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- Committer: Bazaar Package Importer
- Author(s): Jan Christoph Nordholz
- Date: 2008-05-26 22:09:44 UTC
- mfrom: (2.1.1 lenny)
- Revision ID: james.westby@ubuntu.com-20080526220944-ba7phz0d1k4vo7wx
Tags: 6.31.1+dfsg-1
* Remove a considerable number of files from the package
due to unacceptable licensing terms.
* Repair library symlinks.
due to unacceptable licensing terms.
* Repair library symlinks.
- files added:
- debian/Makefile.upstream
- inform-6.31.1
- inform-6.31.1/config
- inform-6.31.1/contrib
- inform-6.31.1/demos
- inform-6.31.1/docs
- inform-6.31.1/include
- inform-6.31.1/lib
- inform-6.31.1/manual
- inform-6.31.1/src
- files removed:
- AUTHORS
- config
- contrib
- demos
- extra
- html
- html/answers1
- html/answers2
- html/icons
- include
- info
- lib
- src
- tutor
- files modified:
- debian/changelog
added
removed
extra/Craft.Of.Adventure.tex
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% --------------------------------------------------------------------------
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% TeX version of The Craft of Adventure
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% --------------------------------------------------------------------------
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\newif\iffiles
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%
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% Manual macros
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%
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% Page layout
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%
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\newif\ifshutup\shutupfalse
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\magnification=\magstep 1
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\hoffset=0.15 true in
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\voffset=2\baselineskip
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%
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% General hacks
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%
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\def\PAR{\par}
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%
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% Font loading
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%
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\font\medfont=cmr10 scaled \magstep2
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\font\bigfont=cmr10 scaled \magstep3
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%\def\sectfont{\bf}
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\font\sectfont=cmbx12
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\def\small{\sevenrm}
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\font\rhrm=cmr8
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\font\rhit=cmsl8
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%
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% Titles
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%
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\newcount\subsectno % Subsection number
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\def\rhead{} % The running head will go here
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%
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\def\newsection#1#2{% To begin a section...
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%\global\titletrue% Declare this as a title page
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\xdef\rhead{{\rhrm #1}\quad #2}% Initialise running head and ssn
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\subsectno=0%
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\iffiles
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\write\conts{\string\sli\string{#1\string}\string{#2\string}\string{\the\pageno\string}}%
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\fi
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}
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%
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%
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\else{\hfil{\rhit \rhead}}%
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%
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\noindent\llap{$\bullet$\rm\kern.15em}%
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{\ninebf EXERCISE \bf\the\exno}\par\nobreak\noindent}
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\medbreak\noindent\llap{$\bullet$\rm\kern.15em}%
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#1{\eightbf ~EXERCISE \bf\the\exno}\hfil\break}
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\outer\def\dangerexercise{\xd@nger \dexercise{\dbend}}
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\def\makexref{\ifproofmode%
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\xdef\writeit{\write\inx{\text\space!\xreftype\space
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\noexpand\number\pageno.}}\iffiles\writeit\fi
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\output={\if L\lr
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\exhyphenpenalty=10000 \raggedright}
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\def\inxentry{\ifx\next\sub \let\next=\subentry
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\else\ifx\next\endindex \let\next=\vfill
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\else\let\next=\mainentry \fi\fi\next}
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\def\endindex{\mark{}\break\endgroup
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\supereject
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\if L\lr \else\null\vfill\eject\fi
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\if L\lr \else\null\vfill\eject\fi
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}
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\let\sub=\indent \newtoks\maintoks \newtoks\subtoks
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\def\mainentry#1,{\mark{}\noindent
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\maintoks={#1}\mark{\the\maintoks}#1,}
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\def\subentry\sub#1,{\mark{\the\maintoks}\indent
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\subtoks={#1}\mark{\the\maintoks\sub\the\subtoks}#1,}
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\def\subsection#1{\medbreak\par\noindent{\bf #1}\qquad}
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% For contents
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\def\cl#1#2{\bigskip\par\noindent{\bf #1}\quad {\bf #2}}
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\def\li#1#2#3{\smallskip\par\noindent\hbox to 5 in{{\bf #1}\quad #2\dotfill #3}}
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\def\fcl#1#2{\bigskip\par\noindent\hbox to 5 in{\phantom{\bf 1}\quad {\bf #1}\dotfill #2}}
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% Epigrams
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\def\poem{\begingroup\narrower\narrower\narrower\obeylines\ninepoint}
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\def\widepoem{\begingroup\narrower\narrower\obeylines\ninepoint}
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\def\verywidepoem{\begingroup\narrower\obeylines\ninepoint}
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\def\quote{\medskip\begingroup\narrower\narrower\noindent\ninepoint}
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\def\poemby#1#2{\par\smallskip\qquad\qquad\qquad\qquad\qquad -- #1, {\it #2}
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\tenpoint\endgroup\bigskip}
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\def\widepoemby#1#2{\par\smallskip\qquad\qquad\qquad -- #1, {\it #2}
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\tenpoint\endgroup\bigskip}
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\def\quoteby#1{\par\smallskip\qquad\qquad\qquad\qquad\qquad
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-- #1\tenpoint\endgroup\bigskip}
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\def\endquote{\par\tenpoint\endgroup\medskip}
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%
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% End of macros
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\def\subtitle#1{\bigbreak\noindent{\bf #1}\medskip}
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\pageno=1\titletrue
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\centerline{\bigfont The Craft of the Adventure}
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\vskip 1in
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\centerline{\rm Five articles on the design of adventure games}
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\vskip 0.5in
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\centerline{\sl Second edition}
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\vskip 1in
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\sli{1}{Introduction}{2}
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\sli{2}{In The Beginning}{3}
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\sli{3}{Bill of Player's Rights}{7}
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\sli{4}{A Narrative...}{12}
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\sli{5}{...At War With a Crossword}{21}
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\sli{6}{Varnish and Veneer}{32}
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\vfill\eject
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\section{1}{Introduction}
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\quote
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Skill without imagination is craftsmanship and gives us
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many useful objects such as wickerwork picnic baskets.
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Imagination without skill gives us modern art.
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\poemby{Tom Stoppard}{Artist Descending A Staircase}
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\quote
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Making books is a skilled trade, like making clocks.
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\quoteby{Jean de la Bruy\`ere (1645-1696)}
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\quote
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If you're going to have a complicated story you must work to a map;
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otherwise you'll never make a map of it afterwards.
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\quoteby{J. R. R. Tolkien (1892-1973)}
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Designing an adventure game is both an art and a craft. Whereas art cannot
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be taught, only commented upon, craft at least can be handed down: but the
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tricks of the trade do not make an elegant narrative, only a catalogue. This
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small collection of essays is just such a string of grits of wisdom and
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half-baked critical opinions, which may well leave the reader feeling
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unsatisfied. One can only say to such a reader that any book claiming to
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reveal the secret of how to paint, or to write novels, should be recycled at
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once into something more genuinely artistic, say a papier-mach\'e sculpture.
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If there is any theme here, it is that standards count: not just of
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competent coding, but of writing. True, most designers have been either
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programmers `in real life' or at the `Hardy Boys Mysteries' end of the
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literary scale, but that's no reason to look down on their better works, or
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to begrudge them a look at all. Though this book is mainly about the larger
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scale, one reason I think highly of `Spellbreaker' is for memorable phrases
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like `a voice of honey and ashes'. Or `You insult me, you insult even my
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dog!'
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\medskip
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The author of a text adventure has to be schizophrenic in a way that the
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author of a novel does not. The novel-reader does not suffer as the player
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of a game does: she needs only to keep turning the pages, and can be trusted
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to do this by herself. The novelist may worry that the reader is getting
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bored and discouraged, but not that she will suddenly find pages 63 to the
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end have been glued together just as the plot is getting interesting.
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Thus, the game author has continually to worry about how the player is
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getting along, whether she is lost, confused, fed up, finding it too tedious
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to keep an accurate map: or, on the other hand, whether she is yawning
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through a sequence of easy puzzles without much exploration. Too difficult,
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too easy? Too much choice, too little? So this book will keep going back
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to the player's eye view.
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On the other hand, there is also a novel to be written: the player may get
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the chapters all out of order, the plot may go awry, but somehow the author
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has to rescue the situation and bind up the strings neatly. Our player
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should walk away thinking it was a well-thought out story: in fact, a novel,
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and not a child's puzzle-book.
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An adventure game is a crossword at war with a narrative. Design sharply
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divides into the global - plot, structure, genre - and the local - puzzles
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and rooms, orders in which things must be done. And this book divides
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accordingly.
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\medskip
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Frequent examples are quoted from real games, especially from `Adventure'
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and the middle-period Infocom games: for two reasons. Firstly, they will
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be familiar to many aficionados. Secondly, although a decade has passed
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they still represent the bulk of the best work in the field. In a few
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places my own game `Curses' is cited, because I know all the unhappy
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behind-the-scenes stories about it.
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I have tried not to give anything substantial away. So I have also avoided
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mention of recent games other than my own; while revising this text, for
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instance, I had access to an advance copy of David M. Baggett's fine game
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`The Legend Lives', but resisted the temptation to insert any references to
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it. Except to say that it demonstrates that, as I write this, the genre is
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still going strong: well, long may it.
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\medskip
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\hbox to\hsize{\hfill\it Graham Nelson}
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\hbox to\hsize{\hfill\it Magdalen College, Oxford}
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\hbox to\hsize{\hfill\it January 1995}
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\section{2}{In The Beginning}
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\quote
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It's very tight. But we have cave!
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\quoteby{Patricia Crowther, July 1972}
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Perhaps the first adventurer was a mulatto slave named Stephen Bishop, born
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about 1820: `slight, graceful, and very handsome'; a `quick, daring,
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enthusiastic' guide to the Mammoth Cave in the Kentucky karst. The story
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of the Cave is a curious microcosm of American history. Its discovery
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is a matter of legend dating back to the 1790s; it is said that a hunter,
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John Houchin, pursued a wounded bear to a large pit near the Green River and
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stumbled upon the entrance. The entrance was thick with bats and by the War
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of 1812 was intensively mined for guano, dissolved into nitrate vats to make
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saltpetre for gunpowder. After the war prices fell; but the Cave became a
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minor side-show when a dessicated Indian mummy was found nearby, sitting
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upright in a stone coffin, surrounded by talismans. In 1815, Fawn Hoof, as
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she was nicknamed after one of the charms, was taken away by a circus,
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drawing crowds across America (a tour rather reminiscent of Don McLean's
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song `The Legend of Andrew McCrew'). She ended up in the Smithsonian but
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by the 1820s the Cave was being called one of the wonders of the world,
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largely due to her posthumous efforts.
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By the early nineteenth century European caves were big tourist attractions,
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but hardly anyone visited the Mammoth, `wonder of the world' or not. Nor
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was it then especially large (the name was a leftover from the miners, who
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boasted of their mammoth yields of guano). In 1838, Stephen Bishop's owner
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bought up the Cave. Stephen, as (being a slave) he was invariably called,
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was by any standards a remarkable man: self-educated in Latin and Greek, he
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became famous as the `chief ruler' of his underground realm. He explored
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and named much of the layout in his spare time, doubling the known map in a
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year. The distinctive flavour of the Cave's names - half-homespun American,
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half-classical - started with Stephen: the River Styx, the Snowball Room,
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Little Bat Avenue, the Giant Dome. Stephen found strange blind fish,
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snakes, silent crickets, the remains of cave bears (savage, playful
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creatures, five feet long and four high, which became extinct at the end of
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the last Ice Age), centuries-old Indian gypsum workings and ever more cave.
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His 1842 map, drafted entirely from memory, was still in use forty years
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later.
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As a tourist attraction (and, since Stephen's owner was a philanthropist,
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briefly a sanatorium for tuberculosis, owing to a hopeless medical
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theory) the Cave became big business: for decades nearby caves were hotly
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seized and legal title endlessly challenged. The neighbouring chain, across
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Houchins Valley in the Flint Ridge, opened the Great Onyx Cave in 1912. By
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the 1920s, the Kentucky Cave Wars were in full swing. Rival owners diverted
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tourists with fake policemen, employed stooges to heckle each other's guided
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tours, burned down ticket huts, put out libellous and forged advertisements.
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Cave exploration became so dangerous and secretive that finally in 1941 the
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U.S. Government stepped in, made much of the area a National Park and
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effectively banned caving. The gold rush of tourists was, in any case,
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waning.
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Convinced that the Mammoth and Flint Ridge caves were all linked in a huge
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chain, explorers tried secret entrances for years, eventually winning
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official backing. Throughout the 1960s all connections from Flint Ridge -
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difficult and water-filled tunnels - ended frustratingly in chokes of
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boulders. A `reed-thin' physicist, Patricia Crowther, made the breakthrough
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in 1972 when she got through the Tight Spot and found a muddy passage: it
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was a hidden way into the Mammoth Cave.
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Under the terms of his owner's will, Stephen Bishop was freed in 1856, at
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which time the cave boasted 226 avenues, 47 domes, 23 pits and 8 waterfalls.
455
He died a year later, before he could buy his wife and son. In the 1970s,
456
Crowther's muddy passage was found on his map.
457
458
\bigskip
459
The Mammoth Cave is huge, its full extent still a matter of speculation
460
(estimates vary from 300 to 500 miles). Patricia's husband, Willie
461
Crowther, wrote a computer simulation of his favourite region, Bedquilt
462
Cave, in FORTRAN in the early 1970s. (It came to be called Colossal Cave,
463
though this name actually belongs further along.) Like the real cave, the
464
simulation was a map on about four levels of depth, rich in geology. A good
465
example is the orange column which descends to the Orange River Rock room
466
(where the bird lives): and the real column is indeed orange (of travertine,
467
a beautiful mineral found in wet limestone).
468
469
The game's language is loaded with references to caving, to `domes' and
470
`crawls'. A `slab room', for instance, is a very old cave whose roof has
471
begun to break away into sharp flakes which litter the floor in a crazy
472
heap. The program's use of the word `room' for all manner of caves and
473
places seems slightly sloppy in everyday English, but is widespread in
474
American caving and goes back as far as Stephen Bishop: so the
475
Adventure-games usage of the word `room' to mean `place' may even be
476
bequeathed from him.
477
478
Then came elaboration. A colleague of Crowther's (at a Massachusetts
479
computing firm), Don Woods, stocked up the caves with magical items and
480
puzzles, inspired by a role-playing game. Despite this, very many of the
481
elements of the original game crop up in real life. Cavers do turn back
482
when their carbide lamps flicker; there are mysterious markings and initials
483
on the cave walls, some left by the miners, some by Bishop, some by 1920s
484
explorers. Of course there isn't an active volcano in central Kentucky, nor
485
are there dragons and dwarves. But even these embellishments are, in a
486
sense, derived from tradition: like most of the early role-playing games,
487
`Adventure' owes much to J. R. R. Tolkien's `The Hobbit', and the passage
488
through the mountains and Moria of `The Lord of the Rings' (arguably its
489
most dramatic and atmospheric passage). Tolkien himself, the most
490
successful myth-maker of the twentieth century, worked from the example of
491
Icelandic, Finnish and Welsh sagas.
492
493
By 1977 tapes of `Adventure' were being circulated widely, by the Digital
494
user group DECUS, amongst others: taking over lunchtimes and weekends
495
wherever it went... but that's another story. (Tracy Kidder's fascinating
496
book `The Soul of a New Machine', a journalist's-eye-view of working in a
497
computing firm at about this time, catches it well.)
498
499
\bigskip
500
There is a moral to this tale, and a reason for telling it. The original
501
`Adventure' was much imitated and many traditions are derived from it. It
502
had no direct sequel itself but several `schools' of adventure games began
503
from it. `Zork' (which was to be the first Infocom game) and
504
`Adventureland' (the first Scott Adams game) include, for instance, a
505
rather passive dragon, a bear, a troll, a volcano, a maze, a lamp with
506
limited battery-power, a place to deposit treasures and so on. The earliest
507
British game of real quality, `Acheton', written at Cambridge University in
508
1979-80 by David Seal and Jonathan Thackray (and the first of a dozen or so
509
games written in Cambridge) has in addition secret canyons, water, a
510
wizard's house not unlike that of `Zork'. The Level 9 games began with a
511
good port of `Adventure' (which was generally considered at the time, and
512
ever since, to be in the public domain, on what legal grounds it's hard to
513
see) and then two sequels in similar style. All these games had a standard
514
prologue-middle game-end game form: the prologue is a tranquil outside
515
world, the middle game consists of collecting treasures in the cave, the end
516
is usually called a Master Game (Level 9 expanded on the `Adventure' end
517
game somewhat, not so well).
518
519
Of this first crop of games, `Adventure' remains the best, mainly because it
520
has its roots in a simulation. This is why it is so atmospheric, more so
521
than any other game for a decade after. The Great Underground Empire of
522
`Zork' is an imitation of the original, based not on real caves but on
523
Crowther's descriptions. `Zork' is better laid out as a game but not as
524
convincing, and in places a caricature: too tidy, with no blind alleys, no
525
secret canyons. Its mythology is similarly less well-grounded: the
526
long-gone Flathead dynasty, beginning in a few throwaway jokes, ended up
527
downright tiresome in the later sequels, when the `legend of the Flatheads'
528
had become, by default, the distinguishing feature of `Zorkness'. The
529
middle segments especially of `Zork' (now called `Zork II') make a fine
530
game, one of the best of the `cave' games, but `Zork' remains flawed in a
531
way that many of Infocom's later games were not.
532
533
In the beginning of any game is its `world', physical and imaginary,
534
geography and myth. The vital test takes place in the player's head: is the
535
picture of a continuous sweep of landscape, or of a railway-map on which a
536
counter moves from one node to another? `Adventure' passes this test,
537
however primitive some may call it. If it had not done so, the genre might
538
never have started.
539
540
\vfill\eject
541
\section{3}{Bill of Player's Rights}
542
543
\quote
544
In an early version of Zork, it was possible to be killed by
545
the collapse of an unstable room. Due to carelessness with
546
scheduling such a collapse, 50,000 pounds of rock might fall on
547
your head during a stroll down a forest path. Meteors, no doubt.
548
\quoteby{P. David Lebling}
549
550
W. H. Auden once observed that poetry makes nothing happen. Adventure games
551
are far more futile: it must never be forgotten that they intentionally
552
annoy the player most of the time. There's a fine line between a challenge
553
and a nuisance: the designer has to think, first and foremost, like a
554
player (not an author, and certainly not a programmer). With that in mind,
555
I hold the following rights to be self-evident:
556
557
\subtitle{1. Not to be killed without warning}
558
559
At its most basic level, this means that a room with three exits, two of
560
which lead to instant death and the third to treasure, is unreasonable
561
without some hint. On the subject of which:
562
563
\subtitle{2. Not to be given horribly unclear hints}
564
565
Many years ago, I played a game in which going north from a cave led to a
566
lethal pit. The hint was: there was a pride of lions carved above the
567
doorway. Good hints can be skilfully hidden, or very brief, but should
568
not need explaining after the event.
569
\footnote\dag{The game was Level 9's `Dungeon', in which pride comes before
570
a fall. Conversely, the hint in the moving-rocks plain problem in
571
`Spellbreaker' is a masterpiece.}
572
573
\subtitle{3. To be able to win without experience of past lives}
574
575
This rule is very hard to abide by. Here are three examples:
576
\item{(i)} There is a nuclear bomb buried under some anonymous
577
floor somewhere, which must be disarmed. The player knows
578
where to dig because, last time around, it blew up there.
579
\item{(ii)} There is a rocket-launcher with a panel of buttons, which looks
580
as if it needs to be correctly programmed. But the player
581
can misfire the rocket easily by tampering with the controls
582
before finding the manual.
583
\item{(iii)} (This from `The Lurking Horror'.) Something needs to be cooked
584
for the right length of time. The only way to find the right
585
time is by trial and error, but each game allows only one trial.
586
On the other hand, common sense suggests a reasonable answer.
587
\par\noindent
588
Of these (i) is clearly unfair, most players would agree (ii) is fair enough
589
and (iii), as tends to happen with real cases, is border-line.
590
In principle, then, a good player should be able to play the entire game out
591
without doing anything illogical, and, likewise:
592
593
\subtitle{4. To be able to win without knowledge of future events}
594
595
For example, the game opens near a shop. You have one coin and can buy a
596
lamp, a magic carpet or a periscope. Five minutes later you are transported
597
away without warning to a submarine, whereupon you need a periscope. If you
598
bought the carpet, bad luck.
599
600
\subtitle{5. Not to have the game closed off without warning}
601
602
`Closed off' meaning that it would become impossible to proceed at some
603
later date. If there is a Japanese paper wall which you can walk through at
604
the very beginning of the game, it is extremely annoying to find that a
605
puzzle at the very end requires it to still be intact, because every one of
606
your saved games will be useless. Similarly it is quite common to have a
607
room which can only be visited once per game. If there are two different
608
things to be accomplished there, this should be hinted at.
609
610
In other words, an irrevocable act is only fair if the player is given
611
due warning that it would be irrevocable.
612
613
\subtitle{6. Not to need to do unlikely things}
614
615
For example, a game which depends on asking a policeman about something he
616
could not reasonably know about. (Less extremely, the problem of the
617
hacker's keys in `The Lurking Horror'.) Another unlikely thing is waiting
618
in dull places. If you have a junction at which after five turns an elf
619
turns up bearing a magic ring, a player may well never spend five
620
consecutive turns there and will miss what you intended to be easy. (`Zork
621
III' is very much a case in point.) If you intend the player to stay
622
somewhere for a while, put something intriguing there.
623
624
\subtitle{7. Not to need to do boring things for the sake of it}
625
626
In the bad old days many games would make life difficult by putting
627
objects needed to solve a problem miles away from where the problem was,
628
despite all logic - say, a boat in the middle of a desert. Or, for example,
629
a four-discs tower of Hanoi puzzle might entertain. But not an eight-discs
630
one. And the two most hackneyed puzzles - only being able to carry four
631
items, and fumbling with a rucksack, or having to keep finding new light
632
sources - can wear a player's patience down very quickly.
633
634
\subtitle{8. Not to have to type exactly the right verb}
635
636
For instance, ``looking inside" a box finds nothing, but ``searching" it
637
does. Or consider the following dialogue (amazingly, from `Sorcerer'):
638
\beginstt
639
>unlock journal
640
(with the small key)
641
No spell would help with that!
642
>open journal
643
(with the small key)
644
The journal springs open.
645
\endtt
646
This is so misleading as to constitute a bug. But it's an easy design fault
647
to fall into. (Similarly, the wording needed to use the brick in `Zork II'
648
strikes me as quite unfair, unless I missed something obvious.) Consider
649
how many ways a player can, for instance, ask to take a coat off:
650
\footnote\ddag{I was sceptical when play-testers asked me to add ``don''
651
and ``doff'' to my game `Curses', but this allowed me a certain moment of
652
triumph when my mother tried it during her first game.}
653
\beginstt
654
remove coat / take coat off / take off coat / disrobe coat
655
doff coat/�shed coat
656
\endtt
657
Nouns also need...
658
659
\subtitle{9. To be allowed reasonable synonyms}
660
661
In the same room in `Sorcerer' is a ``woven wall hanging" which can instead
662
be called ``tapestry" (though not ``curtain"). This is not a luxury, it's an
663
essential. For instance, in `Trinity' there is a charming statue of a
664
carefree little boy playing a set of pan pipes. This can be called the
665
``charming" or ``peter" ``statue" ``sculpture" ``pan" ``boy" ``pipe" or
666
``pipes". Objects often have more than 10 nouns attached.
667
668
Perhaps a remark on a sad subject might be intruded here. The Japanese
669
woman near the start of `Trinity' can be called ``yellow" and ``Jap", for
670
instance, terms with a grisly resonance. In the play-testing of `Curses',
671
it was pointed out to me that the line ``Let's just call a spade a spade"
672
(an innocent joke about a garden spade) meant something quite different to
673
extreme right-wing politicians in southern America; in the end, I kept
674
the line, but it's never seemed quite as funny since.
675
676
\subtitle{10. To have a decent parser}
677
678
If only this went without saying. At the very least it should provide for
679
taking and dropping multiple objects.
680
\bigskip
681
682
Since only the Bible stops at ten commandments, here are seven more, though
683
these seem to me to be matters of opinion:
684
685
\subtitle{11. To have reasonable freedom of action}
686
687
Being locked up in a long sequence of prisons, with only brief escapes
688
between them, is not all that entertaining. After a while the player begins
689
to feel that the designer has tied him to a chair in order to shout the plot
690
at him. This is particularly dangerous for adventure game adaptations of
691
books (and most players would agree that the Melbourne House adventures
692
based on `The Lord of the Rings' suffered from this).
693
694
\subtitle{12. Not to depend much on luck}
695
696
Small chance variations add to the fun, but only small ones. The thief in
697
`Zork I' seems to me to be just about right in this respect, and similarly
698
the spinning room in `Zork II'. But a ten-ton weight which fell down and
699
killed you at a certain point in half of all games is just annoying.
700
\footnote\dag{Also, you're only making work for yourself, in that games
701
with random elements are much harder to test and debug, though that
702
shouldn't in an ideal world be an issue.}
703
704
A particular danger occurs with low-probability events, one or a
705
combination of which might destroy the player's chances. For instance, in
706
the earliest edition of `Adventureland', the bees have an 8\% chance of
707
suffocation each turn carried in the bottle: one needs to carry them for 10
708
or 11 turns, which gives the bees only a 40\% chance of surviving to their
709
destination.
710
711
There is much to be said for varying messages which occur very often (such
712
as, ``You consult your spell book.") in a fairly random way, for variety's
713
own sake.
714
715
\subtitle{13. To be able to understand a problem once it is solved}
716
717
This may sound odd, but many problems are solved by accident or trial and
718
error. A guard-post which can be passed if and only if you are carrying a
719
spear, for instance, ought to indicate somehow that this is why you're
720
allowed past. (The most extreme example must be the notorious Bank of
721
Zork, of which I've never even understood other people's explanations.)
722
723
\subtitle{14. Not to be given too many red herrings}
724
725
A few red herrings make a game more interesting. A very nice feature of
726
`Zork I', `II' and `III' is that they each contain red herrings explained in
727
the others (in one case, explained in `Sorcerer'). But difficult puzzles
728
tend to be solved last, and the main technique players use is to look at
729
their maps and see what's left that they don't understand. This is
730
frustrating when there are many insoluble puzzles and useless objects. So
731
you can expect players to lose interest if you aren't careful. My personal
732
view is that red herrings ought to be clued: for instance, if there is a
733
useless coconut near the beginning, then perhaps much later an absent-minded
734
botanist could be found who wandered about dropping them. The coconut
735
should at least have some rationale.
736
737
An object is not a red herring merely because it has no game function: a
738
useless newspaper could quite fairly be found in a library. But not a
739
kaleidoscope.
740
741
The very worst game I've played for red herrings is `Sorcerer', which by
742
my reckoning has 10.
743
744
\subtitle{15. To have a good reason why something is impossible}
745
746
Unless it's also funny, a very contrived reason why something is
747
impossible just irritates. (The reason one can't walk on the grass in
748
Kensington Gardens in `Trinity' is only just funny enough, I think.)
749
750
Moral objections, though, are fair. For instance, if you are staying in
751
your best friend's house, where there is a diamond in a display case,
752
smashing the case and taking the diamond would be physically easy but quite
753
out of character. Mr Spock can certainly be disallowed from shooting
754
Captain Kirk in the back.
755
756
\subtitle{16. Not to need to be American}
757
758
The diamond maze in `Zork II' being a case in point. Similarly, it's
759
polite to allow the player to type English or American spellings or idiom.
760
For instance `Trinity' endears itself to English players in that the soccer
761
ball can be called ``football" - soccer is a word almost never used in
762
England.
763
\footnote\ddag{Since these words were first written, several people have
764
politely pointed out to me that my own `Curses' is, shall we say, slightly
765
English. But then, like any good dictator, I prefer drafting constitutions
766
to abiding by them.}
767
768
\subtitle{17. To know how the game is getting on}
769
770
In other words, when the end is approaching, or how the plot is
771
developing. Once upon a time, score was the only measure of this, but
772
hopefully not any more.
773
774
775
\vfill\eject
776
\section{4}{A Narrative...}
777
778
\quote
779
The initial version of the game was designed and
780
implemented in about two weeks.
781
\widepoemby{P. David Lebling, Marc S. Blank, Timothy A. Anderson, of `Zork'}{}
782
\quote
783
It was started in May of '85 and finished in June '86.
784
\quoteby{Brian Moriarty, of `Trinity' (from earlier ideas)}
785
786
\subtitle{Away in a Genre}
787
788
The days of wandering around doing unrelated things to get treasures are
789
long passed, if they ever were. Even `Adventure' went to some effort to
790
avoid this.
791
792
Its many imitators, in the early years of small computers, often took no
793
such trouble. The effect was quite surreal. One would walk across the
794
drawbridge of a medieval castle and find a pot plant, a vat of acid, a copy
795
of {\sl Playboy} magazine and an electric drill. There were puzzles without
796
rhyme or reason. The player was a characterless magpie always on the
797
lookout for something cute to do. The crossword had won without a fight.
798
799
It tends to be forgotten that `Adventure' was quite clean in this respect:
800
at its best it had an austere, Tolkienesque feel, in which magic was scarce,
801
and its atmosphere and geography was well-judged, especially around the
802
edges of the map: the outside forests and gullies, the early rubble-strewn
803
caves, the Orange River Rock room and the rim of the volcano.
804
Knife-throwing dwarves would appear from time to time, but joky town council
805
officers with clipboards never would. `Zork' was condensed, less spacious
806
and never quite so consistent in style: machines with buttons lay side by
807
side with trolls and vampire bats. Nonetheless, even `Zork' has a certain
808
`house style', and the best of even the tiniest games, those by Scott
809
Adams, make up a variety of genres (not always worked through but often
810
interesting): vampire film, comic-book, Voodoo, ghost story.
811
812
By the mid-1980s better games had settled the point. Any player dumped in
813
the middle of one of `The Lurking Horror' (H. P. Lovecraft horror), `Leather
814
Goddesses of Phobos' (30s racy space opera) or `Ballyhoo' (mournfully
815
cynical circus mystery) would immediately be able to say which it was.
816
817
The essential flavour that makes your game distinctive and yours is genre.
818
And so the first decision to be made, when beginning a design, is the style
819
of the game. Major or minor key, basically cheerful or nightmarish, or
820
somewhere in between? Exploration, romance, mystery, historical
821
reconstruction, adaptation of a book, film noir, horror? In the style of
822
Terry Pratchett, Edgar Allen Poe, Thomas Hardy, Philip K. Dick? Icelandic,
823
Greek, Chaucerian, Hopi Indian, Aztec, Australian myth?
824
825
If the chosen genre isn't fresh and relatively new, then the game had better
826
be very good. It's a fateful decision: the only irreversible one.
827
828
829
\subtitle{Adapting Books}
830
831
832
Two words of warning about adapting books. First, remember copyright,
833
which has broader implications than many non-authors realise. For instance,
834
fans of Anne McCaffrey's ``Dragon" series of novels are allowed to play
835
network games set on imaginary planets which do not appear in McCaffrey's
836
works, and to adopt characters of their own invention, but not to use or
837
refer to hers. This is a relatively tolerant position on the part of her
838
publishers.
839
840
Even if no money changes hands, copyright law is enforceable, usually
841
until fifty years after the author's death (but in some countries seventy).
842
Moreover some classics are written by young authors (the most extreme case
843
I've found is a copyright life of 115 years after publication). Most of
844
twentieth-century literature, even much predating World War I, is still
845
covered: and some literary estates (that of Tintin, for instance) are highly
846
protective. (The playwright Alan Bennett recently commented on the trouble
847
he had over a brief parody of the 1930s school of adventure yarns - Sapper,
848
Dornford Yates, and so on - just because of an automatic hostile response
849
by publishers.) The quotations from games in this article are legal only
850
because brief excerpts are permitted for critical or review purposes.
851
852
Secondly, a direct linear plot is very hard to successfully implement in
853
an adventure game. It will be too long (just as a novel is usually too much
854
for a film, which is nearer to a longish short story in scope) and it will
855
involve the central character making crucial and perhaps unlikely decisions
856
at the right moment. If the player decides to have tea outside and not to
857
go into those ancient caves after all, the result is not ``A Passage to
858
India''. (A book, incidentally, which E. M. Forster published in 1924, and
859
on which British copyright will expire in 2020.)
860
861
Pastiche is legally safer and usually works better in any case: steal a
862
milieu rather than a plot. In this (indeed, perhaps only this) respect,
863
McCaffrey's works are superior to Forster's: then again, Chaucer or Rabelais
864
have more to offer than either, and with no executors waiting to pounce.
865
866
867
\subtitle{Magic and Mythology}
868
869
870
Whether or not there is ``magic" (and it might not be called such, for
871
example in the case of science fiction) there is always myth. This is the
872
imaginary fabric of the game: landscape is more than just buildings and
873
trees.
874
875
The commonest `mythology' is what might be called `lazy medieval', where
876
anything prior to the invention of gunpowder goes, all at once, everything
877
from Greek gods to the longbow (a span of about two thousand years). In
878
fact, anything an average reader might think of as `old world' will do, the
879
Western idea of antiquity being a huge collage. This was so even in the
880
time of the Renaissance:
881
\quote
882
One is tempted to call the medieval habit of life mathematical or to
883
compare it with a gigantic game where everything is included and every act
884
is conducted under the most complicated system of rules. Ultimately the
885
game grew over-complicated and was too much for people...
886
\endquote
887
\noindent
888
Ironically, the historical counterparts of the characters in a
889
medieval adventure game saw the real world as if it were such a game.
890
891
That last quotation was from E. M. W. Tillyard's book `The Elizabethan
892
World Picture', exactly the stuff of which game-settings are made.
893
Tillyard's main claim is that
894
\quote
895
The Elizabethans pictured the universal order under three main forms:
896
a chain, a series of corresponding planes and a dance.
897
\endquote
898
Throw all that together with Hampton Court, boats on the Thames by night
899
and an expedition or two to the Azores and the game is afoot.
900
\bigskip
901
902
Most games do have ``magic", some way of allowing the player to transform
903
her surroundings in a wholly unexpected and dramatic way which would not be
904
possible in real life. There are two dangers: firstly, many systems have
905
already been tried - and naturally a designer wants to find a new one.
906
Sometimes spells take place in the mind (the `Enchanter' trilogy), sometimes
907
with the aid of certain objects (`Curses'); sometimes half-way between the
908
two (Level 9's `Magik' trilogy).
909
910
Secondly, magic is surreal almost by definition and surrealism is dangerous
911
(unless it is deliberate, something only really attempted once, in `Nord 'n'
912
Burt Couldn't Make Head Nor Tail Of It'). The T-Removing Machine of
913
`Leather Goddesses of Phobos' (which can, for instance, transform a rabbit
914
to a rabbi) is a stroke of genius but a risky one. The adventure game is
915
centred on words and descriptions, but the world it incarnates is supposed
916
to be solid and real, surely, and not dependent on how it is described? To
917
prevent magic from derailing the illusion, it must have a coherent
918
rationale. This is perhaps the definition of mystic religion, and there are
919
plenty around to steal from.
920
921
\bigskip
922
What can magic do? Chambers English Dictionary defines it as
923
\quote
924
the art of producing marvellous results by compelling the
925
aid of spirits, or by using the secret forces of nature, such as
926
the power supposed to reside in certain objects as `givers of life':
927
enchantment: sorcery: art of producing illusions by legerdemain:
928
a secret or mysterious power over the imagination or will.
929
\endquote
930
It is now a commonplace that this is really the same as unexplained
931
science, that a tricorder and a rusty iron rod with a star on the end are
932
basically the same myth. As C. S. Lewis, in `The Abolition of Man',
933
defined it,
934
\quote
935
For magic and applied science alike the problem is how to subdue
936
reality to the wishes of man.
937
\endquote
938
939
Role-playing games tend to have elaborately worked-out theories about magic,
940
but these aren't always suitable. Here are two (slightly simplified)
941
excerpts from the spell book of `Tunnels and Trolls', which has my favourite
942
magic system:
943
944
\quote
945
{\sl Magic Fangs}\quad Change a belt or staff into a small poisonous
946
serpent. Cannot ``communicate'' with mage, but does obey mage's commands.
947
Lasts as long as mage puts strength into it at time of creation.
948
\endquote
949
950
\quote
951
{\sl Bog and Mire}\quad Converts rock to mud or quicksand for 2 turns,
952
up to 1000 cubic feet. Can adjust dimensions as required, but must
953
be a regular geometric solid.
954
\endquote
955
956
\noindent
957
{\sl Magic Fangs} is an ideal spell for an adventure game, whereas
958
{\sl Bog and Mire} is a nightmare to implement and impossible for the
959
player to describe.
960
961
If there are spells (or things which come down to spells, such as alien
962
artifacts) then each should be used at least twice in the game, preferably
963
in different contexts, and some many times. But, and this is a big `but',
964
the majority of puzzles should be soluble by hand - or else the player will
965
start to feel that it would save a good deal of time and effort just to
966
find the ``win game'' spell and be done with it. In similar vein, using
967
an ``open even locked or enchanted object'' spell on a shut door is less
968
satisfying than casting a ``cause to rust'' spell on its hinges, or
969
something even more indirect.
970
\bigskip
971
Magic has to be part of the mythology of a game to work. Alien artifacts
972
would only make sense found on, say, an adrift alien spaceship, and the
973
player will certainly expect to have more about the `aliens' revealed in
974
play. Even the traditional magic word ``xyzzy'', written on the cave's
975
walls, is in keeping with the centuries of initials carved by the first
976
explorers of the Mammoth cave.
977
978
979
\subtitle{Research}
980
981
982
Design usually begins with, and is periodically interrupted by, research.
983
This can be the most entertaining part of the project and is certainly the
984
most rewarding, not so much because factual accuracy matters (it doesn't)
985
but because it continually sparks off ideas.
986
987
A decent town library, for instance, contains thousands of maps of one kind
988
or another if one knows where to look: deck plans of Napoleonic warships,
989
small-scale contour maps of mountain passes, city plans of New York and
990
ancient Thebes, the layout of the U.S. Congress. There will be photographs
991
of every conceivable kind of terrain, of most species of animals and plants;
992
cutaway drawings of a 747 airliner and a domestic fridge; shelves full of
993
the collected paintings of every great artist from the Renaissance onwards.
994
Data is available on the melting point of tungsten, the distances and
995
spectral types of the nearest two dozen stars, journey times by rail and
996
road across France.
997
998
History crowds with fugitive tales. Finding an eyewitness account is
999
always a pleasure: for instance,
1000
1001
\quote
1002
As we ranged by Gratiosa, on the tenth of September, about twelve a
1003
clocke at night, we saw a large and perfect Rainbow by the Moone light,
1004
in the bignesse and forme of all other Rainbows, but in colour much
1005
differing, for it was more whitish, but chiefly inclining to the colour
1006
of the flame of fire.
1007
\endquote
1008
(Described by the ordinary seaman Arthur Gorges aboard Sir Walter
1009
Raleigh's expedition of 1597.)
1010
1011
Then, too, useful raw materials come to hand. A book about Tibet may
1012
mention, in passing, the way to make tea with a charcoal-burning samovar.
1013
So, why not a tea-making puzzle somewhere? It doesn't matter that there
1014
is as yet no plot to fit it into: if it's in keeping with the genre, it
1015
will fit somewhere.
1016
1017
Research also usefully fills in gaps. Suppose a fire station is to be
1018
created: what are the rooms? A garage, a lounge, a room full of uniforms,
1019
yes: but what else? Here is Stu Galley, on writing the Chandleresque murder
1020
mystery `Witness':
1021
1022
\quote
1023
Soon my office bookshelf had an old Sears catalogue and a pictorial
1024
history of advertising (to help me furnish the house and clothe the
1025
characters), the ``Dictionary of American Slang" (to add colour to the
1026
text) and a 1937 desk encyclopaedia (to weed out anachronisms).
1027
\endquote
1028
1029
The result (overdone but hugely amusing) is that one proceeds up the
1030
peastone drive of the Linder house to meet (for instance) Monica, who has
1031
dark waved hair and wears a navy Rayon blouse, tan slacks and tan pumps with
1032
Cuban heels. She then treats you like a masher who just gave her a whistle.
1033
1034
On the other hand, the peril of research is that it piles up fact without
1035
end. It is essential to condense. Here Brian Moriarty, on research for
1036
`Trinity', which went as far as geological surveys:
1037
1038
\quote
1039
The first thing I did was sit down and make a map of the Trinity site. It
1040
was changed about 50 times trying to simplify it and get it down from over
1041
100 rooms to the 40 or so rooms that now comprise it. It was a lot more
1042
accurate and very detailed, but a lot of that detail was totally useless.
1043
\endquote
1044
1045
There is no need to implement ten side-chapels when coding, say, Chartres
1046
cathedral, merely because the real one has ten.
1047
1048
1049
\subtitle{The Overture}
1050
1051
1052
At this point the designer has a few photocopied sheets, some scribbled
1053
ideas and perhaps even a little code - the implementation of a samovar, for
1054
instance - but nothing else. (There's no harm in sketching details before
1055
having the whole design worked out: painters often do. Besides, it can be
1056
very disspiriting looking at a huge paper plan of which nothing whatever is
1057
yet programmed.) It is time for a plot.
1058
1059
Plot begins with the opening message, rather the way an episode of Star Trek
1060
begins before the credits come up. Write it now. It ought to be striking
1061
and concise (not an effort to sit through, like the title page of `Beyond
1062
Zork'). By and large Infocom were good at this, and a fine example is Brian
1063
Moriarty's overture to `Trinity':
1064
1065
\quote
1066
Sharp words between the superpowers. Tanks in East Berlin. And now,
1067
reports the BBC, rumors of a satellite blackout. It's enough to spoil your
1068
continental breakfast.
1069
1070
\noindent But the world will have to wait. This is the last day of your \$599 London
1071
Getaway Package, and you're determined to soak up as much of that
1072
authentic English ambience as you can. So you've left the tour bus behind,
1073
ditched the camera and escaped to Hyde Park for a contemplative stroll
1074
through the Kensington Gardens.
1075
\endquote
1076
1077
Already you know: who you are (an unadventurous American tourist, of no
1078
consequence to the world); exactly where you are (Kensington Gardens, Hyde
1079
Park, London, England); and what is going on (bad news, I'm afraid: World
1080
War III is about to break out). Notice the careful details: mention of the
1081
BBC, of continental breakfasts, of the camera and the tour bus. In style,
1082
the opening of `Trinity' is escapism from a disastrous world out of control:
1083
notice the way the first paragraph is in tense, blunt, headline-like
1084
sentences, whereas the second is much more relaxed. So a good deal has been
1085
achieved in two paragraphs.
1086
1087
The point about telling the player who to be is more subtle than first
1088
appears. ``What should you, the detective, do now?'' asks `Witness'
1089
pointedly on the first turn. Gender is an especially awkward point. In
1090
some games the player's character is exactly prescribed: in `Plundered
1091
Hearts' you are a particular girl whisked away by pirates, and have to act
1092
in character. Other games take the attitude that anyone who turns up can
1093
play, as themselves, with whatever gender or attitudes (and in a dull
1094
enough game with no other characters, these don't even matter).
1095
1096
1097
\subtitle{An Aim in Life}
1098
1099
1100
Once the player knows who he is, what is he to do? Even if you don't want
1101
him to know everything yet, he has to have some initial task.
1102
1103
Games vary in how much they reveal at once. `Trinity' is foreboding but
1104
really only tells the player to go for a walk. `Curses' gives the player an
1105
initial task which appears easy - look through some attics for a tourist map
1106
of Paris - the significance of which is only gradually revealed, in stages,
1107
as the game proceeds. (Not everyone likes this, and some players have told
1108
me it took them a while to motivate themselves because of it, but on balance
1109
I disagree.) Whereas even the best of ``magic realm" type games (such as
1110
`Enchanter') tends to begin with something like:
1111
1112
\quote
1113
You, a novice Enchanter with but a few simple spells in your Book,
1114
must seek out Krill, explore the Castle he has overthrown, and learn
1115
his secrets. Only then may his vast evil...
1116
\endquote
1117
1118
A play is nowadays sometimes said to be `a journey for the main character',
1119
and there's something in this. There's a tendency in most games to make the
1120
protagonist terribly, terribly important, albeit initially ordinary - the
1121
player sits down as Clark Kent, and by the time the prologue has ended is
1122
wearing Superman's gown. Presumably the idea is that it's more fun being
1123
Superman than Kent (though I'm not so sure about this).
1124
1125
Anyway, the most common plots boil down to saving the world, by exploring
1126
until eventually you vanquish something (`Lurking Horror' again, for
1127
instance) or collecting some number of objects hidden in awkward places
1128
(`Leather Goddesses' again, say). The latter can get very hackneyed (find
1129
the nine magic spoons of Zenda to reunite the Kingdom...), so much so that
1130
it becomes a bit of a joke (`Hollywood Hijinx') but still it isn't a bad
1131
idea, because it enables many different problems to be open at once.
1132
1133
As an aside on saving the world, with which I suspect many fans of `Dr Who'
1134
would agree: it's more interesting and dramatic to save a small number of
1135
people (the mud-slide will wipe out the whole village!) than the whole
1136
impersonal world (but Doctor, the instability could blow up every star in
1137
the universe!).
1138
1139
In the same way, a game which involves really fleshed-out characters other
1140
than the player will involve them in the plot and the player's motives,
1141
which obviously opens many more possibilities.
1142
1143
The ultimate aim at this stage is to be able to write a one-page synopsis of
1144
what will happen in the full game (as is done when pitching a film, and as
1145
Infocom did internally, according to several sources): and this ought to
1146
have a clear structure.
1147
1148
1149
\subtitle{Size and Density}
1150
1151
1152
Once upon a time, the sole measure of quality in advertisements for
1153
adventure games was the number of rooms. Even quite small programs would
1154
have 200 rooms, which meant only minimal room descriptions and simple
1155
puzzles which were scattered thinly over the map.
1156
\footnote\dag{The Level 9 game `Snowball' - perhaps their best, and now
1157
perhaps almost lost - cheekily advertised itself as having 2,000,000
1158
rooms... though 1,999,800 of them were quite similar to each other.}
1159
1160
Nowadays a healthier principle has been adopted: that (barring a few
1161
junctions and corridors) there should be something out of the ordinary about
1162
every room.
1163
1164
One reason for the quality of the Infocom games is that their roots were
1165
in a format which enforced a high density. In their formative years there
1166
was an absolute ceiling of 255 objects, which needs to cover rooms, objects
1167
and many other things (e.g., compass directions and spells). Some writers
1168
were slacker than others (Steve Meretzky, for example) but there simply
1169
wasn't room for great boring stretches. An object limit can be a blessing as
1170
well as a curse. (And the same applies to some extent to the Scott Adams
1171
games, whose format obliged extreme economy on number of rooms and objects
1172
but coded rules and what we would now call daemons so efficiently that the
1173
resulting games tend to have very tightly interlinked puzzles and objects,
1174
full of side-effects and multiple uses.)
1175
1176
Let us consider the earlier Infocom format as an example of setting a
1177
budget. Many `objects' are not portable: walls, tapestries, thrones,
1178
control panels, coal-grinding machines. As a rule of thumb, four objects to
1179
one room is to be expected: so we might allocate, say, 60 rooms. Of the
1180
remaining 200 objects, one can expect 15-20 to be used up by the game's
1181
administration (e.g., in an Infocom game these might be a ``Darkness" room,
1182
12 compass directions, the player and so on). Another 50-75 or so objects
1183
may be portable but the largest number, at least 100, will be furniture.
1184
1185
Similarly there used to be room for at most 150K of text. This is the
1186
equivalent of about a quarter of a modern novel, or, put another way, enough
1187
bytes to store a very substantial book of poetry. Roughly, it meant
1188
spending 2K of text (about 350 words) in each room - ten times the level of
1189
detail of the original mainframe Adventure.
1190
1191
Most adventure-compilers are fairly flexible about resources nowadays
1192
(certainly TADS and Inform are), and this means that a rigorous budget is
1193
not absolutely needed. Nonetheless, a plan can be helpful and can help to
1194
keep a game in proportion. If a game of 60 rooms is intended, how will they
1195
be divided up among the stages of the game? Is the plan too ambitious, or
1196
too meek?
1197
1198
1199
\subtitle{The Prologue}
1200
1201
1202
Just as most Hollywood films are three-act plays (following a convention
1203
abandoned decades ago by the theatre), so there is a conventional game
1204
structure.
1205
1206
Most games have a prologue, a middle game and an end game, usually quite
1207
closed off from each other. Once one of these phases has been left, it
1208
generally cannot be returned to (though there is sometimes a reprise at the
1209
end, or a premonition at the beginning): the player is always going `further
1210
up, and further in', like the children entering Narnia.
1211
1212
The prologue has two vital duties. Firstly, it has to establish an
1213
atmosphere, and give out a little background information.
1214
1215
To this end the original `Adventure' had the above-ground landscape; the
1216
fact that it was there gave a much greater sense of claustrophobia and depth
1217
to the underground bulk of the game. Similarly, most games begin with
1218
something relatively mundane (the guild-house in `Sorcerer', Kensington
1219
Gardens in `Trinity') or else they include the exotic with dream-sequences
1220
(`The Lurking Horror'). Seldom is a player dropped in at the deep end (as
1221
`Plundered Hearts', which splendidly begins amid a sea battle).
1222
1223
The other duty is to attract a player enough to make her carry on playing.
1224
It's worth imagining that the player is only toying with the game at this
1225
stage, and isn't drawing a map or being at all careful. If the prologue is
1226
big, the player will quickly get lost and give up. If it is too hard, then
1227
many players simply won't reach the middle game.
1228
1229
Perhaps eight to ten rooms is the largest a prologue ought to be, and even
1230
then it should have a simple (easily remembered) map layout. The player can
1231
pick up a few useful items - the traditional bottle, lamp and key, whatever
1232
they may be in this game - and set out on the journey by one means or
1233
another.
1234
1235
1236
\subtitle{The Middle Game}
1237
1238
1239
The middle game is both the largest and the one which least needs detailed
1240
planning in advance, oddly enough, because it is the one which comes nearest
1241
to being a collection of puzzles.
1242
1243
There may be 50 or so locations in the middle game. How are they to be
1244
divided up? Will there be one huge landscape, or will it divide into zones?
1245
Here, designers often try to impose some coherency by making symmetrical
1246
patterns: areas corresponding to the four winds, or the twelve signs of the
1247
Zodiac, for instance. Gaining access to these areas, one by one, provides
1248
a sequence of problems and rewards for the player.
1249
1250
Perhaps the fundamental question is: wide or narrow? How much will be
1251
visible at once?
1252
1253
Some games, such as the original Adventure, are very wide: there are thirty or
1254
so puzzles, all easily available, none leading to each other. Others, such as
1255
`Spellbreaker', are very narrow: a long sequence of puzzles, each of which
1256
leads only to a chance to solve the next.
1257
1258
A compromise is probably best. Wide games are not very interesting (and
1259
annoyingly unrewarding since one knows that a problem solved cannot
1260
transform the landscape), while narrow ones can in a way be easy: if only
1261
one puzzle is available at a time, the player will just concentrate on it,
1262
and will not be held up by trying to use objects which are provided for
1263
different puzzles.
1264
1265
Just as the number of locations can be divided into rough classes at this
1266
stage, so can the number of (portable) objects. In most games, there are
1267
a few families of objects: the cubes and scrolls in `Spellbreaker', the rods
1268
and Tarot cards in `Curses' and so on. These are to be scattered about the
1269
map, of course, and found one by one by a player who will come to value them
1270
highly. The really important rules of the game to work out at this stage
1271
are those to do with these families of objects. What are they for? Is
1272
there a special way to use them? And these are the first puzzles to
1273
implement.
1274
1275
So a first-draft design of the middle game may just consist of a rough
1276
sketch of a map divided into zones, with an idea for some event or meeting
1277
to take place in each, together with some general ideas for objects.
1278
Slotting actual puzzles in can come later.
1279
1280
1281
\subtitle{The End Game}
1282
1283
1284
Some end games are small (`The Lurking Horror' or `Sorcerer' for instance),
1285
others huge (the master game in `Zork', now called `Zork III'). Almost all
1286
games have one.
1287
1288
End games serve two purposes. Firstly they give the player a sense of being
1289
near to success, and can be used to culminate the plot, to reveal the game's
1290
secrets. This is obvious enough. They also serve to stop the final stage
1291
of the game from being too hard.
1292
1293
As a designer, you don't usually want the last step to be too difficult; you
1294
want to give the player the satisfaction of finishing, as a reward for
1295
having got through the game. (But of course you want to make him work for
1296
it.) An end game helps by narrowing the game, so that only a few rooms and
1297
objects are accessible.
1298
1299
In a novelist's last chapter, ends are always tied up (suspiciously neatly
1300
compared with real life - Jane Austen being a particular offender, though
1301
always in the interests of humour). The characters are all sent off with
1302
their fates worked out and issues which cropped up from time to time are
1303
settled. So should the end game be. Looking back, as if you were a winning
1304
player, do you understand why everything that happened did? (Of course,
1305
some questions will forever remain dark. Who did kill the chauffeur in `The
1306
Big Sleep'?)
1307
1308
Most stories have a decisive end. The old Gothic manor house burns down,
1309
the alien invaders are poisoned, the evil warlord is deposed. If the end
1310
game lacks such an event, perhaps it is insufficiently final.
1311
1312
Above all, what happens to the player's character, when the adventure ends?
1313
1314
The final message is also an important one to write carefully, and, like the
1315
overture, the coda should be brief. To quote examples here would only spoil
1316
their games. But a good rule of thumb, as any film screenplay writer will
1317
testify, seems to be to make the two scenes which open and close the story
1318
``book-ends" for each other: in some way symmetrical and matching.
1319
1320
\vfill\eject
1321
\section{5}{...At War With a Crossword}
1322
1323
\poem
1324
Forest sways,
1325
rocks press heavily,
1326
roots grip,
1327
tree-trunk close to tree-trunk.
1328
Wave upon wave breaks, foaming,
1329
deepest cavern provides shelter.
1330
\poemby{Goethe}{Faust}
1331
1332
\quote
1333
His building is a palace without design; the passages are tortuous, the
1334
rooms disfigured with senseless gilding, ill-ventilated, and horribly
1335
crowded with knick-knacks. But the knick-knacks are very curious, very
1336
strange; and who will say at what point strangeness begins to turn into
1337
beauty? ... At every moment we are reminded of something in the far past or
1338
something still to come. What is at hand may be dull; but we never lose
1339
faith in the richness of the collection as a whole... We are `pleased, like
1340
travellers, with seeing more', and we are not always disappointed.
1341
\poemby{C.S. Lewis (of Martianus)}{The Allegory of Love}
1342
1343
From the large to the small. The layout is sketched out; a rough synopsis
1344
is written down; but none of the action of the game is yet clear. In short,
1345
there are no puzzles. What are they to be? How will they link together?
1346
This section runs through the possibilities but is full of question marks,
1347
the intention being more to prod the designer about the consequences of
1348
decisions than to suggest solutions.
1349
1350
1351
\subtitle{Puzzles}
1352
1353
1354
Puzzles ought not to be simply a matter of typing one well-chosen line. The
1355
hallmark of a good game is not to get any points for picking up an easily
1356
available key and unlocking a door with it. This sort of low-level
1357
achievement - wearing an overcoat found lying around, for instance - should
1358
count for little. A memorable puzzle will need several different ideas to
1359
solve (the Babel fish dispenser in `The Hitch-hiker's Guide to the Galaxy',
1360
for instance). My personal rule with puzzles is never to allow one which I
1361
can code up in less than five minutes.
1362
1363
Nonetheless, a good game mixes the easy with the hard, especially early on.
1364
The player should be able to score a few points (not many) on the very first
1365
half-hearted attempt. \footnote\dag{Fortunately, most authors' guesses about
1366
which puzzles are easy and which hard are hopelessly wrong anyway. It
1367
always amuses me, for instance, how late on players generally find the
1368
golden key in `Curses': whereas they often puzzle out the slide-projector
1369
far quicker than I intended.}
1370
1371
There are three big pitfalls in making puzzles:
1372
1373
\medskip\noindent{\bf The ``Get-X-Use-X" syndrome.}\quad
1374
Here, the whole game involves wandering about picking up bicycle pumps and
1375
then looking for a bicycle: picking up pins and looking for balloons to
1376
burst, and so on. Every puzzle needs one object. As soon as it has been
1377
used it can be dropped, for it surely will not be required again.
1378
1379
\medskip\noindent{\bf The ``What's-The-Verb" syndrome.}\quad
1380
So you have your bicycle pump and bicycle: ``use pump" doesn't work, ``pump
1381
bike" doesn't work... only ``inflate tyre" does. There are games where this
1382
linguistic challenge is most of the work for the player. An especially
1383
tricky form of this problem is that in most games ``examine", ``search" and
1384
``look inside" are different actions: it is easy to code a hidden treasure,
1385
say, so that only one of these produces the treasure.
1386
1387
\medskip\noindent{\bf The ``In-Joke" syndrome.}\quad
1388
In which the player has to play a parody of your company office, high school
1389
class, etc., or finds an entirely inexplicable object (say, a coat with a
1390
mysterious slogan on) which is only there because your sister has a very
1391
funny one like it, or meets endless bizarre characters modelled on your best
1392
friends and enemies.
1393
1394
\bigskip
1395
Then again, a few puzzles will always be in the get-x-use-x style, and that
1396
does no harm: while pursuing tolerance of verbs to extremes leads to
1397
everything being ``moved", not ``pushed", ``pulled", ``rotated" and so on:
1398
and what artist has not immortalised his madder friends at one time or
1399
another?
1400
1401
Variety in style is very important, but logic is paramount. Often the
1402
designer begins knowing only that in a given place, the player is to put out
1403
a fire. How is this to be done? Will the means be found nearby? Will the
1404
fire have other consequences? Will there be partial solutions to the
1405
problem, which put the fire out but leave vital equipment damaged? If the
1406
player takes a long time not solving the problem, will the place burn down
1407
so that the game becomes unwinnable? Will this be obvious, if so?
1408
1409
1410
\subtitle{Machinery}
1411
1412
1413
In some ways the easiest puzzles to write sensibly are machines, which need
1414
to be manipulated: levers to pull, switches to press, cogs to turn, ropes to
1415
pull. They need not make conversation. They often require tools, which
1416
brings in objects. They can transform things in a semi-magical way (coal to
1417
diamonds being the clich\'e) and can plausibly do almost anything if
1418
sufficiently mysterious and strange: time travel, for instance.
1419
1420
They can also connect together different locations with machinery: chains,
1421
swinging arms, chutes may run across the map, and help to glue it together.
1422
1423
A special kind of machine is the kind to be travelled in. Many Infocom
1424
games have such a vehicle
1425
\footnote\ddag{For the ignoble reason that the code was already in the `Zork
1426
I' kernel, but never mind.}
1427
and cars, tractors, fork-lift trucks, boats, hot-air balloons have all made
1428
appearances. The coding needs a little care (for instance, not being able
1429
to drive upstairs, or through a narrow crevice) but a whole range of new
1430
puzzles is made possible: petrol, ignition keys, a car radio perhaps. And
1431
travelling in new ways adds to the realism of the landscape, which thereby
1432
becomes more than a set of rules about walking.
1433
1434
1435
\subtitle{Keys and Doors}
1436
1437
1438
Almost invariably games close off sections of the map (temporarily) by
1439
putting them behind locked doors, which the player can see and gnash her
1440
teeth over, but cannot yet open. And almost every variation on this theme
1441
has been tried: coded messages on the door, illusory defences, gate-keepers,
1442
the key being in the lock on the wrong side, and so on. Still, the usual
1443
thing is simply to find a key in some fairly remote place, bring it to the
1444
door and open it.
1445
1446
If there are people just inside, do they react when the player knocks on the
1447
door, or tries to break it down or ram it? If not, why not?
1448
1449
In some situations doors should be lockable (and open- and closeable) on
1450
both sides. Though irritating to implement, this adds considerably to the
1451
effect.
1452
1453
In a large game there may be several, perhaps five or six, keys of one kind
1454
or another: it's essential not to make these too similar in appearance.
1455
Some games have ``master keys" which open several different locks in a
1456
building, for instance, or ``skeleton keys", or a magic spell to get around
1457
this.
1458
1459
1460
\subtitle{Air, Earth, Fire and Water}
1461
1462
1463
The elements all tangle up code but add to the illusion. Fire has many
1464
useful properties - it makes light, it destroys things, it can cause
1465
explosions and chemical reactions, it cooks food, it softens materials, it
1466
can be passed from one object to another - but in the end it spreads,
1467
whereas code doesn't. If the player is allowed to carry a naked flame
1468
around (a burning torch, for instance), then suddenly the game needs to know
1469
whether or not each item in the game (a curtain, a pot plant, a book) is
1470
flammable. Even the classic matchbook of matches can make for grisly
1471
implementation.
1472
1473
As in Robert Redford's film, so in the best game landscaping: a river runs
1474
through it. But in any room where water is available, players will try
1475
drinking, swimming, washing, diving. They will try to walk away with the
1476
water. (And of course this applies to acid pools, natural oil pits and the
1477
like.)
1478
1479
Liquids make poor objects, because they need to be carried in some container
1480
yet can be poured from one to another, and because they are endlessly
1481
divisible. ``Some water" can easily be made into ``some water" and ``some
1482
water". If there's more than one liquid in the game, can they be mixed?
1483
Pouring liquid over something is likely to make a mess of it: yet why should
1484
it be impossible? And so on.
1485
1486
The compromise solution is usually to have a bottle with a `capacity' of,
1487
say, 5 units of water, which can be refilled in any room where there is
1488
water (there is a flag for this, say) with 1 unit drunk at a time. The
1489
player who tries to pour water over (most) things is simply admonished and
1490
told not to.
1491
1492
Implementing swimming, or being underwater, is a different order of
1493
difficulty again. What happens to the objects being held? Can a player
1494
swim while wearing heavy clothes, or carrying many things? Is it possible
1495
to dive?
1496
1497
Moreover, does the player run out of air? In many games there is some such
1498
puzzle: a room where the air is poor, or open space, or underwater: and a
1499
scuba mask or a space helmet is called for. One should not kill the player
1500
at once when he enters such a hostile environment unprotected, since he will
1501
probably not have had fair warning. Some games even implement gases:
1502
helium, explosive hydrogen, laughing gas.
1503
1504
And so to earth. One of the oldest puzzles around is digging for buried
1505
treasure. The shovel can be found in just about every traditional-style
1506
game and a good many others which ought to know better besides. Of course
1507
in real life one can dig very nearly anywhere outdoors: there's simply
1508
little cause to. Games really can't afford to allow this. It's quite
1509
difficult to think of a persuasive way of breaking the news to the player,
1510
though.
1511
1512
Still, digging in some form makes a good puzzle: it artificially creates a
1513
new location, or a new map connection, or a new container (the hole left
1514
behind).
1515
1516
1517
\subtitle{Animals and Plants}
1518
1519
1520
Vegetation fits into almost any landscape, and in most games plays some part
1521
in it. This is good for variety, since by and large one deals with plants
1522
differently from machines and people. One pulls the undergrowth away from
1523
ruins, for instance, or picks flowers. Trees and creeping plants (wistaria
1524
or ivy, for instance) ought to be climbable. The overgrown-schoolboy
1525
element in players expects this sort of thing.
1526
1527
A plant which can be grown into a beanstalk is now, perhaps, rather a
1528
clich\'e. So naturally no self-respecting author would write one.
1529
1530
Animals are even more useful, for several reasons: they move, they behave in
1531
curious and obsessive ways: they have amusingly human characteristics, but
1532
do not generally react to conversation and need not be particularly
1533
surprised by the player doing something very shocking nearby, so they are
1534
relatively easy to code: and they add a splash of colour. What would the
1535
Garden of Eden have been without turtles, elephants, rabbits, leopards and
1536
guinea pigs?
1537
1538
The classic, rather predictable puzzle with animals is solved by feeding
1539
them some apposite food to make them obedient, then getting them to do
1540
something. Good games find something better. (Significantly, the animal
1541
puzzles in `Adventure' - the bear, the bird and the snake - are better
1542
characterised than most of those in later games.)
1543
1544
1545
\subtitle{People}
1546
1547
1548
So dawns the sixth day of creation: we have the mountains, rivers, plants
1549
and animals, but as yet no people.
1550
1551
The trap with ``people" puzzles should perhaps be called the Get-X-Give-X
1552
syndrome. People are a little more complicated than that. The nightmare of
1553
coding real characters is illustrated well by one of Dave Lebling's example
1554
bugs from ``Suspect":
1555
\beginstt
1556
> SHOW CORPSE TO MICHAEL
1557
Michael doesn't appear interested.
1558
\endtt
1559
\begindisplay
1560
Of course, Michael is only Veronica's husband; why would he be\cr
1561
interested?\cr
1562
\enddisplay
1563
People are the hardest elements of any game to code up. They can take five
1564
times the amount of code attached to even a complicated room. They have to:
1565
\item{$\bullet$} react to events (as above!);
1566
\item{$\bullet$} make conversation of some kind or another;
1567
\item{$\bullet$} understand and sometimes obey instructions (``robot, go south");
1568
\item{$\bullet$} wander around the map in a way consistent with the way the player does;
1569
\item{$\bullet$} have some attitude to the player, and some personality.
1570
1571
\medskip
1572
They often have possessions of their own and can expect to be attacked, have
1573
things given to or thrown at them, or even seduced by a desperate player.
1574
All this requires code. Good player characters also do surprising things
1575
from time to time, in a random way. In some games they have a vast stock of
1576
knowledge and replies. The woman selling bread-crumbs at the very beginning
1577
of `Trinity' (who does not play a huge role in the game) can say over 50
1578
different things.
1579
1580
Most conversation is added to the code in play-testing. If the play-testers
1581
complain that ``ask waiter about apples" does nothing, then add some reply,
1582
even if not a terribly useful one.
1583
1584
Good player-characters may come and go, turning up at different times during
1585
the game: they are part of the larger plot. But there is also room for the
1586
humble door-keeper who has nothing to do but check passes.
1587
1588
1589
\subtitle{Mazes...}
1590
1591
1592
Almost every game contains a maze. Nothing nowadays will ever equal the
1593
immortal
1594
\beginstt
1595
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
1596
\endtt
1597
But now we are all jaded. A maze should offer some twist which hasn't
1598
been done before (the ones in `Enchanter' and `Sorcerer' being fine
1599
examples).
1600
1601
The point is not to make it hard and boring. The standard maze solution is
1602
to litter the rooms with objects in order to make the rooms distinguishable.
1603
It's easy enough to obstruct this, the thief in `Zork I' being about the
1604
wittiest way of doing so. But that only makes a maze tediously difficult.
1605
1606
Instead there should be an elegant quick solution: for instance a guide who
1607
needs to be bribed, or fluorescent arrows painted on the floor which can
1608
only be seen in darkness (plus a hint about darkness, of course).
1609
1610
There is much to be said for David Baggett's recent answer to the question
1611
``How do I make my maze so that it doesn't have the standard solution?'':
1612
omit it altogether.
1613
1614
Above all, don't design a maze which appears to be a standard impossibly
1615
hard one: even if it isn't, a player may lose heart and give up rather than
1616
go to the trouble of mapping it.
1617
1618
1619
\subtitle{...and Other Old Clich\'es}
1620
1621
1622
There are a few games which do not have ``light source" puzzles, but it's
1623
hard to think of many. The two standards reduce to:
1624
\item{} the player's lamp slowly runs down and will need new oil at least
1625
once;
1626
\item{} a dark room, full of treasure, can apparently only be reached
1627
through a very narrow passage, one which cannot be passed by a player
1628
carrying anything (including the lamp).
1629
1630
Most games contain both, and perhaps most always will, but variations are
1631
welcome. (There is a superbly clever one in `Zork III', for instance,
1632
perhaps the best thing in it.)
1633
1634
Similarly, unless there are very few portable objects, it becomes ridiculous
1635
that a player can carry hundreds of bulky and fiddly things around all the
1636
time: so most games impose a limit on how much can be carried, by convention
1637
four (i.e., because that's what (some versions of) `Adventure' did). It is
1638
bad form to set puzzles making life difficult because the limit is four and
1639
not five (after all, in case of emergency, a player could always carry
1640
something else). Of course the norm is to provide a bag for carrying
1641
things.
1642
1643
Sophisticated games also quietly work out the total weight being carried.
1644
\footnote\dag{One of the Infocom games contains a marvellously heavy red
1645
herring which can be carried anywhere, but is terribly exhausting to move.}
1646
1647
Mention of exhaustion raises the question of the player's state of health.
1648
Some games take a quite role-playing-style view of this, with (perhaps
1649
hidden) attributes of ``strength" and ``constitution". The player grows
1650
weary and needs food, tired and needs sleep, wounded and needs recuperation.
1651
A puzzle which really exploits this would be difficult to make fair.
1652
Consequently all rules like this make nuisance for the player (who will be
1653
obliged to go back to the orchard for more fruit every few dozen turns, that
1654
kind of thing) and should be watched carefully.
1655
1656
1657
\subtitle{Rewards and Penalties}
1658
1659
1660
There are two kinds of reward which need to be given to a player in return
1661
for solving a puzzle. One is obvious: the game advances a little. But the
1662
player at the keyboard needs a reward as well, that the game should offer
1663
something new to look at. In the old days, when a puzzle was solved, the
1664
player simply got a bar of gold and had one less puzzle to solve.
1665
1666
Much better is to offer the player some new rooms and objects to play
1667
with, as this is a real incentive. If no new rooms are on offer, at least
1668
the ``treasure" objects can be made interesting, like the spells in the
1669
`Enchanter' trilogy or the cubes in `Spellbreaker'.
1670
1671
In olden days, games killed the player in some way for almost every wrong
1672
guess (or altered the state of the game so that it had become unwinnable).
1673
This was annoying and meant that virtually all players were so paranoid
1674
as to save the game before, say, picking up any new object. Nowadays
1675
it is thought polite not to kill the player without due warning, and to
1676
make smaller mistakes recoverable-from. A good alternative to the death
1677
sentence is exile (i.e., in some way moving the player somewhere
1678
inconvenient but returnable-from).
1679
1680
1681
\subtitle{Writing Room Descriptions}
1682
1683
1684
First, a warning: it is tempting, when beginning to code, to give rooms
1685
``temporary" descriptions (``Slab room." ``Cloister."), and leave the
1686
writing for later. There is no more depressing point than when facing a
1687
pile of 50 room descriptions to write, all at once, and feeling that one's
1688
enthusiasm has altogether gone. (The same warning applies to making an
1689
over-detailed design before doing any coding.) Besides, when testing the
1690
rooms concerned, one has no feeling of what the game will look like except
1691
tatty, and this is also depressing. Also, writing room descriptions forces
1692
the author to think about what the room is ultimately for, which is no bad
1693
thing. So write a few at a time, as coding goes on, but write them
1694
properly: and edit later if necessary (it will be).
1695
1696
Size doesn't matter. It is all too easy to write a huge room description,
1697
rambling with irrelevant details: there are usually one to three essentials
1698
to get across, and the rest should be cut. (This is admittedly a hard-line
1699
view on my part, and opinions vary.)
1700
1701
But even the most tedious junctions deserve description, and description is
1702
more than a list of exits. Here is `Adventure' at its most graceful:
1703
1704
\quote
1705
You're in a large room carved out of sedimentary rock. The floor and
1706
walls are littered with bits of shells embedded in the stone. A shallow
1707
passage proceeds downward, and a somewhat steeper one leads up. A low
1708
hands and knees passage enters from the south.
1709
\endquote
1710
1711
\quote
1712
You are walking along a gently sloping north/south passage lined with
1713
oddly shaped limestone formations.
1714
\endquote
1715
1716
Note the geology, the slight unevenness of the ground and the variation in
1717
the size of the tunnels. Even if nothing happens here, these are real
1718
places.
1719
1720
Flippant, joky room descriptions are best avoided if they will be often
1721
revisited. About once in a game an author can get away with:
1722
\beginstt
1723
Observation Room
1724
Calvin Coolidge once described windows as "rectangles of glass." If so,
1725
he may have been thinking about the window which fills the western wall
1726
of this room. A tiny closet lies to the north. A sign is posted next to
1727
the stairs which lead both upwards and downwards.
1728
\endtt
1729
a characteristic piece of Steve Meretzky from `Leather Goddesses of Phobos',
1730
which demonstrates the lengths one has to go to when faced with a
1731
relentlessly ordinary junction-with-window. The sentence which the whole
1732
description has been written to avoid is ``You can go up, down or north."
1733
1734
Room descriptions are obliged to mention the obvious exits - and it is
1735
certainly poor form to fail to mention a particular one unless there is good
1736
reason - but there are ways to avoid what can be a tiresomely repetitive
1737
business. For instance,
1738
\beginstt
1739
Dark Cave
1740
Little light seeps into this muddy, bone-scattered cave and already
1741
you long for fresh air. Strange bubbles, pulsing and shifting as if
1742
alive, hang upon the rock at crazy, irregular angles.
1743
1744
Black crabs scuttle about your feet.
1745
1746
> SOUTH
1747
The only exit is back out north to the sea-shore.
1748
\endtt
1749
In other words, the ``You can't go that way" message is tailored to each
1750
individual room.
1751
1752
Avoiding repetition is well-nigh impossible, and experienced players will
1753
know all the various formulae by heart: ``You're in", ``You are in", ``This
1754
is", ``You have come to" and so forth. I usually prefer impersonal room
1755
descriptions (not mentioning ``you" unless to say something other than the
1756
obvious fact of being present).
1757
1758
As in all writing, vocabulary counts (another respect in which Scott Adams'
1759
games, despite awful grammar, score). If there is a tree, what kind is it,
1760
oak, juniper, hawthorn, ash? Then, too, don't make all room descriptions
1761
static, and try to invoke more than just sight at times: smell, touch and
1762
sound are powerfully evocative. Purity and corruption, movement and
1763
stillness, light and dark have obsessed writers through the ages.
1764
1765
Above all, avoid the plainness of:
1766
\beginstt
1767
You are in the Great Hall. You can go north to the Minstrel's Gallery,
1768
east to the fireplace and down to the kitchens.
1769
1770
There is a sword here.
1771
\endtt
1772
So much for bad room descriptions. The following example (which I have not
1773
invented) is something much more dangerous, the mediocre room description:
1774
\beginstt
1775
Whirlpool Room
1776
You are in a magnificent cavern with a rushing stream, which cascades
1777
over a sparkling waterfall into a roaring whirlpool which disappears
1778
through a hole in the floor. Passages exit to the south and west.
1779
\endtt
1780
...seems a decent enough try. But no novelist would write such sentences.
1781
Each important noun - ``cavern", ``stream", ``waterfall", ``whirlpool" - has
1782
its own adjective - ``magnificent", ``rushing", ``sparkling", ``roaring".
1783
The two ``which" clauses in a row are a little unhappy. ``Cascades" is
1784
good, but does a stream cascade ``over" a waterfall? Does a whirlpool
1785
itself disappear? The ``hole in the floor" seems incongruous. Surely it
1786
must be underwater, indeed deep underwater?
1787
1788
Come to that, the geography could be better used, which would also help to
1789
place the whirlpool within the cave (in the middle? on one edge?). And why
1790
``Whirlpool Room", which sounds like part of a health club? As a second
1791
draft, then, following the original:
1792
\beginstt
1793
Whirlpool Ledge
1794
The path runs a quarter-circle from south to west around a broken ledge
1795
of this funnel cavern. A waterfall drops out of the darkness, catching
1796
the lamplight as it cascades into the basin. Sinister, rapid currents
1797
whip into a roaring whirlpool below.
1798
\endtt
1799
Even so: there is nothing man-made, nothing alive, no colour and besides it
1800
seems to miss the essential feature of all the mountain water-caves I've
1801
ever been to, so let us add a second paragraph (with a line break, which is
1802
much easier on the eye):
1803
\beginstt
1804
Blue-green algae hangs in clusters from the old guard-railing, which has
1805
almost rusted clean through in the frigid, soaking air.
1806
\endtt
1807
The algae and the guard-rail offer distinct possibilities of a puzzle or
1808
two... Perhaps there are frogs who could eat the algae; perhaps the player
1809
might find a use for iron oxide, and could scrape rust from the railing.
1810
(Herbalists probably used to use rust for something, and an encyclopaedia or
1811
a chemistry text book might know.) Certainly the railing should break if a
1812
rope is tied to it. Is it safe to dive in? Does the water have a hypnotic
1813
effect on someone who stares into it? Is there anything dry which would
1814
become damp if the player brought it through here? Might there be a second
1815
ledge higher up where the stream falls into the cave? - And so a location
1816
is made.
1817
1818
\subtitle{The Map}
1819
1820
Puzzles and objects are inextricably linked to the map, which means that the
1821
final state of the map only gradually emerges and the author should expect
1822
to have to keep changing it to get it right - rather than to devise an
1823
enormous empty landscape at first and then fill it with material.
1824
1825
Back to atmosphere, then, because throughout it's vital that the map should
1826
be continuous. The mark of a poor game is a map like:
1827
$$ \matrix{
1828
&&{\rm Glacier}\cr
1829
&&\updownarrow\cr
1830
{\rm Dungeon} & \leftrightarrow & {\rm Oriental~Room}
1831
& \leftrightarrow & {\rm Fire~Station}\cr
1832
{\rm (fish)} & & {\rm (megaphone)} & & {\rm (tulips)}\cr
1833
&&\updownarrow\cr
1834
&&{\rm Cheese~Room}\cr} $$
1835
in which nothing relates to anything else, so that the game ends up with no
1836
overall geography at all. Much more believable is something like:
1837
$$\matrix{
1838
{\rm Snowy~Mountainside}\cr
1839
&\searrow\cr
1840
&&{\rm Carved~Tunnel}\cr
1841
&&\updownarrow\cr
1842
&&{\rm Oriental~Room} & \leftrightarrow &
1843
{\rm Jade~Passage} & \leftrightarrow & {\rm Fire~Dragon}\cr
1844
&&{\rm (buddha)} & & {\rm (bonsai~tree)} & & {\rm Room}\cr
1845
&&\updownarrow\cr
1846
&&{\rm Blossom~Room}\cr} $$
1847
The geography should also extend to a larger scale: the mountainside
1848
should run across the map in both directions. If there is a stream
1849
passing through a given location, what happens to it? And so on. Maps
1850
of real mountain ranges and real cave systems, invariably more convoluted
1851
and narrow than in fiction, can be quite helpful when trying to work
1852
this out.
1853
1854
A vexed question is just how much land occupies a single location. Usually
1855
a location represents a `room', perhaps ten yards across at the most.
1856
Really large underground chambers - the legendary ``Hall of Mists" in
1857
Adventure, the barge chamber in `Infidel' - are usually implemented with
1858
several locations, something like:
1859
$$\matrix{
1860
{\rm Ballroom~NW} & & \leftrightarrow & & {\rm Ballroom~NE}\cr
1861
& \searrow & & \swarrow &\cr
1862
\updownarrow & & {\rm Dance~Floor} & & \updownarrow\cr
1863
& \nearrow & & \nwarrow &\cr
1864
{\rm Ballroom~SW} & & \leftrightarrow & & {\rm Ballroom~SE}\cr} $$
1865
This does give some impression of space but it can also waste locations in a
1866
quite dull way, unless there are genuinely different things at some of the
1867
corners: a bust of George III, perhaps, a harpsichord.
1868
1869
On the other hand, in some stretches, drawing the map leaves one with the
1870
same frustration as the set-designer for a Wagnerian opera: everything is
1871
set outdoors, indistinct and without edges. Sometimes an entire meadow, or
1872
valley, might be one single location, but then its description will have to
1873
be written carefully to make this clear.
1874
1875
In designing a map, it adds to the interest to make a few connections in the
1876
rarer compass directions (NE, NW, SE, SW) to prevent the player from a
1877
feeling that the game has a square grid. There should also be a few
1878
(possibly long) loops which can be walked around, to prevent endless
1879
retracing of steps and to avoid the appearance of a bus service map,
1880
half a dozen lines with only one exchange.
1881
1882
If the map is very large, or if a good deal of moving to-and-fro is called
1883
for, there should be some rapid means of getting across it, such as the
1884
magic words in `Adventure', or the cubes in `Spellbreaker'. This can be a
1885
puzzle in itself - one that players do not have to solve, but will reward
1886
them if they do.
1887
1888
\subtitle{Looking Back at the Shape}
1889
1890
A useful exercise, towards the end of the design stage, is to draw out a
1891
tree (or more accurately a lattice) of all the puzzles in a game. At the
1892
top is a node representing the start of the game, and then lower nodes
1893
represent solved puzzles. An arrow is drawn between two puzzles if one has
1894
to be solved before the other can be. For instance, a simple portion might
1895
look like:
1896
$$\matrix{ &&{\rm Start}\cr
1897
&\swarrow&&\searrow\cr
1898
{\rm Find~key}&&&&{\rm Enter~garage}\cr
1899
&\searrow&&\swarrow\cr
1900
&&{\rm Start~car}\cr
1901
&&\downarrow\cr
1902
&&{\rm Motorway}\cr} $$
1903
This is useful because it checks that the game is soluble (for example, if
1904
the ignition key had been kept in a phone box on the motorway, it wouldn't
1905
have been) and also because it shows the overall structure of the game.
1906
Ask:
1907
\item{$\bullet$} Do large parts of the game depend on one difficult puzzle?
1908
\item{$\bullet$} How many steps does a typical problem need?
1909
\item{$\bullet$} How wide is the game at any given time?
1910
\noindent Bottlenecks should be avoided unless they are reasonably
1911
guessable: otherwise many players will simply get no further. Unless,
1912
of course, they are intended for exactly that, to divide an area of the
1913
game into `earlier' and `later'.
1914
1915
Just as some puzzles should have more than one solution, some objects should
1916
have more than one purpose. In bad old games, players automatically threw
1917
away everything as soon as they'd used them. In better designed games,
1918
obviously useful things (like the crowbar and the gloves in `Lurking
1919
Horror') should be hung on to by the player throughout.
1920
1921
A final word on shape: one of the most annoying things for players is to
1922
find, at the extreme end of the game (in the master game, perhaps) that
1923
a few otherwise useless objects ought to have been brought along, but that
1924
it is now too late. The player should not be thinking that the reason for
1925
being stuck on the master game is that something very obscure should have
1926
been done 500 turns before.
1927
1928
\vfill\eject
1929
\section{6}{Varnish and Veneer}
1930
1931
1932
So you have a game: the wood is rough and splintered, but it's recognisably
1933
a game. There's still a good month's work to do\footnote\dag{%
1934
And several centuries' worth of debugging.}, though it is easier work
1935
than before and feels more rewarding.
1936
1937
\subtitle{Scoring}
1938
1939
The traditional way to score an adventure game is to give a points score out
1940
of some large and pleasing number (say, 400) and a rank. There are usually
1941
ten to fifteen ranks. A genuine example (which shall remain nameless):
1942
\quote
1943
Beginner (0), Amateur Adventurer (40), Novice Adventurer (80), Junior
1944
Adventurer (160), Adventurer (240), Master (320), Wizard (360),
1945
Master Adventurer (400)
1946
\endquote
1947
in which, although ranks correspond to round numbers, still they have
1948
perhaps been rigged to fit the game. Another amusing touch is that ranks
1949
tend to be named for the player's profession in the game - so, a musician
1950
might begin as ``Novice" and rise through ``Second Violinist" to
1951
``Conductor". One of the wittiest is in the detective game `Sherlock',
1952
where the lowest rank - of zero achievement - is ``Chief Superintendent
1953
of Scotland Yard".
1954
1955
Among the questions to ask are: will every winner of the game necessarily
1956
score exactly 400 out of 400? (This is very difficult to arrange if even
1957
small acts are scored.) Will everyone entering the end game already have a
1958
score of 360, and so have earned the title ``Wizard"? Will the rank
1959
``Amateur" correspond exactly to having got out of the prologue and into the
1960
middle game?
1961
1962
So what deserves points? Clearly solving the major puzzles does. But do
1963
the minor, only halfway-there-yet puzzles? Here, as ever, games vary
1964
greatly. In `Zork III', the scoring is out of 7 and corresponds to seven
1965
vital puzzles (though a score of 7 does not mean the game is over). In `The
1966
Lurking Horror', 20 major puzzles are awarded 5 points each, making a
1967
maximum of 100.
1968
1969
Alternatively, there is the complicated approach. Points are awarded in
1970
twos and threes for small acts, and then in larger doses for treasures -
1971
silver bars 5, gold amulets 10, platinum pendants 20. Treasures are scored
1972
twice, once when found, once when removed to safety - to the trophy case in
1973
`Zork I', or inside the packing case of Level 9's game `Dungeon' (no
1974
relation to the port of `Zork' of the same name). Furthermore, 1 point is
1975
awarded for each room visited for the first time, and 1 for never having
1976
saved the game - a particularly evil trick.
1977
1978
In some games (such as `Acheton') score actually falls back when the player
1979
is wasting time and nothing is being achieved: the player's mana gradually
1980
fades. This annoys some players intensely (no bad thing, some might say).
1981
1982
Games used to have a ``Last Lousy Point" by custom - a single point which
1983
could only be won by doing something hugely unlikely, such as going to a
1984
particular area of the Pirate's Maze and dropping a key. This custom,
1985
happily, has fallen into disuse.
1986
1987
1988
\subtitle{Wrong Guesses}
1989
1990
1991
For some puzzles, a perfectly good alternative solution will occur to
1992
players. It's good style to code two or more solutions to the same puzzle,
1993
if that doesn't upset the rest of the game. But even if it does, at least
1994
a game should say something when a good guess is made. (Trying to cross the
1995
volcano on the magic carpet in `Spellbreaker' is a case in point.)
1996
1997
For example, in `Curses' there are (at time of writing) six different ways
1998
to open the child-proof medicine bottle. They are all quite hard to guess,
1999
they are all logically reasonable and most players get one of them.
2000
\medskip
2001
2002
One reason why `Zork' held the player's attention so firmly (and why it took
2003
about ten times the code size, despite being rather smaller than the
2004
original mainframe `Adventure') was that it had a huge stock of usually
2005
funny responses to reasonable things which might be tried.
2006
2007
My favourite funny response, which I can't resist reprinting here, is:
2008
\beginstt
2009
You are falling towards the ground, wind whipping around you.
2010
>east
2011
Down seems more likely.
2012
\endtt
2013
(`Spellbreaker'. Though I also recommend trying to take the sea serpent
2014
in `Zork II'.) This is a good example because it's exactly the sort of
2015
boring rule (can't move from the midair position) which most designers
2016
usually want to code as fast as possible, and don't write with any
2017
imagination.
2018
\medskip
2019
2020
Another form of wrong guess is in vocabulary. Unless exceptionally large, a
2021
good game ought to have about a 1000-word vocabulary: too much less than
2022
that and it is probably missing reasonable synonyms; too much more and it is
2023
overdoing it. Remember too that players do not know at first what the
2024
relevant and irrelevant objects in a room are. For instance:
2025
\beginstt
2026
Old Winery
2027
This small cavity at the north end of the attic once housed all manner of
2028
home-made wine paraphernalia, now lost and unlamented. Steps, provided
2029
with a good strong banister-rail, lead down and to the west, and the
2030
banister rail continues along a passage east.
2031
\endtt
2032
This clearly mentions a banister, which (as it happens) plays no part in the
2033
game, but merely reinforces the idea of an east-west passage including a
2034
staircase which (as it happens) is partly for the use of a frail relative.
2035
But the player may well try tieing thing to the rail, pulling at it and so
2036
on. So the game knows ``banister", ``rail" and (not entirely logically, but
2037
players are not entirely logical) ``paraphernalia" as names of irrelevant
2038
things. An attempt to toy with them results in the reply
2039
\beginstt
2040
That's not something you need to refer to in the course of this game.
2041
\endtt
2042
which most players appreciate as fair, and is better than the parser
2043
either being ignorant or, worse, pretending not to be.
2044
2045
A feature which some games go to a great deal of trouble to provide, but is
2046
of arguable merit (so think I), is to name every room, so that ``search
2047
winery" would be understood (though of course it would do nothing almost
2048
everywhere... and a player would have to try something similar everywhere on
2049
the off chance). Some games would even provide ``go to winery" from nearby
2050
places. These are impressive features but need to be coded carefully not to
2051
give the player information she may not yet have earned.
2052
2053
2054
\subtitle{Hints and Prizes}
2055
2056
2057
A good game (unless written for a competition) will often contain a hints
2058
service, as the Infocom games did in latter days. Most players will only
2059
really badly be stuck about once in the course of a game (and they vary
2060
widely in which puzzle to be really badly stuck on) and it is only fair
2061
to rescue them. (If nothing else, this cuts down on the volume of email
2062
cries for help which may arrive.) There are two ways to provide hints:
2063
\item{--} in the game itself, by having some sage old worthy to ask;
2064
\item{--} properly separated from the game, with a ``hint" command which
2065
offers one or more menus full of possible questions.
2066
2067
Of course, a hint should not be an explicit answer. The classic approach
2068
is to offer a sequence of hints, each more helpful than the last, until
2069
finally the solution is openly confessed. Perhaps surprisingly, not all
2070
players like this, and some complain that it makes play too easy to be
2071
challenging. It is difficult to construct a hints system in such a way that
2072
it doesn't reveal later information (in its lists of questions to which
2073
answers are provided, for instance): but worth it.
2074
2075
At the end of the game, when it has been won, is there anything else to be
2076
said? In some games, there is. In its final incarnations (alas, not the
2077
one included in the `Lost Treasures of Infocom' package), `Zork I' offered
2078
winners access to the hints system at the RESTART, RESTORE or QUIT prompt.
2079
`Curses' goes so far as to have a trivia quiz, really to tell the player
2080
about some of the stranger things which can be done in the game. (If
2081
nothing else, this is a good chance for the game's author to boast.)
2082
2083
2084
\subtitle{User Interface, and all that jazz}
2085
2086
2087
No, not windows and pull-down menus, but the few meta-commands which go to
2088
the game program and do not represent actions of the player's character in
2089
the game. Of course,
2090
\begindisplay
2091
SAVE, RESTORE, RESTART, QUIT
2092
\enddisplay
2093
are essential. Games should also provide commands to allow the player to
2094
choose whether room descriptions are abbreviated on second visits or not.
2095
Other such options might be commands to control whether the game prints out
2096
messages like
2097
\beginstt
2098
[Your score has just gone up by ten points.]
2099
\endtt
2100
and commands to transcribe to the printer or to a file - these are
2101
extremely useful when receiving comments from play-testers.
2102
2103
UNDO is difficult to code but worth it. In `Curses', UNDO can even restore
2104
the player posthumously (though this is not advertised in the game: death,
2105
where is thy sting?).
2106
2107
Abbreviations (especially ``g" for again, ``z" for wait, ``x" for examine)
2108
must now be considered essential.
2109
2110
Some games produce quotations or jokes from time to time in little windows
2111
away from the main text of the game. Care is needed to avoid these
2112
overlying vital text. It ought to possible to turn this feature off.
2113
2114
The author's only innovations in this line are to provide a ``full score"
2115
feature, which accounts exactly for where the player's score has come from
2116
and lists achievements so far; to provide a choice of ``inventory wide''
2117
or ``inventory tall'', which is helpful for players on screens with few
2118
lines; and to provide ``objects" and ``places"
2119
commands:
2120
\beginlines
2121
| >places|
2122
| You have visited: Attic and Old Furniture.|
2123
||
2124
| >objects|
2125
| Objects you have handled:|
2126
||
2127
| the crumpled piece of paper (held)|
2128
| the electric torch (held)|
2129
| the chocolate biscuit (held)|
2130
| the bird whistle (in Old Furniture)|
2131
| the gift-wrapped parcel (lost)|
2132
\endlines
2133
These features may or may not catch on.
2134
2135
2136
\subtitle{Debugging and Testing}
2137
2138
2139
Every author will need a few ``secret" debugging commands (still present in
2140
several of the Infocom games, for instance) to transport the player across
2141
the map, or get any object by remote control. Since debugging never ends,
2142
it's never wise to remove these commands: you might instead protect them with
2143
a password in released editions. (The Inform system gets around this by
2144
providing a suite of debugging verbs which is only included if a particular
2145
setting is made at compile-time.)
2146
2147
An unobvious but useful feature is a command to make the game non-random.
2148
That is, if there is a doorway which randomly leads to one of three places,
2149
then this command will make it predictable. This is essential when testing
2150
the game against a transcript.
2151
2152
During design, it's helpful to keep such a script of commands which wins the
2153
game from the start position. Ideally, your game ought to be able to accept
2154
input from a file of commands as well as from the keyboard, so that this
2155
script can be run automatically through.
2156
2157
This means that when it comes to adding a new feature towards the end, it is
2158
easy to check whether or not it upsets features earlier on.
2159
2160
Bugs are usually easy to fix: they are mostly small oversights. Very few
2161
take more than five minutes to fix. Especially common are:
2162
\item{$\bullet$} slips of punctuation, spelling or grammar (for instance,
2163
``a orange");
2164
\item{$\bullet$} rooms being dark when they ought to be light (this tends
2165
not to show if the player habitually carries a lamp anyway), or not changing
2166
their state of light/darkness when they should, as for instance when a
2167
skylight opens or closes;
2168
\item{$\bullet$} other object flags having been forgotten, such as a fish
2169
not being flagged as edible;
2170
\item{$\bullet$} map connections being very slightly out, e.g. west in one
2171
direction and northeast in the other, by accident;
2172
\item{$\bullet$} something which logically can only happen once, such as a
2173
window being broken, actually being possible more than once, with strange
2174
consequences;
2175
\item{$\bullet$} general messages being unfortunate in particular cases,
2176
such as ``The ball bounces on the ground and returns to your hand." in
2177
mid-air or while wading through a ford;
2178
\item{$\bullet$} small illogicalities: being able to swim with a suit of
2179
armour on, or wave the coat you're wearing, or eat while wearing a gas mask;
2180
\item{$\bullet$} parser accidents and misnamings.
2181
2182
Do not go into play-testing until the scoring system is worked out and
2183
the game passes the entire transcript of the ``winning" solution without
2184
crashing or giving absurd replies.
2185
2186
2187
\subtitle{Playtesting}
2188
2189
2190
The days of play-testing are harrowing. The first thing to do is to
2191
get a few ``friends" and make them play for a while. Look over their
2192
shoulders, scribble furiously on a piece of paper, moan with despair and
2193
frustration, but do not speak. Force yourself not to explain or defend,
2194
whatever the provocation. Expect to have abuse heaped on you, and bear up
2195
nobly under the strain. To quote Dave Lebling (on testing `Suspect', from
2196
an article in the ``New Zork Times"):
2197
\beginlines
2198
| > BARTENDER, GIVE ME A DRINK|
2199
| "Sorry, I've been hired to mix drinks and that's all."|
2200
||
2201
| > DANCE WITH ALICIA|
2202
| Which Alicia do you mean, Alicia or the overcoat?|
2203
||
2204
| Veronica's body is slumped behind the desk, strangled with a lariat.|
2205
| > TALK TO VERONICA|
2206
| Veronica's body is listening.|
2207
\endlines
2208
\quote
2209
Little bugs, you know? Things no one would notice. At this point the
2210
tester's job is fairly easy. The story is like a house of cards -- it
2211
looks pretty solid but the slightest touch collapses it...
2212
\endquote
2213
After a cleaning-up exercise (and there's still time to rethink and
2214
redraft), give the game to a few brave beta-testers. Insist on reports in
2215
writing or email, or some concrete form, and if you can persuade the testers
2216
then try to get a series of reports, one at a time, rather than waiting a
2217
month for an epic list of bugs. Keep in touch to make sure the testers are
2218
not utterly stuck because a puzzle is impossible due to a bug, or due to it
2219
just being far too hard. Don't give hints unless they are asked for.
2220
2221
Play-testing will produce a good 100 or so bugs, mostly awesomely trivial
2222
and easily fixed. Still, expect a few catastrophes.
2223
2224
Good play-testers are worth their weight in gold. They try things in a
2225
systematically perverse way. To quote Michael Kinyon, whose effect may be
2226
felt almost everywhere in `Curses',
2227
\quote
2228
A tester with a new verb is like a kid with a hammer; every problem
2229
seems like a nail.
2230
\endquote
2231
And how else would you know whether ``scrape parrot" produced a sensible
2232
reply or not?
2233
2234
Unless there is reason not to (because you know more than they do about how
2235
the plot will work out), listen to what the play-testers say about style and
2236
consistency too. Be sure also to credit them somewhere in the game.
2237
2238
2239
\subtitle{It's Never Finished}
2240
2241
2242
Games are never finished. There's always one more bug, or one more message
2243
which could be improved, or one more little cute reply to put in. Debugging
2244
is a creative process and adds to the life of the game. The play-testing
2245
process has increased the code size of `Curses' by about 50\%: in other
2246
words, over a third of a game is devoted to ``irrelevant'' features, blind
2247
alleys, flippant replies and the like.
2248
2249
Roughly 300 bugs in `Curses' have been spotted since it was released
2250
publically two years ago (I have received well over a thousand email messages
2251
on the subject), and that was after play-testing had been ``finished". About
2252
once a week I make this week's corrections, and about once every three
2253
months I re-issue the mended version. Thus, many people who suggested
2254
little extensions and repairs have greatly contributed to the game, and
2255
that's why there are so many names in the credits.
2256
2257
2258
\subtitle{...Afterword}
2259
2260
2261
Bob Newell recently asked why the old, crude, simplistic Scott Adams games
2262
still had such fascination to many people: partly nostalgia of the
2263
`favourite childhood books' kind, of course. But also the feeling of
2264
holding a well-made miniature, a Chinese puzzle box with exactly-cut pieces.
2265
2266
An adventure game, curiously, is one of the most satisfying of works to have
2267
written: perhaps because one can always polish it a little further, perhaps
2268
because it has so many hidden and secret possibilities, perhaps because
2269
something is made as well as written.
2270
2271
For myself, though, perhaps also because each day somebody new may wander
2272
into its world, as I did when occasionally taken to a Digital mainframe in
2273
the 1970s, through a dark warren of passages untidier even than my bedroom:
2274
so that the glow of the words has not quite faded from my eyes.
2275
2276
\end
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