxZip interpreter ignores the opcode, it's behaving legally.
I'm just being legally stubborn. Heh.

I actually don't feel that colored text is evil. When I was writing the
original XZip/MaxZip code, I could have (1) supported @set_color, (2) let
the player control the colors; (3) both, with a preference to choose which
won; (4) neither. I decided that (4) was ugly, and (3) was ideal -- but I
was too lazy to implement it. Between (1) and (2), I definitely think (2)
is more important. So that's what I did. I'd like to go back and change it
to (3) someday, but there are many things ahead of it in the queue.

--Z

-- 

"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the
borogoves..."


From marsh@nettally.com Thu Sep 24 15:35:02 MET DST 1998
Article: 47273 of rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: marsh@nettally.com (Steven Marsh)
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction,rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Interesting Idea For Zorks I-III
Date: Thu, 24 Sep 1998 08:10:04 GMT
Organization: CMDS News machine
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On 24 Sep 1998 12:38:25 +0200, mol@bartlet.df.lth.se (Magnus Olsson)
wrote:

>In article <360a18e3.3040372@news1.inter.nl.net>,
>Scarlet Herring <scarlet_herring@yahoo.com> wrote:
>>On Wed, 23 Sep 1998 13:20:07 -0600, Al <radical@qadas.com> wrote:
>>
>>>What if someone were to take all Zorks I-III and combine them
>>>into one big master program with the plot having II follow I and III
>>>follow II.
>>
>>There's no need. That program already exists. The original Zork was,
>>as far as I know, the combination of the plots of Zork I and II, and
>>part of Zork III. 
>
>Not quite. The map is different, some parts of the Zork trilogy are
>missing (the wizard of Frobozz is entirely absent IIRC), and some
>puzzles have slightly different solutions.
>
	<snip>
>I think Al's idea is interesting. Putting Zork I-III together in
>one game would produce something similar to Dungeon, but there would
>be enough differences to make it a different game.

Of course, (as an optimistic doomsayer) I feel obligated to point out
a few points:

1)  Porting just -one- of the games is proving to be problematic.  We
have a working TADS file of Zork I, but the Inform version's been
goin' on 9/10ths of forever.  If such a project were started, would it
be finished before we can enter the wetworks cyberjack
virtua-simulation of the Zork Trilogy? :)

2)  Assuming that you'd be able to go back to earlier parts of the
Trilogy (which, IMO, is one of the few  reasons you'd want to do such;
otherwise it would probably be easier to make a saved-game converter
for the Trilogy), there might be a problem with the way "new" objects
>from the later parts interact with the earlier parts (and vice versa).
For example (LATERAL ZORK TRILOGY SPOILER WARNING) how would the grue
repellent affect the Coal Mines?  How on earth would you code that
kick-ass wand you get in Zork II?  (Can you Filch stuff from the old
man?)  If you wound up the clockword bird at the end of Zork III,
would you get zapped? And so forth.  (END SPOILER WARNING)

Either you'd be forced to come up with coding/phrasing that wasn't in
the original (where can/can't you raft?), expressly forbid taking
items between games ("You fall down the endless stairs and lose
absolutely EVERYTHING... except your lantern and sword."), or keep the
games a one-way progress.  Not insurmountable, but no solution
particularly recommends it.

3) Minor point: you'd be forced to take the Torch from Zork I with you
throughout the game, since the lantern only has so much juice.  Not a
real problem, but it -does- change the texture of the third game a
fair bit.

Steven Marsh
marsh@nettally.com
"Screw you.  It's ham, isn't it?"


From svanegmond@home.com Thu Sep 24 20:39:30 MET DST 1998
Article: 47284 of rec.arts.int-fiction
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Subject: Re: [FAQ] Unofficial Supplementary FAQ for rec.arts.int-fiction
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Organization: Geek house, Toronto, Ontario
X-Newsreader: trn 4.0-test67 (15 July 1998)
From: svanegmond@home.com (Stephen van Egmond)
Message-ID: <ghtO1.6420$I72.2113930@news.rdc1.on.wave.home.com>
Date: Thu, 24 Sep 1998 15:10:04 GMT
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In article <slrn70j68v.c2f.the_wildman_98@foobar.net>,
The Wildman <the_wildman_98@hotmail.com> wrote:
>There's a word for people who _want_ to maintain newsgroup FAQs -
>masochist

Nonsense.

Nobody actually *wants* to maintain a FAQ.  It starts slowly.  Innocently.
First, you notice that people keep asking the same question.  You just
*know* it's answered in the FAQ somewhere.  

And look, there's this newbie who comes in and gives away half the plot
and all the other puzzles when all he wants to do is MOVE THE RUG.  Flame,
flame.   Haven't they read the FAQ?

Where is that FAQ, anyway?  Oh, it's over here at rtfm (har har) .mit.edu.
Wow, is this out of date. No wonder it's never posted anymore.

Look, that's wrong.  And hey, they released a new version of Frobnitz
Adventures 6 months ago.  There could be a good joke right here.

(tap, tap tappity tap slam)

"Hey, does anybody know who maintains the FAQ?"

A hollow voice says, "you do".

And so begins your adventure.

You collect facts.  You ask friends.  You find something cool that nobody
will ever ask.  You dream something up.  Your cat whispers in your ear
while at breakfast.  You find something under your fingernail.  `fortune`
says something funny.

... and it all goes into the FAQ.

FAQ maintainers aren't masochists, they are sadists. "Ha-ha!" they cry.
"Just try and find the useful information in all this crap. More! More!
We need a theory on the Masons! Yes!"

Then, the black helicopters come in the dark of night, take them away to
write legal briefs for Microsoft and the Chinese government, and the FAQ
lingers, festering, in DejaNews and some forlorn computer at MIT.  They
live out the rest of their lives in the rehabilitation rooms from _1984_.

Six months pass.

The newsgroup fills up with newbies, someone gives away the plot to Riven
2 with three sentences when all they wanted to do was TIE THE ROPE TO THE
RAILING.  Avalon ships.  Confusion and chaos ensue.  Then, a lonely voice
>from anywhere.net says,

"Hey, does anyone know who maintains the FAQ?"

/Steve
 rec.games.int-fiction FAQ maintainer

-- 
       ,,,
      (. .)  
+--ooO-(_)-Ooo------------ --- -- - - - -
| Stephen van Egmond  http://bang.ml.org/


From dicks@math.ohio-state.NO.SPAM.edu Fri Sep 25 13:59:38 MET DST 1998
Article: 47324 of rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: dicks@math.ohio-state.NO.SPAM.edu (Ethan Dicks)
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction,rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Interesting Idea For Zorks I-III
Date: 24 Sep 1998 21:54:47 GMT
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Xref: news.lth.se rec.games.int-fiction:37501 rec.arts.int-fiction:47324

In article <3609f874.640994@news2.nettally.com>,
Steven Marsh <marsh@nettally.com> wrote:
>On 24 Sep 1998 12:38:25 +0200, mol@bartlet.df.lth.se (Magnus Olsson)
>wrote:
>
>>In article <360a18e3.3040372@news1.inter.nl.net>,
>>Scarlet Herring <scarlet_herring@yahoo.com> wrote:
>>>On Wed, 23 Sep 1998 13:20:07 -0600, Al <radical@qadas.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>>What if someone were to take all Zorks I-III and combine them
>>>>into one big master program with the plot having II follow I and III
>>>>follow II.
>>>
>>>There's no need. That program already exists. The original Zork was,
>>>as far as I know, the combination of the plots of Zork I and II, and
>>>part of Zork III. 
>>
>>Not quite. The map is different, some parts of the Zork trilogy are
>>missing (the wizard of Frobozz is entirely absent IIRC), and some
>>puzzles have slightly different solutions.
>>
>	<snip>
>>I think Al's idea is interesting. Putting Zork I-III together in
>>one game would produce something similar to Dungeon, but there would
>>be enough differences to make it a different game.
>
>Of course, (as an optimistic doomsayer) I feel obligated to point out
>a few points:
>
>1)  Porting just -one- of the games is proving to be problematic.  We
>have a working TADS file of Zork I, but the Inform version's been
>goin' on 9/10ths of forever.

Hey, now.  I've only been working on my port since August of 1997.  If
anyone had suggested that I'd still be adding code fragments 13 months
later, I'd have laughed.  As might be expected of a project of this
magnitude, I am now rewriting some of my oldest code to conform to my 
current understanding of the subtlties of porting MDL code to Inform.
I have learned a *lot* ove thr the past year about both MDL and Inform.
At least they are conceptually similar.  I shudder to think what Bob Supnik
went through to make the FORTRAN port.

I really am _almost_ ready to release an Alpha version.  I spent this week
replacing LookSub with one that functions more like the original.  Those
crazy imps: their "Look" routine does more than double duty - it functions
as Examine, Read, Look, with enough internal controls to implement the
ROOM verb (display only the room description) and the OBJECTS verb (display
only the objects in the room), all while respecting the SUPERBRIEF, BRIEF
and NO_OBJECTS flags (if you type noobj at the FORTRAN dungeon, it reponds
that the source calls noobj a hack and refuses to do it; my code implements 
this lost verb).  It's fiendish, subtle and recursive, and a bitch to port.

>If such a project were started, would it
>be finished before we can enter the wetworks cyberjack
>virtua-simulation of the Zork Trilogy? :)

I doubt it.  My Inform version of Dungeon/original Zork is over 16000 lines,
including comments (yes... I commented the code ;-)  I probably have a
couple thousand more to add to finish the endgame.  I will, however, in the
grand tradition of Zorks past, be releasing a test version sans endgame to
get the code out in to the light of day and brace for the crushing flood
of bug reports.

Stay tuned,

-ethan



-- 
Ethan Dicks                                      http://www.infinet.com/~erd/
(dicks) at (math) . (ohio-state) . (edu)       sellto: postmaster@[127.0.0.1]

harvestbot fodder: president@whitehouse.gov fccinfo@fcc.gov root@[127.0.0.1]


From erkyrath@netcom.com Fri Sep 25 13:59:57 MET DST 1998
Article: 47366 of rec.arts.int-fiction
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction,rec.arts.int-fiction
Path: news.lth.se!news.solace.mh.se!news.xinit.se!news.xinit.se!nntp.se.dataphone.net!newsfeed.sollentuna.se!masternews.telia.net!news-nyc.telia.net!howland.erols.net!ix.netcom.com!erkyrath
From: erkyrath@netcom.com (Andrew Plotkin)
Subject: Re: Interesting Idea For Zorks I-III
Message-ID: <erkyrathEztFI0.BqD@netcom.com>
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Allen Garvin (earendil@faeryland.tamu-commerce.edu) wrote:
>     Magnus Olsson <mol@bartlet.df.lth.se> wrote:

>     I think Al's idea is interesting. Putting Zork I-III together in one
>     game would produce something similar to Dungeon, but there would be
>     enough differences to make it a different game.

> It'd be a lot of work just to reconstruct them, plus one would have to do
> a lot of thinking about the implications of having objects from the other
> Zork's available in all three, adding appropriate responses and such.  It'd
> also be darned neat!

I don't think it would be very successful for even the original authors to
go back (at this late date) and stitch together something new. I certainly
wouldn't do it myself. 

Note, also, that at the end of Zork 2 you tumble down the stairs and lose
all your possessions. I'd be much more inclined to use *that* paradigm,
instead of assuming that you can tote items between games which are
well-balanced as they stand. Make up some excuse for losing your stuff at
the end of 1. And recharging the lantern.

--Z

-- 

"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the
borogoves..."


From erkyrath@netcom.com Fri Sep 25 15:08:17 MET DST 1998
Article: 47341 of rec.arts.int-fiction
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Path: news.lth.se!news.solace.mh.se!news.xinit.se!news.xinit.se!nntp.se.dataphone.net!newsfeed.sollentuna.se!newshub.northeast.verio.net!cpk-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!news.bbnplanet.com!ix.netcom.com!erkyrath
From: erkyrath@netcom.com (Andrew Plotkin)
Subject: "Pan as Mighty as the Three-Handed Sword"
Message-ID: <erkyrathEztFBF.BIr@netcom.com>
Organization: ICGNetcom
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Xref: news.lth.se rec.arts.int-fiction:47341

My brain just dumped out another long ramble about programming, divine
possession, and Domingo Montoya. It's not specifically IF-related, so
I won't post this one here. But see

http://www.edoc.com/zarf/essays/sword.html

--Z

-- 

"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the
borogoves..."


From durall@alpha.ewl.uky.edu Sun Sep 27 23:03:12 MET DST 1998
Article: 47413 of rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: durall@alpha.ewl.uky.edu (Bryan Durall)
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction,rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Interesting Idea For Zorks I-III
Date: 25 Sep 1998 19:33:45 GMT
Organization: University of Kentucky Computing Services
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Xref: news.lth.se rec.games.int-fiction:37529 rec.arts.int-fiction:47413

Andrew Plotkin (erkyrath@netcom.com) wrote:
: >     I think Al's idea is interesting. Putting Zork I-III together in one
: >     game would produce something similar to Dungeon, but there would be
: >     enough differences to make it a different game.
: 
: > It'd be a lot of work just to reconstruct them, plus one would have to do
: > a lot of thinking about the implications of having objects from the other
: > Zork's available in all three, adding appropriate responses and such.  It'd
: > also be darned neat!
: 
: I don't think it would be very successful for even the original authors to
: go back (at this late date) and stitch together something new. I certainly
: wouldn't do it myself. 
: 
: Note, also, that at the end of Zork 2 you tumble down the stairs and lose
: all your possessions. I'd be much more inclined to use *that* paradigm,
: instead of assuming that you can tote items between games which are
: well-balanced as they stand. Make up some excuse for losing your stuff at
: the end of 1. And recharging the lantern.

*mild spoiler*

But what about the Scenic Vista?  You could use it to grab any items you
want from the previous two episodes, as long as you left them in the Timber
Room and Room 8.

Zork I -> Zork II isn't that bad, actually.  IIRC, the teapot, newspaper, and
matchbook are given to you to replace the bottle, manual, and Zork I
matchbook for the Dungeon puzzles.  If you make the Zork I treasures disappear
after obtaining the map to the Barrow, I can't think of any Zork I object
that would spoil Zork II.

Zork III is a whole new can of worms, however.  You could probably make it
correspond to the endgame of Dungeon, and modify the table to not
allow objects to come back with you.  (Alternate solution:  Change the
destination for IV to the cell, and the puzzle could involve convincing the
Enchanter to frotz you.)

- Bryan
-- 
Bryan Durall  |  durall@ewl.uky.edu, durall@cslab.uky.edu, durall@mik.uky.edu
"It's often usefull to misleed other players about your jeenyus-level IQ. 
 After all, although your brane power may excede that of the other six players 
 cumbined, you do knot want to let them no." - Diplomacy Survival Guide


From dicks@math.ohio-state.NO.SPAM.edu Mon Sep 28 20:57:37 MET DST 1998
Article: 47583 of rec.arts.int-fiction
From: dicks@math.ohio-state.NO.SPAM.edu (Ethan Dicks)
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction,rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Interesting Idea For Zorks I-III
Date: 28 Sep 1998 17:24:31 GMT
Organization: Department of Mathematics, The Ohio State University
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Xref: news.lth.se rec.games.int-fiction:37586 rec.arts.int-fiction:47583

In article <chewy-ya02408000R2809980859140001@news.mci2000.com>,
Paul F. Snively <chewy@mcione.com> wrote:
>In article <6unled$1br$1@bartlet.df.lth.se>, mol@bartlet.df.lth.se (Magnus
>Olsson) wrote:
>
>>I suppose it would be a much easier project to write a translator
>>from MDL to, say, common Lisp...
>
>You'd be a *lot* better off just writing a new MDL compiler that targeted
>whatever you wanted to target...

Like Inform.  ;-)  I think that it could be done, but there are so many
unique ways of doing things that I suspect that a manual translation is
faster than debugging one-off cases.

(And _I_ originally wrote:)
>>> In any case, you'd still need the PDP-10 emulator
>>>because there is PDP-10 assembler in the MDL sources.
>>
>>You mean in the MDL source code for Zork?

Yes.  It's mostly I/O stuff and interface stuff to the OS, ITS, I think.
It's not much, probably less than 300 lines, but it's in there.

>I suspect that what was meant was that the sources for the MDL
>interpreter/compiler have PDP-10 assembly language in it...

No, that's not what I meant.

>>Of course, the most feasible solution could be to hand-port the MDL
>>Zork sources to a modern Lisp dialect, or perhaps to go the whole hog
>>and port it to C or Inform. In that case, of course, one would have to
>>consider how much the end result would differ from the Fortran
>>Dungeon.

I'm trying to port it to Inform with as little modification as possible.
There are certain things which must change by ncesessity, but I'm checking
responses against the FORTRAN version for maximum compatibility.  There's
upsides and downsides to this approach.  On the upside, I can say that
my Thief and combat code are accurate renditions of the original, down
to some interesting subtlties.  On the downside, IF technology has advanced
quite a bit since 1979, and some stuff was done a certain way because
no better way had yet been developed (e.g. scenery/concealed vs. just plain
invisible).  Some of the hacks in the MDL code are just plain gross.  Some
are sublime.

>Yeah, except I think that there are more resources available on Sanskrit
>than MDL.

There are still those two seminal books.  Lots of good stuff there.

>>However, there's also the question of which OS MDL runs under - did
>>the original Imps use TOPS-10, Tenex, or (as I suspect) ITS? 
>
>If memory serves me correctly--and I can't be sure--you're correct; it was
>one the MIT hackers' beloved ITS system.

There is a function, ITS-GET-NAME, leading me to suspect that the target
OS is indeed ITS.

-ethan
-- 
Ethan Dicks                                      http://www.infinet.com/~erd/
(dicks) at (math) . (ohio-state) . (edu)       sellto: postmaster@[127.0.0.1]

harvestbot fodder: president@whitehouse.gov fccinfo@fcc.gov root@[127.0.0.1]


From chewy@mcione.com Mon Sep 28 22:14:11 MET DST 1998
Article: 47578 of rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: chewy@mcione.com (Paul F. Snively)
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction,rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Interesting Idea For Zorks I-III
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Xref: news.lth.se rec.games.int-fiction:37583 rec.arts.int-fiction:47578

In article <6unled$1br$1@bartlet.df.lth.se>, mol@bartlet.df.lth.se (Magnus
Olsson) wrote:

>I suppose it would be a much easier project to write a translator
>from MDL to, say, common Lisp (since MDL is said to be a Lisp
>dialect). Perhaps someone with knowledge of MDL could comment on the
>feasability of that?

You'd be a *lot* better off just writing a new MDL compiler that targeted
whatever you wanted to target--in fact, an MDL compiler targeting the Java
virtual machine would probably not be a bad path to follow (if you discount
the idea of writing an MDL compiler at all being a bad idea). ;-) Lisp has
evolved *a lot* since MDL. In particular, both major modern dialects of
Lisp, Common Lisp and Scheme, are both statically scoped, whereas MDL, like
its predecesor Lisp 1.5, was dynamically scoped (I believe it was Stu
Galley who characterized MDL as "Lisp 1.5 with data structures.")

>> In any case, you'd still need the PDP-10 emulator
>>because there is PDP-10 assembler in the MDL sources.
>
>You mean in the MDL source code for Zork? A crucial question here is,
>of course, how much of the PDP-10 that this code actually uses, and
>what the code does. Perhaps it could be rewritten MDL instead, or
>perhaps it only requires a lower level of PDP-10 emulation, or perhaps
>it can be rewritten in C and called from the MDL program - there are
>lots of possibilities.

I suspect that what was meant was that the sources for the MDL
interpreter/compiler have PDP-10 assembly language in it, which is true for
all Lisp implementations running on stock hardware that I'm aware of.

>Of course, the most feasible solution could be to hand-port the MDL
>Zork sources to a modern Lisp dialect, or perhaps to go the whole hog
>and port it to C or Inform. In that case, of course, one would have to
>consider how much the end result would differ from the Fortran
>Dungeon.

Every few years I get the notion in my head that an IF system done in
Scheme would be a great thing. Then I wake up and remember that no one in
the real world wants to write Scheme.

>>If anyone knows where to get MDL from, I have an account on a PDP-10 clone, 
>>the one that Paul Allen put up to resurrect old programs on.
>>I'd give it a go.
>
>You lucky bastard, you :-).

Yeah, except I think that there are more resources available on Sanskrit
than MDL.

>However, there's also the question of which OS MDL runs under - did
>the original Imps use TOPS-10, Tenex, or (as I suspect) ITS? 

If memory serves me correctly--and I can't be sure--you're correct; it was
on the MIT hackers' beloved ITS system.

>-- 
>Magnus Olsson (mol@df.lth.se, zebulon@pobox.com)
>------    http://www.pobox.com/~zebulon   ------

Paul

-- 
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Paul Snively
<mailto:chewy@mcione.com>

"I had the sense, too, of the illicit side of the casbah, of a kind of
trade in human (or, in this case, executive) flesh." -- Michael Wolff,
"Burn Rate"


From dicks@math.ohio-state.NO.SPAM.edu Mon Sep 28 22:14:20 MET DST 1998
Article: 47583 of rec.arts.int-fiction
From: dicks@math.ohio-state.NO.SPAM.edu (Ethan Dicks)
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction,rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Interesting Idea For Zorks I-III
Date: 28 Sep 1998 17:24:31 GMT
Organization: Department of Mathematics, The Ohio State University
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Xref: news.lth.se rec.games.int-fiction:37586 rec.arts.int-fiction:47583

In article <chewy-ya02408000R2809980859140001@news.mci2000.com>,
Paul F. Snively <chewy@mcione.com> wrote:
>In article <6unled$1br$1@bartlet.df.lth.se>, mol@bartlet.df.lth.se (Magnus
>Olsson) wrote:
>
>>I suppose it would be a much easier project to write a translator
>>from MDL to, say, common Lisp...
>
>You'd be a *lot* better off just writing a new MDL compiler that targeted
>whatever you wanted to target...

Like Inform.  ;-)  I think that it could be done, but there are so many
unique ways of doing things that I suspect that a manual translation is
faster than debugging one-off cases.

(And _I_ originally wrote:)
>>> In any case, you'd still need the PDP-10 emulator
>>>because there is PDP-10 assembler in the MDL sources.
>>
>>You mean in the MDL source code for Zork?

Yes.  It's mostly I/O stuff and interface stuff to the OS, ITS, I think.
It's not much, probably less than 300 lines, but it's in there.

>I suspect that what was meant was that the sources for the MDL
>interpreter/compiler have PDP-10 assembly language in it...

No, that's not what I meant.

>>Of course, the most feasible solution could be to hand-port the MDL
>>Zork sources to a modern Lisp dialect, or perhaps to go the whole hog
>>and port it to C or Inform. In that case, of course, one would have to
>>consider how much the end result would differ from the Fortran
>>Dungeon.

I'm trying to port it to Inform with as little modification as possible.
There are certain things which must change by ncesessity, but I'm checking
responses against the FORTRAN version for maximum compatibility.  There's
upsides and downsides to this approach.  On the upside, I can say that
my Thief and combat code are accurate renditions of the original, down
to some interesting subtlties.  On the downside, IF technology has advanced
quite a bit since 1979, and some stuff was done a certain way because
no better way had yet been developed (e.g. scenery/concealed vs. just plain
invisible).  Some of the hacks in the MDL code are just plain gross.  Some
are sublime.

>Yeah, except I think that there are more resources available on Sanskrit
>than MDL.

There are still those two seminal books.  Lots of good stuff there.

>>However, there's also the question of which OS MDL runs under - did
>>the original Imps use TOPS-10, Tenex, or (as I suspect) ITS? 
>
>If memory serves me correctly--and I can't be sure--you're correct; it was
>one the MIT hackers' beloved ITS system.

There is a function, ITS-GET-NAME, leading me to suspect that the target
OS is indeed ITS.

-ethan
-- 
Ethan Dicks                                      http://www.infinet.com/~erd/
(dicks) at (math) . (ohio-state) . (edu)       sellto: postmaster@[127.0.0.1]

harvestbot fodder: president@whitehouse.gov fccinfo@fcc.gov root@[127.0.0.1]


From erkyrath@netcom.com Wed Sep 30 17:02:35 MET DST 1998
Article: 47732 of rec.arts.int-fiction
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Path: news.lth.se!feed1.news.luth.se!luth.se!feed1.news.rcn.net!rcn!newsfeed.enteract.com!ix.netcom.com!erkyrath
From: erkyrath@netcom.com (Andrew Plotkin)
Subject: Re: Z-machine history (was: Programs Writing Programs)
Message-ID: <erkyrathF02zx3.A3t@netcom.com>
Organization: ICGNetcom
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Doeadeer3 (doeadeer3@aol.com) wrote:

> In article <tvyogryvdln.fsf@cn1.connectnet.com>, Darin Johnson
> <darin@usa.net.removethis> writes:

> >> It's been brought up before. The Z-machine doesn't have enough RAM to
> >> run a port of Graham's Inform compiler.
> >
> >That's a "machine" limitation, not a language one.  If the language
> >clearly limited you to 64K as part of the language/semantics, then
> >that would be different

BTW, I agree this this. One could argue that some details of Inform 6 (the
language) are tied to the current Z-machine model, but they're details. An
Inform compiler for a new, 32-bit VM would have different details, but
you could sensibly call it the same language.)

> Just out of extreme curiosity and because I like learning new things, why
> should the z-machine be limited to 64K?

It shouldn't!

Oh, you weren't speaking in the ethical declension? :)

> I mean I know why historically. Of
> course I am not positive I know what the z-machine IS (someone told me an
> imaginary *universal* machine that ZIL was designed for).

That's a good description. Except I don't know why the word "universal" is
in there. It's a general-purpose computing machine, in the same sense that
any home computer is.

> But if we are talking
> about Inform emulating the z-machine, then why the limit? Couldn't that be
> changed within Inform, itself? If it was would that necessarily affect the .z
> files produced by Inform? Isn't the memory allocation for Inform .z files
> higher than that already? If not, would that limit what machines .z files could
> be played on? Don't interpreters already exceed 64K? Why do we have to maintain
> an old standard? Does changing it mean interpreters couldn't play old Infocom
> games? Why the 64K limit, even now?

Ok. 

First, there are two separate limits. 

64K of RAM (writable memory, including all dict words, objects, variables,
arrays, properties -- anything that can be changed during play.) 

All memory outside of RAM is ROM (non-writable memory -- can *only*
contain strings and functions.) There's a limit on this, too, which is
different in different Z-machine versions. In V8, it's 512K.

The 64K limit on RAM is very hard to change, because the Z-machine
architecture uses 16-bit values everywhere. Every storage location
(including variables, properties entries, and storage positions on the
stack) is a 16-bit value. All the opcodes that look up and store data take
16-bit values. A 16-bit value can only refer to 65536 separate locations
-- that's (ahem) the long and short of it. 

Strings and routines get around this by sneakily using a *non-contiguous*
set of 65536 locations. In V8, strings/routines can be stored at locations
0, 8, 16, 24, 32, 40... 524272, 524280. There are 65536 locations in that
list, so they can all be represented by a 16-bit value. 

But this is only practical because very few opcodes *use* strings and
routines. Logically, only @print_string and @call_routine ever use such
values -- and they *only* use such values. (There are really a few
variations of @print and @call, but that's a detail.) It would be terribly
complicated to switch *all* data over to such a system.

Now, any expansion of the memory-space (be it terribly complicated or
simple) means that interpreters have to be changed. We saw that with V8.
That was a very very simple change, both in the Inform compiler and the
interpreters. 

Unfortunately, a RAM expansion cannot be that simple. The easiest approach
is to redesign the machine to use 32-bit values everywhere, instead of
16-bit. That's still quite a bit of work. 

Furthermore: There are lots of other annoying limitations in the
Z-machine. Number of attributes. Number of global variables. Number of
global properties. The I/O system.  More subtle matters, like the way you
have to determine the type of a value. (Does this 16-bit value refer to a
dict word, an object, a string, or a routine? You'll recall the long
thread a couple months ago on this subject. The current methods are...
suboptimal.)

I feel (and I think there's a lot of agreement) that it would very bad to
start fixing these limitations one at a time. We'd wind up with dozens
(really, dozens) of Z-machine versions, in various stages of changedness.
It would be impossible to support either the interpreters or the compiler,
much less games.

So the ideal is to invent an entirely new interpreter, with as few hard
limitations as possible. At least, we can eliminate all the ones we've
found out in the past fifteen years of IF development! 

This is, unfortunately, a lot of work. Various people are working on parts
of it. This is explicitly why I started working on Glk, which is a
solution to the "limited I/O system" problem.

Until all the parts are in place, game authors are sort of stuck. 

Does that start to answer all of your questions? It all sums to "There's
lots to work on, and it would be a very great waste of time and effort to
fix things one at a time."

(The fact that the problem is structured this way is *itself* one of the
problems. This *also* is one of my goals, of which Glk is an examplar:
changing the view of the IF interpreter from a single unitary piece, which
is entirely changed if any part is changed, to a set of modules working
together.)

--Z

-- 

"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the
borogoves..."


From erkyrath@netcom.com Wed Sep 30 18:13:33 MET DST 1998
Article: 47766 of rec.arts.int-fiction
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Path: news.lth.se!news.solace.mh.se!news.xinit.se!news.xinit.se!nntp.se.dataphone.net!newsfeed.online.no!news-feed.ifi.uio.no!howland.erols.net!ix.netcom.com!erkyrath
From: erkyrath@netcom.com (Andrew Plotkin)
Subject: Re: Z-machine history (was: Programs Writing Programs)
Message-ID: <erkyrathF03tBz.Bpq@netcom.com>
Organization: ICGNetcom
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Xref: news.lth.se rec.arts.int-fiction:47766

Magnus Olsson (mol@bartlet.df.lth.se) wrote:
> In article <erkyrathF02zx3.A3t@netcom.com>,
> Andrew Plotkin <erkyrath@netcom.com> wrote:
> >BTW, I agree this this. One could argue that some details of Inform 6 (the
> >language) are tied to the current Z-machine model, but they're details. An
> >Inform compiler for a new, 32-bit VM would have different details, but
> >you could sensibly call it the same language.)

> I think there's one very important aspect of the language that's tied
> to the current Z-machine model: the assumption that all values fit in
> a 16-bit word. If we extended the Z-machine to use, say, 128 K of RAM,
> then we would either have to increase the word length, which would
> break at least some existing code, or we'd have to add new types
> (like pointer vs. short in C), which would break even more existing
> code, or we'd have to use packed addresses for RAM as well as for
> ROM (which is being done today). But in the last case, RAM wouldn't
> be byte addressable anymore, which I suppose would break a lot of
> existing code as well.

I was thinking of the first option -- and yes, it would break existing
source code. I was thinking of it as more or less a detail change in the
Inform language, though. Just a terminology difference.

(It wouldn't affect most game code; an author usually accesses words
through the --> operator, which would still work and transparently fetch
32-bit words instead of 16-bit words. 

(The *library* would require lots of changes, but they'd all be
superficial changes of "2" constants to "4". And the same would apply to
any game code that cares -- generally stuff which checks the size of a
property array.

(In fact, the sensible maneuver would be to have a compiler-defined
constant WORDSIZE which was either 2 or 4, depending on the VM target.
Then both libraries and game source could be written to be platform
independent. As I said, I was thinking of this as a fairly minor change to
the language.)

("Minor" because there are much thornier VM changes I want to make too.
:-)

--Z (whew, a four-paragraph parenthetical comment.)
-- 

"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the
borogoves..."


From lpsmith@rice.edu Thu Oct  1 15:32:53 MET DST 1998
Article: 47807 of rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: lpsmith@rice.edu (Lucian Paul Smith)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Replayability
Date: 1 Oct 1998 03:58:54 GMT
Organization: Rice University, Houston, Texas
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Xref: news.lth.se rec.arts.int-fiction:47807

Recently, over on ifMUD, a bunch of us had a discussion about what makes
games replayable, and why.  We tried to consider actual games we had
replayed, to keep us on track.  You can read the entire transcript
(slightly edited for content) at:

http://www.bioc.rice.edu/~lpsmith/IF/replayability.html

Here's my summary of what we came up with, along with some more of my
thoughts:

First, there are two types of replaying that can happen with a game.  The
first type is when you replay sections of the game during your first
game 'experience', defined as the amount of time stretching from when
you first start playing the game to the point at which you consider
yourself to be 'done' with it.  This can involve any amount of the game,
>from one small scene to start to finish.  To make a cross-media analogy,
this would be like rewinding a tape to re-watch a particular scene in
slow motion, or even finishing a book (as I did once) and immediately
starting over from the beginning, because I knew there was so much I had
missed the first time.  For ease of reference, I shall call this type of
replaying, "Iterative."

The second type of replaying happens when you come back to a game after
you're already 'done' with it.  Again, you may play the whole game, or
you may play just scenes (though the latter is harder if you haven't
kept your saved game files).  Again, for reference, I shall call this
type of replaying, "Re-visiting."

It is interesting to note that while the former type is much more common
in games than this latter, the reverse is true of more static media such
as films and books.  More on this later.

Both Iterative and Re-visiting replaying can happen for a variety of
reasons.  Here are some categories we came up with, along with the
definitions we gave them.  Some of them overlap, naturally, but each
emphasises a different aspect:


Replaying for Mastery:  The player's motivation in this type of replaying
is to assert their dominance over the game.  This desire can take many
forms:  to know every last nook and cranny, to have read every last
interesting response, to complete the game in the least number of moves,
to figure out a way to solve puzzle X *before* solving puzzles Y and Z,
to get the 'last lousy point' of the game, or even to find and exploit
every potential bug the programmer has left open.  It was pointed out
that people are particularly taken to patterns, and that they will replay
a game for mastery sometimes to master a pattern--sometimes even if
there wasn't one!

Replaying for Completion:  The player's motivation here is to see the
entire world the author has provided.  In our discussion, we made a
distinction between 'Thoroughness' and 'Completion' but I'm no longer
convinced that there's a useful distinction there not already covered by
the Completion/Mastery distinction, so I'm throwing them back together
here.  Whether you could have seen something and just didn't the first
time through, or whether some of your decisions prevented you from
seeing certain other sections, then, we'll call that 'Completion.'
Replaying 'Grip' or 'Tapestry' just to see the parallel paths, then,
would fall under this category, as would replaying 'She's Got a Thing
for a Spring' just to see what Bob did all day.

Note that some of the same things can be accomplished in replaying for
both Mastery and Completion--the difference is in the player's
motivation to do so.  One would harldly claim to have 'mastered'
Tapestry before playing through all the paths, but aside from that draw,
you could experience in Tapestry a sense of not being 'done' until you
had played through all the possibilities.

Replaying for Impact:  The player motivation here is to see how they can
manipulate and color the world the author has provided through their
actions.  This is often attempted through dialogue:  Whizzard mentioned
replaying the dialogue in Monkey Island to see what different changes he
could effect (until he discovered that the answer generally was:  not
much).  Adam mentioned how in his work-in-progress (Pantheon) and, to a
lesser extent, I-0, the way conversations progressed early in the game
could make a difference in the way things turned out later on.  I
personally remember how, in 'Spider & Web,' the feel of the game was
greatly modified by whether I tended to answer glibly, lie a lot, or
refuse to answer the questions posed.  The impact here must be noticable,
but it may be slight--the main story can progress along the same major
plot, just be colored differently.

Replaying for Experience:  This is the most different from all of the
above options.  While the motivation in the rest is for the player to do
something different this time through, the motivation when replaying for
experience is just to see the same stuff again, because you liked it.
The clearest example of this we came up with was re-playing an old game
for nostalgic purposes.  I've re-played the old Zorks several times,
just because they were my first games.  For Whizzard it was Wishbringer.
For Jarb it was Dungeon on a LA32.  Other examples are more rare, but do
exist.  In a later conversation (not in the transcript, unfortunately)
Ventura mentioned that he replayed Mercy several times over the course
of a month, for no specific reason he could pinpoint--it was just an
experience he needed to relive.  I recall a newsgroup post claiming that
they played AMFV about twice a year, just so they wouldn't forget its
message.

----------

Interestingly, when we compared replayability of games with
rereadability of books, the same aspects emerged--but in a different
ratio.  Books, in general, have a very high 'experience' factor, and a
much lower amount of the other three.  Also interesting was the fact
that 'Re-visiting' replaying usually happened for experiential reasons--
and again, that's the kind of reaction people often have towards books.
Part of that experience is encoded in the stories, characters, and ideas
therein--all aspects that are either hard to do in IF, traditionally
neglected, or both.

The other factors, while often catering to the same desires (Mastery
and Completion, mostly), are often met in very different ways.  This is
usually found in aspects of the book that you didn't 'catch' the first
time through:  unnoticed foreshadowing, cross-references, allusions,
and even missed jokes.  It may be a particularly effective technique to
fold some of these aspects of traditional literature into standard IF
motifs that cater to the Completion desire:  cross-referencing one path
in its parallel path, for example, or foreshadowing future events in an
out-of-the way location that the player isn't required to visit to
finish.

Of course, in any static media, you can never Impact the story yourself. 
This is the greatest strength (as well as the greatest challenge and
pitfall) of interactive media.  I find it very interesting, though, that
people claimed to not need *much* impact on the story--just *some*. 
Enough to flavor it to taste.  And even with all our puzzles, I don't
think we've begun to scratch the surface of our potential here, and it
bears some further investigation. 

---------

In general, I believe it will be profitable if we, as authors, look to
what brings people back to games as well as to more traditional
literature.  I hope the classifications above might help people
organize their thoughts about some of the issues involved.  We might
even have an official MUD forum on the subject in the future, possibly
some time after the competition.  Until then, as we say, "Wave!"

-Lucian


From erkyrath@netcom.com Thu Oct  1 19:44:08 MET DST 1998
Article: 47831 of rec.arts.int-fiction
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: erkyrath@netcom.com (Andrew Plotkin)
Subject: Re: Programs Writing Programs (was Re: [Announce] makemaze for Inform)
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Simon 'tufty' Stapleton (nobody@no.bloody.where) wrote:
> mol@bartlet.df.lth.se (Magnus Olsson) writes:
> > I didn't mean the size of the machine word, but the size of the Inform
> > language's variables. You can think of the hgh-level language's
> > execution model as still another VM on top of the Z-machine, and
> > *that* high-level VM has a word size equal to the length of an address
> > - this is necessary since Inform is a typeless language where pointers
> > have to fit in a basic integer variable.

> Surely this is the answer to the 'multiple interpreters' issue as well.

> 3 steps.
>
> 1 - Invent new and fixed 32bit Virtual machine. This might or might
>     not be based on the existing z-machine.
>
> 2 - Write an interpreter for this VM.
>
> 3 - Write an z-machine interpreter native to the new VM.  this 
>     wouldn't have to be as big as (say) frotz - as it would merely
>     handle the mapping from the z-machine to the new VM - 
> 		particularly easy if the new VM is based on z-machine.  You would
>     also only need to write one of these as the front end would 
>     be handled by the interpreter written in stage 2.
>
> Bingo! Backwards compatibility.

Yeah, but you've introduced another layer of emulation. That slows the
game down another order of magnitude. This seems a little extravagant when
the alternative is simply having two (equally fast) interpreter programs
lying around.

(This shouldn't lead to an infinite regression of interpreters, because a
well-designed 32-bit VM should last us another 15 years without *any*
further changes. That's why I'm so keen to make sure we don't get stuck
with a badly-designed one. :-)

Magnus's point is not really what you said; he was saying that the Inform
*language* is implemented in terms of the Z-machine. It's sort of
like another VM, but the analogy isn't exact. 

I actually don't quite agree with him. If I were changing Inform to target
a 32-bit VM, I'd have the machine word and the Inform language storage
elements both be 32 bits. Throw out the 16-bit word at both levels. I
think that'd cause the minimum disruption to Inform *source* (both
libraries and game source.)

Actually, for completeness, a 32-bit VM should have 16-bit opcodes (in
addition to byte and 4-byte opcodes). But the Inform compiler would
probably never use them.

(That may have been a bit confusing. The Z-machine has @storew, @loadw,
@storeb, and @loadb instructions -- store and load words, store and load
bytes. A word is 2 bytes. All Inform storage elements are words, and the
--> operator also manipulates words, but you can still manipulate bytes
with the -> operator. So the compiler uses all four of those opcodes.

(An Inform compiler targetted to a 32-bit VM, I think, should use 4-byte
storage elements, and the --> operator should manipulate 4-byte fields as
well. -> should still do bytes. So the compiler would only need to use
opcodes to store and load 1-byte and 4-byte fields.)

--Z

-- 

"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the
borogoves..."


From mol@bartlet.df.lth.se Thu Oct  1 19:44:21 MET DST 1998
Article: 47836 of rec.arts.int-fiction
Path: news.lth.se!not-for-mail
From: mol@bartlet.df.lth.se (Magnus Olsson)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Programs Writing Programs (was Re: [Announce] makemaze for Inform)
Date: 1 Oct 1998 19:40:41 +0200
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In article <erkyrathF05nsp.MKr@netcom.com>,
Andrew Plotkin <erkyrath@netcom.com> wrote:
>Simon 'tufty' Stapleton (nobody@no.bloody.where) wrote:
>> mol@bartlet.df.lth.se (Magnus Olsson) writes:
>> > I didn't mean the size of the machine word, but the size of the Inform
>> > language's variables. You can think of the hgh-level language's
>> > execution model as still another VM on top of the Z-machine, and
>> > *that* high-level VM has a word size equal to the length of an address
>> > - this is necessary since Inform is a typeless language where pointers
>> > have to fit in a basic integer variable.

(...)

>Magnus's point is not really what you said; he was saying that the Inform
>*language* is implemented in terms of the Z-machine. It's sort of
>like another VM, but the analogy isn't exact. 

It's also an analogy that can be rather confusing, I suppose, so let's
put it another way:

The Inform language doesn't have types in the way C does: it does have
different types of data, but there's only one kind of variable, which
I called "word" without thinking. It's a key feature of the language
that if I write

[ foo bar;
    bar = ...;
];

then bar is a local variable that can hold an integer, or an address in
RAM, or the address of a string, or the address of a routine, or the
number of a property, or... (completing the list is left as an exercise
to the reader).

The language specification also says that an integer is a 16-bit signed
quantity.

These two things together mean that a variable must be 16 bits long. The
value 16 comes, of course, from the Z-machine's word length, but it is
in principle independent of it.

If you extend the Z-machine to 32 bits (or replace it with some other
architecture with > 16 bits word length), then you'll have to change
the Inform language so that a variable is > 16 bits long, unless
you want to do funny things with addresses that breaks a lot of
existing code. In that case, you'll also have to change the definition
of an integer as a 16-bit signed value. It won't do to restrict
integers to 16 bits, since there's no way for, say, the comparison
operators to know whether they're operating on integers or addresses.

>I actually don't quite agree with him. 

Well, I think we actually do agree; it's mostly a matter of how pedantic
we are. :-)

>If I were changing Inform to target
>a 32-bit VM, I'd have the machine word and the Inform language storage
>elements both be 32 bits. Throw out the 16-bit word at both levels. I
>think that'd cause the minimum disruption to Inform *source* (both
>libraries and game source.)

I think this is the best way, yes, but I think there will still be
*some* disruption to game source.

Let me hasten to add that the disruption will be smaller than that
caused by the upgrade from Inform 5 to Inform 6, and I think it will
be worth it.

-- 
Magnus Olsson (mol@df.lth.se, zebulon@pobox.com)
------    http://www.pobox.com/~zebulon   ------


From erkyrath@netcom.com Thu Oct  1 21:23:36 MET DST 1998
Article: 47844 of rec.arts.int-fiction
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
From: erkyrath@netcom.com (Andrew Plotkin)
Subject: Re: Replayability
Message-ID: <erkyrathF05wKD.3D3@netcom.com>
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Xref: news.lth.se rec.arts.int-fiction:47844

Drone (foxglove@globalserve.net) wrote:
> In article <6uuulu$bob$1@joe.rice.edu>, lpsmith@rice.edu (Lucian Paul
> Smith) wrote:

> > [snip] an interesting but perhaps overly structured analysis
>
> I think it's very simple. People replay when they want ... more.
>
> So if you are the author and you want them to replay you have to make them
> want more, and then give them more.

True, but not very useful. The most reliable way to make people want more
is to define a formula, with lots of recognizable brand names, and then
churn out an endless stream of extruded formulaic product. 

Of course then your audience will be made up of the kind of people who
like that kind of thing. Maybe that's what you were aiming for, but if
not, then this is not a very helpful approach.

An analysis of techniques can never be a complete list of The Ways To Do
It, but it can certainly be a good starting point for authors to think
about.

Also: I re-read books. This is obviously not because I want more; it's
because I want another look. This is a very different thing. How does this
affect your analysis?

--Z

-- 

"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the
borogoves..."


From erkyrath@netcom.com Tue Oct  6 13:07:13 MET DST 1998
Article: 48086 of rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: erkyrath@netcom.com (Andrew Plotkin)
Subject: Re: Stupid VM question...
Message-ID: <erkyrathF0CwnI.1zJ@netcom.com>
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LucFrench (lucfrench@aol.com) wrote:

> I know it's awfully unclean to impliment in C (which badly needs general
> purpose bit field type), but what if we were to use a 20 byte VM instead of 16
> or 32 bits?

Twenty *bytes*? You're trying to store a complete simulation of the Earth
with an Inform object for each molecule? :)

Yes, see the very large VM thread from a couple of months ago. We went
through all the combinations of 32-bit, 20-bit or 24-bit or 28-bit, and
16-bit. The sole advantage of anything in between 16 and 32 is that you
can fit type info inside the reference. 

As I said, I think it's a lousy idea. More details in Dejanews. 

Emacs used 8/24. Emacs ran into space problems. I *really* don't want
weird icky VM hacks; we *don't need to squeeze space*. It's not 1973 and
we already know the game files are in the megabyte range. We've already
got solutions for the games that are physically capable of running on an
Apple 2.

--Z

-- 

"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the
borogoves..."


From erkyrath@netcom.com Tue Oct  6 16:56:42 MET DST 1998
Article: 48100 of rec.arts.int-fiction
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: erkyrath@netcom.com (Andrew Plotkin)
Subject: Re: [INFORM] article
Message-ID: <erkyrathF0DH4B.HuI@netcom.com>
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Dennis.Matheson@delta-air.com wrote:

>   Use ARTICLES instead of ARTICLE.  Example...

> Object Hand "Hands"
>   with articles
>       "Your" "your" "your",

>   You need to specify all three values.  The person who told me about this
> one (sorry, forgot who you were!) said this is described in the Translators
> Manual.

Yow, cool. I didn't know about this. Thanks.

--Z

-- 

"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the
borogoves..."


From foxglove@globalserve.net Sun Oct 11 18:53:03 MET DST 1998
Article: 48409 of rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: foxglove@globalserve.net (Drone)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Problems Spec Re: Zplet question
Date: Fri, 09 Oct 1998 13:29:36 -0500
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In article <01bdf346$833830c0$14118fd1@jonadab>, "Jonadab the Unsightly
One" <jonadab@zerospam.com> wrote:

> > > > > They're standardising problems now? Guess it had to happen.
> :)
> > 
> > > If someone doesn't come up quickly with an open standard that is
> (a)
> > > flexibly incompatible, and (b) robustly unstable, Microsoft will
> lock up
> > > the market.
> >
> > I hear they announce Microsoft Trouble 1.0, but haven't shipped
> yet 
> > because it keeps working reliably.
> 
> [snip]
> 
> Unfortunately, it doesn't follow the provisionary Problems Spec
> very well at all.  For one thing, instead of basing its handling
> of page exceptions on the phase of the moon, as the spec 
> dictates, it uses the hundredth of a second value from the system
> clock, which is unportable because not all systems provide
> access to that much detail of the system clock by API.  Other
> systems could emulate this by peeking (or indirecting through
> a pointer), but that's still not portable.  Another issue is that
> it uses IBM Extended ASCII instead of Unicode.
> 

That's ridiculous. Phases of the moon? Hundredths of a second? When will
the people at Microsoft get it through their skulls that any professional
troublemaking package is crippled without a true randomiser?

And as for the other, let me get this straight. MS designs a high-end
incompatibility engine, then tries to make it directly portable to other
systems? Come on, where are the old days? Where is the troublemaking
innovation that aliased 'complex' text-based menu commands with 'simple'
graphical toolbar buttons, and then aliased those with even 'simpler'
text-based hints?

Now everyone knows that a picture is worth a thousand words, and you can
even read it with the help of a little hint consisting of *one more word*.
That's the product of the kind of excellent turn of mind that should be
applied to the open standard project.

Drone.


From adam@princeton.edu Sun Oct 11 23:07:09 MET DST 1998
Article: 48362 of rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: adam@princeton.edu (Adam J. Thornton)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: The Love That Dare Not Speak Its Name
Date: 4 Oct 1998 16:29:47 GMT
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I just had the *weirdest* dream.

Before I start, I'd like to say that this dream in no way (I think)
reflects my actual opinion of the sexual preference of the two esteemed
r*if members it was about.  Much less do I think they really have the
relationship my dream told me they did.

I hadn't--repeat, *HAD NOT*--been playing IF before going to bed.  I can't
remember how the dream got to this point, and I can't remember the context.

But at some point in my dream I was reading several poems; a small press
flimsy paperback edition, kind of like a lot of the City Lights stuff.
These poems were love poems, by Zarf, and they were great: full of
multilayered imagery, erotic in a very understated way, very beautifully
done (no, of course I can't remember any of them).  Very Zarfian work, on
the whole.

The weird thing, and the scary thing, and the thing that really confuses
me is for whom the poems were written:

Zarf's longtime lover, lifetime partner, inspiration, , and _raison
d'etre_, Rybread Celsius.

Even in the dream I remember thinking "This is like a snippet from _Jigsaw_
gone horribly, horribly wrong."  Really it was more like Jigsaw meets The
Lost Spellmaker meets So Far.

What *DOES* it mean?

Adam
-- 
adam@princeton.edu 
"There's a border to somewhere waiting, and a tank full of time." - J. Steinman


From erkyrath@netcom.com Sun Oct 11 23:07:20 MET DST 1998
Article: 48367 of rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: erkyrath@netcom.com (Andrew Plotkin)
Subject: Re: The Love That Dare Not Speak Its Name
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Adam J. Thornton (adam@princeton.edu) wrote:
> I just had the *weirdest* dream.

And you had to share, too, didn't you.

> Before I start, I'd like to say that this dream in no way (I think)
> reflects my actual opinion of the sexual preference of the two esteemed
> r*if members it was about. 

And before you start, I'd like to say that by the time I got to this point
in your message, I already knew my name was going to be involved.

> But at some point in my dream I was reading several poems; a small press
> flimsy paperback edition, kind of like a lot of the City Lights stuff.
> These poems were love poems, by Zarf, and they were great: full of
> multilayered imagery, erotic in a very understated way, very beautifully
> done (no, of course I can't remember any of them).  Very Zarfian work, on
> the whole.
>
> The weird thing, and the scary thing, and the thing that really confuses
> me is for whom the poems were written:
>
> Zarf's longtime lover, lifetime partner, inspiration, , and _raison
> d'etre_, Rybread Celsius.
>
> What *DOES* it mean?

It means I've been writing great poetry and nobody told me. If you could
forward me a copy, I'd be *really* grateful.

--Z

-- 

"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the
borogoves..."


From adam@princeton.edu Sun Oct 11 23:07:37 MET DST 1998
Article: 48386 of rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: adam@princeton.edu (Adam J. Thornton)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: The Love That Dare Not Speak Its Name
Date: 9 Oct 1998 05:01:10 GMT
Organization: Princeton University
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In article <erkyrathF0JIou.KvF@netcom.com>,
Andrew Plotkin <erkyrath@netcom.com> wrote:
>> But at some point in my dream I was reading several poems; a small press
>> flimsy paperback edition, kind of like a lot of the City Lights stuff.
>> These poems were love poems, by Zarf, and they were great: full of
>> multilayered imagery, erotic in a very understated way, very beautifully
>> done (no, of course I can't remember any of them).  Very Zarfian work, on
>> the whole.
>It means I've been writing great poetry and nobody told me. If you could
>forward me a copy, I'd be *really* grateful.

I tried to remember it.

Really I did.

It's nice to know my posts are finally getting out, too.

But I couldn't remember any of the actual poems.

They were excellent, though.

Lots of that static tension imagery, like in _So Far_.  And...have you read
"Little Viennese Waltz", by Lorca?  Like that.  Not, mind you, much like
the Leonard Cohen adaptation.

You ought to write more like them.  Not necessarily about Rybread, though.

Adam


-- 
adam@princeton.edu 
"There's a border to somewhere waiting, and a tank full of time." - J. Steinman


From adam@princeton.edu Mon Oct 12 23:11:11 MET DST 1998
Article: 48617 of rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: adam@princeton.edu (Adam J. Thornton)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Found in an unspeakable newsgroup:
Date: 12 Oct 1998 18:36:49 GMT
Organization: Princeton University
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Stig Sandbeck Mathisen  <ssm@rlyeh.net> wrote:
>Anyway, for the adventourous among you.
>> nslookup - hastur.rlyeh.net
>and then:
>> set querytype=txt
>> set domain=adventure
>and then:
>> 1

Dear God.

Now I have seen the face of evil.  I go away to gibber.

Adam
-- 
adam@princeton.edu 
"There's a border to somewhere waiting, and a tank full of time." - J. Steinman


From fake-mail@anti-spam.address Tue Oct 13 13:13:59 MET DST 1998
Article: 48319 of rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: fake-mail@anti-spam.address (Neil K.)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Wearable Characters [was "Chick Flick"]
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 icallaci@csupomona.edu wrote:

> You're right; I've seen lots of discussion that indicates
> players don't want their emotional reactions dictated by
> the game's author. On the other hand, we also had a
> discussion not too long ago about what makes a memorable
> player character. A lot of that discussion centered on
> PCs with distinct personalities and definite reactions.

 Indeed. This has come up a number of times over the years, and I know I
for one have expressed irritation at games that made a variety of assumed
emotional assumptions. Or games which made decisions on behalf of the
player. (>KILL SPIDER. "You reach out to kill the spider, but decide not
to and go and read a book instead.") But at the same time I find that the
game I've been working on for some time now has more and more such assumed
reactions. And there are games with such reactions that I haven't minded
at all.

 For me I think the key difference between getting annoyed and not getting
annoyed is the degree to which the character you're playing is well-drawn
and realistic or just generic. If a game has a generic PC and you're
expected to step into the character's shoes then I get annoyed at sudden
and random "you feel X" remarks out of the blue. How dare the author
presume! But if you're specifically playing, or role-playing, a
well-defined person with a history and so on then such messages in
moderation can work. Especially if they're somewhat gradual; appearing
more frequently as the character becomes fleshed out as the game
progresses. So by the time the game says "you shake in terror" you're
either shaking a little bit yourself or feeling like - "right... my
character definitely would shake with terror here."

 Though having said all that I'm sure those words will come back to haunt
me whenever my game is finally finished. :)

 - Neil K.

-- 
 t e l a  computer consulting + design   *   Vancouver, BC, Canada
      web: http://www.tela.bc.ca/tela/   *   email: tela @ tela.bc.ca


From mkkuhner@kingman.genetics.washington.edu Tue Oct 13 13:32:47 MET DST 1998
Article: 48324 of rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: mkkuhner@kingman.genetics.washington.edu (Mary K. Kuhner)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Wearable Characters [was "Chick Flick"]
Date: 8 Oct 1998 11:18:36 GMT
Organization: University of Washington Genetics
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I can't say how authors make assigning motives to the PC work,
but I know some things that make it *not* work for me:

(1)  Assigning motivations to the PC when it's transparently
done to save the author some coding.  ("I don't want to think
about the consequences if the player does X, so I'll tell her
she doesn't want to do it.")

(2)  Assigning motivations to the PC when it's transparently done
to save the plot.  ("I can't figure out how to force the player
to do X.  Aha!  I'll just tell her she wants to do it.")

(3)  This one is probably more of a personal preference (I'm not 
a fan of highly stylized genres):  Assigning motivations to the 
PC when it's done to enforce genre conventions.  ("I don't see why
the heroine would go into the basement without a weapon, but
that's what happens in these stories....")

Looking at my own reactions, I don't want the author to surprise
me with an explicit character reaction:  this means that they
should be cued, generally by slanting descriptions.  If the
slime has consistently been described in terms of its distressing
appearance, I'm more willing to accept that the PC won't touch
it.

One phrasing I *really* dislike is:

>open door

You decide not to.

Clearly I wouldn't have typed "open door" unless in my conception
the PC decided to do it, and being directly countermanded with no
explanation is incredibly annoying.  I would be a lot more willing
to cope with:

>open door

As you reach for the door you recall that violating a class I
security seal is a capital offense.  That's a bigger risk than
you're willing to take just to satify your curiosity.

By providing some additional information this avoids giving the
impression that the game is arbitrarily overruling its supposed
player.  Instead, it's filling in background so the player can
make better decisions in the future.

In the games that used assignent of emotions to the PC most
successfully, I never felt surprised by the PC's reactions:
they were the reactions I was feeling myself in identifying
with him/her.  This is tough, but it's the target to aim for.

Mary Kuhner mkkuhner@genetics.washington.edu


From david@atlan.cix.co.uk Tue Oct 13 13:33:14 MET DST 1998
Article: 48335 of rec.arts.int-fiction
From: david@atlan.cix.co.uk (David Brain)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Wearable Characters [was "Chick Flick"]
Date: 8 Oct 1998 16:14:12 GMT
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In article <6vgham$jrb$1@nnrp1.dejanews.com>, green_gargoyle@my-dejanews.com
() wrote:

> Kathleen (who had finally picked a title ("Past Perfect") only to
> discover there was a movie with that name a few years ago <sob>)

PG Wodehouse wrote an introduction to his novel "Summer Lightning" by observing
that three other books published that year had the same title.  He hoped that people
wouldn't buy one of the others expecting it to be his, but on the other hand if people
bought his expecting it to be one of the others, he wouldn't complain...

So don't worry about it.  It's a great name, anyway.

--
David Brain

Apotheosis can be somewhat unnerving.
  -- Expecting Someone Taller, Tom Holt



From green_gargoyle@my-dejanews.com Tue Oct 13 13:33:21 MET DST 1998
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From: green_gargoyle@my-dejanews.com
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Wearable Characters [was "Chick Flick"]
Date: Fri, 09 Oct 1998 00:02:44 GMT
Organization: Deja News - The Leader in Internet Discussion
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In article <6vi72c$ol8$1@nntp3.u.washington.edu>,
> One phrasing I *really* dislike is:
>
> >open door
>
> You decide not to.

vs.

> >open door
>
> As you reach for the door you recall that violating a class I
> security seal is a capital offense.  That's a bigger risk than
> you're willing to take just to satify your curiosity.

Of course, you could do:

> open door
As you reach for the door you recall that violating a class I
security seal is a capital offense.

> open door
Sirens blare, lights flash, and a thousand storm troops seem to
materialize from nowhere. Within moments you are whisked away, your
identity erased, doomed to spend the remainder of your days in
a 10x10 cell.

--
Kathleen

-----------== Posted via Deja News, The Discussion Network ==----------
http://www.dejanews.com/       Search, Read, Discuss, or Start Your Own    


From erkyrath@netcom.com Thu Oct 15 13:44:32 MET DST 1998
Article: 48769 of rec.arts.int-fiction
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Path: news.lth.se!news.solace.mh.se!news.xinit.se!news.xinit.se!nntp.se.dataphone.net!newsfeed.online.no!news-feed.inet.tele.dk!bofh.vszbr.cz!cpk-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!news.bbnplanet.com!ix.netcom.com!erkyrath
From: erkyrath@netcom.com (Andrew Plotkin)
Subject: Re: Blorb question/suggestion
Message-ID: <erkyrathF0u514.H09@netcom.com>
Organization: ICGNetcom
X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.2 PL2]
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George Caswell (timbuktu@adamant.res.wpi.net) wrote:
> > No, the annotation field isn't really suitable for this. Currently,
> > there's no reasonable way to do this in Blorb.
> > 
>    What's the annotation field for, then?  The description on the blorb page
> seemed pretty open-ended...  I interpreted it as "any text you want to include
> with the game".

The annotation field is a general IFF thing; it's defined for any IFF
format file. The semantic meaning *is* pretty vague.

> > Blorb is for making data accessible to interpreter, and thus the game file
> > itself. You want to make data available to the player. If the
> > documentation were in the Blorb file, you'd either need a special Blorb
> > documentation reader tool to read it, or you'd have the interpreter itself
> > do it.
> 
>    Or you have the interpreter pipe the data to a suitable viewer.

Hm. I hadn't thought of that, but it's still a solution waiting for the
problem to be defined.

> > The former choice seems silly when there are so many reader tools out
> > there already -- Web browsers, Adobe Acrobat, generic GIF/JPEG displayers.

>    Yeah, it'd be like, say, including a MOD player into a Z-machine
> interpreter...  how silly!  :)
>
>    I tease a little, but please, I'm joking around, don't consider this a
> challenge to the validity of the MOD format inclusion in Blorb.

But do you understand the failure of analogy between the two cases?

> > Trying to write and port a reader and interpreter would be twice as hard
> > as trying to write and port an interpreter, which is already stalled.
> 
>    Plaintext readers are -trivial- on most systems.  On just about any GUI,
> displaying small bits of text means opening some kind of text entry field,
> setting it non-editable, and filling it up.  And we're talking about a
> non-critical feature here.  If included in Blorb it probably wouldn't be a
> required feature for interpreters. 

Ok, I'm coming closer to understanding what your problem definition is.
You want extra information associated with the game file, packaged with
the game resources, which the interpreter knows how to pull out, but the
game doesn't deal with directly at all. 

If you're talking about a brief, plaintext comment, the annotation field
*is* suitable for this. (In Quetzal save files, the annotation field is
used in just this way, and I've implemented it in MaxZip. For amusement,
you understand -- I doubt anyone uses it.) 

If you want to extend this to longer text (with linebreaks, even!) or
graphics, the annotation isn't suitable. So you propose something
like-that-but-bigger. This makes sense to me.

However:

> Do I A> put it in the same place as my game file,
> as a plaintext file, and have to copy both the game file and this text file
> around everywhere I use the game file, or B> given that this data is so 
> closely related to the story file it was written for, package it up into the
> same file and save some management troubles.
>
>    Now, B could be done with regular tar files, of course, but if we have a
> perfectly sensible package file format already defined for these story files,
> why not use it, and add a little convenience?

I agree that B is a lousy idea, since layering one archive format on top
of another is silly.

A is what we have now. It's not obviously broken. My OS/GUI has a
convenient representation for wrapping two items into a single manipulable
object: the file folder. Yes, it's a little ugly to look in my "games"
folder and see both story-file icons and folder icons; but that's just
overly rigid thinking. :)

More signficantly, it's something of a disjunction to have to open them
differently. (The former takes a double-click; the latter takes two.)

So I can see the utility of Blorbing readme/documentation files. On the
other hand, as I said in the other Blorb post, there's great utility in
a solution that already exists. :) 

> > And the latter choice is what Blorb is already set up to do. Put a
> > "documentation" command in your game, have it display stuff from the Blorb
> > file.
>
>    That assumes that 1: you'll never want to package in any material the
> author didn't include with their game and 2: you'll never want to use this
> feature with story files that weren't designed to use this (potential future)
> feature of Blorb.

You're now talking about the Blorb file creator and the game creator as
being different people? (Different people not working closely
together, I should say.) That's a slightly different ball of wax too.

--Z

-- 

"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the
borogoves..."


From lpsmith@rice.edu Sat Oct 17 16:55:26 MET DST 1998
Article: 48891 of rec.arts.int-fiction
From: lpsmith@rice.edu (Lucian Paul Smith)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction,rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Good IF posting:  Lessons from MS DOS
Followup-To: rec.arts.int-fiction
Date: 16 Oct 1998 14:44:46 GMT
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Xref: news.lth.se rec.arts.int-fiction:48891 rec.games.int-fiction:38098

As a very occassional poster to r*if, I would like to offer an outside
perspective on the task of displaying public discourse on the world's
Interactive Fiction.  (I once posted a question about 'Curses' and
contributed a room description to the 'Silly Game', that's about it.)
Posting to these newsgroups is certainly better than posting to no
newsgroup, and it is good that all interested parties can read the posts.
But there is a great deal it does not do.  The IF community here, which
includes some highly verbose and highly motivated software commentators
and reviewers, could learn many lessons from the history of the MS DOS
file system <C:/DOS/>.  With countless files on thousands of computers all
over the world, this system has had a major impact on data storage and
retrieval on personal computers.

If you want to evaluate MS DOS, you should know that the system also
supports add-on file-managing software such as windows, <C:/WINDOWS/>.
You might also be interested in the various newspaper articles that have
appeared about MS DOS over the years <http://check.your.local/library>.

Following the MS DOS model, the IF newsgroups could be upgraded with these
features:

o Authors would contribute their posts via a file creation system like the
one at <c:/DOS/EDLIN.COM>.  The system would do some sanity checks to make
sure that the author has contributed a post with actual ASCII symbols that
won't crash the system, etc.

o Each post would be contributed with a filename, an eight-character
description of the post.  The filename would have some of the value of
the post itself, except that it would be immediately viewable with the
'dir /w' command.

o Posts could have a three-character extention, perhaps according to the
file content.  For example, a text post could have the extention ".TXT"; a
html post the extention ".HTM".

o The newsgroup could encourage or require authors to provide datestamps
for new contributions. The experience of the MS DOS system is that
requiring datestamps is a Good Thing.  (In the case of DOS executables,
most of the dates are from 1980 to 1989, a decade which was vaguely
similar to the 90's.)  For IF enthusiasts it would mean that you would
always know when precisely a post was written.  It would also help uncover
stolen ideas and adjudicate disputes.  The newsgroup could figure out the
date itself just as MS DOS does.

o The newsgroup should primarily be available by 'dir /w' rather than
'rn'.  As far as I'm concerned, rn is an ugly dinosaur.  I did some tests,
and when I typed 'dir /w' I got a list of files within seconds.  When I
tried to read the newsgroup, it took me five minutes just to connect to
the Internet.  The propogation system should probably also be extended to
other languages, at the very least to Esperanto and Indian.

o The newsgroup could automatically add new files each day to a directory
of one's choosing.

o The newsgroup could be maintained with the explicit guarantee that the
files would be preserved and freely available in perpetuity, or until the
next hard drive crash, whichever comes first.

o The newsgroup could have *version control*.  When you revise a file in
MS DOS, the old version is written over immediately.  This means that
authors can't try to revisit the past.  It would mean for IF'ers that
people would no longer be able to dredge up past words to sling at each
other in flame wars.  Old messages would be erased from the public
conciousness.

o Users could be encouraged to view the newsgroup with a text editor as
the viewer's helper, just as most people view MS DOS with a grain of salt.

If the IF newsgroups were redesigned along the lines of MS DOS, it could
noticeably accelerate the production, peer review, and subsequent flaming
of IF commentary.  It could expand the scope of the IF community and make
it more chatty.

--
  ----  Lucian Smith (Rice University)
  |  |
  |  |  Visit the MS DOS operating system at C:/DOS/
  ----  * Operating Systems should be purchased and not questioned *


















[Disclaimer:  The preceeding is intended as broad parody for humor only,
and is not inteded as a flame of Greg Kuperberg's post.  On the contrary,
I found Greg's post to be quite articulate, if slightly misguided, and I
think that the sentiment behind some of the ideas expressed there (if not
necessarily the specific implementation suggested) have merit, and deserve
further thought.  This was too good an opportunity to pass up, though.]


From graham_fyffe@hotmail.com Sat Oct 17 20:38:31 MET DST 1998
Article: 48784 of rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: graham_fyffe@hotmail.com
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Handling Deja Vu
Date: Thu, 15 Oct 1998 03:19:07 GMT
Organization: Deja News - The Leader in Internet Discussion
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In article <7005t4$1728$1@nntp3.u.washington.edu>,
  mkkuhner@kingman.genetics.washington.edu (Mary K. Kuhner) wrote:
> In article <700438$4pp$1@nnrp1.dejanews.com>,
>  <green_gargoyle@my-dejanews.com> wrote:
>
> >As the player, you knock on the door for the nth time (having played this
> >part of the game multiple times) - though this is the first time for the PC -
> >and are greeted by the butler. Since you (the player) know of the cushion,
> >you ask the butler about it.  However the butler "knows" you have never been
> >to the house before and should therefore know nothing of the cushion.
>
> You might ask yourself "What is going on for the player at this point?"
> If she asks about the cushion before she's supposed to know about it,
> I'd guess she's not playing, at the moment, for story values.  Either
> she's skimming along to get back to the novel part of the game (having
> forgotten to save often enough--a mistake I make frequently) or she's
> replaying the game to get to a more juicy section.  In either case,
> putting time and effort into making sure she gets a story-maintaining
> response may be something of a waste.
>
> So I personally wouldn't bother coding a special response, unless the
> versimilitude of the butler were *very* important to me, or I expected
> the game to have a huge amount of replaying (say, I'd disabled Save
> for some misbegotten reason).  Or if I were coding Groundhog Day,
> so that the scene would replay over and over in the natural course
> of the game.  Then I'd definitely want a special response.
>
> Some games I've seen have a solution (d), a snarky response berating
> the player for using prior-life information.  I don't think this is
> a good idea unless the game is snarky in general.  A player who has
> just been forced to restart (and it can happen--you can accidentally
> delete a save pretty easily on some systems) is likely to be grumpy
> anyway, and being jeered at by a game is not endearing.

I don't agree with snapping at the player, and it might not be worth coding in
a totally seperate response, but you might throw in a fun little generic
routine that you can pass objects to to produce the following:

If the player character really has seen the cushion this game:

>Butler, what about the cushion?
Billy-Bob the butler responds, "Why, that was Lady Snapple's silk cushion, and
that stain certainly wasn't cran-raspberry iced tea!"

If the player character hasn't seen the cushion this game:

>Butler, what about the cushion?

Billy-Bob the butler hesitates for a moment, puzzled by your apparent ESP,
and continues, "Why, that was Lady Snapple's silk cushion, and that stain
certainly wasn't cran-raspberry iced tea!"

- GLYPH

-----------== Posted via Deja News, The Discussion Network ==----------
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From svanegmond@home.com Sat Oct 17 20:38:45 MET DST 1998
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Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Handling Deja Vu
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It depends.  In Curses, early on, there is an object you're supposed to
find in a two-step process.  If you skip step one, you get

> FROZZLE THE BOOMBATZ
You've played this game before.

But then, the "game" in Curses has a strong voice, giving you points at
random points for at least trying good solutions, only later to take them
away, and so on.  (I hope I've got this attributed to the right game.)

If you don't want the player to notice they're playing again, don't
mention ESP, and it may be best to have your characters react as if
someone had told you about it already.  If nobody could have told you
about it (i.e. it's a secret), a twist in the design may be in order.
-- 
       ,,,
      (. .)  
+--ooO-(_)-Ooo------------ --- -- - - - -
| Stephen van Egmond  http://bang.ml.org/


From fake-mail@anti-spam.address Mon Oct 19 10:20:16 MET DST 1998
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From: fake-mail@anti-spam.address (Neil K.)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: [All IF systems] Blorb.
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 stuart_moore@my-dejanews.com wrote:

> I propose here that the Blorb standard, by Andrew Plotkin, be extended to
> cover the Hugo, AGT and TADS systems.
>
> I have already e-mailed Mr. Plotkin, Mr. Masenten and Mr. Tessman with regards
>to this proposal.

 What about Mr. Roberts, author of TADS?

> Blorb is an excellent mechanism for packaging resources. If coupled with
> non-dependence on any one IF authoring system, it's usefulness could only
> increase.

 I can't speak for Mike Roberts, but I am somewhat familiar with TADS,
having used it for a while. And I know that TADS already has an excellent
mechanism for packaging resources. In fact, it has used the same mechanism
since at least 1992. (the same resource mechanism designed for use with
external functions was modified slightly to support adding multimedia
components, such as digitized sound and graphics, for HTML TADS) There may
be some benefits to switching to Blorb (mainly wider availability of
custom tools) but it would also mean rewriting some of the TADS source
code and changing all the various ports out there. Not to mention the fact
that there'd be backwards compatibility problems - interpreters would have
to support both formats anyway, or else you wouldn't be able to play an
existing game on a new terp.

 Blorb is a nice standard, but I don't see what TADS users would gain by
adopting it. Or, more accurately, I don't see the inevitable pain required
in adopting Blorb would outweigh its benefits. I actually suggested Blorb
to Mike a while ago, and he basically told me what I'm telling you. And
when I thought about it I realized he had a pretty good point.

 - Neil K.

-- 
 t e l a  computer consulting + design   *   Vancouver, BC, Canada
      web: http://www.tela.bc.ca/tela/   *   email: tela @ tela.bc.ca


From dfan@thecia.net Mon Oct 19 16:44:59 MET DST 1998
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From: Dan Schmidt <dfan@thecia.net>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: [Inform] Problem with Emacs
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jcmason@uwaterloo.ca (Joe Mason) writes:

| Okay, here's my .emacs file:
| 
| ;; Link in inform mode
| 
|   (autoload 'inform-mode "inform-mode" "Inform editing mode." t)
|   (autoload 'inform-maybe-mode "inform-mode" "Inform/C header editing mode.")
|   (setq auto-mode-alist
|         (append '(("\\.h\\'"   . inform-maybe-mode)
|                   ("\\.inf\\'" . inform-mode))
|                 auto-mode-alist))
| 
| But when I try to load an Inform file, I get
| 
| File mode specification error: (invalid-read-syntax ". in wrong context")
| 
| I'm using Emacs 20.2 (distributed with Red Hat 5.0) and I know the Inform
| mode is older.  Is there a quick fix for this, or is this a major
| incompatibility between the two versions?  Or is it a typo?
| 
| Joe
| -- 
| I think OO is great...  It's no coincidence that "woohoo" contains "oo" twice.
| -- GLYPH

I'm confused by those \\' parts.  Is that just another way of saying
end of string?

Here's the equivalent that I use (stripped of non-inform stuff).  It
works for me.

(setq auto-mode-alist (append '(("\\.h$" . inform-maybe-mode)
                                ("\\.inf$" . inform-mode))
                              auto-mode-alist))

-- 
                 Dan Schmidt -> dfan@alum.mit.edu, dfan@thecia.net
Honest Bob & the                http://www2.thecia.net/users/dfan/
Factory-to-Dealer Incentives -> http://www2.thecia.net/users/dfan/hbob/
          Gamelan Galak Tika -> http://web.mit.edu/galak-tika/www/


From jacobw@alumni.princeton.eud Mon Oct 19 23:23:08 MET DST 1998
Article: 48824 of rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: jacobw@alumni.princeton.eud (Jacob Weinstein)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction,rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Good IF archival:  Lessons from the xxx physics/math archives
Date: Thu, 15 Oct 1998 10:22:40 -0700
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You know, there's been an awful lot of negativity about these proposed
modifications to the IF archive, but I just wanted to point out that there
is already an IF archive that meets every single one of these standards:
the RAIF-POOL archive. 


> o Author would contribute their games via a web upload system
> like the one described at <http://front.math.ucdavis.edu/submissions.html>.

Every single game ever uploaded to the RAIF-POOL archive has been uploaded
through a web front end. 

> o Each game would be contributed with an abstract, a one-paragraph
> description of the game.

There is not a single game on the RAIF POOL archive that lacks a complete
and thorough abstract.
 
> o Games could be numbered by the archive, perhaps according to the year
> or the month and year.  For example, the 10th game contributed in 1998
> could be "IF 98010" or "int-fiction/1998-10".

Every game on the archive is organized in three seperate ways: date of
uploading; date of creation; and date of birth of author.

> o The archive could encourage or require authors to provide source for
> new contributions.  
You will not find a single game on the RAIF-POOL archive that does not
have source. This has proven invaluable in uncovering plagiarism, because
for every game written in RAIF-POOL, there are literally thousands that
have whole sections of code duplicated.

> o The archive should primarily be available by http rather than ftp.

Not only is the RAIF-POOL available by http, it's available at literally
EVERY PAGE of EVERY SINGLE WEB SITE in the world. Log onto any web site.
Go ahead, I dare you. Then tell me one single RAIF-POOL game that isn't
clearly indexed on that site. You can't! It's impossible! Give it up,  you
poor deluded fool! 

> o The archive could automatically announce new arrivals each day to a
> mailing list of subscribers.

In fact, the RAIF-POOL archive sends out updates instantaneously, and
everybody in the whole world is on the list. Again, I'm not exagerating. I
promise that there will never be a game uploaded to the RAIF-POOL archive
without every man, woman, and child in the world being informed of it.
 
> o The archive could be maintained with the explicit guarantee that the
> games will be preserved and freely available in perpetuity.

Well, I can ALMOST guarantee this. The only thing that could possibly ruin
my near-perfect system would be if somebody actually, somehow, some day,
wrote a game in RAIF-POOL. But I'm guessing we're all pretty safe.

Best,
Jacob Weinstein

-- 
To reply to me by personal e-mail, spell "edu" correctly in my e-mail address.


From neilc@norwich.edu Tue Oct 20 15:16:58 MET DST 1998
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From: neilc@norwich.edu
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: [INFORM] neilc's door hack
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This hack is designed to clear up the confusion surrounding the
entering of doors. Currently, two possible actions can result from a
player attempting to enter a door, and both come to the same result.

The main evil of this is that the before routines of doors do not get
a chance to respond to the player walking right through them if the
player types just a direction, and the door happens to lie that way.

In the past, authors have gotten around this by sticking code for,
say, automatically opening closed doors, in before routines of the
rooms the door is located in.

After thinking about my GoThrough action idea, and briefly trying
to implement it, I gained a healthy respect for the way the GoSub
routine handles so many possibilities. Trying to call
other actions from within this routine was fraught
with peril. I couldn't handle that peril.

A close examination the problem statement, revealed a simpler
solution. So here is a 12 line hack that fixes the problem I
wanted to address (you could also 'Replace' the GoSub routine
if that is your style).

In the GoSub routine, just after the code:

if (j has door)
{

Insert the following:

#IFDEF DOOR_HACK;
  if (j.before~=0) {
     action=##Enter;
     i=noun;
     noun=j;
     k=RunRoutines(j,before);
     noun=i;
     action=##Go;
     if (k==1) rfalse;
  }
#ENDIF;

This hack doesn't yet do exactly what I want: if the player
typed 'enter door', the door's before routine might be called
twice if it returns false.

To fix this last problem, you have no choice but to edit grammar.h
so that attempts to enter a door result in the Go action, not the
enter action.  Fortunately, this is very simple to do. Here is an
example:

(These lines have been formatted to look OK in news readers)

Verb 'get'
   * 'out'/'off'/'up' -> Exit
   * multi -> Take
   * 'in'/'into'/'on'/'onto' noun -> Enter
   * 'off' noun -> GetOff
   * multiinside 'from' noun -> Remove;

must be replaced with (or you could "Extend <X> replace"
the offending grammar directives):

#IFNDEF DOOR_HACK;
Verb 'get'
   * 'out'/'off'/'up' -> Exit
   * multi -> Take
   * 'in'/'into'/'on'/'onto' noun -> Enter
   * 'off' noun -> GetOff
   * multiinside 'from' noun -> Remove;
#ENDIF;
#IFDEF DOOR_HACK;
Verb 'get'
   * 'out'/'off'/'up' -> Exit
   * multi -> Take
   * 'in'/'into'/'on'/'onto' door -> Go
   * 'in'/'into'/'on'/'onto' noun -> Enter
   * 'off' noun -> GetOff
   * multiinside 'from' noun -> Remove;
#ENDIF;

...etc. etc. In other words, All grammar lines that might result in
<<Go noun>> or <<Enter noun>> must have a token inserted above
that line that says:

   * <token[s]> door                -> Go

You will have to decide for yourself whether "SIT ON DOOR" ought
to become <Go door> or not. I say it should, since that is what
it gets re-routed to eventually anyway.

--*--

So the library finally admits to the doors that it has been
using the Go action to Enter them all along, without
telling them. Now it is lieing to them.

This fixes the problem as I see it. All doors may now trap
players entering them with: before [; Enter: xxx ].

The idea I posted earlier (creating a GoThrough action) turned
out to be very impractical and difficult one.

--
Neil Cerutti, turtle in ice
neilc@norwich.edu

-----------== Posted via Deja News, The Discussion Network ==----------
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From adam@princeton.edu Tue Oct 27 15:57:32 MET 1998
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From: adam@princeton.edu (Adam J. Thornton)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Once and Future arrives
Date: 24 Oct 1998 23:11:41 GMT
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Well, I got mine today.  It's beautifully packaged.  Heavy cardboard box,
suitable for a bookcase, with a cover illustration that isn't obviously
related to the game--screaming man's face (Frank Leandro?) some in B/W and
some overlaid with orangy-red.  The blurb, "Tomorrow is yesterday.  Today
never happened.  And Everything is Nothing." is, I think, downright
misleading.  The first two I'll buy.  But the last one suggests a spirit of
nihilism that isn't at all what _Once and Future_ is about.

But then we open the box.

The first thing that jumps out is a bright yellow piece of paper.  It's a
Western Union Telegram informing Mrs. Richard S. Leandro of her son's
death.  I don't know how historically accurate it is, but it looks *good*.

There's a little letter in an envelope.  Frank's last letter to Mom.  With
more of it scribbled on the back of the envelope.  Now, I've lived with
Frank as a guest in my house for several years now, so I know him pretty
well, I guess, but this leter goes a long way to explaining the Frank
Leandro who starts _Once and Future_.

There's the typed letter from the Brigadier General giving more particulars
of Frank's death.  Again, it *feels* like it's authentic, although I'm too
young to have seen one in my family and not close enough to anyone else's
family to have seen such a document.

There's a note to Frank from Vivian, on flowery stationery.  Yeah, I guess
she was a nice girl.

There's a black and white photo of three men--boys, really--in uniform.  I
guess they're Joe, Mark, and Rob.  This is a fantastic piece of packaging.
It looks like what it pretends to be--an Instamatic shot of three of the
guys. 

And then there's the booklet.  The "Noncommissioned Player Guide" is a nice
touch--what we've come to expect.  "What is IF?" and the little demo story.
Very Infocomish, naturally.

There's also a CD.  I guess it's got a game on it or something, but I
haven't opened it yet.

Anyway, this is mighty fine packaging.  It's not quite Infocom in its glory
days--specifically, I wanted Frank's dogtags in there, which *would* have
made it Infocom-in-its-glory-days--but I can find no fault with Mike Berlyn
for not being able to afford the expense or for judging that passing on the
expense would price the game too high.

Beautiful stuff, though.  I'm very, very impressed.

Adam
-- 
adam@princeton.edu 
"There's a border to somewhere waiting, and a tank full of time." - J. Steinman


From mberlyn@cascadepublishing.com Tue Oct 27 15:58:31 MET 1998
Article: 49430 of rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: "Mike Berlyn" <mberlyn@cascadepublishing.com>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Once and Future arrives
Date: Mon, 26 Oct 1998 15:14:25 -0800
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Adam J. Thornton wrote in message <70tmrd$lic$1@cnn.Princeton.EDU>...

>The first thing that jumps out is a bright yellow piece of paper.  It's a
>Western Union Telegram informing Mrs. Richard S. Leandro of her son's
>death.  I don't know how historically accurate it is, but it looks *good*.


It is accurate, both for content and form.

>There's the typed letter from the Brigadier General giving more particulars
>of Frank's death.  Again, it *feels* like it's authentic, although I'm too
>young to have seen one in my family and not close enough to anyone else's
>family to have seen such a document.


This was copied, content and layout, from a MIA letter sent to the mother of
one of the people at the creative agency who worked on the package. It
includes some typos of the original letter.

>There's a black and white photo of three men--boys, really--in uniform.  I
>guess they're Joe, Mark, and Rob.  This is a fantastic piece of packaging.
>It looks like what it pretends to be--an Instamatic shot of three of the
>guys.


This is a real photo, courtesy of one of the other guys (he's in the photo)
who worked on the packaging. It's from the Korean war, though, and not 'Nam.

>Anyway, this is mighty fine packaging.  It's not quite Infocom in its glory
>days--specifically, I wanted Frank's dogtags in there, which *would* have
>made it Infocom-in-its-glory-days--but I can find no fault with Mike Berlyn
>for not being able to afford the expense or for judging that passing on the
>expense would price the game too high.
>
>Beautiful stuff, though.  I'm very, very impressed.


Thanks, Adam. I'm glad you like it.

We also thought of including dog tags, bullet casings and Vietnamese
currency/Army script. Anything 3-D made of metal ended up costing about
$5.00, which was judged too expensive as the cost would have had to have
been passed on.  Vietnamese currency is unavailable through normal channels
in the US, and collectors were unreliable. We couldn't find any sample Army
script of the time.

We spent a lot of time (and money) determining what the "feelies" should be
and, though not of Infocom quality, the package retails for considerably
less than an Infocom package did _years_ ago. We wanted to keep the price
down but still add to the total experience. I hope we accomplished that, and
kicked off this new era of commercial IF with the right spirit.

Thanks again for your kind words.

-- Mike
http://www.cascadepublishing.com





From straight@email.unc.edu Wed Oct 28 16:24:54 MET 1998
Article: 49469 of rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: Michael Straight <straight@email.unc.edu>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Compition Suggestion: Genre Tagging
Date: Tue, 27 Oct 1998 10:53:37 -0500
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On 26 Oct 1998, HarryH wrote:

> Believe it or not, there are categories in last year's comp! Here are the 
> categories in 1997 competition:
> 
> 1. Children Story
> 2. Escape
> 3. Home Adventure
> 4. Simulation
> 5. Ghost Story
> 6. Mission, Errand
> 7. Performance (Play)

Just take one example: "Bear's Night Out" -- this is not a children's
story, it's full of IF in-jokes and it's too hard for children.  If I had
to put it in one of your categories, I'd say "Home Adventure", but that
category of games, where you explore the author's house, utterly bores me. 
Yet I loved "Bear" because it's more about how the bear's perspective
transforms the house then about the house itself.  It's more like Fantasy
in that respect than anything else. 

All of this is to say that I suspect the better a work of IF is, the more
it will resist categorization.  In what category does "Curses" belong?

> Don't like those? Make up your own!
> 1. Beginner (My first stab)
> 2. Feeding.
> 3. Allegory, Theosophy, Transcendence.
> 4. Dip in a Hot Spring.

You end up with categories that are:

1.  So general as to be meaningless - your "Escape" category seems to
imply that "Cask" and "Babel" are the same genre!

2.  So specific as to only apply to one game "Dip in a Hot Spring"?
"Performance (Play)"?

3.  Spoilers.  To say up front that a game is about "Transcendence" could
easily ruin its impact.  "Curses" is a lot more fun if you don't have a
lot of clues about what you're getting into.  Any blurb that would give
you an idea of what "Spider and Web" involves would ruin the opening
scene. 

Looking at your list of categories, I don't see a single one that would
have helped predict which Comp97 games would interest me.

SMTIRCAHIAGEHLT



From obrian@ucsu.Colorado.EDU Wed Oct 28 18:23:20 MET 1998
Article: 49470 of rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: Paul O'Brian <obrian@ucsu.Colorado.EDU>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Competition Suggestion: Genre Tagging
Date: Tue, 27 Oct 1998 10:45:15 -0700
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On Tue, 27 Oct 1998, Lelah Conrad wrote:

> 	I like going into a bookstore and finding things sorted out by
> general category.  I also think blurbs are helpful.  This doesn't mean
> I don't pay attention to book reviews, wander into unexplored
> sections, etc. -- it just means I can do it a little bit more
> methodically.

I like the idea of having short text files that can serve as teasers or
summaries for games. I think that if David Cornelson's IF Library web site
were more widely used, it would be perfect for this purpose. 

I am not as crazy about the idea of separating things into genres. I don't
like it in the publishing world -- I think it does more harm than good
there -- and I don't think we should adpot it into the IF world. I tend to
agree with Michael Straight that many excellent IF works tend to resist
categorization. What is the category of The Edifice? A Bear's Night Out?
Curses? I-0? You could try making up specific categories (Evolutionary,
Non-Human Protagonist, Magic Melange, Sexy Highway Adventure), but, like
"Dip In A Hot Spring," not only would these categories not be generic 
(i.e. they wouldn't define a real genre, at least not in the sense I use
the word), but they wouldn't really tell much more useful information than
the title. You could go the other direction and shoehorn them into more
general categories (Fantasy, Fantasy, Fantasy, and, uh... Fantasy) but
this obviously would yield no new information and would in fact be
misleading. [Lest anyone try to jump on me about I-0, that last 
categorization was a joke. I haven't a clue to what traditional genre I
would assign it.]

> 	How about asking people to send a few lines of
> blurb/teaser/abstract content along with the game, and post it on the
> competition download site?

However, even though I like the idea of having short text blurbs for games
in the Archive, I wouldn't want to make it a rule for the competition. I
think it's an unnecessary restriction on authors, and there may be some
authors (and judges) out there who don't want to create a preconceived
notion of any kind for a game. Also, I think there's the risk that, as
Michael said, people would mistakenly ignore a game they might love, as in
his Bear's Night Out/Home Adventure example. 

> 	Thanks for risking your idea in public.

And same to you. Gee, Lelah, I don't *mean* to be squaring off against you
at every turn. It's just working out that way. I appreciate your desire to
try to improve the competition.

Paul O'Brian
obrian@colorado.edu
http://ucsu.colorado.edu/~obrian





From im@cs.york.ac.uk Fri Oct 30 12:30:16 MET 1998
Article: 49588 of rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: Iain Merrick <im@cs.york.ac.uk>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction,rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Useful Classifications
Date: Thu, 29 Oct 1998 14:05:59 +0000
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Lucian Paul Smith wrote:

[... game classification systems ...]

> Any others?  Comments on the above?

This is a bit vague, but how about 'how much knowledge of the character
and/or universe you are assumed to have'? The categories, roughly
speaking, would be:

- Games where you don't really need to know much about the character or
the world. Anything you need to know will be explained to you. For
instance, _Curses_.

- Games where you _intentionally_ don't know certain things, and the
game revolves around learning them. _Losing Your Grip_ and _Delusions_
come to mind.

- Games where you don't know things which the character really ought to
know. This can be intriguing if it's just done for atmosphere (_So Far_,
IIRC) but bloody annoying if it's part of a puzzle (_Christminster_).
_+=3_ is a degenerate example.

- Games where you need to know things about Real Life. All games do this
to a certain extent, of course, but requiring (say) in-depth knowledge
of nuclear physics is a bit OTT. _Jigsaw_ supposedly required you to
know some Proust (but I didn't, and still managed to solve the relevant
puzzle.)

And possibly:

- Educational games, which tell you things about real life which you
didn't know. Again, all games do this to a certain extent - and again,
_Jigsaw_ is an excellent example.

-- 
Iain Merrick


From erkyrath@netcom.com Tue Nov  3 10:12:44 MET 1998
Article: 49784 of rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: erkyrath@netcom.com (Andrew Plotkin)
Subject: Re: [Inform]: follower.h and enterable objects
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Irene Callaci (icallaci@csupomona.edu) wrote:
> Here's the original react_before Follow code:

> 	if (player in self && noun ~= 0 or self)
> 	{	print "(first getting off ", (the) self, ")^";
> 		PlayerTo(location,1);
> 	}

> I changed it to:

> 	if (player in self)	! also tried: if (parent(player)==self)
> 	{	print "(first getting off ", (the) self, ")^";
> 		move player to location;
> 		rfalse;
> 	}	

> with no change in behavior. If more than one object of class
> Chairs exist in the same location, "self" never evaluates to
> true for the chair in which the player is sitting.

I coded the two crates in _S&W_ just about exactly this way, and it works.
(The latter of your two examples.) (BTW, "if (player in self)", and 
"if (parent(player)==self)" compile to the same Z-code, unless you decide
to get cute and Replace parent().)

Of course, I was doing react_before Exit, in order to replace the standard
library stand-up message. So I had "rtrue" on the end of the routine,
instead of "rfalse".

The rfalse may be the problem. react_before does a scope traversal, like
each_turn -- and like each_turn, it can get confused if the object tree
changes in the middle of things. It's no problem if the react_before
routine moves an object and then returns true; because the traversal stops
there in any case. But when you return false, the traversal may get lost.
That doesn't completely explain your symptoms, but something else may be
confused (including one of us. :-)

I think I recommend never doing this (that is, never move objects in a
react_before if you're planning to return false.)

Possible workarounds:

1: Don't do this work in a react_before; put code in the Follow verb which
tests "if (parent(player) ofclass Chair)..." It's not OO-hip, but it gets
the job done.

2: Write the code as:

   if (player in self)
   {       print "(first getting off ", (the) self, ")^";
           if (self == location)
             print_ret "Help! I'm stuck in ", (a) self, "! [BUG]";
           move player to location;
           <<Follow noun>>;
   }

(remembering that a <<>> implicitly does an rtrue.) This looks weird, but
it's legal. You can put <> and <<>> statements in any phase of the action,
including react_before, and the library doesn't care that you're
re-throwing the same action. 

The extra "self == location" prevents any possibility of an infinite loop,
and it should never be possible in the first place. Just precaution.

(Unless the "chair" is a closed, opaque container? Then maybe location
gets set to the "chair" object, not the surrounding room. I'm not sure of
that. You'd have to handle that separately for a Follow verb anyway.)

--Z

-- 

"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the
borogoves..."


From mol@bartlet.df.lth.se Tue Nov 10 16:09:09 MET 1998
Article: 50189 of rec.arts.int-fiction
Path: news.lth.se!not-for-mail
From: mol@bartlet.df.lth.se (Magnus Olsson)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: The Player in One Sentance
Date: 10 Nov 1998 15:14:14 +0100
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In article <erkyrathF26xGn.G9z@netcom.com>,
Andrew Plotkin <erkyrath@netcom.com> wrote:
>LucFrench (lucfrench@aol.com) wrote:
>
>> And then I thought about other games:
>>
>> "[Player] is a spy." "[Player] is a millenial party goer." "[Player] is a
>> chicken." "[Player] is an American Tourist." "[Player] is a member of the
>> <spoier> family, and is looking for a map." "Player is a text adventurer."
>> "[Player] is <spoiler>."
>
>I think you're both overgeneralizing and asking the wrong question in the
>first place

I agree with Zarf here. And where I think Luc goes wrong is when going
>from the interesting observation that in many games the PC can be
summarized in one sentence, to the conclusion that a character that
can be summarized in one sentence necessarily has no more depth than
that.

Besides, Luc seems to be emulating Procrustes here, stretching or
chopping up his victims to make them the right size for his
theory. For example, saying that the protagonist of "Curses" is a
"member of the Meldrew family, looking for a map" is true, but does it
really convey all the information about the PC that's contained in the
game? It's a bit like saying that Hamlet is an indecisive prince whose
father has been murdered.

But maybe *we*, in criticizing Luc, are asking the wrong question.
Luc, do you mean that you'd like to see IF games where the PC is
defined by a character sheet (with a long list of various attributes
and abilities)? 

The problem with this is that I can't see how this would fit into
the standard IF paradigm. It works in CRPG's, but those games work
in a totally different way. 

-- 
Magnus Olsson (mol@df.lth.se, zebulon@pobox.com)
------    http://www.pobox.com/~zebulon   ------


From jag7@ukc.ac.uk Mon Nov 16 12:09:17 MET 1998
Article: 50430 of rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: JamesG <jag7@ukc.ac.uk>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: The Player in One Sentance
Date: Sat, 14 Nov 1998 17:41:29 +0000
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LucFrench wrote:

On styles of PC:

> What I wanted to rant about, anyway, is the lack of complete player
> characterizations in games.
 
> I mean, even a raw GURPS character sheet give more characterization then most
> works of IF.

True.
 
> [Further digression: I'd sorta like to see a game based upon the premise of the
> player (or the major NPC) being a "Weirdness Magnet".]

[Oooh *yeah!* For those of you without GURPS A "Weirdness Magnet" is the
person that demons stop and chat with, that the only talking do in 20th
century Earth come sto with problems, that gets invited to tea by
strange entities from other dimensions... It's generally a good idea to
steer clear of Weirdness Magnets.]
 
> What I'd like to know, is this this a bad thing?

In my humblest of opinions <g> it can be a bad thing. 

<ramble mode>
In adventures that offer "You're you" I tend to get stuck very quickly
because I'm not a kleptomaniac psycopath who'll steal whatever's not
nailed down, kill anything that stands in his way, and press buttons at
random without any idea of the consequences. Any game that assumes that
I will have taken an object "just in case" and won't let me instead go
"Ah, a heavy slab - the crowbar I passed three rooms back will fix it!"
annoys me. I don't go around pressing buttons or cutting ropes or
breaking mirrors just to see what will happen, I don't do it IRL, so "I"
won't do it in a game. Present me with the character in detail though,
and I'll do what the character would do - if the character is the sort
who lies, steals and kills, I'll lie steal and kill in character.
Sometimes not knowing enough about the character is a disadvantage here,
for example in "Christminster" I was originally working under the
assumption that Cristabel *wouldn't* resort to acts of vandelism... 

Looking through my list of game ideas I a mix - in one extreme I have a
game where the PC could be pretty much anyone from an adventurous
piratical type to a much more careful and cautious character, but it's
not exactly a traditional IF game (and will probably prove tricky to
code).

In another game the PC is very detailed becuase large elements are based
on PC/NPC and NPC/NPC interaction and so knowledge of who the PC is is
needed to judge how the NPCs react to her (this will probably be even
trickier to code, not due to any break from the IF style but because of
the detail of interactions needed. Don't expect to see it anytime soon).

The remaining ideas I have scrawled down tend to lie somewhere in the
middle, near the "One Sentence PC": <Player> is an escaped prisoner,
<player> is a secret agent, <player> is a homicide detective, <player>,
is an eighteenth century nobleman retelling his legendary exploits to a
group of companions, <player> is a dungeon, etc. Some of them may gain
more detail if and when they reach the development stage - in many the
setting is the most detailed element of the initial idea, in others it's
the idea of how far I could twist the expected image of a text adventure
into something totally different (I'm kind of nuts like that but I don't
figure I can do anything nuttier than Freefall...)

</ramble mode>

JamesG,
must find the time to do some coding...
************************************************************************
*  Official RASSM Organiser.          Will design starships for food.  *
*                Another original SF short story uploaded              *
*      (-o-)   http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Corridor/2843   <*>     *
*           "If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not        *
*              be called research, would it?" Albert Einstein          *
************************************************************************




From Taro.Ogawa@navy.gov.au Mon Nov 16 12:12:29 MET 1998
Article: 50492 of rec.arts.int-fiction
Date: Mon, 16 Nov 1998 17:21:18 +1000
From: nobody@student.anu.edu.au
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Subject: Re: The Player in One Sentance
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It is now officially Monday Afternoon and not Friday Afternoon so i can
bite. Yes it may be Sunday somewhere, but fish probably don't read this
newsgroup. And besides if there were fish, they'd be biting too.


[Minor Spoiler Warning]




















In article lucfrench@aol.com (LucFrench) wrote:
> I was looking over the compition games, and I noticed that many of them had\
> two styles of PC:
> 
> 1. The player is only just beyond/below the characterization in ADVENT.
> (Enlightenment, or Fifteen, for example.)
I must admit, that my first reaction when I read this was "hackles up",
since to give my character much more characterization than Zork/Advent
would have been counter to the spirit of the game (Enlightenment, not
Fifteen). On the other hand, the character can be summed up in one
sentence if I chose to do so: "[Player] is an experienced amoral text
adventurer who got careless". Given that you are trolling for discussion
and not for flames, I choose not to look under this particular bridge
before crossing it =) Enlightenment was always about a situation, and I
don't think of it as a work of art, but as a lovingly crafted Chinese Box
(Hey .. you may not like it - and that's fine - but _I_ do ... or at least
I used to before being forced to reread it ad nauseum ... =)

> 2. The Player can be summed up in one sentance. "[Player] is a detective hired
Yyyyyessss ... 


> And then I thought about other games:
> "[Player] is a spy." "[Player] is a millenial party goer." "[Player] is a
> chicken." "[Player] is an American Tourist." "[Player] is a member of the
> <spoier> family, and is looking for a map." "Player is a text adventurer."
> "[Player] is <spoiler>."
But one can reduce anything to one line ... lessee
"[Player] is three different high schoolers."
"[Player] is a swashbuckling archaeologist."
"[Player] is a computer simulation of a person."

> What I wanted to rant about, anyway, is the lack of complete player
> characterizations in games.
> I mean, even a raw GURPS character sheet give more characterization then most
> works of IF.
This is for four main reasons:
#1 The nature of IF means that it's very hard to respond to things the way
that a human moderated game can. If you created GURPS on a computer with
pure computer moderation, then you'd see the non-mechanistic skills vanish
very quickly.
#2 Because of the nature of human RPGs, a player can very easily put their
own personal spin on their character within the bounds of the character
sheet. CRPGs find this a lot harder.
#3 Historically, IF has been about puzzles. The libraries are geared
towards puzzles. The mindset of players is by-and-large geared towards
puzzles. Furthermore, it's harder to get useful realistic interaction
between characters. Parry and Eliza don't count =). One of the comp games
this year solved it in an interesting way (It's been round in graphic
CRPGs for a while), and while it worked well for that game, I wouldn't
like to see it in wide usage since it's always struck me as being
obviously mechanistic. Have you any particularly good NPCs in mind? I've
generally found them to fall into two categories - the push a button
recorded message, and the cypher.
#4 Reiterating. NPCs are hard to do well. It's a lot easier to break
mimesis with an NPC than with a "machine". With a machine there are only
so many different permutations you need to catch, and you can default the
rest. With a character, there are often little things that they ought to
know, that the author has forgotten to catch. With time this can be fixed,
but ...

> [Further digression: I'd sorta like to see a game based upon the premise of
> the player (or the major NPC) being a "Weirdness Magnet".]
 
> What I'd like to know, is this this a bad thing?
No. "Leather Goddesses of Phobos" was a good thing ... But then, the
wierdness magnet in that could be summed up in one sentence too.
<smiles as sweet as saccharine>

--OH.


From mkimball@xmission.com Mon Nov 16 18:04:44 MET 1998
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LucFrench <lucfrench@aol.com> wrote:
> >Graham owes you *NOTHING*.

> Bzzt, wrong, but thank you for playing!

> Unfortunatly, one of the duties anybody who builds a system has is
> spelled out rather clearly in "The Cathedral And The Bazaar":

> "When you lose interest in a program, your last duty to it is to
> hand it off to a competent successor."

Are you sure Graham is playing by Eric Raymond's game?  Inform isn't
exactly the canonical Bazaar project.  From what I've seen, Graham's
development style has been *very* Cathedral.

> It is his *duty* to hand it off, if he has lost interest in Inform.

> It is his *duty* to at least describe why he has been silent.

> These are some of the *duty*s of a maintainer.

It is only his duty if he believes it is his duty.  Regardless of what
ESR says, unpaid freeware developers only have the duties they choose
to have.

Sure, it would be nice if he would make some statement.  It would also
be nice if Inform had a more free license.  But neither of these
things are any sort of obligation.

-- 
Matt Kimball
mkimball@xmission.com


From fake-mail@nospam.ca Mon Nov 16 18:05:00 MET 1998
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From: fake-mail@nospam.ca (Neil K.)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: A fable (was Re: [Inform] future)
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 Sigh. Okay, against my better judgement here I am getting into this
again. I'm also going to assume, probably naively, that you're serious and
not being a total troll.

 stuart_moore@my-dejanews.com wrote:

> For how long? And was Mike as >completely< non-responsive towards IF matters
> as Graham is being now? I know Graham's still posting - rec.arts.drwho is
> where he is at.

 Mike Roberts pulled back from the IF world for a good couple years, as I
recall. As is his right. I know I've burned out on various projects over
time, and it can be very hard to want to deal with them during that
burnt-out point.

 As for Graham posting to a Dr. Who newsgroup - so what? He's got his life
and he's welcome to spend his time however he wishes. You sound rather
petulant, you know.

> Cry-babies. Take TADS' development up themselves, they should have.

 No they shouldn't have. TADS is Mike Roberts' copyrighted property, and
the licence agreement does not say "do with it as you will." Besides, it's
a moot point. Back in those days the source code to TADS was not publicly
available - only Mike had a copy.

 The same licensing restrictions apply to Inform, incidentally. If you
were to read the Designer's Manual you'd notice that not only is Inform
Graham's copyrighted property, but that "distributed copies [can not be]
substantially different from those archived by the author."

 Now if you want to argue that Mike and Graham should have GPL'd the
source or made it totally public domain or whatever, fine. But they chose
not to, as is their right.

> HOW LONG AFTER HE HAD ORIGINALLY SAID HE WAS NO LONGER DEVELOPING TADS, NEIL?
> AND, UNLIKE GRAHAM, AT LEAST HE >MADE< A FUCKING ANNOUNCEMENT ABOUT IT'S
> FUTURE.

 Mike Roberts never once said he was no longer developing TADS, Mr.
Shouty. And he chose to make a fucking announcement about future
directions with TADS only after a quiet period of a year or two. (And
another year and a half elapsed before HTML TADS first appeared.) I don't
know why he didn't say anything during that time, but I can guess -
deciding what to do with the development of a system as big as TADS or
Inform is a very large time commitment and not a decision to be taken
lightly.

> Note this is being e-mailed to Graham too, *u**-word and all. And I never
> swear unless I am VERY angry about something.

 Are you deliberately trying to be a jerk here, or do you really have this
bizarre idea that Graham owes you something?

 Graham with Inform, like Mike with TADS and Kent with Hugo, chose to
produce a piece of work and let other people use it freely. He owes you
nothing. You, at the very least, owe him a modicum of civility.

 Now I realize as much as anyone how frustrating it can be if the author
of your language of choice chooses not to update the software as often as
you'd like. But that's life. No money exchanged hands; no contractual
obligations were signed. You're building your work on the good will of
another. If it bothers you that your project is tied to the work of
someone else like this, then create your own system.

 And stop being a crybaby.

 - Neil K.

 PS: though I might add that it has been Graham's modus operandi in the
past to work quietly on a major new project, then release it without any
warning.

-- 
 t e l a  computer consulting + design   *   Vancouver, BC, Canada
      web: http://www.tela.bc.ca/tela/   *   email: tela @ tela.bc.ca


From jcmason@uwaterloo.ca Tue Nov 17 09:43:39 MET 1998
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From: jcmason@uwaterloo.ca (Joe Mason)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: The Player in One Sentance
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Xref: news.lth.se rec.arts.int-fiction:50533

JamesG <jag7@ukc.ac.uk> wrote (not insribed, ok? wrote):
>
>The only problem is implementation, due to the dispersed nature of being
>a dungeon, it may be a case of having you move your "attention" around
>or simply following the invading adventurer, though I'd prefer something
>more flexible...

The adventurer touches the mirror.

> MOVE MIRROR ROOM TO COLD PASSAGE
You subtly rearrange yourself.

The adventurer leaves the mirror room, and seems surprised when it isn't where
it expected to be.  It walks back in and touches the mirror again.

> MOVE MIRROR ROOM TO NARROW PASSAGE
You subtly rearrange yourself.

The adventurer leaves the mirror room again and looks around the narrow
passage with a satisfied expression.  After a few moments it walks back through
the mirror room, heading for the cave.  As it passes the mirror it looks at it
with a new respect.

> SNICKER
Pleased with yourself, are you?

Joe
-- 
I think OO is great...  It's no coincidence that "woohoo" contains "oo" twice.
-- GLYPH


From fake-mail@anti-spam.address Wed Nov 18 09:28:37 MET 1998
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From: fake-mail@anti-spam.address (Neil K.)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: A fable (was Re: [Inform] future)
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 Such lack of faith. Graham has abandoned the land of Inform, cry the
prophets of doom, and after only a few months without updates.

 Allow me to relate a fable to you. 

 For many years the land of TADS benefitted from a veritable bounty of
regular updates from Mike Roberts. People came to its rich and fertile
valleys, and they tilled the soil of the land of TADS, bringing forth a
multitude of games. The ranks of the people were swelled by refugees from
the abandoned cities of AGT and AdvSys. Many fruitful years of development
passed. But surely as day must turn to night, Mike came to be tired of his
labours. And a heavy silence befell the land.

And lo, despair struck the people. "What have we done?" they cried. "No
updates have come forth from the towers of Palo Alto! Are we unworthy?
Surely, we are doomed!" They rent their garments, wailed to the heavens,
and the great halls of raif echoed with their grief.

 It was a time of great darkness. Many of the people, fearing that the
land of TADS was indeed lost, made the perilous journey across barren
deserts to the land of Inform where, it was said, Graham Nelson issued
forth bountiful updates from the high courts of Oxford.

 But as surely as night must turn day, Mike rose again from his slumber.
The remaining faithful gazed in wonder and awe as a new sun rose over the
cold, wintry land - the sun of HTML. And lo, there was great celebration.
MIDI files! Digitized WAVs! Lossy and non-lossy graphics! The golden skull
was brought forth from its cave, and the fatted chicken slaughtered. And
thus it came to pass that the faithful found their unflagging devotion
rewarded.

 Or something.

 - Neil K.

-- 
 t e l a  computer consulting + design   *   Vancouver, BC, Canada
      web: http://www.tela.bc.ca/tela/   *   email: tela @ tela.bc.ca


From sgranade@bohr.phy.duke.edu Wed Nov 18 13:38:44 MET 1998
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From: Stephen Granade <sgranade@bohr.phy.duke.edu>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Arrival post-mortem
Date: Tue, 17 Nov 1998 18:05:28 -0500
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One of the magazines I occasionally read has a regular feature in which
they invite designers whose games have just been released to discuss them.
The designers seem more than happy to perform an autopsy on their game and
talk about their successes and misses. I like the idea, and I especially
like the imagery of a released game as something which has inexplicably
died, so I thought I'd run with it.

If you haven't played Arrival and you don't want the experience spoiled by
the sight of its messy innards dissected on the newsgroup, please skip
this message. Never fear--you can always retrieve it through the wonder
that is DejaNews.






















---== The Setup ==---

The number one question people tend to ask is, "Where do you get your
ideas?" (Okay, they don't actually ask *me* that question, but other
writers/designers tell me it's a popular question.) You'd probably be
better off asking Andrew, Adam C., or Christopher Huang that question,
because the idea for Arrival came from a pretty mundane source: I can't
draw.

See, when I found out about HTML TADS, I thought, "This is really neat.
Boy, would I ever love to make a graphical game." I put a blank sheet of
paper on my desk, titled it "My First HTML TADS Game," and stared at it.

I ended up staring at it on and off for about a week. Other than the
title, the page stayed blank. I didn't want to start planning a game until
I had decided what kind of graphics I was going to use since, if I were
going to make a game with graphics, I'd have to come up with said
graphics. Somehow.

For a while I thought of making black-and-white stick figures. Hey, I can
draw stick-figures like nobody's business. Unfortunately, no stick-figure
story suggested itself. At the end of the week, I had come to the
conclusion that I was permanently stymied by my inability to draw any
better than an eight-year-old.

In hindsight, it seems glaringly obvious: make my protagonist match my
drawing skills. If only I had paid $70 for that time machine, I could have
saved myself a week's worth of brainstorming.

I have a vivid recollection of me at age eight, daydreaming about what
would happen if aliens ever crashed in my backyard. In half of the
daydreams, the aliens were good and kind and, out of gratitude for the
help I gave them, anointed me President of the Universe. (The fact that
the office of President of the Universe was probably an elected one never
crossed my mind.) In the other half, I saved the world from the horrible
alien menace.

This seemed like as good an idea as any, and better than some. I decided
that saving the world from aliens was much more fun than just helping them
out. To top it off, I decided to give myself some extra wiggle room by
deliberately setting out to make a B-grade sci fi game. Bad pictures?
Goofy special effects? It's...deliberate. Yeah, that's it. Besides, I
hadn't written a just-for-fun game in a while, and this seemed like a good
chance to create one.

I was most likely influenced by a strange mix of Mystery Science Theatre
3000, Calvin and Hobbes, and any film directed by Mr. Corman. The only
event in Arrival taken more-or-less directly from my childhood was the
comment about knocking the mortar off of bricks. Ever done that? I spent a
summer doing that for my dad in order to save up enough money to buy one
of those inflatable rafts. Despite saying "never again," I found myself
*again* knocking mortar off of bricks this summer, only for my own
apartment instead of for my parents' house.

---== Beginning Implementation ==---

On the first day, I made my best and worst design decisions back-to-back.
The good decision: I decided to implement Arrival as a straight text
adventure before adding whiz-bang graphics. I didn't plan any of the
graphics or sounds when I started. As I went along, I noted down objects,
scenes, and events which I thought should be illustrated and then got back
to the writing and programming.

The bad decision: I did very little initial planning and design. Hey, it's
a short demo, right? I'm going to do this in two months and release it
long before the competition. I mean, I just want to slap something
together. Who needs serious planning for something like this?

Geez. Dumb, dumb, dumb. Skipping the initial design steps didn't
permanently cripple Arrival, but it made my task much harder and resulted
in a game which wasn't quite what it could have been. You can skimp on the
design for a game this size and get by, but it's more work overall.

All I did before coding was make a rough layout of the spaceship and plan
the ending puzzle. Everything else was done off-the-cuff.

The only item of interest (to me, at least) in the inital coding was my
decision to break the fourth wall in order to keep the player from going
south in the living room. I didn't want the house just to consist of a
hallway, a kitchen, and a living room, but I also didn't want the player
wandering around the house--the action is supposed to center on the aliens
and the backyard. Since I was already going for over-the-top silliness,
why not throw in an occasional sarcastic narrator who doesn't mind
breaking the fourth wall?

---== NPC Interaction ==---

I've never felt comfortable with NPC design. Do I make them respond to
items and objects? Should I use a branching tree conversational system?
Should I keep the player from talking to them at all? This ambivalence
tends to manifest itself in strange ways in my games--people with no
mouths, people who are pets, people who are only a head, etc.

My approach in Arrival was a bit uneven. Initially you only interacted
with Zigurt and Floban twice: once at the beginning, and then again when
you brought them the things they wanted. Mom and dad sat in the living
room doing nothing. It wasn't until one of my beta-testers pointed it out
that I realized that Arrival was lifeless.

So I slapped on some more NPC interaction. Mom and dad became more active
once I introduced the "getting them out of the room" puzzle--more on that
in a moment. I added two key bits to Zigurt and Floban. One, I let you
watch them get the cap back off the tylenol bottle. Originally they
vanished into the aether, then returned with an open pill bottle. Two, I
gave them responses to every item in the ship's hold.

---== Puzzles ==---

Some of the Arrival puzzles I like. Some of them I don't.

Filling the gas tank with water is just this side of unreasonable. I
wanted the player to have to make a lateral shift--the aliens are
described as disliking water; they want rock salt to dehydrate; and, gee,
look at this, I have a garden hose and access to the fuel tank.
Unfortunately, most people just tried to wet the aliens down with the
hose.

Closing the pill bottle to get the translation book is, while not
well-motivated, the puzzle I am most satisfied with. There is no time
limit. You can experiment. You cannot get into an unwinnable state while
fiddling with it. The timing elements aren't too difficult and do not
require the use of restore or undo. Unfortunately, that puzzle is
completely unnecessary.

The "get your parents out of the living room" puzzle is evil. It was added
in long after the rest of the game was nominally finished, and it shows.
The puzzle initially appears hard to time correctly; if you hang around in
the kitchen, mom will send you directly to your room; you can only tell
dad once about the lights. In the next version, should you hang around the
kitchen, Mom will say that she'll send you to your room after she's done
cleaning up, and it'll take her much longer to clean up. You will also be
able to tell dad about the lights more than once, and each time he'll go
to the backyard. Granted, these changes won't make the puzzle a good one,
but it will make it a passable one.

---== HTML Stuff ==---

I don't do a lot of fancy HTML formatting in Arrival. The two big flashy
HTML things I did were the compass rose and the web page. For the web page
I looked around, found some pages which I thought were goofy, and stole
elements from several of them. The compass rose I did using a table and a
lot of trial and error. (compass.t coming soon to a GMD near you.)

I learned HTML by looking at people's web pages, so I can't really
recommend any books. If you're writing an HTML TADS game, don't sweat it
too much. Know how to use image tags and some of the basic text mark-up
tags and you should be set. HTML TADS games aren't web pages, so don't go
too crazy.

---== Organic Growth ==---

A lot of Arrival grew like The Blob on speed. Since I didn't do much
initial design, I had to apply a lot of spackle and grout later. Some of
the cracks showed more than others. See which of the following you caught:

The obsession with cleaning items slowly grew over the course of writing
the game. First I had the player clean dishes. Then I needed a way to keep
the player from wanting to open the Weber. Then it blossomed from there,
until it seemed like all Kid thought about was cleaning stuff.

Originally the exam room was just for fun. When I decided to let you see
how Zigurt and Floban opened the tylenol bottle, I decided that they'd
most logically (!) use the exam room tools.

At first, the aliens just asked for rock salt. Then I thought it'd be
funny if one of the aliens (Floban, as it turned out) had a predilection
for processed snack cakes. Finally, I added the Precious Moments doll. The
knick-knacks had always been in the living room, and the aliens' hold had
always been stuffed with kitsch, so it made sense that they'd want more.
"Beauty is in the eye of the alien" and all that.

While the map of the ship was planned from the beginning, the compass rose
in the status bar was added two days before the competition. I'm not sure
I'm pleased with it, and I'd be interested in knowing how many people made
it go away ten seconds after they started playing.

As mentioned, the "get your parents out of the living room" puzzle was a
latecomer to the party.

---== Pseudonym ==---

A few words on my choice of a pseudonym.

Arrival is very different from _Losing Your Grip_, probably my best-known
work. In part I was afraid that people would come to Arrival expecting a
smaller version of _Grip_. I was also interested to see how people would
react to the game if they had few preconceptions about the author at all
going in.

The name "Samantha Clark" is in honor of two of my relatives.

---== Random Thoughts ==---

Zigurt and Floban look like they do because of the particular difficulty
of working with generic Play-Doh. I wanted the aliens to be strongly
associated with color. When deciding what they would look like, I asked
myself, "What shapes can I reasonably make with generic Play-Doh that
tends to dry out quickly?" The ball was my obvious first choice. Floban
almost looked like a giant snake ("Hey, these are easy!"), until I decided
that a snake with tentacles was way too Freudian for such a light-hearted
game.

The graphics turned out better than I could have ever imagined. My
favorite is the picture of Zigurt and Floban shooting out the backyard
light. Every time I see Zigurt hefting that Han Solo blaster, I get the
giggles.

I'm also extremely pleased with the opening conversation involving Kid,
Zigurt, and Floban. I rewrote that scene over and over, occasionally
pacing about the apartment and muttering bits of dialog to myself.

I wanted the player to have a semi-specific personality, but not lock the
player into a specific gender. I toyed with giving the player an ambiguous
name, but finally decided that calling the player Kid all the time was a
reasonable solution and fit with the mood of the game.

Having someone run around with two pie plates dangling from a string while
you take pictures is a lot of fun.

The biggest disappointment of the game for me was mom and dad. They had
such promise, but I didn't do much with them. Bad author. Bad! Bad!

The fact that I have now placed fourth in two competitions has not been
lost on me. What this fact signifies is open to interpretation.

One of my beta-testers suggested that I discourage people from playing
Arrival unless they could see the pictures. I was tempted, but my
overweening need for everyone to play my game won out.

Something I had not expected was how Zigurt and Floban would become real
to me. At first they were fairly generic B-movie aliens. Then they started
developing separate personalities, until each of them had a distinctive
manner to them. Zigurt was the more stable, mature one, while Floban was
more flighty and easily upset. Floban was, of course, the Mission
Commander--alien bureaucracies are no more competent than human ones.

That's it, really. For the most part, I was very happy with how Arrival
turned out, its flaws to the nonce.

Stephen

--
  Stephen Granade                | Interested in adventure games?
  sgranade@phy.duke.edu          | Visit Mining Co.'s IF Page
  Duke University, Physics Dept  |   http://interactfiction.miningco.com



