Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!swrinde!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!samsung!dali.cs.montana.edu!milton!xanthian@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG From: xanthian@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG (Kent Paul Dolan) Newsgroups: sci.virtual-worlds Subject: Navigating in Zork mode Message-ID: <1990Aug24.164049.5512@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG> Date: 24 Aug 90 16:40:49 GMT Sender: hlab@milton.u.washington.edu Organization: SF Bay Public-Access Unix Lines: 52 Approved: hitl@hardy.u.washington.edu Several recent articles have focused on the problems and possibilities of navigating (and assisting navigation) through a complex, many dimensioned/categoried data space/virtual reality. While agreeing with those who point out the difficulties, most of us have probably shared an experience that shows one way to make this work. If you have played the games called in the US Dungeon or Zork (commercial version), or the Crowther & Woods (sp?) Adventure game, you probably all did as I did: blundered about a while, realized the need for a map, made a map, used and expanded the map as more was learned, and then finally put the paper map aside as familiarity created an equivalently functioning internal map. Perhaps the unmet need in this paradigm in the discussion so far is that the virtual reality should include a convenient way for the user to create his/her own map; my first impulse would be simply an easily accessed freehand drawing area with tools for ovals, titles, arcs, and so on, panable and zoomable as needed. Thus, rather than solve the problem of making a navigation system suitable for all users, we make all users cartographers and let them teach themselves navigation, with only some primitive initial toolkit. After a while, studying the maps the users create, we can learn from them what (varied) ways of keeping ones directions straight are in use, and incorporate (the best of) them into our system's "autopilots" as time and user demand allow. A very wise cartographic support programmer manager of my acquaintance in Canada used this as his sole development criterion. Does this have wider applicability? I've always liked systems that stayed in a prototype stage "forever"; it is what most attracts me to Unix. Would this work for a virtual reality project as well? Kent, the man from xanth.