Mazes
From Maze
(Difference between revisions)
(→Works Cited) | (→Second Person Mazes) | ||
| Line 131: | Line 131: | ||
Textually described mazes developed into their most complex and confusing configurations in text-based adventure games of the sort that are now called interactive fiction. The genre began with the groundbreaking ''Adventure'', written by Will Crowther for the PDP-10 in 1976 and later expanded by Don Woods into a full-fledged underground adventure. Basing the game in part on his own caving experience in the Mammoth Cave system, Crowther included the ten-room maze introduced with: | Textually described mazes developed into their most complex and confusing configurations in text-based adventure games of the sort that are now called interactive fiction. The genre began with the groundbreaking ''Adventure'', written by Will Crowther for the PDP-10 in 1976 and later expanded by Don Woods into a full-fledged underground adventure. Basing the game in part on his own caving experience in the Mammoth Cave system, Crowther included the ten-room maze introduced with: | ||
| − | YOU ARE IN A MAZE OF TWISTY LITTLE PASSAGES, ALL ALIKE. | + | YOU ARE IN A MAZE OF TWISTY LITTLE PASSAGES, ALL ALIKE. |
| − | |||
Woods would go on to add a second maze, this time "TWISTY LITTLE PASSAGES, ALL DIFFERENT" (Jerz 2007, 23). "YOU" works to connect the player to the character in the maze, although in a different way than first-person 3D games do. For one thing, that pronoun sometimes is explicitly used to address the operator of the program rather than to indicate the main character, as when Adventure outputs "IF YOU PREFER, SIMPLY TYPE W RATHER THAN WEST." | Woods would go on to add a second maze, this time "TWISTY LITTLE PASSAGES, ALL DIFFERENT" (Jerz 2007, 23). "YOU" works to connect the player to the character in the maze, although in a different way than first-person 3D games do. For one thing, that pronoun sometimes is explicitly used to address the operator of the program rather than to indicate the main character, as when Adventure outputs "IF YOU PREFER, SIMPLY TYPE W RATHER THAN WEST." | ||
| − | From ''Hunt the Wumpus'' through ''Adventure,'' another notable difference was that second-person mazes were typically turn-based rather than real-time. They also came to be embedded in a broader context of simulated spaces. Sometimes these were confusing ones that, even if they were not called mazes, required that players map them. But in any case, they usually invited different forms of systematic, high-level thinking that would allow the environment to be figured or puzzled out. The player's activity was thoughtful and was paced at the player's discretion rather than being based on twitch reflexes. The activity of completing a text adventure is called solving (as opposed to "beating a level"), the same term that is used for finding a path through a maze. | + | From ''Hunt the Wumpus'' through ''Adventure,'' another notable difference was that second-person mazes were typically turn-based rather than real-time. They also came to be embedded in a broader context of simulated spaces. Sometimes these were confusing ones that, even if they were not called mazes, required that players map them. But in any case, they usually invited different forms of systematic, high-level thinking that would allow the environment to be figured or puzzled out. The player's activity was thoughtful and was paced at the player's discretion rather than being based on twitch reflexes. The activity of completing a text adventure is called solving (as opposed to "beating a level"), the same term that is used for finding a path through a maze. |
====Third-Person Mazes==== | ====Third-Person Mazes==== | ||
