Re: Is EXAMINE necessary? (was Fyleet, Crobe, Sangraal)

[Graham Nelson <graham@gnelson.demon.co.uk>]

In article <1999Sep6.162427.18639@leeds.ac.uk>, J R Partington
<URL:mailto:pmt6jrp@gps.leeds.ac.uk> wrote:
> >I don't think it's just a case of games being 'good for their time'.
> >Some games are Just Not Very Good. Many of the Infocom games are flawed
> >by modern standards, but they're still good games. Sphinx Adventure
> >isn't.

Does anybody here know who wrote "Sphinx", by the way?

(I rather liked it, myself.)

> I think we just have to accept that some people like the simple syntax
> and the emphasis on puzzles, whereas others don't. I think if they
> were being written now, rather than 12-15 years ago, we'd have gone
> for a better parser---like the Topologika one, say---and provided
> 'undo' (for people who are not in the habit of saving games
> regularly).  Not much else.

Curiously, at one point my draft of "Fyleet" et al. did include
"undo", but Adam (Atkinson) and I decided to be faithful to the
original and kick it out again.  Maybe we were wrong about this;
there are a fair number of "insta-deaths", as Adam puts it, in
the old Phoenix games.

As for the parser, I can't honestly see how improving the parser
would much change, say, "Crobe".  Yes, there are a very few cases
where, oh, "sit on throne" would be nice.  But given that the
player knows that commands are minimal, "sit" isn't going to take
too long to think of, is it?

-- 
Graham Nelson | graham@gnelson.demon.co.uk | Oxford, United Kingdom