IF as an art instalation
Mr Pants
Last week was the first 'May You Live In Interesting Times' digital arts
festival in Cardiff, UK.
My contribution to the event was a work of IF that was projected onto the
side of a church in the centre of town.
The game was played by using mobile phones to send text messages to the
number on screen.
Some of you here very kindly helped me out with the testing of the game, and
asked me to report back after the event - so here's my report.
I'd say the event was a partial success.
Technically, everything was as well as could be expected....
It rained one day, which meant that the light grey reflective walls of the
church became dark grey and non-reflective. If that's not an act of God, I'd
like to see one. But that wasn't the main problem....
The text messages sent to the game were only rarely about the game. Most of
the time, people were sending messages to their waiter (the game was
overlooked by a restaurant), or calling their mates "cocks", or complaining
that the linguistic skills of the game were not up to scratch.
The system will be running at another festival in Nottingham at the start of
December. I'll be writing a completely different game for this, again in
Inform, but hope to learn from the short fallings of this one.
I can't remember how many times I saw the message 'That's not a verb I
recognise'. For the next iteration, I'll try and make that message a bit
more helpful. I think it's something we all put up with in the old days - we
know what kind of language the parser expects, but if you are new to all
this, it is all a bit frustrating. And as it costs on average 5p to send a
text message, you've got to be patient and wealthy to get to grips with what
is going on.
So, next time -
1. The game will be inside
2. After a minutes' inactivity, I'll show the help page.
3. The ''That's not a verb I recognise' message will be replace with a
series of hints and tips.
There's more about the work at the festival site
www.mayyouliveininterestingtimes.com/cgi-bin/show.cgi?id=45&place=art
and on my site - where there's some pictures of the game in progress.
www.wewilldestroyyou.com/txt.html
and you can still play the game here, if you've got Java.
So - there we are - thanks for all your help in my little experiment...
Chris
Kevin Venzke
"Mr Pants" <bigmrchri...@freeuk.com> wrote in message
news:436e28f4$0$28003$ed26...@ptn-nntp-reader02.plus.net...
> and on my site - where there's some pictures of the game in progress.
>
> www.wewilldestroyyou.com/txt.html
>
> and you can still play the game here, if you've got Java.
>
> www.coolpants.co.uk/txt.html
Thanks, this is interesting to see.
It seems to me that it would have been useful to provide more things
to interact with, even useless objects. A ball in a box, say. It looks
like it mainly implements actions useful for solving puzzles, which a
new player might not even realize.
I'd also list exits prominently after any room description. I'd actually
be tempted to explicitly list every object that is implemented there.
It wouldn't look pretty, but it might help new players.
Kevin Venzke
Samwyse
>
> There's more about the work at the festival site
>
> www.mayyouliveininterestingtimes.com/cgi-bin/show.cgi?id=45&place=art
>
> and on my site - where there's some pictures of the game in progress.
>
> www.wewilldestroyyou.com/txt.html
>
> and you can still play the game here, if you've got Java.
>
> www.coolpants.co.uk/txt.html
>
> So - there we are - thanks for all your help in my little experiment...
First, did you save any sort of transcript or log of the games. Even a
list of the "commands" that were entered could be useful. For example,
Emily Short used a list of commands entered into web-based games to
guide her creation of commands and help systems for newbies.
Second, I wonder how an Eliza would have fared? The interactively would
have been less, but the responsiveness might have been more interesting.
Poster
> I can't remember how many times I saw the message 'That's not a verb I
> recognise'. For the next iteration, I'll try and make that message a bit
> more helpful. I think it's something we all put up with in the old days - we
> know what kind of language the parser expects, but if you are new to all
> this, it is all a bit frustrating. And as it costs on average 5p to send a
> text message, you've got to be patient and wealthy to get to grips with what
> is going on.
I used the following bit:
"[You've discovered a verb that the game doesn't recognize. If you're
frustrated, look for common verbs in the general IF help menu by typing
'help'.]" Someone on here (sorry, I forget who) suggested the idea of
making system errors separate and distinct from useful responses. Thus,
the "[ ]".
I also used Emily Short's "ExperGrammar.h" which has a ton of synonyms
and verbs that people are likely to try, especially IF newbies.
Sounds like a kewl opportunity. I think a lot of us would pay money to
get our games into a gig like that. :)
~Poster
Paul E Collins
> I used the following bit:
> "[You've discovered a verb that the game doesn't
> recognize. If you're frustrated, look for common
> verbs in the general IF help menu by typing 'help'.]"
I think that for this public installation, with many people walking
past and contributing only briefly, the OP should remember that nobody
playing the game will have seen all of the messages so far - this is a
big difference from regular "single-player" IF, where you initiate
every action and witness the results.
Therefore, I'd consider using a mini-instructions page, or at least a
short list of common verbs, in *constant view* at the top of the
screen.
P.
solar penguin
>
> "[You've discovered a verb that the game doesn't recognize. If you're
> frustrated, look for common verbs in the general IF help menu by
> typing 'help'.]" Someone on here (sorry, I forget who) suggested the
> idea of making system errors separate and distinct from useful
> responses. Thus, the "[ ]".
I'm not sure that distinction will help new, casual players who won't
have the faintest idea of the differences between the parser and the
model world, and who will try to treat _all_ messages as being useful
because they won't care which part of the program just happens to
produce which message.
>
> I also used Emily Short's "ExperGrammar.h" which has a ton of synonyms
> and verbs that people are likely to try, especially IF newbies.
>
You could also try combining it with Emily Short's "NewbieGrammar.h" and
"HelpRoutines.h" to give the player maximum help.
--
___ _ ___ _
/ __| ___ | | __ _ _ _ | _ \ ___ _ _ __ _ _ _ (_) _ _
\__ \/ _ \| |/ _` || '_| | _// -_)| ' \ / _` || || || || ' \
|___/\___/|_|\__,_||_| |_| \___||_||_|\__, | \_,_||_||_||_|
|___/
http://www.freewebs.com/solar_penguin/
** And it'll continue to kill his own story of his own malice.
** The spirit wished to be rid of him, and his trainer lies dead on
Dartmoor.
Mr Pants
>First, did you save any sort of transcript or log of the games.
I did, it's in the laptop that was running the game - I'll retrive it and
see if I can see any patterns. As far as I remember it was mostly abuse and
swearing - but that's Cardiff on the weekend for you...
>Second, I wonder how an Eliza would have fared? The interactively would
>have been less, but the responsiveness might have been more interesting.
My thoughts exactly - I wrote an Eliza years ago at college - but they seem
to have improved a bit now. I'm committed to another IF game for December,
but if I ever run it again, I think it will be with Eliza...
Mr Pants
> I also used Emily Short's "ExperGrammar.h" which has a ton of synonyms
> and verbs that people are likely to try, especially IF newbies.
>
>You could also try combining it with Emily Short's "NewbieGrammar.h" and
>"HelpRoutines.h" to give the player maximum help.
Well - I didn't know about these include files. I'll take a look at them.
The next time the project is on it will be in a bar filled with computer
game types, so I think I could expect them to be a more sophisticated
audience. At least until they are drunk.
I'll let you know what happens.