Monday 7 May 2018

2018 Writing Salon: Introductions

This post is part of the 2018 "If You Write It, They Will Come" AIF Writing Salon. It's not too late to join in! During the Writing Salon, if you write a transcript of a game by the end of May deadline, then a programmer will attempt to turn it into a game for you. If you do have an introduction for the game done already, then you can post it now, so that programmers can start preparing the necessary project files, but the main deadline is the end of May deadline for a complete transcript of a playthrough of the game.

Now that you've figured out what your game is about, you can start writing. You should post the introductory text for their game and declare what game engine you want for your game so that programmers can start work.

I will most likely be the one programming your game. I prefer programming your game using the Inky engine, which is for choice-based games. If you want a parser-based game though, I can try to program your game in TADS3. I can also program games in Twine or Newlife if that's what you want.

If you have something you want to share, just post it as a comment below. Be careful to use a separate account for posting and not an account you use IRL. Anonymous comments are welcome, but it would be useful to tag your comments somehow so we know which comments are from whom. AIF Central sometimes has difficulties dealing with longer comments, so you may need to break up your posts into multiple comments. At later stages of the Writing Salon, you can also use GitHub issues to send text to programmers.

It is assumed that any game content you post to this blog or elsewhere as part of the AIF Writing Salon is licensed under the GPL so that programmers can turn it into a game for you.

28 comments:

  1. Ok, here's a rough draft of the start to my game. I'm writing this game as if it was programmed in a choose your own adventure style engine, I don't know much about Inky but I don't see why that wouldn't work.

    I'm posting this via mobile so some of the formatting has disappeared, fyi.
    _________________________________
    How dare she? Just... Like that? With a text message??

    "heyyy.... sorry, this is not working out. You know it and I know it.

    I know this is rude and all but it's easier this way thx. we're through."

    THX?!? What the fuck. THX??!! Two years you were together and she dumps you over text? You came back to your apartment after class and she had already picked up all of her stuff? Just like that? Her clothes, her shampoo, all of it! And she took your Game of Thrones DVDs! Technically, she paid for some of the seasons but everyone knows you like that show more than she does! Unbelievable!! If she thinks,

    "Soooo, how long was this drive again?" Asked Emma, her voice snapping you out of your reverie and back to reality.

    "Uh, oh, umm, I think at least three hours." you say, glancing at the clock on your dash, which reads 9:00 am.

    "Oh blegh. I hate boring car trips. It's too bad the others couldn't join us, that totally sucks about Kevin's car." Says Emma.

    It's early on Friday morning and you're sitting in the drivers seat of your car which is full of luggage and supplies for what was supposed to be a fun weekend up at your friend Kevin's family cabin, to celebrate the end of another semester. But now Kevin, and his girlfriend Kinsey, who were driving up with several other friends of yours are now stuck back at your college, waiting on a repair and won't be able to make it until at least Saturday afternoon.

    So it was either you and Emma drive up on your own, or call the trip off and go home. Neither of you were willing to admit defeat so easily, so you decided to make the trip with her. It isn't too long of a drive you think, and you know Emma is good company, even though you don't know her that well.

    Also, you were counting on this trip to get your mind off your recent breakup with your girlfriend, Britt.

    "Yeah, tell me about it. I'm glad Kevin told us about that key hidden under the mat, at least we can get in set things up." You say.

    And then the conversation peters out, not wanting to sit in silence maybe you should turn on the radio or put in a CD?

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    1. Here's a description of Emma that gives a little more background info.
      _______________________
      You've known Emma for years, but not closely. You always got along well with her but you never became close friends, she ran with a slightly different crowd in college and your worlds didn't intersect much outside of your friendship with Kevin and Kinsey.

      You always thought she was pretty cute but you were never seemed to be single when you'd run into her and never gave her much thought besides a casual appreciation for her looks and personality.

      She's very cute, now that you think about it and look at her more appraisingly. Her luxurious thick dark brown hair frames a face whose features combine model like fine details with a wholesome roundness that give off a girl next door meets Playboy playmate vibe you find incredibly sexy.

      She's wearing a green button up shirt that's unbuttoned at the top showing her smooth neck and upper chest above her smallish breasts. A pair of jeans covers her wide hips and curvy ass, another feature you somehow have failed to notice until now.

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    2. Great writing as always SeattleMan. I'll begin work on the game. Have you decided a title yet?

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    3. Thanks! I haven't really been able to come up with anything better than Road Trip for the title, which isn't very interesting. I'm open to suggestions!

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    4. Thank you for volunteering to do some programming for the salon, Blind AIF. If you find that you get too busy or the programming gets too annoying, just let me know and I can carry on with whatever progress you've made.

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    5. No problem lost. :). Thanks for offering, but I think I'll have enough time to program the game. If not, I'll keep you posted. I'm working in Twine 2.0 with the TweeGo Twee compiler. I'm going to upload the introduction to GitHub soon. Seattle Man, I'm also having trouble coming up with a title, but "the Road Trip" is fine for me. :)

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    6. The Road Trip works! It's a bit dull maybe but we can change it later if something better comes up. Also, I changed Emma's name to Clara, fyi

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    7. Hi there. Well, apparently, the Git program doesn't want to work on my machine (Windows XP). I have dropbox though. Here's the source code and compiled HTML. https://www.dropbox.com/s/obih8725e6ycxxg/trip.zip?dl=1

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    8. I'm working pretty steadily on the transcript, should have it done by the end of the month. Some parts might not be as fleshed out as others however. Feel free to email me at seattleman150 at yahoo.com if you have any questions or anything!

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    9. It looks good Blind AIF. GitHub seems to be more troublesome than I expected, so don't bother using it if you don't want to. You can actually upload and edit files right from the GitHub website if you want though.

      One annoying thing with Twine is that it expects you to manually add spacing to mark out paragraphs. You can easily get around that issue by adding the passage below to your TWEE code. It automatically adjusts the visual formatting of paragraphs so that they're easier to read:

      :: paragraph spacing [stylesheet]
      .passage br,
      .popup br {
      line-height: 3.5em;
      vertical-align: top;
      }

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  3. May have to do a bit of tweaking, but here is the rough draft for the start of my story.

    The Story So Far:

    You are Obi, a young man from a small village in Africa. Some days are bad but most are good; that's how the world is, right? Today, you feel, should be a good one. Today you will prepare for many future good days ahead. And what can be better than that?

    You have spent the past few years traveling between other villages, large and small, learning about the world with Amara. Amara had insisted; the world is large, she says, and those who do not learn of it shame it's beauty. That is true, you had replied, and the people of the world always have a need for young, strong backs and the we will always have need of money. When a thing is good in so many ways, it is hard to argue.

    And so, you walked the hot, sun baked paths from town to town with your beautiful betrothed at your side. While you have enjoyed the sights over the past few years, you are beginning to notice a feeling like homesickness. This is strange because you have not considered yourself to have a home. Amara laughed when you told her this. It is simple my dear Obi, she said, you long for the home we will one day have! How you had smiled at your wise betrothed; she was right, of course. Adventure was a fine thing, but so too was a place to tell stories of it.

    The two of you decided that it was finally begin thinking about building a place to be homesick for. Amara seemed saddened a little, she loved your journey, but her eyes an smile were no less bright. However, you would have one last adventure; it would be a short one, you hoped.

    An American man named Barnabas Winslow approached the two of you the day before you were to journey back to your village. Word had spread of you and your betrothed, it seemed, and many had said that none knew the local lands better. This was kind to say, but perhaps true.

    Winslow was interested in looking through old places. In particular, he had a desire to see a small temple a day's journey from your village. He said it is a temple to a god that your people never worshipped, which is interesting. He also says that rare plants are said to grow there, and that he knows people who are interested in them. Some of what he said interested you, some of it did not; that is how people are, right? What is interesting for certain is the money he offers, which could go a long way toward making a home to be sick for.

    Some days are bad but most are good. It is hard to know which days will be which until you walk forward into them ...

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    1. That seems like a fine start for a rough draft! I look forward to reading and learning more, about just what our lovely bride-to-be looks like, the kinds of puzzles you decide on, and the situations Obi and/or Barnabas find themselves in.

      Keep up the good work!

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    2. Are you looking to make a choice-based game or a parser-based game?

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    3. @spike Thanks, I did a quick run through an old script I had written for the start of this game so I can't say I did this all in one go, but I didn't make too many changes from the original. It's actually kind of funny really, the biggest challenge of writing this is that Obi is a very upbeat kind of guy and I need to remind myself now and again to pitch the story from that point of view. I'm not exactly sunny by nature, so it's kind of an interesting challenge.

      @Lost Honestly, I am not entirely sure. I guess I could see it going either way really, but then the technical side isn't my specialty. The way I see it the player is on a clock so I really only need a handful of possible actions per room, maybe 3 or 4 tops, so if the player tries to brute force things they are likely to get a bad ending. I guess choice based makes the most sense in that case?

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    4. In my opinion it just depends what you are going for and what game you want. Hard to say this early, but technically it doesn't seem like it would be too difficult in either style. You have a timer - basically every time you do an action (with the possibility of omitting looking/examining actions), time will pass, and if you don't get through the room/game in enough time bad things happen.

      A choice game would list you a potential of things to do - often times in a more direct manner. You see a bronze statue, a iron sphere, and a wooden pyramid. Which do you want to put on the pressure plate? And the player would select them.

      Of course those would all be listed in a written paragraph describing the room, possibly letting you click to describe the items, and upon picking you would fail or succeed and move on (or waste time as you failed).

      Text parser would describe the room and the player would need to examine the objects, get them, put which one they wanted through text onto the pressure plate. Actions typed could be picking up one item, dropping it on the plate, seeing it is wrong, picking it up, putting another item down, picking up an item that doesn't have anything to do with the puzzle.

      In that way you could count each action, or you could only count up during specific ones like putting an item on the pressure plate, so only those count against you (so picking up everything in the room would count 0 turns, but actually deciding to put something on it would count as 1).

      The style of parser vs. choice is more a stylistic one than anything, and you get a lot of opinions on either side. I tend to feel parser games make me feel more like I'm interacting and exploring myself, but find parser games are easier to keep the player focused on what the author wants - you obviously only have so many choices on what to do vs. 'free' reign. It also allows very awkwardly worded actions or puzzles that don't use standard actions to be done easier as you read what it says and click it.

      Sorry for rambling, but story short, unless there is some specific thing that would only work well with one or the other, the choice is yours for what style you want.

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    5. Choice-based game engines don't have timers, so I would need to write code for that, but I can do that.

      The decision of choice-based vs parser-based isn't a technical decision. The decision changes the game that you write, so you must make the decision. You have to decide on the options available to the player. You have to decide on the responses to each player action. I don't do any of that. For the Salon, you are writing the game in the form of a transcript, and I'm converting that to code.

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    6. Fair enough, I wasn't sure if you had a preference ... if one method was easier than another for you, basically. I guess if I had to pick one over the other I'd say choice based. While I like the idea of players having the freedom of the parser based game but I think some of the puzzles I had in mind might be simpler as a choice based system. Also, that may help keep me focused on things and not tempt me to turn every object in a room into a red herring. Scope creep is a very real thing for me, so I'd probably do best to avoid it.

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    7. I'm having trouble using Github, so I'll just put the initial project files on dropbox for now:

      https://www.dropbox.com/s/ta3gecm7wrjj71c/holet.zip?dl=0

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    8. Sorry for the lack of response for a while, sudden uptick in activity in my personal life which has been making it hard to find solid blocks of time to focus. I already have some of the basic descriptions written up from my previous attempt, will try to take a swing at rewriting them to fit the new format tomorrow and hopefully have the full transcript knocked out in a few days.

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    9. Just try to have a transcript ready by around the end of May deadline.

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    10. Hate to say it, but I may have to throw in the towel here. Just a massive load of real life work has been hitting over the last few weeks and the few solid blocks of time that I have to write I find myself staring at the screen blankly. Sorry to have wasted everyone's time here.

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    11. Life does that sometimes. If you can get something done in the next week or two, I'll still be able to program it up for you. Can you rearrange an existing story that you've written into a game transcript? Otherwise, don't worry about it.

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    12. Oh nuts, I came to post some support for your story Ho Let, since we're the only two authors participating, and I hadn't chimed in on yours yet. I've had to abandon a couple AIF projects for that reason, myself. No worries.


      That being said, since I'm all that's left do we want to rearrange anything? I was going to ask if anyone minded if we moved the deadline to maybe the 4th so we could get another weekend of writing in. If not I'll have a workable chunk finished and could fill in the rest with placeholder stuff.


      Or do we want to change it up totally? Program two versions of one game, one in a Twine style and another in a parser style? Or do a round robin kind of thing, I write the beginning chapter and then pass it on, etc. Just some ideas, this doesn't need to turn into the "Program Seattle Man's Game" salon.

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    13. @Lost I can try but honestly I don't have much hope there. Any prior stories I've written probably wouldn't lend themselves well to the format, so they would probably require a fair bit of rewriting. I vaguely recall trying to turn The Test into something similar where it was a game on a timer, but I don't think I ever wrote anything substantial for it. Had a lot of late nights lately so maybe I'll get some solid time to rest and make a comeback but from where I stand it's not looking particularly great. I'm pretty quick to write when I get in the zone but getting there has been challenging lately.

      @Seattle Man sorry to leave the pressure on you. This was a good idea, feels a little off to only have one game come out of it though.

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    14. @SeattleMan, a few extra days is fine. I just don't want things to stretch on forever. There will still be a month for fleshing out the game during the playtesting phase too, so you don't need everything perfect by the coming deadline.

      I don't think changing things up is worth the trouble. If the idea of the Salon didn't work, then it didn't work. I thought the offering of "free programming" was pretty generous, so I thought there would be a lot more interest, but that was not the case.

      @Ho Let No pressure. Do what you have the time for. Given the short deadline, the most "game-like" story might not be the best choice. You can think of this as an opportunity to get some practice at game writing and to finally get a game out. Just take a short, sexy scene from one of your stories, add a couple of choices in there to make it interactive, and see what happens. Maybe it's good, maybe it's awful, but you'll learn something and you'll have something that you can play.

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    15. Well, I'll see what I can do. Probably won't have much time until this weekend though. Looking back I don't see much that I can just easily copy and paste, so it will still take some time to throw something together.

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