Writer wanted for a "Conversational Storytelling" project

As a partner in the development, you’d need to run the Plain English IDE that I’m using for the prototype – a file manager/text editor/compiler that lets you test your story with a single command key. It runs on Windows, but it’s remarkably simple, surprisingly small (less than a megabyte), and very fast: a 10,000-line story file compiles in less than a second on a bottom-of-the-line computer from Walmart.

The production version of the system will initially take the form of a similar but even simpler Windows IDE that will generate a file that can be loaded and run on any browser. So the stories you write will be available to pretty much everyone on pretty much every kind of device from just a single “.html” file. We’ll set up a web site of our own for both authors and players/readers. (We really need a nice short term for those who interact with interactive fiction.) We’ll be posting links to our own stories on the site, and the stories of others who use our system as well: kind of an iTunes for Conversational Storytellers; iConverse or “The Story Store” or something.

I’ll be working full-time on the project, but my partner will probably be able to keep up working just ten or twelve hours a week on evenings and weekends. We’ll communicate, hopefully at least once daily, via email and/or phone. As I mentioned in a previous post, a story long enough for the 2014 Interactive Fiction Competition could be written in as little as 100 hours; it will, of course, take us much longer than that since it’s our first time out, and since we’ll have to allow for a great deal of experimental beta-testing as well.

The heavy lifting on the Windows side is well along. The heavy lifting necessary to produce browser-compatible output is not a problem, but will require three or four weeks; I have a browser expert on call for that part of the project.

Thanks, I’ll take a look.

My capitalisation might have mislead you, it’s a game by Sam Barlow called “Aisle” and I find it’s quite relevant to this discussion so you might wish to give it a whirl.

I understand what you’re saying, and I’m pretty sure I could finish this on my own – but where’s the fun in that? I’m an old guy, as you can see from my picture. I’ve done lots of things like this (and much more complex than this) and don’t need to simply go through the motions again for either money or fame. Been there, done that. What I’m looking for is someone (young or old) who is inspired and chomping at the bit to do something glorious, but needs focus; someone who reads this thread, as it stands, and says, “You know, maybe he’s got something there. I feel a calling. I’m going to write directly and find out more about it.” In short, someone who is willing to take a series of “leaps of faith” – a rare thing these days.

Seeing is believing, in many cases, yes; but “Blessed are those who have not seen, and yet believe.” I can’t show you the finished product, because it’s not finished. I can send you the prototype as it stands, and you can run it for yourself (if you’ve got a Windows machine), but you’ll have to write me directly if you want those files because (a) they’re “not ready for prime time” yet, and (b) there’s a lot of explanatory material that goes along with them.

See above.

If you want to see some language processing that’s significantly more “magical” – and certainly more complex than what I’m proposing here – take a look at our Plain English compiler and IDE: osmosian.com/cal-3040.zip Just download and unzip it. Start with the “instructions.pdf” in the “documentation” directory and before you go ten pages you’ll be recompiling the thing in itself – even if you’ve never programmed before. It will also give you a good idea of both (a) the kind of out-of-the-box thinking that characterizes all of our products, and (b) a pretty good feel for how the Conversational Storytelling IDE will probably look.

And if you’re wondering, in general, if I have the skills and experience necessary to actually dream up a project like this and and see it through to completion, check out 4praise.com/new/artists/31171.htm (some songs I composed and recorded using software I wrote on an 8-bit, 64K Apple II ages ago. I was really hoping I wouldn’t have to go into all that…

But apparently, as you say, “it’s very hard to make a blind leap and commit to beautiful ideas alone.” Or at least it’s way harder than it was when I was young…

Okay, whirled. Cute idea. Even intriguing. But not at all what I’m proposing. First of all, it’s not conversational. And secondly, I’m presented with a lengthy description that’s chock full of stuff that the author now has to deal with simply because he described it. Which is okay for a single-scene story like Aisle. But I suspect your point is that if there are so many possible outcomes from just one scene, there will be 100 times that number in a 100-scene work. (Which, incidently, may still be managable: I’d have to do the math, but I’m sure it’s far short of infinity.) But that’s not relevant right now.

Let’s see what happens when we attempt to convert something like AISLE into a work of Conversational Storytelling.

[code]AISLE 2 - An Experiment in Conversational Storytelling

Brrrring! Hello, honey? What kind of pasta did you want?

Who is this?

It’s Barbara… Oh, I’m sorry, must have dialed the wrong number.

Wait! Don’t hang up.[/code]
And I don’t really know where to go with it from there. But that’s far enough, I hope, to show at least two major and important differences:

  1. The conversational style, with direct first-person input over some kind of believable “communication link”.

  2. The obvious (and severely restricted) context at every step: each single-line response clearly delimiting the scope of what might reasonably be said next.

Conversational Storytelling is a very small, and well-defined, and restricted subset of Interactive Fiction. It is specifically designed to be (a) realistic, (b) extraordinarily interactive, and (c) easy to write and use. If you keep picturing something outside of that narrow realm, you will of course conclude that the sheer number of possible inputs and the complexity of multiply-compounded situations will be unmanageable; but if you can picture just the single restricted story type that we intend for our authors to tell, well, perhaps then you’ll reach a different conclusion.

Let me say it another way. The “Interactive Fiction Problem” cannot be solved in it’s entirety by a single mechanism; those who have tried have failed, and will continue to fail. But various, well-understood subsets of that problem can be solved, individually, by relatively simple yet specialized solutions. In short, I’m changing the problem definition to make it solvable. Kobayashi Maru, dude. Kobayashi Maru.

  1. is where we’ll have to agree at disagreeing for the purposes of theoretical discussion. You see obvious and severely restricted contexts… well, it might be my background in theatre and my love for improvisational comedy (I’m currently devouring ISIHAC), but I see tons of possible ways to reply to that first line, all of them more than reasonable.

EDIT - You might be interested in “Sleep is Death”, which is a half-graphical version of what you’re proposing except that the computer is actually another person.

sleepisdeath.net/

The default, unexplained relationship between the player’s commands, the parser, and the actions of the player character leaves a lot of room for deep implications that some of the best parser IF games have exploited to great effect. There are many psychological angles that can be explored, and a few philosophical/theological/moral ones.

Have you played Counterfeit Monkey by Emily Short yet? If not, you’ll want to, since it leverages both the psychological paradigm and the conversational paradigm.

Oh, and how could we forget? Following on Bainespal’s suggestion, give Bellclap a whirl. Or “Crystal and Stone, Beetle and Bone”.

I am planning to write a conversation based story. What would this system offer me over what Threaded Conversations can offer?

This really sounds like you need to consider doing a shorter demo first. This might be the sort of thing I’d look into (I don’t have Windows, so in fact it’s moot, but I’m interested in experiments), but I look at “ten to twelve hours on evenings and weekends” and say “My God, that is literally all of my free time.” That’s a very heavy ask if you want someone to work on your dream.

And I have a feeling you aren’t going to win many recruits by saying that we need to be inspired and chomping at the bit to do something glorious, and willing to take a series of leaps of faith; it’s a bit insulting to those of us who are skeptical, and it’s also a bit presumptuous to think that the people who are inspired and chomping to do something a bit glorious are going to be inspired to do exactly what you need them to do, and willing to take leaps of faith that your system will be the one that works. I have lots of ambitious ideas and some ways of thinking about how to implement them (mostly having to do with simplifying the input and complicating the output), but if I’m going to take leaps of faith that they can work I want to take the leaps of faith in myself. It just seems like it’d be much more satisfying to take a long shot at my own dream, you know?

You’re asking people to do you a favor because you don’t have a story you want to implement yourself. Don’t lecture us about how we haven’t said yes yet, and maybe try to make the size of the favor a bit more manageable. Or maybe if you can look within yourself (or your family) for the inspiration to produce a little short work, that’ll inspire people to pick up your system and make something bigger.

(An aside: I looked at some of the things you linked and found the typefaces very hard to read.)

FWIW, I think you totally can cover 98% of all sensible inputs to the game world. But your players will actively seek out that 2% because they’ll want to locate the boundaries of the game. That’s not a problem, though, you just need a graceful way to handle input you’ve not covered. (So, it’s a UI problem.)

Good luck finding a writer. If it was ten years ago, I’d do it.

Jon

Magnificently put. And this is not because they’re trying to break the game on purpose; they’re trying to see how far they can go, which in a system that encourages exploration and such freedom of input is to be expected; if they don’t know the limits and what they have at their disposal, they can’t really work towards puzzle solving. Even in traditional IF the author has a hell of a lot of work when he realises that his players are coming up with sensible solutions to his puzzles that he didn’t implement because it didn’t occur to him… and if a player finds that a sensible solution doesn’t work, and isn’t even acknowledged, what’s their motivation to keep trying?

One last thing: “Galatea” and “City of Secrets”. I think you’ll find them quite, quite interesting. In fact, here’s a challenge which might showcase your project very well: implement “Galatea” the way you envision your system. I’m quite serious.

Sounds like you’d be an excellent beta tester! But give me, say, ten distinctly different but “more than reasonable” replies to:

Brrrring! Hello, Honey? What kind of pasta did you want?

Just so I can get a better idea of what you’re talking about.

Yes, that’s much closer to something truly conversational. I even experienced a bit of the “addictiveness” that characterizes conversational storytelling: I kept trying to quit but instead kept clicking for “just one more response”.

If by “Threaded Conversations” you mean something like this (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conversation_threading) the main advantage is that your user won’t have to deal with a complex, hierarchical output structure – the story will fit, conveniently, on any kind of device (even a small phone) and the user input will be consistently and strictly textual. The disadvantage is that your user will be restricted to communicating with a single story character (though possibly others through that character). Another advantage is that you’ll be writing a story with essentially a single fast-paced thread, which should make it significantly easier for you to write.

Keep in mind that Conversational Storytelling isn’t for everyone. On the author side, it’s for people who want to write short stories with humor and depth centering around a one-on-one personal encounter. On the user side, it’s for anyone who likes to send and receive text messages – but especially for left-brainers who like to read but want a break from traditional text.

But perhaps I’ve misunderstood the question…

A little context:

The thing is, every month or so someone shows up here with a Great Idea for a project. They’re looking for a coder, a writer and an artist; they will be lead design. They have never made a game before; they have never managed people in a creative project. They do not show you a working prototype. They talk about the cool stuff their game will be able to do, but are very vague on crucial design details - in particular, they underestimate how much work it will entail, often by orders of magnitude. They’re unfamiliar with the field; they assume that the only possible reason why nobody’s making this sort of game now must be that nobody has ever had the idea before, and when it’s pointed out that this is not the case and that similar things have been tried and proved prohibitively difficult, they stick doggedly to their original vision. They suggest that this could be the Next Big Thing and suggest great commercial success, but have an Underpants Gnomes kind of business plan, and evidently expect people to put in a lot of work for free. When nobody takes them up on their idea, they fade (sometimes decrying us for lack of vision for our failure to commit wholeheartedly to their idea) and are never heard of again.

So you can see why we’re kind of conservative about unproven Big Ideas people around here - most of 'em are stone-soup types who conspicuously don’t know what they’re doing. And making a game is a big commitment. You don’t match that type that closely - you’re actually offering pay for the work, you suggest that you’ve got substantial experience in a related field - but you’re also taking aim at two enormous Unsolved Problems (natural-speech parsing, the realistic conversational implementation of responsive NPCs) and saying that they’re easy. So the basic attitude is liable to be ‘show me a working example if you want to get anyone willing to commit.’ Promise less and show more.

Basically, you’re the Wright Brothers, auditioning for a pilot. If you take out an ad in the paper that you’ve solved the mechanical problem of powered flight, and you just need someone to pilot the thing, most people are going to be pretty sceptical. A better approach, perhaps, would be to individually approach some IF authors whose work you respect, show them around the thing, see if they want to kick the tyres. (It’s always nicer to be headhunted than to respond to a cattle-call.) If the system can do all you’re saying it does, someone will sure as hell want to write a game in it.

There will be shorter demos all throughout the project, of course. The two-hour-suitable-for-entry-into-the-Interactive-Fiction-Competition is the first major goal, the proof of the pudding.

There are Windows emulators that run on a Mac. Or I could lend you a Windows PC for the duration of the project.

Actually, our dream. I’m looking for a dreamer who wants to share the dream – the vision, the journey, the rewards.

That’s okay; I’m not looking for “many” – just one very special kind of person.

No offense intended. But is it possible to truly offend with a statement that is utterly void of truth?

I’m looking for an inspired chomper who is lacking both a well-defined project and a partner. Inspired chompers who have ideas of their own should, by all means, enthusiastically pursue their own ideas.

Go for it! And may God go before you, lighting the way.

Sorry, wrong on both counts. It’s not a favor – the job pays $300 and a 50% interest in the resulting product. And I’ve got lots of story ideas; I just think it would be better (and more fun) to work with someone else on the thing “Two are better than one… for if they fall, the one will lift up his fellow, etc.”

Frankly, I’m at that stage of life (60+) when I want to share what I know more than repeat what I’ve already done. My family and friends have already heard (and continue to hear!) all I have to say; I’m looking to broaden that audience by just one.

There are reasons for all of those “hard to read” typefaces – some historical, some artistic, some philosophical. The font in our Plain English development system, for example, is my elder son’s printing, digitized. Since he “put a lot of himself” into that program, we felt it appropriate to make it, in a way, look like him. And it provided us with a small, non-copyrighted font that we could include with the package. And it had a “friendly” look, suitable to one of our target audiences (kids just starting out with programming). Not to mention the iconoclastic effect it had on a different target audience, namely programmers who seemed (to us) to be very much in a rut.

On the other hand, some people have complained about the font in my “Some of the Parts” book – though it turned out it wasn’t a font problem at all. It was the sad fact that they couldn’t read cursive writing. I hope that’s not the problem you were having.

Thanks, Jon, for the encouraging words. They’re especially valued coming from you.

I mentioned the “graceful way” we plan to handle the 2% in an earlier reply – an ELIZA-like sub-parser that combines the user’s input with the current context to steer the user back onto the trail we want him to follow.

But in normal conversation – which we’re attempting to simulate – people don’t try “to see how far they can go.” That would rude at best, incomprehensible at worst. The user you’re picturing is not part of our target audience. Our user is focused on solving the main character’s problem in a reasonable (and, as the story progresses, an increasingly obvious way).

Again, you’re thinking of something other than what I’m describing. We don’t encourage exploration, in general, as a typical “adventure game” might; instead, we strongly encourage the user, in a variety of subtle and not-so-subtle ways, to work together with the story’s main character to discover the solution to a pressing problem using what the main character has at hand.

The user finds out “what they have at their disposal” simply by asking the main character; the limits are set by the small and immediate context of the scene.

This is one of the beauties of our system. When an unanticipated (but reasonable) input is discovered in beta testing, it is easily incorporated into the whole by simply adding additional (optional or required) exchanges to the scene. It’s a remarkably flexible – not at all brittle – structure.

Okay, guys, so far it’s been suggested that I play Aisle, Counterfeit Monkey, Bellclap, Crystal and Stone, Galatea, City of Secrets, and several others. I appreciate the input and will keep them on my to-do list. But there are only so many hours in a day. (Not to mention the fact that I’ve got to answer your posts using this primitive “edit here, preview there, make corrections back over in the other thing” editor. Does that bother anyone else but me? Why don’t these forums have wysiwyg editors? But I digress.)

Our goal is not to convert stories of one type to stories of our type; that’s not the Kobayashi Maru way. We begin the composition of a story by first selecting a setting, storyline, and means of communication suitable to our genre. Not all stories are best told our way; we recognize that and are fine with it. Not all games are board games, or card games, or go-outside-and-run-around games. We’ll carving out a niche, not offering a panacea.

I understand that. Which is one of the reasons I take such care in answering every post. I realize I have to convince someone that (a) this is serious (though fun) stuff, and (b) I’m a guy who has the skills and time and resources to see the thing through.

Well, now, that’s pretty darn near complimentary! [Insert smiley that says I’m not being sarcastic here]

“Easy” only because we begin with a major Kobayashi Maru -style adjustment of the problem statement. The general problem is much more difficult – but that doesn’t concern us in this project. We’re setting out to create great bicycles; not to solve the problems of transportation in general.

A working example of our natural language parsing is our Plain English compiler. It’s a significant and non-trivial work (25,000 lines of Plain English code) and it reveals, also, a number of important philosophical tenants we feel quite strongly about regarding interfaces, editors, delivery systems, etc; many such things will find their way into our Conversational Storytelling project. In other words, I can’t show you the thing I’m proposing, because it’s not done yet. But I can show you a working model of something in the same ballpark, that is significantly larger and more complex: osmosian.com/cal-3040.zip (Just download and unzip; no installation necessary. Start with the “instructions.pdf” in the “documentation” directory.)

More precisely, I’m Orville in search of Wilbur.

Understood. Flying someone else’s untried plane is scary. That’s why I want my partner to actually be part of the development process. But let’s keep in mind that, unlike powered flight, this isn’t at all dangerous. And you can quit anytime you like (because we’re not really brothers – at least not until we make the journey together!).

Our experience with our Plain English compiler has been strongly positive with people new to programming, and very strongly negative with so-called professionals. Seems you really shouldn’t try to put new wine into old wineskins! Such experiences have made me somewhat gun-shy when it comes to dealing with professionals in any given field. Besides, such people typically have lots of ideas of their own and don’t have the time for “someone else’s dream” (as a poster described this project above). I do suspect, however, that Interactive Fiction authors would be significantly more flexible than most programmers since they exercise more of both sides of their brains when writing stories, and are always seeking new and better ways to tell their tales. It’s a compliment to everyone here that the replies that I’ve received on this thread are far-and-away more civil and edifying than pretty much anything I’ve ever gotten on programming forums.

But the problem is that the IF can be played over and over again. After playing an IF through once I usually go back and play with the world, seeing how it responds. In a normal conversation I obviously wouldn’t do that, but if I could have the same conversation over and over again (Groundhog Day-style) I probably would, just to see what would happen.

Threaded Conversations is an extension for Inform 7, used in Alabaster and Counterfeit Monkey, and I think it’s the state of the art in interactive conversations. It allows for freeform player input, and allows the author to suggest conversation responses while accepting unsuggested ones too, striking a great balance between the ease of choice-based fiction and the seeming unbounded space of parser-based fiction. From an interaction point of view, what more does yours offer?