Oh God, here we go...it's IF time (ignore my cynicism)

*Ignore my cynicism. I just feel I've spent the entire past week in front of a computer due to the unusually high onslaught of assignments. But, I digress...*

*Warning: you will spend the entire third of a future course talking about this stuff*

Storytelling and Computers

Introduction

Scott Adams Speaks

Parser fun

"Not everything worked, and the computer wouldn't always tell you how to make it work."

About 3 weeks ago, we started learning how to program interactive fiction. I wouldn't call myself ahead of the curve, because everyone else has had this class as sort of a prep step. The thing about programming interactive fiction is that it doesn't use intricate code (in a manner of speaking). The programming is done using plain old english words.-the issue being that Inform 7 (the program that creates IF) does not recognize all words. There's a certain style. The good thing about Inform is that it will tell you at least where your error lies and why. But you still have to figure out how to fix it.

Last year, in fact, when I demonstrated a text adventure game in my "Writing Electronic Texts" class for the first time, three literature majors dropped the class that afternoon.

-I've seen this happen many times here. Students drop this classes that deal with writing and technology because they don't wait until the part of the course where it actually makes sense. You think "when am I ever going to use this?" But I'm using HTML in Communication Theory and Technology in a couple of weeks. Wait it out. The content will synthesize at some point. Hell, Wednesday's 2-3 assignment just made me realize that a class last semester wasn't so pointless after all.

"The most extreme example I can think of that illustrates this parallel post-modern tendency"

I find post-modern characteristics popping up more and more this past week. Post-modernism is known for its experimentation. and IF is a far cry from a Jane Austen novel.

"This is the actual way the game plays and the idea is you go through the game; you have an adventure. You have a puzzle-solving situation. You'll meet a lot of things you've got to deal with...Your mind gives a much better picture than the finest artist. There is tremendous capability in the human mind"

Anyway, these early games helped you develop logical ways of thinking, since there were no instructions. You had to figure out everything by yourself, which meant that the games took longer to play than say, a Gameboy game that came with an instruction booklet (does anyone else miss that thing?) I sort of see the appeal, for I think it is the same reason people read books: we're given guidelines, but also create the world inside our minds. This is why so many of us are dissapointed by film adaptions of novels.

"The next one-third of the game literally came from the people I gave to to play the game. I'd watch how they played the game. I'd watch what they'd try to do with the items that I never thought they might try to do. [I said,] "Wow, what a good idea! I think I'll put that in the game." I literally did. So the games were written by the users."

well, we're doing this in EL 405 on thursday, so I will link here to the blog for that day.

I really don't have anything to say about the last reading, "Parser Fun". It is essentially a bunch of anecdotes and tips about playing/programming interactive fiction.