Re: Game prologues and introductions


7 Dec 95 08:06:16 GMT

jools@arnod.demon.co.uk (Julian Arnold) writes:

>Michael S. Phillips (mike@lawlib.wm.edu) wrote:
>> Anyways, I was wondering if people had strong opinions on whether it is
>> worth the effort to 'lead the player' through the introduction.
[...]
>I like this idea. It seems a logical interactive extension of the "sample
>transcript of play" from Jigsaw et al.
[...]
> anything
>which makes IF more accessible to newbies, without detracting too much from
>the actual gameplay, must be a good thing.

The first adventure game I played was a version of Colossal cave that
gave you a hint when you hadn't made progress in a while. This
basically meant that you couldn't ever get stuck, provided you kept
playing for long enough.

I liked this more than the hint systems I've seen since then. It
didn't feel like cheating because I was given the hint without asking
for it - it was part of the game, and you couldn't read all the hints
at once, even if you had no will-power.

--
  	Matthew McDonald mafm@cs.uwa.edu.au
Nim's longest recorded utterance was the sixteen-sign declarative
pronouncement, "Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me
eat orange give me you."