Latest PAX East Stuff

Due entirely to the efforts of people who are not me, PAX East has even more IF content than expected.

– The Get Lamp screening will be accompanied by a panel featuring Andrew Plotkin, Brian Moriarty and Steve Meretzky.
– The recently-announced PAX schedule also includes a session of ACTION CASTLE, an RPG where the GM plays a human IF parser.
– The IF hospitality suite will host a panel on IF outreach to the indie and casual gaming communities featuring Jason McIntosh and Andrew Plotkin with Chris Dahlen (who has written up some IF for the Onion AV Club) and John Bardinelli (regular contributor to Jay Is Games coverage of IF)
– There will also be an unofficial panel on adaptive difficulty strategies, featuring Jim Munroe and Aaron Reed talking with Dave Gilbert of Wadjet Eye Games. Gilbert’s work includes a number of excellent graphical adventures, including Emerald City Confidential.

I’m especially pleased about the latter two events: it’s cool to revisit IF’s roots, but we want to look forward as well as back. Thanks to everyone who’s worked on putting this together.

Homer in Silicon

…on the curious and strangely addictive Echo Bazaar.

More JIGComp

The Jay is Games IF competition is now over, and winners announced. I got to disappointingly few of the games before the end.

I did play both Hoosegow and Roofed before the end, though, and Dual Transform I beta-tested, so that means I actually lucked into playing the top six games. Some thoughts about those games after the cut (mildly spoilery, but the real specifics are rot13′d).

Recent Playing: Ka, Vanitas, various XBox games

I’ve been moving horribly slowly through the JIGComp games and will probably not finish all of them. I did play all of Dan Efran’s “Ka”, however, and liked it enough that I have put my review over on IFDB.

On my iphone, I’ve been — playing is the wrong word. Tinkering around with the experiential artwork “Vanitas”, produced by Tale of Tales. Again, it’s not really a game, and this time it’s also not really a story, even in the vaguest sense: the app provides a virtual wooden box you can open and close. Each time you open it, there’s something new inside: a collection of odd objects, from coins and feathers and needles to skulls and flowers. The idea is an evocation of those old master vanitas still-life paintings, the ones that are supposed to remind us of the mortality of flesh and the brevity of human existence. I always really liked those for their elegance and technique. The “Vanitas” app functions in much the same way. You can play around with the objects in the box, turn them over with a prod of your finger, prick the soap bubble. Rotate the phone and they slide over one another. Things like that. It’s appealing for more or less the same reason that the paintings are, if you like those sorts of thing.

My XBox crusade continues, and I’ve tried Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (really so very much not for me); more of Fallout 3 (we are nearly done now, I think); Assassin’s Creed 2; and Rise of the Argonauts. Rise of the Argonauts makes me see in funny colors: the ways they’ve rewritten the mythology are not in support of especially compelling gameplay or story. Assassin’s Creed 2 has a silly framing story, but gets much better after that; I’ve only played a couple of hours, but I’m much enjoying the characterization of the protagonist (who seems to have been lifted from one of the spare non-speaking Montagues, and is keen on punching other young Italian men, and wooing women at balconies). Even better, it’s all about scampering around and over a period-accurate version of Florence. I’ll probably have more to say about that, and about Fallout 3, later.

JIG Comp continued

Tonight’s playing: Party Foul. Low-spoiler comments after the cut.

JIG Comp games

After a busy week, I’m just now getting to try a few of the Jay Is Games IF competition games. For those who aren’t familiar with it, this is a JIG-hosted IF competition on the theme of Escape; the games are short and all playable online, and there are some substantial prizes. It looks like this intrigued some people who aren’t IF veterans (and some who are) to contribute games. So, very cool.

I probably won’t get to all of them during the play period, but I thought I’d try out a few. Brief, non-spoilery thoughts on “Fragile Shells,” “I Expect You To Die,” and “Golden Shadow” follow the cut; if you’re interested in more, longer, and much funnier reviews, Jenni Polodna is also covering this comp, as is Matt W. And grue love.

Coding Puzzles

Recently on the intfiction forum someone asked me how to code puzzles in I7. I found that a bit of a stumper, but I cobbled something together, and he liked the answer enough that he suggested I post the reply more permanently on my blog. So I’m doing that, with a little bit of editing and fleshing out.

Educational challenge-based interactive fiction. Of a sort.

Back in 1993 I was tutoring my sister in algebra. Her quizzes and tests were always made of word problems with a running storyline involving many recurring places and characters. I tied the fate of the main characters to how well she did on the previous quiz, so a good performance brought them good fortune.

Unfortunately, one test she completely bombed, and, well, this is a transcription of the quiz she got next. (On behalf of my younger self, I apologize to the people of Argentina, the spirit of Goethe, and hypnotists. [Hi, Conrad.])

ETA: Didn’t anticipate this getting Metafiltered, so I put it someplace with a low bandwidth allowance, and that’s now used up. You can also see it cached and in non-PDF form here.blah

Status of projects

This is a slightly self-regarding post about the status of various IF-related projects of mine, since people have been emailing to ask. Warning! It’s kind of boring!

GDC AI summit talk et al

So, this has been in the works for a bit, but got officially confirmed today: I’m going to be speaking at the AI summit at GDC, in a panel with Michael Mateas and Dan Kline, on artificial intelligence and storytelling. (Unsurprisingly, I’m talking about conversation; the panel as a whole will also look at things like drama management, narrative pacing, etc.)

Scheduling information isn’t up at the GDC site yet, but is presumably forthcoming; the panel will be sometime March 9-10, 2010, at the Moscone Convention Center in San Francisco, CA.

I’m excited to be talking alongside people whose work I’ve admired for a long time, and really looking forward to this event.

Meanwhile, PAX East plans are moving forward, with lots of IF stuff projected; there’s now an ifwiki page, if you want to check out who else is going to be there and what social plans are in the works. And Jeremy Freese and I are going to be making a speaking appearance at MIT the following Monday, as well.

Yes, it will be a full and busy March.