Great story/game idea. [INTERACTIVE FICTION] · 9:33am Aug 8th, 2012
So, While I was goofing around on the Internet, an incredible idea was born in my head.
Interactive fiction.
Interactive fiction, often abbreviated IF, describes software simulating environments in which players use text commands to control characters and influence the environment. Works in this form can be understood as literary narratives and as video games.[1] In common usage, the term refers to text adventures, a type of adventure game where the entire interface can be "text-only".[2] Graphical text adventure games, where the text is accompanied by graphics (still images, animations or video) still fall under the text adventure category if the main way to interact with the game is text. It can also be used to distinguish the more modern style of such works, focusing on narrative and not necessarily falling into the adventure game genre at all, from the more traditional focus on puzzles. More expansive definitions of interactive fiction may refer to all adventure games, including wholly graphical adventures such as Myst.
Wait, so it is something like Brony Hero ?
In a way, yes. But here, you choose from limited amount of options, and follow already predicted paths. Instead of choosing, you will CREATE the option.
So it is like those homestuck-esque tumblrs, like Woona etc? But there is already so much of them!
NO. In those, the "choosing" is just author selecting most interesting option and continuing from this. You do not have control. At all.
In this, you will write everything by yourself, and you will receive continuation in realtime.
How would that work?
There are two ways.
First: Decide every step.
You are standing next to the door of Carousel Botique.
>Knock
You knock on the door.
Nothing happens.
>Wait
You hear muffled noises coming from inside of the shop
>Enter
You enter the botique. You are met with a sight of a white unicorn with a violet mane, furiously trying to stitch parchments of material together.
Something like that. Most used options would be >examine, >ask about, >wait, etc.
I personally prefer this one. Although, most of dialogue would be automatical except commands like >accept, >deny, >lie etc.
Second: Visual novel style.
You accompany sobbing pegasus as she slowly walks through the park.
She sits down on one of the benches. You follow her and place yourself next to her.
Fluttershy has her eyes closed. You can see teardrops falling on the soil.
What will you do?
>hug her
>kiss her
>stay still
>walk away
Yeah, that is it. I cannot hide that I prefer the first option - it shows far more potential.
So, how would it be played on FimFiction?
Well, here lies the probem. Actually, not only there, but still.
It would not work on FF sadly. It would be either a windows EXE file to run just like any normal game or app, or as a website.
There is simply no way of doing it in the manner of Brony Hero - I would need to create thousands of pages for only few paths.
Why?
WARNING: NEET SPEAK - EXPLAINING OF GAME MECHANICS
Variables. The game would have boolean, integer and string values.
Integer values store numeral data. Call them Counters - they will remember what day it is, how many times you had met a pony, for example:
With each encounter with Lyra, you gain one lyra_point. If you have at least 1 point, during your walk through village you will addtionally see line "You see Lyra waving at you". If you have over 5 points, she will walk towards you and start simple conversation. And, if you get for example 20, she might invite you for a dinner.
Also, these could be used to hold your statistics, like strength etc. (If I decided to add some RPG elements, that is)
Boolean values store binary data: 0 and 1. Those can be named Switches - they store information if you have plans for date or if it is sunny today.
Example: You will not be able to meet Vinyl unless you first go to to club and see her. The value of vinyl_encounter will change to 1, and you will be able to come to her house.
String values. They are responsible for storing text data. We could possibly go without them, but they give us some interesting benefits, such as choosing your own name, which will later appear in the in-game dialogue.
Let us say you give the variable NAME value of "Timecode". Then, when I have a coded line "Hey, %NAME%!" it will appear on screen as "Hey, Timecode!"
These would have purely aesthetical value.
END OF EXPLANATION
As for the story, it would depend on you if you want to date or murder ponies. (Although I shall settle for romance for now)
Few ideas that could be also implemented:
-Choose gender and race. For example, as a unicorn it would be easier to date Twilight, but harder to get Applejack interested in you. Also, as a mare, you would have better chances with RD, but lower with Rarity.
-Inventory. gather items, sell them, buy other, give presents, etc.
-Content settings. You could disable any sex-related stuff, but still could enable for example gore.
-Optionally, age could be also chosen. (You do not expect a 30 years old stallion to date a crusaider, right?) ALthough it would be rather a choice of teenager/young adult/elder etc.
Anyways. After I am done with everything, I shall try to write something like this.
I still have to finish 5 songs, 3 videos, 3 games and 2 fanfics. And it is going to take some time.
Then get going!
Yahtzee (The Zero Punctuation guy) had a similiar idea already, though his novel would be entirely random based on stats defined at the beginning, that's basically the same thing, right?
In the unlikely possibility that this'll see the light of creation, I'd be glad to help out with text or pre-reading or whatever you like
276437 Actually, the whole interactive story idea is pretty old - it was somewhere in 1980. I still have no idea why it had not get popular.
There is a lot of games from that period of time that I played on emulator on my android phone.
Maybe, thanks to ponies, people will get interested it this type of fiction again.
But, well, lately ppl look only on graphics
Btw, is that one from yahtzee available somewhere? I would like to take a look.
276439 Yeah, I've seen some of that type before, though it's rarely executed with many options since you have to create n^m, wherein n is the average number of choices available and m is the amount of branches where reader has to choose a path, options, while the reader may only use a single path and be through with it. The concept is fun, but there's a ton of work for not so much content, except if you re-read and try to follow every possible path.
276442 Well, that makes me think of those point and click adventure games - do what you can and progress to next room.
I would like to make this similar to RPG - you can choose what to do at any point of time, the branches could merge mutiple times, and then branch again based on your previous choices.
That sounds pretty awesome, but also like a lot of work.
In the meantime I have a similar idea (which you pretty much stated already), we could have a much simpler semi defined story path the regularly forks. I could write one path and depending on the character you want to play as somebody else (such as Brutalassmaster) could write another path should you decide to become a murdering psychopathic monster. it would be nowhere as immersing or in depth as an interactive game, but we could get it on Fimfiction at least, and it would have some degree of interaction.
276504 Yeah, I was thinking about something like that; Although I wanted to create more interactive story.
I am now in phrase of interpreting commands. I seriously have no idea how I should make story, either as built-in procedures (easier but it will turn into clusterfuck after constant expansion) or as an external script (more work, but later I could make a wizard for creating custom stories, so I will be able to expand it without recompiling it constantly)
Also it would be nice to write a simplified story like that.
But after a chapter you will probably decide that you better procrastinate like usual
276514
You know me too well. Which program if any are you using to create this interactive story?
276534 Motherfucking delphi
I would do it in c++ but I have no idea how to make classes in it.
Also, the story wil be stored in file with architecture similar to INI file.
276536
I fucking hate the proprietors of Delphi for purging their wonderful product from the internet. Greedy dick-heads.
276538 Actually, there are newer versions out here, legal to obtain. (Although 7 is best imho)
Why just not torrent it?
276545
I don't usually trust torrents, But I'll give it a go.
276570 The one with most seeders on TPB, I use exacly the same one.
u sownd liek a shitehole
1521932 nigga why
haha u sound like a faggot :))))))
2586977 reported
2586981 ok
2586982