The state of IF worlds today

[Guest]

That Chris guy from infocom that is working on Storytron

Not from Infocom.

From Atari, once upon a time.

More recently, from Batshitville, which is in the province of Insania.

Bruce

That Atari bloke is at least thinking and applying his thoughts in an effort to create something, regardless of what that effort may accomplish. And its another thing everyone can draw on, take, and do something else with.

[bruce]

That Chris guy from infocom that is working on Storytron

Not from Infocom.

From Atari, once upon a time.

More recently, from Batshitville, which is in the province of Insania.

Bruce

That Atari bloke is at least thinking and applying his thoughts in an effort to create something, regardless of what that effort may accomplish. And its another thing everyone can draw on, take, and do something else with.

Oh, so am I. And that effort is going to accomplish another Stiffy Makane game. And the source will be available.

So I don't think the act of creation is all that special. What separates me from Chris Crawford is 1) I didn't used to be an excellent game designer and 2) I'm not currently a batshit-insane megalomaniac.

Bruce

[Vitriola]

I'm not currently a batshit-insane megalomaniac.

...allegedly.

[Lysander]

I'm bumping this. Robb, this is the thread I was talking about in the planet IF thread on the other bass.

[Guest]

The problem is still the same, that of trying to direct the player through a world created by another. The menu choice allows the author to describe their world from the logic they have applied to it. These previous posts touched upon another idea of IF that both the player and the creator are human and are both capable of creating and thinking through these worlds.

As said before, the author has the ability to discern the logic inherit in the world they have created, as they are the only one who knows what is important and where and how things should flow. How they can flow and the result of each action. The menu choice makes this easier in telling a story in the same way a book tells ones, guiding the one involved and given them a direct line to follow.

The issue is, that the Player and the Creator both think and are both human and thus imaginative and able to see what is presented and come to their own conclusions. With most IF and Robb's stories explictly, the approach is to immerse the player at the expense of their own ability to confront the issues in their own way, in effect creating a story (a set of certain instances that lead to another). The perfect game would perhaps be an enviroment where the author is merely a guide who has created a world that isn't set, just objects thrown into a certain perception of reality.

Which may be the difficulty in creating a story, that the story itself is the perception of the one telling it. As has been already used as an example, the choice Robb made to allow his own writing to be the actions the player takes (creating an enviroment and a specific narrow path for a story to unfold at the expense of freedom and the ability of the player to act how they would within that world), allows him to directly control the perception and of the player and gives him a more direct medium for his writing to come through. It is creating an enviroment and emersing those playing in the logic and perception of the creator, but as been said already, at the expense of the players own ability to interact and foster their own way in that world.

Has has been said before...

The ultimate game would be a platform to evolve and change a problem around the actions and input of the player, which is something narration can't do, and the player can't accomplish, without both the author and the player forming a mutual basis of creation and evolution around eachother.

I mean, having the perception of the player impact the perception of the author, and from that, having a third result that neither could anticipate. Its an interesting idea, and would invariably solve the problem that has already been discussed, of how to present the authors perception to the player. Which is invariably the style of writing and what not, wherein were just bitching aimlessly about things we don't understand nor are willing to do.

[Guest]

Not from Infocom.

From Atari, once upon a time.

More recently, from Batshitville, which is in the province of Insania.

Bruce

That Atari bloke is at least thinking and applying his thoughts in an effort to create something, regardless of what that effort may accomplish. And its another thing everyone can draw on, take, and do something else with.

Oh, so am I. And that effort is going to accomplish another Stiffy Makane game. And the source will be available.

So I don't think the act of creation is all that special. What separates me from Chris Crawford is 1) I didn't used to be an excellent game designer and 2) I'm not currently a batshit-insane megalomaniac.

Bruce

Ya, well... Its nice to see people have ideas and then create a problem for their ideas to solve, wherein there never was a problem in the first place.

The thing about storytron and all these approaches that pretend that they are approaches, instead of just a person doing it without the fanfare and waving for attention to VALIDATE THEIR IDEA, is that in many cases, people become dazzled with their own bullshit.

They stop trying to solve the problem, believe they have found a solution, and forget that the problem and not the answer, was what drove them forward to constantly try and constantly recreate and become different and hone themselves to an edge. To become better.

Or perhaps I am merely describing myself and saying why I'm a horrible shrill.

YOU DECIDE

[Guest]

I'm bumping this. Robb, this is the thread I was talking about in the planet IF thread on the other bass.

It is difficult for me to now grasp the understanding behind what I previously wrote, and it reads now as so much bullshit. I guess its the difference between a creator and one who takes what they see before, and tries to create a template out of it, which just invariably destroys what was interesting and wonderful about it in the first place.

To reapply an idea looking for a result, without the understanding that it is movement and creation, creating a new thought that accomodates what we are now.

[Guest]

Which may be the difficulty in creating a story, that the story itself is the perception of the one telling it. As has been already used as an example, the choice Robb made to allow his own writing to be the actions the player takes (creating an enviroment and a specific narrow path for a story to unfold at the expense of freedom and the ability of the player to act how they would within that world), allows him to directly control the perception and of the player and gives him a more direct medium for his writing to come through. It is creating an enviroment and emersing those playing in the logic and perception of the creator, but as been said already, at the expense of the players own ability to interact and foster their own way in that world.

And arguably its just his style. Trying to deconstruct it leads only to not really understanding it. Which appears to be what Robb may be seeking in trying to understand his own relationship with the player. I don't know. Just that I highly doubt creating a template and trying to pretend that leads to be imaginative and a wonderful writer, actually touches on being able to write.

Or that writing touches on being a good writer.

I doubt writing is real and only allows it to feed into itself, but maybe that all of this is merely a form of taking the system in our heads and applying it to a system that invariably loses that.

Yes, let us teach comedy and the ability to be imaginative and wonderful.

After all of this has become real to everyone, has taken a form, maybe the entire medium is just a bunch of people screaming at other people that it HAS IT BE THIS WAY, for no other reason that they are comfortable with it, and have come to defend it.

Or maybe that is how everything works, and why the new is so fragile and precious; for when it becomes something, it stops being everything except a form and reason for those who are believed to be the ones who understand it, to create reasons for justifying their own imagination and patterns of thought. And so the template is just stagnation, the teaching just a dead form forced upon to destroy a clear voice.

Perhaps.

[Lysander]

I think it's Steve Moretzki who brought up in a podcast i was listening to that they would have a situation wheere they would put a bunch of different objects and obstacles in a room and give them all flags, and that would cause the game to behave more like a world with rules than an actual game. Because, you could solve problems with ways the authors hadn't thought of, since the authors might be expecting you to solve a problem with one way but there's nothing preventing the problem to be solved another way because rather than specifically writing in solutions the action is more free form allowing any object with a certain flag to react a certain way with certain other objects with acertain flag.

[The Moved Base Fairy]

MOVED BASE!!!

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

The base has moved! I think keeping the bases where we talk about game development "separate" from the other sections, used largely to scream obscenities at people, is a Good Thing.