[MUD-Dev] Response (Was Re: MUD Design doc (long))

[Ola Fosheim Grøstad <olag@ifi.uio.no>]

Chris Gray wrote:

> do a default action if not. Then again, any system with inheritance and
> a full object tree can just pile a zillion string messages (or methods)
> on the base object, and get the same effect. So, I'll come around and
> ask the question: is there any reason *not* to do this? As Caliban says,
> many objects don't have any special response to, say, 'smell', but
> that is a different matter from telling the user that the system
> doesn't understand 'smell'.

But why bother the user with data that doesn't contain any valuable information?
What about not having any cluttering text response at all?  Of course, smelling
can be used for user-user communication so: "Ola smells your hair" makes sense in
the wider context...

Anyway, if a user pushes a button and nothing happens then he will eventually
deduce that it had no effect. Just play the click-sound, there is no reason to
spell it out for him. Hollywood movies would be more interesting if they didn't
come with a built-in interpretation! Figuring things out should be part of the
game?  So... "*click*"  is better than "nothing happens" for dramaturgical
reasons.
--
Ola Fosheim Groestad,Norway      http://www.stud.ifi.uio.no/~olag/