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Mark Phillips


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Joined: 1969.12.31 00:00:00
Messages: 2199
Location: Watsonville, CA
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How important is it to you that every noun in a room description be something that you can further examine?

Example from the Park NW: "A west wind blows leaves across the grass." Today if you ask to "look leaves" you'll receive the standard reply, "If only there were a 'leaves' here to look at".

It would be more realistic and I think more rich if the response in this situation were "You see nothing special about it" -- or even a description of the leaves.

But -- "All my friends have big buts", Pee Wee's Big Adventure -- it would be a *lot* of work to implement. How much? A lot.

Do you think it's worth doing? If yes, what kind of priority should it receive?

--Mark

Bartle quotiet: E80, A67, S47, K7. TriadCity characters: Mark, Poobah, Occam, Abelard.
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james fisher



Joined: 2001.12.02 00:00:00
Messages: 126
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I think the more important areas should be as detailed as feasible. The other areas don't really n eed every noun to have a description. You can always go back later and add more detail when there is time.
Gary Smith



Joined: 2000.01.02 00:00:00
Messages: 166
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In Zork, if you said look at <noun> you got one of several randomized messages unless the <object> rererenced by <noun> objected to it or modified the response. Doing so would make the game richer and lead to some more interesting things. A short example, again from Zork, in the living room is an oriental rug. If you say "look at rug" You get a message that gives a hint: there seems to be something under the rug."

Gary
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Mark Phillips


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Joined: 1969.12.31 00:00:00
Messages: 2199
Location: Watsonville, CA
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This level of richness is possible in TC today, but it's cumbersome to achieve. We have to actually create TC Items which will then be found and seen by the player.

I'm thinking we might add Zork-like nouns as properties of TC's Rooms and other objects. It would work much like Gary suggests. If the world author provides no text for a particular noun, the game engine responds with our standard "You see nothing special about it." But at least that's a little richer than "If only there were a <noun> here to see."

This is still extra work for world authors -- adding the nouns, even if they don't add a description. But it would result in that extra layer of richness.

Now here's a cool thought. Suppose we could use some spiff "natural language processing" to *automatically* parse the nouns each time a new description is added to the game world? Would that be cool? I don't have time to write this right now but we could maybe search for a smart intern.

Just thinking out loud!

--Mark

Bartle quotiet: E80, A67, S47, K7. TriadCity characters: Mark, Poobah, Occam, Abelard.
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Sascha Lecours



Joined: 2003.10.24 00:00:00
Messages: 446
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That would be pretty sweet, although prone to little bugs. But really, I'd like to see a few more 'description of the leaves' scenarios around. I think it's totally worth doing, but only a few areas should be given a high priority - and the rest can be saved for when the builders are feeling bored.
 
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