Week 12

Unfortunately this will be my last blog! I know what you're all thinking, bad times! But the module has come to an end, and so has my blogging! Even though I’m ending on this sad note, I cannot be too sad as I have learned so much in these last 12 weeks about e-publishing, which includes-
• A definition of e-publishing
• The different links of the publishing value chain
• Different forms of e-publishing that includes
- e-books
- e-journals
- blogs/blogosphere
- interactive fiction games
- visual novels
- podcasts
• Disruptive technologies
• Copyright
• Different technologies used to create the different forms of e-publishing
• How to subscribe to RSS feeds

I must say, I enjoyed this week’s topic of discussion in the lecture, as we were discussing something that is of interest to me, and to many of you. As it says on the following website- http://ebooks.epicauthors.com/?tag=social-networking
'Social Networking'- if you’re not doing it, you’re behind the times. If you don’t Twitter, what’s wrong with you? If you don’t blog, where have you been? You can’t possibly succeed nowadays without Social Networking. Just how true is that?’
Very true in my opinion! It’s become a world wide phenomenon that’s taking over the internet. Social networking is like water, it flows. There are a band of social networks constantly being created to cater for the public. Do you remember the times of myspace and bebo being the dominant players in the social networking world? Long gone are those days! Move over and make way for Facebook and Twitter! But give it a year or so, and it will be Twitter who???
It states on the http://www.epuplishing.com/publishers-use-twitter-facebook.html that “success for the online publisher is typically defined by three metrics: attracting new visitors, getting them to spend more time on your site and encouraging them to return frequently’. Isn’t this exactly what social networking sites are succeeding in doing?
Although some might argue that it’s not a direct form of e-publishing, it can be used for e –publishing purposes, for example a way of promoting your business, and books as it says on the following website-
http://www.epuplishing.com/publishers-use-twitter-facebook.html
‘Social Networking is certainly a great thing- and publishers should take advantage of it to improve the dialog with their existing readers as well as to find new ones’.
Another purpose of e-publishing on social network sites is blogging, especially political blogging as seen most recently with Barack Obama “tweeting” on Twitter (http://twitter.com/)
On his page he highlights certain issues or causes that he’s trying to alter, for example-
• 5.15 p.m Dec15th- The stakes are enormous-if we don’t get this done, your premiums are guaranteed to go up.
• 5.27 p.m Dec 15th- Reform will save families money, will save businesses money and will save government money. It has to pass on our watch.
Obviously social networks can influence the public, as witnessed ‘during the recent presidential campaign where team Obama leveraged the instantaneous spread of information to millions- and revolutionized voter turnaround efforts’ http://www.epuplishing.com/publishers-use-twitter-facebook.html. Another example of twitter being an influential form of e-publishing is the backlash a fan of Stephen Fry faced after calling his “tweets” boring. Fry then sent a message to the user, saying: "You've convinced me. I'm obviously not good enough. I retire from Twitter henceforward. Bye everyone." After this, the user who called him boring started receiving angry messages off “other tweeters”. The whole incident escalated, until in the end Stephen Fry apologised. To read the whole story, click here http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/8336425.stm.
This just goes to show how influential social networks can be, especially with such things as cyber bullying happening more frequently. It doesn’t seem such a problem at first as there’s distancing between the act and the result, but more often than anything, it escalates out of hand. There’s a worryingly amount of teenagers committing suicide because of cyber bullying in the recent years. I found this story in ‘The Sun’ reading the headline- A DEVOUT Christian who was a 'bright and promising' student killed herself after becoming a victim of cyber bullying. Read more:

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/article1086136.ece

One thing to always be wary of these days when opening an account with social networking sites is this notion of privacy. Think about it, how easy is it for someone to download hacking software off the internet and use it for hacking purposes? Not that hard! When typing in the words “hacking software” on google, a staggering 11,100,000 options was available for me. Shocking! Not long ago I was a victim of someone hacking my facebook account and was posting a daily status! Luckily I managed to sort the problem out through changing my password. This isn’t always the only security problem with social networks, take for example The U.S. Marine Corps banning Twitter, Facebook, MySpace and other social media sites from its networks, effective immediately.
‘These internet sites in general are a proven haven for malicious actors and content and are particularly high risk due to information exposure, user generated content and targeting by adversaries,” reads a Marine Corps order, issued Monday. “The very nature of SNS [social network sites] creates a larger attack and exploitation window, exposes unnecessary information to adversaries and provides an easy conduit for information leakage that puts OPSEC [operational security], COMSEC [communications security], [and] personnel… at an elevated risk of compromise.’
To read more about this story, click here- http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2009/08/marines-ban-twitter-myspace-facebook/
So next time you’re on the internet checking your facebook or twitter page, just think who could be watching your every move on a database ready to hack into your account! Because it’s not impossible, not even for the Government! Take Gary McKinnon, a Britain who hacked into the US government computer systems, the full article is available here- http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7831481.stm. Not only this, but the government are keeping an eye out on every social network page, so it’s important to watch what you put out there! Because they will know where it came from as every computer that has a network has an IP address. This enables people like the government to track down which computer has been used for something.
Well, I’m afraid that that’s it from me for now. I hope you had as much enjoyment out of reading my blogs as I did writing them. Who knows, maybe one day I might be back! I might not be able to resist expressing my views through blogging. Hope you all have an enjoyable Christmas, and remember if you’re stuck for a Christmas gift for anyone this year, Lulu is on hand to help!
Merry Christmas and a happy new year!

Week 11

Hi!

This week I’m moving on to talk about podcasting as a form of e-publishing.

To those of you who aren’t quite familiar with this term, podcasting is a series of digital media files (could be photos, video or audio files) which are released as though an episode of a television series, one at a time. These files then get downloaded through web syndication. It is possible for you to access a podcast on computers, mp3 (MPEG Audio Layer 3) players, and most recently through mobile devices. Some allege that the term podcasting is derived from the words ‘ipod’ and ‘broadcast’ http://ezinearticles.com/?Podcasting-Trend&id=49037.

‘What distinguishes a podcast from other types of audio products on the internet is that a podcaster can solicit subscriptions from listeners, so that when new podcasts are released, they can automatically be delivered, or fed to a subscriber’s computer or mobile device… Just like the old radio serials of the 1930s and 40s, this format encourages listeners to subscribe so they can find out “what happens next” http://www.entrepreneur.com/encyclopedia/term/159122.html. If all of this is quite confusing for you, why not take a look at this video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yMSL42NV3c

which explains podcasting in plain English. It might give you a greater understanding of the podcasting technology, the process of creating a podcast, and why it’s so popular. Does this interest you in creating your own podcast? If so, click on this link for a tutorial.

http://radio.about.com/od/podcastin1/a/aa030805a.htm

Hugh Chignell declares in his book ‘Key Concepts in radio studies’ (SAGE, 2009), page 43 that the podcasting technology as a form of e-publishing has built ‘on the success of the web log (‘blog’) which allowed people to communicate creatively to an Internet audience’. This is a good point as people have realised the impact that blogs are now having on the public and society, and are now trying to offer new ways of catering to people’s needs. The reason I say this is because it’s not always possible for people to listen to radio shows everyday, and used to have to miss out on certain radio programmes if they weren’t able to tune in that specific day before the wonders of podcasting, whereas now you can download that specific show on an mp3 player, computer or mobile device to listen to later if you wish to do so.

These days with podcasting being a phenomenon worldwide, many websites are catering for the public’s needs. Here’s an example of one of these podcast creating websites-

http://www.clickcaster.com/
(Clickcaster). It claims on the website to make ‘podcast creation and publishing fast, fun and easy’. After signing up, and browsing the website, I have learned a few things. Here, every channel created is a podcast. Creating a “post” on this website is essentially creating a form of a blog where it is possible to add media, such as mp3 files, videos and photos to it, and then post it.

In a previous blog I have spoken about RSS feeds (Really Simple Syndication). It is also possible to subscribe to an RSS feed to specified podcasts. This ensures that you receive regular updates (the following podcast) through such podcatchers as ‘itunes’ and ‘juice’.

Hugh Chignell mentions in his book ‘Key Concepts in radio studies’ (SAGE, 2009) ‘The mainstream radio industry in the UK has seen the potential of podcasting and used it to ‘time shift’ programmes and forms of output’. This is true but there are many different uses for podcasting that include-
• Self guided walking tours
• Story telling for the visually impaired
• Diary
• Religion
http://www.onlypodcasting.com/podcasting-articles/history-of-podcasting.php

Self guided walking tours-
Museums can now offer visitors the chance of walking tours on their mobile devices. This enables the visitor to be able to choose their own tour to acquire their own taste, and to get the knowledge of the work/place that they’re located/looking at. It’s simple to receive this on your phone, just download it! The wonders of such a technology is that it is easily accessible to people, it is much cheaper to create a podcast rather than to pay a tour guide for his/her services, and also it prevents the company having to pay for the creation of maps and leaflets. Not only this, but it saves the cost of having to keep updating these later. Examples I have found of this are-
• Boston public garden- www.learnoutloud.com/Podcast.../Boston...Tour...Podcast/30123
• A Tour of St.Teilo’s Church (national museum of Wales)- http://www.museumwales.ac.yk/en/rhagor/podcast/?id=282
• Guiness Storehouse Tour Dublin- http://www.guiness-storehouse.com/en/Podcast.aspx

Story Telling for the Visually Impaired-
Libraries and newspapers sometimes offer podcast feeds of local publications and news for people with visual handicaps to enjoy and stay up to date with the local news.

Diary-
Podcasts can be used to remind the user of the mobile device of meetings and thus functions as a diary.

Religion-
Religious groups and churches use podcasts to make sermons and talks available to their congregation or people who are interested, for example http://www.prayerpodcasts.com/

Hugh Chignell iterates in his book ‘Key Concepts in radio studies’ (SAGE, 2009) on page 43 that Berry, R alleges in his book ‘Will the iPod kill the radio star? Profiling podcasting as radio’ (2006) that he ‘sees the potential in this new technology to encourage the largely young iPod users to ‘regain the radio habit’. What are your views on this? Leave your comments.

Bye for now.

Week 10

This week’s blog is a discussion on visual novels.

A visual novel is a type of interactive fiction game that features mostly static graphics. They are classified to be a sub-genre of adventure games. These visual novels are highly popular in Japan.

Whilst doing some research on visual novels, I came across a woman called Michelle’s blog which discusses the topic of visual novels. Her definition in her blog (http://juicedonwriting.com/441/visual-and-interactive-novels/) of a visual novel was-
‘A digital novel which consists of text accompanied by mostly static images, but can include animation and audio components also. Visual novels can also provide reader interaction via choices which determine the story path and outcome of the novel’. I suppose it could be argued that a visual novel is a ‘combination of a novel and a computer game: they’re computer games with a large text based storyline and only little interaction of the player’ (http://vndb.org/d6).

This week we had the chance to view visual novels such as ‘Inanimate Alice’ http://brad-field.info/. It is written by a woman called Kate Pullinger, and is about a girl named Alice taking us on a journey of her life from the age of eight up to her twenties. At the moment there are four different chapters in her life to choose from, and the visual novel consists of text, graphics and music to tell the story. It is a brilliantly made visual novel in my mind as it consists of different storylines in each chapter to keep the reader intrigued, whilst the music adds tension to the storyline to engage the reader’s attention. As it is released in instalments, I suppose it could be said to follow in Charles Dickens’s footsteps by creating hype for their work, as he released his novels a chapter at a time in monthly instalments in ‘The Pickwick Papers’, leaving each chapter on a cliff-hanger to keep the readers interested for the next chapter.
After viewing visual novels, I then proceeded to create my own, assisted by the ren’py software, which is possible to be downloaded from this link-

http://www.renpy.org/wiki/renpy/Home_Page

As it says on this website, ‘Ren’Py is a free and cross-platform visual novel engine that helps you use words, pictures, and sounds to tell stories with the computer. Its easy and efficient script language makes it possible for non-programmers to make visual novels’. Through the process of creating my own visual novel with this software I realised that the format of creating a visual novel is very similar to creating an interactive fiction game in the sense of the language input you put in to programme the characters and events of the game/ visual novel, for example-

# Declare images below this line, using the image statement.

#background images
image bg forrest = "forrest.jpg"
image bg city = "city.jpg"

# Declare characters used by this game.
$ c = Character('Rob', color="#c8ffc8")
$ m = Character('Cadi', color="#00ff00")
$ f = Character('Fflur', color="#00ffff")

#define character images -- Rob
image Rob stand = "rob_stand.gif"
image Rob happy= "rob_jump.gif"

# The game starts here.
label start:
scene bg forrest at truecenter

show rob stand
c "My name's rob."
"I live in the forrest."

show bg city at truecenter
hide rob
show rob happy at truecenter with dissolve
c "But I want to move to the city."

show bg forrest

If this looks quite daunting to you, and is impossible for you to understand, why not take the Ren’Py tutorial? Click here if you wish to do so-

http://www.renpy.org/wiki/renpy/doc/tutorials/Tutorials

Even though the input of text is very similar with interactive fictions and visual novels, the output is very different! Interactive fiction usually only consists of text, whereas a visual novel consists of colour pictures such as this-
sound, and music.

Personally I find visual novels much more stimulating to participate in compared to an interactive fiction game as you are the driving force in moving the story forward in the direction you wish to do so by answering questions, clicking on certain pictures and texts. Doing all these things can have an effect on the story. Therefore unlike interactive fiction games, there is a possibility of a different ending as you have different options instead of one set plot.

As visual novels are becoming more popular, there is a variety of different software’s emerging to cater for visual novelists such as-
• ‘Blade’- which as it says on their website http://www.bladeengine.com/BladeEngine/overview.php
‘is a free game engine and construction kit aimed at making Visual Novel easy to construct.’ It also says that ‘One of Blade Engine’s objective is to be a tool that is easy to create basic Visual Novel for creators who are not exactly a technical wizard, and for those creators who simply wants to concentrate on story and contents of visual novel rather than technical customizations’. This is an advantage to someone like me who isn’t a very technical person. I will definitely be giving this software a try when creating my next visual novel!
• ‘Novelty’- This software is ‘a tool for creating visual novels that I have worked on for years’ it says on the website http://www.gamedev.net/community/forums/topic.asp?topic_id=549117. ‘Unlike most VN engines, Novelty is a WYSIWYG and doesn’t require the user to learn a complicated scripting language’. Novelty is built upon a graphics engine that relies on an xml format. ‘This means that users can create new assets by using an xml-based design language. This gives the user a lot of flexibility’. Once you have finished creating your own visual novel with Novelty, all you have to do is export it as a stand-alone exe.

With new technologies such as the iphone now being produced, it makes it possible to view visual novels on your phone. It might look a bit different, but the content is still the same. So if you have an iphone, and are sitting on a bus or a train bored one day, why not take part in a visual novel? I’m sure it would entertain you for the duration of your trip! Think about it!

Until next week, have fun creating your own visual novels if you’re adventurous enough!

Week 9

I hope you had fun exploring the wonders of participating in your own interactive fiction last week! I’ve been hooked on it all week! It’s a wonder that I managed to tear myself away from the ‘Storymash’ website to write this week’s blog!

This week’s lecture was replaced by a meeting with our tutor to discuss our practice-led task as well as the 2,000 word essay.

After weeks of experimenting with different software’s and websites to create pieces of work to be published electronically-

- lulu- http://www.lulu.com/
- inform- http://www.inform-fiction.org/I7/Welcome.html
- Ren’Py- http://www.renpy.org/wiki/renpy/Home_Page

we must put what we have learned here (with the above websites/ software’s) to great use and create a project and publish it electronically. We must think critically of technologies used to produce our project. The whole point of this exercise is that hopefully through creating a product using technologies such as the internet (ip/tcp), html, pdf’s, and xml we will learn something through practice as we engage with these technologies.

After creating the project, we must then go on to write a report on the whole process. This report doesn’t entail us to give a step by step diary of what we did, but instead-

- talk of the processes used to create it
- talk about e-publishing and how traditional publishing has evolved with these technologies and disruptive technologies used in your project. Not only this, but how these technologies have altered the publishing value chain
- another aspect I could concentrate on in my report is alternative deliveries to what I used. I could weigh the pros and cons of both outlets (the one used, and another possibility)
- this could then link in with the strength and weaknesses of my delivery
- a point to highlight in the report is the problems I had with the project, and the ways I overcame them.

This practice-led project and report consists of a 60%/40% marking split. It is down to each individual to decide which percentage we wish to award both aspects of the work-
- project
- report

I haven’t quite decided on how I wish to split it yet. I will probably wait until I have completed both parts of the work to make a final decision, but knowing me I will probably play it safe and go the 60% with my report!

I have decided to publish an e-book using http://www.lulu.com/ as I enjoyed the experience of having full creative control in publishing my e-book last time. Obviously this time I will publish my own work instead of using project Guttenberg, and I will definitely pay more attention to detail this time around. I am aware that in order to succeed in this project I will have to add value to the artefact that I’m creating, and give the public something different that they can’t buy anywhere else (hence why I will publish my own work). Not only this but I will include in keeping illustrations, and choose appropriate typesetting and font. By doing this it could add value to the work, by giving the public a better experience when reading my book, and therefore public perception of my artefact. I myself in the past have experienced reading pieces of work where the font chosen makes it very difficult to understand the words written on the page in front of me; this is an attribute that I don’t want my work to possess. I want to make the reader’s experience of my work a pleasurable one. This is something I need to keep in mind in order to fulfil the requirements of the task.

I’m sure it is going to take a lot of my time and effort to complete this project, but I’m up for the challenge! If you have any suggestions that you think could add value to my e-book, or make the reader’s experience a more pleasurable one, then please do leave a comment.

Hope to hear from you.

Week 8

In this weeks blog I intend to add on to what I discussed in week six’s blog about interactive fiction which is a catch-all name for many forms of story-telling. I feel I didn’t discuss much background knowledge on the subject, or fully explain what interactive fiction is. So this is my task this week to my reader’s. To explain the wonder that is interactive fiction! So here goes…

Interactive fiction is also known in a shorter term as IF. It is a game where players give text commands to control the actions of their character. It could be argued that interactive fiction games are the older version of video games, but are much more restricted as they are only 1 player games.

Another term used for interactive fiction is text adventure games. This is probably because interactive fiction features two modes of writing which includes the players input, and the game/programming output.

Will Crowther was the first person to write a text adventure in 1975, and it was named ‘ADVENT’, then later ‘Adventure’. A man called Don Woods later (with Crowther’s permission) expanded on Crowther’s source code so to make it available to people’s personal computers, as it was originally an experiment on a mainframe. Interactive fiction even though still a text based game has altered from a verb and noun command such as “get toothbrush” to sentences such as “walk to the sink and get toothbrush” . I know it doesn’t sound like a big change when looking at it in this way, but trust me, it is, for example it says on the website-

http://www.atariarchives.org/deli/interactive_fiction.php

‘The limitation of interacting with a complex world by using simple commands became a problem’. It wasn’t challenging enough for the player. That was until such games as Zork were released as it says on the above link, ‘Zork was the first game to include a sophisticated full sentence parser that allowed for fairly complex input’. Many people are now getting in on the craze and creating new forms of interactive fiction, for example the game’ ‘The Breathing Wall’-

http://www.thebreathingwall.com/

This interactive fiction game breaks the norms of usual interactive fictions as the game reacts to the player’s breathing habits. The course of the character and story changes depending on your breathing. Although this game differs from the usual interactive fiction games, it also follows the traditional side as it is made up of text, images and sound, just like any other IF game.

There is a new form of interactive fiction breaking through at the moment, with such websites as ‘Flight Paths’-

http://www.flightpaths.net/

Which is a networked novel that people have contributed through text, videos and pictures to the outcome of the story.To know more about the website and how to contribute, click on the link below-

http://www.flightpaths.net/blog/

‘Storymash’ is another example of this type of website, where it enables communities of authors, amateur writers, readers, and any other person who’s interested in collaborative fiction to have the chance to participate in writing a chapter of interactive fiction. Different people can write different outcomes to the last chapter. If you’re interested in doing this, click on this link-

http://storymash.com

So why not have a go at participating this week, I certainly am going to give it a try! All this research on it has intrigued me to have a go, and see what happens.

Until my next blog, have fun giving it a go!

Week 7

Hi! Well, six weeks has passed, and at last it’s reading week! This therefore means that I have no lecture this week! All week I have lazed about thinking about blogs. Contemplating if a blog is a persona, or if it is an extension of you?

This question is quite tricky to define isn’t it? Personally when I write a blog, I suppose on some level or another my blogs do resemble my thoughts on a certain subject or discussion, but then again I wouldn’t go as far as to say that the blogs I write reflect me as a person or my personality. How about you?

I read on this website-
http://bloggingexperiment.com/archives/finding-your-blogs-persona.php

That when you first start blogging, you need to find your voice, which is referring to the personality you want to portray through the way you write. This will enable you to find the voice for your blog.
‘You may have noticed I said the voice of your blog, not your voice. When you first begin blogging most of the information out there makes it seem like you have this inner voice that once you discover it will begin spewing forth great blog posts. Once you’ve been at it a while, you begin to realize that’s not quite how it works. However, as I said earlier, finding your blogging persona will often make it much easier to establish your writing style, and even that elusive “voice”.’
This persona is a bit like a role in a play. You are playing a certain character, and with that character there are certain qualities, characteristics and attributes. ‘Your blog needs to establish a role for itself in the eyes of the audience’, and then fill that role. ‘Many times this role will help your audience relate to you and may explain why they should listen to what you have to say’. Do you agree with this? I certainly agree that every blogger needs to find their voice whether it is their own, or a character. I must admit, I’m not quite convinced with the last bit about the role helping your audience relate to you, because if you’re acting out a role, how can the audience identify with you? It’s impossible; they might connect with this “character” persona of yours, but not the author of that blog.

This week I had time to arrange my trips to New York over the New Year’s and Paris, late January. I remembered about a website that we had mentioned in the lecture to help arrange your trips away, and thought I’d give it a go. I’m sure many of you have heard of it, if not used it - ‘Trip Advisor’- http://www.tripadvisor.com/. It was very helpful, and very easy to understand as it was categorized in to different sections-
• Flights
• Restaurants
• Things to do
• Cruises
• Vacation rentals
• Forums
• Find hotels travelers trust

As I clicked on the heading ‘Restaurants’, a box came up on the screen asking me to fill in the City which is your destination, and all types of different choices of recommended restaurants appeared from number 1 (the most recommended) down. I found this service highly accessible, efficient, quick to use and effective. Each restaurant had a rating, price range, who it was recommended for, what type of cuisine it was, and finally, but the most important, travelers reviews. This ensures that the public gets a true depiction of the restaurant through other people’s eyes, and not just the restaurant itself. I hope my trip goes as successful as the research on Trip Advisor!
Here’s a graph estimating how many users the website had from July ’09 until November ’09-
http://www.quantcast.com/tripadvisor.com
Well, it will be back to normal next week, so I better make the most of my time off and go and do some work… Talk to you next week! Bye.

Lecture 6

Hi there!

What a fun, but at the same time frustrating lecture we experienced this week! We got the chance to be very creative by creating our own interactive fiction game (a game which is programmed by text commands) using the ‘inform 7’ software. This software if you’re interested in creating your own interactive fiction game is available to download free off the web
http://inform7.com/download/.

This new online service of being able to download this software to create interactive fiction games has developed from the success of ‘Infocom’ software which originated in 1979. It was originally released as disks of interactive fiction games such as ‘Planetfall’, ‘Starcross’, and ‘Deadline’. I suppose it could be argued that these were the Playstation or X-Box games of the 1980s decade. The ‘Infocom’ company was an independent and successful one while it lasted, but it was later sold on to another company called ‘Activision’ who shut the ‘Infocom’ division in 1989. Even though ‘Infocom’ stopped producing these interactive fiction games, other multimedia companies emerged and carried on to market this type of product. This was probably because they saw a gap in the market for something like this. The ‘Zork’ software/brand is an example of this. Now due to technology, it is possible to access some of these earlier games online, click here to see.

This is exactly what we did in the first part of our lecture this week. We attempted to play the interactive fiction game ‘The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy’-

http://www.douglasadams.com/creations/infocomjava.html

This was so much fun, and believe it or not, my first experience of playing an interactive fiction game! Even though it was fun to play, it was also frustrating! The game commences with a paragraph that sets the scene. This paragraph contains the clues to what you’re meant to perform in order to proceed forward with the game. Once you’ve typed in the correct command for your character to execute, another sentence/paragraph appears on screen as another clue for you to accomplish. This carries on as a sequence throughout the game. The frustrating part of this was that if you didn’t get the command for your character correct, you ended up dying! This unfortunately happened to my character twice with a bulldozer! Just my luck!

I’ve quickly learnt that the skill involved in playing these interactive fiction games is learning the art of what you’re allowed to do, and what you’re not allowed to do. If you decide to play the game one day, a quick tip for you- you’re at an advantage if you are aware of the original story from the book, for example if playing the game ‘The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy’. Through knowing the plot of the original story, you’re more likely to know what commands to type in for your character. Unluckily for me, I wasn’t aware of the story, and was totally clueless in trying to figure out what my character should be doing. Knowing the story would have assisted me in progressing further in the game. For example knowing to stay on the ground in front of the bulldozer, and not getting up as I did twice! This resulted in my death. By knowing the original story, I could have avoided getting killed, and could have advanced further in the game. Towards the end of my session with this game, it became quite obvious that the format of the game doesn’t change, it’s the actions of the character that changes the events of the game/ the course of what happens to your character. The downfall to the game in my opinion, you might disagree, is that if you make the wrong decision, it’s one strike and you’re out! Your character dies instantly instead of having another life as you get with other games, such as playstation.

One thing that was hindering my character from further development was that the format of the game was not recognising some of the words/ orders that I was giving my character, for example- “Walk to the pub”. You had to break it down for the character in smaller steps, for example, my character couldn’t go straight from his house to the pub, he had to complete tasks along the way in order to get to the pub. Not only this, but you had to tell your character which way to walk in terms such as “North”, “South”, “East” and “West”, which could be quite confusing at times!

The aim of the game I suppose is for your character to wonder around the space, moving through it as a passive observer. Here is someone else's view on the game- 'The hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy is considered by many to be one of the funniest and most rewarding pieces of interactive fiction that has been released. However be aware the game is very hard and it's easy to die or get stuck when you forget to take an item. From the moment you start the game you will encounter many things that make the game more whole because it gives much better responses than most games in the genre. Instead of the standard "I don't understand that" routine it gives you many different responses and some events are hilarious as well such as when you are run over by the bulldozer in the beginning of the game and you are dead you can still type in thing while you are being taken away by an ambulance. All this adds up to a great game so fans of the genre and the book should not miss this game.' http://www.thehouseofgames.net/index.php?t=10&id=225

After the experience of playing an interactive fiction game, we then went on to create our own. It was quite a hard process to complete, as it was my first ever experience of creating something of the sort before. Whatever text you programme in as your format to the game, the software (Inform 7) converts what you have typed in, and adapts it to the game.

To format the game, you write the information/ clues that you want the player to see on the screen in quotation marks, and describe the scene as graphically as you can in order to set the scene for the player. It is not necessary for the creator to include commands such as for the character to stand up, although it is necessary for the person who is playing the game to do so. The reason for this is that the software/programme knows that in order to move somewhere the character must stand up. The technique to creating your own game is to describe everything, for example the rooms and their location (North, South, East, West) in order for the character to be able to explore the space. The brilliant thing about this software is that through writing your story as it were, if you go to the ‘index’ option at the top of the screen, a plan of the building you’ve created is shown. This can assist the player in remembering which room was located where.

Here’s our story for you to use as an example if you wish to create your own game-

When play begins, say “Welcome to JP Hall. There are sliding doors towards the North. The door towards the stairs is to the West”.
The foyer is a room to the West. “It is a yellow colour, and it is very cold there”.
A vending machine is here. “There is a vending machine North of you, you’re quite thirsty”.

In order for this process to succeed as a game, it is vital that you use punctuation for the software to process what you have said.

I hope this helps you to understand the format in which to write your own commands for the game. If you’re going to attempt to create your own game this week, good luck! I’m sure many of you will enjoy doing so.

Until next week then, goodbye, and have fun creating your interactive fiction games!