Laziness in writing games

[VerityasDragon]

Am I the only one who when playing an adventure gets tired of the fact that often there is an object mentioned in the room description, but when you type "Look at [object]" the response is "You can't see that"? I find it very frustrating and often give up.

I played one game recently where three objects were mentioned in the description yet none could you interact with in any way. It's just lazy and wouldn't take long to add a simple description.

[KVonGit]

To a certain extent, especially if it's in the first room.

Well... If it's something like the floor or the walls, I usually let it go if those don't exist, but if it's wallpaper that is mentioned, I expect the parser to at least understand "wallpaper" -- most of the time, especially with a small game.

Back in the day, if something was mentioned in the description that served no overall purpose, it didn't exist, or it was a red herring if it did, haha! That was due to file size limitations, though, or it mostly was.

Anyway, after being on the game-creation side, I have created many a "scenery" object, only to delete it once the beta-testers tried all 20+ built-in commands on it with nothing but default responses for most of them. (I'm not spending time covering all that just for a joke response here and there. I'll just be less descriptive, thank you very much. Or at least use more adjectives and fewer nouns in room descriptions, bwahaha!)

So, I definitely side with you. On the old forum, there are quite a few posts from me saying just what you are saying, only not so nicely. =)

...but, nowadays, I try to ignore things like that when the games have charm (or heart, or maybe just a sick twisted sense of humor), especially when it comes to most little games created by individual authors.

...as long as it isn't habitual, and as long as everything else is fun and intuitive. If it's hard to figure out what the !!!! to do, don't be mentioning s--- that ain't there!!!

Oh... Sorry. I'm calm now.

Anyway, yeah. It is frustrating. 🤣

[VerityasDragon]

I guess I am just a "completist", if something is mentioned ("The prince sits on the settee") then I expect to at least be able to look at it.

I am writing my first adventure at the moment and I am trying to make sure every object mentioned will have a description, even if it's something basic, like the road you're on. Yes, I know it's a game, and I'm doing this for my own entertainment (it may not ever be published) but I want the world to be as immersive as possible. I don't want that jarring effect of putting something in the description which then "cannot be seen".

I guess in a way I am fortunate, because the world in my game is based on a real town, so I don't need to think up descriptions as most of it I can use the real place.

But I guess if you don't want to describe every object, at least changed the default message from "You can't see that" when you obviously can because it's in the description, you could have something like "What you're looking at is pretty unremarkable".

[vurt834]

In the game object, you could use the scope to add scenery so it shows up in all rooms. I'd just create a room that's isolated, put objects in there, and add them to the scope list (pardon my vague usage of scope, it's been awhile since I did it

[vurt834]

Dang, someone wrote that in the last post =)

[fishneedles]

Everything you said is what I'm trying to mitigate with the TA I'm making. It should be listed on here I believe as a WIP, which it very much is. It's mostly just a couple of rooms right now, but you'll still spend a bit of time in them. I tried to think of different ways objects can be interacted with so that it will feel like you have a bit more freedom within the world.

I want people to essentially use every verb and alt-wording they can think of to see if there's anything major that I'm missing. It's my very first game project, and I have no idea how other people think. So you may have a verb that's obvious to you, but I didn't think about. Let me know. :)

Oh, I guess you'll need the actual name of the game. It's called "Nowhere" and should be in the WIP category.

[KVonGit]

If you post a link, I'll make a note to check it out and provide some feedback for you.

[fishneedles]

I really appreciate it! It should be on https://textadventures.co.uk/games/view/odyap_hbn06pphseax-nkq/nowhere It's still very much a WIP, and I'm working on several different areas, but I just wanted to get feedback on the demo area I made.

…

On Mon, Jun 30, 2025, 2:54 PM K.V. ***@***.***> wrote: If you post a link, I'll make a note to check it out and provide some feedback for you. — Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#1572 (reply in thread)>, or unsubscribe <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AJSFKMZTCMX2WO3A67A6XXD3GGW27AVCNFSM6AAAAAB6BBWYDWVHI2DSMVQWIX3LMV43URDJONRXK43TNFXW4Q3PNVWWK3TUHMYTGNRSGIZTOMI> . You are receiving this because you commented.Message ID: ***@***.***>

[KVonGit]

I got to play for a few minutes (before the world realized I was playing a text adventure), and it is very well written.

I'll give it a real play through sometime soon, might be a few days, though.