You Can't Get Ye Flask: Difference between revisions
m
clean up
m (update links) |
m (clean up) |
||
Line 4:
{{quote|''"Dammit! So let's recap: there are four directions that I can move in and none of them work. What the fuck am I supposed to do?"''|'''[http://www.sydlexia.com/mysteryhouse.htm SydLexia]''', reviewing [[wikipedia:Mystery House|Mystery House]]}}
An annoying aspect of oldschool [[Text Parser]]-based [[Adventure Game
For example, let's say the command to look at a monster was "look monster". If you typed in "look at monster", the game might say something like "I don't know how to do that" or "I don't see an 'at' here". This got better over time, but never completely disappeared before command-line interfaces went out of style. Still, the text parser remained a staff favorite, as it allowed them to anticipate what the player might type in a given situation. Should the player's input be totally off-the-wall (such as 'pick nose'), [[The Dev Team Thinks of Everything|they would create a suitably off-the-wall response.]]
Line 18:
Another option is to give a list of all the possible words. One small game, used to demonstrate features of the C programming language, listed its 6 verbs and 12 nouns in the help screen. Chris Crawford's ''Storytron'' engine has you choose each variable part of the sentence from a drop-down list, and then adds or replaces the next part of the sentence as appropriate.
Examples of games with actual ''good'' parsers include ''[[The Hobbit]]'', and anything by [[Infocom]] and Legend. Ironically, that includes some of the ''oldest'' adventure games; many of the newer ones tried to reinvent the parser wheel. The TADS (Text Adventure Development System) runtime is particularly good at such
Sometimes called "Guess The Verb" or "Guess The Syntax". The "ye" comes from [[Ye Olde Butcherede Englishe]]. The equivalent frustration in non-parser [[Point and Click]] games is the [[Pixel Hunt]]. Contrast [[The Dev Team Thinks of Everything]], if you are working with an exceptionally good text parser.
{{examples}}
== Video game examples
=== [[Adventure Game]] ===
* ''[http://www.platypuscomix.net/applepalooza/deathmaze.html Deathmaze 5000]'', for the [[TRS-80]] and [[Apple II]], contained (among other things) a pit in the first level containing an item you needed to complete the game. Once you stepped on it you were stuck in one place, and your only clue was "To everything there is a season." In case you didn't pick up on the clue, it would shout "To everything, TURN TURN TURN" after a few minutes. Typing in "Turn" did nothing. Physically turning by hitting the move keys did nothing. None of the items you got on that level were "turnable". The only way to know what to do was if you bought the Deathmaze 5000 Hint Sheet from the software company in the early 80's (and whoever you are, you don't have it).
Line 94:
{{quote|Congratulations, you have killed the dragon with your bare hands! (Unbelievable, isn't it?)}}
* The [[Edutainment Game]] ''Voices of Spoon River'' several times explicitly tells the player to "place" something on something else... but the verb "place" isn't implemented. It's not too hard to figure out that you have to "put" instead, but it's still weird.
* ''Ad Verbum'' makes an art of
* "The Six Foot Tall Man Eating Chicken" has a pretty big one. There is a cork. There is a bucket with a hole in it. Putting the two together? Plug doesn't work. Use doesn't work... {{spoiler|Solution is PUT. Which is never mentioned}}
=== [[MMORPG]]s ===
* Parodied in the screenshots of [http://www.cityofheroes.com/news/news_archive/ncnorcal_announces_city_of_her.html this] ''[[City of Heroes]]'' ([[April Fools' Day]]) announcement.
* ''[[EverQuest]]'' tends to suffer from this trope. When talking to [[NPC
*** And sometimes, the developers made it obvious they were just being mean. For example trying to ask Bootstrutter about "jboots" earns a response something like "What nonsense is this about jboots? Speak to me of Journeyman's Boots!"
** Somewhat related to this trope: you needed to activate the chat text field to talk to NPCs, otherwise, pressing letters on the keyboard would result in activating hotkeys for game commands. Standard fare, sure, but then you take into account that the default key for "Attack" was 'a' and it was possible to attack friendly NPCs. Forgetting to press Enter before typing could be lethal as you'd get three letters into "What" before the NPC flattened you for what seemed like no reason.
Line 116:
* ''[[Operator's Side|LifeLine]]'' on the [[PlayStation 2]] plays similarly to a text adventure, albeit one controlled by the player's voice than with a keyboard. Aside from the [[Fake Difficulty|joys of iffy voice recognition]] causing much frustration and the genre standard [[Guess the Verb|Guess the Noun]] portions, there are several instances in which very specific phrases must be used to get the proper effect. [[Collection Sidequest|One chip]] is particularly difficult to acquire, merely for the fact that said chip was located behind a bag of some sort, and telling Rio to "check behind bag" didn't work for some reason.
== Non-video game examples
=== Film ===
* [[Phelous]] points out that the website in Fear Dot Com seems to run on this sort of interface.
| |||