Re: Gameplay theory: leaving object behind..


12 Sep 1995 04:54:38 GMT

In article <1995Sep10.135006.26604@news.cs.indiana.edu>,
Sam Hulick <shulick@guava.ucs.indiana.edu> wrote:
>For instance, if you find even something
>as silly as a toothbrush lying around, why pass it up? You may need it
>in the future.

I think I'd rather let my teeth get dirty than use a toothbrush I found
laying around somewhere.

A game I'm beta testing, _Avarice_, promises eventually to have several
thousand objects. You see, it's set in a mansion. Sure, you _could_ pick
up the porcelain poodle and the astrolabe from the bric-a-brac shelf--as
you could in real life--but why _should_ you?

A game should not require that every object have a use in the game. I'm
all for hideously detailed games that have a great many objects that have
no relevance to the game. Don't let the player get away with "I can pick
it up--it must be useful".

This, oddly, is something that works better in a graphical game like
_Avarice_ than in a text adventure, where the necessity to enumerate each
object would lead to absolutely unwieldy screens of text.

Adam

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