As promised, here’s the first update on my project for IFComp 2009.

At this point I can’t even give you a title.  My working title is “My Game”.  I haven’t yet typed one word into the Inform 7 UI.

And that makes me feel pretty good, actually!  The three previous projects I tried all fizzled partway through, and I think the problem in all three cases was that I too quickly started banging out code.

What I’ve found is that an interesting mechanic is not enough to hang a game on.  My first attempt was a fantasy-based game where the central conceit was that you spent part of the time undead.  Descriptions would change, and some of your fundamental characteristics as a player would be different, enabling different solutions to the same problems you encountered as a living character.

It was a cool idea, and I may yet do something with it, but I just took it and ran, whacking in generic descriptions and telling myself I’d figure out the puzzles, and even the plot, as I went.  In fact, one of the reasons I picked this idea to try first was that I thought it was a cool concept, but it wasn’t my favorite idea.  I knew I didn’t have the skills to attempt my favorite first.

Of course, I hit a brick wall.

My second attempt again had an interesting concept, but with ultimately no way to get an entertaining game out of it.  After implementing the first phase, I realized the central mechanic of the idea made it too hard to portray the story arc I wanted.

My third attempt probably would have worked, but what I found was that although I had a good “hook”, an idea for some interesting puzzles, and a coherent narrative planned, I just didn’t care about the characters or the story I was trying to tell.

Every time I told myself:  Well, at least I learned something new.  And I still have time for my real comp game.

I don’t have that margin for error this time, so I’m not going to make those mistakes again.  The first thing I did for idea #4 was figure out the story I wanted to tell.  It’s still not the one I want to tell the most, but it’s one I at least care about.  The idea for the setting came from that, and it’s something I’m comfortable with and think I can implement well.  I then sketched the major characters enough to know who they are and get an idea of how the dialogue should go.  I’m now working on plotting the segments of the story and researching interesting puzzles that should integrate well.

Only once I get done with that will I try to work on the map and finally start laying some code down in Inform.  I’m hopeful that by approaching things this way, I’ll have a clearer idea where I want to head before I start painting myself into a corner.

More to come later!

Tags: Inform 7, Interactive Fiction

Or,

How Interactive Fiction Made Me the Man I am Today

Back when I was in junior high, I got interested in “text adventures” — games now known as “interactive fiction”.  If you’re not familiar with the genre, the game describes your environment using text, and provides a prompt where you can type commands in a limited subset of English.  The commands move your character in the simulated world and allow you to explore, interact with objects and characters, and solve puzzles.

Back then in the mid-80s, the only (decent) interactive fiction was being produced by Infocom, the almost legendary, and now defunct, software company formed by a bunch of MIT grads.

After cutting my teeth on the Zork series, Enchanter, Infidel, and Witness on my old Apple II+, I somehow heard about the concept of “beta testing” and got the bright idea to apply to Infocom to test their games.  With the encouragement of my parents, I sent in a letter to them, and to my amazement I got accepted!

In an incredible stroke of luck, my eighth-grader’s application came in at the very same time they were putting the finishing touches on Seastalker, the first interactive fiction game pitched at kids.  Just like that, I was a beta tester!

I made sure to do a very thorough job testing that game, and got invited back to work on several more games over the next few years, including (at one point) the infamous Leather Goddesses of Phobos, which would seem to be an odd choice for a 17-year-old to test.  Maybe they’d forgotten how old I was at that point.  I also got a chance to test A Mind Forever Voyaging and Trinity, two of my all-time favorites.

Unfortunately, the good times came to an end eventually; by the end of high school the amount of time I had to dedicate to testing games was much lower, and Infocom was starting to hit the skids.  By that time I was interested in writing my own games, and experimented with creating my own text adventures in Applesoft BASIC, but they were very limited, with a two-word parser and not much coherency.

Fast forward to 1993 — I’d just graduated from college with a Master’s in Mechanical Engineering.  I applied for a job at Black and Veatch writing performance analysis software for power plants, and C++ was all the rage.  More specifically, object-oriented programming was all the rage.  I was asked several times if I had any OOP experience, and I was able to tell them with a straight face that yes, I had written OO software, using a package called “TADS 2″, a text adventure development system.

I expected derision.  I got the job.

Unfortunately, I never actually completed a full project using TADS 2 — there was always something else to work on, and eventually I dropped it.  For years I had no idea that there was an interactive fiction community still in existence.  I certainly never participated in it.  I stumbled upon references to the “Inform” language and the odd TADS game from time to time, but nothing drew me in.

That changed fairly recently.  I ran across Play This Thing, a gaming blog, and found a link to Lost Pig (and Place Under Ground), the 2007 winner of the annual Interactive Fiction Competition, which could be played in-browser.  I was re-hooked.  Since then I’ve explored the works of Emily Short and Adam Cadre, plus some of the more popular games to come out of the past two decades.  Things sure have changed.  Some of the newer style of plot-driven, consciously artistic games are incredible experiences, while the newer tools allow Infocom-style puzzlefests that are far larger and more ambitious than anything from the “Golden Age”.

And of course, I found Inform 7.

I’d never been intrigued enough by either TADS or earlier versions of Inform to learn one fully; I program for a living, and the thought of learning another C++-like dialect just did nothing for me.

But Inform 7 is different.  It’s designed from the ground up to be “literate” — in other words, to make the source code read as much like a composition in English as is possible.  It’s also a heavily rule-based language, with interesting trade-offs and structure.  It’s different enough from what I know that I’m actually interested in learning it.  And it’s powerful enough that I can accomplish some fun things fairly quickly.

So the upshot of all this prelude is that I’ve registered to enter the 2009 Interactive Fiction Competition.  I need to have my game completed and tested by the end of September, which gives me 3 months.  Luckily, I’ve been learning the language for the past several months with some trial projects, so I should have enough of a knowledge base to hit the ground running.

Keeping motivated to put the time in is going to be the problem (as always).  To that end, I’m going to promise to post at least once per week on the status of the project, whether I’ve done anything or not.  That will not only keep me blogging, but should serve as a spur to force me to keep moving forward.

My first post will be about the design process I’m going through.  Look for it in the next few days.

Wish me luck!

Tags: Inform 7, Interactive Fiction