Slashdot Mirror
Adventure Game Interfaces and Puzzle Theory
MarkN writes "It seems like whenever broad topics of game design are discussed on Slashdot, a few people bring up examples of Adventure Games, possibly owing to the age and interests of our members. I'd be interested to hear the community's thoughts on a piece I wrote on Adventure Games, talking about the evolution they underwent in terms of interfaces, and how the choice of interface affects some aspects of the puzzles and design. My basic premise is that an Adventure Game is an exercise in abstract puzzle solving — you could represent the same game with a parser or a point and click interface and still have the same underlying puzzle structure, and required player actions. What the interface does affect is how the player specifies those actions. Point and click games typically have a bare handful of verbs compared to parser games, where the player is forced to describe the desired interaction much more precisely in a way that doesn't lend itself to brute force fiddling. It's a point Yahtzee has made in the past; he went so far as to design a modern graphic adventure game with a parser input to demonstrate its potential."
Read on for the rest of MarkN's comments.
MarkN continues:
"In addition to talking about the underlying concepts of the genre, the other main thing I touch on are the consequences of the simplification of interfaces — puzzles are more likely to be cracked by trying everything until it works since there are fewer possibilities for interaction. There are a few simple alternatives: requiring a number of actions in sequence, or requiring the player to achieve a more complex configuration or state to demonstrate their intent. But that can reduce the world of puzzle solving to explicit logic puzzles in order to get around the problems that more creative types of puzzles run into, since they depend upon actions that are simpler to specify. It's a topic I'd be interested to get the community's thoughts on, and what they see as the best way to craft a puzzle solving experience."
"In addition to talking about the underlying concepts of the genre, the other main thing I touch on are the consequences of the simplification of interfaces — puzzles are more likely to be cracked by trying everything until it works since there are fewer possibilities for interaction. There are a few simple alternatives: requiring a number of actions in sequence, or requiring the player to achieve a more complex configuration or state to demonstrate their intent. But that can reduce the world of puzzle solving to explicit logic puzzles in order to get around the problems that more creative types of puzzles run into, since they depend upon actions that are simpler to specify. It's a topic I'd be interested to get the community's thoughts on, and what they see as the best way to craft a puzzle solving experience."
Most of them when I played them back in the 90s seemed to require the following player input:
find monsters
kill monsters
level
And then when you go to a high enough level
find newbies
kill newbies
run from angry wizards
And that was about it.
I once had a similar debate while discussing with a guy who was doing a nethack port on the Game Boy Advance platform.
Nethack is a keyboard-driven game, where you specify actions (go, eat, attack, loot, force, open, close, zap...) by pressing a given key before you specify the object upon which your action is performed (if any), thus taking advantage of the large number of keys available on an average keyboard.
Console RPGs have a limitation in input keys : on the game boy advance, you only have 8 useful keys (directional pad, A, B, left and right shoulder keys).
So porting nethack to the Game Boy Advance platform required either simulating the keyboard in some way, which was the approach of the guy I was talking to, or defining a different interaction paradigm.
In console RPGs you usually specify objects before you specify actions. The reason is simple: objects, displayed as a list, are easy and fast to browse with directional keys. Then for one object you select, you get to select which actions is available for performing on that object, once more a small list, fast to browse with few keys.
So I ended up figuring out that the best way to port nethack was to actually invert the interaction paradigm, going from action->object to object->action.
For the player, it meant that the game would be played in very different ways. You don't think "what am I going to do now?" but "what can I use at this point to do something?" Still, the game engine is the same...
By self-submitting you acknowledge that your piece isn't good enough become popular on its own. I hope you're prepared to have your ideas roasted by the slashdot community.
I really miss the interfaces the older adventure games used, like Police Quest 1 and 2, Space Quest 1 and 2, Leisure Suit Larry 1-3, and the other Sierra adventures from that time. Just walking around, and typing instructions. Of course this could be modernised by using voice commands, but I like it better than just clicking around on everything until the right thing is clicked.
Nice article, good points. Fiddling with the different option to obtain the right combination can be fun (monkey island)
But a major way of improving gameplay would be to have multiple ways of solving the puzzles. For example the closed door, you could:
-open it with a key
-use a crowbar
-ask a NPC to open it
-open it from the other side
etc.
It would make the decision tree more complex, but more fun. The game could adapt/react to your action, making it more replay-able. A simple example is Indiana Jones fate of atlantis.
I think one of the biggest hurdles with adventure games, which the article touches on, is the fact that it's hard to make a complex world that is still easy to navigate.
For example, I love the idea of Sherlock Holmes games but often they devolve into a laborious click frenzy where you start investigating every object in the environment in the hope that it will be somehow relevant.
Similarly, how many people here have played Resident Evil and spent a lot of time walking awkwardly against the walls while mashing the X button?
I think the most successful adventure games are those that can make their world seem at once complex and immersive yet still easy to navigate and explore without becoming an exercise in endless clicking frustration.
That's not a premise, that's an observation. Anybody who's really played the original verisons of, say, Hero's Quest or Leisure Suit Larry 1, with text parsers, then played the remakes Quest for Glory 1: So You Want To Be A Hero and LSL1VGA will tell you that. There are responses you simply cannot get out of the point'n'click versions because they couldn't dedicate an icon to a one-off action. Further, branching conversation trees really give things away compared to the text parsers.
On the other hand, again, the two games are pretty much identical in terms of puzzles and solutions; clicking your hand icon on a tree isn't much different than 'climb tree.'
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
When I was a kid (30'ish years ago) my brother and I would go to the arcade, primarly to watch the older kids play games (I was terrible at them, so it was interesting to watch.) There were a handful that always struck me as the most interesting and those were the ones with the unique interfaces: Centipede and Missle Command, because of the trackball, Tempest because of scrolling wheel (which reminded me of Pong) and some kind of crossbow game where the player grabbed a replica crossbow. But there was one other, and to this day I have yet to find anyone who doesn't think I'm nuts when I describe it: It was an adventure game with multiple players with multiple classes where the players used a keyboard (one of the membrane ones, like the second generation Speak & Spell.) I always thought it odd that a play-for-quarters game would be so complicated that it required its players to actually have that many selections so as to have a way of actually completing the game (don't ask me to describe what was on the screen. I was too short to actually see it :)) To this day, I don't think I've seen another like it, without actually transitioning to a PC.
Bark less. Wag more.
For that reason, adventure games are more than mere problem / puzzle solving games. They require of the player some skills to hack around inside the source (or to know someone who has) to get the most out of them.
As for versions written since the early 80's - I haven't a clue. They all seem to be variations on the earlier theme, so once the (original) problem had been solved, they held no interest for me.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
Not to be mean, but have you ever played Nethack seriously ? ...) but if you want to wield another object such as a potion, a monster corpse, or anything else, you can do it and you may discover interesting effects with this.
What you say is wrong because, Nethack doesnt limit you, you can try any action with any object (it may lead to nothing but at least you can try to do it). You select an action, it suggests obvious choices but you can also try everything else.
For example, if you want to "wield a weapon" (== "equip a weapon"), the game suggest items that obviously qualify as weapons (sword, bow,
My point is, if you go from action->object to object->action, you would still have to display all the objects available and then display all the actions available : you didn't reduce choice or the difficulty to navigate the interface at all.
"So I ended up figuring out that the best way to port nethack was to actually invert the interaction paradigm, going from action->object to object->action."
So you translated it into German!
I just lost it, the mind and the lunch.
IMO, the adventure game became less challenging once it was just a matter of moving your mouse over images. You didn't have to think about an action. Text based adventure games required you to use language, but they had the limitation of a vocabulary. Also every action only had a limitted number of responses, which made the game somewhat boring. Only certain words worked. In order to be entertaining over a long period of time, you need to have a sense of humor, so that when the player does something unlikely, they're rewarded with an unlikely consequence. Ideally, like in a pen and paper role-playing game, you could create a course of actions from the language you were most familiar with, and the interpreter could apply those words to the environment as best it could. Even if it is ridiculous like "throw mashed potatoes on idol" and the response is, "The natives hail you as a god of modern art, but they still want to roast you for dinner."
--Ray
http://www.beanleafpress.com
I can't confirm or deny your sanity, but the game did exist (though it wasn't very popular). The game was called Thayer's Quest.
Support Right To Repair Legislation.
A very good article. The author knows his adventure games.
The whole concept of "the underlying game is the same, just presented through a different interface" isn't really true. I find that the different interfaces make way to whole different sub-genres of game.
For instance, consider the point-and-click style Sierra / Monkey Island games, in which you have many verbs and inventory. Such games tend to be very much object based and character based. All of the puzzles are about either a) using the right object in the right way with the right target, or b) choosing the right dialogue path.
Compare this to the first-person Myst-style games, which are all left-click based. No inventory, only a single verb. Well these kind of games tend to have very few characters for one thing. The character interaction is usually limited to cutscenes, as opposed to dialogue trees. The puzzles tend to be more mechanical (figuring out how to make certain devices work) rather than purely logical. The solutions tend to be more about what this author calls "implicit information" - having to write down passwords rather than carrying keycards.
For example, consider that you are stuck in a locked room. In Myst, you will probably see some kind of complex lock mechanism, and have to figure out its controls, and how the device works, and then "hack" the device to open the door. In Monkey Island, you will probably be interacting more with the environment; have to use some item you find in the room or already have in your inventory, or bribe the guard by choosing the correct dialogue.
I think the interface directly influences the style of gameplay. For example, the Monkey Island interface is nowhere near complex enough to let you figure out the workings of a locking mechanism in the Myst style, and nor does the Myst interface have the ability to let you use items on the environment or have a conversation with a guard.
My Googlefu is strong and I believe you are talking about:
http://www.gamespy.com/articles/490/490363p1.html
Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SqddFGYvfgs
See details about the Magnavox Odyssey 2 here, including mentions of the Arcade ports that were relatively unpopular in the US but more successful in other countries:
http://www.allgame.com/cg/agg.dll?p=agg&sql=5:17
Often wrong but never in doubt.
I am Jack9.
Everyone knows me.
I think it's more likely a lack of imagination on the part of designers. The fact is the basic building blocks of the design are fundamental.
Stephen Poole made the point that the more things Lara Croft became capable of in the Tomb Raider games (climbing ladders, auto aiming etc.) the more bizarre it seemed that she couldn't use the rocket launcher to blow wooden doors off their hinges.
I think a lot of times the reason puzzles devolve into an endless series of finding blue keys for blue doors is not so much because of an inherent problem in the interface but more because the designers can't be bothered to think of creative uses for that interface. Not saying that I can necessarily but nobody complains that you can solve Sudoku puzzles with a bruteforce online tool. The point and fascination for the participant is that it's more entertaining to do it without just cheating.
If your game isn't entertaining enough even if someone knows every answer ahead of time it sure as hell isn't going to be made more so by the addition of High IQ required brain busters.
www.nodicerpg.com - Some RP stuff for free, some not so for free, but still cheap.
Like all instruments, the accordian must be properly used. See Atomik Harmonic: Turbo Polka and Turbo Angels: Gmajna
True. And even if the action doesn't do anything right now, it might in different circumstances, or change the way other things interact with you.
Still, I think its useful to go object->action. For one thing, you probably have fewer actions than objects, so the first list is smaller. I don't know of any UI rule that says that's better, but I feel it probably is. And secondly, you can pick out a few of the most likely actions with that object from the full action list and make a hot-list.
i'd hit it so hard, if you pulled me out you'd be the king of britain [bash.org]
What an excellent article - but here are two examples not mentioned that I'd be interested in Slashdot's views on...
1. "Hybrid Interfaces"
Surely Starship Titanic broke the mould here.
There seems to be plenty of web opinion that it broke the rules on obscurity of solution as well. :-) I got stuck on the puzzle where you have to suck, so to speak - but managed to figure the rest of it out, including the sauces which seems to be the other one people get stuck on.
TFA talks about "recent games," but Starship Titanic was out in 1998...
2. Clicky clicky
Anyone else remember WIMP on the Arch? Given that it was on the Arch this must have been out way before Myst. There's no Wikipedia article, one might just appear this evening... but it's mentioned under Fourth Dimension's entry.
1990 - a year before Myst started development.
"... and more and more now there are all kinds of electronic goodies available" -- Pink Floyd 1972
>Put lamp on grate
Nothing happens.
>Put sword on grate
Nothing happens.
>Put rock on grate
Nothing happens.
>Put wand on grate
Nothing happens.
>Put apple on grate
The grate opens!
Towards the Singularity.
if you go from action->object to object->action, you would still have to display all the objects available and then display all the actions available : you didn't reduce choice or the difficulty to navigate the interface at all.
From a pratical standpoint you would have to limit the players actions to the obvious.
Now you know why console RPG's always seem to be dumbed down.
Powder: http://www.zincland.com/powder/ -- it's for the PocketPC, you can get the emulators from Microsoft if you want to see what it's like.
This game is similar to Nethack in play but has an interface that would probably work on the GBA (shoulder keys rotate through the menu, B to activate the menu, directions to move, and A to "do").
Layne
The more complicated they become, the larger the advantage becomes to those who look up the solution.
I'd like to submit as a counterexample the Zelda series. To put my words in the right context: I have completed Twilight Princess two times (I own it), and my gf.ex[2] had Ocarina of Time, which I played most of a good while ago.
For those of you who don't know (srsly? on /.?), it's single player. Your HP is measured on a scale from 12 to 80 (quarters of hearts), with most attacks inflicting 1 or 2 points of damage. You character "levels up" by finding items or by collecting hearts; you get a full heart container for beating a boss, and can find shards hidden in the bushes. The game has a fixed set of items: four bottles, a fishing rod, a bow plus arrows, a ball on a chain, a pair of iron boots, bombs etc., which you find at various story points; some of the bottles are hidden and found by off-storyline investigation, and some items or item enhancers (a bigger quiver) are found in side quests.
Combat is fairly easy. Even for the bosses, you fairly quickly learn how to dodge their attacks and stay nigh-invulnerable, plus there's typically a big stack of hearts available if you look around. This minimizes the impact of gathering combat gear. [one exception is the Cave of Ordeals which is pure combat, tons of fun, and completely optional].
That's for the character progression. It tends to be either (1) in lockstep with the story, or (2) not very important; something you do for completeness or (future) convenience.
The main focus, not being on combat or character progression, is on solving puzzles. Each item has between (roughly) one and three important characteristics that outline how you use them. For instance, the iron boots make you heavy, slow and give you a lot of friction. The grappling hook lets you pull objects close to you, or you close to objects, and have a limited range; it also hits the object it impacts with and travels in a straight line. The bow hits the object it impacts with, doesn't move any object, has a limitless (for practical purposes) range but shoots in a parabolic curve.
The trick is to figure out how to combine your items with your environment. In one dungeon, you jump and grab a hold of a handle hanging down from a ceiling, but nothing happens. If you put on the iron boots, you become heavy, pull the lever down, and activate something. In a later dungeon, you use the grappling hook to "jump" to a chandelier, then put on the iron boots to do the same trick.
So, each object is fairly simple on its own, having typically only a single "wear" or "use" verb (and rarely both), but complexity arises from their combination and their interaction with the environment. I think that's a fairly good of building a rich system from simple components.
The puzzles can get somewhat complex. For instance, there's a sliding block puzzle: some (~3) block reside on a frictionless ~6x6 chessboard with some squares cut off and walls on the edges; you can exert an axis-parallel force on a block, including from outside the board, but not from inside another block. Your goal is to move a subset of the blocks onto some marked squares. (think of sokoban with sticky arrowkeys and the player inside the walls if it helps you). They can get fairly demanding; less straightforward than "go kill diablo".
Yet it's one of the highest ranked games at that site which averages out other reviews.
How come?
Well, the story itself is nice. It's fairly simple:
SPOILER WARNING ... but the characters are interesting and it's told in an interesting way.
The villain kidnaps the princess
SPOILERS END HERE
I posit this hypothesis: by emphasizing story progression and a sense of achievement (from solving puzzles) over greater combat ability (from MF'ing and tediously but trivially earned leveling), there's less to be gained from cheating--you're cheating yourself out of the feeling of accomplishment, and all your getting is a nice story and the possibility to cheat yourself in the future.
If you want a really good comparison of interface versus depth of a game, compare Black Isle's Fallout 2 to Bethesda's Fallout 3. Fallout 3 fails to have any interesting puzzles, and very little character or plot depth. It's pretty enough, and a 3-d (if buggy) environment - and they did a good job with the real-time/turn-based hybrid interface. On the other hand, Fallout 2 is a pearl of humor and interesting character choices - not just a black and white, good versus bad spectrum.
I hope we can get through this dark period of games quickly, to a day where the tools are well developed enough that we can have some interesting writing again. The market these days is comprised of mostly of FPSs, MMOs and flash games, it seems.
[Ego]out
Problem as I see it is that MMOs are by their nature social games
I concur that MMOs are social, but they lack a lot of normal 'game' elements. Puzzles are not common. You get infinite retries in most situations. In the most advanced aspects - team raids - it's really a challenge of coordination. Which, while game-like, is not particularly accessible to the casual player. It feels more or less like dancing, without the physicality.
[Ego]out
Then you wouldn't port Nethack, you'd make a Nethack-inspired game that wouldn't be Nethack. The whole point of Nethack is having a seemingly "open" gameplay : tons of availables actions, your imagination is most often than not the limit.
Hell, Nethack's motto is "if you think something is possible, do it, the devs probably thought it about it before". Actually, limitating you to the obvious would probably prevent you from finishing the game (which is already insanely hard as it is).
However, mentioning Nethack is clearly very relevent to the debate here. That's the only game i know that give you this sensation of freedom with a predefined set of commands.
PS : I tried Final Fantasy XI on a PC I know first-hand how console RPG's interface can be frustrating.
I implemented an LP-MUD like driver for use on web pages as seen here, and both typed commands and click commands can be used. Each web page becomes a "location". The typed commands are geared towards power users but at the same time is the engine for the graphical interface. Effectively, you can type "open door" or you can click on the door and select "open door" from the menu. By default, you get a chat line when you press TAB, and commands are preceded by a / ("/say hello", "/get key") although you can set the command mode as default, and you don't need the /.
Obviously the problem with this is explorability. With the graphical interface, you can just trial and error your way through the virtual place. This makes it much more shallow. You don't have to think about a solution, instead you worry about "finding" the solution in the graphical interface. On the other hand however, no one but 0.01% will be interested in typing their way through their game.
One of the disadvantages of adventure games, IMO, is that they don't handle bigger thoughts, strategy and solutions, but just micro problems such as which object to insert where or whether the red or blue key opens the door. In fact, when you think about it, it's mind numbingly boring. I'd have liked adventures with more sophisticated puzzles. Graphical interfaces just make it worse for the advanced player and more difficult for a creator. This is why the original adventure games never die in some of the hearts of those who played them. For all the enormous advancements in graphics, the underlying games never really got that much better and usually are less sophisticated and less detailed.
That they killed Floyd. Man, that just crushed my whole life. I haven't been right since... that shaky, almost annoying robot, so brave so suddenly, about to go into that room. Planetfall, you broke my soul.
This is my sig.
A 8-directional menu, with several steps/layers would make all the choices in NetHack somewhat manageble. Use d-pad to point, and a, or something to choose.
...that adventure game designers seem to be designing for the lowest common denominator.
Granted, there is some reason behind some of their choices...pixel-hunts suck, so indicating what objects can be used, and their name, is a good thing. But they could, for example, include a lot of extraneous hotspots, and even items. It's a lot harder to brute force when you've got 20 items in inventory and 15 on screen. Or, if when you look at a bookcase, you can grab every book instead of the one you need.
And, of course, 3D movement helps a lot. I remember in The Pandora Directive, you're trying to get past a security lock, and the solution is to make, of course, a fishing rod out of a hook or something and grab a clipboard with passcodes on it.
But the trick was that the clipboard was on the receptionist's desk, behind a window, and you actually had to walk up to the window and look to the right to see it even existed. You couldn't just run your mouse over the screen.
Same with stuff in trashcans. Walk up to them, look down, there it is, but you couldn't click on the trashcans from across the room.
At some level, of course, this just becomes annoying. But there's always been a trade-off there, and, too often, I think companies err on the side of 'simple'.
And, totally unrelated, I'd like a game that treated concepts as items. The Pandora Directive made me think about that, because you didn't just have conversational trees, you had a list of every person and company and noun you'd ever come across, and another list of every inventory item, and could ask anyone about any of them.
I think it would be interesting to expand that idea. For example, say you come across a car that needs to be hotwired. Well, in a normal adventure game that would be sole book on a bookshelf, or you'd have a question as a tree option in a conversation somewhere.
What if, instead, you had a 'concepts inventory' included the idea 'hotwire a car'. And you could drag it, like normal inventory, onto people, or onto a bookcase, or onto a computer, and get the answer. (Or not, depending on who you ask.) And now you have a new verb on the car.
And such a system would certainly solve the goofy 'You have a three hundred page book but can only read the four relevant pages' problem. Which is especially weird if you have the book before you know what's relevant. No, now pages show up when you 'combine' concepts with the book, presumably looking up that information in an index or something and marking the pages.
You could even combine concepts and make new ones. Drag 'Person X' onto 'Company ABC' and get 'Is person X working for company ABC?'.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
http://www.geocities.com/jdean284/jsm.html
The problem is: use key on door
And the solution is:
use rope on key, use fireon door, use ropekey on firedoor.
That is the solution? Common, what the hell are you smoking. If you want puzzles to move up a notch, the solutions isn't to try to "innovate" a overdone old paradime, it's to use the new possiblities 3d graphics, and interactive environments bring. Look at Portal, sure "Use cube to stand on; Jump; Shoot Portal; Jump into portal" just screams entertainment, but it can be done sooo much better, if you crawl out from your hole and look at the possiblities.
I've always thought it'd be neat to turn the Zork series into a top-down Zelda style game.
Les Miserables Volume 1 now up with my reading of
Bug report: The parent post includes "Read the rest of this comment..." link, but the entire comment is shown.
"Mirror."
"So I should run? Okay."
"No, no, no, don't, no..."
[runs in circles]
"What are you doing? Oh, you're really, really, really stupid. Huh!"
"Case."
"Are you talking about this?"
"Yes. Trunk."
"So I should run?"
"No, don't run!"
"Okay."
[runs in circles]
"Don't run, don't run, don't run. Stop, stop, stop, stop."
"Trunk."
"Yes."
"Wh-- no, trunk. Trunk!"
"I am walking."
"I don't want you to walk! Trunk."
"I am walking."
"Trunk!"
"I am walking."
"Camera."
"It's just an antique."
"Do what I tell you!"
"Can you at least try to be serious?"
"Pffft!"
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
Dude, we could very easily have hung out in the same arcade as kids, except for that animated keyboard machine, ("Thayer's Quest", according to another poster). --Which I do indeed remember marveling at once, although it was in another arcade downtown.
I didn't spend any money on those games when I was young either. AND I was pretty terrible at them, but an arcade in the 80's was a magical mystery tour, to be certain. It always inspired the same kind of feelings as that weird, "Heavy Metal" movie, (which South Park somehow portrayed more accurately than the original). --The smell of pot hanging in the air and the spooky look of some of the patrons, I always felt like there was a reasonable chance of never coming out alive from some of those halls, but that didn't stop me. The games were just too unbelievably wonderful to stay away from.
Have you read this article?
Nostalgia for 30-something geeks!
-FL
A couple years ago, I was telling my friend about http://www.kingdomofloathing.com/. At the time, I was working on a card game that was not feasible as a card game. I kept trying to keep the game simple, yet have most of my druthers included... It just wasn't going to fly. So, he and I combined both concepts and the result is something quite different.
The game is entirely browser-based with no plugins or downloads necessary. We tried to keep the interface as simple as possible. We do have a few people who stumble through it, but most beta testers were able to pick it up and run with it without referring to documentation.
The game is divided into numerous events, each with a set of options. The options are modified by the character's current status, inventory, random chance, or by the choices the character makes. The player's status even helps determine which events are presented to the player.
The thing that I find fascinating is trying to write the content in a way that presents itself randomly to the character, but in a logical order and way. This is as not straight-forward as fiction writing. It's like trying to write a Choose-Your-Own adventure where the reader starts from flipping to any random page and a single choice may lead to many possible pages. I also find it challenging creating the puzzles that blend well with the plot and setting, yet are challenging enough for most without being too straight forward or too randomly difficult.
He and I have had a blast creating our game. And, we have had several people try it and give us positive feedback.
If you'd like to try it out, you can find it at http://www.urbanlegions.net/. If you'd like to discuss the decisions behind our designs, that's really a topic for another thread.
Urban Legions
Pedantic Man to the rescue!
You cannot attempt to [W]ear most items in Nethack. If you type W with no armor available, it will tell you that you don't have anything else to wear. Similarly, you cannot [P]ut On non-accessory items--if you type P and have no accessories, it will tell you that you don't have anything to put on. It doesn't even give you the option to select an item. [q]uaffing works similarly.
If you have an item of the appropriate type, and you type P, q, or W, and you select an item of an inappropriate type, it will tell you, "That is a silly thing to [wear|put on]." I suspect that this is to simplify the code, rather than so that you have perceived freedom of action. Otherwise, you should be able to select items even if you have no legal items from which to choose.
In other words, I don't think it's too far outside of the spirit of the game to go object->action, however you absolutely have to account for every legal action. You can exclude a Wear action for arrows, for example. However, this might provide clues to the player for some actions, and may ruin the gameplay experience. For example, if the player selects a potion, and notices that he has the option of wielding the potion, it takes the joy out of discovering this particular option yourself.
Maybe I am getting old, but I'm always surprised when someone brings up Zelda in a design discussion and doesn't talk about a Link to the Past.
Quest for the rings was quite a game in its time. The graphics were primitive and it required alot of planning to have a game but it had its place. Fact is I played UFO and that gunfighter game more because no one in my family was into DND style multiplayer games. Like most games at the time, the packaging was pure art.
I suppose the emphasis on puzzles and the like is why some don't class Zelda titles as true role playing.
Well granted the stories are better later on, but still. It's all about how you solve/do stuff.
If each mistake being made is a new one, then progress is being made.
Actually, Powder was designed for the GBA http://www.zincland.com/powder/index.php?pagename=about
I thought we were going to talk about Rhindle, Grundle, and Yorgle, and that dam bat....
> Yet it's one of the highest ranked games at that site which averages out other reviews.
> How come?
Well, the things is extremely well designed and executed. There are virtually no bugs. Story flows logically. The quality of the design is astounding (for instance, in the Minish Cap, you will go through the same level at different size, solving different puzzles with different items).
I really think that Zelda works because of the quality of the design & attention to details.
Yeah, I had read that after I posted. I first encountered it on the PocketPC. But reading more, there are several platforms(as well as another Rogue-like by the same author and links to a Rogue for GBA and NetHack for the DS).
Layne
Considering adventure games just as a series of puzzles is really missing the whole point. The main objective of adventure game is to tell a story, the puzzles are merely a way to engage the player into the world, not a means to an end. And the important part isn't really if you have one or three verbs, but how well the puzzles integrate into the gaming world and how believable they are, many of todays games fail at that, leaving the player with awkward puzzles (tape mobile phone to cat).
Another thing is that the three verb interface didn't just reduce the number of verbs, but it made the verbs more organic. In The Longest Journey or Full Throttle for example you don't have explicit verbs, but body parts. You have a "hand" action, a "mouth" action and a "eye" action for example. "Mouth" is not only used for talking, but also for drinking potions or sucking on a hose to get fuel out of a tank. So the whole game becomes a matter of combining objects instead of applying specific verbs to objects.
I find it a bit amusing that noone bothered so far to mention the Myst games. Those games are quite straightforward what the use key on door concept is conserned, but the complexity of most puzzles is so vast that using a brutforce approach to crack a puzzle implies millions of permutations of the given combinatory dataset. You had to search for clues as to how to solve it, and some of the puzzles gave me quite a lot of headaches (literally). Another game of interest in this genre would be Shivers 2: Harvest of souls. It's puzzles can't be compared to the nightmarish puzzles of Myst 1-5, but the eerie and creepy atmosphere of the game made it allmost impossible to solve the complex puzzles without putting them down on paper, turning off the computer, solving the puzzle offline, then start the game, and try your solution. What I'm trying to point a scrutinizing finger at, is the singleminded focus on the "use key on door" phenomena. Game developers can easilly make an above par puzzle game (or even excellent puzzle game for that sakes matter) if they pay attention to the psychological and mathematical factors of any puzzle. Make the puzzle complex enough (i.e. permutations of possible solutions > 1000000), and add a suiting (i.e. extremely distracting) atmosphere to each scene, and you'll have a nice graphical game with the potential to leave the player breathless whilst giving him her quite an intellectual challenge (which is in fact required to solve a puzzle).
Community generated content.
Create competitions for the best puzzles. Reward the contributors and host the top 20 puzzles submitted in the game itself with rewards appropriately doled out.
Most MUDs are also CRPG's with levels, equipment, quests/missions, et cetera. Little to no puzzle solving necessary. Thus they share more in common with World of Warcraft than they do with adventure games.
Survival horror games (e.g., Resident Evil, Silent Hill, et cetera) even though they have a lot of first person or third person shooter characteristics actually have more in common with adventure games because of the perpetual "find key to open door and advance storyline" situation.
My other first post is car post.