You Have Died

I had a pretty decent night last night on the IF. Cleared up a lot of "interface" issues ... for what constitutes an interface in this case. For the most part, I'm trying to maintain the top portion of the page for really interactive information and the rest to maintain the ongoing description of the current location. So if you pick up a lantern, the top part would affirm that you've picked it up while the bottom would reflect the change with the location in terms of the lantern not being there.

It gets a lot more complicated with some of the "conversations", since some of them can be triggered by picking up items, etc. I had this more or less going to a new page, but now all the information is displayed at once. I'm trying to maintain the feel that the player/reader is in control of the text and to keep them from getting too lost or disconnected.

My latest quandry is in simple design. I haven't decided if I'll kill off players yet. Clearly there are game mechanics to give reason to do so, but when was the last time a book made you reload? Which is more important ... narrative flow of gameplay tension? Not sure.

Technical quandry which goes alongside that is being able to save your place. Haven't decided if I'm going to try and cookie enough information to save anywhere or go with a chapter system, which would be more or less literary savepoints.




tagged: gaming, interactive fiction, Zork