Introducing Interactive Fiction

Watch this
Paper Tales: A Guide to Narrative Prototyping.  And consider watching https://archive.org/details/GDC2015Ingold  (you may wish to stop and play some of the games he mentions, especially 80 Days which I think is quite good)

There are three kinds of interactive fiction that are well established, parser fiction, branching fiction and the rising-in-popularity Walking Simulators. Many games have IF as part of the game as well.

Play this http://adamcadre.ac/if/tutorial.html  It explains the conventions of traditional IF, built in Inform 7. It should make Parser fiction make more sense.

If you find playing parser fiction agonizing, you may prefer listening to it. This podcast can give you a feel for parser fiction.

then play this https://www.choiceofgames.com/creatures-such-as-we/  (Branching fiction)

and this http://warpdoor.com/2014/11/23/hunger-daemon-sean-m-shore/(Parser fiction)

Then play one of these

NOTE: You do not have to finish them all. You are playing for flavor of the game, and how they work. This is a LOT of gameplay, and honestly, you can’t do all of this over four days unless you quit at some point.

You may also find this of interest, but it is optional: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/oct/22/interactive-fiction-awards-games (Links to an external site.)

You may find the Forest Paths approach useful. Here is a video on it from GDC

 

TURN IN

What sort of platform you plan to use and why you chose it.  It can be a very short comment here! Does not have to be a post.

Comments

  1. I will use the platform Twine because I like the style of visual novels. I also find that the process of finding the correct commands can be a bit frustrating, and I’m more interested in creating branching fiction than parser fiction.

  2. I’m planning on using Twine. I found Inform to be pretty frustrating to play, even when it was well-designed. Although I do think parser fiction is interesting, I think I’d rather avoid having to account for various verb/noun combinations and whatnot.

  3. I’m planning on using Twine since thought the format was clean but still simple enough/doable for me to learn from scratch. I also think having pre-set choices rather than the user creating their own input is more suitable for my game.

  4. I will be using Twine since it seems pretty intuitive to set up and create different paths in the story. There are also options to use javascript and css to help spice up the experience. I also would like to give preset choices instead of having users input everything on their own

  5. I’m planning on using Twine. It seems like the most feasible platform for creating a game in a short period of time. I also think it’ll be easier to write a branching fiction story than a parser fiction story, since I’ll have fewer cases to think about.

  6. I am planning on using Twine because I feel like it is easier to use and easier to play games made with Twine. I don’t like the format of Inform7 games as much.

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