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Text of the page (random words):
o wanted to deal with knowledge and let the player express particular ideas or ask particular questions handling player knowledge is always a significant challenge in interactive narrative while you can track what the player has seen during gameplay you can t track what they remember and you definitely don t know what they ve concluded on their own so if the aim is to present the player with the ability to articulate the state of the world as they actually understand it you first have to find out what the player does understand which isn t always easy many mystery games just dodge this problem completely and use straight adventure game mechanics solve this string of puzzles and you ll find the necessary evidence these might be using other genre trappings of a mystery but they re not really asking the player to deduce the solution other mystery games ask the player to demonstrate they understand the mystery s logic but still only in reactive circumstances like presenting counter evidence when a witness lies in phoenix wright or noting when an npc has said inconsistent things in contradiction for mask we wanted to enable an active process one where the player forms hypotheses investigates their ideas and refines what they think based on new information to let the player express their hypotheses we put together an interface where the player has a sort of red strings murder board without the actual red strings this is essentially a crafting system and one in which the player can craft both questions about the mystery and their own finished explanations for what really happened once they ve formed a hypothesis it opens up options in dialogue though it may still not always be wise to say what s on your mind the storycrafting system is best shown off with some screenshots these shots are not completely spoilery but if you want to play mask of the rose fresh you may want to stop here and in that case you may like to know the game is currently on sale on steam for those open to mild spoilers here s a bit more detail the screenshots and description talk about the very latest release of mask iterating on player feedback on some things they found confusing at launch so if you ve played and these look a little different that ll be why onward continue reading dialogue expressiveness in mask of the rose author emshortif posted on november 22 2023 categories interactive fiction tags conversation crafting knowledge mask of the rose 7 comments on dialogue expressiveness in mask of the rose end of august links events september 1 the yearly if comp is now accepting submissions for this fall if you intend to enter you should indicate that by september 1 so tomorrow though i imagine most people who are planning to enter will already have sent in their intent sept 2 the san francisco bay area if meetup gets together in person introcomp the very long running competition for just the beginnings of interactive fiction games is currently running entries are available to play and votes are due september 8 sept 17 the seattle if meetup is getting together to play and discuss my multiplayer if game aspel because the game is hard to play without fellow players this may be an unusual opportunity to check it out if you ve not been able to november 4 5 the convention adventurex is running in london it s friendly to many types of narrative game elite status platinum concierge long ago i started a game for choice of games then titled platinum package when i started it it was a lighthearted slightly satirical piece about the world of luxury services and interactions with the wealthy writing it during the period of 2015 2019 though i found that my own attitudes about wealth shifted to be significantly more critical and i found myself writing more and more about the challenges of human connection in a world where resources and opportunities are so unequally distributed it was always a part time project running alongside whatever other work i was doing and my day jobs were becoming ever more demanding at a certain point i realised that i was not sure when if ever i would have enough time to work on it further and that my thematic concerns were pulling it further from being the lighthearted game i originally pitched to cog i discussed the issue with them and they kindly offered an option i hadn t considered to involve another experienced cog author to finish the game off and bring certain aspects of it back in line with the brand to do that they brought in hannah powell smith who has written a number of well received cog games of their own they did a lovely job of revising the project and i m grateful to hannah and to cog for rescuing it elite status is now available to play players have noted that it s a bit different from the typical choice of games piece it s not a power fantasy and while there are romance elements that is a relatively light aspect of the story also several npcs have their own preferences and will not be open to dating all possible player characters elite status also does something a bit experimental structurally after chapter 6 the game branches widely and doesn t come back together until the epilogue sequences and it chooses its final crisis on the basis of the player s engagement with particular characters and themes when i was first planning the game eons ago choice of robots was one of cog s best regarded pieces and it branches very widely at that stage too but not for the same reasons i believe the most difficult of these later game sequences to reach but also perhaps my favourite from a writing perspective involves having a strong relationship with your colleague felix felicity and finding out more of what has happened in their life if you happen to be hunting for that outcome yourself try cultivating their friendship skewing populist and practical but not strong on brand awareness or reputation choosing a character motivation focused on your own family or financial insecurity and not being too close to mj or ax other recent or semi recent releases long time if author stephen granade also recently ish released a choice of games project professor of magical studies you are a practitioner of pattern magic an arcane art that allows you to reshape the very nature of reality with an extra advantage thanks to your synesthesia which enables you to see patterns more clearly with a few strokes of a pen on paper you can draw magical energy from the space between universes to do everything from levitating objects to preserving memories that you can walk through later to creating pocket dimensions you ve just been hired for your first faculty position at winfield phillips the seemingly normal new england college that happens to have a secret magic department it s a great first job or would be except for darcy bozeman your former school friend used magic to cheat you out of a coveted fellowship almost derailing your academic career before it began now darcy s a fellow professor at winfield phillips and is still working to undermine you i ve not yet had a chance to try it out but player responses rave about the cool magic system and fun romance developments fans of the marino family s mrs wobbles series may like to know that there s a new story available and a new format for reading it as well called unboxing it s available as an epub if you re not familiar with them this guest review by lucian smith offers a better thematic introduction than i could they are interactive stories of fostering and adoption told by a family who knows that experience from the inside already available on mobile devices and coming soon to steam escape from norwood is a text game with active npcs who will carry on acting when you re not doing anything as well as supporting maps and illustrations the game s tagline bills it as the depth of a classic text adventure with a modern ui and the steam release also supports screen readers parsercomp is a competition for parser text adventure games specifically it ran through the beginning of august this year it s too late to vote if you missed that but if you d like to check out the results and try some parser based games they can be found on itch io meanwhile the single choice jam collected games where there was only one meaningful choice presented to the player an intriguing formal exercise and not a new work but an old one consider the consequences thought to be the first choose your own adventure style book ever published is now archived online articles and reviews the rosebush is a web based magazine for interviews and articles about interactive fiction it is fairly new but already features an interview with author autumn chen an article on gender in the 1990s text adventure christminster and a piece by mike russo on games that use a limited verb set whether that s implemented as a limited verb parser game or as a choice based game with unusually systemic underpinnings back in 2016 i wrote an article for if only about limited verb parser games it s fun to see what s become of that genre since tools dendry is one of the cooler tools out there for people interested in storylet interactive fiction it draws heavily on the design of varytale but is open source and available to install locally it s dendry that allowed several of us with thanks to ian millington and autumn chen to get my older game bee working again it has however been somewhat challenging for people to get up and running on their own because instead of being a tool available on a webpage it expects a command line user comfortable with installing code from github the good news there is now a new tutorial that walks a new user through the process and teaches a first few beats of design with the tool meanwhile if you d rather try some storylet work with a more familiar and widely supported language ian thomas has also released an ink unity framework for storylets fundraising the colossal fund raises money every year partly to fund prizes for if competition winners and partly to pay for the activities of the if technology foundation if you d like to contribute you can do so here author emshortif posted on august 31 2023 august 31 2023 categories interactive fiction 6 comments on end of august links status i ve been unusually quiet lately and not even following my usual link assortment schedule apologies for that especially to people who ve sent me interesting links lately i do mean to resume in time but have needed to set even this aside for a little while the end of last year was rough i lost a couple of people close to me one of them very unexpectedly and much too young and work wise i ve been deep in finishing mask of the rose however i will be speaking at gdc in person this time and i expect to be more present here again once mask launches author emshortif posted on march 3 2023 categories interactive fiction 4 comments on status end of october link assortment events if comp is still running now through november 15 there are lots of games to play you need only vote on five to participate as a judge in the competition though you re very welcome to vote on more than five of course and as if the bounty of if comp were not enough october also always sees ectocomp for spooky halloween games it s run as a jam on itch io games are available from oct 31 ectocomp invites games in english french and spanish tomorrow november 1 the oxford london if meetup is playing through some of those comp games together online november 12 is the next meeting of the sf bay area if group december 1 is the opening of the winter tads jam for games written in the tads language and a note i do my best to pull together events people announce publicly in certain spaces or things that they email me about but i don t always get everything and my time for blog maintenance also varies a bit from month to month however there is now a calendar section on ifwiki which you can check out or add to i m not planning to stop mentioning events on my blog but the ifwiki calendar is a useful place to go if you d like to make something known to the if playing public you can also post about things in the events section on the intfiction forum other releases the marino family has a long running series of undum stories about mrs wobbles and the tangerine house which takes a fantasy perspective on the experiences of children with foster homes and adoption lucian smith wrote a lovely review of one of the previous episodes that spoke to this theme in some depth the eighth entry in that series action figures is live today work uc santa cruz is hiring an assistant or associate professor of computational media while this is not a position focused on teaching frameworks engines or programming which are covered elsewhere in the curriculum an understanding of processes and tools used to create computational media work is desired the successful candidate will develop and teach courses within the graduate and undergraduate curriculum continue their work in creative technical and or scholarly practices of computational media and participate in shaping our diverse interdisciplinary department author emshortif posted on october 31 2022 october 31 2022 categories interactive fiction leave a comment on end of october link assortment mid october link assortment if comp is currently in full swing this annual competition has been running now for nearly three decades and continues to showcase interesting new work in the field the if comp website has gotten some sweet upgrades to help judges find the games they ll like the most you can have the website serve you a personally randomised list to help distribute judges and avoid situations where games by well known authors or those at the top of the alphabetical list get way more attention alternatively you can set filters and look only for say parser based games with an expected play time of half an hour if you d like to judge you need to submit scores on at least five games out of the total of 71 if you d like to get a sense of what s in the mix before diving in you might check out reviews by other players one of the cool things about the if comp is that it has a very long tradition of in depth reviews shared on the intfiction org forums on ifdb or on private blogs the short game podcast also provides coverage of the comp games often over the course of several episodes this year the comp is looking to draw in more judges more discussion and more attention from the wider world so please do join in if this sounds appealing and let your friends know as well other events october 21 october 28 is the ai and games jam which is for games built using ai techniques and organised by tommy thompson of the ai and games youtube channel which i also recommend text based and pcg games are welcome what do you mean ai if you re implementing artificial intelligence of any kind be it for decision making pathfinding character behaviour player modelling level generation animation you name it it ca...