"How to Play IF" card
Andrew Plotkin
somebody is sitting down in front of an IF game for the very first
time, this card should give him or her an idea of what commands are
likely to work -- and what commands are *likely* to work. It's not
trying to teach everything an IF expert would know; it's just
conveying the pattern.
Was it a success? Heck if I know, but we gave away a couple hundred.
People who looked at them seemed to exhibit varying degrees of "aha".
I came up with the text, and Lea Albaugh (of the Interactive Fiction
Writing Month) did the design and layout.
This is a public resource, and therefore we have posted the document
to the Archive under a Creative Commons (BY-SA) license. You can print
it out, package it with a game, translate it, reformat it, remix it,
whatever you want, as long as you keep the license and credit the
original creators.
The package is currently in the if-archive/unprocessed directory, but
will eventually move to... I'm not sure what directory. Somewhere. We
will also host it on the PR-IF web site in the next couple of weeks.
In the meantime, you can check out the files at:
<http://eblong.com/zarf/tmp/play-if-card/>
There's a PDF, a bunch of image file formats, and then a plain HTML
version. (The HTML version is an imperfect approximation of the PDF,
but it should still be usable.)
(Note: the PAX postcard was two-sided, but this version only includes
the business side. I figure if you're printing more of them for an
event, you want to tag it with your web site, not the Boston one.)
--Z
--
"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the borogoves..."
*
Kenji Yamada
} kenji
namekuseijin
great!
Erik Temple
wrote:
> This is a public resource, and therefore we have posted the document
> to the Archive under a Creative Commons (BY-SA) license. You can print
> it out, package it with a game, translate it, reformat it, remix it,
> whatever you want, as long as you keep the license and credit the
> original creators.
Another use for this (or something like it) would be as part of the game
experience itself. So often the intro to IF files that are included in
games are long and unwieldy--and, for that reason, likely completely
unread by newbies. Here's a glulx file that uses the card instead, as a
quick demo:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/947038/IF%20Card%20Test.gblorb
While there's probably still too much text here, I think that it's far
more friendly than a long, text-only explanation. (Best for in-game use
would be something similar to the Card, but broken into a few discreet
pieces that the player can page through quickly, kind of like the
instructions in many casual Flash games).
The same thing could be done for any browser-delivered game using a
javascript pop-up window.
--Erik
Ron Newcomb
Andrew, you wouldn't happen to have a version of that card that could
fit on something the size of a business card, would you? Seattle I-F
is thinking of creating little "business" cards that fit in a wallet
that we could give out to anyone we happen to bump into. (George's
SeaIF T-shirt design was a great idea; a conversation starter.) It
would serve double-duty if the backside of the card had those commands
and super-quick intro on it!!
-R
Andrew Plotkin
>
> Andrew, you wouldn't happen to have a version of that card that could
> fit on something the size of a business card, would you? Seattle I-F
> is thinking of creating little "business" cards that fit in a wallet
> that we could give out to anyone we happen to bump into.
You have all the versions that I have.
It's designed for 7x5", so squashing it down to two inches high is
going to put you into serious eyestrain territory.
George Oliver
> http://dl.dropbox.com/u/947038/IF%20Card%20Test.gblorb
>
> While there's probably still too much text here, I think that it's far
> more friendly than a long, text-only explanation.
Agreed that it could be simplified a little, but it looks damn good! The
image looks particularly nice against a Gargoyle served game, and I'm
guessing it'd be the same with Parchment's default CSS.
Andrew Plotkin
That's a nice setup. However, I worry about the diminished value of
not being able to hold the thing *next to* the game as you play. I
intended a "glance over while musing your next move" approach.
(I intend to link this thing on the PR-IF game pages -- popping up in
a separate window. Of course that doesn't help for small-screen
devices.)
ChicagoDave
> It's designed for 7x5", so squashing it down to two inches high is
> going to put you into serious eyestrain territory.
There are folded business card templates both horizontal and vertial
with fold up/down left/right. It might all fit on something like that.
David C.
www.textfyre.com
Erik Temple
wrote:
> Here, George Oliver <georgeo...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> On 4/2/2010 10:57 AM, Erik Temple wrote:
>>
>> > http://dl.dropbox.com/u/947038/IF%20Card%20Test.gblorb
>> >
>> > While there's probably still too much text here, I think that it's far
>> > more friendly than a long, text-only explanation.
>>
>> Agreed that it could be simplified a little, but it looks damn good! The
>> image looks particularly nice against a Gargoyle served game, and I'm
>> guessing it'd be the same with Parchment's default CSS.
>
> That's a nice setup. However, I worry about the diminished value of
> not being able to hold the thing *next to* the game as you play. I
> intended a "glance over while musing your next move" approach.
Yes, the intent of the card is clearly that it be a real-world
quick-reference card, and my demo wasn't really intended as a replacement
of that function. I was just pointing out that the kind of boil-it-down,
make-it-simple design that the Card represents is also a good model for
in-game intro to IF. Even if the card itself were included in the game,
distributing the PDF of the card with a game would be, as you suggested, a
good idea--folks could then print it out and look over it as they play.
I do think there is a lot of value in giving players an in-game way to get
a quick overview of how IF is played--one that doesn't involve reading a
long explanation that's buried in a weird help-menu interface with
confusing controls (the current norm). If it has some personality (as your
card does) and isn't taxing, this will probably get looked at, and might
actually help keep a newbie's attention on the game a bit longer than if
it isn't there.
My developing thinking on including (something like this) in games is that
there should be a short (three or so frames) introduction to this thing
called IF; this would more or less correspond to the material from the
left and right thirds of your card and would be set up more or less as I
set up the demo, but with the player being able to click next/back to go
through the frames. Another, vertically oriented, card could be
implemented in a separate Glulx window, open at all times. This might
correspond to the central third of the Card--i.e. example commands--or
maybe provide a quick distillation of the intro material just described.
In any case, this side-window would provide the "glance over while musing
on your next move" function.
Currently, of course, none of this would work for anything but desktop
interpreters for Glulx or Tads, and is practical for Parchment only on
larger screens, but better than nothing, I think.
Anyway, I may work the idea up as a plug-and-play extension for I7-Glulx.
The coding is easy (the demo is about 10 lines of I7), but designing the
various images, and what precisely should go on them, will be a bit more
time-consuming...
> (I intend to link this thing on the PR-IF game pages -- popping up in
> a separate window. Of course that doesn't help for small-screen
> devices.)
Cool. Folks will be able to print it that way if they like, too.
Another option--potentially difficult, I gather, because of the way the
Parchment html page is set up--would be to make it a dynamic element of
the page; e.g., the player can choose to open it or not; when it's open,
the Parchment gameplay window slides to the left, say, and the card
appears on the right (also not good for small screens).
--Erik
Ron Newcomb
(Is the popup window one of those always-on-top windows? Else I'd
just say embed the .jpg into the webpage like every other jpg. ..Or
does Parchment always take up the whole page?)