What works and what doesn't (repost)
Mark Tilford
http://www.adrift.org.uk/cgi/f/ikonboard.cgi?act=ST;f=6;t=7040 )
1) First-person PC
I ask this a lot. I want to write Clocks from the first-person, but I
had a few complaints about that when I wrote I Am the Law. That was
also first-person, and Revgiblet wasn't a fan of this approach. He
said one of the key differences between static and interactive fiction
is that in IF the player decides who the PC is. The thing is, the way
the plot of Clocks goes, I need the PC to form strong, meaningful
relationships with other characters and I need the PC to have
important conversations with other characters. In I Am the Law, Joshua
had many conversations with other characters. Revgiblet singled out
the first-person reflections on the conversations as the negative, not
the conversations themselves. What do people think?
2) Amount of reading
One of the complaints about I Am the Law was the length amount of
reading to be done. I tend to write IF with lots of story and
essentially cut-scenes. I'm often told by drifters that on this issue
I should make the game I want to make. I write static fiction and I'm
at uni studying to make video games, so in one sense IF is the middle-
ground of two of my creative areas. If I wanted to I could make Clocks
a novel or a video game, but I think it would work best as an IF game
with a lot of reading. I'm passionate about the story, but will I put
people off?
3) Writing embellishments
In static fiction a lot of the atmosphere comes from the little things
in the writing. A little sentence in the right place can make all the
difference. However, in IF if you write too much then players with
logical minds get confused. They want a black-and-white description of
the elements in play (room, items, characters, objectives). Can I fill
the game with varied atmosphere boosters, or do players want to read
something in a recognisable format every time they do something?
4) An alternate theory of how to use items.
As Duncan pointed out to me, if a player finds an object, they
anticipate there's going to be a puzzle to fit the object. This is
generally an accepted principle, and there's nothing wrong with. I
learned from the Secret of Monkey Island the enjoyment from finally
discovering the use for your proverbial rubber-chicken-with-a-pulley-
in-the-middle. However I think Clocks needs a slightly different
system, so what do you guys think of this:
Clocks takes place largely in a house that you can wander around in.
If you were really in a house there would be a lot of objects all over
the place, a lot of which wouldn't be used. My proposed system is that
I fill the area with all the objects that would realistically be
there. Many will be used for puzzles, many will be red-herrings, and
most of them will have plot significance in so much as you can deduce
things from their presence. The idea is that instead of meeting a
knife, taking it and then finding a rope to cut, you instead find the
rope to cut and think "where can I find a knife?" Because it's in a
house you know you can go to the kitchen to get one. But equally,
anything sharp would do the trick. This puts the focus not on finding
objects but finding puzzles and then working out how to solve them.
This is both more realistic and possibly gives a different edge to the
puzzles.
What are people's thoughts on this? Is it complete heresy or do you
think it could work?
Erik Temple
> Clocks takes place largely in a house that you can wander around in.
> If you were really in a house there would be a lot of objects all over
> the place, a lot of which wouldn't be used. My proposed system is that
> I fill the area with all the objects that would realistically be
> there. Many will be used for puzzles, many will be red-herrings, and
> most of them will have plot significance in so much as you can deduce
> things from their presence. The idea is that instead of meeting a
> knife, taking it and then finding a rope to cut, you instead find the
> rope to cut and think "where can I find a knife?" Because it's in a
> house you know you can go to the kitchen to get one. But equally,
> anything sharp would do the trick. This puts the focus not on finding
> objects but finding puzzles and then working out how to solve them.
> This is both more realistic and possibly gives a different edge to the
> puzzles.
>
> What are people's thoughts on this? Is it complete heresy or do you
> think it could work?
It would probably be less cluttered to make regular household objects
unimportant until a potential use presents itself. So, looking in the
kitchen drawer before you've seen the rope results in something like this:
"Silverware, steak knives, bottle openers; nothing you need right now."
Attempting to take a knife or anything else results in refusal, e.g.
"You don't need that right now."
Once the player has seen the rope, though, she can go back to the
kitchen and scoop out the sharpest knife in the drawer.
I believe this approach has been used, to one degree or another, fairly
commonly in the past; maybe someone with a better memory than mine can
suggest particular examples.
--Erik
Jay
> It would probably be less cluttered to make regular household objects
> unimportant until a potential use presents itself. So, looking in the
> kitchen drawer before you've seen the rope results in something like this:
>
> "Silverware, steak knives, bottle openers; nothing you need right now."
>
> Attempting to take a knife or anything else results in refusal, e.g.
> "You don't need that right now."
>
> Once the player has seen the rope, though, she can go back to the
> kitchen and scoop out the sharpest knife in the drawer.
Don't know how that would work in text, although in point and click
adventures that's maddening - you can't interact with something till
you need it.
What about making much of the "clutter" portable scenery objects so
they're not obviously in the way. So if you opened a drawer it would
tell you it's full of silverware and various stuff. The player could
then try to take "knife" "spoon" and stuff. Perhaps you could clue
the player in...under a sink "It's full of all sorts of spray cans of
stuff and dish soap and dirty rags". If there's a stuck drain your pc
might muse..."I think I remember some drain opener under the sink".
Perhaps "get drain opener" would first result in "You paw under the
sink...wow there's a lot of stuff. You don't see it on this
side." (Dirty Rag: Taken) <again> "You paw under the sink...wow
there's a lot of stuff. You uncover more items." (Insecticide:
Taken) <again> "You continue to paw under the sink. You really
should clean under here." (Drain Cleaner: Taken).
That way you could keep your quest items a couple of layers deep
without frustrating people who really want to search every nook and
cranny and find the drain cleaner right when they've started the game
before they know they need to drain the bathtub in the disused
lavoratory.
Don't let the character carry lots of stuff so they have to be more
selective about taking all. Perhaps the character can be obsessive
compulsive and get fidgety if you don't return stuff to its proper
place so you won't have people hoarding stuff in inappropriate
places.
Benjamin Caplan
> 2) Amount of reading
> One of the complaints about I Am the Law was the length amount of
> reading to be done. I tend to write IF with lots of story and
> essentially cut-scenes. I'm often told by drifters that on this issue
> I should make the game I want to make. I write static fiction and I'm
> at uni studying to make video games, so in one sense IF is the middle-
> ground of two of my creative areas. If I wanted to I could make Clocks
> a novel or a video game, but I think it would work best as an IF game
> with a lot of reading. I'm passionate about the story, but will I put
> people off?
Based on your description, there are basically two possible worlds here.
In one, you're better off following your own instincts and doing what
you enjoy best. In the other, if you try making a less cutscene-heavy IF
game, you'll find that you warm to it unexpectedly, and you'll always
use that approach from then on.
The only way I know of to distinguish is to try writing in the style
people tell you to. I'll assume for the sake of argument that you
haven't already done so; if you have, then you already know what to do.
I suggest you write one or two short-short (SpeedIF-size) IF games in
your instinctive, heavy-cutscene style, and then (in a fork) adapt each
of them to the peer-recommended style. This should allow you to feel
'under your hands' (so to speak) which style you like best, but without
the vast time and labor investment that writing a full-length piece in
the peer-recommended style would represent.
(SpeedIF traditionally takes two hours, so multiplying that by two games
and then by two versions of each game, and finally multiplying the
result by four because things always take longer than you expect, I
estimate that the experiment I'm suggesting would take about 32 hours,
or two dedicated weekends or one dedicated week.)
This is short enough to be a significant improvement over doing your
Current Work In Progress in a style you don't instinctively prefer, but
long enough that I can't actually recommend you do it unless a third
party (hint hint lurk lurk) confirms that it's a good idea.
Good luck, happy hacking.
Jerome West
> 2) Amount of reading
On all of your other points, I'd say go with your instincts, try to
write the game your way and see how it turns out. They all sound like
intriguing ideas, things that might feel alien to a player used to the
usual IF conventions, but aren't _bad ideas_ per se.
Long reams of text, however, are going to turn a lot of people off of a
game. It's a delicate balance, and I'm not suggesting that all games
should consist of no more than terse one-line replies to commands.
Sometimes a longer section of text is necessary.
But the more you do this, the less interaction is happening, and the
less agency the player feels. I've no objection to reading a lot of text
if the story is interesting, but a cut-scene where I can't affect what
is happening no longer feels like interactive fiction. Try breaking what
you currently have down into sections, allowing the player to move the
story forward via their actions, and giving them the option of breaking
out of the pre-determined path if they feel it necessary.
If you still find you have a large number of cutscene-like sections
where you don't _want_ the player to affect what is happening, perhaps
that indicates that the story is better told as static fiction after all.
Poster
<96215e32-6f3e-4722...@t13g2000yqt.googlegroups.com>,
Mark Tilford <ralphm...@gmail.com> wrote:
> (originally by djchallis on the ADRIFT forum at
> http://www.adrift.org.uk/cgi/f/ikonboard.cgi?act=ST;f=6;t=7040 )
>
> 1) First-person PC
> I ask this a lot. I want to write Clocks from the first-person, but I
> had a few complaints about that when I wrote I Am the Law. That was
> also first-person, and Revgiblet wasn't a fan of this approach. He
> said one of the key differences between static and interactive fiction
> is that in IF the player decides who the PC is. The thing is, the way
> the plot of Clocks goes, I need the PC to form strong, meaningful
> relationships with other characters and I need the PC to have
> important conversations with other characters. In I Am the Law, Joshua
> had many conversations with other characters. Revgiblet singled out
> the first-person reflections on the conversations as the negative, not
> the conversations themselves. What do people think?
The player doesn't necessarily decide whom the PC is; the player can
only do that when the PC is sufficiently generic. You can have a more
defined PC, but you will lose some players. (Ex: "I don't want to be a
midget who's into mortification! Yuck!"). Of course, you don't want to
use this to make the character a straitjacket. If you look at life,
we're all characters but we try different things, fail, and put square
pegs into round holes. Even the most well-defined PC still should be
accorded that kind of freedom; otherwise, you're basically writing a
novel or short story with some "guess the verb/noun" interludes.
> 2) Amount of reading
> One of the complaints about I Am the Law was the length amount of
> reading to be done. I tend to write IF with lots of story and
> essentially cut-scenes. I'm often told by drifters that on this issue
> I should make the game I want to make. I write static fiction and I'm
You should. Don't let anyone else tell you "make it this way". However,
if you have a particular goal in mind (win a contest, sell copies, so
on) and they are experts, well, it can't hurt to listen. :)
> at uni studying to make video games, so in one sense IF is the middle-
> ground of two of my creative areas. If I wanted to I could make Clocks
> a novel or a video game, but I think it would work best as an IF game
> with a lot of reading. I'm passionate about the story, but will I put
> people off?
IF desperately needs folks who are passionate about their stories.
Again, don't let anyone quench your flame.
> 3) Writing embellishments
> In static fiction a lot of the atmosphere comes from the little things
> in the writing. A little sentence in the right place can make all the
> difference. However, in IF if you write too much then players with
> logical minds get confused. They want a black-and-white description of
> the elements in play (room, items, characters, objectives). Can I fill
> the game with varied atmosphere boosters, or do players want to read
> something in a recognisable format every time they do something?
I'm an atmosphere junkie, so the more atmosphere you have, the better.
You're right in that (exceedingly) logical folks will feel like they
must cut through all the flowery writing to get to the point, but
honestly, it doesn't sound like your game would appeal to them anyway. I
don't think you'll gain much by trying to appeal to them.
Think about this way: if you compromise on what makes your game Yours,
then you'll end up with something in the middle that satisfies no-one.
That is to say, your game will be roadkill.
> 4) An alternate theory of how to use items.
> As Duncan pointed out to me, if a player finds an object, they
> anticipate there's going to be a puzzle to fit the object. This is
I anticipate that there will be a reason for the object's existence at
the very least. Usually that collapses into "where's the puzzle", but
it's important to recognize that the first step does exist.
> generally an accepted principle, and there's nothing wrong with. I
> learned from the Secret of Monkey Island the enjoyment from finally
> discovering the use for your proverbial rubber-chicken-with-a-pulley-
> in-the-middle. However I think Clocks needs a slightly different
> system, so what do you guys think of this:
>
> Clocks takes place largely in a house that you can wander around in.
> If you were really in a house there would be a lot of objects all over
> the place, a lot of which wouldn't be used. My proposed system is that
> I fill the area with all the objects that would realistically be
> there. Many will be used for puzzles, many will be red-herrings, and
> most of them will have plot significance in so much as you can deduce
> things from their presence. The idea is that instead of meeting a
> knife, taking it and then finding a rope to cut, you instead find the
> rope to cut and think "where can I find a knife?" Because it's in a
> house you know you can go to the kitchen to get one. But equally,
> anything sharp would do the trick. This puts the focus not on finding
> objects but finding puzzles and then working out how to solve them.
> This is both more realistic and possibly gives a different edge to the
> puzzles.
>
> What are people's thoughts on this? Is it complete heresy or do you
> think it could work?
I see no problem with that working. Alternately or perhaps in
conjunction, you could use the PC's perspective to determine which
objects are useful or not. I've found that's a real time-saver that
allows you to bring objects of interest to the forefront while allowing
a bunch of nondescript other items to exist without getting flayed for
"purple prose".
Example:
It's Friday. 10 PM. I'm wandering through the dining room, reflecting on
the passage of time since she left. The set she bought is still here,
draped in dust, chairs and table and assorted knick-nacks exactly as she
wanted it to be, ten years ago.
> Examine nick-nacks
My eyes glaze over as I look dispiritedly down the table at the various
decorative objects. I never really cared for them then and they matter
less to me now.
--
Poster
www.intaligo.com I6 libraries, doom metal, Building
sturmdrangif.wordpress.com Game development blog / IF commentary
Seasons: fall '09 -- One-man projects are prone to delays.
Adam Thornton
Poster <pos...@nospam.com> wrote:
>(Ex: "I don't want to be a midget who's into mortification! Yuck!")
Back to the drawing board, then, I guess.
Adam
Jim Aikin
>
> 2) Amount of reading
> One of the complaints about I Am the Law was the length amount of
> reading to be done.
My impression is that many gamers just want to get on with the game.
They skim large blocks of prose (and then get pissed off at the author
when they've missed important information by skimming).
I tend to write reams of text, so I'm probably not the right person to
advise you on this. On the other hand, I don't tend to write a lot of
cut-scenes.
What I hate in a game is fake interactivity -- where the author is
trying to disguise a cut-scene by letting the player enter commands
along the way, but only one command is implemented, so the player has no
choice but to read the scene from start to finish while interjecting
commands. If a cut-scene contains essential information, write it as a
single block. If it doesn't, let the player break out of it without
finishing it. That's my suggestion.
> 3) Writing embellishments
> In static fiction a lot of the atmosphere comes from the little things
> in the writing. A little sentence in the right place can make all the
> difference. However, in IF if you write too much then players with
> logical minds get confused. They want a black-and-white description of
> the elements in play (room, items, characters, objectives). Can I fill
> the game with varied atmosphere boosters, or do players want to read
> something in a recognisable format every time they do something?
For my money, atmosphere is good!
> 4) An alternate theory of how to use items.
> As Duncan pointed out to me, if a player finds an object, they
> anticipate there's going to be a puzzle to fit the object.
In a small game, this is fine. In a large game, I'd suggest including
one or two "red herring" objects that don't do anything useful, one or
two "alternate solution" objects (such as a butter knife that you can
use instead of the screwdriver to unscrew the hinges), and one or two
multiple-solution objects that are _needed_ in two or even three places.
This type of design keeps the player on his or her toes.
It makes for a richer world, and it's also more logical: you _could_ use
a butter knife for that. But of course you could drive yourself crazy
trying to do too much of it, and never finish the game.
--JA
Thomas Insel
>might muse..."I think I remember some drain opener under the sink".
>Perhaps "get drain opener" would first result in "You paw under the
>sink...wow there's a lot of stuff. You don't see it on this
>side." (Dirty Rag: Taken) <again> "You paw under the sink...wow
>there's a lot of stuff. You uncover more items." (Insecticide:
>Taken) <again> "You continue to paw under the sink. You really
>should clean under here." (Drain Cleaner: Taken).
One's going to need to be very careful with this -- guess-the-noun
isn't any more fun than guess-the-verb. Without more positive feedback,
I'd likely give up before the third try, and you'll need to be very
complete with synonyms (drain opener, Draino, etc.).
>Don't let the character carry lots of stuff so they have to be more
>selective about taking all. Perhaps the character can be obsessive
>compulsive and get fidgety if you don't return stuff to its proper
>place so you won't have people hoarding stuff in inappropriate
>places.
Cute if done very skillfully, but there's a high risk of annoyance
here as well.
Tom
Ron Newcomb
I think it'll all work as long as the writing and interactivity are
both strong. Since long reams of text also means infrequent
interaction, then the interaction when it finally occurs really has to
mean something. Like Jim says, no fake interactivity.
This may also mean you're skirting CYOA territory, like Photopia.
Richard Bos
> 1) First-person PC
> I ask this a lot. I want to write Clocks from the first-person, but I
> had a few complaints about that when I wrote I Am the Law. That was
> also first-person, and Revgiblet wasn't a fan of this approach.
> What do people think?
First person feels odd today, but back when I was playing on my Spectrum
it was less unusual. Basically, if it works, it works. If you want
something weird, try _third_ person, and preterite instead of present.
"Bimbo stood in his large comfortable tunnel like hall"...
> 2) Amount of reading
> One of the complaints about I Am the Law was the length amount of
> reading to be done. I tend to write IF with lots of story and
> essentially cut-scenes. I'm often told by drifters that on this issue
> I should make the game I want to make.
Well... yes and no. A cut-scene should convey information you _cannot_
present interactively. It shouldn't just be there to blast a lot of text
at the player. For example, a single screenful of text, well-formatted,
that tells you about something happening to two other characters forty
miles away, that's a good use of a cut-scene. A flashback where the
protagonist remembers actually doing something is usually better done
interactively.
> 3) Writing embellishments
> In static fiction a lot of the atmosphere comes from the little things
> in the writing. A little sentence in the right place can make all the
> difference. However, in IF if you write too much then players with
> logical minds get confused. They want a black-and-white description of
> the elements in play (room, items, characters, objectives). Can I fill
> the game with varied atmosphere boosters, or do players want to read
> something in a recognisable format every time they do something?
Definitely add them. The more atmosphere the better. _But_ remember to
make the atmosphere interactive, too, even if only trivially.
For example, when you add a chair, I want to be able to _try_ and sit on
it. I don't care if I get told "Although the chair looks comfy, this is
no time to sit down", but I do mind if I get told "You can't see that
here", "That is just scenery", or "You cannot sit on the chair".
Also, if I examine the chair, I prefer "It's a nice example of early
20th century mock Hepplewhite" to "You see nothing special".
> 4) An alternate theory of how to use items.
> As Duncan pointed out to me, if a player finds an object, they
> anticipate there's going to be a puzzle to fit the object. This is
> generally an accepted principle, and there's nothing wrong with.
There is, if it is held to all the way through. Use-item-drop-item can
be deadening to the atmosphere. It's much better to have items with more
than one use, where that makes sense; to have puzzles with more than one
solution; and to have a few red herrings. Just make sure that the red
herrings are where they should be. A fork with no in-game use should be
in the kitchen, not in the bedroom.
> Clocks takes place largely in a house that you can wander around in.
> If you were really in a house there would be a lot of objects all over
> the place, a lot of which wouldn't be used. My proposed system is that
> I fill the area with all the objects that would realistically be
> there. Many will be used for puzzles, many will be red-herrings, and
> most of them will have plot significance in so much as you can deduce
> things from their presence.
Sounds good. Do be careful that you don't lose yourself in the plethora
of objects, though. You don't want a kitchen cupboard with six soup
plates, six normal plates, a soup terrine, two serving platters with
covers, six long drink glasses, six coffee cups, six tea mugs, a stack
of coasters, a cutlery drawer plus all its contents, and so on, and so
on. You do want to stop your players from overlooking something
significant in all the confusion.
Richard
stuffisthings
I was going to ask about this, because that an approach I've been
favoring in my WsIP. It only makes sense, especially for nondescript
items. As many have noted, if you are walking around your own house,
or really any house, you probably won't stuff your pockets with
kitchen knives and scotch tape "just in case" -- though if I saw a
glowing orb in my living room I might pick THAT up without having a
clear use for it. And there's no need for it to be so simplistic,
either: after spotting a rope you might want to cut, you could be
allowed to pick up the butter knife, only to find it's too dull to cut
the rope -- but then you might use it later to unscrew something (and,
of course, if you skipped picking it up when faced with the rope, it
would still be an option to grab after you discover the screw). Maybe
some people would be unduly confused when the kitchen drawer that had
nothing useful in it before now has a takeable kitchen knife, but like
most problems in IF this can be solved through good writing. In fact,
my mind this is the *only* reasonable way to implement a house,
office, or other "slice of life" locale, because otherwise the player
will instantly know from the fact that they can pick up the paper clip
but not the stapler that it will need to be used somewhere (or worse,
the poor programmer will waste endless hours programming every mundane
object on the desk).
Generally, I prefer IF that rewards players for acting somewhat
reasonably... I can only dream that someday authors will not be
rewarding for spending their precious time coding than funny
contextual responses to "jump" and "kiss" rather than alternate puzzle
solutions or hints on reasonable actions (unless maybe it's a humorous
setting). I know that for a lot of people one of the joys of IF is
pushing the boundaries of the game world, but it seems that handling
those players often runs contrary to the goal of telling a good story.
Note that I don't include genuine attempts to solve puzzles through
unusual means here, but then again maybe this impulse is a result of
the long history of nonsensical puzzle solutions in IF? There has
definitely been more than one instance where I read a review praising
a game for responding to some unusual verb or bizarre action, when I
found that many of my own seemingly logical actions were met with
standard library errors. This is something I'd rather avoid in my own
work... if and when I ever get any damn time to work on it!
Jerome West
> As many have noted, if you are walking around your own house,
> or really any house, you probably won't stuff your pockets with
> kitchen knives and scotch tape "just in case"
On the other hand, if I'm in my kitchen and I decide to pick up a
juicing machine, take it through to the lounge, and place it carefully
on top of the television, I'd be very surprised if a mysterious entity
named "parser" popped up and prevented me from doing so, offering by way
of explanation only the fact that this would be an extraordinarily
pointless waste of my time. I'd immediately begin thinking that perhaps
what I thought of as the real world was actually a rather shoddily
implemented work of fiction.
Captain Mikee
> unimportant until a potential use presents itself.
...
> I believe this approach has been used, to one degree or another, fairly
> commonly in the past; maybe someone with a better memory than mine can
> suggest particular examples.
There's something like that in Lydia's Heart. While I think it's a
great idea in theory, this particular situation was one of the few
puzzles that had me completely baffled. If you try it, be careful to
let the player know that coming back later in the game might be
useful.
As for atmosphere, by all means, write lots of atmosphere! But break
it up in pieces. Scenery objects can have descriptions that lead to
minor scenery objects not mentioned in the room description.
There is one pitfall to this approach, which I experienced a number of
times in Anchorhead and once or twice in Worlds Apart: when there are
a lot of different objects (or topics, in the case of Worlds Apart) in
scope, a player can accidentally hit on something important when
attempting to refer to something else. Whenever this happens to me, I
feel like I've cheated somehow, and I try to work my way backwards to
the context where the thing I discovered was originally mentioned.
Sometimes that's significantly harder than getting it by accident! So
be careful what you name things, and make use of "Does the player
mean..." and the like. And make sure descriptions include hints that
lead the player in the right direction.
Emily Short
> On Jun 27, 5:16 pm, Erik Temple <Ek.Tem...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > It would probably be less cluttered to make regular household objects
> > unimportant until a potential use presents itself.
People interested in this technique should really also look at
"Nothing More, Nothing Less":
http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=5q9fhw0z1zc8xmmw
-- it has a rather inventive handling of ordinary household clutter
such that the player's attention is always drawn to just the things
that are currently important, while nonetheless making it clear that
there's more stuff there.
Autymn D. C.
> In a small game, this is fine. In a large game, I'd suggest including
large = broad
http://google.com/search?q="Comparisons+for+the+illiterate"
> one or two "red herring" objects that don't do anything useful, one or
> two "alternate solution" objects (such as a butter knife that you can
> use instead of the screwdriver to unscrew the hinges), and one or two
> multiple-solution objects that are _needed_ in two or even three places.
> This type of design keeps the player on his or her toes.
the someone -> who
a someone -> one
> It makes for a richer world, and it's also more logical: you _could_ use
> a butter knife for that. But of course you could drive yourself crazy
> trying to do too much of it, and never finish the game.
It'd be funny to host a BugComp where the games are intentionally
broken or somehow wrongs or mungs the gameplay.
-Aut
Conrad
Hi, Mark,
You've gotten some good advice. I'll add a few thoughts.
I've been trying to write in a different style than comes naturally to
me lately, and I even told myself I could lower my personal
standards. (Trying to write pulp fiction.) But it seems it just
doesn't work that way; I still end up working just as hard to write
well. And although the result was indeed pulp-ish, it was still
recognizably my style.
So your game will be your game no matter what overall design you use.
I wonder if it would be possible for you to make a few short games,
100 or 150 move solutions, that would field-test these different
approaches? See what you like and what your players like without a
big commitment of time and energy. Someone mentioned doing speed-IF-y
sketches; I'm saying, polish them a bit and playtest them.
To answer your questions:
> 1) First-person PC
I like the idea; but it's non-standard. And that will draw
attention. For you, it sounds like you'd be experimenting. Which is
fine, but it's a good idea to know when you're experimenting, and to
define how much experimenting you want to do in a given work. ("In
this work, I'll be 5% experimental.") Anything over 10-15% is unlikely
to be a good experiment, because it gets difficult to track what's
working and what's not.
> 2) Amount of reading
Well, again, the industry standard is less reading and more
interactivity. As you deviate from that, you're creating something
foreign to what people know and like.
The alternative strategy to cut scenes is to "atomize the plot," which
means cutting the cut-scenes into single events and distributing those
events in time through that segment of the game. So the simulator
updates slowly, in bite-sized pieces, and in response to player
behavior. My feeling is that this is more fun. But it's also more
work to program.
> One of the complaints about I Am the Law was the length amount of
> reading to be done. I tend to write IF with lots of story and
> essentially cut-scenes. I'm often told by drifters that on this issue
> I should make the game I want to make. I write static fiction and I'm
> at uni studying to make video games, so in one sense IF is the middle-
> ground of two of my creative areas. If I wanted to I could make Clocks
> a novel or a video game, but I think it would work best as an IF game
> with a lot of reading. I'm passionate about the story, but will I put
> people off?
Well, that is the response that the word on the street says you'll get
from a lot of cut scenes; and it's the response you got last time; so
it's likely that it will be the response you get next time. One way
or the other, you'll end up making the game you want to make -- see my
argument on style above -- but the question is, will you make the game
your players want to play?
> 3) Writing embellishments
> In static fiction a lot of the atmosphere comes from the little things
> in the writing. A little sentence in the right place can make all the
> difference. However, in IF if you write too much then players with
> logical minds get confused. They want a black-and-white description of
> the elements in play (room, items, characters, objectives). Can I fill
> the game with varied atmosphere boosters, or do players want to read
> something in a recognisable format every time they do something?
Atmosphere is good, but when it overwhelms the 'real' information
being communicated to the player, it chokes the style. Again, I'd
settle on a proportion -- 1 measure of atmosphere writing to every 4
measures of information, maybe -- and stick to it.
But you can also sneak atmosphere writing into descriptions of rooms,
items, and characters. Atmosphere should be hinted at; otherwise it
stops being atmosphere. And hints can be dropped quickly.
> 4) An alternate theory of how to use items.
>
> [..]
>
> What are people's thoughts on this? Is it complete heresy or do you
> think it could work?
People have given you some good advice here. In general, the best
games usually don't allow the simulator to wander too far from the
story. Because when the simulator wanders from the story, the player
does. A lot of the challenge in writing IF is to herd the player
along your storyline, without seeming like you're herding him. The
more irrelevant simulator stuff you give him to screw with, the more
irrelevant player screwing-around you're desiging into your game.
Red herrings are fine, but in murder mysteries there's generally only
one per book. The example you give with the rubber chicken with the
pulley built into it is entertaining because it's so unlikely you'd
need it, and then it's just what the doctor ordered. So what about
the reverse of that? Something *apparently* very useful, that the
player assumes he'll need, which he never finds a good use for?
Overall, I'd suggest you don't deviate too far from conventionality
while you're still learning control of the artistic medium. The
conventions are the conventions for a reason. And even if it's a bad
reason, it's what your audience is looking for.
And I say that with no thought of suggesting you stifle your
creativity, because the fact is your creativity would have plenty to
do in figuring out how to tell *your* story within the existing,
standard, conventional form.
Conrad.