Hi. I’m new here but the video piqued my interest so I thought I’d throw in my 2 cents …
My first thoughts are that this is really cool, but it might be difficult to find the right “compromises” between the 3D and the text. Both mediums will need to be justified in order to rationalise the effort that goes into building a game like this.
For instance, one of the advantages of I.F. seems to be that you can construct any space, of any dimensions, using only words – there are virtually no limits. So a huge underground cavern with pools of lava heating the air and reflecting from the walls is described in a couple of sentences. 3D requires everything to be manually constructed, and then rendered at an acceptable frame rate – that same lava cavern suddenly takes 20+ hours of building work, and still might not appear the way the author intended it to.
Also consider NPCs. I’m sure it’s not easy to write a realistic and fleshed-out NPC into a traditional I.F., but it only becomes more difficult when you want to implement that same NPC into a 3D space. Modelling, textures, animation … Will you have voice acting? Compare the feedback, “The butler smiles nervously at you.” with actually showing that on the 3D model.
On the other side of the coin, the advantages of 3D are obvious. A true sense of place within a 3D space; actual sounds for your ears; the ability to move your PC physically … In fact, a lot of the more simple commands that we might give in a traditional I.F. (“put card in slot”, “open door”, then “go north”) can be well-catered for with the first-person interface (drag the card to the slot, click on the door to open it, and then move your character through it). The question then becomes – why is the text interface there at all?
Clearly text can convey much information that a 3D game can’t – the smell, air temperature, vibrations, how the PC feels (hungry, sick), memories the PC has, etc. It also allows much more complex instructions from the player than a 3D interface alone would – “ask beggar about cheese” or “look through keyhole”, for example. It seems to me that the hard part will not only be combining the 2 mediums into a smooth experience (although it already looks pretty slick in this early demo!), but justifying the huge workload of implementing a full 3D game on top of a text interface.
Having rambled on like that, I hope you understand that these are just some thoughts for your consideration and that I was impressed with the video. I sincerely hope to see the project develop further!