So the last ten minutes were this:
… and so I vanished into a rabbit hole.
Do you have a plan that you’re writing to, or are you just feeling your way along? The flowers sound delightful, by the way.
When I start writing a game, I usually have a strong overarching idea. I can describe the essence of the game to you in ten sentences. I have perhaps a few clear ideas of locations or events. But most of it is still a blank, and I’ll gradually fill it in as I go along. For me writing is exploring, finding out what it is that my essential idea really amounts to.
This particular game is a little bit different in ways I can’t explain without saying more about the game then I want to do at the moment (it’s supposed to be a competition game)… but the description above still holds! Currently, I’m implementing a relatively small outdoors area; most of the game will take place indoors. (Like in Zork, for instance, if we want a classic reference.) There were a few things I wanted to put in, but otherwise I was thinking of it as “fun to explore”, “with maybe some optional puzzles”, and it’s been slowly taking shape as I went on.
This is exactly what I’ve been learning from playing so many old games lately: you don’t need the rabbit hole. Modern players are way too spoiled. Remember: “It’s a game, not a simulation.” (Someone wrote this in a comment elsewhere on the forum. If I find it, I’ll credit that person.)
An idea for an essay has been bubbling in my mind the last few days: “What I’ve learned from oldschool IF.”
I want to go into topics such as:
As I said, still brewing in the back of my brain. I’m making notes though, so I may actually write it sometime in the not too distant future.
Not going to lie: half the reason I decided to make my game a psuedo parser game instead of a real one is to avoid this exactly. A more streamlined experience where I can control what can and can’t be interacted with keeps both me and the players focused. I know that’ll turn off some players, but honestly the alternative is that I’ll never finish the game.
I don’t necessarily disagree with that, Rovarsson. Indeed, I have another parser game on the backburner in which you can only interact with the nouns that are printed in bold and then you can only examine and use them. That ultra-sparse style of interaction would fit the breakneck speed of that particular game! But the game I’m working on right now, and certainly this outside section, well, it’s all about taking your time exploring and enjoying the environment. So that calls for a different type of implementation – when it actually fits that purpose. Picking flowers sounds like precisely the type of behaviour I want to reinforce, so I ought to reward it!
I feel like there’s no one best way here. For instance, I think Ryan Veeder’s most distinguishing characteristic is that his games are exhaustively implemented where it least matters. And that delights people; the idea that you can just ignore the main thrust of the game and do whatever you want, and the game rewards it.
I do like the other style as well, but I think it’s good to point out that both are good, in their own way. The ‘less implentation’ way is definitely easier, though! I enjoy it a lot, and I’m working on an Adventuron port of an older ‘minimalist’ game I wrote 4 years ago called Swigian. I think Adventuron and the whole old-school, less-implementation style is neat.
Of course you should write exactly the game you want to write, in as much breadth and depth of implementation as you want. I know I have stood in awe at some games of the exploratory smelling-the-roses type.
I am very much a modern IF player. I started playing in 2004, well after the late 90’s revolution. Until recently, the oldest game I had played was Sunset over Savannah (1996). Discovering how the older games did things came as a whole new paradigm to me. So my proposed essay is not as much a critique on modern IF as it is a way of recapitulating and internalizing my experiences with the ways of the old masters.
I’m definitely in that boat…
And I need to hear this now and again, too…
I think I’m reaching a point where I’m going to try to finish the whole game world with not more than a sanely adequate amount of background implementation. Once I’ve reached that point and could potentially release a 1.0 if I wanted to, then it might be much less stressful to continue adding all the fanciful details that my mind gravitates to as I work on the game…
Right. Parser simulation and physics can be used awesomely (The Impossible Bottle) but nobody wants to play the game I made with eight objects and a rulebook just for brushing the PCs teeth when the story is not specifically about dental hygiene.
Eight objects. 
Your dental routine is much complex than mine.
I do enjoy little easter egg type things like Victor was describing with the wreath, or even requiring 8 items to brush your teeth, as long as it’s not forced upon you in order to complete the game.
Alfred Hitchcock once said that “drama is life with the dull bits cut out of it”. Please don’t put them back in and force me to reenact them.
Does the PC die a horrible death if you go against one of the rules? If you’re going dental, there’s tons of gruesome possibilities…
The toothbrush is standing in the glass. The toothpaste is in the tube which is closed with a cap. The water is in the tap which must be opened by turning the faucet. (Is that the right word?) Anyway, that’s eight objects for you, and we didn’t even get to the sink and the towel yet!
“Dental Hygiene Simulator”, coming to an interactive fiction competition near you soon!
It will be a little bit of work to implement this in a thoroughly realistic manner. But so so worth it!
>put toothpaste in glass
You squeeze some toothpaste in the glass.
>put water in glass
You add water to the toothpaste, which slowly dissolves in the water.
>pour water on towel
(first taking the towel)
You pour the whitish liquid onto the towel.
>examine towel
The towel is wet and covered in white stains.
>rub face with towel
There’s toothpaste all over your face.
You finally reach the offices. The boss screams: “Oh my god, who are you, did you murder my employee while you were robbing his house and did you then… oh, wait, it’s you, there’s just a lot of toothpaste on your face.”
Agree that all these little actions that one does more or less unconsciously in real life should be handled implicitly in a game - unless there really is something hugely significant triggered by the squeezing of the toothpaste out of the tube. Just ‘brush teeth’ and let the player get on with their virtual life.
I have an issue with too much of this sort of detail in games in general. For example, if there is a locked door and I’m holding the key, I really just want to unlock and open that door in one swift movement and get on with the game, rather than having to unlock the door WITH KEY (what else am I going to try and unlock it with? My socks?), and then open the door before I can carry on. Some players probably enjoy that sort of thing, but I’m just too impatient. You should see how I handle locked doors in real life: I just pull them off their hinges and carry on down the corridor.
I think this is a convenience that we more or less expect from parser games nowadays, and have been for at least the past 15 years. Though there are always possible exceptions: if it’s the great gate to the Realm of Doom and it’s a key that after 14 hours of play you’ve finally been able to fashion from your own leg bone, then maybe it would be more dramatic to have you perform the unlocking as a separate action. 
You’d think so wouldn’t you? But I’m pretty sure I’ve come across it in more recent Inform games - at least the WITH KEY bit. Maybe it’s something built into Inform (I don’t know, I’ve never used it).
Anyway, now that I have publicly stated my design requirements, I expect everyone to adhere to them, or face my disapproval (with exception granted for the 14-hour leg bone thing).
Yeah, I think you need to use the Implicit Actions or maybe Locksmith extensions to handle keys implicitly? I forget. But I’m pretty sure the default Inform handling isn’t very graceful.