CHU2-2018.08.05.txt (115.6 KB)
I didn’t paste text inline here because my room became unexpectedly enormous at 16k+ words - it wasn’t the longest source text in the game, but I think it was in the top 5.
I created two bathrooms off my room (it was a joke on the Slack about all the bathrooms people wanted) since my story involved a major renovation. I made them enterable lit containers so they wouldn’t violate the main map by using compass directions. I also blatantly flouted rules by having time-travel and an entire extra small map of rooms that didn’t exist in Cragne’s time period and had been removed in that renovation.
I was able to pull this off by doing a player body-swap (and also changing the game tense temporarily - so much complicated stuff they inspired and fostered!) I half-expected to be shut down and was ready to plead my case that I wasn’t really going outside scope since the actual protagonist went nowhere except my assigned room and the bulk of my scenario was a detailed flashback that didn’t interfere with any other part of the map. Luckily Jenni was like “um sure, just don’t break anything…”
I imagine the hardest thing was authors making objects with effects that could be smuggled out of their rooms. Most of my extra props were locked inside the flashback and inaccessible to the actual protagonist except for the assigned quest item (one of the books) and a piece of trophy clothing - I loved the idea that they said they would not restrict the PC from wearing every clothing item in the game and it tickled me that Naomi could eventually waddle around wearing 20 outfits and all the accessories.
My item provided a minor flashback that could occur outside my room, but I (hopefully) made sure it didn’t interfere with anyone else’s sequencing.
Main room commentary within the game:
"So, welcome to the Narthex! If I understand correctly, it’s behind a locked door in either direction, so congratulations for making it here…however you manged [UGH SORRY SP after all these years…] to do it! I had to look up ‘narthex’ so that was the first thing I did - I made the room name change after Naomi learns what it means.
Ryan said we didn’t have to go crazy in our rooms if we didn’t want to, so I envisioned doing a quick and easy, atmospherically appealing room about the subtle creeping dread of objects vanishing and reappearing. It was going to take a good hour to write, maybe two if I wanted to get fancy, and n ot take too much time from the other project I was working on.
Then I got my assignment, and EVERYTHING CHANGED.
Sorry Ryan and Jenni, for (compiles to check) the 16697-word source text in a world with 13 rooms and 73 things. Only five of those are my added rooms, I swear.
I put a commentary in each location. If there’s not, then Ryan or Jenni may have put their individual feet down on not increasing the PROP_TABLE_SIZE or the MAX_DESCRIPTIVE_FOODLUMS or someothersuch limit in Inform 7.
Thank you, testers: Andrew Schultz, Jeremy Freese, Mike Spivey, Rachel Spitler, Eric W. Brown, Lucian Smith, Christopher Conley. Special thanks to Andrew Plotkin and everyone on the #Slack community for tech help, support, and fungal bloom jokes. Also thanks Ryan and Jenni for letting us do this crazy thing."