Re: Cameras and Player Info

[Morbus Iff]

>I disagree. For one giving the player control of the camera is a very cheap
>(read as: easy to program) way to make the player feel in charge. This also
>allows the player to find or miss events in a realtime enviorment. This
>presents an opportunity once again to make subtle changes in the story. The
>most compelling reason I can think of allowing a player some camera control
>in an interactive story is that it's a two way mirror. You can sample what
>is in the camera frustrum and use this information to enhance the story.

Agreeable, but we get into the discussion of person - third or first? Would
an interactive fiction story focus more around the person or the
environment? The movable camera lends itself to the environment, whereas
your cardinal directions relate to first person.

>Well I tend to agree. Whether the storyverse is rendered in 3D polys or
>rendered in text , the goal is to give enough for the human imagination to
>fill in the rest...

Which can often not happen. As well as Myst was a great game, I tended to
find myself losing the story line because it took me about three days to
figure out one of those stupid puzzles ;) The storyline was too sparse in
between - and gave my imagination other things to worry about ("damn, i'm
hungry", "hey, buffy is on")

>Hmm the problem I have with games of this style is that there is no sense of
>life. For me personally I get more from reading pure text. I think it has to
>do with smashing two media (text & graphics) in a non too smooth way. I
>think works fine for information media but not for story telling.

To clarify, you wouldn't want the definite break between square picture,
and rectangular text beneath, but more of a tree picture with text
scrolling through its canopy?
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