Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Path: news.duke.edu!newsgate.duke.edu!nntp-out.monmouth.com!newspeer.monmouth.com!newscon02.news.prodigy.com!prodigy.com!news.stealth.net!news-east.rr.com!news.rr.com!portc01.blue.aol.com!uunet!dca.uu.net!ash.uu.net!world!buzzard
From: buzzard@world.std.com (Sean T Barrett)
Subject: Re: Sycamora Tree: "Inform is outdated"
Message-ID: <GCw0tK.E46@world.std.com>
Date: Sun, 6 May 2001 00:17:43 GMT
References: <lve8etcbql4ccn6uj5flmeo0i52bdb0con@4ax.com> <iFAI6.22337$9f2.2121818@ruti.visi.com> <GCtqry.KBA@world.std.com> <emshort-0405012000320001@user-2inik44.dialup.mindspring.com>
Organization: The World Public Access UNIX, Brookline, MA
Lines: 84
Xref: news.duke.edu rec.arts.int-fiction:86383

Emily Short <emshort@mindspring.com> wrote:
>buzzard@world.std.com (Sean T Barrett) wrote:
>> Let's crawl before we walk: before "expecting" serious simulation,
>> let's see if we can even get anybody doing it at all.  It need
>> not become "expected" anymore than multimedia has.
>
>At the risk of seeming obtuse, how are we defining 'serious' simulation?

You seem pretty far along, actually.

>As far as I've been able to define simulationist problems that *I* would
>like to try to solve (and perhaps I'm not dreaming big enough, but I think
>I'm being reasonable about these things), the biggest issue has almost
>always been not processing power or even programming ability, but the
>vagueness and imprecision of language.  Some parser refinements are no
>doubt conceivable, but even with an advanced natural language parser, say,
>there is only so solidly that I can present the physical universe to the
>player.

Sure, I agree.  The primary utility of simulationism in storytelling
is immersion; in games, is immersion and possibly enabling more "dynamic
plots" (surely not a goal all IF authors desire, though); and in toys
would be something different.  My interest is definitely not in
simulationism for simulation's sake, which would be making toys,
not games or stories.

My mention of graphics was not to say that graphics have anything
to do with IF, or that there is any direct analogy; only to make
an existence proof against the claim that "one person cannot make
use of that much power"--the claim that "content costs" must be
high if compute costs are high.  An existence proof in the domain
of IF is still to come.  From playing with TADS 3, though, I feel
it's pretty clear that, while potentially limited to higher-end
computers with more memory, it enables me to write more complex
programs--real data structures with complex algorithms.

Will that really enable better simulationism?  I don't know.  Perhaps
all the complexity of simulationism is in the design, and the
implementation is easy.  Perhaps not.

Perhaps a complex, very slow parser library could provide the
technology you need to resolve your liquid parsing problems (IIRC);
perhaps not.  But I don't see any reason to discard the idea without
trying it first (not that you are necessarily proposing that, but
it was the context of my previous post).

>rendering the events into words, and (above that) by his ability to make
>that rendering germane to the world he is building and the story he
>tells.  In that regard, perhaps, the solo author actually has an advantage
>over a team: the single unified vision is often more compelling than one
>created by collaboration, unless the collaborators are particularly
>inspired and adept at what they do.

I agree.

>It may be kind of beating a dead horse to say that Sycamora was (wait, let
>me invoke the Muse of Mangled Metaphors) barking up the wrong tree.  But
>people seem to agree that they were -- perhaps most of all because they
>tried to specify quality in concrete terms when they had really no grasp
>of the indicators.

As I said, I don't consider amount of simulationism a metric for
the quality of games; I consider it a space of IF that is largely
unexplored, and I wonder whether that isn't partly because of
people being held down by things like the z-machine limits.

If it were true that Inform outdated in this regards, it wouldn't
mean Inform was outdated for people who don't want to explore that
space; perhaps I should be more cautious about sounding like I'm
agreeing with the subject line of this post; it was only my intent
to disagree with the claim advanced in the text of the message I
was replying to.

>I think what characterizes the best of IF is still the distinction of the
>narrative voice and vision.  If you look at the highly praised games of
>the past year, they are a rather idiosyncratic lot, with trends pulling in
>a variety of different directions.

Sure.  Although many comp reviews comment on how fun the "toys"
in Metamorphoses were, it was the writing that won the XYZZY.
But then again, we don't know how much difference the immersiveness
of the simulation made.

SeanB
