I really enjoy the drag and drop interface of Texture stories, but I’ve been wondering how to categorize this type of interactive fiction. The mouse based interactivity may lead one to believe that such works of interactive fiction are similar to Choice IF, but the mix and match nature of creating input seems to have more in common with Parser IF. They don’t seem to fit either category. I guess you could call them Texture IF, but it doesn’t seem right to name a category after a specific system. Another option would be Drag-Drop IF, but that doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue.
The best idea I have so far is to call this category Merger IF since that reflects what you are doing when dragging and dropping text. The name also contrasts nicely with Parser IF. Anyone else have any other ideas? Is it silly to create a separate category for interactive fiction that primarily uses a drag and drop interface? Is there already a category and I’m just not aware?
The reason I’m asking about this now is that I’m working on an IF system that is a hybrid of all these categories and I need a way to talk them in the documentation. Does Merger IF sound too weird?
Word bank? I think it’s a subcategory of choice-based though, since the number of targets in the text times the number of verbs in the bank is fairly small. It would be practical to just list out all the combinations as conventional choices, wouldn’t it?
I would call it choice-based, because the options are explicitly laid out for you, but it’s one of the many edge cases where the parser-vs-choice dichotomy doesn’t quite work.
My rule of thumb is, if your options are explicitly laid out on the screen and you pick one, it’s choice-based, if you have to think about what options are available (and putting in something that’s not an option gives an error message instead of just being impossible), it’s parser-based. Which means the original edition of Trouble in Sector 471 is parser-based (you can type XYZ and get an error message) and the revised edition is choice-based (your options are clickable buttons, clicking the blank space between isn’t even recognized by the game).
Which is, imo, a useful way to draw the distinction for usability purposes—on a phone, tapping one of an enumerated set of options tends to be much easier than freely entering text. But it doesn’t necessarily tell you much about what the experience of playing the game will be beyond that. “Parser game” and “choice game” tend to imply things about the actual gameplay and the simulated world you interact with, and this definition doesn’t even try to get into that.
If you want a specific name based on the interface, something about dragging and dropping might make sense.
Or, more generally, there could be a category for any game where you “build” a command from selectable verb and noun options. Texture does this via dragging and dropping, but another system might do this with menus, for example.
The building aspect is what made me think of Merger IF as a term. Menu and drag-drop interfaces are indeed very similar and seem to belong to the same category.
I think something like “build-a-command IF” might be clearer than “merger IF.” Something along the lines of taking existing parts and using them to construct a command. I haven’t given it a ton of thought, though.
Oh, I just saw the “word bank” suggestion, which also makes sense. Word bank IF.
Anyone else think drag-and-drop is adjacent to point-and-click? Note, this thread is the first I’m hearing of texture games, that’s just the first thing my brain free associated.
If you want to emphasize that a system has aspects of both, I’d say “hybrid” sounds best.
Otherwise, you could just call these non-standard IF systems. Trying to coin a name probably isn’t going to help people find out more about the systems outside your documentation, but making it clear that these are individually exceptional systems is.
In principle I think it’s very close to a classic verb-icon interface.
You click on icons representing verbs, then click on objects on an illustrated game screen, making a verb-object pair.
You click and drag verbs to words on a textual game screen, making a very-object pair.
Although the “noun” can be any word or phrase, and the “verb” can also be any word, and they both vary from page to page, so it’s pretty flexible in terms of what the player is doing, or whether it’s a concrete activity at all, besides dropping words on one another. It’s not like, here are the five or a dozen verbs you’ll be using in this game, now go use them on stuff.