>True, but it seems that finding that cutoff point between enough
>detail to be convincing and overburdening the player is very difficult.
As with novels, this is part of the craft. I doubt there's a mechanical
method that answers these kinds of questions. (Not a fun answer, of
course.)
>Anyway, I don't mean to pick on your points, Dave. Just that I'm frustrated
>with the conventional tools we seem to have at our disposal for modelling
>text-based worlds.
I empathize with you. I felt this way many times while writing _Legend_.
I guess it depends on how you feel about _Legend_, but I wouldn't
underestimate the effectiveness of cut scenes. Instead of making your
player go ">n, n, n, n" past five different buildings, you could have them
type ">n" and noninteractively walk them past scenery that doesn't matter.
I do find it encouraging that separate people have cited all three of the
Barfee Outlet, the sequence on Foon, and the New Hell bit as portions of
the game that evoked very vivid mental pictures. These are quite different
from each other when it comes to level of interactivity. So I think many
different styles can work.
Dave Baggett
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dmb@ai.mit.edu
"Mr. Price: Please don't try to make things nice! The wrong notes are *right*."
--- Charles Ives (note to copyist on the autograph score of The Fourth of July)