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!

Lecture 5

Hi! What a week it’s been! I’ve been thinking long and hard all week about this online artefact that I will be creating for my project in this module. Whilst thinking about the process I would go through to create it I couldn’t help but wonder, in order to complete the tasks requirement, I must be able to define what the difference is between publishing something online compared to publishing something as a hard copy, and what are the advantages or disadvantages to publishing something online?

Publishing something allows you to print any type of work, whether it is an article, journal or book. But these days, the publishing world has now advanced and evolved with technology. This disruptive technology has now made it possible to publish these types of works online in this day and age. For example, online newspaper websites such as-
• ‘TheSun’(http://thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/)
• ‘Guardian’ (http://guardian.co.uk/)
and
• ‘The Times’ (http://timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/).

This means that the public no longer have to buy a newspaper or watch the news in order to be up to date with current affairs. All they have to do is sit in the comfort of their own homes and browse the web to be clued up on the world’s news. They don’t even have to buy journals anymore. All they have to do is go online to websites such as archipelago (http://www.archipelago.org/), and browse to view collections of people’s works that they have submitted to be a part of an online journal such as poems or pieces of creative writing. You can even submit your own work to be published as a part of a journal if you wish to do so.

Have you ever thought of comparing the traditional newspaper article with an online article and seeing how different they've become through technological advances? Take a look at the following online article-

http://www.news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/8325096.stm
Ten years ago this story would be reported on the news (television) or in a newspaper where it would only be a word article in the editorial section. Nowadays stories are published online with added technological advances. Therefore I've been analysing the advantages, as well as the disadvantages that an online article offers its readers as opposed to a normal hard copy article.

One of the advantages to reading an article online is that the readers have extra features that enhance their interest and pleasure in the story. Take hypertext as an example of one of these technological advances. Are you familiar with this? If not, have you noticed links at the side of the page when reading an online article? These allow the reader to view summaries of the story, background information on the subject, as well as the option to browse other similar stories online. This adds another dimension to the publishing world as readers can research more about the subject, and get different perspectives on the story rather than just one view point on the matter, as the work is created by multiple authors with different opinions on the subject. Through doing this, the reader can delve deeper in to the story/article that was printed, and have the option of sharing(e-mailing) these stories with others if they think that it might be of interest to other individuals.

Newspaper articles usually include photographs to keep the reader’s interest in the story. But online publishing goes that one step further as it is possible to add video and audio links to the article. This allows the reader/viewer to get a different take on the article to what they would get just by reading the story alone. This is an effective form of communicating with the audience, as it can add more emotion to the story as the audience can see those affected by what happened. Another advantage to publishing articles online is that it is a quicker form of releasing breaking news to the public. The reason for this is that it is possible to update online articles 24hours a day, whereas if a newspaper has printed an article on a certain story, and has new facts to add to the story, they must wait until the following day to print a follow up on that particular story as newspapers are only printed daily. With online articles you can put the story straight up on the World Wide Web without getting conformation or corroboration of certain facts, as you can edit this as soon as you do. This allows the story to be broken first on the web usually. If you wait to check your facts, you’re going to lose the story to someone else. This same notion of time/the web being a quicker source of information on current affairs applies to the audience commenting on different articles. For example, it is possible for readers to comment on an online article straight away, where as with a newspaper article it could take weeks for the reader’s comments to be published, and even then it’s only about three different comments that are chosen to be published out of hundreds. Usually by then the article is old news to people! This Washington Post’s article is a great example where readers have commented on articles-
http://washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/15/AR2008091503124_Comments.html
Why not take a look!

Where there are advantages to online articles, there are also disadvantages to them. One of these disadvantages is that the gatekeeper doesn’t have as much power with this outlet as they do with newspaper articles when it comes to controlling what people comment. Therefore the story isn’t necessarily depicted in the way that they had hoped for, as other members of the public read these comments online and change their views/ stance on the story. Another downside to online articles is that sometimes people click on the hyperlinks that appear on the side od the article, and click on to another link on that page, repeating this action. It’s hard then to get back to the original page as they’ve gone from one page to another, then another a.s.o.

As I have iterated above, video and audio links do have advantages linked to them when it comes to an online article, but they can also prevent the audience from getting the true story as they edit the story down to a few seconds compared to how it would be portrayed in a full length story on the news (television). This is the same with an article piece. It is cut down in word amount compared to some newspaper articles; therefore the public do not get a fair representation of what truly happened. An example of this would be how the media take certain quotes out of context and put a different spin on them in order to sell newspapers. This also is relevant to online articles as they are competing against other websites in order to get higher ratings for their articles. By clicking the stumble upon button on an online article (which is usually located at the bottom of the page), the higher the rating of that certain article goes. This means that if that article receives the largest amount of clicks that day, it would be the top story of the day. Does this mean that by doing this we as an audience are becoming a part of creating the news? I suppose in a way it does. Think about it, if people don’t take an interest in that particular article, it’s not news!

Leave your comments on the matter.