Gareth Rees (gdr11@cl.cam.ac.uk) wrote:
>1. Characters
>
>"Christminster" has more interaction with human characters than most
>non-commercial games, and more even than many Infocom games. Although
>the game isn't as tightly-plotted as Infocom's mysteries, or even as
>much as "Plundered Hearts", it does have a handful of characters with a
>reasonable range of actions (Edward has about 150 things he can do).
>Lots of the puzzles are built around these characters and their
>interactions with each other.
>I've used various techniques to try to make the interaction with the
>characters more realistic. One idea I used, following Legend's
>"Gateway" and some Infocom games, was to split up long interactions over
>a number of turns, with some mechanism to keep the player sitting still
>while the interaction was going on. In one case I want to player to
>feel trapped, so they are prevented from getting away by main force; in
>others there is a puzzle to solve while the incidental conversation goes
>on.
I felt that this was very successful in some places (at dinner, in
Malcolm's room before being discovered by Bungay and Jarboe), and
unsuccessful in others (when actually confronted by B+J). In
reflecting on this, I think the interactions work well when both the
player and the characters have clearly defined goals or tasks to
occupy them, and they fail when _either_ party does not. So the
dinner felt very natural, because I (as player) had two immediate
goals---to figure out how to eat the dinner and to eavesdrop on the
characters' conversations. And all the other characters were
similarly occupied.
>2. Handling time
>
>"Christminster" has a novel method of allowing time to pass. ....
>although there are timed
>events, time does not pass at a constant rate, but advances with the
>solution of the major puzzles.
>I don't know if this idea is entirely successful. Some of my
>playtesters said that they didn't like timed games in general, but
>enjoyed "Christminster"'s approach. Others were I think frustrated by
>being prevented from waiting for events to happen ("why can't I wait
>until seven o'oclock?" was an appeal I heard several times).
Once I figured it out (after about 50 "z's" trying to wait for 7 pm) I
really liked it. In fact, I might have taken it further by doing away
with the tradition "score" and just using the passage of time as the
indication of the player's advancement. In IF like Christminster (or
Curses, say) I've always thought that the score was artificial and
found the "Your score has gone up by X points" somewhat jarring. I
thought that the ringing of the bell was a nice indication that I was
progressing.
>4. A couple of questions
>
>(1) What hope is there for interesting interaction with other characters
>in a game?
I would edit this question to be: What hope is there for interesting
characters in a game? I think we have to start there first. Here's
my list of the main characters in Christminster from most to least
interesting:
Jarboe and Bungay
Wilderspin
The Master
Edward
The funny thing is that this order is from least interaction to most
interaction. J+B are interesting because they are highly motivated
and act boldly (ransacking Malcolm's room, threatening the player).
The interactions with Wilderspin are interesting (and well done, I
must say) because they are focused in a couple obvious areas and he is
active. His responses to queries about the griffins and his reaction
to "wilderspin, push left eye" and "get on wilderspin" (I warned you
there were spoilers!) really felt right because he was so active.
In contrast, Edward is so passive (I guess this is less true in the
release version) that I really found him irritating. I realize he's
supposed to be a wimpy and whiny character to begin with, but I don't
think he's very successfully realized. Similarly, during the
confrontation with Jarboe and Bungay they are both very passive (and
there's also nothing for the player to do), which is why I find that
scene disappointing.
I'm curious---why are so many IF characters so passive? Of course
some of it is the difficulties of implementation, but I think this is
one area where the puzzle aspect of IF really gets in the way of
things like plot and characterization. For example, why doesn't
Edward do more? For example, when the player finds the peanut, why
doesn't Edward say "Hey, give me that peanut so I can try to lure my
parrot down from the tree"? Even when I waved the peanut (yes, I
tried this), Edward doesn't do anything. Of course this would
essentially eliminate one puzzle, but is that really a problem? When
the burden of solving the puzzles falls entirely on the player, the
other characters are often hamstrung.
I guess what I'm saying is that what made the characters interesting
isn't so much interacting with them, but interacting with and
observing their actions. After all, this is what makes real people
interesting. I think this is pretty key to successful characterization
in IF.
Switching gears a little, one thing I really wanted to be able to do
in Christminster was something like "tell <person> about
<event/location/object>" as in "tell the master about malcolm's room".
Clearly, this can't be implemented in general. But I wonder if some
inform functions (for example) couldn't be written to implement this
in a limited way. For example, after discovering Malcolm's room and
lab book, the game could say something like "You can now tell others
about 'Malcolm's room', 'the lab book', 'Jarboe and Bungay's
conversation' ...". Of course there's the question of what you would
have the player say, but maybe a synopsis (a choice of synopses?)
could also be given. This then gives a character a springboard to
take some actions.
Cheers,
chris