Visual effects in IF
Ola Sverre Bauge
<very very light spoilers for the absolute beginning of Spider & Web>
Playing Breath Pirates made me think about... um, well, visual effects
in IF. (Huh, having a to-the-point subject really robs me of a good
opening line.) For instance, the white flash after you read the
newspaper seemed to me like a very effective way to mark an internal
change in the character, as he makes up his mind to join the Breath
Pirates.
Though I later learned that the flashes only marked the increasing of
your score, the pleasant memory of what I originally thought it to be
stuck. Then I thought of something of interest to raif: Though IF by
its very nature functions very well without any window dressing at all,
it should perhaps not shun it completely.
Imagine Spider & Web, if, in addition to just printing
-- glaring light...
the screen actually faded to white, then changed the screen colors
before fading to reality in the interrogator's chair, then faded to
white and changed back to the other colors when you returned to the mind
probe's memory reconstruction. This could not only have been a bit of a
surprise to the player, it could also make them feel more like they were
there, not to mention alleviate the confusion some players apparently
experienced regarding what was real in the game and what was memory
reconstruction.
Troll Disclaimer: I'm not trying to criticize Mr. Plotkin for not doing
something like this in S&W (especially since it's impossible in Inform
and today's interpreters): I just thought it was a good example of a
game in which such an effect could have added to the content and not
just be flashy window dressing as it was in Breath.
I understand that there is pressure building to include (optional)
sounds and graphics in Z-machine interpreters, and may I humbly ask for
something like what I mentioned above too? With an option to turn it
off if you suffer from flash-induced epilepsy or don't like the colors
the author has picked, of course, and ideally it should be nonexistent
to interpreters which didn't understand such things, kind of like style
sheets in HTML. Mind you, I have absolutely no idea how it would be
done, so this is all wishful thinking.
I've paved myself quite a road of good intentions without even having
begun a single work of IF so far, so maybe I shouldn't post this. Nah.
There's no requirement to substantiate or actually know anything about
what you post about is there, isn't that what makes Usenet great?
I did have some thoughts on aural effects too, but this will probably
spawn more than enough discussion for a while.
Ola Sverre Bauge
o...@bu.telia.no
http://w1.2327.telia.com/~u232700165
What is now / and what was then
I really don't know / I really can't tell
-Misery Loves Co, "Happy?"
Andrew Plotkin
Ola Sverre Bauge (o...@bu.telia.no) wrote:
[viciously genericized :-)]
> Imagine [GAME], if, in addition to just printing
> -- glaring light...
> the screen actually faded to white, then changed the screen colors
> white and changed back to the other colors when you returned to [...]
> This could not only have been a bit of a
> surprise to the player, it could also make them feel more like they were
> there, not to mention alleviate the confusion some players apparently
> experienced regarding what was real in the game and what was memory
> reconstruction.
> Troll Disclaimer: I'm not trying to criticize Mr. Plotkin for not doing
> something like this [...] (especially since it's impossible in Inform
> and today's interpreters): I just thought it was a good example of a
> game in which such an effect could have added to the content and not
> just be flashy window dressing as it was in Breath.
> I understand that there is pressure building to include (optional)
> sounds and graphics in Z-machine interpreters, and may I humbly ask for
> something like what I mentioned above too?
This winds up being directed to me anyway, since one of the things I'm
trying to do (besides writing games) is create an interface standard for
*all* output. And I'm deliberately making that standard as abstract as
possible, which means *not* telling the interpreter how to implement
things.
One of the (many) decisions I've made in the course of this is to not
allow any style features (color, font, etc) to change in a window. In
other words, I'm proposing that your idea be impossible, not just in
current games, but in most of the game systems which are written or
ported in the next several years. :-)
From one point of view, this is a stupid attitude on my part -- why not
allow as many display capabilities as possible, as long as they're all
completely optional? That doesn't put any additional *mandotory* workload
on interpreter writers.
Maybe. But I think that it's better to focus on simplicity and common
capabilities before worrying about complicated and rarely-used ones.
Text-window fades are (1) impossible on most terminal-window systems
*and* most existing graphics-window text widgets. (It would probably only
be possible on hand-coded text widgets, and one of my goals is to allow
interpreters to use standard widgets as much as possible.) They're also
(2) unlikely to be used by most authors. And they also (3) in the class
of things that intrudes heavily on the player's ability to make the text
look the way he wants to look; some fraction of players will want to turn
this off, and I venture to estimate this fraction is more than half.
Between those concerns, it seems to me that this effect would almost
never get used in real life. And since both the Blorb movement and the
Glk movement are still in their infancy, I don't want to look at
something this specialized. Wait until we have a solid base of
interpreters, players, and games. (Glk, at least, is designed so that new
features can be added later without breaking backwards compatibility.)
I hope this doesn't sound like I'm criticizing *you*. I have nothing
against this particular feature, as opposed to any of the other thousand
features that a text game might have.
I wanted to take the space to lay out how I think about these things,
because, well, I *have* been thinking about them carefully for several
months.
--Z
--
"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the
borogoves..."
Jason C Penney
Which is still there...
: Imagine Spider & Web, if, in addition to just printing
: -- glaring light...
: the screen actually faded to white, then changed the screen colors
: before fading to reality in the interrogator's chair, then faded to
: white and changed back to the other colors when you returned to the mind
: probe's memory reconstruction. This could not only have been a bit of a
: surprise to the player, it could also make them feel more like they were
: there, not to mention alleviate the confusion some players apparently
: experienced regarding what was real in the game and what was memory
: reconstruction.
: Troll Disclaimer: I'm not trying to criticize Mr. Plotkin for not doing
: something like this in S&W (especially since it's impossible in Inform
: and today's interpreters): I just thought it was a good example of a
: game in which such an effect could have added to the content and not
: just be flashy window dressing as it was in Breath.
Aha! But some of it is possible in Inform on a few of todays
interpreters (all the Frotz ports and a few others). A text only V6
version of S&W could do this very easily using V6Lib.
Let's say you have two ZWinStyles, FlashbackStyle and
InterogationStyle, which have distinctive colour schemes or screen
layouts or some such.
Next we write a function to switch styles with a flash of white thrown
in.
[ FlashNSwitch newstyle;
ZWin7.SetColours(C_BLACK, C_WHITE);
ZWin7.SetLoc(1,1);
ZWin7.SetSize([screen dimentions in units header entries]);
ZWin7.Erase();
newstyle.Activate();
];
Ta-da!
Now just call FlashNSwitch(InterogationSyle), or whatever when needed.
I very much doubt that Mr. Plotkin would be interested in doing
this... But it is doable!
Later,
Jay
----
Jason C Penney (jpe...@cs.uml.edu) Xarton Dragon -=<UDIC>=-
<http://www.cs.uml.edu/~jpenney/>
"The trouble with computers of course, is that they're very
sophisticated idiots." -- The Doctor
Brock Kevin Nambo
Ola Sverre Bauge wrote in message <3506b...@d2o201.telia.com>...
>I've paved myself quite a road of good intentions without even having
>begun a single work of IF so far, so maybe I shouldn't post this. Nah.
>There's no requirement to substantiate or actually know anything about
>what you post about is there, isn't that what makes Usenet great?
Oh yeah. Creativity is my worst trait <alas, you will probably not see any
IF coming from me (well, not me alone anyway)> but it is fun to watch you
people.*
>>BKNambo
*picky picky, so I don't 'watch', I 'post'. Call it habit.
--
http://come.to/brocks.place - Hey look, it's the Roman Empire!
'"USENET" is actually a very odd text-adventure game written by Infocom
that someone installed on your computer when you weren't looking.'
W o r l d D o m i n a t i o n T h r o u g h T r i v i a !
Brock Kevin Nambo
Jeff Hatch
Ola Sverre Bauge wrote:
> I've paved myself quite a road of good intentions without even having
> begun a single work of IF so far, so maybe I shouldn't post this. Nah.
> There's no requirement to substantiate or actually know anything about
> what you post about is there, isn't that what makes Usenet great?
You're a brave man. :-)
-Rúmil
Brock Kevin Nambo
I did *not* post that twice.
--
http://come.to/brocks.place - Hey look, it's the Roman Empire!
'"USENET" is actually a very odd text-adventure game written by Infocom
that someone installed on your computer when you weren't looking.'
W o r l d D o m i n a t i o n T h r o u g h T r i v i a !
Brock Kevin Nambo wrote twice in message <chomp>
Den of Iniquity
On Thu, 12 Mar 1998, Brock Kevin Nambo wrote:
>I did *not* post that twice.
Oh yes you did.
--
The Pantomime Horse
Den of Iniquity
Brock Kevin Nambo
Den of Iniquity wrote in message ...
>On Thu, 12 Mar 1998, Brock Kevin Nambo wrote:
>
>>I did *not* post that twice.
>
>Oh yes you did.
Don't oppress me!
>The Pantomime Horse
Ladies and gentlemen, it is NOT Mr. Ed.
>>BKNambo