to be honest sebby I disagree on the freedom angle. You are still and always dealing with a computer program, admittedly a very clever and sophisticated one, but one which has no actual cognitive grasp of what is happening and cannot respond dynamically the way a human Gm can.
Take the troll in zork. If I encountered the troll in a tabletop game, probably the last thing I'd do is either fight it or give it the food, I'd try to think of a more interesting solution. Maybe I'd have my character rub the clove of garlic on some convenient cloth and chuck that over the troll's nose and eyes, thus making it unable to smell or hear then sneak past it. Or maybe I'd stand on the steps above the troll and drop something heavy down on it's head. Or maybe I'd insult the troll then lead it to the waterfall, get it to charge then have it fall off. All of these would be valid responses to a troll in a tabletop game, and sinse you'd have a human Gm who was as adaptable as you, she/he could have the troll respond accordingly. In tradditional if though, you can't do any of these things unless the author of the game happened to think of it. What is equally frustrating is that you might have the right idea, but the wrong way of phrasing your command. For example in the Pentori prequel there is a fireplace, which when you examine it with something gleaming in it. i tried get all fireplace, enter fireplace, north (sinse I was at the north end of the hall), and various other commands. the game kept telling me "i don't know how to" the correct command as it turned out (and it took an E-mail to malinch to find this), was in! for goodness sake! _place_holder; To me that "freedom" you speak of is more like playing an action game with no information about what the keyboard controls are. Your hitting every letter on the keyboard and function key trying to find what is jump, what is run, what is shoot and getting no where. I personally don't care about the in put in if. I want my in put (as in any game), to facilitate my interaction, to let me control my character's actions and progress through the challenges of the game, not to be a constant barrier in which I'm playing "guess the commamnd" with the author. Myself, I tend to think if a computer game is a program, treat it like one. computer programs are only adaptable within a certain marjin of error, so why not treat them as such/ after all if games like the choiceofgames titles, certain of the better quality Eamons such as Runcible cargo or Thraw's ring, not to mention games like King of Dragon pass show, you don't need to rely on the player guessing the intentions of the author to have a complex and many layered game with multiple actions and consequences. Indeed I'd argue that with a limited parser it is easier for players to find! those extra pathways and scenes sinse they are more clearly able to determine what they have not tried before and try something else in the future. URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=179037#p179037 _______________________________________________ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
