I've been following the threads on this group for awhile and can't seem to
make heads or tails of it. A lot about quantum mechanics and phone calls
from the future, but not a lot about the art of IF. So, since I've
started on writing up my new adventure, I thought I'd start an art of IF
designing thread.
While writing my room descriptions, I was struck with some of the things
I don't like about IF games and some of the things I do like. The main
thing it boiled down to was mapping. I'm sure I read a thread about this
about a year ago or so, but what the hay, it's time for some rehashing of
old threads.
The thing that will make me drop a game faster than a hot potato
is an inability to map the game world. And this inability really bothers
me. I mean, here we are trying to simulate "real life" to some extent and
we put in places that can't be mapped without explanations. I will use
two examples of "mazes" that I think exemplify my thoughts. The maze from
Zork has got to be the stupidest thing I ever encountered. Can someone
explain to me how, after leaving a room to the north, I don't know that
I've been turned around and am now facing west? Or that I've returned to
the room I just came from? I can understand if I've come upon a room from
a different angle that I don't recognize it, but if I just left a room, I
should know where exactly I am now in relation to that room.
As opposed to this, an "easier" game Wishbringer had the trip up
the mountainside. If you didn't map it, you had to remember from memory
which way to turn or you'd fall off the cliff. This makes sense and is an
appropriate "mapping problem" in my books. The first maze is an extreme
case of "mapping problems" that seem to pop up time and time again. Even
in those games that advertise "NO MAZES", they still have rooms where you
leave north and come in facing east without explaining this to the player.
These puzzles are ones I consider to be really brute force puzzles (kinda
like that clothing thing in 3+=, 8->).
To me, I should be able to map everywhere my persona goes in the
game world. I may not be able to get everywhere, but my map should show
me where I've been and how I got to where I am. In Curses, (which I've
just retried), this happens quite nicely in the beginning (which is the
farthest I ever get! 8-<). There are eight or nine rooms or so, and I
have to solve some puzzles to go further (like, what the hell is a
dumbwaiter???). In my own game, the opening has fifteen rooms. The
player can initially visit 9 of them and they are easily mappable and tend
to indicate that more remains to be discovered. In the closing part, I
have a maze (it's part of the norse mythos) but it's not one of those
annoying indescript room mazes. The player is able to distinguish rooms
from each other and knows how to backtrack to the room he just left, but
there are an amazing number of dead-ends, and loop-backs, that make it a
maze game. (The map was actually taken from one of Adrian Fisher's
designs) (Fisher is an expert maze maker who designs about 100 real-life
mazes a year.)
This leads me onto my next topic of automapping, but I'll leave
that to a future thread. For now, I'd appreciate hearing other game
designers' and game players' opinions about this. Please post to the news
group as I'd like to put some IF discussion back in this group. 8->
-- Sent to you from the desk of Jean Duteau: GM of the Ottawa Bullets (FHL[2-4]) GM of the FHL Montreal team FHL Statistician & FHL[4] Commissioner