Re: Announcing: Fyleet, Crobe, Sangraal

[dylanw@demon.net (Dylan O'Donnell)]

"Adam Atkinson" <ghira@mistral.co.uk> writes:
> On 27-Aug-99 21:32:03, Adam Atkinson said:
> 
> >The games were all written with the two-word parser in mind, so there
> >shouldn't be any NEED at all to say "go north and throw all but the
> >ancient key under the bed".
> 
> Thinking about it, even when I play games which do allow me to say the
> most contorted things, a transcript of my commands would look just
> like something from a two-word game. The only exception would be the
> "turtle, follow me" kind of syntax you need to talk to people in
> infocom games.
> 
> Do people _really_ make very frequent use of the full power of
> advanced parsers?

Yes, actually. Not convoluted sentences like the one above, usually,
but three or four word commands like HIT TROLL WITH SWORD or PUT JEWEL
ON PEDESTAL; I'm _used_ to being able to say things like that with the
expectation that, even if they don't work, the game will understand
what I'm trying to do. It's jarring (even if perfectly reasonable, as
in the case of games from this era) when it doesn't.

-- 
:  Dylan O'Donnell               :   "It is pitch black. You are likely     :
:  Forgotten Office, Demon       :    to be eaten by a grue."               :
:  http://www.fysh.org/~psmith/  :  -- Dave Lebling and Marc Blank, "Zork"  :