Adverbs

Authoring General Design Discussions
21

“Examining closely” sounds like a nightmare. It’s bad enough that we have to be ready to examine everything like checking items off lists, and looking under/behind every piece of furniture, not to mention the games that separate SEARCH from EXAMINE and require the former for no good reason… if we add “examine closely” I think we’ll be taking a step backwards, not forwards. Besides, “examining” already presuposes careful examination - if you want to diferentiate, you should diferentiate it from “look at”.

One thing that doesn’t seem to have been covered yet by this discussion - the parser’s promise of complete freedom is flimsy enough and easily broken as it is. It tries hard to recognise every sensible input and beyond, but it invariably fails to recognise actions the player would consider to be sensible. Adding adverbs is like adding a layer of complexity to a rickety base. I experienced this in “Danse Nocturne”. It felt cool for about 10 seconds, which is how long it took for me to run full force into all the adverbs the game didn’t recognise (and I was trying adverbs that I felt made sense to the one possible verb).

It might be wise to remember such verbs as “whisper”, “shout”, “caress”, “seduce”, “scare”, “slam”. They are all modofiers, and as has been said on this thread, might be best to expand into expressive verbs before entering adverb territory. “Angrily” is a modifier that can be applied to every action, and that’s a nightmare to program - whereas “slam” is a verb that only applies to things that can be closed, and can have pretty much the same effect.

22

I deeply dislike “search,” and have been known to ragequit when it becomes obvious that the reason I am failing to make progress in a game was that I hadn’t "search"ed everything thoroughly. Even A Day for Fresh Sushi almost did that too me, despite all my past built-up trust in the author, and I only forgive it because it was Speed-IF and I was enjoying being a purple lesbian.

That said, I eagerly await Ghalev’s private-eye game. (Though that is partially out of cumulative respect for Ghalev, and guessing that he’ll probably Do It Right.)

23

Thank you, and here’s hoping :slight_smile: Well, for starters here’s hoping I just ever even get the thing done :slight_smile:

24

“Like a gameplay mechanic involving Tom Swifties?” asked Ron gamely.

25

“Ron, you are about to be eaten by a grue,” Jim responded darkly.

26

Or, “The light has gone out! We will be eaten!” Matt exclaimed gruesomely.

27

A while ago I had thought of introducing adverbs too, but (initially?) only “weakly” and “strongly”, although the actual words might be manifold. They would have several game-wide effects.

[1] Setting the grain - the weaker the action, the more detailed control one has.

open the door
A hidden device explodes. You are dead.
undo
Portal
circumspectly open the door
You open the door a tad, then feel something catch.

[2] Disturbance - more light, sound, smell, et cetera is produced, so effects reach farther and last longer.

loudly greet Mary.
Her father comes out of the study, “Mary, there you are!”.

[3] Speed - strong actions are faster, and give less possibility for observation.

quickly go to the station
Panting and out of breath, you just manage to catch the train.
undo
Town square
slowly go to the station.
On your way you observe that the suit is no longer in the tailor’s window. By the time you arrive at the station all you see of the train is a distant smoke column.

The game effects can be quite varied. Running after a thief may mean you can’t find your way back; your opponent may be only hurt or dead and unable to furnish important information; stomping around may scare the snakes in the grass - but running may make you step on them. The idea was that much was done through simulation rather than explicit coding. The snakes flee when there is too much noise, so the player may come up with another way to scare them. The game is played in small steps, but normal steps perform several of the small ones, and large ones again several normal ones (under author control). Output has a level, so that with bigger actions only higher-level output shows. Et cetera.

Oh, and yes - languages being rich, most or all of this can be done with special verbs - and would be, by native speakers. But not all players are native speakers of the language the game uses, and having “much” or “little” as general modifiers makes playing much easier for them - no more “hunt the verb in the dictionary”.

28

Now I’m thinking of the common practice in pidgins of using reduplication for emphasis.

(this concept is in no way suggested to be an even slightly good idea)

29

When you’re fighting Guess The Verb at least the parser lets you know that you’re fighting. I think both adverbs and specialised verbs will result in a much more insidious problem, which is that you may not know you’re even in a fight because the unmodified/generic verb is successful. This is exactly what happens with search.

But, search can be clued, so we can have hope that eventually adverbs can be used successfully. It will just be very hard, and with questionable pay-off.

30

I suppose so - unless your game would be built around them, e.g. semi-synonyms of a single base verb.

> examine stewardess
A young woman in a professional uniform.  She is currently facing you.
> ogle stewardess
Well endowed in the T&A department.
> leer stewardess
Disgusted, she turns her back on you.
> x stewardess
You can't see much, as she faces away from you, but she seems a shapely lady in a professional uniform.
> ogle stewardess
Your eyes are drawn to the split in her skirt.
> x split
Keep your mind on the game.
> ogle split
The split reveals a bit of her underwear.
> ogle underwear.
Your mind turns it into a barrier to be overcome in order to advance with the game - YOUR game.
> x underwear.
The other passengers would probably report you.
> peep underwear.
You just see a tiny piece of dot-patterned textile.
> x dots
A somewhat irregular pattern of relief dots.
> ogle dots
They don't particularly excite you.
> investigate dots
Groups of dots in a 2x3 pattern, raised - wait - it is Braille!
> read dots
You can't see the complete message.
> spy dots
By judiciously moving your head, you manage to get the whole message in view.
> read dots
"If you can read this you are too close".

Without some restriction, the width of the verb*modifier space is too large, be they expressed through adverbs or through specialised verbs. So if there are many modifiers there should be few verbs, or the inverse. That’s why I had been thinking about a one-dimensional space, just “little” or “much”. Maybe other dimensions would be possible, but the player would have to be educated as to their existence.

And then there is of course “chicken and egg”, with all the different ways of being silent.

31

I like that example! It doesn’t look like the results to any command are particularly predictable though. For something like that to be successful the player would need to be able to learn which commands will be successful in which circumstances.