Hunter, in Darkness
  by "Dave Ahl Jr." (Andrew Plotkin)
[Notes originally written to include with my '99 IFComp game reviews. 
I didn't get around to it at the time. Now I have.]

I suppose I should say a few words about this one, too. (Warning: this
section contains SPOILERS. Authorial spoilers are the worst.)

_Hunter_ was sparked by a MUD conversation, somewhere way back in May
or June of 1999. Yes, before the newsgroup discussions of "the
definition of IF", which frequently turned to Wumpus as an example. I
don't remember the exact topic of the conversation, but it was
probably along the same lines: does Wumpus count as early interactive
fiction?

(I tend to think it's not; the world is too rule-based, too much of a
simulation. You've read all the text in the game long before you win.)

Like most good ideas, the phrase "Do Wumpus *as* IF" appeared
full-formed and obvious. The original game has no real story; but
there's *room* for a story. Who is the Hunter, who is the Wumpus, and
what was it really like?

Not that I *answer* the first two questions. That wouldn't be any fun.
:-)

A bunch of ideas went into the mix:

* Copy as many elements as possible from the Wumpus game. (Crossbow,
bats, pits, three exits per room.)

* Don't use the word "Wumpus" until after the player has been drawn
into complicity.

* Make sure that complicity works. Make the player feel
claustrophobic, scared, exhausted, and in pain.

* No compass directions.

* A maze. This was a purely technical challenge; could I design an
algorithmically-generated maze, unbounded in extent, which still felt
like hand-written rooms on a hand-designed map?

* Several different levels of darkness and light, instead of just two.

* Several possible paths to winning. I've always avoided this in the
past; I wanted to try it.

* Players should guess that "Dave Ahl, Jr." is a pseudonym, but not
who the real author is.

* In-medias-res beginning.

* Big surprise at the end; the Wumpus is not a mindless animal. It's
pointing your crossbow at you.

How'd I do? Overall, I think it worked, although (as I write this) the
scores and reviews have not yet appeared.

I wound up deciding to introduce the word "Wumpus" when the player
wounds the critter. This can be on the second move, or very late in
the game, depending on which path the player takes. No doubt the early
appearance will let the Wumpus-nature out of the bag long before most
players have figured it out. Not ideal, but acceptable. (Stephen
Granade figured it out before he'd even started it up -- just from the
game's title and pseudonym.)

I certainly hope the sense of there-ness works. I was inspired by many
sources. One large one was Alan Garner's _Weirdstone of Brisingamen_,
which contains a scary-as-hell chapter about crawling down a horribly
narrow passage underground. I deliberately did *not* re-read that
before writing the game. Unconscious stealing is too easy.

I did, however, spent an amusing evening crawling across my living
room floor, under chairs and tables. An educational experience; how
can you write about crawling unless you study how it works? In case
you're curious, the narrow point in the cave crawl is just barely
larger than one of the gaps in the base of a papasan chair.

There are indeed three levels of light in the game, but the difference
between "bright" and "dim" is never important and I doubt anyone
noticed. Oh well.

The left/right/fore/back navigation turned out to be doable. (Although
the code got fairly messy.) In a small game like this, with a very
constrained map, I could get away with it. Note that you *never* enter
a room turned around. Two-way connections between rooms are rare, and
every one is either an up/down connection or an explicit "you go
forwards / you back up". Either way, you wind up facing the same
direction. I also made sure every room had a clear "forward"
direction, so that one's facing within the room was always obvious.

The maze is a bit of an exception, but I still erred on the side of
never turning around. A "left" exit is always left, no matter how you
enter the room. Since the topology is entirely indeterminate, and most
of the connections are one-way anyhow, I don't think this causes much
(extra!) confusion.

The generated maze-rooms aren't very convincing to my eye; too many
common elements. But I did find that beta-testers wandered around a
lot before noticing that. So I guess it's a partial success. There
are, in fact, 32768 rooms -- which is to say, a "room" is an integer
value between 0 and 32767, and the room description and exits are both
computed from that key value in a deterministic way.

The algorithm which generates the exits was a stone bitch to get
right. I wanted three exits from each room (of course). Each room has
one "correct" exit, and you have to make six correct moves in a row to
get out, so the chance of getting out by random wandering is
negligible. But more than that: I wanted each room to connect only to
"nearby" rooms in some sense. So that if you wandered around at
random, you'd stay in a smallish cluster of rooms. You could even map
it, although there would always be unexplored paths leading farther
out.

Furthermore, if you wandered around by a fixed pattern (e.g. "left if
possible, else up, else forward") you should quickly get into a small
closed loop. However, if you followed the *correct* path, you should
*never* get into a closed loop -- at least not for hundreds of moves.
The correct path should always move through new territory.

After a great deal of swearing, I got all that to work. (I won't go
into the details here -- ask if you're interested.)

Pseudonymity... I didn't try to disguise my writing style, but I tried
to throw in other uncharacteristic touches, like the flashy opening
screen. "Score" actually gives meaningful output. :-) I even resisted
the temptation to put in my usual smartass "[BUG]" messages, in case
someone disassembled the game file.

The story itself is pretty straightforward, I hope. I kept the focus
very tight; it's all about blood and pain. I originally had ideas
about luring the bats around with bits of fruit, or worms, for
example. But that would lose the focus. I stuck to blood.

By the time you read this, we'll know how it did. [Eighth, as it
turned out. Plus an XYZZY for Best Setting and Best Individual Puzzle
of 1999.]