TWIFcomp

While working on the RileyCon website, I got sidetracked by needing some 3d graphics, so I took a few days to work on learning Blender. Halfway through that project, I had an idea for a new interactive fiction game, so I'm now digging an increasingly deep ditch in project space by embarking on a new IF project.

I few months ago, I submitted a game, "Nine-tenths of the Law" for the 2008 IntroComp. Submissions for that contest are supposed to be short introductions, but I got a little carried away, and it turned into a larger project than initially anticipated. What else is new? It was a good chance to learn Inform6, but I'm not eager to write something else entirely in Inform6 since better tools now exist.

While taking a break from the endless stream of excellent Blender tutorials that are available on the net, I played "Tapestry" on ClubFloyd in the IFMud.  Tapestry was originally written in 1999, but was still very enjoyable. The game got my juices flowing, and by the time I woke up the next morning, I had the outline for a new game.

I had been working on a one-room game called "Pinque Minque" under Inform7, but I had shelved the project at the end of last year.  The new game concept, tentatively called  "Rover's Day Out" looks like it would make a more engaging game.  Its structure naturally lends itself to a break between introduction and resolution, so I think I will again aim for the IntroComp in November, but this time actually complete the game, targeting a release in Spring 2010.

Instead of going right to code, data structures, and other nitty gritty, this time I'm pseudocoding the game in plain old text. Later, I'll go back and write the game such that it more or less reproduces the text.  Learning Inform6 and writing  "9/10ths" at the same time was a good experience, but I think it had a negative effect on the story and plot elements of the game because I was so focused on the peculiarities of the language and I wanted to try every bell and whistle.