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From: blasi@seagull.escs (Robert Blasi)
Subject: Re: Teleportation? Magic words? Not really! (wa
Message-ID: <1993Aug12.134111.589@knight.vf.ge.com>
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Reply-To: blasi@seagull.escs
Organization: Martin Marietta Aerospace, Valley Forge, PA
References: <1993Aug11.205402.27071@nomina.lu.se>
Date: Thu, 12 Aug 1993 13:41:11 GMT
Lines: 56

In article 27071@nomina.lu.se, magnus@thep.lu.se (Magnus Olsson) writes:
> In article <243rfrINN62o@life.ai.mit.edu>,
> David Baggett <dmb@ai.mit.edu> wrote:
> 
> >To be fair to Crowther and Woods, they had the convention that you
> >could "teleport" to a nearby location just by typing its name.  E.g.,
> >"grate" gets you under the grate from up to 4 or 5 locations away.  So
> >typing "plover" to get to the plover room isn't that far afield.  The
> >thing is that since the Infocoms dropped the "name the room to
> >teleport" concept, we've since collectively forgotten about it, and
> >don't use it anymore when we play Collosal Cave (though it is mentioned
> >in the instructions you get when you type "help").  That kind of thing
> >makes some of the puzzles harder.
> 
> This, however, is not quite true (at least not IMHO). The way I
> understand the intentions behind ADVENT (as expressed in the
> documentation; and I think this was in the docs from the very
> beginning), these "magic words" aren't magic words at all, and they
> don't teleport you! Instead, they're just a shorthand for typing a lot
> of movement commands.
> 
> Let me explain what I mean. Suppose you're exploring the area around
> the plover room (as mentioned in the original post). After a while, it
> is reasonable to assume that you know the geography of that part of
> the cave quite well. In that case, it's not really reasonable to force
> you to type a long sequence of movement commands to get back to the
> plover room, especially not if the path is tortuous and twisting (as
> indeed cave passage tend to be, at least in early adventure games).
> It's quite reasonable just to say "go to the plover room", or, more
> conveniently, just "plover", and have the computer trust in your
> ability to find your way there yourself. 
> 

	Uh, that's all quite well and good, too bad it's wrong regarding "Plover".
"Plover" was most definitely a magic word. In my quest to optimize my use of lantern
light and the infamous "NOSIDE SAMOHT" recharge in the 550-pt. version, I would
start the game by getting the plover's egg and the pyramid.
	I.e. The first thing I did in the well house was use "plover". I'd never
been to the plover room prior to its usage. And the use was responded to by a 
">Foof!<" and I was teleported.
	Note: It doesn't matter whether or not "plover" would have also served as
shorthand to get into the Plover Room and then the Dark Room. You still can't fit
through the tunnel with the lantern to get the platinum pyramid.
	Nuff said.

						VTY, Rob Blasi


---
+-------------------------------+----------------------------------------------+
|Robert S. Blasi, II		|	blasi@esc.vf.ge.com		       |
|Electrical Engineering Student	|	blasirs@dunx1.ocs.drexel.edu	       |
|Drexel University, Phila., PA	|   	blasirs@duvm.ocs.drexel.edu	       |
+-------------------------------+----------------------------------------------+
		"IBM, Intel, Microsoft: One down, two to go."

