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Magic Words - Interactive Fiction in the 21st Century
An anonymous reader writes "1UP has just published a nine-part article on Interactive Fiction, the politically correct name for what used to be called text adventure games (e.g. Zork, Stationfall, etc.). The feature includes an overview of the genre and its history, lengthy interviews with the genre's leading current creators, and resources for aspiring IF writers. Anyone who has fond memories of typing their way through dank caverns or outsmarting leather goddesses and ravenous bugblatter beasts with nothing but a keyboard should read this -- not just for the nostalgia, but to see what's become of the format."
What a silly thing to say. Did the makers of the games feel insulted by the label? Were the games themselves offended? Is "text" to "fiction" what "coloured" is to "black? Of course not.
Just because someone comes up with a brand-new, improved-formula, pro-active name doesn't mean that it's more politically correct, or even better, than the old one.
... is that, today, it's much easier to write a simple piece of interactive fiction than ever before, yet it's far less popular nowadays. I personally like TADS, but I'm sure there are other excellent systems.
A point I'd like to make, though:
As someone who's done a LOT of serious area writing on diverse MUDs (both RP-enforced and hack and slash) and has dabbled in IF, I must stress that writing IF and writing on a MUD are two completely different things. I know someone's going to compare the two and claim IF's still alive and well in the form of MUDs, but it's not even close to the same thing. Your skill set in creating a MUD area doesn't automatically map to IF, and vica versa.
Good IF requires FAR more attention to detail than the average MUD. On a typical MUD, you can get away with only one or two levels of details because the players are busy interacting with other people. In IF, you've got to really hammer in those details to bring out a convincing world (usually - that Arabian Nights-esque game that was in the IF Comp a year or two ago was basically choose your own adventure, yet was extremely good), because the world is all there is.
IF != MUDs. That is all I want to point out, before someone claims it's so.
-Erwos
Plausible conjecture should not be misrepresented as proof positive.
I guess I'm just a jerk, but when did "nine page article" become synonymous with "nine part article"? I mean, sure, it looks like they tried to do a decent job putting the article together and I'm not trying to demean the content, but it sounds a lot more grand to call it a "nine part article", no? And we can add "cynical" in front of "jerk", I suppose, since I'm left wondering if "anonymous reader" is someone closely associated with 1UP who'd like to see the site get a few more hits for its "nine part article".
Yeah, unfortunately, gamers these days are from an entirely different generation than those of 10 - 20 years ago.
With MTV and flashy graphics and an emphasis on getting a quick hit, it seems like entertainment requiring "investment" is falling from our culture. Sports games are designed to have mere 5 minute quarters, there are FPS that allow you to jump in get 10 kills and bail, and many good television shows containing a consistent storyline (rather than the flavor-of-the-week variety) don't end up being so successful (running jokes/themes aside).
It's likewise no surprise that the old computer game staples (adventure games, text games, those ASCII RPGs) are becoming increasingly less popular.
But perhaps there is hope. Books (something I deem to be a yardstick for people's interest in imaginative entertainment and attention-span -- as true or not as it may be) have been selling increasingly more.
People say that books are a dying medium, but perhaps some life remains with the success of Harry Potter and perhaps the frequent coupling of Hollywood blockbusters with current novels.
But I guess we'll have to see if games start taking a new route, themselves.
in 1975, i think, i was betting babysat by something called a "cyber" (i think). i could see it though a window in the hallway.
my mom was working on her doctorate and didn't know what to do with me, what with the recent divorce and all, so she left in the computer lab at the university while she was in class. it was empty most of the day.
the desk my mom sat me in front of had a paper tape reader, a keyboard, and some type of printer.
i would go sign out the tape named "star trek" and run the commands to load the paper tape, then i would start traveling around the universe, trying to get to a starbase with fuel, trying not to run into things as i jumped quadrants, and trying to blow away klingon ships before they gave me too much damage.
every move, the printer would spit out a page showing the details of the quadrant i had moved into, and some status info.
anyway, that was my first computer game.
I've always been puzzled at how games in the so called "adventure" genre were all about puzzles. Why not just call them Puzzle Games then. An "Adventure" game should be about exploring some kind of interesting game world, not about twisting levers in a certain way. I always hated the puzzles in Zork. Those stupid dam controls. Give me a break. I think CRPGs were what adventure games were intended to be.
IMO, all computer games should contain an element of interactive fiction. At least until virtual reality has reached near holodeck levels, we will need text descriptions. Even a holodeck uses lots of text in terms of character dialogue. It's just spoken instead of written. When you combine good modern game design with interactive fiction you end up with something like Planescape:Torment, a computer game that some believe to be the best ever made. It was the interactive fiction aspect of the game that made it stand out from the competition.
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
Kids today are only interested in cool graphics. Ever since DOOM, they've been basically buying the same game, but with nicer graphics than the previous version. Seen one FPS, seen 'em all. They're too lazy to use their imaginations.
Yeah, but kids aren't the only ones playing games. There's a small but thriving community creating dozens of new games each year, several of which are comparable to the original Infocom games. If interactive fiction was alive when Infocom was releasing 3 or 4 good games a year, how much more alive is it now when the online IF community is releasing four or five times that number?
Beyond that, I don't need a mediocre game that millions of other people play; I need a good game that I can play.
Yes, you are correct.
...Jorge Luis Borges described such a book (though he did not write one) in 'El jardin de senderos que se bifurca' ('The garden of forking paths') in 1941 (Fishburn, 1990):
It's been a while since I read it, so I did a little Googling and found this interesting article by Phil Goetz here.
Here's a relevant quote:
"Hypertext is text with links. Links take you from one text to another. Sometimes there is a default linear path which the reader can follow through the narrative, and the links are optional.
For instance, say you were reading the hypertext version of Hamlet on an Apple Macintosh. After reading Act II, you might be prompted, 'Should Hamlet (A) kill his uncle, (B) leave the country, or (C) mope about life and death?' You type 'A', and read a considerably shortened version of Hamlet (This exhibits one problem with interactive fiction - sometimes the action which builds up to more dramatic climax is not the action which a goal-oriented reader would take.)...
'In all fiction, when a man is faced with alternatives he chooses one at the expense of the others. In the almost unfathomable Ts'ui Pen, he chooses - simultaneosly - all of them... Fang, let us say, has a secret. A stranger knocks at his door. Fang makes up his mind to kill him. Naturally there are varios possible outcomes. Fang can kill the intruder, the intruder can kill Fang, both can be saved, both can die and so on and so on. In Ts'ui Pen's work, all the possible solutions occur, each one being the point of departrre for other bifurcations. Sometimes the pathways for this labyrinth converge. For example, you come to this house: but in some possible pasts you are my enemy: in others my friend.' (Borges, 1944)
In the same year Borges described a backwards hypertext fiction, the likes of which has never been written, in 'An examination of the work of Herbert Quain' (Borges, 1944). Herbert Quain's supposed book April March was a backwards-branching hypertext. The first chapter described the events of an evening. The next theee chapters describe three alternate prececling evenings. The next nine chapters describe nine alternate evenings before those in the second through fourth chapters with three possible preludes to each of those three chapters. There never was any such book; Borges often pretended to review an imaginary book in order to explain the principles he had in mind for a book without actually writing it.
Julio Cortazar wrote the novel Rayuela (Hopscotch) in 1963, which is a simple non-interactive type of hypertext. He provides two ways of reading it: With or without a set of optional chapters between the required chapters (Cortazar, 1966). To my lnowledge, the only interactive fiction written on paper before it had been demonstrated on a computer was 'Norman vs America', a 20-frame cartoon by Charles Platt based on an idea by John Sladek, published in an underground comic in 1971 (Platt, 1971)."
What's really cool about these games is that the data files for the games are platform-agnostic. I originally bought a Lost Treasures before I became a 100% Linux convert, and to my delight discovered that the Linux port of the Inform parser ran these games perfectly from the data files. Same thing when I got a hold of some old Scott Adams game files and the parser for it.
Karma: Frotzed (mostly due to the Frobozz Magic Karma Company)
If you post your comment on rec.arts.int-fiction, I'm sure you'll get a good response. The number one feature where AI would be useful would be in improving the parser's recognition of typed commands. People are so used to text-messaging each other that the parser's frequent "I didn't understand that" gets in the way of their immersion in the game, to an extent that wasn't a problem back when all computer users were used to the command-line interface.
Meanwhile, Stephen Granade's brief article on why IF doesn't need AI will be a good start.
http://brasslantern.org/editorials/ai.html
Literacy Weblog http://jerz.setonhill.edu/weblog
Ugh, this reminds me of why I hate text adventures. open drawer with key, that does not computeth, use key in drawer, that does not computeth, unlock drawer with key, that does not computeth. Can someone tell me how to unlock a freaking drawer that would have taken two clicks in a graphical adventure game?
Make me a friend and I'll mod you up
The main parts I remember are wandering around a city in a taxicab, trying to find something to do. The text used to read something like "There is a taxi stand here, and a cabbie waiting for a fare." And then there was a scene in a bar in the city where the description read something like "One of them asks for a match, and everyone laughs uproariously." (I didn't get the joke at the time, not that it's a very funny joke.)
I eventually found my way into an adventure of some sort because I remember there being a cave or dungeon or something, with a sign over a door reading "Breathes there a man with soul so dead," or some other quip about a soul.
I never got very far into the game, and I never have seen any mention of it since...
What's the world coming to where you turn into a crotchety old guy at mid-twenties? I think exactly the same way you do about the situation of gaming, but I realize our attitudes are similar to those old fogies who go around saying "Back in my day we had to walk through 6 feet of snow etc."
I'm really hoping Video games will go through a period of revitalization, 'cause they're heading down the path of mass commercialization.
There are many types of text based games. I run a MUD (Multi User Dungeon) which has over 35,000 rooms and more as more modules are added to the game. Over 256 live users can be on all at the same time fighting monsters and each other!
Text based adventure games are not lost! Check need to know where to find them. MajorMUD is just 1 over 1,000's od MUD out there.
Meh, I wouldn't say that. I'm only seventeen, and I revel more in a game of Zork (or more frequently, MUDs) than my long-standing addictions to Asheron's Call. While I do enjoy some modern games, I find myself more frequently looking for the excellent storylines and intricacies of older games (older to me means mid-nineties, seeing as I'm not that old myself) such as the Super Famicom Final Fantasies, the old Dragon Warriors on Famicom, and the text worlds of my first video game addictions; MUDs and MOOs. The realm of interactive fiction extends itself not only through a single-player world, but even moreso in multiple user dimensions where roleplaying is enforced. The people become the storylines; their illustrious descriptions create the 32-bit graphics, rather than waiting for the stale, polygon graphics of Everquest or AC. As far as a lack of investment... I "invested" about two months of real time over six years to one of my favorite MUDs, a good month of real time to Asheron's Call, and the average console game I play lasts a good 30-50 hours. There's a lot of us mature younger gamers who don't mind that kind of investment.
;)
Maybe I'm just speaking for a small demographic of younger gamers who'd rather sit down and create a world of their own with graphics of the mind, but I can't see a blanket statement that gamers are completely different than those of twenty years ago being true. Us young folks still have imaginations too.
"I'll burn my books; ah, Mephistopheles!"
-The Tragical History of Dr. Faustus
Now I'm curious. How did you play those text advedntures without reading ? On the other hand, it would explain why you didn't like them >:)...
Anyway, the best scifi experience I've ever had was with the game Star Control 2 (with Knights of the Old Republic at the second place). Which, as it happens, has been translated for modern machines and can be played for free. Ur-Quan worm, here I come !
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
Just to state the blatantly obvious, it understandeth not because it's a Flash thingie parodying Scott-Adams-style 16KB adventures, though probably not in 16KB. Modern-day IF (such as the interviewed authors') typically uses the Inform or TADS parser/world model libraries which will, of course, handle "unlock drawer with key" just fine, as well as "take all keys except the pink one out of the bottom drawer, then put them on the keyring" (well, something similarly pedantic anyway).
Ever since DOOM, they've been basically buying the same game
Not true. After Doom, the next major step was Quake, which brought real 3d spaces and true up/down. And then came Half Life, with many new things and concepts to master. The tri-tentacle terror that hunts on sound is one of the most beautifully executed FPS game sequences I have seen.
Furthermore, the rise of real 3d has given birth to 3d FPS, to Deux Ex, to Everquest and many other games.
And wait till you see Half-Life 2 and Doom 3. Your jaw will drop to the floor, not only by the graphics, but also by the gameplay, which is made possible by the graphics.
I modified TinyMudd so I could add AI modules for NPCs.
Unfortunately, I waited to the last week of the year to start, of course. :) By the end of a week, I had a NPC that realized when it was hungry, could find food and get through unlocked doors by finding keys. It didn't have any location memory, so it took a while to get through a door when the key was in a different room, but it was pretty cool for a week's worth of work.
I did write plans for an improved engine and still come up with ideas and write them down. But I haven't implemented anything since that week. Makes me wonder what it could have done with more time. Now I'm stuck in the real world cycle as a Unix admin and don't want touch computers at night.
Damn laziness, maybe I should have went to grad school....
Good luck, working with text adventures is a great way to build intelligence models into an already existing world you don't have to waste your time programming from scratch. It's a good testbed for AIs that could be then moved to real world tasks.
I'm glad someone else is going down this path. I'd like to get back into AI someday. Maybe when I'm laid off. :)
-Mike
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
The primary benefit I see in doing this is that instead of requiring users to complete excruciatingly specific chains of actions to achieve a goal, programmers could set goalstates and let the creativity of their players run wild trying to achieve them. OpenCyc's inference engine should be able to determine whether the goalstate was achieved or not, based on the properties of the objects.
This would, of course, make for an entirely different interactive fiction experience. Up until now, interactive fiction programming has focused on creating intuitive but nonobvious chains of reasoning and rewarding the player for discovering these sequences. Goal-based interactive fiction would place a greater focus on designing situations based on the properties of your objects. For example:
In a normal IF game, there would be one preferred way to solve this problem. Perhaps two, if the author felt especially creative. But an OpenCyc enabled game would let you examine the room in increasing detail, and use any and all of the objects you find to achieve the goal of incapacitating Jimmy.
Instead of being required to, say, grab a gun from the shotgun rack and shoot Jimmy in order to move past him, you might decide electrocuting Jimmy is quieter and smarter:
Oops. OpenCyc knew that the letter opener was metal and that the lamp cord was plugged in, and that a human being could be electrocuted by doing this. Next time you unplug the lamp before cutting the cord and electrocuting Jimmy. Or maybe you tie him up with the lamp cord, and don't kill him. Your choice.
What makes this style of gameplay especially intriguing is that solutions could emerge which would surprise the author. It might even be fun to create situations which have no immediate solution and see if, through clever introspection, one might not emerge. Sharing your unique solutions with others would be part of the fun of playing the game.
By building on OpenCyc, the effort one programmer takes to define objects could be used and amplified by other authors. It could perhaps even be used by the general OpenCyc community in other applications. If nothing else, the challenge of trying to create a goal-based interactive fiction language that was powered by a common-sense inference engine like OpenCyc would be a heck of a lot of fun.
He who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense.
TMA *
Too Many Acronyms
Corollary to Moore's Law: The IQ of new computer owners is declining.