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From: Deinst@world.std.com (David M Einstein)
Subject: Re: The Future of IF
Message-ID: <Gup1GD.BBE@world.std.com>
Date: Wed, 17 Apr 2002 03:53:01 GMT
References: <f904a017.0204151241.2a56ae9e@posting.google.com> <emshort-1604020400380001@dialup-209.246.209.152.dial1.philadelphia1.level3.net>
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Emily Short (emshort@mindspring.com) wrote:
: In article <f904a017.0204151241.2a56ae9e@posting.google.com>,
: jaikin@musicplayer.com (Jim Aikin) wrote:

: > I'm wondering how other IF authors see the future of this genre. Not
: > in a technical sense (more sophisticated parsers, etc.), though that's
: > always an interesting topic, but in a broader sense.

: the book-reading audience will really want to get into it unless/until we
: have something a lot closer to natural language parsing, which is not a
: matter of designing some cool interfaces that look like pages, but of
: major linguistics/AI/cognitive science research and development.

  The problem is not so much the parser as the other end.  The reason that
adventurespeak exists is the same reason that ask/tell and menus exist for
npc conversation, there is no way to handle all of the cases.  If one is
willing to relinquish control one can make IRC chatterbots, but it is hard
to make a coherent statement with a chatterbot.  The difficulty of having
the game respond in ways that the author can accept, let alone approve of,
increases dramatically with the size of the allowed input.
   Deinst

Waiting with bated breath for Savoir-Faire.
