§9.12. Cameras and Recording Devices
Recording what is going on, for later playing back or examination, is difficult because the range of situations is very complex. Exactly how much information should we store when we make a recording, and will this require problematically large tables? Will it be difficult even to do at all?
The usual approach is to record only basic details of events or situations. In If It Hadn't Been For... the tape recorder preserves only a few different sounds - footsteps, creaking, rustling - rather than capturing exactly the sound of every action taking place in earshot. In Claims Adjustment, we can take up to 36 Polaroid-style photographs, but each is described only by saying what it is a photo of. Thus we can have a photograph of a vase, or even a photograph of a photograph of a vase (because that too is a thing), but not a photograph of a still life in which several items have been gathered together by the player. That would ordinarily require too much storage.
A similar trick, though involving impromptu sculpture rather than photography, can be found in Originals. (The artist magically "manifests" these models rather than sculpting the conventional way in order to avoid the nuisance of carrying around raw materials - wax maquettes and so forth - which would clutter up the example.)
Text, of course, can store arbitrary descriptions. Mirror, Mirror provides a perfect visual recorder: it remembers a room description exactly as the player saw it at the time.
Actor's Studio provides a video camera that records and time stamps all actions performed in its presence while it is set to record.
See Telephones for ways to speak to inanimate objects, which might be appropriate when, say, tape-recording a confession
We start out by giving ourselves a capacious recording device:
And most of what follows is attaching sounds to various events. (We could have made noises associated with all the actions, but for simplicity we stuck to a few.) The thing to note here is that the recording happens as part of Carry out, not as part of Report, so sounds will be recorded even when they are the result of non-player action when the player is not even in the room.
Now we're at liberty to record evidence of the ghost getting out of the cupboard and getting back in, while we ourselves stand about on the lawn. |
|
We start out by giving ourselves a capacious recording device:
And most of what follows is attaching sounds to various events. (We could have made noises associated with all the actions, but for simplicity we stuck to a few.) The thing to note here is that the recording happens as part of Carry out, not as part of Report, so sounds will be recorded even when they are the result of non-player action when the player is not even in the room.
Now we're at liberty to record evidence of the ghost getting out of the cupboard and getting back in, while we ourselves stand about on the lawn. |
|
|
|
|