Thomas et al, I’m not sure i agree with the notion that authors implement guess the verb puzzles deliberately. Some early games might have done so, as would games parodying the difficulty and absurdity of those—Scott Adams is a prime example. In general though, I think that such stuff fell out of favor relatively early on, and it’s far more likely that authors accidentally failed to account for reasonable synonyms and syntaxes. This is one area where beta testers can help, and it’s often worth checking a suspect game’s credits or about section to see if they are acknowledged. Outside testers can find weirdness in games the author’s own biases wouldn’t have seen. Yours, Zack. On Jul 10, 2013, at 10:32 AM, Thomas Ward <thomasward1...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi Jim, > > I often think that is intentional on the part of the author to make it > difficult to guess the correct command. Some find such guess the verb > situations as challenging, but I find it just annoying when I know > what I am suppose to do but can not tell the game what to do because > it has to be worded a certain way. > > For example, take the game House of the Midnight Sun. There is a pile > of straw behind an old broken down cottage you need to set on fire > with the tinderbox you find in the basement. You can't tell it > specifically to burn straw, light straw, start fire,or anything like > that. Instead you need to get near the straw and do "strike tinderbox" > and that will start the fire. If you examined the underside of the > tinderbox you would know that, but if not you'll drive yourself crazy > trying various commands such as "burn straw" to get the fire started. > > I often wish that such games would allow for more than one command to > do the same thing. Alternate phrasing and structure of commands would > go along way to making IF games more entertaining for the casual IF > player. However, a lot of the people who create them now are hardcore > IF players, and enjoy the difficulty of puzzles and obscure commands. > Thus I don't see that issue improving any. > > Cheers! > > On 7/10/13, Jim Kitchen <j...@kitchensinc.net> wrote: >> >> Hi Thomas, >> >> You got that right! and as I said to Lisa, some of the interpreters were >> better than others. But it sure often was frusterating trying to figure out >> the correct verb, syntax etc even when you knew what you needed to do. >> >> BFN >> >> Jim > > --- > Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org > If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. > You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at > http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. > All messages are archived and can be searched and read at > http://www.mail-archive.com/gamers@audyssey.org. > If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, > please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gamers@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
