Mood establishment and Plot Development
David Whitten
"How could she? She KNOWS I have carried that bear with me everywhere
I went since I was in first grade!" Janice fumed.
Dotty patted Janice on the shoulder.
"I know exactly how you feel." she said. "I had to rescue Puff at least
twelve times before my mom quit trying to get rid of her"
Janice hugged her lime green dragon tightly around the neck.
"maybe... " she whispered "We can rescue Kelly too..."
Now this story fragment definitely sets a mood. But it also definitely
is made up of 'atmosphere' pieces that could be presented to the
reader/player based on a timed fuse.
Now, when the IFstory/game is just starting up, it is permissible to
give a block of text to the reader to 'set up' the story. Enhanced has
a good example of this. There are also examples of 'finish up' text
such as when the reader/player has died.
But is there a common form used to insert blocks of 'mood or plot
development' into the middle of the IFstory/game ? The only examples out
there that I can think of is the little snips on arcade games when you
have completed a level. Maybe a corresponding point would be when
you have completed a task/solved a puzzle.
Any thoughts?
David Whitten (whi...@netcom.com) (214) 437-5255
Bill Blohm
<SNIP>
: But is there a common form used to insert blocks of 'mood or plot
: development' into the middle of the IFstory/game ? The only examples out
: there that I can think of is the little snips on arcade games when you
: have completed a level. Maybe a corresponding point would be when
: you have completed a task/solved a puzzle.
: Any thoughts?
My $.02 would be that any place where you make a drastic change in the
story you should insert a block of text to re-set the mood if the play
so far won't do it. For example, in a game you could have the player
wandering around solving some puzzles, no dangerous things or anything
that could cause serious harm (other than walking off the cliff). Then
when the puzzle is tripped that transports the player to another world,
dungeon, whatever, then you insert enough text to make it obvious that
this area is not as nice. That would change the mood from easy-going
to a more alert setting. If such a change is not happening, then I
would say such blocks of text shouldn't be necessary or wanted.
Bill B.
Gerry Kevin Wilson
David Whitten <whi...@netcom.com> wrote:
>If I were to write a short story, I might start it like the following:
[Cute example bites the dust.]
>Now this story fragment definitely sets a mood. But it also definitely
>is made up of 'atmosphere' pieces that could be presented to the
>reader/player based on a timed fuse.
Sure. You can present this either split up into a dialogue bit and a
movement message for the hug, or just all together. There are no game
police, (yet) so you must only worry about 2 things. 1) Writing a game
that YOU like. 2) Writing a game that your players like. Notice which
one of these I list first. If YOU don't like what you're writing, nobody
else will.
>Now, when the IFstory/game is just starting up, it is permissible to
>give a block of text to the reader to 'set up' the story. Enhanced has
>a good example of this. There are also examples of 'finish up' text
>such as when the reader/player has died.
Don't forget the much-debated 'atmospheric' messages that pop up
randomly. Also, the player's action messages can and should mesh with
the atmosphere of the game.
>But is there a common form used to insert blocks of 'mood or plot
>development' into the middle of the IFstory/game ? The only examples out
>there that I can think of is the little snips on arcade games when you
>have completed a level. Maybe a corresponding point would be when
>you have completed a task/solved a puzzle.
Or when you walk into a certain room for the first time, or on turn X,
etc. There are many ways to slip atmosphere into your game, and you
should use them liberally. Dialogue, actions, random stuff (which
usually should NOT be required to solve any puzzle, due to flaky random
number generators.), room descriptions, object descriptions, NPC
personalities, room-entry messages, etc. Every single thing you add to
your game can be looked at as a way to make your work more cohesive and
enjoyable to the player. I try to do this in the following manner:
First, whenever I've finished a section of the game, I go back and look
it over, re-reading all the text that will be output to the screen. This
is your chance to spellcheck and debug. In addition, you must be
thinking like an editor. Consider the following list:
1.) Does this (object, puzzle, NPC, room, text chunk) advance the plot in
an entertaining and appropriate manner?
2.) If not, does it at least advance the plot in a boring manner?
3.) If not, is it at least entertaining (if slightly gratuitous)?
4.) No? Rewrite or remove.
The object for any particular section is to 'score' as low as possible,
marking down the number in front of the first appropriate answer as the
score for that (whatever). Par for the course is (NUMBER OF OBJECTS) * 1.5.
Thus, if I have 30 objects, then I want to score 45 or lower. Too many
gratuitous jokes for no purpose bog the storyline. Irrelevant stuff that
really isn't even funny should just be 'black-lined' out. At least 1/2
your (whatever)s need to advance things in an entertaining and relevant
manner. The other 1/2 need to advance things along somehow. The more
in-jokes and dreck you add in, the better the rest of the game has to
be. "Phil vs. the Forces of Creation" is a good example of a game too
deeply mired in in-jokes and fluff. Still, if the rest of the game had
been outstanding, I could've overlooked that. But...well, it wasn't.
Phil went to that big overwrite bit in the sky. Sorry Phil.
--
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<___SOFTWARE______E-MAIL...@uclink.berkeley.edu__|_\__/__>
Neil K. Guy
>But is there a common form used to insert blocks of 'mood or plot
>development' into the middle of the IFstory/game ? The only examples out
>there that I can think of is the little snips on arcade games when you
>have completed a level. Maybe a corresponding point would be when
>you have completed a task/solved a puzzle.
One stylistic thing that's always bothered me about this block of
text method is the attribution of emotions and motives that this
usually involves. This probably doesn't bother everyone - if fact,
it's pretty normal in text adventures to attribute emotions and
motives and whatnot to the player.
Now, I may play a character in a text adventure with predefined
experiencs and emotional reactions - for some reason I just don't like
being told upfront that "you feel x" from within the text. Maybe it's
me, though. It's hard to avoid this without just creating a totally
generic and bland character.
Unless the game bases some of its output text on your previous
actions in part. For instance, if you do something horrible at the
start of the game then maybe it'd flag a "morality = extremely nasty"
attribute and output text and events/consequences that reflect that.
Conversely, if the player establishes him/herself as a fairly decent
person at the start of the game then it'd be justified in putting the
traditional "You have moral qualms about doing that" text for certain
actions.
- Neil K.
S.P.Harvey
: >But is there a common form used to insert blocks of 'mood or plot
: >development' into the middle of the IFstory/game ? The only examples out
: >there that I can think of is the little snips on arcade games when you
: >have completed a level. Maybe a corresponding point would be when
: >you have completed a task/solved a puzzle.
What I'm attempting to somehow factor into my work-in-progress is related
directly to mood. My game is a paranormal/UFO adventure, and I'm trying
to work in some of the psychological effects of extreme terror and
disbelief (which are usually reported by contactees). I haven't yet hit
on the truly precise way to handle these events. I do know that it will
be a hard-wired feature, no changes due to "character" - this is not an
RPG. I've toyed with the ideas of hallucination, dreams, intellecutal
repression, amnesia, anything.
What I'm trying to get away from is the impression of the game player as
totally unflappable, no matter what happens. For example, Lurking Horror
gave me the willies in a masterful way. However, my "player character"
was unaffected. No matter how badly a room description affects the
person at the keyboard, the player will still stand nochalantly in the
room, checking his inventory, examining objects, et cetera. Unless we
try to break this convention.
I imagine the really difficult part will be designing it accurately, but
not allowing it to interfere with game play.
Scot
--
----------------------| S.P. Harvey |--------------------------
"Most of the world was mad. And the part that wasn't mad was angry.
And the part that wasn't mad or angry was just stupid.
I had no chance. I had no choice." - Charles Bukowski, 'Pulp'
----------------------| sha...@interaccess.com |--------------------------
TEAddition
agree that it would be nice to get away with long stretches of
dialogue/story in the middle of a game, but on the other hand I don't
enjoy having entire pieces of the action pulled away from the player's
control.
The solutions to this are hard to find. I've considered using directed
dialogue, but it never comes up as anything more than "choose your own
adventure" stuff. [Directed dialogue: a) "You wouldn't dare." b) "But
you'll break the crystal sphere!" c) "Fine. I give up." Choose:> a ]
However, there's one thing we have to keep in mind as IF designers, which
is that as much as we'd like to create true worlds, we are too limited by
the parser. Our players can't enter into philosophical debates with the
characters of our games. We can't create a town and subsequently create
every person, building, and object in the town. I mean, at the moment I
still haven't seen a satisfactory method of creating a matchbook!
Accept some of the limitations of the genre and then work within them.
Otherwise, you'll never finish a game.
-TEA-
Robert Paige Rendell
>What I'm trying to get away from is the impression of the game player as
>totally unflappable, no matter what happens. For example, Lurking Horror
>gave me the willies in a masterful way. However, my "player character"
>was unaffected.
That's not quite true - there was a very effective use of the effect of
the surroundings on the character in Lurking Horror:
(minor SPOILERS, I guess...)
>l
Before the Altar
You are at the bottom of the cave. The huge slab of granite in the center is a
sort of altar. It is carved with strange and disturbing symbols, the largest of
which looks very familiar. Some of the symbols are obscured by rusty red stains.
Nearby is an iron plate set in the concrete of the floor.
>open panel
You slide open the panel, revealing a dark pit below. Immediately, there is a
response from below.
A low, guttural, groaning and snarling issues from the opening.
>look in opening
You peer through the hole, shining your light into the stygian darkness below.
The commotion below is growing louder, and suddenly you catch a glimpse of
things moving in the pit. Without consciously realizing you have done it, you
slam the panel shut, reeling away from the source of such images. Now you know
what has been done with the missing students.
>open panel
You would sooner die than open that panel again.
--
Robert Rendell \((/
ren...@molly.cs.monash.edu.au ~oo~
What do you know about Tweetle beetles? Well... /))\
Magnus Olsson
S.P.Harvey <sha...@interaccess.com> wrote:
>What I'm trying to get away from is the impression of the game player as
>totally unflappable, no matter what happens. For example, Lurking Horror
>gave me the willies in a masterful way. However, my "player character"
>was unaffected. No matter how badly a room description affects the
>person at the keyboard, the player will still stand nochalantly in the
>room, checking his inventory, examining objects, et cetera. Unless we
>try to break this convention.
Well, that didn't disturb me very much when playing Lurking Horror. Maybe
it's got something to do with how much we identify with the game character.
Of course, one can get ridiculous effects when the designer hasn't
thought sufficiently much about the appropriateness of "canned"
replies; imagine, for example, playing a game in a horror setting
that's really scared you witless and getting a cheerfully optimistic
"canned" response when trying to do something - for example, assuming
you bring a magazine into a haunted house, and while a headless ghost
is dripping blood all over you type "read magazine", you get the
response "The magazine turns out to be the latest edition of 'Mad'.
You make yourself comfortable and spend an enjoyable half-hour reading
a parody of 'Terror on Elm Street'". Yeah, not bloody likely, is it?
:-)
Of course, this is a general problem about canned responses in IF -
it's very easy writing them with a specific situation in mind, and not
realizing that they might be wildly inappropriate in other situations.
Of course, one could make the character's behaviour be influenced by
the way the player *is supposed to* feel; e.g. if the character has
managed to get himself right in the middle of a battle, typing "read
magazine" might result in the response "you're far too concerned about
your own safety to do that right now"; however, if the player isn't
feeling the way he's supposed to feel (maybe because he's played the
game before and realized that the dangerous-seeming situation isn't
dangerous at all) the response may be just as inappropriate as the
naive canned response "The magazine turns out to be the latest edition
of 'Mad'...".
Magnus Olsson (m...@df.lth.se) / yacc computer club, Lund, Sweden
Work: Innovativ Vision AB, Linkoping (magnus...@ivab.se)
Old adresses (may still work): mag...@thep.lu.se, the...@selund.bitnet
PGP key available via finger (to df.lth.se) or on request.
Andrew C. Plotkin
establishment and .. Magnus Ols...@marvin.df. (2505)
> Of course, one can get ridiculous effects when the designer hasn't
> thought sufficiently much about the appropriateness of "canned"
> replies; imagine, for example, playing a game in a horror setting
> that's really scared you witless and getting a cheerfully optimistic
> "canned" response when trying to do something - [...]
That brings up the interesting possibility of setting the mood via
*appropriate* canned replies. Put in several variants and it might work
very well.
> open door
would produce one of...
The door is locked.
The door is locked!
You tug furiously on the handle, but it won't budge!
depending on the "tension level" at that point. (Depending on how
sophisticated your scenario is, the tension level could be fixed at each
point in the plot, or some simulated variable that depends on your
actions.)
Extend the idea:
> i
You have a sword, a lamp, a backpack full of stuff, and a troll is
trying to kill you so will you please pay attention?!
--Z
"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the borogoves..."
David Whitten
solving, but I still want to write stories. not games.
I guess I have a low creativity or tolerance for puzzles, but I know
I can sit down with a book, make progress in the story the author
intended, and stop reading within two hours, and feel I have 'done
something'. Too many IFstory/games, I sit down, start it up, and
five hours later, I am still within a few moves of where I was when
I started.
I don't like the idea of 'pushing the reader/player', but many stories
do just that.
books also have the ability to jump into the middle of the story in case
the beginning is too slow, boring, or confusing.
I think the IF genre still needs some more 'bookish' elements.
David (whi...@netcom.com) (214) 437-5255
Gerry Kevin Wilson
David Baggett <d...@ai.mit.edu> wrote:
>
>I was thinking about this a lot three years ago, so I decided to try it in
>_The Legend Lives!_. (Forgive me for repeatedly mentioning it, but most of
>my recent IF experience is tied up in it, since I refused to allow myself
>to work on side IF projects until I finished it.)
Hey, you won't hear any complaints from me. I talk a lot about Avalon too.
<"Wow" says the reader, "I didn't think he'd manage a plug so quickly.">
>Most of _Legend_ is traditional, but I have several parts that I call (for
>lack of a more descriptive term) "transitions," where the player just reads
>about how his character is interacting with the other characters. Really,
>these bits are just like excerpts from a novel, except that it's in second
>person.
We think along similar lines. Still, this is nothing new for IF. It
often occurs that something happens beyond your control, either to
advance the plot, or set up the next puzzle. I also use it in Avalon
sometimes to better define Frank as a person with a past and a
personality. Some folks may not like not being themselves, but
'frank'ly, being yourself in a story doesn't always work. Frank has a
set personality, so I can easily figure out what he'd do, given a certain
command. He refuses to murder children in cold blood, he possesses a
strong sense of loyalty to his friends, and sometimes a seemingly normal
sight or smell will remind him of something out of his past. I can only
do this sort of thing convincingly because the player is not playing his
own alter-ego, but a fully developed character, such as might occur in an
RPG.
>Some people don't like this at first blush, but I think it works well in
>practice, and I've found that people don't actually dislike it as much when
>they're playing as they do in the abstract. You might think that reading
>lots of second person text would leave a bad taste in your mouth, but this
>doesn't turn out to be the case.
Right. Anytime you 'ask y about x' in Avalon, your response will most
likely be in the form of a dialogue between Frank and the NPC. I haven't
seen any other IF that does this, though I could be mistaken.
>For me, this came out of a desire to distinguish between "actors" (objects
>you can "talk to" with commands like "ask monk about egg") and "characters"
>(entities that may or may not have corresponding actor objects, and which
>are like the fully-developed non-cardboard characters we find in good
>novels).
Amen. Avalon is about the characters in it, not the puzzles or setting
or anything else. It's a "take these people and put them in that
situation" type of thing. The puzzles are there, but most are solved
through interaction with NPCs of some sort. For instance, you could
encounter a puzzle like this: (but you won't, this particular one anyways)
Ambush Alley
The dark trees around you loom ominously. The hair on the nape of your
neck pricks up like the ear of a nervous dog. Something's wrong.
Seriously wrong.
Suddenly, a gunshot rings out, narrowly missing you and your men!
Joey is standing here, his sniper rifle slung over his shoulder. His
eyes dart about nervously, scanning the trees.
Markie is here too. He's carrying the miscellaneous equipment for the squad.
>men, take cover
The two of them duck behind a rock. You join them quickly as a slug
zings past your ear.
>joey, shoot sniper
"I can't see him! I wish those nightsight scopes hadn't been smashed
when the jeep crashed." Silently, you curse, mentally nodding in agreement.
>markie, inventory
Markie rummages through his pack. "I've got some rations, an emergency
blanket, and a magnesium flare."
>markie, light flare
The sudden light of the flare causes a slight yelp from the trees as the
sniper is blinded.
>markie, throw flare at trees
Markie hurls the flare into the woods. It exposes a Nazi sniper,
standing next to a tree and rubbing his eyes.
>joey, shoot sniper
Joey lines up his sights. "Got him." he says, and pulls the trigger.
The sniper slumps to the ground.
Turning back to your men, you clap them on the shoulders. "Good work
boys. Now, let's get going. We haven't got much time left."
So, as you can see, the interactions between the characters play an
important role in Avalon.
>Someone else (sorry for not quoting!) mentioned that you can't engage in
>philosophical discussions with actors. This is exactly the problem! I
>thought the character/actor distinction would be a way to bring good things
>from both adventure games and novels together in an interactive work.
Well, maybe we can't do anything that complex, but you can at least do
stuff like "ask merlin about religion". While not as entertaining as an
AI character, it's at least interesting reading for the player.
>We cannot hope for actors to be as fulfilling as characters in the near
>future -- making such entities is an "AI-complete" problem, in that it
>requires solutions to all of the problems involved in making a human-like
>intelligence to solve it.
>
>Given this problem (which I'm fairly confident will not be solved in the
>next 100 years), we have to make do with very stupid, largely
>one-dimensional interactive game entities. I can't think of an alternative
>to having both characters and actors that deals with this problem, but I'm
>sure there are some out there waiting to be discovered.
100 years? Maybe. Possibly not. Look how far we've come in 20 years.
Whose to say that computers won't have its own Einstein in another 20,
who solves the basic problem, and leads us into the future. :) Wishful
thinking, I know. But hey, the world would be a depressing place without
dreamers.
--
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<___SOFTWARE____________...@uclink.berkeley.edu__|_\__/__>
David Baggett
>But is there a common form used to insert blocks of 'mood or plot
>development' into the middle of the IFstory/game ?
I was thinking about this a lot three years ago, so I decided to try it in
_The Legend Lives!_. (Forgive me for repeatedly mentioning it, but most of
my recent IF experience is tied up in it, since I refused to allow myself
to work on side IF projects until I finished it.)
Most of _Legend_ is traditional, but I have several parts that I call (for
lack of a more descriptive term) "transitions," where the player just reads
about how his character is interacting with the other characters. Really,
these bits are just like excerpts from a novel, except that it's in second
person.
Some people don't like this at first blush, but I think it works well in
practice, and I've found that people don't actually dislike it as much when
they're playing as they do in the abstract. You might think that reading
lots of second person text would leave a bad taste in your mouth, but this
doesn't turn out to be the case.
For me, this came out of a desire to distinguish between "actors" (objects
you can "talk to" with commands like "ask monk about egg") and "characters"
(entities that may or may not have corresponding actor objects, and which
are like the fully-developed non-cardboard characters we find in good
novels).
Someone else (sorry for not quoting!) mentioned that you can't engage in
philosophical discussions with actors. This is exactly the problem! I
thought the character/actor distinction would be a way to bring good things
from both adventure games and novels together in an interactive work.
We cannot hope for actors to be as fulfilling as characters in the near
future -- making such entities is an "AI-complete" problem, in that it
requires solutions to all of the problems involved in making a human-like
intelligence to solve it.
Given this problem (which I'm fairly confident will not be solved in the
next 100 years), we have to make do with very stupid, largely
one-dimensional interactive game entities. I can't think of an alternative
to having both characters and actors that deals with this problem, but I'm
sure there are some out there waiting to be discovered.
Dave Baggett
__
d...@ai.mit.edu MIT AI Lab He who has the highest Kibo # when he dies wins.
ADVENTIONS: We make Kuul text adventures! Email for a catalog of releases.
David Baggett
Gerry Kevin Wilson <whiz...@uclink.berkeley.edu> wrote:
>100 years? Maybe. Possibly not. Look how far we've come in 20 years.
If you're talking about creating human-level intelligence, we have not left
the starting gate in the *50* years we've had computers.
>Whose to say that computers won't have its own Einstein in another 20,
>who solves the basic problem, and leads us into the future.
We have Einsteins, and they are not sufficient. We don't even know what
"human-level intelligence" means. We don't even know what "intelligence"
means.
All IMO, of course. Though I've found that optimism tends to correlate
with ignorance in this field. :) Anyone who thinks "the natural language
problem" will be solved in a matter of decades does not know enough about
language.
>But hey, the world would be a depressing place without dreamers.
Human-level intelligent machines will be a mixed blessing, just as
human-level intelligent animals are. :)
Phil Goetz
>David Baggett <d...@ai.mit.edu> wrote:
>
>Most of _Legend_ is traditional, but I have several parts that I call (for
>lack of a more descriptive term) "transitions," where the player just reads
>about how his character is interacting with the other characters. Really,
>these bits are just like excerpts from a novel, except that it's in second
>person.
This was done in _Amnesia_. It bugged me. Mostly because I would
be floundering around NYC for hours, getting nowhere, having no idea
what was going on, and suddenly the program would
scroll 2 screens of text by me. It would make my character do things
I didn't want to do, and advance the story further in 2 seconds than
I had managed on my own in the past hour. I don't know which of those
I disliked more.
Phil go...@cs.buffalo.edu