I was thinking once about a game based on jumping between worlds, to create some kind of a multi-world puzzle. I also wanted to incorporate elements of video into the game. I think that I may have a solution for that one, namely using python scripts and any video module to play video files (to keep everything cross-platform). Now, for the game itself:
The story will be about an AFGNCAAP who has a strange condition: they can remember their every dream completely, and discovers that the world isn’t quite what it seems like.
The main gimmick of the game would be jumping from conversation-oriented main world to puzzle-oriented dreams. During the awake world scenes, the player would collect clues that will be relevant to solving the dream puzzle, and if solving the dream puzzle will be impossible, then instant groundhog day reset ensues (thus the player would have to repeat the clue search).
The game should utilise every tool of timekeeping from Inform7’s arsenal, that means scenes, timed missions and other stuff. After each successful dream sequence, a new detail from the awake world would be unmasked, until the player has enough evidence to discover the truth, thus ending the game in a sequel hook.
As for actually doing it, there are still some things to do.
1: Name the thing - yeah, I still don’t have the name for it. 2: Build a detailed story
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Since having taken a class called Creative Video Techniques during the semester that literally just ended, I’ve been wondering how video would work in IF. It sounds like you want to have elements in real-time as well, instead of having no game time pass in between commands, as is typical?
Can you even get video to play in an interpreter using Inform 7 and Glulx/Blorb? I honestly don’t know; I would point to Hugo as a good system to try an experimental piece with video. It supports MPEG and AVI files.
Anyway, it sounds like a good project, but you still have a lot of details to fill in. I hope you suceed!
(The path forward that I plan is to support HTML/Javascript in Glulx, and then people can do whatever HTML can handle.) (Sorry it’s been going slowly.)
Well, on online interpreters, I could do an escape and just use tag… And that’s about it. The desktop version would just be a bunch of scripts (python or shell/vbs) launching videos in the native player. So, you know, the web version would be superior to the desktop version in terms of video integration.
Hee! “Ageless, faceless, gender-neutral, culturally ambiguous adventure person.” You see them in, say, Zork, where you’re not really playing a character, unless it’s in your own head. You know nothing about the protagonist, and any clues about their identity are usually accidental.
