Re: Superfluous rooms (was: Gameplay theory: leaving object behind..)


21 Sep 1995 14:56:20 GMT

In article <43qr1c$h2g@blues.epas.utoronto.ca>,
Walter (or maybe Carrie) OGrady <wogrady@blues.epas.utoronto.ca> wrote:
>I'm glad IF-writers have taken to putting detailed, well-written
>descriptions of the rooms in their games; I tried a "Scott Adams" one
>once and I couldn't stand it, all one-word descriptions and nothing
>for the imagination to go on.

How quickly we forget.

The Scott Adams games, granted, were crude both in paucity of description
and in terms of the parser, which was three letters per word, two words
(NOUN VERB, or really NOU VER). Yet we must consider that they were
designed to run on machines with as little as 4K of RAM (if the text could
remain in ROM on a cartridge); the whole game was usually well under 16K, I
think.

So it's not really that the writers have gotten better, just that their
tools--and their audiences' tools--have.

Adam

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