Not a Game, a Book
Mr Jared Stein
less int. At any rate, I am working on a fantasy/adventure novel that
is meant to be read, not played. Really, it's inspired by nostalgia for
Choose-Your-Own-Adventure books from the mid-80s and "reads" like one
using only hypertext. Anyone interested in this sort of thing? I
originally was heading toward the completely interactive interface that
most of you are playing with, but then I decided I would lose much of
the literariness of the work.
--
J. Stein
You must stay drunk on writing
so reality cannot destroy you.
--Ray Bradbury
e-mail: mr.s...@usu.edu
icq: 13616102
fax: (801) 912 2334
Philip Goetz
news:387A618B...@usu.edu...
> Hi, I caught sight of this newsgroup thinking it was more fiction and
> less int. At any rate, I am working on a fantasy/adventure novel that
> is meant to be read, not played. Really, it's inspired by nostalgia for
> Choose-Your-Own-Adventure books from the mid-80s and "reads" like one
> using only hypertext. Anyone interested in this sort of thing? I
> originally was heading toward the completely interactive interface that
> most of you are playing with, but then I decided I would lose much of
> the literariness of the work.
>
> --
> J. Stein
I'm interested. IMHO it's appropriate for discussion on r.a.i-f, though
I know some people disagree. (A lot of good people interested in
interactive fiction, BTW, have been scared away from raif by the
emphasis on TADS/Inform/Hugo.)
Jake Wildstrom
Philip Goetz <pgo...@i-a-i.com> wrote:
>Mr Jared Stein <mr.s...@usu.edu> wrote in message
>news:387A618B...@usu.edu...
>> Hi, I caught sight of this newsgroup thinking it was more fiction and
>> less int. At any rate, I am working on a fantasy/adventure novel that
>> is meant to be read, not played. Really, it's inspired by nostalgia for
>> Choose-Your-Own-Adventure books from the mid-80s and "reads" like one
>> using only hypertext. Anyone interested in this sort of thing? I
>I'm interested. IMHO it's appropriate for discussion on r.a.i-f, though
>I know some people disagree. (A lot of good people interested in
>interactive fiction, BTW, have been scared away from raif by the
>emphasis on TADS/Inform/Hugo.)
I too believ it's on-topic. The concept of "interactive fiction" gets redefined
here on occasion, whenever something pushes the established limits of either
"interactive" or "fiction". Considering a sample of (for instance) Zork I,
DooM, a CYOA book, hypertext fiction, Christminister, Photopia, and the
Dictionary of the Khazars, we'd probably get about 20 different responses as to
which of them are "interactive fiction". But I think a lot of us would in fact
consider hypertext to be sufficiently interactive to be on-topic here, although
since it isn't the medium of choice for most of us, we may not be of much help
in resolving any problems you have. We would, however, be interested in
learning about your projects--the goal which we all have is to create immersive
fiction with an element of reader (player?) involvement, and any tool which
achieves that goat (be it Hypertext, Inform, TADS, or the Erasmatron) is of
some interest.
Incidentally, if you're not already subscribed to it, alt.hypertext also seems
like a worthwhile place to discuss this project.
+--First Church of Briantology--Order of the Holy Quaternion--+
| A mathematician is a device for turning coffee into |
| theorems. -Paul Erdos |
+-------------------------------------------------------------+
| Jake Wildstrom |
+-------------------------------------------------------------+
Gene Wirchenko
>Hi, I caught sight of this newsgroup thinking it was more fiction and
>less int. At any rate, I am working on a fantasy/adventure novel that
>is meant to be read, not played. Really, it's inspired by nostalgia for
>Choose-Your-Own-Adventure books from the mid-80s and "reads" like one
>using only hypertext. Anyone interested in this sort of thing? I
>originally was heading toward the completely interactive interface that
>most of you are playing with, but then I decided I would lose much of
>the literariness of the work.
I found them awfully limiting. Certainly, the straight page
turning variety was. Steve Jackson Games ha[sd] the Fighting Fantasy
series where there is more variety, but they are still awfully limited
compared with a basic text adventure. Even a good one still feels
hollow, incomplete.
What literariness are you referring to? Perhaps some of the
experts could convince you to the path of Darkness^W^W^W^Wtry writing
IF.
Sincerely,
Gene Wirchenko
Computerese Irregular Verb Conjugation:
I have preferences.
You have biases.
He/She has prejudices.
Dylan O'Donnell
[CYOA]
> I found them awfully limiting. Certainly, the straight page
> turning variety was. Steve Jackson Games ha[sd] the Fighting Fantasy
> series where there is more variety,
Games Workshop. Different Steve Jackson (one's American, the other
British).
> but they are still awfully limited
> compared with a basic text adventure. Even a good one still feels
> hollow, incomplete.
Well, I thoroughly enjoyed playing them at the age of 13 or so, which
probably sums them up... (sums up most of Games Workshop's products,
come to that).
--
: Dylan O'Donnell : Hora aderat briligi. Nunc et slithia tova :
: Demon Internet : Plurima gyrabant gymbolitare vabo; :
: Resident, Forgotten Office : Et borogovorum mimzebant undique formae, :
: http://www.fysh.org/~psmith/ : Momiferique omnes exgrabure rathi. :
Noel Webster
> Hi, I caught sight of this newsgroup thinking it was more fiction and
> less int. At any rate, I am working on a fantasy/adventure novel that
> is meant to be read, not played. Really, it's inspired by nostalgia for
> Choose-Your-Own-Adventure books from the mid-80s and "reads" like one
> using only hypertext. Anyone interested in this sort of thing? I
> originally was heading toward the completely interactive interface that
> most of you are playing with, but then I decided I would lose much of
> the literariness of the work.
Hypertext is probably the quickest and easiest way to develop a CYOA-
style novel, but it might be fun to create the story using TADS or
Inform. I'm thinking you could treat each "room" as an individual
"scene" which the reader visits once and cannot return to. The reader
would progress from scene to scene by making an arbitrary choice from
several available options, much like a CYOA story.
Using TADS or Inform, however, the reader would actually TYPE what
action she/he chooses to take, as opposed to clicking on a hypertext
link. Also, you wouldn't have to be quite so obvious in defining the
choices available to the reader. Consider a story in which the
protagonist is in danger of being attacked by a dragon, and progressing
to the next scene requires either 1) attacking the dragon, or 2)
attempting to escape by climbing a nearby ladder. Hypertext would
require links for "attack the dragon" and "climb the ladder". Using an
IF language, however, you could make it apparent that both the dragon
and the ladder are possible choices by simply acknowledging their
presence in the scene description, leaving it up to the reader to decide
what action to take. With good writing, you should be able to make it
clear to the reader what options are availible without explicitly saying
so. By not breaking from the story to inquire about the reader's choice
of action, the story might "flow" more smoothly in a literary sense.
Of course, writing a CYOA story using TADS or Inform will require
putting severe limitations on the level of interactivity typically
allowed to the player by IF langauges. From a programming standpoint,
this shouldn't be too difficult, and as long as your readers are aware
that your story is meant to be taken as an interactive novel rather than
a puzzle-oriented game, I don't think the limited interactivity will
frustrate anyone.
If you're really feeling ambitious, you could attempt to include much
more interactivity than the typical CYOA story usually allows, with a
wide range of choices available to the reader. Every action would be
irreversible and would drive the story forward in a new direction. Of
course, that could get complicated in a hurry. ^_^
Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.
Philip Goetz
news:387ae552...@news.shuswap.net...
> >less int. At any rate, I am working on a fantasy/adventure novel that
> >is meant to be read, not played. Really, it's inspired by nostalgia for
> >Choose-Your-Own-Adventure books from the mid-80s and "reads" like one
> >using only hypertext. Anyone interested in this sort of thing? I
> >originally was heading toward the completely interactive interface that
> >most of you are playing with, but then I decided I would lose much of
> >the literariness of the work.
> What literariness are you referring to? Perhaps some of the
> experts could convince you to the path of Darkness^W^W^W^Wtry writing
> IF.
That's a good topic for discussion -- what was it that you felt you would
have to give up in moving from CYOA to a more fine-grained interactivity?
Although be warned we're probably going to approach the subject by
trying to figure out how we can achieve whatever it is in computational IF.
Phil
Gene Wirchenko
>ge...@shuswap.net (Gene Wirchenko) writes:
>[CYOA]
>> I found them awfully limiting. Certainly, the straight page
>> turning variety was. Steve Jackson Games ha[sd] the Fighting Fantasy
>> series where there is more variety,
>
>Games Workshop. Different Steve Jackson (one's American, the other
>British).
I never noticed. Now that you mention it, I took a look at one
of the books and there's a puffin, etc.. <wipes egg off face>
>> but they are still awfully limited
>> compared with a basic text adventure. Even a good one still feels
>> hollow, incomplete.
>
>Well, I thoroughly enjoyed playing them at the age of 13 or so, which
>probably sums them up... (sums up most of Games Workshop's products,
>come to that).
Mmm, maybe a bit later for some of the products, but in general,
I'd concur. Talisman is a great idea done without enough
consideration to game balance and mechanics.
Joe Mason
Gene Wirchenko <ge...@shuswap.net> wrote:
>>> I found them awfully limiting. Certainly, the straight page
>>> turning variety was. Steve Jackson Games ha[sd] the Fighting Fantasy
>>> series where there is more variety,
>>
>>Games Workshop. Different Steve Jackson (one's American, the other
>>British).
>
> I never noticed. Now that you mention it, I took a look at one
>of the books and there's a puffin, etc.. <wipes egg off face>
The first time I realized there were two of them was when one of the Fighting
Fantasy gamebooks was dedicated to "the other Steve Jackson".
>>> but they are still awfully limited
>>> compared with a basic text adventure. Even a good one still feels
>>> hollow, incomplete.
Try _Creature of Havoc_. It was very, very good. (And I'm currently seeing
lots of echoes to it in the computer RPG _Planescape: Torment_, which is
even better. Wonder if that's a coincidence?)
>>Well, I thoroughly enjoyed playing them at the age of 13 or so, which
>>probably sums them up... (sums up most of Games Workshop's products,
>>come to that).
Only exception I've found is the Warhammer Fantasy RPG (now available once
again thanks to Hogshead Publishing! Yay!) Every once in a while I read
something published recently from the battle rules and cry at what they're
doing to my favourite setting.
Joe
Curt Siffert
results (so far) on http://www.storysprawl.com/ and also a smaller,
faster version of it on http://www.talkcity.com/storysprawl (they
licensed a version from me).
I do think that much of the oomph of the old CYOA books has
been taken away by the proliferation of infocom-ish games. The
lure of a CYOA book is so the reader can feel more involved in
the action - Infocom was one step beyond. But my interest is
more in having the reader not only participate by reading and
choosing, but by also writing and continuing the story themselves.
StorySprawl works as an effective writing system for these
CYOA books, either assisting a solo author or a group of authors
so people can keep track of all the different possible plot paths.
I have a lot of fun with it, myself. The cool thing is that with a utility
(that I have yet to write) you can convert the online hypertextual
story data into a document/book that you can print out with the
correct page numbers to turn to and everything.
Curt
Mr Jared Stein wrote in message <387A618B...@usu.edu>...
>Hi, I caught sight of this newsgroup thinking it was more fiction and
>less int. At any rate, I am working on a fantasy/adventure novel that
>is meant to be read, not played. Really, it's inspired by nostalgia for
>Choose-Your-Own-Adventure books from the mid-80s and "reads" like one
>using only hypertext. Anyone interested in this sort of thing? I
>originally was heading toward the completely interactive interface that
>most of you are playing with, but then I decided I would lose much of
>the literariness of the work.
>
Philip Goetz
news:bETg4.623$l81....@monger.newsread.com...
> I've been interested in this for quite a while, and you can see the
> results (so far) on http://www.storysprawl.com/ and also a smaller,
> faster version of it on http://www.talkcity.com/storysprawl (they
> licensed a version from me).
>
> I do think that much of the oomph of the old CYOA books has
> been taken away by the proliferation of infocom-ish games. The
> lure of a CYOA book is so the reader can feel more involved in
> the action - Infocom was one step beyond. But my interest is
> more in having the reader not only participate by reading and
> choosing, but by also writing and continuing the story themselves.
I'm also more interested in that, but I don't think it's possible in
single-player IF, for 2 reasons:
1. Computer characters aren't smart enough that you would want
to listen to a story they told, and
2. Computer characters aren't smart enough that you would want
to tell them a story.
I think it's already been done well in multiplayer IF, specifically
MUSHes. (But not MUDs, which AFAIK are all still stuck in
the boring old hack-n-slash mode.)
I think the advantage CYOA has over more fine-grained IF,
like Infocom, is that they can craft a better story with better
writing. Unfortunately, I'm not aware of any CYOA story
that was written by a decent writer -- all the ones I saw were
juvenile hack work.
The best writers that I've talked to, BTW, about IF, have been
uninterested in it, because they want to tell /their/ stories, not
to help somebody else tell their stories. Good authors
have a compulsion to tell their stories. This might
have bad implications for IF.
Phil
Adam Cadre
> (But not MUDs, which AFAIK are all still stuck in the boring old
> hack-n-slash mode.)
Yup, all we do all day over on ifMUD is bop each other with our trusty
+8 vorpal swords.
> I think the advantage CYOA has over more fine-grained IF,
> like Infocom, is that they can craft a better story with better
> writing.
That's quite an assertion. I don't think it holds water, or indeed
watermelons.
All the text in both CYOA and IF is generated by the author or
authors. (Trivial exception: IF might ask "What is your name?" and
then later plug the answer into the text at various points.) The
only difference is the degree to which the player controls the
arrangement of that text. CYOA offers fewer branches at each decision
fork, and each branch is generally guaranteed to advance the story
more than "You walk into a wall." does. But otherwise, they strike
me as basically the same, and for that matter, the IF author can even
weed out responses like that if so inclined. Not that that's really
necessary -- the story as it exists in the IF player's head upon
completion is not an exact replica of the story as recounted, complete
with bits like "And then the doctor tried to make the incision, but she
wasn't holding the scalpel, so she picked up the scalpel and then made
the incision." If that's what you mean by CYOA having the potential
for better stories, I think that's silly. If not, please explain
further.
And as far as "better writing" is concerned, that I don't understand
at all -- does typing into an Inform program rather than a word
processor somehow sap one's ability to compose a memorable sentence
or a well-crafted paragraph? I can't imagine that's what you mean, so
what do you mean?
> The best writers that I've talked to, BTW, about IF, have been
> uninterested in it, because they want to tell /their/ stories, not
> to help somebody else tell their stories.
This, to me, seems not all that far removed from saying that "the
best film directors I've talked to about prose literature have been
uninterested in it, because they want to tell stories through the
presentation of images, not just language."
Playing IF is as different an experince from reading a story as
watching a movie is from reading a book. Perhaps moreso.
> Good authors have a compulsion to tell their stories. This might
> have bad implications for IF.
Nope. Good authors of linear fiction (may) have a compulsion to tell
their own stories without anyone else having any control over the
telling. Good authors of IF tell stories over which the player has
a certain degree of control, and do so well. There is no doubt some
overlap between these two groups, but they are still distinct from one
another.
-----
Adam Cadre, Sammamish, WA
http://adamcadre.ac
Joe Mason
>> (But not MUDs, which AFAIK are all still stuck in the boring old
>> hack-n-slash mode.)
>
>Yup, all we do all day over on ifMUD is bop each other with our trusty
>+8 vorpal swords.
Hey, I wasn't issued one of those. What gives?
Joe
Daryl McCullough
>All the text in both CYOA and IF is generated by the author or
>authors.
Yeah, but...(as Garrison Keillor says, here comes the "yeah-buttal")
in the case of static fiction (or CYOA with a small number of
possible paths)...each piece of text can be written so that it
takes into account all that the reader has read up until that
point. But in the case of IF, each piece of author-written
text must work in a large number of possible contexts; there
can be many, many different histories experienced by the player
up to the point that he or she reads the text. Because of that,
the text really cannot take into account everything that has
gone before.
I think the above paragraph addressed something in your original
post, but now I've forgotten what. Oh, well.
Daryl McCullough
CoGenTex, Inc.
Ithaca, NY
Adam Cadre
> But in the case of IF, each piece of author-written text must work in
> a large number of possible contexts; there can be many, many different
> histories experienced by the player up to the point that he or she
> reads the text. Because of that, the text really cannot take into
> account everything that has gone before.
Sure it can, to at least a limited extent. Key points along the way
can be flagged, and the various configurations of the flags can be
considered in rendering a paragraph later on. (Has the player seen
event A and B but not C? Or A and C but not B? Or none of them? In
that case, don't print X, but do print Y and Z...)
Some examples: in Varicella, I flagged instances of seeing the green
slime so that in later encounters with it the program would know
whether you were astonished by it or just annoyed with it. I also
flagged events so that in conversing with various characters, the
engine would know whether to have you say "So, what do you think of
Mr. X?" or "I saw Mr. X eating a sandwich -- what do you think of
that, hmmm?" This may be a bit crude, but you could make it more
delicate if you were so inclined.
And then, of course, one of the aspects of IF that I'm most interested
in of late is trying to compose text that works even if you've come to
it from radically different directions...
Stu
>Daryl McCullough wrote:
>> But in the case of IF, each piece of author-written text must work in
>> a large number of possible contexts; there can be many, many different
>> histories experienced by the player up to the point that he or she
>> reads the text. Because of that, the text really cannot take into
>> account everything that has gone before.
>
>Sure it can, to at least a limited extent. Key points along the way
More than a limited extent, I would say.
CYOA books are typically *way* more linear in this respect. It is much easier
to code objects which interact with each other (i.e. they have certain
properties which can 'react' with the properties of other objects) than it is
to write CYOA paragraphs detailing the interactions of every 'object' in the
book.
Example: Most of the CYOA books I have played (not played any for quite a few
years, maybe there has been a renaissance) would limit your input by branching
off so that you could only travel 'forwards' in both plot and location. They
had to be constructed so that if you got to the endgame section you had to
have gained a requisite object or clue which would let you win.
IF games, on the other hand are able to let the player wander back and forth
at will and can thus let you pick up required objects or not providing you are
able to get back to their location when you figure out that they are needed.
There were a few attempts to break out of the restrictions of the format. The
classic 'Warlock of FIretop Mountain' had a requisite combination of keys to
open a locked chest. an odd 'add up the numbers on the keys & turn to that
paragraph system was used to make combining them less obvious. Also the
'GrailQuest' series (author?) had a number of additions to the format with
spells that could be cast at any time to help you in combat, etc. as well as
maps with ;locations marked on which you could visit again and a few other
tricks.
Basically, though, they were all restricted by the printing costs. There is
only so much which you can fit in a paperback.
Stu.
--
Stuart Houghton
Amnesty International UK
"One word geek test - pronounce the word 'coax' "
Daryl McCullough
>
>In article <3888B1...@adamcadre.ac>, re...@adamcadre.ac wrote:
>>Daryl McCullough wrote:
>>> But in the case of IF, each piece of author-written text must work in
>>> a large number of possible contexts; there can be many, many different
>>> histories experienced by the player up to the point that he or she
>>> reads the text. Because of that, the text really cannot take into
>>> account everything that has gone before.
>>
>>Sure it can, to at least a limited extent. Key points along the way
>
>More than a limited extent, I would say.
>
>CYOA books are typically *way* more linear in this respect.
Exactly. I'm arguing that the more linear a work is, the
more the text can take into account shades of nuance in
describing a scene, or a character's reaction to it. The
less freedom there is for the player (or reader, in the
limiting case of static fiction) is to choose what happens,
the more details the author can take into account in his
writing.
Sean T Barrett
>Daryl McCullough wrote:
>> But in the case of IF, each piece of author-written text must work in
>> a large number of possible contexts; there can be many, many different
>> histories experienced by the player up to the point that he or she
>> reads the text. Because of that, the text really cannot take into
>> account everything that has gone before.
>
>Sure it can, to at least a limited extent. Key points along the way
>considered in rendering a paragraph later on. (Has the player seen
>event A and B but not C? Or A and C but not B? Or none of them? In
>that case, don't print X, but do print Y and Z...)
As soon as you do that, though, you've started moving off along the
continuum from 'writing static fiction' to 'writing programs that
generate text'. And if the context of this discussion (Adam snipped
too much for me to be certain) is about whether the writing techniques
for linear fiction apply to IF, then it seems to me it's in doubt, since
writing programs that generate text is pretty far removed from writing
static linear fiction.
Sure, adding a sentence to a room description if the window is open
isn't *that* far along the continuum. I'd buy into the notion that if
the author consciously considers all of the combinatorial variations
of a given piece of text, she's authored every such variation consciously;
it's effectively just a compression of multiple pieces of text into
a programmatic shorthand.
But that slightly misses the point. While a given text may depend
on state A, B, and C, with three separate sentences changing for each,
and one of them affected if only B&C are true, this misses out on
the fact that there are all sorts of other states D,E,F,G,H that
could have varied and perhaps *should* affect the text. The act of
writing such a text and considering all those combinations is radically
different from the proces of writing linear fiction.
Admittedly, in linear fiction, you can introduce "bugs" if you revise
some piece of the earlier story and fail to adjust a dependency later
on in it. But the exponential explosion in branching fiction seems to
me to be radically different.
Obviously, certain kinds of CYOA and such have such controlled branching
and such divergent paths that they can be written to explicitly account
for every combination, simply because there is no true combinatorial
explosion; but that seems to me to be underrepresenting the range of IF
with a rather small subset that we tend to refer to as "linear" or
even "too linear"--even if there are some fine works of this sort; the
branching at the beginning of "Hunter, in Darkness" comes to mind.
Sean B
Stu
>aiuk...@dircon.co.uk says...
>>
>Exactly. I'm arguing that the more linear a work is, the
>more the text can take into account shades of nuance in
>describing a scene, or a character's reaction to it. The
>less freedom there is for the player (or reader, in the
>limiting case of static fiction) is to choose what happens,
>the more details the author can take into account in his
>writing.
Surely that is just a factor of time & patience, though? If an author is
willing to take the time to plan out her work of IF and calculate what some
likely results of the combinatorial explosion may be then suitably evocative
and meaningful text can be assigne dto those event.
This is a trick of course, and it will always be the case (except, perhaps in
some as-yet-unimplementable completely open-ended IF) that most of that
'explosion' will be unrelated to the story which the author wished to tell.
You may have set up your monkey typing pool, but for every copy of the
complete works of Shakespeare you will have an infinite number of gibberish
pages. Many of the offshoots of the combinatorial explosion will be pointless
- you could try to combine the loaf of bread with the broken Fromitz board,
but this would be pointless & the game would be entirely correct to say so and
cut off that combinatorial branch - but other may elicit interesting or
atmospheric side effects - e.g.
>TAKE CAMERA LENS THEN HOLD LENS OVER DESK THEN LOOK THROUGH LENS
Lens: Taken,
Curling your finger and thumb around the edge of the lens you hold it a few
inches from the surface of the desk.
Stooping over, you peer through the polished lens and see dust and spattered
ink ground into the mahogany grain by a lifetime of work.
>
None of this would 'advance the plot' as such, but it could give the
reader/player a greater sense of the character of the room, or of its
principal owner.
Daryl McCullough
>>> a large number of possible contexts; there can be many, many different
>>> histories experienced by the player up to the point that he or she
>>> reads the text. Because of that, the text really cannot take into
>>> account everything that has gone before.
>>
>>Sure it can, to at least a limited extent. Key points along the way
>>can be flagged, and the various configurations of the flags can be
>>considered in rendering a paragraph later on. (Has the player seen
>>event A and B but not C? Or A and C but not B? Or none of them? In
>>that case, don't print X, but do print Y and Z...)
>
>As soon as you do that, though, you've started moving off along the
>continuum from 'writing static fiction' to 'writing programs that
>generate text'. And if the context of this discussion (Adam snipped
>too much for me to be certain) is about whether the writing techniques
>for linear fiction apply to IF, then it seems to me it's in doubt, since
>writing programs that generate text is pretty far removed from writing
>static linear fiction.
Exactly. Unless the program is written by someone who is both
a brilliant AI researcher and an excellent writer, generated
text tends to be pretty lame compared with human authored text.
Daryl McCullough
>da...@cogentex.com (Daryl McCullough) wrote:
>>Exactly. I'm arguing that the more linear a work is, the
>>more the text can take into account shades of nuance in
>>describing a scene, or a character's reaction to it. The
>>less freedom there is for the player (or reader, in the
>>limiting case of static fiction) is to choose what happens,
>>the more details the author can take into account in his
>>writing.
>
>Surely that is just a factor of time & patience, though? If an author is
>willing to take the time to plan out her work of IF and calculate what some
>likely results of the combinatorial explosion may be then suitably evocative
>and meaningful text can be assigned to those event.
If it is possible to consider each possibility, then I would say
that the combinatorics haven't exploded yet. It's very easy to
write a program in which there are a billion (or much, much more)
possible states. You can't really write text that takes into account
all those possibilities, except in a gross way. Maybe in many
cases, this gross level of sensitivity to the state of the world
is good enough for game purposes, but I think that that is because
players don't expect the writing quality to be as high as in a novel.
Oh, I should just clarify that a little. Two ways in which a passage
is "high quality" are (1) how well constructed, evocative,
and beautiful is the passage in isolation, and (2) how appropriate
is it---how well does it take into account what the reader has
experienced up to that point, and how well does it lead in to
what is to follow.
It is certainly possible in IF to have isolated pieces of
text that are as beautiful as one in any novel. But the
appropriateness of a passage is limited by the IF author's
ability to anticipate and take into account how the player
may have reached the point where the text appears.
Stu
>aiuk...@dircon.co.uk (Stu) says...
>>da...@cogentex.com (Daryl McCullough) wrote:
>
>If it is possible to consider each possibility, then I would say
>that the combinatorics haven't exploded yet. It's very easy to
>write a program in which there are a billion (or much, much more)
>possible states. You can't really write text that takes into account
>all those possibilities, except in a gross way. Maybe in many
>cases, this gross level of sensitivity to the state of the world
>is good enough for game purposes, but I think that that is because
>players don't expect the writing quality to be as high as in a novel.
>
You can try to guess/plan the most likely ones, or at least some of the more
interesting.
Now, a novelist could do this too and try to provide endless description of
every scene, but the difference with a novel and with IF is that a novel would
have to ram it down your throat whereas in IF you are actively looking for
such details and if <cough> mimesis is achieved then one would expect to find
them.
>It is certainly possible in IF to have isolated pieces of
>text that are as beautiful as one in any novel. But the
>appropriateness of a passage is limited by the IF author's
>ability to anticipate and take into account how the player
>may have reached the point where the text appears.
In some cases. It is also possible to have a description of an object/scene
be appropriate to the protagonists state of mind, or to the general
surroundings in such a way that it adds atmosphere (or even meaning) without
being linked directly to a moment in the plot.
e.g. If I come across my Grandfather's WW2 medals then they will provoke a
memory of the time he showed them to me and how I felt the last time I saw
him, regardless of whether I am in the kitchen, the bedroom or the secret
passageway beneath the library.
A novelist would maybe include a scene with this memorabilia, but would have
to fix it to a point in the plot - just because an IF author is less confined
doesnt imply a lack of emotional wallop.
Aquarius
> In article <86kg7p$2...@edrn.newsguy.com>, da...@cogentex.com (Daryl McCullough) wrote:
>>aiuk...@dircon.co.uk (Stu) says...
>>>da...@cogentex.com (Daryl McCullough) wrote:
>>
>>If it is possible to consider each possibility, then I would say
>>that the combinatorics haven't exploded yet. It's very easy to
>>write a program in which there are a billion (or much, much more)
>>possible states. You can't really write text that takes into account
>>all those possibilities, except in a gross way. Maybe in many
>>cases, this gross level of sensitivity to the state of the world
>>is good enough for game purposes, but I think that that is because
>>players don't expect the writing quality to be as high as in a novel.
>>
> You can try to guess/plan the most likely ones, or at least some of the more
> interesting.
> Now, a novelist could do this too and try to provide endless description of
> every scene, but the difference with a novel and with IF is that a novel would
> have to ram it down your throat whereas in IF you are actively looking for
> such details and if <cough> mimesis is achieved then one would expect to find
> them.
Novelists, however, get to railroad their characters (as you know), which
means that a given character in their book may well eat the orange, with
corresponding lyrical passage about the fruitfulness bursting on the
tongue, but the character is unlikely to tread on the orange, bounce it,
put it on the ironing board, or give it to the monkey. The combinatorial
explosion doesn't happen in straight prose, because the novelist gets to
choose the combinations that will happen. Presumably they implictly
define all the ones that don't happen in the novel as returning "You
can't do that"? :-)
Aquarius
--
"The grand plan that is Aquarius proceeds apace"
-- Ronin, Frank Miller
Stu
><shameless plug>
>Actually DragonLord (a Win 9X/NT game) is a non-linear CYOA: it gives a
>limited number of choices but STILL allows free wandering. I think the
>trick to making games like this is to make the available choices the only
>'rational' ones. Check it out and let me know what you think!
></shameless plug>
>
>It's at: http://www.users.uswest.net/~gainaz/DrgnLord.zip
>
Sounds interesting, I'll check it out.
Philip Goetz
news:388794...@adamcadre.ac...
> Philip Goetz wrote:
> > (But not MUDs, which AFAIK are all still stuck in the boring old
> > hack-n-slash mode.)
>
> Yup, all we do all day over on ifMUD is bop each other with our trusty
> +8 vorpal swords.
Is ifMUD a roleplaying MUD? If not, then it's not what I'm talking about.
Anyway, the generalization still stands.
> > I think the advantage CYOA has over more fine-grained IF,
> > like Infocom, is that they can craft a better story with better
> > writing.
>
> That's quite an assertion. I don't think it holds water, or indeed
> watermelons.
>
> All the text in both CYOA and IF is generated by the author or
> authors. (Trivial exception: IF might ask "What is your name?" and
> then later plug the answer into the text at various points.) The
> only difference is the degree to which the player controls the
> arrangement of that text.
That's a huge difference. Breaking text up into little bits
that will be seen in an unknown order makes good writing harder.
We agree that it is easier to write a dramatic structure in linear
fiction than in interactive fiction? If so, then it shouldn't be
a stretch to accept that there is a continuum between linear
fiction and Infocom, and things halfway along that continuum
are harder to write than a linear story, but easier to write than
Infocom.
> necessary -- the story as it exists in the IF player's head upon
> completion is not an exact replica of the story as recounted, complete
> with bits like "And then the doctor tried to make the incision, but she
> wasn't holding the scalpel, so she picked up the scalpel and then made
> the incision." If that's what you mean by CYOA having the potential
> for better stories, I think that's silly. If not, please explain
> further.
Stylistically, the size of the text chunks is probably the major factor.
From a story perspective, the size of the decision chunks
is the major factor. /Photopia/, which you wrote, had a well-crafted
story. But you had essentially no decision points in that story.
Doesn't your experience prove my point?
Could you have written as good a story if you
didn't know how each scene would turn out,
or what order they would come in?
Phil Goetz
Sean T Barrett
>> > (But not MUDs, which AFAIK are all still stuck in the boring old
>> > hack-n-slash mode.)
>> Yup, all we do all day over on ifMUD is bop each other with our trusty
>> +8 vorpal swords.
>Is ifMUD a roleplaying MUD? If not, then it's not what I'm talking about.
>Anyway, the generalization still stands.
The generalization (that MUDs are combat, MUSHes are social) falls down
rather hard. I was going to avoid pedantry about this, but it's a
totally incorrect meme; MUD is a generic catch-all term; MUSH is short
for TinyMUSH and shouldn't be used as a generic at all, as far as I know.
Historically speaking, following on the original MUD were many other
kinds of muds (the following are the names of the engines, not the
names of the muds, as there were too many of the latter to name):
The "social" muds: TinyMUD, TinyMUCK, and TinyMUSH; MOO and COOL,
Ubermud and Untermud, and god knows what else since I stopped
participating in that sort of thing in 1993.
The "combat" muds: MUD and AberMUD and LPmud and Dikumud and god
knows what else since I stopped participating in that sort of
thing in 1994.
There is also nothing stopping anyone from creating a combat
mud using one of the "social mud" engines, including, AFAIK,
TinyMUSH; and similarly, vice versa.
TinyMUD was written by Jim Aspnes, TinyMUCK by Stephen White,
TinyMUCK 2.0 by Lachesis, I think; MOO and COOL were by Stephen
White, while Ubermud and Untermud were by Marcus J. Ranum.
(Actually, I use a social mud these days called PerlMUD, by
Thomas Boutell.)
I don't know the history of the combat muds well enough to
roll off the names of the authors, besides LPmud which was
by Lars Pensji (sp?).
SeanB
Dan Schmidt
| TinyMUD was written by Jim Aspnes, TinyMUCK by Stephen White,
| TinyMUCK 2.0 by Lachesis, I think; MOO and COOL were by Stephen
| White, while Ubermud and Untermud were by Marcus J. Ranum.
| (Actually, I use a social mud these days called PerlMUD, by
| Thomas Boutell.)
PerlMUD is also the basis for ifMUD, it turns out, though it's been
heavily hacked.
--
Dan Schmidt | http://www.dfan.org
Adam Cadre
a bit...
I wrote:
> All the text in both CYOA and IF is generated by the author or
> authors. [...] The only difference is the degree to which the player
> controls the arrangement of that text.
Philip Goetz wrote:
> That's a huge difference. Breaking text up into little bits
> that will be seen in an unknown order makes good writing harder.
I disagree. I think it means you trade in the aesthetics of a
structured monologue for the aesthetics of call-and-response, but
the former is not inherently superior to the latter.
> We agree that it is easier to write a dramatic structure in linear
> fiction than in interactive fiction?
Easier, sure. But see below.
Also, I think we may not be using the same terms here. There are at
least three elements to narrative as I've been thinking about it in
this discussion: the "content" (theme, emotion, what have you), the
"dramatic structure" as you put it, and also the moment-to-moment
pleasure of the text. Now, if you reduce those into two categories,
Story and Writing (as the Xyzzy Awards do, for instance), it seems
obvious that the content goes into the Story category and the pleasure
of the text into the Writing category, but where does dramatic
structure go? That's not as clear a call, but I've been thinking of
that as part of Story, not as part of Writing. So I haven't been
thinking of overarching structure at all when the phrase "good writing"
has cropped up -- I've been thinking of resonant turns of phrase,
effective punch lines, snappy dialogue, that sort of thing.
> If so, then it shouldn't be a stretch to accept that there is a
> continuum between linear fiction and Infocom, and things halfway
> along that continuum are harder to write than a linear story, but
> easier to write than Infocom.
Well, ease isn't what I took issue with -- what I took issue with was
the assertion that equally good stories cannot be told, and especially
that equally good writing cannot be achieved. Is the journey more
arduous? No doubt! But that doesn't mean that equal heights cannot
be attained.
I'm also not sure that I buy that CYOA is a step on a continuum
between a reg'lar book on the one hand and an IF game on the other,
or if it is, that it's halfway along. I'd have to think about that
for a bit.
> Stylistically, the size of the text chunks is probably the major
> factor. From a story perspective, the size of the decision chunks is
> the major factor.
And since there are typically many more decision points in CYOA --
every choice a scene-to-scene transition, while IF's scene transitions
are rarer and not often true branching points, one could contend that
in a sense IF is the midpoint on a continuum between linear fiction
and CYOA.
But really, the more I think about it, the more I come to believe that
in the end CYOA and IF are awfully close to isomorphic in theory, and
it's just the vehicle (dead trees vs. phosphors) that determines the
differences we seen in practice. This also is something I'd have to
think about for a bit.
> /Photopia/, which you wrote, had a well-crafted story.
Thanks.
> But you had essentially no decision points in that story. Doesn't
> your experience prove my point?
It would, had I originally wanted to write a story with lots of plot
branches along the way, and then given up and compressed them into a
chain of scenes out of frustration. The reason Photopia has a
predetermined sequence of scenes isn't because there's no way to write
a good story otherwise; it's because that particular story called for
that particular structure.
> Could you have written as good a story if you didn't know how each
> scene would turn out, or what order they would come in?
Could I have written *that* story as well? Probably not. Could I
write *a* story equally good that offers copious plot branching? I
certainly hope to someday.
Curt Siffert
"Philip Goetz" <pgo...@i-a-i.com> wrote in message
news:Fbhl4.1879$D33....@iad-read.news.verio.net...
> > Philip Goetz wrote:
> > > I think the advantage CYOA has over more fine-grained IF,
> > > like Infocom, is that they can craft a better story with better
> > > writing.
> >
> > That's quite an assertion. I don't think it holds water, or indeed
> > watermelons.
> >
> > completion is not an exact replica of the story as recounted, complete
> > with bits like "And then the doctor tried to make the incision, but she
> > wasn't holding the scalpel, so she picked up the scalpel and then made
> > the incision." If that's what you mean by CYOA having the potential
> > for better stories, I think that's silly. If not, please explain
> > further.
>
> From a story perspective, the size of the decision chunks
> is the major factor.
I'd agree with this for writers that are prose-centric. It's easier
to keep the immersion going if the interruptions are minimized,
if choices are offered, but if they don't have to deal with tons
of "You can't do that!" or "Huh?" responses.
For writers that are more concerned with structure and dramatic
moments/effects/realizations, the Infocommish strategy might be
more effective. Photopia was memorable for me not because of
certain turns of phrases, or certain images that came into my
heads while I read certain words, but instead because of how
certain turns of events made me feel. At those moments, the
words themselves were largely irrelevant compared to the structure
of the plot. That structure couldn't have been duplicated as
effectively through CYOA.
That said, there are a lot of Infocommish games that could probably
be improved upon if they were converted to CYOA. You'd have to
sacrifice some directional dungeon-crawling, but you'd be able to
expand the prose and limit the dead-end responses - greater
immersion without sacrificing the experience. Most of the
exploratory games that are light on puzzles would be good
examples.
I think the main reason CYOA is so derided is that there haven't
been any good examples yet. There are CYOAs that make you
roll dice and actually *ask* you if you've picked up the red sword
yet. It's stupid, it busts the immersion, and those stories would be
better suited as text-adventure games.
But CYOA has strengths in allowing choice, well-written lengthier
prose for those who want that sort of immersion, and plot lines
that can sprawl out in unlimited directions - no need for them to
combine back up into one or two "endgames". It is possible to
duplicate that in text-adventure, but it is boring to program and
it kind of goes against the point of the combinatorial abilities of
these packages.
Stephen King wrote a linear serial (Green Mile) where all the
episodes were on the 10-bestseller list at the same time. Who's
to say that if the end of Episode 1 had branched, it wouldn't
have sparked a whole new rebirth of the CYOA form?
In StorySprawl, we have stories with fairly long chapters, limited
choices, the ability to create a new choice if you don't like what's
offered, with the promise of your continuance being extended by
others. We also have the (rarely-used) ability to crosslink (fold in
on other plotlines) and it leads to the authoring challenge of writing
prose that would fit for all the possible plotlines that lead up to
that chapter, without having to use the gross and immersion-busting
strategy of asking the user what they did before - challenging, but
possible. And fun. (http://www.storysprawl.com/ and
http://www.talkcity.com/storysprawl)
What do I prefer? To be honest, I like programming for storysprawl
more than I like writing for it. I don't like writing text-adventure games
either, though. I don't think I would get excited enough to put hours
of effort into an interactive creative work until I could do it entirely
audio-only. An audio drama with characters, background music,
and sounds - with voice recognition when you tell it what to do.
*That* will be cool, and will probably sell as well, to all the people
that listen to audiobooks.
Curt
Mark J Musante
> But really, the more I think about it, the more I come to believe that
> in the end CYOA and IF are awfully close to isomorphic in theory, and
> it's just the vehicle (dead trees vs. phosphors) that determines the
> differences we seen in practice. This also is something I'd have to
> think about for a bit.
I'd like to draw a distinction between what the player perceives as
a difference, versus what the author sees. Having written a CYOA game
in TADS, I can say that the programming of it is VASTLY easier than
doing up an equivalent game as IF.
But when the player plays it, he gets an experience that is very similar
to regular IF. This is based on comments I got back from that CYOA game.
-=- Mark -=-
Mark J Musante
Kevin Forchione
<snip>
>Photopia was memorable for me not because of
> certain turns of phrases, or certain images that came into my
Now we know where Zafod Beeblebrox has been hiding for the past several
years...
--Kevin
Philip Goetz
> >more the text can take into account shades of nuance in
> >describing a scene, or a character's reaction to it. The
> >less freedom there is for the player (or reader, in the
> >limiting case of static fiction) is to choose what happens,
> >the more details the author can take into account in his
> >writing.
>
> Surely that is just a factor of time & patience, though? If an author is
> willing to take the time to plan out her work of IF and calculate what
some
> likely results of the combinatorial explosion may be then suitably
evocative
> and meaningful text can be assigne dto those event.
Not all scenes can be written equally well, because some are inherently
more dramatic or visual than others. Sometimes an author will bring a
character down one path rather than another to "set up the camera shot"
so that a more dramatic description is possible. The author will make
sure the character doesn't discover some information before a certain
scene, because the tension from the audience knowing what the
character doesn't makes the scene work. In many, many ways, the
desired dramatic progression, style, etc., can at times determine
the content.
This is the most common objection to IF that I get from authors:
"I have already played out all those alternative games in my mind.
I've chosen to write about the one path that is the very best.
Why should I or my readers settle for less?" I agree with them
that a storyline produced in an IF, /by itself/ (e.g., if you printed
it on paper), is inherently very likely to
be less dramatic and less successful than a storyline in a good
linear fiction written by an equally talented linear writer.
Phil Goetz