Jolt Country

Thanks a lot for this.

Roody_Yogurt wrote:Disappointingly, it attacks somewhat easy targets like drug addicts and sexual deviants and abusers. Even the ex-junkie, ex-whore protagonist, after having cleaned up her life, is living in some kind of "cautionary tale" limbo (both figuratively and eventually literally). There's some foreshadowing that the game's central issue will be the protagonist's guilt over an abortion (going for some kind of botched-childhood trifecta)- I could be wrong; maybe that is not the case.

Yeah, uh, no. If I ever do end up finishing it I don't want to spoil too much, but I wasn't going for an abortion angle at all--the lost child is more a thematic element than anything else. And she's not a whore, not even an x-whore--I didn't explain this right out because I intended to do it in trippy flashback at a later point in the game. Basically how it went was: she did a lot of drugs, then one of her friends died in front of her of an overdoce, so she tried to get off drugs, had a hard time coping with all that, so she turned to sex. As... stress relief.

I am very character driven with my writing, and I think that that tripped me up a little bit when writing a lot of the PC's remarks to everything. As a first time IF author people have no idea what to expect from me, so when they see that my protagonist is a crabby bitch who hates everything they come to the conclusion that I am a crabby bitch who hates everything. I'll touch on this more later, but I don't think people realize the degree to which I have divorced my PC's voice from my authorial voice.

Roody_Yogurt wrote: The game has some sympathy for the PC and her drug-addled friends.

I have a ton of sympathy for my PC. I would like for the player to also have sympathy for this PC. More than that--if the player has no sympathy for the PC then the rest of the game is not going to be worth playing because it is literally all about her. The idea was to set up this girl as really bitter and resentful and not terribly personable, then peal back her onion, so to speak, over the course of the game, so you get a good look at how someone so jaded and unlikeable on the surface got that way.

Roody_Yogurt wrote:For a game with a female protagonist, it makes some odd choices, portraying the world as largely misogynistic.

I don't think that's strange at all. Every story needs conflict; what better than to drop a girl into asetting where a lot of people don't like girls?

Roody_Yogurt wrote:I can understand the reasoning for the abundance of this in the game, I think it loses its plausibility and effect when it's painted with such broad strokes.

Fair enough. The tone of the game is somewhat unrelenting. I had hoped that all the custom responses (more on that later) would break up the dismalness but people seem to be coming away from it with a bad taste. In my defense, she's in an other-world, at this point, so everything she sees is filtered through the lens of her perception and magnified to horror-level. I'm glad people are unsettled, that means I was able to communicate something but people seem to take that as a failing of the game so I'm not sure quite what to do. (besides, well, finish it, I guess)

The scary hicks attack because she is fixing their gate? Is that an attempt at some Southern dialect, like "she's fixing to break through our gate"?[/quote]

I hate to do this because it sounds so fucking pretentious, but that bit isn't supposed to make sense. It's actually a dream the person I'm basing this on had. It doesn't have much more significance than to be creepy.

Roody_Yogurt wrote: I'm also not sure how an ex-junkie working a crappy job somehow has the physique of a young Terminator 2 Linda Hamilton. I mean, it's kind of cute in its sheer insensibility, but still.

Years of training.

Roody_Yogurt wrote:The writing is quite flavorful throughout (something that it even comments on at one point).

I commented on my own writing? I don't quite recall what you're referring to.

Roody_Yogurt wrote:Encourage the player to refer to one not-mentioned object and you're basically saying, okay, refer to anything you can think of.

Correct. That is exactly what I am doing. Did you try it?

I've implamented custom descriptions for the car's radiator, the radio, the air conditioning, the back seat, what's beneath the back seat, the trunk, the hood, trees on the twisty path, mist, ground, the gate, the stable house, the porch, and so it goes. Most of those have responses if you try and itneract with them in ways that make sense as well (climb a tree or turn on the radio, for instance). One of my favorit things about IF is the idea that you are walking about in a world. There is no reason to mention the glove compartment in the description of the car because it has no relevance to the story, but that doesn't mean it isn't there. If a player tries to >x glove compartment and is told there is no glove compartment when we all know cars have glove compartments, that reminds the player he's typing into a computer program, rather than inhabiting a world. Immersing a player into your world is, to me, the whole point. It may seem infesable to program in absolutely every object every player can think of, but I don't think it is. If someone complains to me "I tried to do <thing> but the game wouldn't let me," nine times out of ten I will implament that thing. Everywhere I can place custom text is an opportunity for the player to learn more about his character and the world he's in. Every one of these easter eggs is another gem for a player to discover on his third or fifth playthrough when he thought oh hey just for fun I'll >x seatbelts and finds out that not only did I write a joke there, but he can belt himself in and doing that reveals a character point way earlier than I intend to introduce it plot-wise. That stuff is fun. Games are supposed to be fun.

Don't get me wrong, I think that the "only expect to refer to objects I refer to in the flavor text" method is a reasonable suspension of disbelief agreement to make between author and player, and it works great in tons of games written by people who aren't me. But 13-year-old me always felt vaguely cheated whenever I couldn't refer to an object I felt should be in a scene, so when the time came to write my own IF I thought I'd chalenge myself to throw in as much crap as possible and find ways to tie it all into the character.

Roody_Yogurt wrote:It doesn't seem like there are a ton of choices per "scene"

Yeah, really, the only major decisionpoint in the intro is the scene in the graveyard. As a player, I love interactivity; as an author, a branching plotline is a nightmare. This was my attempt to meld those two concepts: few split points that lead to different endings, but each split gives you lots of leeway. As far as that goes I don't think it's a problem for a game to have rails, because... well... it's a game. The trick is to hide them. And from what I've read I think that I succeeded rather well in that, at least.

Lysander wrote:Yeah, uh, no. If I ever do end up finishing it I don't want to spoil too much, but I wasn't going for an abortion angle at all--the lost child is more a thematic element than anything else. And she's not a whore, not even an x-whore--I didn't explain this right out because I intended to do it in trippy flashback at a later point in the game. Basically how it went was: she did a lot of drugs, then one of her friends died in front of her of an overdoce, so she tried to get off drugs, had a hard time coping with all that, so she turned to sex. As... stress relief.

Ah, ok, I got confused on the chronology there. I had read it as she and her friends were junkies, and in the last days of her using, things were so hard up that she started whoring for money, then her friends died and she decided to clean up... but yeah, I guess Marcus was already dead during her "whoring".

Lysander wrote:As a first time IF author people have no idea what to expect from me, so when they see that my protagonist is a crabby bitch who hates everything they come to the conclusion that I am a crabby bitch who hates everything. I'll touch on this more later, but I don't think people realize the degree to which I have divorced my PC's voice from my authorial voice.

Yeah, I don't think that the reader confuses your voice with the characters' voices, but the game swings issues around like weighty sledgehammers so its natural to infer a somewhat-shared worldview.

Lysander wrote:I don't think that's strange at all. Every story needs conflict; what better than to drop a girl into asetting where a lot of people don't like girls?

True, but I think it's kind of simplistic for that to be a female character's main conflict. I think a balanced character/world would combat several injustices per person, not just "world hates gay guy because he is gay" and "world hates girl because she is girl". I know you're trying to get us to empathize with the character, but it just feels a bit forced.

Lysander wrote:Fair enough. The tone of the game is somewhat unrelenting. I had hoped that all the custom responses (more on that later) would break up the dismalness but people seem to be coming away from it with a bad taste.

The humor is appreciated, but the way the game throws around big issues, it feels like it's trying to make statements, somewhat detracting from the narrative. I'm not suggesting throwing out the issues, but some more subtlety could be effective.

Lysander wrote:In my defense, she's in an other-world, at this point, so everything she sees is filtered through the lens of her perception and magnified to horror-level.

Interesting. I didn't think the "other-world" section started until after the "crazy hick" part, so many of the tone things that bothered me the most happened in what I thought was the real world. If the entire game is in the other-world, I guess I was wrong.

Lysander wrote:

Roody_Yogurt wrote:The writing is quite flavorful throughout (something that it even comments on at one point).

I commented on my own writing? I don't quite recall what you're referring to.

The exact quote is:

The trees lean over the path, branches curling down, giving an impression of a set of teeth waiting for the perfect moment to clamp... You shake yourself. Now's not the time for flavor text.

I just felt it was funny since it seemed like 90% of the prose was flavor text.

Lysander wrote:]
Correct. That is exactly what I am doing. Did you try it?

(on allowing the player to refer to anything)

It is true. In most cases, I did not try to interact with most things, and when I saw a lot of things mentioned, I just thought to myself, man, I bet that's not implemented. I admire your goal and wish you the best of luck with it. It is that kind of dedication that will breed diehard fans.

Just the same, it could just be my own prejudices against verbose games (as I am annoyed when things command too much of my attention), but I speculate that past wordy games have trained me not to poke around with stuff, just as an under-described game might also do.

Still, your attitude towards implementation is to be commended.

Roody_Yogurt wrote:I don't think that the reader confuses your voice with the characters' voices, but the game swings issues around like weighty sledgehammers so its natural to infer a somewhat-shared worldview.

It does, and I do, but it's mostly just meant to establish "this person has extreme opinions"; you're not meant to agree as such, just understand where she's coming from. I get how that's distracting though so mayhaps I should dial it back. The thing that intrigues me is most of the people who have been really negative about her also expressed a desire to keep playing after the intro was done. That seems totally contradictary to me, but I think it would be kind of awesome to make a game where you start off hating yourself and then change those feelings over the course of it. That's fairly common to do with characters, NPCs, etc. But I don't recall it being done to a player character in a game before.

Roody_Yogurt wrote:I know you're trying to get us to empathize with the character, but it just feels a bit forced.

That's good feedback, I appreciate it. When I was writing it I kept worrying that she wasn't relatable enough and I had thought, then, that if people weren't feelin' it they'd stop playing. I can probably trim back on the angst some near the end.

Roody_Yogurt wrote:the way the game throws around big issues, it feels like it's trying to make statements, somewhat detracting from the narrative.

Yeah, people seem nervous I'm going to turn it into some preachy message about the evils of <fill>. One of the Bruce's said something to this effect on a blog, I think. its not my intent at all. If there is any message, I suppose it would be not to condemn people you don't know well. But even that isn't the kind of stuff I'm consciously thinking about when I write. I'm just telling a story.

Roody_Yogurt wrote: I'm not suggesting throwing out the issues, but some more subtlety could be effective.

It is heavy handed. There are reasons for this but it would spoil things to say much more. I would hope that it would make sense in the context of the finished work. Time will just have to tell on that one. It doesn't help that I am not the most subtle of people. Lil from column a, lil from column b...

Roody_Yogurt wrote:Interesting. I didn't think the "other-world" section started until after the "crazy hick" part, so many of the tone things that bothered me the most happened in what I thought was the real world.

Everyone has had a different problem with that scene at the ranch house. Most people were mad that you had to examine gate twice. My thinking was that a person in that situation would look at the gate, move on, try abunch of crap and not be able to leave, then look at the gate again, hense "looking closer...". I was trying to be clever and atmospheric, working the "you can't go that way" into the experience. It was my attempt at pacing. But most people didn't think to do it a second time so that frustration ended up taking them out of the game, so that totally backfired. This is why I do heavy handed. ;)

My point is this: that scene has given me more trouble than any other, all told. I originally had players just go from mist to coffin, which worked much better because the lack of being gut shot meant the slow reveal of coffin that I intended was not completely obviously telegraphed, and actually worked and was unsettling. It also went and confused things--I was thinking that the "you are in a totally different place with no way out" would clue people into things being not as they seemed, but that clearly was not enough for everybody. I can defend all these points but it doesn't matter; no one seemed to get it, so I might just take it out, lest people give it more significance than it deserves.

I feel we have covered basically everything I had something to say about, but I <i>did</i> want to mention one last thing before I put my end of this to rest. I just want to say that while exactly what closure was being attained when you save <spoiler> was unclear, that scene was surprisingly touching, making the most hectic part of the game also the most satisfying. So, good work on that!

Marcus's entire plot line (accept a bit of history) is introduced and wrapped in the intro so I don't mind spoiling it to the max. Absolutely no one picked up on something I thought was inordinantly clever, which is that the entire graveyard scene is a metaphor. The creature that attacks is meant to be a physical embodyment of addiction--it has "wings," it has noxious chemical breath, and its attacks all center around incapacitation either by injection (IE when Marcus is speared) or contact poisons. It targets Marcus first because he's so firmly in its grip, but as she's delt with addiction in the past it also will just as soon go after the PC. Alone, neither of them are strong enough to face it; all they can do is run. If you fail the conversation, Marcus gives up, and lets addiction own him (AKA he gets "killed"). The PC can run, leaving the junky as a lost cause, and keep it at bay for a while, but as marcus says, it keeps coming back (and would again later on in the game, but we don't get there). The only way to truly put the whole mess behind you is to work together on literally burying both of their demons.

My favorit thing about this metaphor is that it's not anything overt; it's just... there. So if you like depth, then depth I have provided, but if you don't care at all then the game still works on a tangible level.

Lysander, I wonder if your approach of adding descriptions to objects not specifically mentioned might have to do with your lack of sight? I was just thinking, as a sighted person, in a new environment I rely highly (perhaps initially solely) on visual clues, whereas a non-sighted person might be more apt to rely on previous experiences to assume what's in his or her immediate environment.

I don't think one approach is necessarily right or wrong. But in interactive fiction there are no pictures, so a sighted person could interpret a description as "this is everything you can see that's important" whereas a non-sighted person might not rely as heavily on the description, as they probably do more exploring of their local environment on a day-to-day basis and might be more apt to explore things not specifically listed in a game's description.

(If any of my terms in this message are not politically correct or offensive, I apologize in advance; it comes from ignorance, not malicious intent.)

Hey wow, sorry I missed this! That is actually a very good question. I never did think about it that way, but there might be some logic to it. It's hard for me to say either way because, as you don't have my experience, I don't have the experience of being sighted; so I've no idea how much I'd learn to filter out. In the back of my mind I've always wanted to write a whole IF game that won't allow you to use the verb >examine, because well... I don't see anyone else doing that better. I think it would be neat because >x is such a ubiquitous ; command, dating bak to adventure and not really touched since. Even the most experimental of IF (So Far etc) tries not relying on it for brief periods. There might be a good reason for that, but I'll never know until I try.

(Oh, and you are totally fine--I wasn't even mad earlier, I was just trolling the only other disabled person on the board. No room for friends in this world.)