Chapters & Controlling multiple characters
Charles
around several fictional characters of different backgrounds (ie:
races, nationalities, etc). I want to do this to give multiple
perspectives and situations during given historical periods.
The way I see this is similar to a chapter book/novel, where each
chapter is written with a specific character as the protagonist. I
have seen many books that do this successfully, but haven't seen any
IF that follows more than one protagonist (unless it is a 'party' of
characters). If you know of examples, I would be very interested in
knowing which ones to view.
I would be curious to see points of view as to whether this can be
successfully accomplished.
Adam Thornton
Charles <cang...@gmail.com> wrote:
>I would be curious to see points of view as to whether this can be
>successfully accomplished.
_Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy_ did it. In the modern era, _Common
Ground_ did it as well. My current WIP is going to have a change-of-POV
in it, although it will be for a relatively small part of the game.
No reason it wouldn't work, if done well.
Adam>
Sami
_Heroes_ by Sean Barrett comes to mind.
JJ Sonick
Infocom's Suspended, one of my all time favorites, has you switching
between 6 different robots in the same futuristic complex. It's much
more of a simulation than a linear story, and the robots are not
typical fictional characters, but each has a personality and an
extremely different point of view (one is primarily visual, one is
primarily auditory, one ("Poet") spins his own fanciful/metaphorical
descriptions of things, etc.) Interacting with and sensing the same
room/object with different robots gives excellent examples of how IF
can exploit multiple viewpoints within the same game.
Michael Martin
My own WIP also does this. I did an intro of it for IntroComp two
years ago, and found that many players had difficulty noticing when
the viewpoint had switched. In the final version (still in
development, honest!) I made chapter breaks really obvious and put the
character for that chapter in boldface and in the center of the
screen. My alpha testers seem to prefer this.
"The Big Scoop" by Johan Berntsson (from IFComp 2004) also does this,
and has a mostly-unnanounced viewpoint shift that is, again, highly
disorienting.
My advice is that it can be done, but one must be blatant about it.
--Michael
Charles
Thanks all for the quick responses and example IFs. I'll look into
them immediately.
And Michael, information like that is perfect
Looking forward to more suggestions, experiences, and IF
recommendations
Daphne Brinkerhoff
> I have seen many books that do this successfully, but haven't seen any
> IF that follows more than one protagonist (unless it is a 'party' of
> characters). If you know of examples, I would be very interested in
> knowing which ones to view.
Photopia (Adam Cadre) came to my mind, and then Snatches (Gregory
Weir). Then I realized there's a way to get you a good list. If you
go to this page:
and scroll down near the bottom, then click "require" where it says
"multiple protagonists". Keep scrolling down and click the "submit
query" button.
The list might include some variants that aren't exactly what you
want, but should give you something to work from.
--
Daphne
Charles
Awesome link Daphne. Thanks a ton!