Workshop experience: Days 2 and 3

Continuing background on my IF workshop in Passo Fundo.

Talk at Jornada Nacional de Literatura

The Jornada Nacional de Literatura is a big festival/conference with a lot of different aspects: aside from the workshops, there’s a children’s program with multiple activities going on at any given time during the day, and kids are bussed in from the schools; there are academic conferences and summits for local Brazilian writers; there [...]

Modeling conversation flow: beginnings and endings using scenes

[This is part of a series of discussions on the craft of modeling conversation. For previous installments, see my original Homer in Silicon article which lays out the basic elements of the model, and previous blog posts on the issue.]
The convention that characters should greet one another before launching into other discussion is now pretty [...]

Conversational analysis studies

[A note: I really appreciate the feedback I've gotten on these conversation modeling posts, both in comments and off-blog. My goal here has been to take a first stab at explaining the model of Alabaster, since I'm going to have to write up a bunch of documentation for it; and to get some responses on [...]

Modeling conversation flow: actions in conversational context

[This is part of a series of discussions on the craft of modeling conversation. For previous installments, see my original Homer in Silicon article which lays out the basic elements of the model, and previous blog posts on the issue.]
Giving and showing.
In addition to ASK and TELL, many IF games retain the convention that the [...]

Modeling conversation flow: NPC questions

[This is part of a series of discussions on the craft of modeling conversation, in particular using the conversation system I'm developing for Inform 7. For previous installments, see my original Homer in Silicon article which lays out the basic elements of the model, and previous blog posts on NPC initiative, subject changes, transitions in [...]

Modeling conversation flow: NPC repeating information

[This is part of a series of discussions on the craft of modeling conversation. For previous installments, see my original Homer in Silicon article which lays out the basic elements of the model, and previous blog posts on NPC initiative, subject changes, transitions in player speech, and interruptions.]
One of the standard objections to early versions [...]

Modeling conversation flow: interrupting the player

[This is part of a series of discussions on the craft of modeling conversation. For previous installments, see my original Homer in Silicon article which lays out the basic elements of the model, and previous blog posts on NPC initiative and subject changes, and transitions in player speech.]
There’s a hacky moment in Alabaster to do [...]

Modeling conversation flow: transitions in player speech

[This is part of a series of discussions on the craft of modeling conversation. For previous installments, see my original Homer in Silicon article which lays out the basic elements of the model, and previous blog posts on NPC initiative and subject changes.]
One of the issues that has already appeared several times in these posts [...]

Modeling conversation flow: subject changes

[This is part of a series of discussions on the craft of modeling conversation. For previous installments, see my original Homer in Silicon article which lays out the basic elements of the model, and my blog post on NPC initiative, which describes how NPCs might manage a list of things to say in the future.]
Alabaster [...]