Re: Just spent 5 hours bug fixing HLA Adventure (my head's about to roll off!)

Okay, found it...

First thing: I hate short descriptions. Just out of consideration, provide
a mechanism to change between short and long descriptions.

When messing with online MUDDs, people read the descriptions to
keep track of places they've been. Online services (MUDDS) tend to
provide a toggle to switch between short and long descriptions. The
reason "they" do this is because people running scripts to get from
one area to another don't need the long description while running the
script, so typically they provide a mechanism like:

SET DESC = 0 ;short descriptions
SET DESC = 1 ;long descriptions
SET DESC = SHORT
SET DESC = LONG

The syntax is up to you. The SET command is quite common.

Also, an area header might be useful...

[Sandy Beach, Cliff]
You are on a narrow stretch of sandy beach. To the west is
the icy gray surface of the sea, and to the east there is a
sheer cliff. Far above, on top of the cliff, you can see the
turrets and towers of a huge castle. You can go north or south.

Without the long description I'm getting the same short desc for
each area.

I see you have SEASHORE at the top which could be used for
the title of each area. That's quite nice, but it doesn't change
enough. It makes the game flow nicer to let the user know where
he's at. Very important to MUDDer's I think. But it'll help with
HLA and Elsinore as well.

<elsinore>
This is the seashore. You can only go north or south from here.
</elsinore>

If I go north or south I end up with:

<elsinore>
This is the seashore. You can only go north or south from here.
</elsinore>

Which is fine if you're in a maze where the goal is to find your
way out but otherwise it's annoying because I end up having to
retype "LOOK" every time I move.

Something else worth considering, when displaying the description,
perhaps display obvious exits at the bottom, something like:

[Smoking Tavern]
You are inside a smoky, crowded tavern. All around you, massive
village men are drinking great tankards of ale while the tavern
wenches move around with big platters of roast meats. There is
a feeling of good cheer in the room. The exit leads southwest.
A handsome young Dane, rather the worse for drink, is leaning
heavily against the bar, and talking about what he'll do to
save his sister from ruin at the hands of the Royal Family.
[Obvious exits: E, SW, Door]

The directions at the bottom should not include any hidden exits. So
basically that means everything in the game has a visibility attribute.

<snip author="Charles A. Crayne">
The main thing to keep in mind while moving about is, not only that
the game recognizes all ten of your directions, as well some of your
synonyms, but that the room description does not always list all of the
available choices. For example, the room description for the village square
reads (in part):
</snip>

Yeah, I found the buildings via ne, nw, etc. That was where I started
thinking that Elsinore was more oriented as word puzzles. And thus
my comment:

:I'm thinking along the lines that Elsinore is more of a bunch of puzzles
:rather than an interactive adventure, right?

So that's where I was coming from when I stated that. I was thinking
that it fell into that genre... and that when you wrote it, your frame of
mind went along the lines of a variety of neat little puzzles for people
to get through.

When people design games each tends to fall into particular mindset
for that particular game they are working on.

It goes like this...

I'm going to design a game... I have no clear goal at the time, but
I'll start off with a little "word puzzle". And then the whole game
falls into a variety of "word puzzles". ;-)

I'm going to design a game... I have no clear goal at this moment,
but the guy gets a gun. The game falls into using the gun to get
things done.

There was one game ages ago... I hated it! That darn thing... I hated it
so much because it was about beauracracy, and irritating puzzles on
how to get someone in the government to do something for you, and
it sure was irritating... It was a word game like Elsinor and HLA
adventure... What was that thing called??? It came on either a 3.5"
floppy or a 5.25" floppy, so that'll give you an idea of the file size.

Anyways, the mindset in that game was to have a whole bunch of
really irritating issues to deal with, puzzling humorous oddities.

One issue involved filling out forms in triplicate to get something
from a government office or apply for something... The name
might have been "Beoracrazy".

Okay, back to the descriptions of the exits. I think the description
at the bottom is convenient. For graphical games, there is usually
a compass which lights up with directions of exit. So maybe a
neat little compass could be put into effect. It kind of takes you
out of the word puzzle mentality as well, which can be distracting
but it can put you into thinking into another direction. <shrug>

--
Jim Carlock
Please post replies to newsgroup.


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