> 1) Don't implement unimportant objects mentioned in descriptions.
Do this and you'll lose me _real_ fast. Games like this often deteriorate into
"guess which word the designer wanted":
You're in the produce department. In front of you are racks of
oranges, grapefruit, tangerines, peaches, apples, pears, kiwi
... potatoes, tomatoes, celery ...
> get oranges
I don't see any oranges here
> get grapefruit
I don't see any grapefruit here
> get tangerines
I don't see any tangerines here
[time passes]
> get tomatoes
You got the tomatoes. These are super crucial to the game play
and absolutely necessary to solving the puzzle.
> 2) Tell the player outright to ignore the object - implement it as a
>basic decoration. "That's not important; leave it alone." I don't like
>this either - it's rather rude and shatters any illusion of reality for
>me.
Unless I misunderstand, that's only a slightly less rude implementation of the
above, you're just putting everything in your descriptions in a list that gives
a "you don't need this" message. This should be part of the prose.
Now making the player think about what objects they'll need to solve a puzzle
is fine, and giving them red herrings is obviously sometimes critical (I
shouldn't blindly pick up _everything_ I see because I know I'll need it
later), so some extra objects are critical; implement them as thoroughly as
everything else.
> 3) Don't implement any objects at all. So you go into a grocery store
>and it's totally empty - there isn't anything there.
"You are standing on the corner of the business district. Numerous shops
selling various things dot the landscape. Of interest are the church, the
firehouse and the ice-cream parlor."
Doesn't sound too bad to me. Sure, you'll have to implement some _imaginative_
red herrings (otherwise the puzzle is just following a linear path, another
ho-hum).
> 3) Make things inaccessible. That's the approach my game has taken -
This to me is a repeat of #1, If this is going to deteriorate into a linear
search, count me out.
> North
You are standing in front of the firehouse
> Open door
The door is locked
> North
You are standing in front of the church
> Open door
The door is locked
> exit
I don't understand exit
> quit
I don't understand quit
> leave
Thank you for playing
C:\GAME>CD ..
C:\>DELTREE GAME
C:\>CD \DOOM
C:\DOOM>DOOM
When I played role-playing games I tried my hand at games-mastering and design.
I didn't understand abstraction. If you had to hack your way through 1000 orcs
to get to the goal, the castle included lodging for 1000 orcs. Not many people
played my games twice.
Abstraction is necessary to any fiction. Hint that there's a real world out
there, but please don't make your users interact with all of it.
Dan