The ”not text” aspect

[EJoyce]

@DeusIrae

I hadn’t heard this, but seems understandable to me - I think a lot of the CoG games include strong romance elements, and I can see character art making it harder for players to project their preferences for attractiveness into the characters.

Yeah, as I understand it this was indeed the main objection, or at least a major one, from the fans who were opposed to having art at all. Of course, often people just don’t like change, but it makes sense to me that at least some of the people who play CoG games for the romance are looking for something they can’t get from the many VN dating sims and RPGs with significant romance elements that are out there.

[Warrigal (Garry Francis)]

@Piergiorgio_d_errico

so, IMO I think that is somewhat artificial the divide between choice engines and parser engines, I think that is feasible developing choice-tailored standard libraries for every known IF engine, even I7/10 save, perhaps, ADRIFT.

I am currently testing a game written in Adrift that uses a choice-based conversation system, so this is definitely possible in Adrift.

[ramstrong (Harry Hardjono)]

@EJoyce

since you’re not positing that something can be, e.g., a “parser visual novel”?

I’d say that is a very distinct possibility. There are financial and cultural reasons why such things don’t exists, but there’s no technical reason why it’s impossible.

Princess Tomato in Salad Kingdom is an example of Illustrated Choice IF that could have been implemented as Parser VN.

[EJoyce]

That’s fair! I guess my point was more that the person I was replying to seemed to be saying “this is a continuum between two kinds of primarily-text games, and this is a continuum between two kinds of related primarily-graphics games,” and then depicting that as a two-axis graph—but it probably does work as a graph also, even if some of those quadrants are sparsely populated. (Now that I think about it, Square Enix’s recent remake of The Portopia Serial Murder Case probably qualifies as a parser VN, although regrettably the parser aspect of it is terrible.)

[jkj_yuio]

@EJoyce

Isn’t this in fact two separate continuums rather than a two-axis graph

You’re right. My origin is definitely not in the right place. It’s just that personally i feel all variants are in the same space. it’s q question of exactly how they relate.

[gfaregan]

I’m not a big fan of text only games that assume you’re going to take notes and draw a map, but that may be more of a genre or design thing than something that would be helped by adding a graphical map.

[EJoyce]

They definitely are all in the same space! Maybe it’s more of, I don’t know, one of those many-circle Venn diagrams? Or just a great big ball of interactive fiction-y stuff.