Re: Some Comments on an "Adventure Engine"

From: Randall Hyde (randyhyde_at_earthlink.net)
Date: 12/11/04 

Date: Sat, 11 Dec 2004 07:23:52 GMT

"Evenbit" <nbaker2328@charter.net> wrote in message
news:1102749254.262203.165350@f14g2000cwb.googlegroups.com...
> I do not see a reason for numbering them, but if you must, then
> seperate the directions...
>
> 1 north, going north.
> 2 south, heading south.
> 3 east, moving east.
> 4 west, walking to the west.
> 5 up, ascending...
> 6 down, descending...
>
> ...from the rest and start over from 1 with...
>
> 1 lantern, a brass lantern with rusted hinges.
> 2 oil, a flask of oil (used with the lantern).

Well, first of all we have enumerated data types in HLA.
So there is no reason to deal with explicit numeric equivalences.
If you're expecting the player to enter these numeric values
instead of typing a command (gee, isn't the command recognition
part of the fun?), then I'd suggest using cursor keys and the like
to specify movements.

>
> ...etc. Organize like things together with like things. A direction
> is an action (walking to the west), therefore it is a verb and should
> not be lumped together with the nouns (objects like a brass lantern or
> a flask of oil).

The parsing code that figures out this stuff is pretty easy. Especially
if you take the original approach of "verb noun" for your command
structure (which, quite frankly, is pretty lame). HLA's pattern matching
library will come in real handy for this purpose. Indeed, I've worked
on game sentence parsers in the past that let you type in commands like
"north is the direction in which I want to go" and it easily converted
it to "go north" (of course, dealing with sentences like "I want to go
in the opposite direction of south" is problematic, but as long as a
sentence doesn't contain any negatives, it's pretty easy to parse).

>
> This is probably the biggest hurdle. This is why Randy keeps asking
> "what are the data needs?" because we need to think about all the
> different objects, properties, and actions that would be involved in an
> entertaining interactive fiction so we can design the generic machinery
> to accomadate them. To do this, we need to constantly be aware of
> organization, relationships (group, heirarchy, list, etc.), player
> motivation, player interaction (how is a battle "win" determined?),
> player and antagonist qualities, etc.

And things like "do you have special powers in certain locations that
don't exist elsewhere?" "Is this true for the antagonists?"
Can rooms contain other rooms? (e.g., enter a "house" which
has multiple rooms)

How do we track the progress of the player? What order do puzzles
have to be solved?
Cheers,
Randy Hyde

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