intfiction.org

I know this sounds ironic, considering the medium, but I feel so bogged down by all the choices I can offer the player. It would be so much easier for me to write a linear and--and yet, I want to give my readers the capability to think about the problems and explore.

There seems to be no end to all the design elements I can offer in IF, and all this possible content is bogging my narrative down. I changed my draft into a more linear form of fiction, and so far it's gone more seamlessly, it's so much easier for me to tell stories that are linear, yet I would still like to give my readers the capability to explore.

I don't know how to eliminate all the excessive content ideas that keep popping up in my mind, and all these ideas are bogging down the project. What is the best way of balancing story with interactivity? I've asked a similar question before concerning puzzles, but this riddle has more to do with all the choices this medium can offer. Where is the best place to draw the fine line between telling a story and providing good interactivity?

Whether or not your story is linear, it has to feel interactive or players will hate it.

Rameses and Photopia are good examples of linear storytelling in IF.

Both are heavily railroaded while encouraging players to derail the narrative. In a game like this, you have to anticipate everything a player might try, so you can refuse them in a rewarding way.

This is a good general strategy - you can have a fun time in Treasures of a Slaver's Kingdom just typing nonsense into the prompt - but the stakes are higher when your player has nothing else to do.

"Linear" is a sick bird. All games give some kinds of choices to the player, and reserve some to the designer. Decide which is which.

1) Think about which player choices are interesting and which are important to the story. Focus on those.

2) Think about the kinds of interaction that would be enjoyable and well-suited to an IF format. Focus on those.

Also, dude, you're spending way too much energy on stressing out about every single thing you can find to stress about. Chill out. You're not going to produce a masterpiece on your first try. Write some short stupid games. Write a game with no gameplay at all, just a bunch of scenery or random events or whatever. Write a game that will make no sense to anybody else but makes you smile. Just get into the habit of writing, and of having fun writing. Thinking about design theory is valuable, but it's worse than useless if it's what you do to procrastinate.

In the vein of offering some practical advice that I myself am having some difficulty accepting...

Good writers read. They read a lot. When they're standing in line at the grocery store, they read. While they're waiting for their car to fill up with gas, they read. Great chefs eat. They sample everything, no matter how crazy. Everyone isn't a prodigy. We don't all take to this medium like Maga, Zarf, Emily, Graham, Mike, et cetera ad nauseum. While they all have different "strengths", I'm going to assume that they all have one thing in common.

They play a lot of IF.

Play a lot of IF. Note those things that you tried and didn't work. Note those things that you tried and didn't work like you wanted. Read transcripts. Club Floyd is both educational and hilarious. Figure out those things that you can write a universal reaction to and respond to those. Figure out those things that require special attention and respond to those. Hopefully you get the idea.

You can't just let the player run wild through your world. You can't possible anticipate or program everything they might do. You have to guide them gently and as invisibly as possible. Take the following example.



Not a great example. But what can we reasonably expect the player to do here?

• Examine flowers
• Examine sand stone
• Examine gravel
• Get gravel/stone

And what are they probably not going to care less about?

• Examine grass
• Examine sun
• Sniff breeze
• Get grass
• Scratch arm
• Check watch

Your problem isn't what your players might possibly do or try. Sometimes they're going to get a nonsensical response from the interpreter. Your problem is writing prose that makes sense, that leads the character in the direction that you want them to go while at the same time accomodating the obvious things that the player might try to do. There will always be people out there who try to do stupid things, (hopefully) knowing that they won't work.

I'm going to go ahead and promote Aaron's book again here. He discusses, encourages and provides examples of what to emphasize and when. The way you write is going to dictate a lot of what the player does. Not their whims.

The truth of the matter is that people want to play your game. They want to get through the story. They want to see what all you have to offer them in the way of a playing experience. If they try to do something that makes sense, something that it seems viable they should be able to do and can't do it, they may complain. Otherwise, you can't stress it.



I'm not going to examine the bricks. I'm not going to count them. I'm not going to examine the mortar to make sure they used appropriately sized spacers for the size of the bricks and the intent of the application when they were doing the masonry. I'm going to check my inventory for a rope or some dynamite. I might poke the wall a couple of times to make sure there isn't a secret passage. Then I'm gonna find something better to do.

So again... How you present it dictates what the player will do far more than your anticipating their every whim. Play some games. Run some beta tests. Find out what players are likely to try and what they aren't.

Go from there.

[Edited to get a cooking reference in there.]

Ugh, I wish that were true. I distinctly recall having to implement a room's featureless white walls because some people could not accept that they were indeed featureless.

That gets into the uniquely IF-specific art of writing descriptions without mentioning any nouns you don't want to implement.

Adjectives, too ... If you take the time to specifically mention that the walls are both white and featureless, that's two points of detail, thus proving they must be critically important to a puzzle at some point

I do think the IF community suffers a bit from overcompensating for the missing nouns of past ages, though. To me, the worst offender is Zork III, which, in the opening room, describes shadows as "strange" and then refuses to admit they exist. Well, I guess that (and directionless light casting shadows) is a form of strange ...

But the other extreme, where people feel they need to pander to commands like "smell the upholstery" when all the room mentioned was "furniture ..." well, there is a fine line, somewhere

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Games, Fonts, and Font-Toys For Gamers - http://www.cumberlandgames.com

I so agree with you.
But it's also a matter of the player not being able to distinguish between what is scenery and objects. In the "golden age" it was easy to see what was what since object s was usually listed: "You also see": etc. etc.
But is it "fair" to complain about a lot of text? (not that I'm saying it's happening here)
Although I'll admit that some descriptions can be overwhelming, isn't the idea of a text adventure that the author creates an atmosphere, a little like the author of a book?

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Work in progress: D-Day (Adrift V.5)

Hopefully far better than a book, but some of the same principles apply, including the twin wonder-powers of focus and brevity. Prosy meanderings (whether in style or amount) are a bit like butter: they can make things delicious when applied expertly, but with a heavy hand they'll just make things fatty and bland. More to the point, an unfinished game pleases no one, and injudicious pursuit of so-called "deep" implementation can trap a game in eternal development, essentially destroying it.

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Games, Fonts, and Font-Toys For Gamers - http://www.cumberlandgames.com

I'm also new in using Inform and making IF games, and I totally understand how you felt. I myself also want to make the game interesting with choices, so when I write a room that is a cave, I linked 2 soon to be 3 other rooms to my original room. Perhaps this coding of what I did will explain better what I'm trying to say:



I hope this helps, I find this the easiest way in creating choices, but of corse more experienced writers than my self probably have an even easier way of making choices for the player. I hope this helps.

Deain