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Show HN: My IFComp entry that aims to be 'Skyrim rendered in text'

egamebook.com

39 pointsfiliph19 comments

It's a cute little tool; though I guess I'm somewhat confused; is the "Show" here the egamebook site itself or is it your entry to the Interactive Fiction Competition?

Because while your story is fun and overall well done, the system it's running on is pretty interesting to me; I was desperately clicking around the top level of the site looking for the option to make one for myself and play around with the scripting, and only after searching for what IFComp stood for did I start to get that this is a one off-entry I guess?

If I am wrong, please correct me and point me to where I can play around with the system you've made, because it has nice flow to it.

Not OP, but the system is described at [0], and apparently hasn't been released yet. Code for this particular story appears to be available at [1], although:

> This code depends on package:egamebook which is not yet open source. Until that happens, you won't be able to build this project unless you're part of the development team (reach out to filiphracek@ if you're interested).

[0] https://egamebook.com/

[1] https://github.com/filiph/edgehead

This is correct. Both these things (the game and the system) are kind of big, at least in terms of time invested, but what I released yesterday was the game. Technically, it's also the system's first major release (there was another small game 2 years ago [0]).

If anyone wants to hack on this, I'm open to giving them access to the egamebook repo, somehow (I wish there was a github per-user privacy setting...). I just don't yet have the documentation and time to make a full open-source release — not at the quality I'd expect from a project like this.

[0]: https://egamebook.com/lochness/

I appreciate your response, as well as lambda_tango's.

Not sure if it matters, but consider this my interest in this project as a user. I unfortunately am next to useless when it comes to programming, but I could easily see this being wonderful as a platform or integrated into plenty of existing platforms as a plugin. It's a very slick presentation and works well for what it's meaning to do.

I would also just add that opening up the code doesn't mean you have to have perfect docs in place. This is a great idea, though, and I enjoyed the game.

Looks fun. I really want keyboard controls though.

It works really well with the Vimium extension in Firefox, for what that's worth.

Curious: what do you expect as keyboard controls. I've had this on my TODO list for ages and I have my own idea of what they should be, but I'd love to capture the expectations first, so that I don't break them.

Three focus areas: the toolbar, the text, the active choices. Let the user type 1, 2, etc., to answer if that's not implemented (didn't check, sorry). Agree that keyboard controls are a big deal for games like this, as is accessibility since text-only games tend to have a lot of blind players. (See Choice of Games, who do this stuff well.)

Mainly I saw there were number next to each option. I therefore expected to be able to hit the same number on the keyboard to make that choice, but it wasn't working. I believe this is what they call a false affordance[1].

[1]:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affordance#False_affordances

> The system behind this game has been in the making for 7 years.

What are the parts of this system, and what were the blockers? The game is turgid, and the buttons are too big (the unchosen options should disappear on each decision point).

Sorry you found the game turgid. What exactly does that mean? Are you referring to the writing, the design, the illustrations, the mechanics? I'm mapping the scatter of opinions on the game and precise explanations help me.

You're asking about the parts of the system. The noteworthy are:

* a STRIPS planner for the NPCs in the game that has to deal with stochastic actions

* an NLG subsystem

* all the usual game OOP stuff that would work with the above (immutable objects with semantics)

* a layered storytelling framework

But if you're asking about the 7 years, it's mostly a lot of pivots. The layered storytelling framework was an idea that I had for a very different game last year, for example.

If I knew exactly what I'm building, it would take about 6 months of work, even with my limited free time. But that's not accounting for all the things I had to learn-by-doing along the way.

I disagree about the "bigness" of the buttons, thought the presentation was notably pleasant. Leaving the old choices was helpful, I scrolled back once or twice to check something and it makes the game feel like you're reading a novel, which is cool. Also, the prose was a little purpleish, which is exactly what you want for a low fantasy Hawardesque fantasy novel (or game), so no complaints there. I think "turgid" is perhaps overstating it.

> the prose was a little purpleish, which is exactly what you want for a low fantasy Hawardesque fantasy novel (or game)

No no no, you go big or you go home. You can't be a little bit The Eye of Argon.

> What exactly does that mean?

I meant that it has a lot of parts that don't work well togther: the presentation doesn't match the writing, the writing doesn't match the setting, the slots doesn't evoke a feeling of a contested combat. It feels like a lot of ideas thrown together without an overall vision tying them together.

I keep thinging of Inkle's Sorcery! and how well it's put together, or Simogo's Device 6's novel use of text.

> a STRIPS planner

Well now! I'd love to hear more about this; I didn't notice it in action while running backwards and forwards from the war forges to the corpse room & back while waiting to see if the explicitly-mentioned time-pressure was really a thing or a unconvincing plot momentum device.

When I hear that my mind tingles with dread about the needed time investment ;) How big/long is the game?

I love the presentation!

There is a walkthrough available.

https://egamebook.com/vermin/v/ifcomp/ifcomp_submission/Insi...

> How big/long is the game?

About 30-40 minutes. Its very well done. I highly recommend

> "I'll live," she says.

This has to be some kind of running gag :D

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