Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction,rec.arts.int.fiction
Path: nntp.gmd.de!Dortmund.Germany.EU.net!Germany.EU.net!howland.reston.ans.net!news.moneng.mei.com!bloom-beacon.mit.edu!news.kei.com!eff!news.duke.edu!agate!news.ucdavis.edu!csus.edu!netcom.com!librik
From: librik@netcom.com (David Librik)
Subject: Re: Ancient TRS-80 Text Adventures
Message-ID: <librikDCxEK3.J1v@netcom.com>
Organization: Icy Waters Underground, Inc.
References: <MERRYMAN.6.000C6B3A@medtronic.com> <3vrcbm$lnj@fountain.mindlink.net>         <librikDCruyz.JyG@netcom.com> <GDR11.95Aug4111159@stint.cl.cam.ac.uk>
Date: Mon, 7 Aug 1995 05:43:15 GMT
Lines: 127
Sender: librik@netcom20.netcom.com

gdr11@cl.cam.ac.uk (Gareth Rees) writes:

>David Librik <librik@netcom.com> wrote [edited a bit]:
>> Pearson had the best sense of plotting I've ever seen in an adventure
>> author.  Part of the reason for this was his interfaces.  It would
>> override your commands when something was happening to you.  This was
>> actually a good idea; it gave the player a feeling that his character
>> was not as much of a "totally isolated, independent actor" as other
>> games do.
>> 
>> Pearson made significant inroads onto the problem of believability in
>> non-player actors in a very simple way: constrain *everything* the
>> player can do, so he gets used to it -- then the "flimsiness" of most
>> NPCs doesn't become quite so apparent.  And keep NPCs and players
>> *busy* when they're together.

>These techniques sound very interesting; certainly they're like nothing
>produced by Infocom or more recently.  I would love to see a transcript
>of one of Pearson's games.

Anyone used to modern Infocom-style adventures would get frustrated.
There are very few commands that work, and there is a depressing degree
of "guess-the-verb" in Pearson's games.  If there's a hole in the
wall, CLIMB HOLE works, but anywhere else it doesn't know that command.

Once you get used to the constraints on what you can do -- once you
expect that you can't simply examine, interrogate, and mess around with
everything you see and find -- then you when you are rescued from a
helicopter crash by a Vietnamese girl named Mei Li, the suspension-of
-disbelief isn't broken simply because you can't "really interact" with her.
She offers you some food, which you can eat; you can't recover your
strength till you do, so you can't do too much else.  Later, she leads
you on a path through the darkness.  If you don't follow her, you'll be
lost, so you do.  Once she's brought you to Saigon, though, she's shot down
in the street by a South Vietnamese officer.  You never really have
a chance to talk!  Pearson's games usually had a TALK verb (no object) to
"chat with someone," but the NPCs made no attempt at AI: when you TALKed
with them, you were "forwarding the plot."

It wasn't really quite like a Choose Your Own Adventure, since there
weren't long scrolling passages of text where you have only a few
choices.  Rather, it was Interactive Fiction which let you interact
with the story at a somewhat higher level than most games.  (TALK is
a good example; most Infocom games require you to negotiate the
conversation by hand.  And when things are really happening in Pearson's
story, you can get "swept away" by the turn of events.)

>Even better would be to get an idea of how it was written.  It sounds
>from your description as though the games were a patchwork of "real"
>adventure (the wandering around and object-manipulation sections)
>together with choose-your-own-adventure sections which offer the
>illusion of adventure game input, but in fact just use the player's
>input to choose between a handful of paths.

Right on the first bit (wandering and object manipulation), but -- as
I've said above -- not really C.Y.O.A. for the rest.  The basic design
was something like this:

The screen was layed out:

OBVIOUS ITEMS >>  KEY   I.D.CARD

YOU ARE IN A LARGE OFFICE
WITH A WINDOW AND SOME FURNITURE

>>  [command input here]

[messages area: down here appears the result of commands and sudden events]

... the screen replots on each turn, there's no scrolling text ...

 ----

General flow for game program code:

Check for events
Get Input
Input acceptable for current situation?
If so, handle that
If not, print whatever the current default message is
Repeat

So when you're in your office, you can type "LOOK" and get a description
of what's on your desk (a nameplate, a telephone, etc.)  LOOK NAMEPLATE
will tell you your name.  Since there's nothing special about the
telephone, typing "LOOK TELEPHONE" will just give you the usual "LOOK"
message (as before).  Then, after a few turns, the phone rings.  Typing
ANSWER (PHONE, IT, etc.) results in the message "A VOICE ON THE PHONE
SAYS "THIS IS OFFICER STRADE AT SCOTLAND YARD!  THERE'S BEEN A MURDER
AT THE CROWLEY ESTATE!" etc. etc.  If you type anything else but ANSWER,
it just repeats the message A TELEPHONE ON THE DESK RINGS... in the
messages area.

So while you have long stretches of standard adventuring, there are
times when something important happens which constrains your actions,
and the game is fairly clear when this happens.

When something really overwhelming is happening, the "acceptable input
for the current situation" may be NOTHING: no matter what you type
(even just pressing Return), a message appears in the message area.
For instance, there's one scene in a basement when something grabs you
and shoves you against a wall, hissing in your ear.  You might as
well just press Return three times here until this three-step "scene"
is played out, nothing you type is going to change things.

Now that I think of it, this is often all that NPCs are: sequences of
events, combined with some special commands that produce appropriate
feedback.  They're not full-fledged items.

Describing this makes it sound incredibly primitive.  But as Alan
Cox points out: in adventure games, consistency is the primary design
goal.  Once the player has accepted a certain level of detail and
power, the author can use techniques based at this level to affect
the reader's mind.  (That works whether it's a Scott Adams simplicity,
a Jyym Pearson plot-driven thing, or the sketchiness of Zork in comparison
to Unnkuulian Unventure 2.)  Players of Pearson's games didn't expect
that _anything_ would be "three-dimensional," and so a careful suggestion
and some game events could be very effective in building an idea of a
character in the player's mind.  How long do you read a comic book
before you quit noticing that the art is totally unconvincing?

So Jyym Pearson's main method for creating memorable actors wouldn't work
in a modern game.  But his other technique -- keep players and NPCs busy
while they're together (think of Mei Li) -- is still worthwhile, I think.

- David Librik
librik@cs.Berkeley.edu
