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From: erkyrath@netcom.com (Andrew Plotkin)
Subject: Re: How do YOU start writing a game?
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Date: Mon, 9 Sep 1996 04:00:09 GMT
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Carl D. Cravens (ravenpub@southwind.net) wrote:
> But I have a similar question... what do you do when you've got a nifty
> plot line figured out, with a very moody setting, but you can't figure
> out how to hang enough puzzles off of it?  It's supposed to be a story,
> not a puzzle romp, but suddenly you find that you've picked an
> environment that doesn't lend itself to puzzles very well.  (An old
> ghost town with no NPC's except for a mysterious ghost.  There aren't
> characters to manipulate, no magical stuff, and precious little working
> equipment that got left behind.)  How would people react to a mystery
> that had very few puzzles beyond solving the mystery itself?

I find that the "length" of a game is proportional to how much the player
has to do in the course of a run through it, beginning to end. So, if I'm
understanding your description correctly, your work will be a very short
one. Start up -- assume you already know all the clues, whatever they 
are, from previous runs -- go to the end scene, and I'm done. 

If you're willing to have written a short work, that's fine.

If not, you can think of ways to make the player run around the entire 
game before doing the end-scene. (I like this better from a prose 
perspective, as well. If the point is the story, the program shouldn't 
let you skip large parts of it.) What ways? Well, very simple puzzles, 
for one thing. One area is blocked by a rusted door; there's a crowbar in 
another area, near a clue whose finding is part of the story. As long as 
this stuff fits in with the environment, it will add to the interactivity 
without interfering with the story. And nobody ever complains that 
puzzles are too easy. :-) (As long as they *do* fit in. Gratuitous easy 
puzzles are annoying; but then so are gratuitous hard puzzles.)

I'm really only using the word "puzzle" because it's traditional. The 
point here is not to force the player to stop thinking about the story 
and start solving a puzzle. It's just to make him interact with the 
world, as opposed to just walking around and examining things.

--Z



-- 

"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the
borogoves..."
