I agree. “Woody usually goes out” and “Stan won’t let me take the key” are observations, not a product of deduction, so it’s not a giveaway if the game creates them after you observe something. (Or even after a cut scene)
The difference is that in your UI you only have clickable facts (“Woody usually goes out”, “Stan won’t let me take the key” ) whereas I like to also have objectives (“must make Woody leave”, “must take Stan’s key”). So my UI risks to be a giveaway, your UI seems more safe in this aspect. However, in my UI, it is clear how it is supposed to be used : you play by combining one objective with one object ( or fact). Always two things, never three. And one of them must be an objective. (Except for look-at and walk-to, which are implemented as traditional verbs ). Otoh, it is not completely clear to me how your UI is supposed to be used. You gave an example where you combine two objects and one fact. But is it always like this?
BTW, I already implemented my UI and I know it works. Soon I’ll let you play a text based game. I only need to translate to English and deploy. It’s not that I don’t try things in practice. It’s just that I like theory a lot
That would be nice but the reason why I removed them from my idea is that in my opinion having objectives opens a can of worms.
If it’s the system that creates the objective, even only after the player does something, that could be a giveaway.
If it’s the player who can freely create objectives, that could make the implementation more difficult, especially if you want to parse and analyze text inputted by the player.
In any case, it makes the system more complex, because you are adding a third kind of “thing”. If you can accomplish your goal with just “objects” and “information”, it’s not necessary to add the third element “objectives”.
Are you sure that two only things are enough to provide the two different information needed, which are 1) what action to do and 2) why?
If you design all the puzzles so that they always require two objects and one fact, then it’s always like this. If you design the puzzles so that some of them require a different quantity of things, then it’s not always like this. I assume that different puzzles might require a different kind of “things” to connect.
It occurred to me this problem can always be solved: if you think a particular objective is a giveaway, then instead of giving that to the user, you make him generate that objective by combining a fact and another objective (which does not provide a giveaway). (Example: must take hammer AND Woody-goes-out ==> must-make-woody-leave)
Or, if this still seems a giveaway, you can bypass the intermediate (use peg-leg to take-hammer).
But there’s still the issue of simplicity. Your idea seems simpler (if we change it by only requiring one object and one fact, not two objects and one fact).
But it could be only an apparent simplicity, because we might need to have objectives anyway. (There’s a reason Ron had the notebook)
Almost. I haven’t yet found a case where two objects are required (in addition to an objective) to prove you have solved a puzzle. To go back to the example: i feel that the peg leg puzzle is solved as soon as you understand you need to break something made of wood, somewhere out of the shop. I don’t see the saw (or even the peg leg) as an important part of the puzzle, only a detail (you need to arrive at by trial and error).
And for the “wanted poster” puzzle: if you click the objective “have Kate jailed” and the wanted poster, it’s clear you have solved the puzzle, because otherwise the objective and the poster would have nothing to do with each other. I think this is always the case: one object will always be enough, because it would be otherwise totally unrelated to the objective.
So for you it would be OK if the player could just input “break something made of wood somewhere out of the shop” without bothering about specific objects?
He didn’t check whether there was actually something to break outside the shop
He didn’t make sure that breaking the target object would have motivated a character to call Woody
He didn’t bother to search for a tool to break the target object with
This definition of puzzle is 100% mental and ignores the execution part to the extreme that it makes completely irrelevant places, the objects in them and the characters linked to the objects or the places. The only “things” justified are the ones needed to make a deduction but the rest of the world has become irrelevant.
Giving the command “Ruin the vichyssoise somehow” isn’t challenging or interesting or fun like executing the actions needed to ruin it.
You are right. I am defining the puzzle as “that part which can be arrived at by pure logic”. The rest, which you need to arrive at by trial and error, I am leaving out of the definition and calling it “detail”. But these detail could be fun to execute, you say. Yes. But it could also be boring because someone might not like trial and error. I can see why someone might want to search for an object to break, but can you see why someone might not want to? Both approaches make sense to me.
Why do you think that solving the original vichyssoise puzzle needed trial and error? The connection betweed food and rats/mice is a popular narrative trope in the pirate world. When I saw the mouse I knew that I had to use it to ruin the vichyssoise.
Well, if the rat was the only thing in the monkey2 world than can ruin a vichyssoise and have the cook fired, you can arrive at the rat by logic. But if there’s something else, like poison, or spit, or a wig,(a “substitute”), then you need to try them all and see which one works. It’s true there is a trope, but it doesn’t seem enough to make me exclude that the poison or the spit or wig might also work.
Edit: But if you say you KNEW, this means there were no substitutes for the rat. So you could arrive at the rat by pure logic. If so, then (by definition) the rat is part of the puzzle.
Similarly for the peg-leg… If it was the only thing in Woodthick made of wood and located far out of the shop that you can select, we can call this part of the puzzle. (And if the saw was the only thing that cuts…)
Anyway, this is just a definition I made up as a result of being annoyed by the huge amount of trial and error in adventure games.
The most sensible thing to do could be to reduce trial and error, not to eliminate it entirely.
No… Nooo… I’ve never had this impression. Somebody (maybe you, I don’t remember) underlined the same thing about Kate (why should her go to Phatt, since she’s always on Booty looking for customers?)
Well, no, it always seemed obvious to me that the fact the woodsmith was so static was a puzzle itself. You have to distract him to move him away. It’s a common puzzle: distract the shopkeeper to move him away the store to open the safe in MI1, for example. That’s why I found the peg leg puzzle absolutely logical. From the first moment I jumped in that shop, I KNEW I should have had him away, sooner or later, in the game. And I agree with @Caven: the hanging peg legs and the wax routine helped a lot.
And, by the way: the Woodtick citizens are not so static, too: you have to distract the innkeeper too to move him away and getting the chance to sneak in Largo’s room… You have to get the Bloody Lip cook fired to move him away as well… and Largo is always wandering here and there!
I agree with @Ema on this. There is no reason to assume people will think one way or another way, as if strict linear thought were common and exclusive, or as if there were only The One True Way™ to solve a puzzle. There are many clues and environmental cues to make the connection, including common genre, film, and adventure game tropes; and people may come about them through different paths.
When I played in the past, i also reasoned through this puzzle like @Ema described.
@LowLevel in thailand, while drinking cocktails under coconut trees, I was trying to implement your idea in the “one object + fact” variant (I know you prefer two objects, but let’s leave it aside) but I stumbled in another problem. It seems too obscure. I mean, even after you solved the puzzle, it does not seem obvious that you have to formulate it as “peg leg + saw + woody-usually-goes-out”. To make it intuitive, we need to turn this into a real sentence, like “use peg leg and saw because woody-usually-goes-out”. Is this what you mean? You play by composing sentences of the kind USE x AND y BECAUSE z?
For comparison: my objective-based UI composes sentences of the kind “USE x IN ORDER TO y”. In the particular case where you click a character, this turns into “TALK TO x IN ORDER TO y”.
So, to implement your idea, it is sufficient to turn IN-ORDER-TO into BECAUSE?
If so, how do you justify to the user the fact he has to give you a reason, in addition to the two objects? what if the user asks “why the heck must I give you a reason? by clicking the two objects, I already told you what to do.”. (and one way to solve this problem could be to use the “one object + fact” variant).
Well, only if you want to use text and sentences. I can’t exclude that there is a good way to implement the mechanism without using texts.
Yes, it seems to me that it could work in this way.
Because the two objects specify what to do, not why it should be done. The mechanism is centered around the “because” part, which is the element that proves that the player has made a deduction.
case 1) without text: the user clicks saw, then clicks peg leg, then the game waits for a third click. And you are completely baffled as to why the game is not executing your action. What the game is expecting you to add is not clear. [Edit: but maybe the game can just popup a list of reasons. So it would become clear what it’s expecting.]
case 2) with text: you click saw, then click peg-leg, then the game displays “use saw and peg leg BECAUSE…”. This is no more baffling. Now it is clear that the game is waiting for you to click a reason.
Right. But to constantly ask the user why he wants to do something is insulting, as you correctly noticed. Unless the sentence is not completely determined without the third object. Now, in the “single object + fact” variant, the sentence is not completely determined with just the object, so it’s not insulting. But in the “two objects + fact”, it can be a problem…
Never mind, I got it. The solution is simply to define a precise order in which you have to click objects: first an object, then a fact, then the second object. So, if you click the first object, the objects become greyed out, so you need to click a fact for second. And only then, you can click a second object.
(and not always you will ask the second object).
So this allows you to implement the “two objects + fact” formula in a way that’s not perceived as insulting.
How do you know the player has in fact made the deduction, versus merely attempting trial-and-error with what amounts to a new kind of inventory item? If anything, the fact that the game explicitly tells the player that Woody leaving the shop is a possibility removes an element of deduction, since the player could receive that deduction simply for randomly interacting with multiple items.
Tough question… It’s true, my object + objective variant can still be played in a trial and error way.
But you still need to compose the sentence “use peg leg to make-woody-leave.” A moment before you click the last piece, I was hoping you to recognize what you are doing and why. You click the last piece while knowing this is going to work. This I was hoping. (Unless you are brute forcing, ie playing without thinking. But this is not the problem I am trying to solve. ) (In monkey2 it is very likely you click the last piece without knowing why this is useful)
I still think that asking the player to specify every time why he wants to do something might be perceived as insulting or simply unpleasant. But it seems to me that the whole goal of your attempts is to make sure that puzzles aren’t solved by pure chance, so I have accepted that this is the kind of gameplay that you are interested to design. I don’t know how people will react to this kind of mechanics but for sure asking “why” is a way to reach the objective.
I don’t see why this variant solves the issue (assuming that there is actually an issue: you could just ignore the “insulting” aspect and design the game the way you want to do it).
I don’t think that the game has a way to ensure that the player has actually made the deduction. For example, the game has no way to know if the player is following a walkthrough.
Some puzzle games include a limit to the quantity of moves that the player can attempt for each specific puzzle. It’s not clear to me how much the kind of game we’re discussing is a puzzle game or an adventure game, but if limiting the quantity of attempts is acceptable, then it could be a way to minimize the trial-and-error issue.
I think the player only feels insulted if he has already composed a perfectly clear action and then you ask him why. He perceives the third thing to be superfluous, and then he starts suspecting you only want to check his soundness of reasoning. Instead, if he sees that you play by clicking the objective (or reason) first, he thinks that there must be some other reason why the UI is like that. (which is true, in the case of “one object + objective”: the purpose is also to eliminate what i consider unnecessary operative details — allow you to prepare a coffee without forcing you to explain in detail how to do it, for instance. In my game I have a part where you are asked to prepare a coffee. I don’t want to make it a cutscene but I don’t want to force you to specify in detail how to do it . The narration flow would suffer. [and I can’t make it happen when you click “use coffee-maker”: see below])
I think the best bet there is just to ensure the necessary clues are there, rather than attempting to create a whole new UI to address the problem. If there’s a concern that clues suitable for a beginner player might be too obvious for a skilled player, then difficulty levels could adjust the amount or quality of the clues given. Or perhaps this is where a good hint system would come in…
I see the problem as being worse than that. Existing adventure games can’t tell if the player is making a deduction, but the proposed system sounds like it would make some deductions automatically for the player. For instance, if merely trying to take the hammer and/or looking at “housecall repair” sign is enough for the game to tell the player that the carpenter is known to leave his shop, then the player is relieved of the burden of realizing that on their own. If the player doesn’t have to understand the significance of the sign in order to receive the deduction, the game comes dangerously close to being its own walkthrough, by using the UI instead of the game world to provide clues.
I’ve been working under the assumption that we’ve been talking about adventure games this whole time. I don’t think limiting the amount of player attempts is appropriate, unless the goal is to make an adventure game where the player can fail. And as I recall, the frustration with that sort of gameplay was what ultimately launched the LucasArts philosophy of adventure games where failure is rare or impossible.
