They are just-so stories. And they don’t teach you anything about ‘deduction’. This is why Sherlockian IF rarely feels authentic because it IS about genuine deduction, which plods rather than scintillates. But I love the original stories anyway, much as I love Star Trek despite the ‘Heisenberg compensators’. Generally I don’t enter comps, and play them only sporadically, so my opinion is fairly irrelevant here but I feel a wider mystery focus would be better.
Re: copyright. I think it would be wiser not to reveal the inspiration at all if you are just borrowing ideas rather than actual material, since you are under no obligation to reveal the sources of your ideas and in today’s world you cannot really rely on people following the rules when they decide whether you need to be sued.
For the purposes of this comp, and considering not everyone will be as familiar as everyone else with the subject matter, and furthermore given that every subject matter is always open to interpretation, I’d advise you “not to sweat it.” [emote]:)[/emote]
The Robert Downing Jr. films (I only saw the first) is a perfect example. They take Holmes’ basic personality traits and dress them up very differently, but it’s still recognisably Holmes, in a perfectly valid reading. So it’s valid as source material for you. Heck, Jeremy Brett created an outstanding Holmes, but it wasn’t Conan Doyle’s Holmes. It was still brilliant.
As long as y’all don’t come up with another “The Cross of Fire”, all will be good.
I find Brett a fantastic portrayal of Holmes, but not Doyle’s Holmes as I read it. Brett’s trademark mania and grand outbursts make Holmes nearly bipolar, whereas Doyle’s Holmes is simply very much a product of its Victorian era. Although Doyle’s Holmes is indeed prone to moments of great excitement and inner turmoil, it always seemd to be to be a very different thing from Brett’s sometimes feverish state. It’s a sutble thing, but important: Doyle’s Holmes will go down to the floor to take measurements of footprints, with no qualms as to lying down full-length, while Brett will throw himself on the floor as though those footprints were the Holy Grail and he were a crusader.
Having said that, I could simply have a different take on Doyle’s Holmes. Different interpretations et al.
Bottom line is, I do think Brett is the best Holmes yet, and find it hard to believe we’ll have another one as good. The fact that in my eyes he’s not quite the Holmes that Doyle created does not diminish him one iota.
EDIT - I suppose I could sum it up this way. I find Doyle’s Holmes to be essentially a cerebral creature (though not as much as Mycroft), whose world lies entirely in the realm of numbers, knowledge, theories, and occasionally comes to the real world to test those theories. I find Brett’s Holmes to be a lot more physical than cerebral (without diminishing his intellect).
I sort of see what you mean but I think I do have a different interpretation of the original Holmes somewhat because I always saw him as quite mercurial (which due to the pathologisation of everything people now tend to call ‘bipolar’), but I agree that originally Conan Doyle was not really trying to install this as a character trait, so much as merely trying to surprise the reader by hiding Holmes’s reasoning for sometimes-bizarre behaviour.
I loved some of the games resulting from the IF Arcade, and I’ve considered providing a sequel as one year’s Hugo minicomp theme as there are lots of old arcade games that could be given another spin and many of the folks at joltcountry.com are arcade fans, anyway. Still, it’s been a case of too-many-minicomp ideas, too little time.
Ha, I dunno, I sort of hold “The Cross of Fire” in high regard. I mean, sure, the puzzles and gameplay are terrible, but the game’s existence at all is brilliant- especially after reading the Sherlock Holmes story it refers to. It’s just too bad they didn’t have the chops to pull the idea off.
I was thinking of making it a general Mystery/Conspiracy Comp, and giving out a reading list of some kind. I still kinda want to tie it in with Gravity Falls, somehow, both because it gives a general idea of the kind of games I want to see, and because it might better promote the comp among people who otherwise might not give IF a chance (especially if we time it with the second season premiere! stars in eyes).
Also, it seems you misunderstood me. I don’t have trouble writing the mysteries, I have problems coding them. It’s very unlikely I could code more than one suspect to interrogate, let along an entire drawing room mystery (which come to think of it is more of an Agatha Christie thing); about the only thing I could do well is typical IF find-the-clues-while-no-one-is-home, which isn’t very Sherlock Holmes-like.
Oh, man. Gravity Falls makes me feel ten times more nostalgic than kid shows from my actual childhood. Everyone needs to experience that show! (You are talking about the show right?)
You’re right - even a very short mystery is likely to need a more detailed implementation than other genres would. If we had a mystery comp it would need a considerable time allowance.
I’ve never seen Gravity Falls, but I’ll see if I can find some on the YouTubes.
Yes, I’m talking about the show. Are there any other Gravity Falls, actually?
It’s a quite excellent show. Unfortunately it’s rather hard to find episodes on Youtube. That’s part of why I’m thinking about making it a general Conspiracy/Paranormal Mystery Comp.
Edit: Also, I gotta say I’m really warming up to the idea of Shuffle Comp, if only to troll it by picking mostly terrible mid-late 90’s alt-rock.
It’d be… mildly troll-resistant. If you picked stuff that doesn’t lend itself to game prompts, other participants could just pick a different song. Like Cover Stories, there’s a built-in incentive to provide seeds that are likely to have broad appeal, because it’s pretty cool to have someone else make a game from something you suggested.
Or maybe everyone would just use it as an opportunity to rickroll one another. Who knows.
Something that’s strongly evocative of mood and setting.
Alternatively, something with totally incomprehensible but evocative lyrics.
Something that suggests narrative without being super-explicit about it. (Tom Waits’ Murder in the Red Barn is a sketch for the mood and setting and voice of a story, but it’s not quite the story itself. On the other hand, his Watch Her Disappear describes a sequence of events that an author might be tempted to just implement literally.)
Something that’s not super-unsuitable. I listen to a lot of angry hip-hop, but there are several excellent reasons why that’d be unlikely to work for many potential entrants.
Something that’s not super-annoying. Which will vary a lot by taste, obviously, but if I want some poor schmuck to listen to it over and over, I should have the courtesy of at least picking something which wouldn’t drive me nuts.
So no “Blue, Da ba dee, da ba die?” Aw. It almost creates itself.
What’s the end goal? Is it just kind of up to the person writing the game? I mean, is it just supposed to be some game that “goes with” the song that inspired it (as in, the song would make for appropriate background listening)? Or is it supposed to explain and tell the story of the song? Or just whatever the author wants to do?
I fail to see how this doesn’t meet Maga’s recommendations. Unless you think it’s super annoying?
Like you said, it almost creates itself! And it’s startling how many people have creepy misinterpretations of the nonsense lyrics. (Including yours truly.)