I chose to make my own CYOA-like choice-tree-matching tool (I hesitate to call it a ‘new language’, though it could form the core of a language, I just haven’t developed a programming environment for it, besides in LambdaMOO where I do pretty much all my skunkworks projects) because I had ideas about how to absorb and feedback player choices that have never been done before, based on theories about interactivity I had never seen expressed before. (What I said about Space Invaders in the other thread is an important clue to how I see interactivity – I have looked at early arcade history pretty in depth looking for the turn physics engines made that narrative engines never did, and I believe that turn occurred in Space Invaders, and is also strongly in evidence in Pac-Man.) And I still really haven’t seen a lot of those ideas expressed. So it was for my own edification, to test out my own ideas and see if they would work. They solved the things I thought they did but they were not the magical solution to explosion of narrative complexity in interactive work that I thought they would be, as I discovered in trying to use my own tools. However, they are still good tools and they’ve been coming in handy the more I work in IF.
Basically, I had a dream ‘vehicle’ for interactive video and I built the engine for it — I still don’t really have a chassis though: it was to be just interactive video but now it is something much weirder and it may eventually involve using Parchment as just one element of a larger web design. The important thing is, the new hypothesis solves many problems I had with the first hypothesis, and it’s interesting to me and is leading me forward artistically. It’s one of those ‘I have to chase this’ things.
I started working on the concepts around 1999/2000. Took a break from employment etc. to build something big in earnest during 2002-2003. Tried my video project in late '03/'04, then that failed and I was rather destitute so the next 3 or 4 years were basically used up trying to get back on my feet and ‘make it again in the city’.
Anyway, circumstances have brought me full circle and now I am in building mode again, so now is the time when another huge piece is getting added to my code monstrosity.
I wouldn’t portray it as ‘I am dedicated to designing a general-purpose CYOA scripting language’. More accurate would be ‘A targeted CYOA scripting language is one of the tools I’ve created for my ongoing hobby/passion of coming up with interactive fiction design theories and attempting to implement them.’ (Before I discovered Inform I had already written my own parser system and text adventure design language – you would design it in HyperCard and then it would spit out C+±compilable code — this was in around '95, but it died with HyperCard unfortunately. Besides, Inform quickly won me over from my own system as soon as I read the manual.) There are other tools in the same position: there is a whole web page design/blogging platform system I’ve built out of LambdaMOO; tools for auto-tracing linear narratives visually based on simple question-answer inputs (see here and here) and really all sorts of stuff all relating to tracing choice, that piqued my fancy, and that I have plans to release. Some of the tools have been duplicated though by others in the interim, which is also cool because it confirms I’m in touch with the zeitgeist of people who can glimpse all the artistic possibilities that don’t quite exist yet in this medium, and thus I am not actually insane and/or driven by imaginary entities. 87
Because thinking about art and interactivity IS what drives almost everything about me – there is incredible untapped juice there and I am (we are) one of the few people on the planet who really perceive it. That’s an extraordinary thing for we few who are moved to systematising by the crossover between stories and games.
In one sense, I am one of these people with a ton of half finished projects. In another sense, few of them are abandoned (an important distinction, e.g. Tolkien’s process, has anyone read up on it? Fascinating) and some of the projects have been coming together lately into things greater than the sum of the parts. It’s an exciting time for me! Actually more than a decade of work is coming into play lately in my art.
I’ll find out what the universe has in store for my little collection of polished stones eventually. Good luck with your own codepile. If you are very focused about it you will probably advance it much quicker than I do any individual thing. 8)
There are a lot of different reasons and motivations why someone might want to do this kind of stuff.
Paul.
P.S. Thanks for asking! XD