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From: mtulloch@winnie.fit.edu (Michael Tulloch)
Subject: Re: Nutty idea concerning _Myst_
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Date: Thu, 30 Mar 1995 21:25:44 GMT
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Yeah, I know what you're talking about. The old UNIX game, Rogue, and the 
old Infocom game Beyond Zork took the best approach I've seen so far. 
In Rogue, the game is simple: you're a fighter let loose in a dungeon, 
trying to reach the lowest level, and some sort of gem. But, 'cause it's 
in text-graphics (Ie, a line of * is a wall, you are &, an orc is O, et 
cetera), it can randomly allocate rooms, passages, and objects every time.
So the game is still pretty fun, yet maintains its atmosphere.
The problem with the idea you suggested is that it'd be too generic -- 
I mean, Star Wars and Star Trek are both SF (though some might argue this), 
but they are vastly different. A game that assembled primitives from scratch 
every time would create different games every time so that there'd be no 
continuity between play. What we need to do IMHO is set up a universe large 
enough to allow many Points of view, and then with random distribution of 
objects, and rooms, take on these different points of view. The general 
plot flow of the game would be the same (ie, you might be Han Solo 
instead of Luke Skywalker, but Leia would still be kidnapped at the 
beginning, forcing someone to do something), and there would be enough 
centralness to call it the same game. Beyond Zork came closest in this
aspect, generating a random character every time you started anew, and 
since how some puzzles were solved depended in some way on your abilities, 
you had to do it differently every time. Other puzzles depended on using 
certain items, which were distributed randomly throughout the game, so 
even the order of puzzle-solving changed from game to game. 

It's a tough thing to make a real involving game that 
has replay value. Interestingly enough, the games that have the most 
replay value are boring ol' straight shoot-em-up video games! (Even Rogue 
and Beyond Zork come in 2nd to them.)

--- Mike
