Re: Gareth's competition comments


20 Oct 95 11:22:10

dmb@lf.ai.mit.edu (David Baggett) wrote:

> In article<30840BDF.227E@bud.com>, Jon Drukman <jsd@bud.com> wrote:
>
> >even the LAYOUT of it on-screen is important to me.
>
> That's a new one. Can you give some examples of good and bad layout?

To take an exaggerated example, I personally find descriptions like

West of House
You are standing in an open field west of a white house, with a
boarded front door.
There is a small mailbox here.

a lot more aesthetically pleasing than descriptions like

I'm in an open field.

Obvious exits: North, South, West, Northeast, Southeast.

I can also see: White house - Boarded front door - Small mailbox

This latter version also seems infinitely more 'mechanical' to me.
It's more like reading a shopping list, really.

To take another, less exaggerated, example, consider this description
from Infocom's "Seastalker":

(west walkway)
You're at a work counter, next to the control gear used to operate
the test tank.
The test tank (which is now empty of sea water) is located in a
large work room, just south of your laboratory, with concrete-block
walls on three sides and a high metal roof. Most of its floor is dug
out and lined with steel, to form the huge tank used for developing
and testing underwater gear and the pilot models of your submarine
craft.
There's a walkway around the tank on three sides -- north, west and
south. On the east side, a steel gate forms the wall of the room.
Sitting on the work counter is:
a catalyst capsule

Somethins about the layout here makes it hard for me to read. I can
only guess that it's the way paragraphs follow each other -- some
blank lines or some indentation wouldn't hurt. Also, the "(west
walkway)" line looks a bit unusual for an Infocom game. Most of
their games would have given it as "West Walkway".

As examples of layout I liked, I thought Infocom's "Beyond Zork"
and "A Mind Forever Voyaging" looked very neat.

So I'd say yes, layout is important both for capturing atmosphere and
for making the text easy to read. But I can't give any definition of
what is "right" and what is "wrong". It might make for an interesting
discussion, though, and I'd be interested to hear what others think.

_
Torbjorn Andersson