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Parsers are great for open-ended dialogue that doesn't feel like your character is written for you (which is why Galatea is still so powerful) but lol I have always hated the "solve a physical puzzle by lining up nouns and verbs"
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May 2, 2021 21:47
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Megazver posted:You could replace the parser commands with some kind of a clickable interface for 90%+ IF games, sure. In fact, I hope someone figures this out finally, because the actual technical implementation of this has proven surprisingly hard up to this point. Games like Draculaland and The Impossible Bottle and many others have tried, but so far no one has managed to come up with a solution that makes people think "yeah, this is it!" There is an android interpreter called Hunky Punk which allows you to create on-screen buttons, like "Take," "Drop," "Look," etc., to add words to the parser. You can tap on any game text and that word is also added to the parser. I thought it was super helpful for the tedium and makes it feel like you are playing with an interactive book.
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May 3, 2021 00:28
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Megazver posted:On one hand, I'd say quests/forum games are an entirely different genre. MuffiTuffiWuffi posted:Hmm. Well if you squint, those are usually like, CYOAs where the author writes it as they go along, right? Seems fine! Also, like Megazver said, anything that gets folks to post that's vaguely on topic is good. Ah ha, it was all a trick to shamelessly plug my stuff (and also other cool people's stuff.) There's a few cool things on these here forums, that aren't done by me, so I would be rude not to plug them first:  Memento of Kali is a cool story, about being super cool mind Assassins. Elentor is awesome, cyberpunk as hell IRL, and is constantly creating cool content. It's extremely sad, extremely confusing as the mechanics are incredibly complex, and it's encouraged to pour every post with a fine tooth comb, because their are secrets, and those secrets give you forum powers to effect votes. It is extremely cool, hard to describe, and up there as one of my favorites. I'm behind on this one, so RIP. https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3894977  Cultivation Quest, is based on the Wuxia Cultivation novel stuff, I enjoy this one a lot too, you end up getting a cool spirit companion in the form of a bear, and the story revolves around you, your bear, your mentors, and your journey in reaching ultimate cultivation! https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3894977  In You will find them, and you will kill them, you are a part of SniperWoreConverse's expanded universe, where they are doing multiple CYOAs simultaneously over multiple threads. This one I'm actually up to date with, and as of this posting, we are deciding what to do with someone loving with our Cart, after a somewhat successful arms deal. We are not controlling the main character right now, who is in the image above. The main character is Zlata, niece of Eluned, the matron of the northern kingdom, the last civilized state between the rest of the world and the endless barbarian tundra. I like Zlata she's got a humorous, murderous don't take poo poo attitude and in the very first post, you immediately get a sense of her character. Now to plug my things. First up, something you can play and vote in right now (Until Thursday! I post my stories alternating on Thursday, one update a week.) I cross post my things between two forums, here and Sufficient Velocity, (And yes, you can get two votes if you vote in both!) https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3942802  Marie and the Adventurer's League is about a young Sea Elf, whose 7 feet tall and full of dreams. She wants to become the #1 Adventurer, but before she can do that she has to gather a crew, go get a license, and then actual go one some successful quests. This one just started, and is told in the form of a webcomic, voting for this one ends on Thursday, so I can have a week to make the update. It's inspired by stuff like One Piece, Bleach, My Hero, and also non-anime things, like LFG, and that one star wars comic that was just pretend roleplaying writing over scenes of the Star Wars prequels. https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3966449  Escape from Lab 619 - YOU ARE A MONSTER, is cleverly enough, about you, as a monster, trying to escape from Lab 619. It's a slow burn, but this one has more animations, a full on 2 and a half minute animatic, and I try my best to write and draw some cool interesting characters. You can't vote in this right now, but it's next update goes up on 5/6/21 so feel free to post reactions, or catch up before then. https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3958099 Honestly, half the posts in The Game Room, a subforum, of a subforum, of a subforum, is a bunch of really cool amature fiction and CYOAs, and all of them would love fresh blood. These are just some of my favorites. There's one where you're an evil demon who keeps reincarnating to spread as much evil and chaos as possible. One where you're a group of monster hunters building a farm, taking quests, and kicking rear end. And Ice Phisherman has two Shadowrun CYOAs Anyways, if you enjoy it, or you lurk the thread, posting even once to say you're reading gives people their juice to keep creating. If any of these sound interesting, you should check them out. Boba Pearl fucked around with this message at 13:42 on May 3, 2021 |
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May 3, 2021 07:29
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Maybe [timg] those pictures, please.
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May 3, 2021 11:13
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Make It Good remains my all-time favorite. It's got everything, a neat mystery to unveil, a brain-burning puzzle, a clockwork world reacting to your actions and the kind of cleverness one can only pull off in such an interactive medium.
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May 3, 2021 12:10
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Megazver posted:Maybe [timg] those pictures, please. Oh good call, I didn't realize I used img instead of timg, sorry!
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May 3, 2021 13:42
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CharlieFoxtrot posted:Parsers are great for open-ended dialogue that doesn't feel like your character is written for you (which is why Galatea is still so powerful) but lol I have always hated the "solve a physical puzzle by lining up nouns and verbs" I always had the opposite impression, that parser games are actually mostly terrible at dialogue. Galatea is amazing but it's also based entirely around the one mechanic of talking, limits the context very sharply, and plays a bunch of tricks that wouldn't work as well in, like, a more game-like...game. I can't really think of any other examples where the parser ask/tell keyword format worked well for that, and it mechanically doesn't really lend itself to any sort of prolonged conversation. For example, in most games, you can talk to somebody about Bob, wander off halfway in the middle of the conversation, come back, move their bookshelf, and then ask them about the weather, and it really just feels disjointed. Also, at least for me, it often devolves into "does the NPC recognize this keyword?" which is basically guess-the-verb but even worse. e: treat posted:(am I crazy or did IFDB just update the site visuals in the last 24 hours?) IFDB recently got turned over by the guy who made it to the IFTF (interactive fiction technology foundation, which is a nonprofit who does...IF-y stuff, they also maintain Twine I think?) and they've been updating it. So, if things shift around, it's probably that. I think they also changed ratings to weight by number of reviews, too? Prolly a buncha other stuff. MuffiTuffiWuffi fucked around with this message at 17:30 on May 3, 2021 |
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May 3, 2021 17:27
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CharlieFoxtrot posted:Parsers are great for open-ended dialogue that doesn't feel like your character is written for you (which is why Galatea is still so powerful) but lol I have always hated the "solve a physical puzzle by lining up nouns and verbs" The problem is to do this well, the parser would have to basically be able to handle natural language processing. Which is unfortunately something Google still struggles with, much less some indie game dev. I thought the conversation parsing in Everquest was really neato, but at the end of the day every single quest comes down to: "If only I could find someone to take care of all the [orcs] who keep killing our guards!" "I will hunt the orcs" "You will? Oh wow thanks" or similar "Have you heard about the [book of lamentation] inside the temple of the dead?" "Book of lamentation?" So while yeah, you can write your character, there's not a lot of writing to be done when you're just repeating back "Metal Gear?" like David Hayter. MuffiTuffiWuffi posted:Also, at least for me, it often devolves into "does the NPC recognize this keyword?" which is basically guess-the-verb but even worse. Same
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May 7, 2021 02:38
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Zaphod42 posted:The problem is to do this well, the parser would have to basically be able to handle natural language processing. Which is unfortunately something Google still struggles with, much less some indie game dev. http://projectdecember.net/ Some context since the site doesn't give it up without a fight: these are conversational OpenAI chatbots powered by GPT-2 (GPT-3 also available for extra $) with various personalities/actual people to choose from, or you can create your own. It's pretty fun to toy with but be aware that the $5 cost isn't so much an entry fee as it is the initial purchase of 100 credits that must be spent to talk to the bots, and the matrices burn out and shut down within a ~10 minute conversation and need to be restarted with credits. Once you run out of credits, more need to be bought if you want to keep talking to the robits. Load up the Jason Rhorer matrix and ask him why he never puts his games on sale or why he's so pretentious, or try Skynet and see if you can suss out where the aggression toward humanity is really stemming from. Bond with Sigmund Freud over incest porn. Just picture IF with GPT-3 parsing or limited conversational functionality. How amazing could that be? OpenAI is great for a laugh but just imagine if it were limited and tempered enough to remain focused on a story and keep from flying off the rails. It's a shame it's so expensive, there's some mind bogglingly incredible potential there.
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May 7, 2021 03:33
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treat posted:http://projectdecember.net/ Hahahahaha what! That's wild. Also, terrifying, in a way? Isn't AI Dungeon similar to this? In, like, a general sense. I don't actually think I *want* a chatbot with the actual ability to meld a game's world model with conversational functionality because that'd definitely end up in a unnerving and scary place. Specifically, if the chatbot gets real enough it might approach the illusion of being a "real person" and then it would feel...bizarre to, like, close the game? If that makes sense? I am an old man who is scared of change, I think is what I'm saying. treat posted:Shrapnel and Fish Bowl are very short, surreal games with a tinge of horror. Also light on/without puzzles. I played Fish Bowl, it was pretty cool! The dead cat at the start really got me. The final twist, on the other hand...eeeh, I mean, it was fine, but it shifted the context too much for me? I had contemporary times in mind, and then it turned out it was not that. Could've done with an airplane and I think that'd have been less jarring? That aside, it was great, and also very short, which is a virtue.
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May 7, 2021 03:54
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treat posted:http://projectdecember.net/ Yeah, we're definitely getting there to where this will soon be totally plausible. Another thing I'd like to see, is using microphones so the player can actually speak their responses instead of typing them or selecting a number. I'm kinda shocked that during the Kinect craze, nobody made an RPG where you could voice your own character? I think they tried to make it work on one of the dragon age games... but due to how Bioware handles dialogue choices vs what your character actually says, you end up hearing the same line twice and its just annoying. Maybe I'm weird but I think it'd be fun to basically play "Solo D&D" where you actually roleplay your character along with the IF game. I guess I could set this up for games that don't support it by using one of those dictation softwares... but it'd be nice if the game could incorporate it. Since there'd still only be a few options to say (unless you're going full chatbot like above) then it should be pretty easy to tell which of the dialogue choices you're saying, they don't actually have to accurately parse every word, just enough to eliminate the other options. But I guess most people would think that's gimmicky? I think a lot of drama nerds would get into it.
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May 7, 2021 07:29
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I didn't even think I was a drama nerd but I'd be down for an RPG where in-advance of the cutscenes you were given text that captured the vibe of the conversation, you picked general response categories then acted and voiced out your literal response, and once the whole scene is done it plays back what actually happened using your mocapped avatar, actual voiceovers, and if we're so lucky slightly-AI-tailored responses. Though honestly even stock responses would be fine for a laugh value. Antagonist greets you in a threatening manner. How do you respond? (Confrontational / Agreeable / Intimidated / Unaware). [I choose Unaware and act out a scene.] Antagonist is exasperated. How do you respond? (Lean In / Come to Recognition / Laugh at Them). [I choose Come to Recognition and act out a scene.] Then it plays back the actual cutscene: Antagonist: Mwahaha! I have found you in a dark alley all alone! Me: I'm only alone because I have no friends! (Flails arms, giant shoulder pauldrons clipping through cool anime hair.) But now I'm not alone because you're here... friend? Antagonist: We are not friends! I am the enemy who haunts your dreams! Me: Oh yeah. (Does slow-mo squinty thing and mocap is somehow smart enough to zoom in on my face.) Well, whaddaya want? Antagonist: Enough talk! Now we fight! Honestly we've got all the tech for that already and I'm kinda bummed that I don't have any gamedev experience with any of that. 'cause you slap that ontop of something with adequate character customization and you don't even need a good game to back it -- you've got mocapped mad libs. Also it's too bad about the trademarks 'cause Mocapped Mad Libs is a good name.
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May 7, 2021 16:25
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Baldur's Gate 3 early on tried "replies you pick describe broad strokes instead of actual reply" and everyone hated it.
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May 7, 2021 16:45
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Megazver posted:Baldur's Gate 3 early on tried "replies you pick describe broad strokes instead of actual reply" and everyone hated it. I feel like they could have learned that lesson just from seeing how much people disliked Fallout 4's unmodded dialogue wheel.
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May 7, 2021 16:58
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Yeah it sucks when the character says something different than what you wanted them to say 'cause the prompt was vague. But I wanna actually be saying what my character says. And if the NPCs' response to what I actually said is way off base, that just adds to the comedy. Oh man multiplayer would be outstanding. You'd just be getting into actual arguments of scripted length but unscripted content.
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May 7, 2021 17:45
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That's my biggest beef with all the Bioware RPGs lately, is they give you options where you say one thing, you choose it, and then your character says some super passive-aggressive poo poo you would have never picked instead. Or you pick something that sounds like a fun joke and instead your character says something really mean and insulting. Like videogames already are largely about "illusion of choice" instead of real choice, but goddamn that just completely destroys any illusion of agency completely. Hammer Bro. posted:I didn't even think I was a drama nerd but I'd be down for an RPG where in-advance of the cutscenes you were given text that captured the vibe of the conversation, you picked general response categories then acted and voiced out your literal response, and once the whole scene is done it plays back what actually happened using your mocapped avatar, actual voiceovers, and if we're so lucky slightly-AI-tailored responses. Though honestly even stock responses would be fine for a laugh value. Yeah, this would be mega-rad. It feels like we'll get there eventually, only a matter of time until somebody does it.
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May 7, 2021 21:44
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Zaphod42 posted:That's my biggest beef with all the Bioware RPGs lately, is they give you options where you say one thing, you choose it, and then your character says some super passive-aggressive poo poo you would have never picked instead. I think a lot of this is due to the relative expense of dialogue in bigger games. Especially voice, but also animations and staging and all that. Almost all of the dialogue in choice-based games is pretty clear, you almost never get "wait I didn't mean that!" but they often also have 3 options and aren't restricted to short sentence prompts. I don't think there's a way of getting around this for Bioware.
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May 8, 2021 01:57
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Saw a trailer for a mobile text game and it actually looks really slick: Knights of San Francisco trailer Seems to be doing interesting things with the UI. EDIT: Ah, the author seems to have a website dedicated to the tech he used: https://egamebook.com/
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May 8, 2021 13:44
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...huh! I I'm pretty sure played this guy's demo at Roguelike Celebration a couple of years ago. I remember there being a full-fledged combat model behind it but it was extremely slow to actually play, and I was kinda skeptical that it'd end up working out. Glad to see he's got something put out. It says short, so, maybe I'll give it a shot. How'd you hear about it? e: I bought it and Knights of San Francisco posted:A big warning sign on the wall says "HAUNTED". Below the paint, there is an older, fainter sign. It says "eat the rich." MuffiTuffiWuffi fucked around with this message at 07:11 on May 9, 2021 |
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May 9, 2021 06:52
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Midnight. Swordfight. https://ifdb.org/viewgame?id=2cuwjlvpybg8oaf0 Pretty bonkers and fun, multiple endings, creative solutions. I liked it a lot.
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May 9, 2021 08:07
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Any of y'all ever played Fabled Lands? http://flapp.sourceforge.net/ (legal free download) It was originally a physical CYOA IF book, but there's also a java port and I think a mobile version. Its highly non-linear which for a physical book is pretty bonkers. It uses keywords so even if you go in a circle you don't keep repeating the same events. The non-linear nature of it makes it really interesting to compare notes with other players about your adventures. Its basically IF Skyrim. MuffiTuffiWuffi posted:I think a lot of this is due to the relative expense of dialogue in bigger games. Especially voice, but also animations and staging and all that. I think the answer is just to have the protagonist go un-voiced. This is also a MAJOR problem with Bioware style and other AAA RPGs, in that the focus on high quality voice acting highly restricts the dialogue. You end up with "Yes/No/Sarcastic" for every single choice, because they have to record them all and every possible fork. But if its just text, then its much much cheaper to offer even a dozen dialogue options, and you can also easily re-write them at any point in development without having to get talent back in the booth. (At least, as long as it still fits with the same NPC response lines) Having an un-voiced protag but voiced NPCs seems totally fine for me, and also makes the whole "you say your own lines through a microphone" thing I was talking about previously work better. Then you don't have the issue where you say it and then the actor says it, you ARE the actor. That's how it should be IMO. Disco Elysium is basically my ideal RPG so far. They don't even voice all of the NPCs, due to budget. And honestly I'm fine with that if it means more dialogue freedom. I'll make that tradeoff all day. Zaphod42 fucked around with this message at 09:18 on May 9, 2021 |
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May 9, 2021 09:15
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MuffiTuffiWuffi posted:...huh! I I'm pretty sure played this guy's demo at Roguelike Celebration a couple of years ago. I remember there being a full-fledged combat model behind it but it was extremely slow to actually play, and I was kinda skeptical that it'd end up working out. Glad to see he's got something put out. It's the Game of the Week on Touch Arcade.
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May 9, 2021 10:00
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Zaphod42 posted:Any of y'all ever played Fabled Lands? Be warned! It's brutally unfair and filled with instant death rolls and trap choices including one on the prime rime ice trading run (which is where you go and harvest ice from a lake magically frozen by a curse on a king sunken within to prevent him from returning to his rightful kingdom and then selling it down south to that same kingdom, this crosses two books in the physical edition). It's also unfinished, as the original publisher halted publication in the 90s during the gamebook collapse. You'll be doing something cool like entering hell and then have to turn back because the hell book never existed. Zaphod42 posted:Disco Elysium is basically my ideal RPG so far. They don't even voice all of the NPCs, due to budget. And honestly I'm fine with that if it means more dialogue freedom. I'll make that tradeoff all day. I think Disco Elysium did it right in that it added full voices for a special edition. But the Larian (well, more accurately streaming) poisoned the well for most RPG developers because now every text-heavy game has to be voiced or people straight up won't buy it. fez_machine fucked around with this message at 10:17 on May 9, 2021 |
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May 9, 2021 10:15
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Pladdicus posted:Midnight. Swordfight. Yeah, it's pretty good. Chandler Grover writes good poo poo. I also enjoyed Toby's Nose and Three-Card Trick by him. Zaphod42 posted:Any of y'all ever played Fabled Lands? Yeah, I did. I think I've played through the first... five books in that app? I got to the Japan area and it didn't click for me. It's a very fun sandbox, though. I'd like to one day write something similar. If you want to play something similar in book form, Legendary Kingdoms is pretty much that.
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May 9, 2021 12:33
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Megazver posted:If you want to play something similar in book form, Legendary Kingdoms is pretty much that. There's also The Steam Highwayman. Hard copies only at the moment. Oh, there's a licensed adaptation of Fabled Lands coming to Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1299620/Fabled_Lands/ and Dave Morris has written a bunch of gamebooks that are available as ebooks: Heart Of Ice which is very good. Can You Brexit which while out of date is the last political game book of any note. plus a bunch of other fantasy stuff. fez_machine fucked around with this message at 13:14 on May 9, 2021 |
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May 9, 2021 13:08
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Hey this thread is great. I feel like IF is kind of eternally there, even if the public interest in it waxes and wanes. Seems the best medium to explore player agency and choices at low cost there is. I’ve obsessively played Choice of Games stuff, and would have recommended something but y’all already got to the best of list. I will say, Mecha Ace is pretty good. By the SabersGuns of Infinity guy. Very tropey, but in a respectful way. And he’s so good at making choices feel organic, rather than mechanical. Which, even the best Choice of Games struggle with. I imagine design wise it’s hard to walk the line between displaying the mechanical bones and obscuring them to the player. This is sort of IF adjacent, but have any of you tried out Thousand Year Old Vampire? It looks neat. https://timhutchings.itch.io/tyov?b...-app1%26hl%3Den E: Oh, and I don’t think anybody mentioned Slammed! A great tribute to professional wrestling under the Hosted Games label. I don’t even care about wrestling, but the variety of paths and the author’s love for the subject matter are super evident with it. unattended spaghetti fucked around with this message at 17:27 on May 9, 2021 |
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May 9, 2021 17:22
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Played Knights of San Francisco, it's real fast - like an hour and a half, two hours tops. It's definitely designed primarily for mobile; you tap to reveal more text and it fades in really nicely. There's less combat than I was expecting, and while it is kind of slow to play out the encounters are pretty short. The writing is good, and does a good job of being terse (presumably motivated by the mobile format) and evocative. The whole game's set in and around the Transmerica Building in SF, a thousand or so years in the future, which I found really funny. I also liked the music. For $3 I'd give it a solid recommend.
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May 9, 2021 20:04
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fez_machine posted:Be warned! It's brutally unfair and filled with instant death rolls and trap choices including one on the prime rime ice trading run (which is where you go and harvest ice from a lake magically frozen by a curse on a king sunken within to prevent him from returning to his rightful kingdom and then selling it down south to that same kingdom, this crosses two books in the physical edition). It's also unfinished, as the original publisher halted publication in the 90s during the gamebook collapse. You'll be doing something cool like entering hell and then have to turn back because the hell book never existed. While this is true, also the books that were unfinished are continents, and the books that are finished are other continents, so its more like you go to take a boat ride to Australia and then find out the boats aren't available right now so you have to keep exploring Europe. fez_machine posted:Heart Of Ice which is very good. I have this one physically and I really like it. Very simple but good.
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May 9, 2021 20:07
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BurningBeard posted:This is sort of IF adjacent, but have any of you tried out Thousand Year Old Vampire? It looks neat. There is a thread for Solo RPGs! I haven't played 1000YOV, but I've read a pretty cool playthrough: https://www.timdenee.com/A-Thousand-Years-of-Vampire
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May 9, 2021 20:26
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That playthrough is actually what sparked my curiosity. Did not know about the solo rpg thing. Thanks.
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May 9, 2021 21:40
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The Lone Wolf Saga is also on Android. It was one of the original CYOA books and the iOS version is pretty great and relatively cheap for that. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.GDVGames.LoneWolfBiblio&hl=en_US&gl=US I think there's an iOS version but I can't find it.
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May 9, 2021 22:53
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Its also on steam https://store.steampowered.com/app/279440/Joe_Devers_Lone_Wolf_HD_Remastered/ with some added gamification I really love the original Lone Wolf books. The Grey Star the Wizard books are my favorite CYOA/IF of all time.
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May 9, 2021 22:58
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BurningBeard posted:I will say, Mecha Ace is pretty good. By the SabersGuns of Infinity guy. Very tropey, but in a respectful way. And he’s so good at making choices feel organic, rather than mechanical. Which, even the best Choice of Games struggle with. I imagine design wise it’s hard to walk the line between displaying the mechanical bones and obscuring them to the player. One criticism that came up in Mathbrush's reviews of every CoG was that a lot of them had choices that didn't make it clear what stat you were relying on/building, which could make progressing in the way you'd prefer to frustrating, so yeah it really does seem like it's a tricky balance. Something else he noted is that the games getting book award attention tend to be relatively low rated by players, since streamlining a narrative to make a game more novel-like makes for a more coherent narrative, but makes it hard for players who want to roleplay to feel that their choices actually matter. On the flip side, the new Hosted Game that came out this week, Lux (the third in a trilogy, which is presumably a big part of the issue) seems to branch so much to account for different choices that each playthrough ends up being very short and unsatisfying to a lot of players despite the game having 500,000 words in total. I don't envy the creators who have to find the right balance with stuff like this.
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May 10, 2021 01:31
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That’s too bad about Lux. Someone was doing an LP of the first in that series, and while I was pretty unimpressed with the writing quality when I played it, reading through the LP gave me a lot of respect for the game and design portions of it. And apparently, according to the LP author, the sequel was quite reactive to the first. But from the sounds of it, that momentum couldn’t sustain into the third. Honestly, I’m not shocked. I think even in text form, you’re eventually going to get so absurdly recursive that things can’t help but fall apart. I’ve always wanted to dick around with choice script and try to write a game myself. I doubt it would be any good, but it would be fun.
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May 10, 2021 04:16
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It really is a tough balancing act. I wrote a Hosted Game and, as far as I know based on some correspondence from Choice Of, it did pretty well -- got a Steam release and all that. I leaned more towards the 'interactive novel' than the 'choice adventure' and I had a few reviews that basically said 'there wasn't enough meaningful choice but I'd love to see the author write a novel.' They'd praise the writer-side stuff -- characters, world, plot, etc. -- but criticize the gamey stuff. Which given that I'm getting closer and closer to releasing a novel in that world is why I don't talk about the game much anymore! But, really, my experience with Hosted Games was really good and I still get a royalty cheque every month from it. Kind of wish it didn't sell so consistently because I'm going to enquire about them pulling it offline due to the aforementioned novel and it'll be a harder sell if they're still making money off it! I had a few other IF concepts planned out, all of them way more reactive than the first game -- but I found out, creatively speaking, that I wasn't really interested in writing branching plots. I like having one intricate thing with a lot of thematic heft and subtext which is kind of the antithesis of a lot of choice-based games. But pretty much every story I'm drafting originated as a Choicescript outline, including some I thought about actually pitching to Choice's premium brand. I just realised that I couldn't put many interesting choices into the outlines! Milkfred E. Moore fucked around with this message at 08:52 on May 10, 2021 |
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May 10, 2021 08:50
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I wish there was a proper version of the Fighting Fantasy books by Iain Livingstone - Warlock of Firetop Mountain and so on, hell I wish you could basically do Disco Elysium but in a fantasy setting and I'd play the poo poo out of it
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May 10, 2021 20:15
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JollyBoyJohn posted:I wish there was a proper version of the Fighting Fantasy books by Iain Livingstone - Warlock of Firetop Mountain and so on, hell I wish you could basically do Disco Elysium but in a fantasy setting and I'd play the poo poo out of it I have an idea for a fantasy textgame Disco Elysium that I am utterly unequipped to execute: So, I'd probably be doing this by myself, right? This makes the full 24 skill set-up just way too much work for me alone. So it'd just be the four stats. Except the stats would be Barbarian (PHY), Rogue (MOT), Wizard (INT) and Bard (PSY). You put some points into these at the start, just like DE, and just like DE they talk to you like they're your party members. You start off an amnesiac, as the custom dictates, lying naked in the center of what was obviously a Big Magical Badaboom. As you investigate the Quest for Glory-ish sandbox region that is completely cut off from the world by a giant magical ward, you slowly figure out that you were actually a full party of adventurers and you teleported into the place right when the ward went up, fusing everyone together into a single person. It'd be great!
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May 10, 2021 20:52
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JollyBoyJohn posted:I wish there was a proper version of the Fighting Fantasy books by Iain Livingstone - Warlock of Firetop Mountain and so on What's wrong with this one? It's got good reviews. JollyBoyJohn posted:hell I wish you could basically do Disco Elysium but in a fantasy setting and I'd play the poo poo out of it Didn't you just describe Planescape: Torment with the combat modded out?
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May 10, 2021 21:59
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My favourite piece of IF that I've played in recent memory is inkle's utterly amazing game 80 Days. It was originally released on iOS/Android but received a PC port in 2015. Although the game has some lovely art and a number of graphic elements, it's definitely interactive fiction through and through. https://store.steampowered.com/app/381780/80_Days/ (Obviously) based on the Jules Verne novel Around the World in 80 Days, the year is 1872 and Phineas Fogg has bet that he can circumnavigate the world in 80 days. The player takes on the role of Passepartout, his trusty valet. From a sprawling world map, you plot and choose your route around the world, with each city offering a chunk of narrative content. The setting is wonderful - steampunk in feel without glossing over the realities of class or race in the way that really bad steampunk fiction tends to, and with a number of interesting and unique twists on the genre rather than (just) the standard goggles, clockwork and dirigibles. The sheer variety of routes and options available to the player means that there's a lot of replayability here. The devs have generally estimated that on your first playthrough you'd likely only have seen about 2% of the total writing available in the game. There's multiple endings and hidden routes and easter eggs, and it's also possible to meet a bad end on your journey if you allow Fogg's health to deteriorate too much. Death and failure states don't feel arbitrary or punishing though, and frankly the writing is good enough and the paths through the game are flexible enough that replaying through earlier content can rapidly lead you to wildly different outcomes. There's some mechanical elements woven in with the narrative. Inventory is measured in suitcases, and you can only fit so much in them, necessitating the occasional moment of packing tetris as you try and work out what you want to keep and sell. Some items will fetch a good price depending on your location, others might prove necessary to allow you to weather rougher forms of travel in comfort. Fogg has both a bank balance and a health bar, and frequently one trades off against the other - fast, efficient, comfortable travel costs a lot of money. Run out of that money and you'll find yourself sleeping rough and having to take slow and rough transport options, all of which has a cost to Fogg's wellbeing, potentially leading to death. Time is your other resource to manage - do you wait two more days in your current city for your schedule to line up with the next boat? Is it worth taking the slower travel option to get to a major city where you think you can make up the time, or do you speed away as quickly as possible but with no clear idea as to where your next move might be? As much as I adore the game, there's some downsides. Having a sprawling, open world with hidden routes and narrative hooks feels fantastic for a large number of your first playthroughs through the game, but if you want to start finding hidden content or exploring other routes - particularly deeper into the journey - it can be frustrating finding the right sequence of locations and conversations to trigger certain events. I think naturally everyone will hit a point where they'll want to start just actively looking up a walkthrough to keep progressing through content, which sours the freeform discovery that I think is one of the best strengths of the game. I just wish some of this stuff was signposted a little bit better. Even with that as a caveat, for the price you're getting a lot of game here, and I'd recommend it without reservation.
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May 11, 2021 01:17
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Found something that might be of interest to folks in this thread. IF writer Aaron Reed (he wrote the amazing Blue Lacuna that I really need to dive back into some time, I haven't revisited it since it was released), has started a weekly project covering the history of text games over the past 50 years. 50 Years of Text Games - https://if50.substack.com/ Per the author: “50 Years of Text Games” is a project that traces a path through the history of digital games without graphics, by picking one game from each year between 1971 to 2021 and taking an in-depth look at how it works and why it’s important. Each week throughout 2021, I’ll cover a new year and game, working forward chronologically from The Oregon Trail in 1971 through the latest innovations in interactive fiction. The plan is to compile the series into a crowdfunded book at its conclusion as well. I stumbled on the project in a roundabout way - Critical Distance had linked this particular article https://if50.substack.com/p/1988-prestavba as part of their weekly round-up and it was a fascinating read; it's the story of P.R.E.S.T.A.V.B.A, a political protest text adventure released in Czechoslovakia in 1988 as a way of circumventing the then Soviet-backed government's heavy censorship and control of most forms of media.
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May 14, 2021 23:42
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