There are two things I love in my childhood memories… Interactive Fiction and Anime. I know I am going to cause a ruffling of feathers to “pro-versatile authoritative” interactive fiction critics… But I don’t give a damn. I am versatile, but that doesn’t mean I have to bow down to how interactive fiction has to be, but doesn’t mean that I like designing hypertext or the like… I rather visual novels at that juncture then hypertext fiction. Which is nothing more then a J-IF. But I digress, as I am more apt to design more parser based IF, doesn’t mean that I am one to say “IF is Infocom…” Which is absurd and quite assuming… And you know what they say about assumptions? Anyhow, unlike the “pro-versatile authorities” in the IF community, which I run into time and time again, in IF IRC’s, time and time again, I don’t get my knickers in a twist over how one views how IF should or shouldn’t. If one wants to make hypertext, let them. If one wants to make parser-based… So much the better.
However, just because I am apt to creating parser based IF ala Inform 7, ZILF, ALAN and the like (I am looking into designing a project now with Inform 7 instead of ZILF due to javascript release availability and ease of customizing score on status line), doesn’t mean I am not for playing hyper-text. In fact I play less parser based (so far the only titles I played is Zarf’s Hadean Lands and Textfyre’s Shadow in the Cathedral as a concurrent release) that is modern if not concurrent and more hypertext if not visual novel based IF then anything. But one thing I realize is the large void that is more traditional, if not code structure capable, but most definitely traditional (which sometimes if most voids progression, I am just as criminal of it), is the multimedia aspect of parser IF. Yes I know, Quest allows that, Glulx when compiled from Inform allows this, along with most other concurrent parser based platforms also support… Hell even ALAN 3 supports Multimedia now. But there is still that void. I remember mostly Europe when PAWS was on the Sinclair ZX and C64, mostly Sinclair, alot of text adventure titles was booming with graphics. Yes that is not true multimedia, due to lack of audio and video, but it was a start. The Japanese a little after started making Visual Novels (I think was called a Sound Novel original, please correct me on that one) due to the answer of Mystery House by Sierra-Online.
My proposal is simple, and may cause a few raised eyebrows, how does a parser based visual novel for IF sound? I am thinking of going by route of ngPAWS (thanks Uto and company for developing this awesome platform! you are THE best!) with Anime style art (I am doing this all on my own, may have help). This is to be done after porting a project I been working on from ALAN to Inform 7 (a mystery spoof I christened Castle Macbeth). Hope this gets some interest!