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The Craft of the Adventure
The Craft of the Adventure Five articles on the design of adventure games Second edition 1 Intro duction :: ::: :::: ::: :::: :::: ::: :::: ::: :::: :::: ::: :::: ::: :::: ::2 2 In The Beginning ::: :::: ::: :::: :::: ::: :::: ::: :::: :::: ::: :::: ::: ::: 3 3 Bill of Player's Rights : ::: :::: ::: :::: :::: ::: :::: ::: :::: :::: ::: :::: :7 4 A Narrative... ::: ::: :::: ::: :::: :::: ::: :::: ::: :::: :::: ::: :::: ::: :: 12 5 ...AtWar With a Crossword : : :::: ::: :::: :::: ::: :::: ::: :::: :::: :: 21 6 Varnish and Veneer : ::: :::: :::: ::: :::: ::: :::: :::: ::: :::: ::: :::: ::32 1 1 Intro duction 1 Intro duction Skill without imagination is craftsmanship and gives us many useful ob jects such as wickerwork picnic baskets. Imagination without skill gives us mo dern art. {Tom Stoppard, Artist Descending A Staircase Making b o oks is a skilled trade, like making clo cks. { Jean de la Bruy ere 1645-1696 If you're going to have a complicated story you must work to a map; otherwise you'll never make a map of it afterwards. {J.R.R.Tolkien 1892-1973 Designing an adventure game is b oth an art and a craft. Whereas art cannot be taught, only commented up on, craft at least can be handed down: but the tricks of the trade do not make an elegant narrative, only a catalogue. This small collection of essays is just such a string of grits of wisdom and half-baked critical opinions, whichmaywell leave the reader feeling unsatis ed. One can only say to such a reader that any book claiming to reveal the secret of how to paint, or to write novels, should be recycled at once into something more genuinely artistic, say a papier-mach e sculpture. If there is any theme here, it is that standards count: not just of comp etent co ding, but of writing. -
DESIGN-DRIVEN APPROACHES TOWARD MORE EXPRESSIVE STORYGAMES a Dissertation Submitted in Partial Satisfaction of the Requirements for the Degree Of
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA SANTA CRUZ CHANGEFUL TALES: DESIGN-DRIVEN APPROACHES TOWARD MORE EXPRESSIVE STORYGAMES A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in COMPUTER SCIENCE by Aaron A. Reed June 2017 The Dissertation of Aaron A. Reed is approved: Noah Wardrip-Fruin, Chair Michael Mateas Michael Chemers Dean Tyrus Miller Vice Provost and Dean of Graduate Studies Copyright c by Aaron A. Reed 2017 Table of Contents List of Figures viii List of Tables xii Abstract xiii Acknowledgments xv Introduction 1 1 Framework 15 1.1 Vocabulary . 15 1.1.1 Foundational terms . 15 1.1.2 Storygames . 18 1.1.2.1 Adventure as prototypical storygame . 19 1.1.2.2 What Isn't a Storygame? . 21 1.1.3 Expressive Input . 24 1.1.4 Why Fiction? . 27 1.2 A Framework for Storygame Discussion . 30 1.2.1 The Slipperiness of Genre . 30 1.2.2 Inputs, Events, and Actions . 31 1.2.3 Mechanics and Dynamics . 32 1.2.4 Operational Logics . 33 1.2.5 Narrative Mechanics . 34 1.2.6 Narrative Logics . 36 1.2.7 The Choice Graph: A Standard Narrative Logic . 38 2 The Adventure Game: An Existing Storygame Mode 44 2.1 Definition . 46 2.2 Eureka Stories . 56 2.3 The Adventure Triangle and its Flaws . 60 2.3.1 Instability . 65 iii 2.4 Blue Lacuna ................................. 66 2.5 Three Design Solutions . 69 2.5.1 The Witness ............................. 70 2.5.2 Firewatch ............................... 78 2.5.3 Her Story ............................... 86 2.6 A Technological Fix? . -
Manuals Are Best Used As Confetti at Sporting Events, You Should Tasset Still Read the Sections with Names in Bold for Valuable Information About This Game
What Is A LEGEND Adventure Game? In an adventure game from Legend, you become the main character in an evolv ing story that takes place in a world populated with interesting people, places, and things. You see this world through you r main character's eyes, and you play the game by directing his actions. Like a book or a movie, the story unfolds as you travel from location to location, encountering situations which require action on your part. You can think of each of these situations as a puzzle. The key to solving these puzzles will often be creative thinking and clever use of objects you have picked up in your travels. You will get points as you solve puzzles, and your score will help you monitor your progress. Throughout the game the richly textured graphics, prose, sound effects and music will draw you into a spellbinding adventure that could only be brought to you by the master storytellers of Legend Entertainment Company. Legend Entertainment Company 14200 Park Meadow Drive Chantilly, Virginia 22021 703-222-8500 U.S. Customer Support: 1-800-658-8891, 9:00 a.m. - 5:00 p.m. EDT/EST European Customer Support: 081-877-0880 FAX: 703-968-5151 CompuServe E-Mail 76226,2356 24-Hour Hint Line: 1-900-PRO-KLUE (1-900-776-5583) $.75 For the first minute, $.50 for each minute thereafter Hint books are available - call 1-800-658-8891 to order ·. Giovanni's House of Armour "Famous for custom fit" Table Of Contents Name~------~---r Fitting Date_£---?'~------ Introduction..................................................................................................... -
Ebook Download a Mind Forever Voyaging
A MIND FOREVER VOYAGING : A HISTORY OF STORYTELLING IN VIDEO GAMES PDF, EPUB, EBOOK Dylan Holmes | 248 pages | 07 Nov 2012 | Createspace Independent Publishing Platform | 9781480005754 | English | [S.l A Mind Forever Voyaging : A History of Storytelling in Video Games PDF Book Delivered from our UK warehouse in 4 to 14 business days. Since the inception of video games, their depictions of violence, sexuality and other explicit themes have made them a lighting rod of controversy. Good video games and good learning: Collected essays on video games, learning and literacy 2nd ed. Can a Computer Make You Cry? International Journal of Research in Education and Science , 3 2 , Critical analysis, historical perspective, and a gently opinionated personal touch make A Mind Forever Voyaging an enlightening read that captures the best that video games have to offer. Rogers, R. The thought was that while this game might have a liberal slant, future games might have a conservative slant, or be educational, or whatever else — the sky was the limit. Course Schedule subject to change Please be sure to complete readings before that class day. Hugos, M. Hwa, S. Good video games and good learning: Collected essays on video games, learning and literacy 2nd ed. Owen, P. Average rating 3. Alternative gaming blogger Dylan Holmes focuses on games that tell stories in innovative and fasci From amazon. View all copies of this ISBN edition:. John Harney. Throw in the four contract-fulfilling Zork gamebooks he cranked out betwixt and between the computer games, plus all the help he gave to others with their designs, plus the way he just kept everyone insanely sane during all of the trials of the Cornerstone era with his parties and games and antics… yeah, Meretzky deserved carte blanche to make his next game exactly what he wanted it to be. -
Superhero League of Hoboken
Special "Orbs ft Stuff" lssuc Not sold in Hoboken Superhero League of Hoboken rom the incorrigibly twisted he plants to make the Jersey City what Meretzky will do with the idea. mind of madcap Steve Meretzky; Marketplace uninhabitable. A com Instead of facing Dragons and Super Hero League of Hoboken puter named Matilda lisFs several Wizards in combat, you'll fight F missions Albino marks his first foray into the realm of role-playing. This hybrid combines thatimust Winos, elements of the animated adventure be fulfilled Lawyers system used in such games as in various and Tricky Meretzky's Sorcerer's University with parts of Dick RPG-style combat sequences, which America's mutants. In also makes it a first for Legend north east one battle, Entertainment. ern sector. a lawyer Taking place 200 years in the After you issued an future, Hoboken is set in a world finish all injunction populated by mutants. Radiation, the level against toxic waste and a plethora of 0.]. one mis Tropical Simpson jokes have plunged the s10ns, a Oil Man world in a new Dark Age, and it's up new set of who retali to you to save America. As the harder ones miiiiliiltiil~;;;: ated by Crimson Tape, you lead the Hoboken are posted. 1ssumg a chapter of the Super Hero League - The slick "point and quest" inter stream of saliva at the lawyer. The and appropriately so, for your prima face of previous Legend games is even lawyer's dying words were: "I think ry superpower is the ability to Create slicker in this incarnation. -
THE ART of Puzzle Game Design
THE ART OF Puzzle Design Scott Kim & Alexey Pajitnov with Bob Bates, Gary Rosenzweig, Michael Wyman March 8, 2000 Game Developers Conference These are presentation slides from an all-day tutorial given at the 2000 Game Developers Conference in San Jose, California (www.gdconf.com). After the conference, the slides will be available at www.scottkim.com. Puzzles Part of many games. Adventure, education, action, web But how do you create them? Puzzles are an important part of many computer games. Cartridge-based action puzzle gamse, CD-ROM puzzle anthologies, adventure game, and educational game all need good puzzles. Good News / Bad News Mental challenge Marketable? Nonviolent Dramatic? Easy to program Hard to invent? Growing market Small market? The good news is that puzzles appeal widely to both males and females of all ages. Although the market is small, it is rapidly expanding, as computers become a mass market commodity and the internet shifts computer games toward familiar, quick, easy-to-learn games. Outline MORNING AFTERNOON What is a puzzle? Guest Speakers Examples Exercise Case studies Question & Design process Answer We’ll start by discussing genres of puzzle games. We’ll study some classic puzzle games, and current projects. We’ll cover the eight steps of the puzzle design process. We’ll hear from guest speakers. Finally we’ll do hands-on projects, with time for question and answer. What is a Puzzle? Five ways of defining puzzle games First, let’s map out the basic genres of puzzle games. Scott Kim 1. Definition of “Puzzle” A puzzle is fun and has a right answer. -
The New Zork Times by Brief but Savage Downpour
® “All the Gnus Weather: Thic fog, followed That Fit, We Print” The New Zork Times by brief but savage downpour. VOL. 4. .No. 2 —SUMMER 1985— INTERFERON EDITION New Release: A Mind Forever Voyaging A Mind Forever Voyaging, the first were to be introduced. While you're advanced-level Science Fiction story busy exploring the future, the scien- from Infocom, is for true text- tists and programmers who created adventure buffs. Why? Because it you are honing and perfecting the has more locations to visit (several simulation's parameters. Thus, as the hundred), more things to do, more story progresses, you can travel responses, and a large vocabulary further and further in time, watching (1800+ words) than any of our previ- Rockvil prosper as the Plan ously released products. succeeds, or perish as it fails. Only The story takes place in 21st- you can tell on what course the century Rockvil, South Dakota. The country sets itself by adopting the United States of North America has Plan. fallen prey to incredibly high unem- While there are several puzzles to ployment and crime rates. Political keep players on their toes, designer indiffererence, perhaps caused by Steve Meretzky (author of Planetfall backward educational systems or and Sorcerer, and co-author of The diminishing national resources, has Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy) Items from Dr. Perleman’s desk are contained in every A Mind Forever swept the nation. Exploiting this op- concentrated more on immersing the Voyaging package. portunity, Senator Richard Ryder has player in a vast, highly detailed, develop (sic) the Plan for a Renewed realistic world; a vision of the National Purpose, stressing patriot- destiny of mankind. -
14. Riddle Machines: the History and Nature of Interactive Fiction
Nick Montfort Riddle Machines: The History and Nature of Interactive Fiction 14. Riddle Machines: The History and Nature of Interactive Fiction Nick Montfort Introduction The genre that has also been labeled "text adventure" and "text game" is stereotypically thought to offer dungeons, dragons, and the ability for readers to choose their own adventure. While there may be dragons here, interactive fiction (abbreviated "IF") also offers utopias, revenge plays, horrors, parables, intrigues, and codework, and pieces in this form resound with and rework Gilgamesh, Shakespeare, and Eliot as well as Tolkien. The reader types in phrases to participate in a dialogue with the system, commanding a character with writing. Beneath this surface conversation, and determining what the computer narrates, there is the machinery of a simulated world, capable of drawing the reader into imagining new perspectives and understanding strange systems. Interactive fiction works can be challenging for literary readers, even those interested in other sorts of electronic literature, because of the text-based interface and because of the way in which these works require detailed exploration, mapping, and solution. Works in this form are often less visually rewarding, and the rewards they do offer are only attained with time and effort. But text-based interactive fiction has provided some of the most the intricate and compelling literary simulations yet developed. Understanding how interactive fiction works, and how it has developed over the past three decades, is an essential part of the puzzle of literary computing. Characteristics of interactive fiction Formally, a work of interactive fiction (often called a "game," even if it does not exhibit the typical qualities of a game) is an interactive computer program. -
The Post Infocom Text Adventure Collection
The Post Infocom Text Adventure Collection Many of us played and loved the text adventures produced by Infocom in the 1980’s. They were rich in story and puzzles, and contained some excellent writing. In the years since Infocom’s demise in 1989, there have been a lot of good games produced using the Z-Machine - the game format that Infocom was using. This gives us a chance to make these modern-day games run on the computers of the 80’s, like the Commodore 64. I decided to create a collection of Z-machine games for the C64, and this is it. All in all, it’s 31 games, released in 1993-2015. Each game has been put into its own directory, in which is also an empty disk for game saves and a file called AUTOSWAP.LST to make life easier for people using the SD2IEC diskdrive substitute. If you haven’t played text adventures before, or feel that you never got the hang of it, you should read the chapter How to play a text adventure. If you want more of a background on Infocom and the game format they used, you should read the chapter about The Zork Machine at the end of this document. There is also a chapter about the process of porting Z-machine games to the C64 and, finally, a chapter about writing your own games. I created this documentation as a PDF, so that you could easily print it out and keep it nearby if you’re enjoying the collection on a real C64. -
Download Twisty Little Passages: an Approach to Interactive Fiction
TWISTY LITTLE PASSAGES: AN APPROACH TO INTERACTIVE FICTION DOWNLOAD FREE BOOK Nick Montfort | 302 pages | 01 Apr 2005 | MIT Press Ltd | 9780262633185 | English | Cambridge, Mass., United States Slashdot Top Deals I got about a quarter of the way into this and had to stop. In Montfort's words, Infocomwhich was founded June 22, by Lebling, Blank, Anderson, and seven other MIT alumni, "began work on the foundation of IF while the plot of ground that it was to be built upon had not been completely surveyed. Slashdot Apparel is back! Genre fiction is a type of literature, and trying to actually seperate one from the other is a fool's errand. I think what you may be getting at is the fact that writing a compelling IF world is literally NP hard. Hitchhiker's Guide project, which began in February and was slated ambitiously to be completed by the following Christmas. Friend Reviews. Instead, what this book really is is a very comprehensive history of the form. There's really not that much meat there; Montfort goes into a detailed history and categorization of riddles that isn't all that relevant to IF. Played them, loved them, but goddam that transparent crystal 3D mze was a killer. Nick Montfort. Montfort then discusses Adventure Twisty Little Passages: An Approach to Interactive Fiction its precursors including the I Ching and Dungeons and Dragonsand follows this with an examination of mainframe text games developed in response, focusing on the most influential work of that era, Zork. The reviewer's memory of Monty Python's a little weak. -
Search-Based Drama Management in the Interactive Fiction Anchorhead∗
Search-Based Drama Management in the Interactive Fiction Anchorhead∗ Mark J. Nelson and Michael Mateas College of Computing Georgia Institute of Technology Atlanta, Georgia, USA fmnelson, [email protected] Abstract towards a story that maximizes the evaluation function, tak- ing into account any effect on evaluation the DM actions Drama managers guide a user through a story experience by themselves may have. DM actions might include things such modifying the experience in reaction to the user’s actions. as causing a non-player character to bring up a particular Search-based drama management (SBDM) casts the drama- management problem as a search problem: Given a set of conversation topic, causing certain parts of the world to be- plot points, a set of actions the drama manager can take, and come inaccessible, or leaving items where they’re likely to an evaluation of story quality, search can be used to optimize be found by the player. Search over possible choices of DM the user’s experience. SBDM was first investigated by Peter actions and the possible resultant sequences of plot points Weyhrauch in 1997, but little explored since. We return to (subject to a model of what the user is likely to do) is run at SBDM to investigate algorithmic and authorship issues, in- each step to choose the DM action that maximizes expected cluding the extension of SBDM to different kinds of stories, plot quality. This all takes place in an abstract model, con- especially stories with subplots and multiple endings, and is- nected to the real game by passing messages back and forth, sues of scalability. -
Aeternum: the Journal of Contemporary Gothic Studies Volume 6, Issue 2 © December 2019
Aeternum: The Journal of Contemporary Gothic Studies Volume 6, Issue 2 © December 2019 Aeternum: The Journal of Contemporary Gothic Studies Volume 6, Issue 2 Editorial ii-iv Gothic Games GWYNETH PEATY Articles 1-15 Bending Memory: Gothicising nostalgia in Bendy and the Ink Machine KATHARINE HAWKINS 16-30 Homecomings: The haunted house in two interactive horror narratives ERIKA KVISTAD 31-48 Playing with Call of Cthulhu: The Official Video Game: A transmedial Gothic experience HILARY WHEATON 49-60 Beyond the Walls of Bloodborne: Gothic tropes and Lovecraftian games VITOR CASTELOES GAMA and MARCELO VELLOSO GARCIA Book Reviews 61-63 Twenty-First-Century Gothic: An Edinburgh Companion. Maisha Wester and Xavier Aldana Reyes. (2019) 64-65 New Music for Old Rituals. Tracy Fahey. (2018) i Aeternum: The Journal of Contemporary Gothic Studies Volume 6, Issue 2 © December 2019 EDITORIAL GWYNETH PEATY Curtin University Gothic Games Video games have called upon the Gothic since the earliest years of digital gaming. This is most obvious in games that remediate classic literature. From the text-based adventure Dracula (CRL 1986) and the dubious side-scrolling action of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (Bandai 1988), to more recent examples such as Brink of Consciousness: Dorian Gray Syndrome (MagicIndie 2012) and The Wanderer: Frankenstein's Creature (La Belle Games 2019), video game creators have consistently adopted and adapted Gothic characters, tropes, and narratives. In some cases the works of a specific author have been used as the foundation of a game space, as in The Dark Eye (Inscape 1995), a point-and-click game based on the writings of Edgar Allan Poe.