IF Theory
JSH...@aol.com
dialogue with regards to interactive fiction theory. If you'll have me,
that is! I'm a newbie. (I know, collective groan, right????)
I recently re-discovered IF after about a 20-year hiatus. My initial
experience with IF was (what else???) playing Infocom games with my
best friend on my Apple IIc computer in the 1980s. Evocative of the
Wishbringer glow-in-the-dark stone and the Moonmist iron-on transfer,
right? Exactly! Love those '80s! :-)
Anyhow, as I said, I recently rediscovered IF and was initially just
looking for the nostalgia trip! I was also excited because I thought,
"Oh, wow! I'm sure that in 20 years things have improved tremendously.
I bet the things that really frustrated me to death before won't be a
problem anymore. And, wouldn't it be neat to write my own game? I'm
sure you don't even need to know code these days to do that." Well...
LOL! :D
Please take this kindly, as it is intended that way, but I was really
disappointed that things hadn't progressed more. Maybe I've never
really learned how to play IF properly (in which case you can point me
to some helpful places to learn how, I'm sure!) I think that might be
part of the problem. And I KNOW that I don't understand the programming
complexities behind IF, but I also know that it still isn't what I
would call "user friendly."
I actually thought there would be an interface out there that would
help you "write a game." ie., It asks you for a title, the number of
rooms in your game, a description of the PC, etc. and you work from
there. (Enter a name and description for Room #1... that kind of
thing.)
So, there are two things going on here, and I'm getting them mixed up,
I'm afraid. Let me try to separate them out. (Playing IF and writing
IF).
Some of my frustrations about playing IF include:
-- often feeling "stuck," like I don't know what to do next (this might
mean I simply don't know how to play, as mentioned above)
-- it's plain-old cumbersome!!!! (eg., I started playing "Vespers" and
when I went into the dormitory, I just kept thinking how much easier it
would be for me to just type "Lucca's room" and go there or simply
"Matteo" and be in his room, instead of the "n" or "se" or whatever I
had to do to get to each room as I wanted to get to it. Not a big deal
and I'm sure it's a technology-driven thing, but we want, I would
imagine, the technology to support and enhance the player's experience,
not take away from it. I think "Kingdom of Loathing" does this
extremely well. I don't think it fits the definition of IF [is there a
definition, by the way? And if so, what is it?] but it's worth
checking out if for no other reason than to get some kicks, so be sure
to go to www.kingdomofloathing.com and see what you think. I'm addicted
to this game and it's a "months" kind of thing and the game keeps
expanding so in a theoretical kind of way you could "play forever."
Ramble officially over.)
-- it's plain-old cumbersome!!!! (sometimes I just want the computer to
be "smarter" about what it is that I want to do. "Open door." "It
appears to be locked." "Unlock door." "What do you want to use to
unlock the door?" "Key" "Which key do you mean: the mystic key, the
brass key, the iron key, the small key, the copper key, or the Floriday
Keys?" It's hard for me to get lost in a fictional world, which for me
is what is fun about reading and about **trying to** play IF, when
these details seem to weigh me down and make it a chore to do a simple
maneuver in a game. And partially I was spoiled in this regard, too by
"Kingdom of Loathing," which always understands exactly where I want to
go and what I am trying to do.)
DISCLAIMER: I've now given up all atempts of this being a short
postl!!!!! Forewarned is forearmed!!!!
-- it's plain-old cumbersome!!!! (I don't think in terms of compass
point directions in my "real life." I think in terms of left, right,
forward, and backward (so that gives us, in essence, the same as NESW
does) and so that "SE, NE, NW, and the ever-popular SW" don't feel left
out we could have "soft directions" like "soft-left forward,"
"soft-left backward," etc. Now, I admit... not ideal at all... those
are wordy and would have to be abbreviated, but at least they "fit" the
way my mind thinks about moving in the world, where as n,e,s,w and
ne,nw,sw,se don't fit the way my mind thinks at all. Therefore, they
distract me from the game... the story... the experience that I'm
trying to enjoy... namely playing and reading IF.)
Is there no click-able interface that can be used? For example, if the
screen prints the text of an important and lengthy letter, it would be
awfully nice to simply highlight and then cut and paste that text into
my word processing program. Just as one example.
That about covers my frustrations with playing... at least for now. I
think this is the same as feeling "stuck" (#1 above), but I often get
to a point in a game where I feel like I have no idea at all what I'm
supposed to do next. So I do "jump" and "wave" and "kiss wall" and mess
around for a while before I realize that I really don't have any clue
what my next move in the game is supposed to be. Sometimes the genre
just feels "above me," like "I'm not sure I get it, but I'd really,
really like to try to get it."
Okay! Big breath! The only thing that I don't like about writing
interactive fiction is that I can't do it! I don't know anything at all
about computer programming and "codes" and "scripts" and things like
that. Now, maybe there is a way to pair would-be authors like me with
someone with the technical skills and vision for the same game and the
same story line and then a nice collaborative effort might ensue.
So... much of the above was me venting, and I thank you for
"listening."
Having said all this, I feel that IF has ENORMOUS POTENTIAL and that
there are extremely good reasons for it to exist as a genre / medium.
I'd miss it if it wasn't here! Do I think that it's been taken to it's
full potential? No way! But then again, neither does anyone else in the
IF community, I'm presuming. Do I think it can and should be a medium
for serious literary works... absolutely! Do I think it deserves to be
a genre and a medium... absolutely, positively!
But I think the community has a lot of work to do first to make the
genre more accessible and more user-friendly.
Anyhow, I'm interested in exploring these more academic IF Theory
concepts with anyone who is interested in such a dialogue.
As a side note before closing, I thought Andrew Plotkin's "Space
Beneath the Window" (I might not have the title quite right) was
interesting in that it allowed me to simply type the word of what it
was that I wanted to focus on. Then again, I'm sure much discussion and
much Internet ink has been spilled over this topic already. And I
understand that that game was "outside the box" of traditional IF.
Of the games that I have completed so far (I have many in progress...
some of which I am "stuck" in and some of which I am not... at least
not yet!), by far my favorite was Adam Cadre's "9:05." Far and away my
favorite completed game so far! A close second is "Common Ground,"
followed by Emily Short's fun and light-hearted Speed-IF "Sushi" game.
(Sorry, Emily... I can't remember the proper title.)
So, in conclusion, I'll simply thank you for your time in reading this
and would love to hear back from you if you'd like to discuss IF Theory
further!
ems...@mindspring.com
>[some complaints about the current state of IF]
You emailed me something like this a few weeks ago and I tried to
respond, but your mail server bounced my reply; so I'm just posting
what I wrote then, in the hope it reaches you this way.
Many of the things you raise in your post have been addressed in some
way or other, so I'll point you at the resources to read more/whatever:
>Some of my frustrations about playing IF include:
>
>-- often feeling "stuck," like I don't know what to do next (this might mean I simply don't know how to play, as mentioned above)
This is partly a question of the game being well designed and partly a
question of difficulty. Some games are hard; some aren't. If you think
you'd like to try a few that are just designed to tell a story without
ever really stumping the player, a good place to start is this list:
http://www.carouselchain.com/if/statistics.php?genre=32&type=genre&limit=10
and many of the things on this list:
http://www.carouselchain.com/if/statistics.php?genre=29&type=genre&limit=10
are more about exploration and conversation than about getting stuck.
>-- it's plain-old cumbersome!!!! (eg., I started playing "Vespers" and when I went into the dormitory, I just kept thinking how much easier it would be for me to just type "Lucca's room" and go there or "Matteo's room" and be there, instead of the "n" or "se" or whatever I had to do to get to each room as I wanted to get to it. [And the other rant about compass directions not being the way you think of things.]
These are pretty standard complaints. There are a couple of approaches.
If you'd like to read the discussion about eliminating compass
directions, try a few of these threads:
and in fact ifwiki's past topics page is a really good place to look at
what the community has already said about any given topic.
Games that experiment with alternative modes of movement include some
experiments in relative directions (left/right rather than west/east)
--
Rat in Control (http://www.wurb.com/if/game/2126)
A Stop for the Night (http://www.wurb.com/if/game/2138)
As for being able to go to rooms by name, I know of a few; you might be
interested, if you'll forgive me mentioning my own work, in a game I
just released called Bronze (http://plover.net/~emily/Bronze/), which
does accept N/S/E/W etc., but also allows you to GO TO rooms by name or
FIND objects you've left behind.
There is also a commercial IF game called 1893 that allows you to click
on compass directions in a graphic window to move around:
http://www.illuminatedlantern.com/1893/
>-- it's plain-old cumbersome!!!! (sometimes I just want the computer to be "smarter" about what it is that I want to do.
...this is also an old standby. For this see the discussion of implicit
actions:
http://www.ifwiki.org/index.php/Past_raif_topics:_Game_Mechanics:_part_1#Implicit_actions
and several of the newer games and systems have made some progress with
handling these things elegantly. I wrote a library to eliminate the
unlock-door-with-what-key thing, which I agree is pretty annoying.
Bronze again tries to be good about this; if you'd like to try one not
by me that is pretty smooth, look at
Return to Ditch Day (http://www.wurb.com/if/game/2357)
which is a game with puzzles but has a remarkably smooth and tidy
interface and rarely if ever lets you get hung up on actions you
haven't taken yet. So there are movements in this direction, both by
individual authors working on their own games, and by language
designers improving their languages to make these things easier.
>Is there no click-able interface that can be used? For example, if the screen prints the text of a letter, it would be awfully nice to simply cut and paste that text into my word processing program. Just as one example.
There are a lot of interpreters out there; many (indeed, most) would
allow you to copy and paste, I think. But I don't know what system
you're using or what to recommend.
>That about covers my frustrations with playing... at least for now. I think this is the same as feeling "stuck" (#1 above), but I often get to a point in a game where I feel like I have no idea at all what I'm supposed to do next. So I do "jump" and "wave" and "kiss wall" and mess around for a while before I realize that I really don't have any clue what my next move in the game is supposed to be. Sometimes the genre just feels "above me," like "I'm not sure I get it, but I'd really, really like to try to get it."
The other thing you can do, aside from playing easier games, of course,
or those with hints or walkthroughs, is to play with some other person;
I often find when I do this that the other person thinks of things that
didn't occur to me. This is the only way I made it through several of
the largest and hardest IF pieces.
>Okay! Big breath! The only thing that I don't like about writing interactive fiction is that I can't do it! I don't know anything at all about computer programming and "codes" and "scripts" and things like that. Now, maybe there is a way to pair would-be authors like me with someone with the technical skills and vision for the same game and the same story line and then a nice collaborative effort might ensue.
There is a sort of clearing house for looking for collaborators, here:
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Delphi/7442/if/assistlist.html
You may also be interested in some of the easier IF languages:
ADRIFT (http://www.adrift.org.uk/cgi/new/adrift.cgi)
Alan (http://www.alanif.se/)
I have not tried to use either of these, but my understanding is that
they are closer to the "enter descriptions here" model you described,
and farther from a programming language. There are correspondingly some
limits on what you can do with them, but this is always a tradeoff:
ease of use vs. power.
Hope that helps.
-- Emily
Nikos Chantziaras
> [...]
> Anyhow, as I said, I recently rediscovered IF and was initially just
> looking for the nostalgia trip! I was also excited because I thought,
> "Oh, wow! I'm sure that in 20 years things have improved tremendously.
> I bet the things that really frustrated me to death before won't be a
> problem anymore. And, wouldn't it be neat to write my own game? I'm
> sure you don't even need to know code these days to do that." Well...
> LOL! :D
Yeah, when I first took a look at Minix back then, I thought "hah, in 20
years from now I'll write my own OS!"
Duh! You still need to code >.< ZOMG!
ChicagoDave
You have successfully identified numerous excellent questions. Nearly
all of these questions have subjective answers. IFWiki.Org is a good
place to review past conversations, theory, and craft.
As for creating IF without coding you have to understand that we've
tried a lot of what you suggest. We've created editors and templates
that do a lot of "build my map" functionality and the end result (my
very humble, yet subjective, opinion) is that you need to at least
understand rudamentary logic if not out-right programming concepts.
There doesn't seem to be a viable substitute (at this time) for writing
code and developing your story together.
Good luck,
David C.
Kevin Forchione
news:1142877416.7...@v46g2000cwv.googlegroups.com...
> As for creating IF without coding you have to understand that we've
> tried a lot of what you suggest. We've created editors and templates
> that do a lot of "build my map" functionality and the end result (my
> very humble, yet subjective, opinion) is that you need to at least
> understand rudamentary logic if not out-right programming concepts.
Rather than intimate that this is a negative, perhaps it would be better to
extol the virtues of learning programming skills. After all, anyone who
believes they're capable of writing an interactive fiction should have no
trouble assimilating the much simpler elements of the programming language
in which it is written. After all, we expect children to learn the alphabet,
we don't expect them to write novels. Why cast aspersions? Grasp the sword,
seize the power.
--Kevin
Giles
10 years ago this was me. I started at the beginning of the Inform
Designer's Manual with Ruins the example game and got it to compile.
Then I changed the words and added an object of my own and hey presto!
My First Game - well, sort of - but certainly the first program
remotely mine I ever compiled. You have no idea how satisfying it was
to link up rooms, compile, then wander through them just like in
Infocom days of old.
A decade later and I earn my living with code - some of it has even won
awards (though not for IF I have to admit) . But there are also much
more gentle introductions to Inform around now, such as the Inform
Beginner's Guide
(http://www.inform-fiction.org/manual/download_ibg.html). Come to grips
with what's in that, and you'll begin to see why point and click
adventure creation, while lovely in theory, isn't nearly as fun as
being able to bend things to your vision.
Good luck anyways
-Giles
JSH...@aol.com
to me bounced back, as you are correct that I initially tried to
contact you individually about these issues. Sometimes spam filters
are kind of goofy that way!!!!!