I'm finally finished with my final project, but I want to know how mine stacks up with everyone else's completed projects. How many things does your player have to complete before winning the game? Id you game long or short or in between? I would like to know these things because I put a very large amount of effort into my game and had trouble with a lot of aspects of it. Many thanks to Dr. Whalen for all the help. It would have been very difficult for me to complete the game without his help. Was my knowledge of inform below the curve of did you all have problems as well? The process of making the game itself gave me the feeling that I knew a lot less about the process than I should have, and that everyone else knew how to make their games without much trouble. I'm asking all of these questions because I want to know if I should make changes to my project to get it up to par with everyone else's, even though I feel that my completed project was done to the best of my ability. Thanks everyone.

The idea behind Inform 7 is very interesting. This program synergizes literature in the form of text and videogames. An individual does not need to be literate in software programming or game design to create a quality piece of work. While creating Crushin’ the Russian, I spent a large amount of time searching online for assistance and found little help. It was frustrating. I would try to pinpoint where I made an error in the script, make a change, and play the game over until I get to action that isn’t working properly. All of this usually ended in disappointment. It is immensely time consuming.  read more »

The semester has finally come to an end. It seems logical that my last blog entry be about how I feel about the class. What i liked, what I disliked, what I should have done differently....
I'm not a big fan of videogames and I am not a big technology type of girl. However, I do have to say that I now have learned to appreciate certain aspects of this field more. A lot more. I would never have thought that video games could have source of literature, let alone a deeper meaning than what is seen. I was proven wrong. Just by working on my project it seems that I was able to uncover a lot more than expected.
I really liked some of the of hyper texts that we worked with. They were very interesting to work with and uncover the puzzles within each one. I could definitely see the "literature" aspect of each one.
Interactive fiction was the worse. It was always very frustrating to try to reach the end of the game. There always seemed to be a million different ways to go, things to do... It was all pretty confusing. And even though I disliked it the most, I decided to make one for my final project. For some reason, creating them is a lot better than actually playing them.  read more »

Now that E-lit is over, except for portfolios, I feel as though I should reflect a little on course. I have had a pretty enjoyable time taking E-lit however not everything was taken without a grain of salt. I've never been a big techie but after I took the course because I enjoyed Dr. Whalen as a teacher.

House of Leaves I couold have done without but do believe the artifact project was pretty interesting. After four years I've come to realize that a true liberal arts education is going to include some classes that you won't love but you never know when you'll start to use certain things.

Though interactive fiction and puzzles may not be incorporated in to my everyday life, I can aee that one day they may be valuable and in the end I had a good time.

So I know finals are in a few days but I just learned of a website that is very similar to PowerPoint in its presentation but it is way more flexible than PP. It made me think that it was a perfect tool for electronic literature and I wish I had found this before creating my final project.

I'm more than sure Dr. Whalen mentioned this website once but I completely forgot about it. So if anyone is scrambling and still checking the blogs, I suggest using this program if you don't have PowerPoint and want a visual aid.  read more »

This is new. I just came across this mentioned on Nick Montfort's blog, a new website, launched yesterday(?), for the programming environment some of you have been working in (or toiling with -- depending on how much success you've been having). It's a whole new presentation for Inform 7, complete with some new documentation, screencasts, and a bunch of complete working examples. If you're still putting some finishing touches on your IF project (if you're doing an IF project), you may very well find something useful.

I've only looked at the site briefly, since I wanted to get this post up, so please take a look. And if you find anything on the new site that you think is particularly helpful or that leads to any epiphanies, post it in a comment here so others can benefit as well!

My Final Project ended up being a fun little hypertext.

Here it is: http://sites.google.com/site/pleasedonottouch/

Wind your own way through the Museum and decide what you think true beauty is.

(Comments are more than welcome.)

My final project is entitled "Get a Helmet." It's not exactly what I had first planned on doing because I still just don't know enough about Inform to get it to do exactly what I want and I get very frustrated from the error messages.

My game is for people like me who get very frustrated with some works of IF and get stuck and aren't very good at figuring out what else to do. My game is simple and I enjoy playing it because it is light-hearted and in my opinion interacts well with the player.

It may be too easy though. I've been fooling around with Inform and am doign everything I can to make this game a little less one-dimensional. The game tells the player exactly what to do and I think I need to change that up a bit. But right now, my game is glitch free and fun so I'm proud of it,

I decided to make a piece of interactive fiction as my final project. Having made one before, I felt as though the program would be somewhat familiar to me. I wanted to make sure that it was creative and would be somewhat easy at the same time. I know what it's like when you're playing with these "games" and it seems impossible to get past certain parts.
My interactive fiction takes place on the Mary Washington Campus. The main goal is to pick up little pieces of paper that have grades posted on them. These papers are around campus and once they are all collected, they must be given to "your" mother in the parking lot. I made sure that all of the building were located exactly where they are on campus. This would make it a lot easier to succeed and find all the notes. My project, as probably noted, is not one that would make a great story line. After reading some of my classmates works, I noticed that some had more of a "story" or "literature" aspect. Mine, however, is more game-like  read more »

For my final project I decided to create a hypertext fiction game/ puzzle. It shows this form of text because I had already creted an IF game and was not very fond of this form of electronic media. Creating this hypertext was a challenge for me, I had never done one before this class. However, the more I started to piece the puzzles and clues of my story together the more I became motivated to perfect this type of electronic media that I am not familiar with. I feel as if hypertext is more critical thinking and literature based than interactive fiction, where as I feel that the player just takes/ picks up an object and returns it to a final destination. My project requires the reader to inquire over the information and discover a suspect (or suspects) who robbed a bank. I made it so that all characters have some motive to identfy some charaters as suspects so that there has to be scrutiny and judgemental decisions to be made by the reader.  read more »

I couldn't help but write on this. I actually saw the article yesterday and had considered it as a topic. Then, when I logged in a few minutes ago, I saw ksulliv3's post on typeface in comics.

The article discusses 7 of the "Most Hated Fonts", which include two mentioned by ksulliv3; Comic Sans and Helvetica. Both of these are popular fonts used in comics and cartoons. The article goes on to describe how any font which becomes popular, risks being overused, or misused, thus becoming despised.

http://www.prepressure.com/fonts/interesting/most_hated

I myself have come across e-mails, fliers, and other documents that, while may have a very clear message, have totally inappropriate fonts. To me, this is similar to what Dr. Whalen was describing, as being very distracting to the reader/audience. There are certain medias, and/or genres where Comic Sans would make an appropriate typeface. Comics for example, would be a great place. But I do not like reading e-mails, or informational fliers that have some cutesy little font with curls and swigglies on the end of every character.  read more »

Hello everyone! So, my final project (creative portion) is now 100% complete (at least, as far as this project is concerned). That being said, I need to write my paper. That being said, I would like to see what others think of it, so I can write about what I was trying to portray with this game versus what others got. I also just want people's opinions because I'm curious. So, if you would kindly download the installer, rename the installer to "The Cave.exe" (I had to rename it to "The Cave.jpg" so that I could upload it here), run the installer, then play the game (also, rtfm, meant in the kindest of ways) and post your opinions here!

As an extra incentive, my name is in the installer, so you'll get to figure out who I really am!

System Requirements: Windows OS (Vista works fine too).

I found a very interesting article:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123992364819927171.html?mod=yhoofront

Some of the crazy implications that this article sheds light on:
- This kind of argument would be nearly unexplainable fifty years ago.
- There are countries in the world today in which this disagreement would be almost unexplainable.
- This argument DOES really matter.

Many people do not realize that the font one chooses can mean just as much as what they are saying it, much like an accent or a dialect. The word "y'all"; aversion of contractions; and a thick Canadian accent each tell us something about the speaker. Any student can agree that an assignment with an unspecified font can either be a godsend or a forged suicide note; Times New Roman can mean "Take Me Seriously, I Worked Really Hard On This Paper" just as Ariel can mean "I Replaced the Serifs With an Extra Two Pages of Phantom Text."

I reflect now on my project (which I will present in some way tomorrow) and can't believe some of the things I wrote. It is empowering in a sense to have the ability to remain anonymous while pouring out some morbid prose. There are seldom published books that are as graphic as some of the literature is online and I feel a lot of that is due to association of name to product in a negative light. To be honest my presentation will be a little extreme, but it serves as a conduit for some side that maybe everyone can tap into to vent.

After hours of painstaking research and grueling cross referencing of the Appendices (not to mention sticking measuring tapes all over my room), I believe I have finally uncovered the unquestionable truth about the nature of the monster that haunts the unfortunate inhabitants of House of Leaves.

Are you ready for this, class?
....

Do you really want to know?

....

Are you sure?

...

Well, it's your funeral, I guess.
You see, the minotaur is clearly...a grue.
What other creature haunts dark places, has never been seen, and consumes all of its victims without exception as soon as the lights go out?
What other creature is the terror to adventurers (and photojournalists) everywhere?
What other creature, I ask you, could so neatly connect the origins of electronic literature to a print novel?

None but the noble grue.

Ladies and gentlemen, I rest my case.

After reading the letters written by Johnny's mother confusion set, yet again. Now, it can easily be possible to say that the true author of the navidson record is in fact Pelafina. While researching these letters online, it seemed that many people thought they had proven this theory in different ways.

1. The font used to write these letters is in Dante. This font only happens to be used in the letters AND the title page that states the name of the book and the authors.

2. Following along with this idea of the font determening the answer to the question "who wrote the book," Dante is the author of the Inferno and on page 633, the words seem to be in a form of a tornado, blown out candle, or a staircase. Some even say that it is the map of hell described by Dante in his book.

3. In one of her letters, Pelafina mentions that it is important for johnny to respond her next letter with a checkmark on the lower right hand side of the page. That same checkmark can be seen on page 97. This means that Pelafina is actually present alot more in the story than is actually thought.  read more »

Beginning on page 339 in House of Leaves, Mark Danielewski describes how Navidson attempts to save everyone in the house. Navidson shows he is "one tough fucker," as he carries his unconscious wife out of the house despite taking a major hit to his shoulder. He sprints back into the house to acrobatically save Reston. When he saves Reston, both discuss how it seemed like it took forever and the distant that Navidson had to go seemed like miles. However, upon reviewing the Hi 8's video footage, Navidson appears to make his leaps instantly and on top of that the distance seemed exponentially smaller. Once Reston is taken outside, Navidson makes one more trip into the house to save his daughter and brother, Tom. Tom heroically grabs Daisy and gives her to Navidson, but in the process is caught in the house. Tom is gruesomely killed right in front of Navidson and falls into the abyss where the floor used to be. Tom's death is foreshadowed earlier in the section when him and Navidson joke how the floor is always there for you. In a house where nothing can be taken for granted, it takes the death of Tom for the two of them to realize this.  read more »

I came across this picture when I searched "The Navidson Record" in Google search. The picture seems as though it's warning those who desire to enter the house on Ash Tree Lane. People shouldn't be tempted to go in the house because its dangerous and they will not come out the same person. The circular rings around the doorknob are also symbolic of the never ending hallways of the house.

I did some research to figure out a little more about the typography in House of Leaves. The text of the book is arranged on the pages in such a way that the method of reading the words sometimes mimics the feelings of the characters or the situations in the novel. While characters are navigating through sections of the house's interior, the text is densely, confusingly packed into small corners of each page; later, while when a character is running desperately from an unseen enemy, there are only a few words on each page for almost 25 pages, causing the reader's pace to quicken as he flips page after page to learn what will happen next.

The typography of this book allows the reader to jump around from section to section at will while following footnotes or the multilayered narrative.  read more »

House of Leaves is horrifying. The back bone of this book is a film, The Navidson Record, and is just as startling. However this supposed movie does not even exist, or so we think. I find it difficult to understand why this is so. After all, the plot, script, and stage directions already exist. Surely a movie depicting The Navidson Record would sell tickets and disturb audiences just as the book has. So why not? Maybe it is Danielewski's intent for this to remain a mystery. Maybe it would be far to expensive and complicated to produce. Maybe a movie would ruin the mystery of the novel. I dont know. I know I am not alone in hoping one day I will paying $12 to see The Navidson Record. Here is a sample of what we can expect:  read more »