Thanks for trying out Headlights and writing up your feedback on the Perplexity engine!
One note on the game itself before responding to the engine feedback: One of the things I’m trying to do with the engine is explore using voice (and hearing) i.e. being able to talk to the game and have it read the descriptions to you. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to get that system running so folks could try it with Headlights (it is available for “Baby on Board”). All this is to say: Jordan White and I tried to keep the text as small and tight as possible because it turns out to be annoying when you have to listen to long responses in that mode. When playing through text, it doesn’t work quite as well. We’re still exploring ways to strike the balance.
The engine itself is still early in development and I am still exploring the types of games that will best use it, but there are a few things I’m trying to do with it:
The point of having it understand the syntax of English (as opposed to normal 2ish word commands) is to get to a place where you feel like you can speak and interact with a game naturally, like you are talking to a dungeon master in a real life D&D, or a friend who is playing the part of the game and walking you through an adventure on a road trip. I believe this could open up IF to a much wider range of players. It does understand the syntax of English very well, due to the great work of the DELPH-IN English Resource Grammar. It doesn’t yet have a wide vocabulary. I’m working beefing that up over time.
Another point of the engine is to have a basic physics model that knows things like “objects can be on top of each other”, “things can be put in containers”, “pulling a thing out of the middle of a stack makes the things on top touch whatever that thing was touching”, etc. It gives a game developer a lot of stuff “for free” as a result. You can see examples of this here.
I’ve spent a lot of time since the last IFComp trying to make the engine understand classic IF Commands. There are still some it doesn’t do (like understand “get it”) but I’ll get there. You can see a writeup of the challenges here. And so, yes, you can have (mostly) a “classic” IF session with the game. But I think the richer language and backing physics engine start to shine once you know that you can ask questions about the world to get hints, and navigate to anything you can describe. For example:
** THE GRASSY CLEARING **
This area is very grassy.
You need to get to shelter before it gets too dark.
You see a branch and grass.
To the west is a rocky corner.
To the north is a cave.
To the south is a glowing field.
?:what is glowing?
a glowing field and glowing grass
?:go to the glowing grass
** THE GLOWING FIELD **
Venturing towards the glowing aura, you enter a field. The grass is illuminating the field by producing light somehow.
Its glow provides a feeling of safety. This might be useful.
To the north is a clearing.
?:is the grass glowing
Yes
?:get the grass
This grass is too thick to pick up. It does look thin enough to cut off with something though.
?:where is something sharp
inside a rocky corner, inside a world, north, on top of a boulder, and west somewhere
?:find something that is sharp
(going to the clearing...)
(going to the rocky corner...)
** THE ROCKY CORNER **
Walking into the rocky corner, you see less and less vegetation until there is only dirt and stones around you.
You see a boulder with something shiny on it.
You see a pebble.
To the east is a clearing.
...
etc.