Hi Tom.
all that is very true, also in terms of text sinse the english language
contains so many descriptive words, having the game randomly select a couple
can give the appearence of new items or descriptions even though it is only
selecting from a pool, which can completely change the feeling of the game.
For instance in the roguelike game angband, most magical items that aren't
weapons such as potions, wands, rings and amulets and the like need to be
identified with an identify spell before you know exactly what their affects
are. they aren't however just called "unidentified x" they each have a
material description, such as copper plated wand, or ivory studded staff"
Once identified, either by using an identify spell or by using the item, the
game will call them things like ivory studded staff of cone of cold.
The clever thing however, is that these descriptions are compltely
randomized each game, so one game the ivory studded staff might be cone of
cold, the next it might be a staff of summon monster.
this adds a lot of replay value, and also a very nice flavour for the magic
items.
What is however even cleverer, is that the game creates these descriptions
out of a number of components that are put together. So each potion for
instance could be a red potion, a red congealed potion, a red bubling
potion, a dark red potion etc and you have lots of variation.
the same goes for room descriptions.
one idea I had in entombed for instance was having a description that could
substitute psudonims, or parts of the description to allow variation in the
environment.
for instance, you are in a long/round/wide/narrow/cramped/broad
cave/cavern/chamber/room/slot.
Add in a few more descriptors and some sentence variation, and there is the
potential for a great many different ways of describing the same
environment, ----- and that's before you start assigning random objects to
the area.
this is why in some senses textual games have a greater facility for
randomization and variation than audio or graphical ones, sinse it's far
easier to create variations in text than it is in graphics or sounds.
Beware the grue!
dark.
---
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