Interactivity vs. Narrative
Titus Barik
I am trying to explore the tension between interactivity vs. narrative
by taking short stories or excerpts from novels and 'translating' them
to interactive fiction. Specifically, the project will explore story and
discourse in terms of the two mediums, offering comparisons between
elements that work well in traditional text mediums, and contrasting
them with unique elements in interaction fiction that are encountered in
the course of this translation process.
The problem is I'm not a literary expert, and don't have any examples of
works that might translate well from text to IF. Does anyone have any
suggestions on what to look at, preferably texts that are available from
Project Gutenberg?
I imagine that works that have a lot of spatial descriptions or
interaction with the environment by a main character within the story
would lend itself well to this translation.
Thanks in advance,
Titus
--
Titus Barik (ti...@barik.net)
Jim Aikin
I'm not sure what would work well for your purposes ... but as it
happens, all of the Oz books are public domain, and the complete texts
are available somewhere or other for download. If you can't find them,
let me know and I'll send you the whole shebang. It's about 3.5MB
zipped.
There's an interesting setup at the beginning of "The Road to Oz"
where Dorothy goes down a road (in Kansas) and finds herself at what
is essentially a very IF-like intersection of roads. By now I don't
remember the details, but it struck me at the time that Baum was
anticipating a standard device of IF. And of course the magical
creatures and so on would translate pretty directly.
--Jim Aikin
Ron Newcomb
> by taking short stories or excerpts from novels and 'translating' them
> to interactive fiction. Specifically, the project will explore story and
> discourse in terms of the two mediums, offering comparisons between
> elements that work well in traditional text mediums, and contrasting
> them with unique elements in interaction fiction that are encountered in
> the course of this translation process.
The second epilogue* to Tolstoy's _War and Peace_ contains the
author's musings on the nature of events and history. (Namely, he
says things mainly play out on their own with little influence from
singular great men.) Since the story of W&P presumably follows this
pattern, you could use that epilogue to implement the rules of
gameplay -- the world according to Tolstoy. Then you can allow the
player to fiddle with the characters and powers-that-be when the story
starts, and allow the player to explore the results -- and Tolstoy's
ideas by implication.
Just a thought. I haven't read the thing.
-R
* FYI: this extra epilogue is removed from many reprintings / editions
of W&P.
Adam Thornton
Jim Aikin <midig...@gmail.com> wrote:
>There's an interesting setup at the beginning of "The Road to Oz"
>where Dorothy goes down a road (in Kansas) and finds herself at what
>is essentially a very IF-like intersection of roads. By now I don't
>remember the details, but it struck me at the time that Baum was
>anticipating a standard device of IF. And of course the magical
>creatures and so on would translate pretty directly.
OK, I'm busted.
The Oz books are precisely what I have in mind for my eventual
exploration of multiple-first-person puzzles.
Specifically, there's a lot of stuff in _Tik-Tok_ and _Rikitink_ that I
think would work well. Yeah, I like Nomes. Why do you ask?
Adam
David Fisher
news:JfadnbYjzYH922zV...@giganews.com...
>
> I am trying to explore the tension between interactivity vs. narrative by
> taking short stories or excerpts from novels and 'translating' them to
> interactive fiction.
> Does anyone have any suggestions on what to look at, preferably
> texts that are available from Project Gutenberg?
I think this is a great idea.
Here are some possibilities from a quick scan through Project Gutenberg ...
some of these might be a bit longer than you were asking for, though:
Jonathan Swift - Gulliver's Travels
Alexandre Dumas père - The Count of Monte Cristo, The Man in the Iron Mask,
The Three Musketeers
H. G. Wells - The Time Machine, War of the worlds, The Invisible Man, The
Island of Dr. Moreau
Jules Vern - Journey to the Centre of the Earth, Around the World in 80
Days, 20000 Leagues Under the Sea
Edgar Rice Burroughs - Tarzan, At the earth's core, various "Mars" stories
Robert Lois Stevenson - Treasure Island, Kidnapped, Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde
Mary Shelley - Frankenstein
Daniel Defoe - Robinson Crusoe
Johann David Wyss - Swiss Family Robinson
John Bunyan - Pilgrim's Progress
Lewis Caroll - Alice in Wonderland, Through the Looking Glass
Aladdin and the Magic Lamp
Arabian Nights (A Thousand and One Nights)
Homer - The Iliad / Odyssey (Jason and the Argonauts)
The Twelve Labours of Hercules (Golden Fleece, etc.)
(Howard Pyle) - Robin Hood
(Waldo Cutler) - "King Arthur" stories
Children's stories and fairy tales:
Brothers Grimm
Hans Christian Anderson
Rudyard Kipling - The Jungle Book
Kenneth Grahame - The Wind in the Willows
Beatrix Potter - Peter Rabbit
Carlo Collodi - Pinocchio
Cinderella
Beauty and the Beast [already done as IF!]
Some others that could possibly work as IF:
Orczy - The Scarlet Pimpernel
Charles Dickens - Oliver Twist
Don Quixote
Flatland
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle - Sherlock Holmes
Rudolf Erich Raspe - The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen [I'd love
to see this as IF]
H. Rider Haggard - King Solomon's Mines, Allan Quatermain
Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller - Wilhelm Tell (William Tell)
Mark Twain - A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, The Prince and the
Pauper
Oscar Wilde - The Canterville Ghost, The Picture of Dorian Gray
David Fisher
George Oliver
<davidfis...@australiaonline.net.au> wrote:
> Homer - The Iliad / Odyssey (Jason and the Argonauts)
That reminds me:
http://www.avventuretestuali.com/avventure/cyclops
Titus Barik
> Here are some possibilities from a quick scan through Project Gutenberg ...
> some of these might be a bit longer than you were asking for, though:
>
> Lewis Caroll - Alice in Wonderland, Through the Looking Glass
Hello David,
Thanks for the list of useful suggestions. For the current project
scope, the first chapter of Alice in Wonderland looks like it will work.
I plan to implement this using I7, so expect some newbie questions from
me shortly!
Sincerely,
John W Kennedy
> I'm not sure what would work well for your purposes ... but as it
> happens, all of the Oz books are public domain,
All of Baum's books, Oz and otherwise, are public domain. But many of
the later books are not, except for a window where the copyrights were
not renewed (due to carelessness) under the old law and were later too
old to be swept up under the new law.
--
John W. Kennedy
"The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich
have always objected to being governed at all."
-- G. K. Chesterton. "The Man Who Was Thursday"
Conrad
>
> The problem is I'm not a literary expert, and don't have any examples of
> works that might translate well from text to IF. Does anyone have any
> suggestions on what to look at, preferably texts that are available from
> Project Gutenberg?
>
> I imagine that works that have a lot of spatial descriptions or
> interaction with the environment by a main character within the story
> would lend itself well to this translation.
Anything by Shakepseare!
I was thinking of glueing Much Ado onto Henry 5 in a sci-fi context
for some kinda mongrel Frankensteinish hybrid: because I figured these
gave pretty good chances for contestation, as opposed, for example, to
Romeo and Juliette, which is necessarily on rails. Much Ado, though,
could turn tragedy under pernicious player influence and not go bad;
Henry 5 could lose Agincourt if the player character bungled the
strategy.
Never got beyond beginning to dice up the scripts. Huge project.
Conrad.
David Fisher
<Y6OdneXF-Zvg-2_V...@giganews.com>, Titus
Barik<ti...@barik.net> wrote:
>
> For the current project scope, the first chapter of Alice
> in Wonderland looks like it will work.
Would you like to just work on it yourself, or would you
be open to suggestions from the newsgroup about adapting
Alice in Wonderland as IF?
David Fisher
Adam Thornton
John W Kennedy <jwk...@attglobal.net> wrote:
>Jim Aikin wrote:
>> I'm not sure what would work well for your purposes ... but as it
>> happens, all of the Oz books are public domain,
>
>All of Baum's books, Oz and otherwise, are public domain. But many of
>the later books are not, except for a window where the copyrights were
>not renewed (due to carelessness) under the old law and were later too
>old to be swept up under the new law.
I belong to the school that believes if it ain't Baum, it ain't Oz.
Ruth Plumly Thompson? It is to regurgitate.
Adam
Titus Barik
> Would you like to just work on it yourself, or would you
> be open to suggestions from the newsgroup about adapting
> Alice in Wonderland as IF?
Hi David,
I didn't realize that this would generate any interest at all! To be
perfectly honest, I'm mainly doing this study for 'Computer Models of
Interactive Narrative', a graduate course at NC State being taught by
Dr. Michael Young. We are able to choose our own projects, of course,
and I may have chosen one that is slightly too ambitious!
Certainly, I'm open to suggestions, and I can even open source the
project after the midterm deadline (Oct 24). But currently, this is more
of a learning experience than anything else.
John W Kennedy
Then you are in a distinct minority, and should say so, to avoid
misunderstandings.
--
John W. Kennedy
"The whole modern world has divided itself into Conservatives and
Progressives. The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes.
The business of the Conservatives is to prevent the mistakes from being
corrected."
-- G. K. Chesterton
David Fisher
<rLGdnYxWQpaEOG_V...@giganews.com>, Titus
Barik<ti...@barik.net> wrote:
>
>> Would you like to just work on it yourself, or would you
>> be open to suggestions from the newsgroup about adapting
>> Alice in Wonderland as IF?
>
> project after the midterm deadline (Oct 24).
Cool ... good luck with your project!
Here is a summary of the first four chapters and some thoughts
about adapting it to IF ...
Scene 1 - bored
- Alice sitting with her sister feeling bored
- sister has a boring book
- thinking about making a daisy chain
- white rabbit runs past & says he is late
When does the rabbit appear? After an action (eg. after the
player does a few things like pick daisies or trying to read
her sister's book), a time limit (after 4 turns), or something
else?
Scene 2 - rabbit chase
- Alice chases the rabbit across the field
- rabbit disappears down a hole under the hedge
- Alice jumps into the hole
Does the game just say "Your curiosity aroused, you start
chasing the rabbit", or does the player have a choice?
If so, what if they don't chase the rabbit? (Change the story
so that the rabbit always stays just out of reach, but the
player can take their time chasing it?)
How many turns should you spend chasing the rabbit? It could
all be over in a single turn, or it could become a mini game.
Scene 3 - falling
- falling takes a long time; cupboards and bookshelves line walls
- Alice talks to herself & almost falls asleep
- lands unhurt on a pile of sticks and dry leaves
How long do you want to spend falling? One turn (ie. make it a
cut scene), or several turns (with a chance to examine the objects)?
Could try and insert a puzzle here (something the player needs to do
before landing, eg. grab a cushion to soften the landing).
Scene 4 - the long low hall
- sees rabbit disappearing downb a long passage
- chases rabbit & ends up in a long, low, lamp lit hall
- many doors, but all locked
- glass table with a golden key (doesn't fit the doors)
- finally finds a low curtain with a tiny door behind it; key fits
- can see lovely garden through the door
- goes back to table & finds a bottle (which wasn't there before)
- bottle says "drink me"
- she drinks it & shrinks to 10 inches high
Could change the geography a bit (several passages instead of
just one).
Should the player have to "search" to find the curtain?
Needing to re-examine the table to find the bottle would be an
unfair puzzle in IF!
It also wouldn't seem very fair if the cake from the next scene
doesn't exist yet. Allow the player to eat the cake before drinking
from the bottle?
Scene 5 - tiny Alice
- goes to door, but she has left the key on the table
- table legs are too slippery to climb
- finds a glass box under the table with a cake that says "eat me"
- eats it; soon grows nine feet tall
How do you (fairly) arrange for the player to have left the
key on the table? If the key is on the floor (or if the little
door is still open at this point), that changes the story ...
Either allow the story to be changed & let Alice go through
the door at this point, or find a believable reason why she can't.
Scene 6 - giant Alice
- cries a pool of tears
- rabbit returns
- Alice talks to the rabbit, who drops his gloves & fan in fear
- fans herself, which makes her grow small again
Not very obvious that using the fan would make you shrink -
unfair puzzle?
Scene 7 - the pool of tears
- falls into the pool of her own tears
- hears a mouse splashing & swims over to it
- talks to mouse
- other kinds of birds fall into pool, too
- they all swim to shore
- talks to animals
- left alone
- rabbit comes along again, looking for his fan & gloves
What prompts the rabbit to appear again?
(Time limit or event trigger?)
Scene 8 - rabbit house
- rabbit mistakes her for someone else
- tells her to fetch them & points in direction of his home
- Alice goes that way and finds the rabbit's house
- finds the fan & gloves
- also finds a bottle with no label; drinks it
- grows very big & fills house
Geography is a little unclear here; would it have been
possible for Alice to have found the rabbit's house before
now? (Secret panel in the wall?)
What if the player doesn't drink from the bottle?
Scene 9 - stuck in the house
- rabbit talks to someone else about Alice
- they end up putting pebbles down the chimney, which turn into cakes
- Alice eats a cake and shrinks again
- runs out of the house and into the wood
Need to decide how closely you want to stick to the story
again, eg. to prevent entering the wood before entering the
house, could say "Now that you are here, you are curious
about the rabbit's house. You can see all sorts of interesting
things inside."
Running into the wood is to escape from the mob outside;
what happens if the player doesn't try to escape from them?
Scene 10 - woods
- encounters a (giant) puppy
- finds a caterpillar smoking on top of a mushroom
Find the mushroom immediately, or explore a bit first?
---
Some dubious inspiration for your writing (at least it has
a mushroom with a caterpillar on it):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b5H0wUo37RY
-- "Don't come around here no more" (Tom Petty)
David Fisher
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Titus Barik
> Scene 1 - bored
>
> - Alice sitting with her sister feeling bored
> - sister has a boring book
> - thinking about making a daisy chain
> - white rabbit runs past & says he is late
>
> When does the rabbit appear? After an action (eg. after the
> player does a few things like pick daisies or trying to read
> her sister's book), a time limit (after 4 turns), or something
> else?
Hi David,
What a great summary! A lot of your thoughts are the same as mine and I
am only on scene 1 at the moment. I did a short user test and had to
already add several things. First, I had programmed in take book, but
someone decided to type steal book, so I had to add that as an
Understand directive.
Right now, I directly tied the rabbit appearance to the actions that
relate to the daisy; i.e., making a garland or examining the garland. I
like the turns idea, and I need to look into how to implement something
like that.
There's also a great research paper by Kozdras titled "Interactive
Fiction: 'new literacy' learning opportunities for children" which uses
Alice as an example and describes why it works well as IF. It is
available freely here:
Thanks!
Adam Thornton
John W Kennedy <jwk...@attglobal.net> wrote:
>Adam Thornton wrote:
>> In article <48f287a6$0$4972$607e...@cv.net>,
>> John W Kennedy <jwk...@attglobal.net> wrote:
>>> Jim Aikin wrote:
>>>> I'm not sure what would work well for your purposes ... but as it
>>>> happens, all of the Oz books are public domain,
>>> All of Baum's books, Oz and otherwise, are public domain. But many of
>>> the later books are not, except for a window where the copyrights were
>>> not renewed (due to carelessness) under the old law and were later too
>>> old to be swept up under the new law.
>> I belong to the school that believes if it ain't Baum, it ain't Oz.
>> Ruth Plumly Thompson? It is to regurgitate.
>Then you are in a distinct minority, and should say so, to avoid
>misunderstandings.
I just did.
I have no idea how Jim Aikin feels about the post-Baum Oz books.
Adam
scree...@gmail.com
If you don't mind me asking, what is your aim in taking this course?
This is a great thread.
madd...@gmail.com
I've always thought that The Mystery of the Yellow Room by Gaston
Leroux would make good IF.
http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/1685
-Aric
Titus Barik
Hello,
Well, I must admit that I originally took the course because it seemed
to be an interesting alternative to my traditional Engineering heavy
coursework. The course homepage is here:
http://liquidnarrative.csc.ncsu.edu/index.php/csc582-home
"In this course we examine the use of intelligent systems to control
interaction within virtual worlds, focusing on the computational
modeling of narrative as a primary organizing principle for that
interaction. Class format is a combination of seminar and lecture,
drawing from texts at the intersections of artificial intelligence,
cognitive psychology, multi-agent systems, computational linguistics,
user interface design, narrative and film theory and sociology."
The motivation for this topic in particular comes from the paper by
Henry Jenkins, "Game Design as Narrative Architecture", which begins
with four quotes:
"Interactivity is almost the opposite of narrative; narrative flows
under the direction of the author, while interactivity depends on the
player for motive power" --Ernest Adams (2)
"There is a direct, immediate conflict between the demands of a story
and the demands of a game. Divergence from a story's path is likely to
make for a less satisfying story; restricting a player's freedom of
action is likely to make for a less satisfying game." --Greg Costikyan (3)
"Computer games are not narratives....Rather the narrative tends to be
isolated from or even work against the computer-game-ness of the game."
--Jesper Juul (4)
"Outside academic theory people are usually excellent at making
distinctions between narrative, drama and games. If I throw a ball at
you I don't expect you to drop it and wait until it starts telling
stories."
--Markku Eskelinen (5)
My goal is to demonstrate that there exists a compromise (and the extent
of that compromise) of interactivity and narrative in the context of
this paper through Alice in Wonderland using IF against the source text.
Sincerely,
James Jolley
>
> "There is a direct, immediate conflict between the demands of a story
> and the demands of a game. Divergence from a story's path is likely to
> make for a less satisfying story; restricting a player's freedom of
> action is likely to make for a less satisfying game." --Greg Costikyan
> (3)
I'm not so sure about that. Andrew's Rematch and many of the jocular
works like "pick up the phone and dial" or it's "die" counterpart or
was that the other way around? Makes no difference, limited
interactivity make for what is an interesting idea.
--
Best
-James-
David Fisher
<sb2dnfpw-MLAFW7V...@giganews.com>, Titus
Barik<ti...@barik.net> wrote:
> The motivation for this topic in particular comes from the
> paper by Henry Jenkins, "Game Design as Narrative Architecture"
Interesting. I found a copy here:
http://web.mit.edu/cms/People/henry3/games&narrative.html
It reminded me a bit of this article ("Three problems
for interactive story tellers"):
http://www.gamasutra.com/features/designers_notebook/19991229.htm
> My goal is to demonstrate that there exists a compromise
> (and the extent of that compromise) of interactivity and
> narrative in the context of this paper through Alice in
> Wonderland using IF against the source text.
Are you thinking of allowing the player to do things in a
different order to the original story (and/or to do completely
different things)?
In a way, Alice in Wonderland seems ideal, because it is
very dream like and doesn't have to make sense -- but maybe
that makes it a bit of a biased example of adapting an
existing story to IF.
It would be a lot harder to adapt a story that depends
more on logical consequences:
The holographic image repeats the same section of the
message over and over, "Help me Obi Wan Kenobi, you're
my only hope".
You ask R2D2 to play back the entire message, and he beeps.
C3P0 translates: "He says the restraining bolt is short
circuiting the mechanism".
>s
You go back to your room, wondering what would have
happened if you had removed the restraining bolt.
>sleep
You fall into a deep sleep. The next morning, storm
troopers arrive, kill you and your family, seize the
droids and prevent the stolen Death Star plans from
reaching the rebellion. You should really have stuck
to the story line.
David Fisher
Elvwood
> The Oz books are precisely what I have in mind for my eventual
> exploration of multiple-first-person puzzles.
>
> Specifically, there's a lot of stuff in _Tik-Tok_ and _Rikitink_ that I
> think would work well. Yeah, I like Nomes. Why do you ask?
Ooh, ooh, yes please! I've had an Oz IF (or three) on my "want to do"
list for many years, and by now I'm quite sure I won't get to start
one until 2029 at the earliest. I'd be very happy to play (and
playtest) yours instead.
FWIW, I would have set mine in the time of _The Lost Princess of Oz_,
my favourite of Baum's later Oz books (at least partly because all the
annoying Deus Ex Thauma magical devices are conveniently out of play).
The usual suspects split into four teams to head off and search for
Ozma in the four countries of Oz; thereafter we only hear about
Dorothy's party in Munchkin country. I think this setup provides just
enough context to freely develop the adventures of the other three
groups...
John
Elvwood
> On Oct 11, 5:35 pm, Titus Barik <ti...@barik.net> wrote:
> > I am trying to explore the tension between interactivity vs. narrative
> > by taking short stories or excerpts from novels and 'translating' them
>
> > I imagine that works that have a lot of spatial descriptions or
> > interaction with the environment by a main character within the story
> > would lend itself well to this translation.
>
> I'm not sure what would work well for your purposes ... but as it
> happens, all of the Oz books are public domain, and the complete texts
> are available somewhere or other for download.
If you want something small, the Jack Pumpkinhead and Sawhorse story
in _Little Wizard Stories of Oz_ would convert well IMHO. If playing
as Jack, there are a couple of straightforward puzzles and an
opportunity to do something a little different when his head is
destroyed.
John
Adam Thornton
Well, don't hold your breath.
I'm currently about halfway (maybe a bit more) done with my current
WIP...and it's taken me four years to get here.
I had forgotten the setup of _Lost Princess_; that does make for an
excellent back-story, with plenty of room for development. I'd
recommend that initially the player be Shaggy (thus, you'd do the
Gillikin Country). That gives you Jack Pumpkinhead and Tik-Tok as
switchable-to characters, which gives you a bunch of puzzle suggestions
right there. There's the perennial winding-Tik-Tok puzzle, and I like
the idea of doing something along the lines of the voicemail hell in
_Zork: Grand Inquisitor_. You *can* figure out some tedious logic
puzzle the hard way, or, as Jack, you can get a newer, fresher pumpkin,
and the answer will be immediately apparent to your better brain.
Somewhere in that Infocom Hard Drive that was floating around was the
story about using the verb "MEANWHILE" to change between viewpoint
characters. I like that a *lot*.
Adam
Conrad
Long post. I'm restless and waiting on an important call.
On Oct 13, 6:58 pm, "David Fisher" <David.Fis...@efs.mq.edu.au> wrote:
> In a way, Alice in Wonderland seems ideal, because it is
> very dream like and doesn't have to make sense -- but maybe
> that makes it a bit of a biased example of adapting an
> existing story to IF.
>
> It would be a lot harder to adapt a story that depends
> more on logical consequences:
>
> The holographic image repeats the same section of the
> message over and over, "Help me Obi Wan Kenobi, you're
> my only hope".
Yeah, this is basically (so far as I can tell) where Murray was coming
from with _Hamlet on the Holodeck_. But oddly, describing _Hamlet_ as
being motivated by 'logical consequences' is problematic. You can
imagine the reviews:
(In the spirit of Chateu d'IF):
Hamlet: Prince of Denmark
written in HUGO, by William Shakespeare
> XYZZY
"What means this, my Lord?" Ophelia asks.
"Marry, this is mitching mallecho: it means mischief."
(wtf?)
Choice of Platform
--The old-fashioned Hugo platform didn't work for this game... It
needed something fresh and more lively to spice it up.
--The parser seemed to struggle with the implementation, at times
giving peculiar results:
...Who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death
[... etc]
> X FARDELS
You cannest not the while you carry them.
> DROP FARDELS
You cannest not drop the fardels.
> WHAT THE HELL IS A FARDEL?
It be not clear to me what you want to do with the fardels.
Language
--All that iambic pentameter just didn't do it for me.
--The language was beautiful! Incredibly poetic! But the author
needs to be more clear about what's happening. There were times when
I was reading the text quite carefully and I couldn't for the life of
me figure out what was going on.
Cut Scenes
--There were long, looong stretches where I was just listening to
people ramble on about stuff I didn't care about. The author needs to
slim these speeches down to three or four lines and make them more to
the point.
--The cut scenes were way too long. I would go and make myself some
crackers, come back and the characters were still talking. Sometimes
there were long cut scenes where my PC wasn't even there.
Conversation
--The conversation was strangely stilted:
> ASK POLONIUS ABOUT FARDELS
Polonius bows.
"My lord, I cannot, as it were, tell you whatsoever about the
fardels."
> POLONIUS, TAKE FARDELS
Polonius bows.
"My lord, regretfully I must humbly decline to take the fardels."
--The conversations were a problem, because I'd type one little thing
and get a series of exchanges where my character said things I didn't
really have in mind. Then, it would lock me in to a peculiarly
unhelpful set of response-choices.
For example:
>ASK POLONIUS ABOUT OPHELIA
"You have a daughter, have you not?"
Polonius bows.
"I have, my lord," the royal advisor says.
"Let her not walk i'th'sun. Conception is a blessing, but as your
daughter may conceive -- Friend, look to't."
Polonius bows.
Polonius mutters, so you can't hear him, "How say you by that? Still
harping on my daughter. Yet he knew me not at first: he said I was a
fishmonger. He is far gone, far gone. And truly in my youth I
suffered much extremity for love, very near this. I'll speak to him
again--"
Polonius bows.
"What do you read, my lord?" the royal advisor asks.
Pick one:
Words <
Words
Words
--If I can't hear him, how is the game telling me what he's saying?
The whole exchange is so problematic you don't know where to start:
I mean:
What exactly have I said to this old groover about his daughter? Was
that a slur on her character, or -- or what? And was this business
with "fishmongers" and so forth necessary, and if it was really
necessary, what am I supposed to be getting out of it?
Story
--There were lots of times when I simply didn't know what to do. The
game wouldn't allow me to kill the evil king because I didn't have
proof; then after he loses it during the MMORPG beta-testing, where
his murder of my father is simulated, I have proof but can't kill him
because he's praying. I couldn't figure out how to get him to stop
praying -- this puzzle is too hard -- and then later when I kill him
it turns out it's not him, but [SPOILER] Polonius [/SPOILER] ! It was
just so unfair!
Even after that, I can't kill him during the interrogation scene,
because Rosencrantz and Guildenstern have taken my sword away and
royal bodyguards kill me if I attack bare-handed: and then when I see
him again Laertes is always there fighting with me. I could only kill
him [SPOILER] *after every other major character was dead and I myself
was fatally poisoned* [/SPOILER] -- this ending sucks, and it's one of
these not-even-learn-by-dying deals: it isn't at all clear how to
avoid it.
-- [SPOILER] I only managed to save Horatio. [/SPOILER] This is a
really hard game.
--The sense of inevitability the author is apparently trying to go for
is tampered with by the apparently irrelevant nature of all the stuff
that keeps getting in the way.
Plot
--The cause and effect is very tangled, presumably because the author
wanted to make sure certain things happened no matter what you did.
For example: After I break up with my girlfriend (if that is indeed
what the scene was about), the evil king announces that he intends to
exile me to England -- I know this, because he steps out of hiding and
talks about it, and the game is still running the scene even though
I'm not in it.
Then, after I kill the wrong guy, I tell my Mother that I has been
decreed I'm exiled to England; then I speculate that it's because I
killed the wrong guy I'll be sent there; then during the interrogation
the evil king announces he is exiling me to England for my own safety
(but really with orders for my execution).
Now, this is buggy as all hell, and probably he [the author] just
wanted to make sure I got on the boat to England. But, on the boat to
England, there's this great bit where I'm fighting pirates and I have
to know that the solution is [SPOILER] to get captured so the pirates
can ransom me [/SPOILER]-- great puzzle design -- AND THE GAME SKIPS
ALL OF IT.
I only find out about it because I tell my best friend the story.
I mean, what? So why all the effort to get me on the boat to
England? And if those really are alternate plot lines that funnel
into the boat-trip, how do I access them?
NPCs
--The girlfriend plot needed to be more developed: there should be
some way to prevent her from [SPOILER] killing herself, either by
making it easier not to kill accidentally her father, or by evading
capture long enough to talk to her. [/SPOILER] Mistakes should be
avoidable in IF; that's what UNDO is for. If there already is a way,
it needs to be better clued.
--The author introduces this character 'Osric' almost at the end of
the game. It's not clear what he's there for: is he supposed to be
comic relief (if he's not homosexual he's flamingly metrosexual), or
did we just need a referee for the fencing match, or what? Would it
have been that difficult to give him a cameo at the game's beginning?
Player Character Development
--Other characters would talk about me doing things (like visiting my
girlfriend with my clothing all messed up) that never happened in the
game. I don't know if this is a bug, or if it's something I was
supposed to do that I never did, or a cut scene I was somehow spared,
or what, but the game made a whole big deal about it and this is why
all the other characters [SPOILER] decided I was crazy [/SPOILER].
--The technique of showing the player character's insanity by giving
him a version of reality that doesn't jibe with that of the other
characters really works. I liked it better in this game than in the
author's previous one, MacBeth, with the poorly-implemented dagger.
--The interrogation scene was particularly strange, because the evil
king keeps demanding to know where I hid the body and I DON'T KNOW
WHERE I HID THE BODY: the game skipped that part. I started to
think, maybe I'm crazy after all...
HELP
--The hint file sucks. It's all about Freud and some guy named
Bellefrost (who the author never read). There's almost nothing to
tell you about how to get to alternative endings.
mick
as you were saying and as I mentioned here or on the other list, the
mad hatter's tea party would be a concise short one to do.
Ok you can have that but lay off Edgar Allen Poe. He's mine ;-)
best
mick
mick
David Fisher
news:ceres5-...@quicksilver.fsf.net...
>
> Somewhere in that Infocom Hard Drive that was floating around was the
> story about using the verb "MEANWHILE" to change between viewpoint
> characters. I like that a *lot*.
Found the story in
http://waxy.org/2008/04/milliways_infocoms_unreleased_sequel_to_hitchhikers_guide_to_the_galax
... here is the context:
If there are multiple viewpoints, how does one change viewpoint?
Provisional answer: with the "verb" MEANWHILE.
Example: ">MEANWHILE, ON THE HEART OF GOLD. Zaphod is still trying to
persuade the computer to unlock the sauna. Ford is chatting up Trillian."
Now the story begins to sound more like traditional fiction, with an
omniscient viewpoint.
What happens to the scene that one leaves when switching to a new
viewpoint -- does it go on by itself? Answer: perhaps it doesn't matter. If
one returns to the old scene to find that time has passed, one can use time
travel to return to the scene as it was left.
David Fisher
Adam Thornton
Conrad <conra...@gmail.com> wrote:
>Hamlet: Prince of Denmark
>written in HUGO, by William Shakespeare
Bravo! Bravo!
The rest is silence.
Adam
Peter Pears
Beautiful read, hilarious, and you've made your point brilliantly...
but I simply can't not point out that Hamlet isn't a literary text,
rather a dramatic text - meant to be seen when acted, or heard out
loud, not read. The way your faux reviewer misunderstood the asides is
a good example of why, in a rather pedantical sense, it's not quite
the same thing even in the context of this discussion.
Conrad
> Beautiful read, hilarious, and you've made your point brilliantly...
> but I simply can't not point out that Hamlet isn't a literary text,
> rather a dramatic text - meant to be seen when acted, or heard out
> loud, not read. The way your faux reviewer misunderstood the asides is
> a good example of why, in a rather pedantical sense, it's not quite
> the same thing even in the context of this discussion.
Glad you and Adam enjoyed it; and it's a good point, Peter: when
people complain to me about Shakespearean language, I make almost the
same point to them: He didn't write novels. To study the plays, read
them; but to experience them, watch them.
All the world's a game,
And all the men and women merely players:
They have their saves and their restores;
And one man in his time plays many PCs...
Conrad.
brennanyoung
We might bring up Roland Barthes' distinction between horizontal
narrative (i.e. plot) and vertical narrative (i.e. connotative window
dressing). It's much easier for IF authors to mess around with the
vertical narrative stuff, because the plot needn't change. The
(graphical) interactive fiction "Ceremony of Innocence" uses this
technique to great effect. The plot is entirely fixed, but it has an
epic structure - each episode is represented by a letter or a postcard
with clickable puzzle-like elements - but the user may spend a long
time on each episode before proceeding to the next. I strongly urge IF
authors to check out "Ceremony of Innocence" - not least because it is
that very rare thing: A decent multimedia CDROM from the mid 1990s
from a company other than Voyager.
One of the most promising sources for interactive fiction must be oral
traditions, including low cultural forms like gossip and high cultural
forms like classical mythology. Well, classical mythology was
certainly 'of the people' in the first place, and the high/low
distinction has come about since the renaissance.
Example: The epic story of Hercules is composed of various distinct
episodes. ("12 tasks" in its most compact form). You may begin the
story at any task, and can even skip episodes, because each episode is
somewhat self-contained. There may be some details which refer to
earlier episodes. (He got his lionskin and club from SOMEWHERE, but
that's not important right now). Hercules also appears in another
great epic - the story of the golden fleece. (Hercules is one of the
Argonauts). Again, it does not matter at all whether we read
Argonautica first (or hear the legends from a storyteller in the Agora
of Classical Athens). Our brains can join up the dots in the right
order. Three of DuMaurier's "Ripley" books have been made into films,
each by a different production company. Book three was made before
book two. It doesn't matter, but if you watch all three films (or read
all the books), you get a better understanding of the Ripley
character. StarWars Episode 4 is the 'first' film. It doesn't matter.
Other examples abound. Sherlock Holmes... Star Trek... James Bond etc.
Tarantino's PulpFiction or Dostoevsky's Notes from the Underground
offer yet another alternative. (Present the episodes in the 'wrong'
order, so that unknown plot details offer the potential for more keen
satisfaction - hunger is the best spice).
If we get away from the idea that if someone dies, they shouldn't
appear 'later' in the fiction (except as a ghost) then we approach
what Freud called 'primary process' - a fictional world which
transcends space and time (it is 'tenseless'). In a dream, your
brother becomes your friend, and you don't even notice it happening.
This is why Alice is such an inspiration for IF authors: The bookshop
becomes a lake, the baby becomes a pig. This is not a lot different
from 'the helper becomes a saboteur' - a very common plot twist in
linear fiction.
Really I think this a matter of coarse-grain and fine-grain flow. The
sequence Get jug/Break jug/Fill jug should be meaningless (or at least
surreal). Whereas scenes could be chained together in almost any order.