2007 ended with a flurry of activity, with the French IF-Comp launching and two new games. (The Text the Halls contest also hasn’t closed yet.)
2007 was quite a year for theory: we saw two new IF dissertations and new blogs. While I don’t see any more dissertations coming down the pipeline, I’m hoping more pieces like Dennis Jerz’s brilliant article on Adventure surface in journals.
For the coming year, Textfyre should be coming out with their first game. While there is understandable trepidation at commercial interests, I find the possibility of there once again being professional IF writers too thrilling to ignore.
It’s much harder to predict freeware releases, but based on commentary in various Internet forums I predict this year we’ll see more new authors brought in the fold by Inform 7.
Also, the trend of more non-English IF will undoubtedly continue. I’m hopeful translations will also start to appear for the best works.
Out of sheer wishful thinking I will also predict a major tutorial for TADS 3 will come out, giving it a major boost. I also predict (once again based on nothing at all but hope) that a major multimedia Hugo game like Future Boy! will come out and hit outlets like Adventure Gamers.
I’m hoping more “mainstream” outlets like Play This Thing!, TIGSource and JayIsGames continue to support IF (although it seems from the JayIsGames awards list this year they didn’t have much exposure outside of the Lovecraft Project and IF Comp).
Personal goals:
- Finish this thing. Nudges from the peanut gallery may help.
- I will resume posts on Nick’s thesis, and I have general theory posts of my own to make (“Hotel Dusk: player as conscience” and “Mutual exclusivity in puzzles” are in my draft queue).
- At some point this year I may run a 4th Interactive Fiction Excerpt Hunt.
- I should brush off my old paper for that Theory Book; my paper is now likely hopelessly outdated and it lacked a proper conclusion anyway.
Let me slip in something extra and say I have something new coming out on the 10th of January.
TIGSource is running an IF contest called “Text the Halls”. The entries are now gathered together in a voting topic. There are 4 Inform games, 1 TADS game, 2 ALAN games, 1 Windows-only game, and 2 ‘online’ games (basically choose-your-own-adventure style).
Voting will last “a week” (so it closes January 3rd).
Otherwise known as the author of Deadline Enchanter. The link was posted on rec.arts.int-fiction but I figured some people might miss the post:
Notes on Deadline Enchanter
There’s a thread on Asian-language IF on rec.arts.int-fiction. I wanted to mention the first (and so far only) original Asian-language IF I’ve ever heard of: Asteka, which is in Japanese.
(The non-original one I’m thinking of is Japanese version of Zork I.)
One game existing does suggest that there were others. I don’t know enough Japanese to do any research.
So the people have spoken and I am working on project #2. Just to keep myself from getting too stalled, I will shame myself with my own personal progress bar. Feel free to taunt me if the bar stays stuck at one place for too long.
Alpha version (playable to the end with a walkthrough, my goal by the end of the year) is roughly at 50%.
Command Lines: Aesthetics and Technique in Interactive Fiction and New Media
The PDF weighs in at 418 pages.
The range of the dissertation includes media other than textual IF; Figure 1 is of Shadow of the Colossus.
I’ve been playing Worlds Apart by Suzanne Britton (I’ll write a full review when I’m done) but I wanted to mention one issue now: there’s a lot of waiting.
The waiting is of three types. The first is in conversation. The conversation is somewhat cutscene-based. There are things your characters will say you have no control over, and this is spread out over multiple turns so that 5 turns later the game will run the next part of the script. However, you can also ASK things about specific topics in-between. This is a reasonable format in short bursts; it keeps the reams of text from getting too ungainly, and provides a moderate illusion of interaction. It also allows time to examine the things in the environment. The problem in Worlds Apart is the wait period is too long; the cutscenes are sometimes spread out over more turns than any topic-asking or world-searching will take, so part of the interaction involves typing Z until the next portion of the conversation comes up.
The second kind of waiting is worse: waiting for puzzles. The first puzzle where this happens isn’t too bad (you’re waiting for a character to finish what they are doing and end up in a certain position) but there are later instances where you can’t solve a puzzle in the first turn and have to wait X number of turns later when an event to trigger. This ought not to bother me so much — it ensures the player has a certain amount of struggle with the problem in question, so the solution gives the sense of overcoming an obstacle — yet I’m starting to get irritated.
The third is holistic: certain things will only show up and one particular obstacle can only be overcome after you’ve made progress in the story. This is perfectly natural — events in a story can have a chronology — but in Worlds Apart the progress from one event to the next seems arbitrary.
Am I being unfair? When is forcing the player to wait a reasonable thing?
There were three specific points I got stuck playing Lost Pig. They were all essentially my fault, but I thought it might be instructive to mention them.
I give complete spoilers for several puzzles, so don’t read these unless you’ve finished the game.
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I’ve got two major projects in progress: Madrigals of Love and War, and another secret one.
However, those still need a lot of work I’d like to push to finish something. I have three shorter works in progress hanging around. All of them are of a science fiction flavor. I’d like to have at least an alpha (playable to the end on a walkthrough) version done by the end of the year. Which one should I work on?
(Vote in the comments, and give a reason. I won’t necessarily be going by a plurality here.)
- #1 Working title of “Theme Park”: Two beings of the deific-power sort are attempting to meddle with the time stream by averting a tragedy. You don’t play the deities, you play the one being meddled with. The opening is a touch misleading and might get changed, but I’ll quote it anyway:
Ah, a day at the park! The Fourth Open Symposium On Genetics has been more grueling than expected, so you’ve skipped a day to relive your childhood. You storm the gates of MedievalLand right at opening, and make it to the The Loop Ourborus before a line begins to form. A car all to yourself — what bliss!
- #2 No working title: I suppose this one could be best considered a cross between Little Blue Men, Bad Machine, and The U.S. Men’s Hockey Team Olympic Challenge.
So, those fellows at R3694 think they’re better than you? Floating eye units get no respect. Look at the retractable arm — look! — see, it can hold things and move things and fix things, how about a station on the Galactic Border where the war is going on? — but no, their wonderfully infallible artificial intelligence is sending you down from “abandoned space station” duty to “completely lifeless mining asteroid” duty. They’re going to refit this place into a zero-g handball court, hm? Perhaps a little mischief before you depart is in order.
- #3 Working title: Beautiful Things. The main character’s brother just died. It’s time to retrieve the family album from his basement. The prose is a bit less straightforward on this one.
Pity on your brother. Good chap in soul, but got all gummin in the drink and what can you do. Cops weren’t sure how he fell like he did, ragdoll body on the pavement, but autopsy and testimony tracked down “astronomical” amounts of the sour clear stuff like it was his blood of life.
Sure, he didn’t like you, but he didn’t like anybody. All the rage. Called his mum (different from yours) a “swine-swilling-hag-bag”.
Clearing out the house all’s left. There’s a family album in the basement. Step sprightly. What have you but the jamb jars loose and the door skittles shut and you’re all locked in. Should be a key in the toolbox. No worries.
Well, this review *was* up. I’m not sure what happened to erase it.
Anyhow, last review!
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