Great word! Conjures up images of Gandalf taking his time in the inn’s outhouse, robes scrunched up around his bony white knees while he’s crumpling up his beard between his hands to keep it from soaking up that suspicious dwarfbeer-smelling green-brown liquid on the plank floor.
I do like a great big lore-dump at the beginning of a game. It draws forth promises of epic adventures (which the game itself of course has to keep). It also helps me settle in, prepare myself to really inhabit this fictional world I’m entering.
LoL… I’ll note of your conjured image, esp. for Dm’d… party start a major barroom brawl, then leaving the inn, from the outhouse emerges a really PO and overleveled wizard, annoyed by the ruckus heard when minding his/her outhouse business… a good and funny means of starting a quest, after being easily subdued & apprehended by the wizard, they must do a mission for repaying the damages to the inn and the beaten guests…
It depends on how interactive you want your interactive fiction to be. The higher the ratio of words to user action, the less interactive the story is.
Generally, I think good writing tries to be as concise possible while still getting the job done. When in doubt pare it down.
Heh… this put a funny idea in my head. Rooms start out as very verbose, but each time you revisit the room, a word or two from the end of the description drops off. As mentioned scenery, objects, and NPCs are dropped from the description, they disappear from the game world as well. Puts a unique timer running in each room.
Not sure if this is a knowing nod, but there actually is a Proust section in Graham Nelson’s Jigsaw - @draconis’s Lets Play worked through it recently (see this post and following, though the whole thing is a very fun read!)
I could think of several narratives that would support a slowly-decaying environment like you described…
But also, that’s not a bad strategy to write room descriptions - decay what’s already been examined and isn’t of further interest from the description, and potentially call out extra stuff dynamically. That’s kind of the “holy grail” of parser - the prose evolves so the player never feels they are reading the same exact description over and over. That means it’s okay to leave out stuff if it’s potentially discoverable later.
Visit 1: “Ooh, new room, here’s what’s most obviously interesting,” the player EXAMINES for more detail about furnishings and scenery if they want, perhaps discovering more stuff on closer scrutiny that might not be apparent on first-glance walkthrough of a room.
Visit 2: “This room again.” Short description. Everything is still there, only call out descriptively what’s different, like an NPC wandering in. The player can still examine everything they remember, and if they type LOOK they get the verbose room description again, perhaps including clever details that acknowledge what they’ve done - they’ve rummaged the couch and checked under the rug already - also perhaps noting they feel like they’ve missed something…
Visit 3: “This room again. But look - the one thing you suddenly lock onto is an odd lump behind the curtain (hiding a hidden lever)” - since the player neglected to examine or open the curtain on two previous visits after examining everything else, the parser is now calling it out directly - that’s the thing that will progress the story and the only actual important detail in the room.
There are times IF makes me feel like the Professor from Gilligan’s Island:
“In the 1978 ‘Rescue from Gilligan’s Island’, actor Russell Johnson shows the Professor in a reinvention predicament. After returning to work at a university, he discovers all his inventions made (while stranded on the island) had been invented already, among them the Frisbee and skateboard. His frustration makes him want to give up the world he’s come back to.” -Source
I spent a really long time coming up with a new conversation system only to find out it had been already used in Planescape: Torment, among other games. I did three-d movement in a game to find Andrew Schultz did it in Threediopolis. It can be rough but also when people play something they like, they look for more like it, so it can make some people very happy to have multiple games with the same idea.
I actually become rather excited when someone else has done it already! It means that I was onto something that was going to work, which proves I am capable of making more good ideas!
Also, I only do stuff so that it exists. If someone else does it, I still win. I don’t put effort into making a legacy. Even if it’s already done, an idea is still worth making because it’ll have a little bit of me on it too.
But I’ll put it online, and in time I’ll be forgotten and that’s okay.
Also, I don’t want that to come off as dismissive.
I knew someone who really wanted to invent something new, and obviously had all the skills to make amazing things.
But they put all their time and effort into finding metaphorical uncharted territory, which was not time and effort spent on making stuff that would have been of value because they made it, original idea or not.
EDIT: For the record they did eventually get past this, but there were years where I just wanted to see what their creations would be like, with all their details etched into every facet of the design, and they just absolutely refused until they found the undiscovered idea.
The earliest IF was terse because of system memory limitations. The best of classical IF prose is poetic in its efficiency of language
Later authors tended to limit word count to implement (if only superficially) what they’ve mentioned, and draw the reader’s attention to that which is well implemented.
“Cain” escaped that requirement by presenting its longer passages as visions, things with which we know we can’t interact
The other side of the equation is the reader. I can only speak for myself, but I’m sure I’m not alone. I am an easily distracted reader (call it Attention Deficit Disorder if you must). I am drawn to IF because it forces me to slow down, focus my attention on key details, and make reflective choices between passages. IF which fails at that loses my attention pretty quickly.
Tastes vary. Others might like longer passages, and I know that authors are writing for all types of readers.
Ah, but don’t forget Myst also has books you can read! (Handwritten in cursive no less, which may have been a questionable choice given the screen resolution the game is working with.)
I love to read, but I prefer text that is high on information and low on fluff. I grow increasingly impatient of reading fiction padded out with long descriptions. Skip the details and get on with the plot. Goes even more for supposedly interactive fiction. It should be real interaction, not just splitting up the wall of text into smaller chunks that I am forced to “interactively” consume.
