"You can't see any such thing" Message

Authoring General Design Discussions
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Please forgive me if this topic has been debated to death in the past, but I couldn’t find any recent discussion.

In: https://intfiction.org/t/writing-struggles/61319/43, @Rovarsson wrote:

This made me laugh out loud, but it also inspired me to write about something that’s been bugging me for years.

“You can’t see any such thing” grates on me for two reasons, not just because “throne” should be implemented, but because - I think - if a game doesn’t recognize a word, it should 'fess up.

I much preferred the Infocom style, which, depending on the particular game, gave responses such as

Sorry, but the word "throne" isn't in the vocabulary that you can use.

or even just

I don't know the word "throne."

(which also appears to be the TADS default).

Best would be

You don't need to use the word "throne" to finish this game.

(I remember seeing something similar to the above somewhere, but I don’t recall where.)

I assume the reason for the change was so that players couldn’t guess the implemented vocabulary and therefore find unintended hints to solve puzzles… to which I say, so what? If someone wants to do that, what’s the harm?

With the current Inform default, the parser may be trying to be coy, but it often comes across as being stupid and annoying.

You can’t see any such thing? Then why did you just tell me about it?

Experienced players probably tune this out in the way they accept limited input syntax, but I could see it being a particular turn-off for new players.

I realize my opinion is likely in the minority; otherwise the default message in Inform would have been changed years ago. What do you think? If you believe “You can’t see any such thing” is definitely the way to go, I’d be very interested to hear your reasons.

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If someone can’t be bothered to implement the objects they describe, THAT’s what’s annoying. I don’t think a player should ever see any variation on that message (unless they type something that isn’t described or is a typo).

Best for me is to signal to the player that something isn’t important by lumping descriptions together, like so:

There’s a dirty glass window through which you can see a glittering expanse of sand dunes stretching away to the horizon.

X window, X dirt, X glass, X expanse, X sand, X dunes, X horizon, X desert all get this response:

“Through the dirty window, you see the sandy dunes of an endless desert.”

Now I know that this is just to let me know I’m trapped somewhere in an endless desert to give me a sense of place, and that this isn’t something I should bother with.

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If somebody makes a huge game with lots of scenery and when you examine some, new nouns are mentioned, some can easily be forgot, so I think it makes sense to tell the player that the game does not understand that word. The drawback may be that we break immersion by stating that this is a game. Very much a matter of taste.

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In a larger game (or in any game where the effort seems worthwhile), it is good to customize parser responses to match the narrative voice, especially if the narrator is not Graham Nelson. Not everyone will agree, and that’s OK.

In my experience, testers aggressively and thoroughly test the specific matter of implemented nouns, so if an author is heeding their advice, the error most likely indicates a misspelling or missing synonym. However, it would take a lot of confidence (more than I have) to handle the response that way. Especially when it comes to synonyms.

E (barring objects not in the room, of course)

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It was debated to death in the early 90s. It’s fair to say that we haven’t revisited the subject much.

Right. But also, I think, the concensus is that both responses are bad. The correct behavior is for the game to recognize the word and describe the throne, or at least give the player a hint that the throne is just scenery!

If the author makes a modicum of effort to make game objects match the room description, then this problem goes away. And then it’s better for the game to give the same response for unrecognized words and off-screen objects, because “unintended hints” is the larger remaining problem.

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It’s also the case that in modern games, the game dictionary may not be a good guide to what words the game recognizes. So an error like “You don’t need to use the word “throne” to finish this game” may in fact be false or misleading.

  • In a large game, a word might be used in several contexts. If there’s a “Mister Throne” three chapters later, the fact that the word “throne” is in the dictionary is not actually helpful to the player right now.
  • The game may match some vocabulary through regexps or player-input transformations (which I7 allows). Those words will not be in the dictionary even though they are helpful in playing the game.

Basically, the game dictionary turns into a low-level implementation issue, and exposing it to the player may be more confusing than helpful.

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Yes!

Same goes for the impressive statue of the growling lion in front of the temple. Manes, teeth, whiskers, eyes, claws, maw, tongue, nose, and tiny tinkly necklace-bell all redirect to the initial Lion-description.

(or maybe you need the tiny tinkly necklace-bell to distract the great big dog…)

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When there is a long description paragraph of room text, as a player, I often find myself reading and re-reading it, making sure I’ve ‘X’ every single item in the description, whether they are implemented or not. Because no doubt, in my mind, the one object I don’t examine is one where the secret key is revealed.

That kind of examining of every object lawn-mowing becomes very tedious in an overly descriptive game. It doesn’t add much to the gameplay. My solution is simpler. In some way, highlight text or call out what objects are important and can be further examined or manipulated. Then the author doesn’t have to worry about ambiguous messages, and the player benefits by not needing to dissect every word of description.

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I’ve seen some recent games tweak the response to something like “You can’t see any such thing, or if you can, it’s not important.” Not the most beautiful solution, but it does at least help to redirect the player away from any scenery the author didn’t code. Of course, you have to be extra sure you’ve covered all the synonyms - if I’m telling the player that the ladder isn’t important because it’s called “stepladder” in the code and I forgot to define “ladder” as a synonym, I’ve made the problem worse!

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This immediately came to mind.

Carry on folks.

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Well, I was right - I do have a minority opinion. :grin:

Thanks for all your replies, especially to @zarf for the technical info. The different perspectives were very helpful. That said, I still have a negative visceral reaction to “you can’t see any such thing,” which, I’ll admit, may be largely a consequence of a) having been exposed to “I don’t know the word” during my formative IF years; and b) having played too many under-implemented Inform games.

You’ve got me thinking though, so again, thanks for your comments. :smile:

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Most IF systems have a way to change default parser messages. “You can’t see any such thing” I believe was just the catch-all. It makes sense if the parser types EXAMINE THROWN or EXAMINE FLARGMENT. At minimum the message is better if the parser can echo back the specific word the player typed like “I don’t understand flargment.” Of course that’s better than “Here’s a throne described three ways.” EXAMINE THRONE. “I can’t see any such thing.” because then the game feels like it’s lying to the player. It’s not the parser’s fault, but the author’s.

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The thing I’ve always wondered is, why is it “you can’t see any such thing” and not “you can see no such thing”?

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I think ‘no’ is too door-closey Players can start to imagine things like what they typed isn’t in the game at all when they read No (though it might be, now and elsewhere, or eventually) whereas Any is still chock full of possibilities.

I’m assuming Graham Nelson wrote the message, and I consider if a triumph of grammar. There have been seconds when I thought I’d like to roll my own replacement, but I can’t do better for purpose, and accepting its tone.

Wade

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Would it be possible to have the parser check the room description and, if the word (or its synonym) is present there but not in the dictionary, to have it give something like:

“You take another look at [item] and conclude nothing else about [item] is of interest.” [reprinting the room description optional]

This acknowledges that no further details are worth considering without potentially undermining the significance implied by the room description (it might not be important to the solution of the game while still being important to its ambience).

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How 'bout this: a static analysis tool that scans through the strings in the source code, perhaps focusing on room descriptions if there’s a good way to detect those. Use an external list of nouns (WordNet or whatever) to extract all the mentioned things.

Step two would be to find all objects defined in your game and compile those into a separate list, along with their synonyms if these are also found in that external noun list. That way a stepladder gets listed, but people and fantasy crap (unlikely to have synonyms) won’t. Keep the synonyms for a given object grouped with that object!

Now you can

  1. find things referred to in room descriptions that don’t have any actual objects,
  2. find missing synonyms and other such related words that the player may try, like ladder.

But then, I have a headful of tired and a mouthful of popcorn so what do I know?

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I remember abusing the heck out of that back in the day while being stuck in Bureaucracy:

>ASK AGENT ABOUT GENERATOR
The travel agent says, "The portable foot-powered generator? Oh yes, the
portable foot-powered generator! Um... I can't tell you anything about that."

Me: “So there’s a portable foot-powered generator somewhere in the game? Veeerrry interesting…”

I don’t remember if it ever actually helped me though. :slight_smile:

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Handling “You can’t see any such thing”? Easy peasy!

[ Forest v0.1 ]
Forest is a room. "You are in a dark and mysterious forest, the trees looming over you like ancient guardians."

Let’s test v0.1:

Forest
You are in a dark and mysterious forest, the trees looming over you like ancient guardians.
 
>x trees
You can't see any such thing.

Ouch forgot to add the trees.

[ Forest v0.2 ]
Forest is a room. "You are in a dark and mysterious forest, the trees looming over you like ancient guardians."
The trees are scenery in the forest. The description of the trees is "The trees tower over you. The branches are covered with dark green leaves."

Let’s test v0.2, should be OK now:

Forest
You are in a dark and mysterious forest, the trees looming over you like ancient guardians.
 
>x trees
The trees tower over you. The branches are covered with dark green leaves.

>x ancient
You can't see any such thing.
 
>x guardians
You can't see any such thing.

Ok I admit it, I need an Understand statement here.

[ Forest v0.3 ]
Forest is a room. "You are in a dark and mysterious forest, the trees looming over you like ancient guardians."
The trees are scenery in the forest. The description of the trees is "The trees tower over you. The branches are covered with dark green leaves."
Understand "ancient" and "guardians" as the trees.

Let’s test v0.3, we are done, right?

Forest
You are in a dark and mysterious forest, the trees looming over you like ancient guardians.
 
>x ancient
The trees tower over you. The branches are covered with dark green leaves.
 
>x guardians
The trees tower over you. The branches are covered with dark green leaves.
 
>x branches
You can't see any such thing.
 
>x leaves
You can't see any such thing.

Sigh. I guess I need more scenery…

[ Forest v0.4 ]
Forest is a room. "You are in a dark and mysterious forest, the trees looming over you like ancient guardians."
The trees are scenery in the forest. The description of the trees is "The trees tower over you. The branches are covered with dark green leaves."
Understand "ancient" and "guardians" as the trees.
The branches are scenery in the forest. The description of the branches is "The branches are covered with dark green leaves."
The leaves are scenery in the forest. The description of the leaves is "The leaves are dark green."

Let’s test v0.4, surely got it all covered now!

You are in a dark and mysterious forest, the trees looming over you like ancient guardians.
 
>x branches
The branches are covered with dark green leaves.
 
>x dark green leaves
You can't see any such thing.

Ok ok ok, more synonyms needed…

[ Forest v0.5 ]
Forest is a room. "You are in a dark and mysterious forest, the trees looming over you like ancient guardians."
The trees are scenery in the forest. The description of the trees is "The trees tower over you. The branches are covered with dark green leaves."
Understand "ancient" and "guardians" as the trees.
The branches are scenery in the forest. The description of the branches is "The branches are covered with dark green leaves."
The leaves are scenery in the forest. The description of the leaves is "The leaves are dark green."
Understand "dark" and "green" as the leaves.

Let’s test v0.5, 100% coverage for sure!

Forest
You are in a dark and mysterious forest, the trees looming over you like ancient guardians.
 
>x trees
The trees tower over you. The branches are covered with dark green leaves.
 
>x dark green leaves
The leaves are dark green.
 
>x tree
You can't see any such thing.

Noooooo! Dang it! No more trees! I am sick of them!

[ Forest v0.6 ]
Forest is a room. "You are in a dark and mysterious forest."

There! I am all done now! Ship it!

Forest
You are in a dark and mysterious forest.
 
>x forest
You can't see any such thing.

Sits quietly in a corner and cries…

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This is still an isue with Adrift games. X DOG when there is no such animal to be seen in your location will give “The shaggy dog keeps gnawing on its bone.”

Aha! There’s a shaggy dog in this story. And it has a bone…

I call it “parser-fishing”.

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A solution is to have the parser remember what the player has seen. If the dog has been encountered, then say it is not there, if it has not use the generic message.

And now I have work how to implement that…