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<h2>§51 The room description</h2>
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<p class="normal"><span class="atleft"><img src="dm4-406_1.jpg" alt=""></span>
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When beginning to code a design, it is tempting to give rooms temporary
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descriptions (“Slab room.” “Cloister.”), and
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leave the writing for later. There is no more depressing point than
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facing a pile of 50 room descriptions to write, all at once, and feeling
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that one's enthusiasm has altogether gone. (The same applies to making
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an over-detailed design before doing any coding.) Besides, when testing
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the rooms concerned, one has no feeling of what the game will look like
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except tatty, and this is also depressing. Also, writing room descriptions
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forces the designer to think about what the room is ultimately for.
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So most designers like to write a few at a time, as coding goes on,
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but to write them properly: and edit later for consistency and second
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<p class="indent">In any room description there are usually one to
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three essentials to get across, and the rest is better cut or relegated
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to text appearing only if the player chooses to examine something in
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particular. Even the most tedious junctions deserve description,
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however, and description is more than a list of exits. Here is
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‘Advent’ at its most graceful:</p>
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<p class="output"><em>Shell Room</em><br>
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You're in a large room carved out of sedimentary rock. The floor and
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walls are littered with bits of shells embedded in the stone. A
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shallow passage proceeds downward, and a somewhat steeper one leads
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up. A low hands and knees passage enters from the south.<br>
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<em>In Limestone Passage</em><br>
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You are walking along a gently sloping north/south passage lined with
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oddly shaped limestone formations.</p>
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<p class="normal">Note the geology, the slight unevenness of the ground
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and the variation in the size of the tunnels. Nothing happens here,
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but it seems a real place.</p>
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<p class="indent">Flippant room descriptions are best avoided if they
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will be often revisited. Subtler humour is more durable:</p>
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<p class="output">On the wall by the bed is a slightly curved, full-length
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mirror. You reflect upon this for a while.</p>
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<p class="normal">(From the Cambridge University game
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‘Xenophobia’ (Jonathan Mestel, 1989). This wording is also
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neat in that it applies equally well on the tenth visit to a location
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as on the first, whereas text like “Astonished to see a mirror,
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you leap back…” would not.) About once in a game an author
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can get away with something like this:</p>
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<a id="p407" name="p407"></a>
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<p class="output"><em>Observation Room</em><br>
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Calvin Coolidge once described windows as “rectangles of
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glass.” If so, he may have been thinking about the window which
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fills the western wall of this room. A tiny closet lies to the north.
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A sign is posted next to the stairs which lead both upwards and
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<p class="normal">A characteristic piece of Steve Meretzky<a id="s51_fnref1"
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name="s51_fnref1"></a><a href="#s51_fn1">†</a> from ‘Leather
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Goddesses of Phobos’, demonstrating the lengths one has to go
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to when faced with a relentlessly ordinary junction-with-window. The
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sentence Meretzky is at pains to avoid is “You can go up, down
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or north.” With care it is even possible to remove mention
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of a room's exits altogether, but only if the information is presented
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in some other way. For instance:</p>
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<p class="output"><em>Dark Cave</em><br>
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Little light seeps into this muddy, bone-scattered cave and always you
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long for fresh air. Strange bubbles, pulsing and shifting as if alive,
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hang upon the rock at crazy, irregular angles.<br>
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Black crabs scuttle about your feet.<br>
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><tt>south</tt><br>
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The only exit is back out north to the sea-shore.</p>
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<p class="normal">Here, the “You can't go that way” message
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for the room has taken up the slack.</p>
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<p class="indent">Experienced players know all of the various formulae
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used in room descriptions by heart: “You're in”, “You
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are in”, “This is”, “You have come to”
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and so forth. This, perhaps, is why some designers prefer impersonal room
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descriptions, not mentioning “you” unless to say something
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other than the obvious fact of being present. Once into the text then,
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as in all writing, vocabulary counts. If there is a tree, of what species?
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If a chair, of what style? (‘Cutthroats’ (Mike Berlyn and
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Jerry Wolper, 1984) describes a cupboard of no particular interest as
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a “lopsided wooden dresser” for the sake of painting the
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scene.) Room descriptions should not always describe static, fixed
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things, should bring in senses other than sight and should not always
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be monochrome. Plainness and repetition are to be avoided at almost
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<p class="output">You're on a winding drive outside a magnificent door.
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Exits are west to a woodshed, upwards to a vine and in through a door.
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You can see a vine.<br>
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><tt>west</tt><br><a id="p408" name="p408"></a>
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You're in a woodshed in the swamp. Exits are east to a winding drive
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and west to a herb garden. You can see a candle and a woodpile.</p>
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<p class="normal">(‘The Price of Magik’, BBC Micro version
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– in the Amiga version of the later ‘Time and Magik Trilogy’
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re-release, the winding drive description ran to an eighty-word essay,
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and did away entirely with the mechanically-generated “exits
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are” sentence.) So much for what is bad. The following, from
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‘Advent’ again, is something much more dangerous: the
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mediocre room description.</p>
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<p class="output"><em>Whirlpool Room</em><br>
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You are in a magnificent cavern with a rushing stream, which cascades
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over a sparkling waterfall into a roaring whirlpool which disappears
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through a hole in the floor. Passages exit to the south and west.</p>
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<p class="normal">This seems a decent enough try, but no novelist would
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write like this. Each important noun – “cavern”,
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“stream”, “waterfall”, “whirlpool”
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– has its own adjective – “magnificent”,
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“rushing”, “sparkling”, “roaring”.
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The two “which” clauses in a row are a little unhappy.
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“Cascades” is good, but does a stream cascade “over”
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a waterfall? Does a whirlpool itself disappear? The “hole in
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the floor” seems incongruous. Surely it must be underwater, indeed
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deep underwater? Come to that, the geography could be better used,
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which would also help to place the whirlpool within the cave (is
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it in the middle? on one edge?). And why “Whirlpool Room”,
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which sounds like one of the perks of a health club? Here is a second
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<p class="output"><em>Whirlpool Ledge</em><br>
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The path runs a quarter-circle from south to west around a broken ledge
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of this funnel cavern. A waterfall drops out of the darkness, catching
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the lamplight as it cascades into the basin. Rapid currents whip into
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a roaring whirlpool below.</p>
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<p class="normal">Even so, there is nothing man-made, nothing alive, no
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colour and besides it seems to miss the essential feature of all the
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mountain water-caves I've ever been to, so let us add a second paragraph
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(with a line break, which is easier on the eye):</p>
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<p class="output">Blue-green algae hangs in clusters from the old
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guard-railing, which has almost rusted clean through in the frigid,
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<p class="normal">The algae and the guard-rail offer possibilities.
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Perhaps there are frogs who could eat insect-eggs in the algae, or
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perhaps the player might find a use for iron oxide, and could scrape
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rust from the railing. Certainly the railing should break if
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a rope is tied to it. Is it safe to dive in? Does the water have a
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hypnotic effect on someone staring into it? Is there anything dry
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which would become damp if the player brought it through here? Might
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there be a second ledge higher up where the stream falls into the cave?</p>
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<a id="p409" name="p409"></a>
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<p class="aside"><span class="warning">▲</span>
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Lack of variety comes in many forms. Brian Howarth's eleven
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“Mysterious Adventures” games written for the Scott Adams
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game engine invent some interesting milieux (‘Feasibility
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Experiment’ (1982), with objects like “Vague Shapes”,
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is worth a look) but they are highly repetitive and difficult to tell
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apart. The main weakness of ‘Enchanter’ is a sparse,
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location-heavy map, especially in the prologue, where many rooms
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over-describe their neighbours. Slightly at odds with the traditional
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dungeon elsewhere, ‘Enchanter’ blends in horror tableaux:
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dead grass “seems to grip at your feet”, a demon statue
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“seems to reach towards you”. There's a lot of
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“seeming” motion, because the deserted, blasted landscape
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is largely static: “listless waves barely stir the flotsam and
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jetsam” sums it up only too well. The outcome would have been
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mediocre had the puzzles in the game not been exceptionally good,
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and a few of the interior locations appealing. Here is a fine example
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of the interior room as vista, overlooking a landscape and drawing
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together the whole game's map:</p>
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<p class="output"><em>Map Room</em><br>
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This room in the high tower appears to be a map room, with hundreds of
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ancient maps covering the walls. A huge globe, made of gold, sits on
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a pedestal in the center of the room. Through the tower windows can
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be seen a vast forest stretching out to the northeast and the sea,
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covered in fog, to the east and south. Stairs to the south lead to
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the bottom of the tower.</p>
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<p class="dotbreak">� � � � �</p>
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<p class="normal">It is a vexed question just how much land occupies a
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single location. Usually a location represents a single room, perhaps
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ten yards across at the most. Really large chambers are usually given
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several locations, so that a ballroom might be divided into corners
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with names like “Ballroom Northwest” and “Ballroom
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Southwest”. The “huge cave about 3,000 feet across”
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of ‘Acheton’ occupies no less than 16 locations, which
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although it conveys a sense of space can also seem repetitious and
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<p class="indent">At the other extreme it is sometimes necessary for
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a single location to do duty for a great swathe of ground, especially
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out of doors, where drawing the map can leave one with the same
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frustration as the set-designer for a Wagnerian opera: everything
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indistinct and without edges. ‘Spellbreaker’, under
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tight constraints on locations, includes one-location meadows and
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volcanos. The reverse position is taken by the distinctive and plausible
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‘Gateway to Karos’ (Derek Haslam, 1984). Locations are
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superimposed in a square map-like grid onto the rivers, cliffs, forest
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and so forth of the island of Karos, so that each location represents
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perhaps one square kilometer:</p>
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<p class="output"><em>Eastlands</em><br>
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You are in a cluster of roofless, abandoned buildings, apparently
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part of an ore-washing mill. A dry water-channel runs northward, and
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a path leads west.<br><a id="p410" name="p410"></a>
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A garden spade, well used but still strong and sharp, lies abandoned here.</p>
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<p class="normal">(About a dozen neighbouring locations share the short
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name “Eastlands”.) A middle position between ‘Spellbreaker’
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and ‘Gateway to Karos’ is taken by ‘She's Got a Thing
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For a Spring’ (1997), an evocation by the nature photographer
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Brent VanFossen of the mountains of northwest America. Almost an
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interactive postcard, this thoroughly appealing game features elks,
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mooses, eagles and so forth, but is equally vivid with terrain and
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<p class="output"><em>Granite Canyon</em><br>
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You're on a shelf overlooking a small canyon, apparently carved by
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the nearby stream and 20 or 30 feet deep. A rocky path enters from the
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west beside a tangle of blackberries, and dead ends at a ledge overlooking
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the stream below. Above you, granite walls continue to rise, the pink
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stones a beautiful contrast to the clear blue sky. An animal trail leads
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up, too steep to walk, but you might be able to make it in a scramble.<br>
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Beside you stands a small tower supporting one end of a steel cable.<br>
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The end of a spruce branch is just barely visible deep inside the
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<p class="normal">A single location can also substitute for an infinite
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expanse, such as the Neverending Lane of ‘Jinxter’.</p>
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<p class="indent">Another consideration in outdoor locations is that
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the slow process of sunrise and sunset ought to affect room descriptions.
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‘Christminster’ organises time so as to keep the player indoors
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between seven and ten p.m. so that only two states are needed, full day
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and full night. ‘A Mind Forever Voyaging’ derives most
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of its impact from its depiction of the same city decaying in ten-year
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stages, as it rolls forward in history like H. G. Wells's classic (and
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classically filmed) novel <i>Things To Come</i>. The definitive
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shifting-description game of recent years is Andrew Plotkin's ‘A
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Change in the Weather’ (1995):</p>
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<p class="output">You're standing on a ledge, on a rather steep, overgrown
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hillface. Greenery hides the stream below and the hilltop above, and
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the meadows and sky beyond sweep away into the incandescent west.</p>
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<p class="output">You're standing on a ledge, on a rather steep, overgrown
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hillface. Rain hides the stream below and the hilltop above, and to the west
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<p class="normal">Descriptions alter not just through time passing, but
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also because of differences in perspective. Still the most remarkable
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example is the ‘Suspended’ complex, which a player in suspended
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animation controls through robots with different sensory perceptions.
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Here is the same place from four points of view:</p>
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<p class="output">I'm in a large room which looks like the inside of
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a globe. The walls seem sculptured with wiring, swirling around the
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room's perimeter, leading into a tall column. The column itself has
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a door on its face. Doorways lead to the west, south, east and northeast.</p>
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<a id="p411" name="p411"></a>
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<p class="output">Sonar indicates a large, spherical open area with a hollow column running
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from floor to ceiling. The column reflects sonar evenly indicating
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no distinguishing external characteristics.</p>
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<p class="output">All around me charges flow, shaped by the very nature of this room. The
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electrons are being channeled into an electrical column, central to this
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<p class="output">A small humming can be detected from a column which extends from floor
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<p class="normal">Another device, used in the spy thriller ‘Border
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Zone’ (Marc Blank, 1987), is to respond to directions not with
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a description of the new location but with a response about how you got
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<p class="output">><tt>east</tt><br>
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You open the door and walk out into the passageway. You scan the
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passageway, noting guards at either end, machine guns poised at their
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sides. You don't remember them from the beginning of the trip, so you
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can only suppose that security has been tightened in the search for
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the American agent.<br>
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><tt>look</tt><br>
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<em>Outside Your Compartment</em><br>
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You are standing in the passageway that runs along the length of the
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car. At either end of the passageway, a guard is standing, machine gun
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poised at his side. Right now, you're standing outside your own
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<p class="aside"><span class="warning"><b>•</b>
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<b>REFERENCES</b></span><br>
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Mike Berlyn (<i>XYZZYnews</i> 17) groups the issues here under the headings
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Size/Scope, Ceilings, Floor/Ground, Walls, Lighting and Mood (“a
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depressed person is not likely to have yellow-and-red throw pillows”:
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<span class="warning"><b>•</b></span>Gerry Kevin Wilson offers three don'ts
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for room descriptions: “1. Don't mention a player's actions in
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a description. 2. Don't mention moveable objects in a description.
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3. Don't exceed one screenful of text in a description.”
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<span class="warning"><b>•</b></span>“Very often, a map or the
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plan of a building can suggest a plot element that no amount of abstract
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thought could generate.” (Gil and Beryl Williamson, in <i>Computer
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Adventures – The Secret Art</i>.)
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<span class="warning"><b>•</b></span>Wisest of all, perhaps: “It's
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awful to sit down and think, ‘I've got to write fifty room descriptions
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today, and each one of them has to be clear, crisp and vivid while
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conveying exactly the information I want it to convey’ ”
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(Gareth Rees, Usenet posting, 7/6/94). Don't write them all at once.</p>
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<hr class="footnotebar">
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<p class="aside" style="margin-top:0"><a id="s51_fn1" name="s51_fn1"></a><a
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href="#s51_fnref1">†</a> But Meretzky was not always as
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corny as his reputation. Influenced by ‘Suspended’, which
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he had play-tested and later called “probably the most interesting
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and daringly different game Infocom ever did”, he used a virtual
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reality theme to construct almost the only work of early IF to contain
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serious political themes: ‘A Mind Forever Voyaging’ (1985).</p>
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