I was fool, couldn't let myself to go

Today I will be running down a list of backlogged items that never made it to the internet over the last week. Before I get going though, I have to note that today's title is not a typo, and not from this Beck, but this one. That video sucks but it is the best I cound find.

Anyway to business! I watched Run Lola Run the other day (Again) and still really like that movie. What I think is really awesome is that they work the world into one preset, fixed state and then run though three possible outcomes that could come from that starting point. Each time they establish that the pre-conditions are the same and then show how the different actions of Lola change the world around here. Everything else is constant but Lola, she causes ripples that not only determine the post-conditions of her story but the side characters as well. At the beginning of the movie fred noted that it seemed like something based on a game. I laughed at him and was like 'HO HO HO Fred, no there is no Run Lola Run video game." When I watched the movie though, I kept thinking how it was just like one of my Authored Worlds for interactive fiction. A game that consisted of a few city blocks all preset that the player could then interact with in interesting ways and also see what happens to NPCs dude to his/her actions would be pretty awesome. I had more to say when I started this but I have forgotten since. Damn it.


My next idea was for a program/plugin that would add tags to a book manuscript for each scene and for characters and such. It would provide a way to see when characters first appear, show all their scenes and let you reorder them like clips in a movie or something. The best way to do this would be a plugin for Word or something but I am not sure if it is possible. The key would be allowing the addition of tags without having to write markup in the actual document. I suppose it could be stripped out later, but I would not want it here changing my page counts and stuff. Anyway, it seemed like a cool idea so I wrote it down and now have posted it.

Somewhere in there I had a dream where Johnguydude was the leader of a church that met in an old railroad station from the 1800's and he wore a bowler hat and suspenders. I don't know what part of the larger dream narrative it served, but I made sure to rememeber that little bit.

Finally, I have been addicted to reading Questionable Content since last monday. This is where the image above comes from. The first comics have sad art, but it gets way better every few hundred.

I've always known that the mirror never lies

When I began this blog I really had intended to keep certain dark facinations of my out of my posts. Since I have already ruined that by mentioning Daikatana a few times before, here we go again.

Last night I had a dream where the 5th episode was released for Daikatana, but instead of being a viking themed area it was Babalyon from Titan's Quest with gardens, stone walls, and lots of water. All the weapons were these crazy golden versions of things from other episodes. I got to play it along with a bunch of other people, including Johnguydude and Rohen, in a place that looked like an actual level from the game. I remember being very worried that everyone had all the right data installed so the map rotation wouldn't crash them. It was pretty awesome, playing Daikatana DM in some awesome water temple thing with like 12 people. I think this was my minds April Fool's Day joke on me. Damn.

Today I intend to start a project beyond the scope of any of my previous efforts. Hopefully in a few days Ill have something to show you all.

turn this all around behind us

These are just some thoughts I scribbled in a notebook a few months ago. I was thinking about how one would define an interactive story and the various elements of such a narrative.

Fate is the natural flow of events, the way the future from if the player moves forward on the simple/easiest path through the story.
Facts are creator authored elements of the story.
Static facts are the past, before the player began interacting with the world.
Once a player begins a game they become the creator, adding Dynamic Facts to the truth of the story. The facts are dynamic not because they themselves change, but because they are defined by the dynamic actions of the player.
Static Facts are absolute and will be true in any players game world.
Dynamic Facts are the results of personal player choice.
The combination of these will define the narrative of a players experience.

Dream of the Day:

A game about learning language. Initially the player can't understand anything the characters are saying. Over time the player can understand more and more of what they are saying, while also understanding more of the story. This parallel developement culminates in some revelation. Here the narrative is not dynamic but the learning process forms the interaction.

*Update* Also it seems there was a piece by Kieron Gillen about words in gaming over at Rock Paper Shotgun a long time ago that I missed. OK now I have had about enough of the computer for today.

The Beginning of the Descent

I frequently am overwhelmed by the possibilities of the world. In any one day, in any one place, there are so many things which could be done that I just end up doing nothing. Right here, I could be starting a blog about anything, writing anything, but I just don’t know what to do. What I have decided this will all be about is capturing ideas. Through every day I envision more exciting things than I have ever actually created in my life. Most of these images, ideas, and half-formed stories are soon forgotten. In most cases, this is probably a good thing, it would take quiet an ego to think all my idle musings were small nuggets of genius, but there are some that stay with me, some that have a slight power over me. I hope I will be able to capture some of these rogue dreams that plague me here in some concrete form for examination. First, I hope laying out my ideas for the perusal of others will help weed out the weaker ones and help me develop the stronger. Secondly, I simply need practice communicating my thoughts outside of my head. The power of the mind is such that in a few minutes I can see and experience things which would take years and thousands or millions of dollars to create for others. Even single images, single ideas I have, often seem impossible for me to show to others. This is something I have to overcome. Why? It is hard for me to say directly. There are a few products, creations, whatever you want to call them, which have had a great impact on me. These creations come to me uncalled for throughout the normal course of life and I am amazed at little bits of them. At some time I hope to explore more specifics here, but for the moment I provide you with this example because it is easy to embed in this post.

In every scene of that video I see a small little story, an image in someone’s mind and I just love it so much. I don’t even know what Yelena Yemchuk and Billy Corgan were thinking when they created each scene, other than a few shots of the band, but around each I have been able to create a whole world that captivates me. What I have decided to do is create something that has that gives someone else this feeling. Ultimately, this blog, and I hope my course of life, will be about reaching that goal.

So far I have not even mentioned games at all, but really this has all been about them and their impact on me. There are forms of other media which make me want to burst with awe, as evidenced by the video above, but by far games have entranced me the most. Well, to be more precise, the potential of games as a path to interactive works. Art has had the potential to be interactive forever. Elements of theatre are interactive; installation art can be interactive. These forms are all limited by physical constrains in time, energy, space, and basic Newtonian physics. An author or a painter is not limited by these things, but also creates a static work. The reader or viewer cannot interact with the work in any way but consumption. With the technology that powers games today we could create works in an environment with all the freedom of painting, but with the ability for the user to enter and explore the world created. There are many challenges, both technical and artistic, which must be overcome before we have fully established interactive digital art as a valid form of expression. Think back on the video above, specifically to the image of the girl kissing but looking away, where the camera pans out to show her limp hand hanging down. There is a story there, I do not know what, but if we could pan around them as they are frozen in time, zoom in so close we can enter into each characters thoughts, looking at a maze of connected ideas within their heads, perhaps we could discover why she feels as she does. What if initially their heads were filled with memories that did not form a full vision of how they came to that moment, and the player was to enter their thoughts, relive experiences, and draw the connections for themselves and the apathetic girl. Connecting the thoughts into one logical whole could be the game. What if the way the player interpreted the memories, and in turn made connections, changed the ending revelation the girl would have, thus creating their own take on the narrative with the narrative itself. What if this were some multi-user social networking system where users created memories and connections as a group, forming this girls life? Perhaps this last one as gone too far, but I hope by now I have at least shown there is something to be excited about here. This wasn’t meant to turn into an exploration of thought as a game mechanic, but it is just how I see things. Again, the possibilities of the world are overwhelming.