halftruth's blog

For my final project, I chose to write a short story.  read more »

Our team's ARG was focused from the beginning on keeping a simple story (not necessarily a completely realistic one—just a straightforward one) and on keeping the story based on campus.  read more »

This Is My Milwaukee!

It was introduced through a ten-minute video reminiscent of a low-key "Tim & Eric" skit--worth watching even if you're not looking for a rabbithole. But when people noticed the number and the P.O. Box at the bottom of the page, things started to get more interesting. The number works, and when you call a real human being picks up and introduces himself as Mike Russo, Vice President of the Milwaukee Tourism Commission. Of course, there's already a (real) tourism group for Milwaukee, and if you phone them up, they're a lot less likely to give you advice about rebreathers. Another number was found, this one for Joey, who also works at the MTC. Both apparent MTC workers stay admirably in-game as they respond to questions about Blackstar, rebreathers, section 21 and ham-burgers. They also take down their callers' email addresses, in order to send out an "information packet" which is supposed to drop on Monday. (It would have been earlier but, Mike tells us, an intern screwed up. Those wacky interns.)  read more »

I've actually read Szulborski's book before, although I think I mostly skimmed the first section at that point--it didn't really capture my imagination the way the rest did. Having attempted to create ARGs in the past, though, I think the philosophies/queries he presents are useful in trying to shape one's own game, although I am also of the opinion that too much time spent defining one's terms is really counterproductive. Sometimes games are like pornography: you just know it when you see it--and that's all you need.  read more »

No, neither of Cathy's journals are ARGs, and in fact I wouldn't go so far as to call them games. I wouldn't even call them interactive--they are interactive in the same way an action figure is. Whatever you get out of it is what you do with it, it has nothing to do with its actual form. You can get a very substandard sort of interactivity out of Cathy's Book and Key by playing with the papers and sorting through them, but--from my admittedly less-than-spotless examination (it's hard to sustain the interest needed for thorough perusal and pattern recognition when the stuff you're looking through has no appeal to you)--there's not much more there than what is obviously there. In an ARG like The Beast (more about which later), the deeper you go the more you find. It's like the examination of poetry, or good poetry anyway. You can get deep enough into it that even the etymology of words brings greater meaning to the poem. With Cathy's Key, you can try to find that kind of richness, but it just isn't there.  read more »

I hope everyone feels Halloween pressing in. I didn't think of it as I was making my game, but it turns out that my Inform project goes pretty well with the season.

Setting out, I wanted to create an environment that had a definite tone, mood, and feel. I wanted to bring multiple senses into the game, and I wanted the player to have a good sense of what it would feel like to be the player character. My goal was to leave no room or object undescribed. Had I had time, I would have expanded the world, because (as I discuss in my memo) my favorite sort of games are the free-ranging, full-world sort where exploration can be rewarding and intriguing all on its own. I love the side quests, the mini-games and trade skills, the tricks or surprises of landscape. I really wish I could have made a larger, more fleshed-out world for the character to explore, but time limitations prevented me. I would also have liked to have made a longer game, as I feel that this one is somewhat rushed, but... time again.

So what I ended up making is much more like a playable story than a real game. I'm a little disappointed in myself, but let's face it, midterms drain everyone, right?  read more »

So I wasn't in class today, but I'd really love to play through other people's projects! I may not have any useful advice to give, but I would still like to see what everyone is making. So to be fair, and in the spirit of sharing, I'm putting mine up. It's not really finished yet, and there are still some things I'm trying to improve, but I'd love to hear what anyone thinks.

Happy fall break, everyone :]

I know it's all discussing virtual reality, but trying to draw parallels between "Avalon" and our work with Inform can kind of make my head ache.

As an English major (what else?) I have a lot of faith in the power of words--I sort of have to. Over the summer I took a seminar on John Milton (which I loved) in which discussion often came to rest on Orpheus, who could change the physical world with his music. In some ways, the goal of not only poetry, not only writing, but simply creating is retreading, or attempting to retread, Orpheus' tracks, attempting to enact some sort of change in the physical world by means of our own forces.  read more »

So I ended up spending some extra time with my quiz, turning it into a very short game. Which sounds really industrious, but I promise I was mostly procrastinating from other work. Anyway, I thought I would upload it, just in case it would help anyone or in case anyone would actually enjoy playing it. You can download it here. Also, if anyone is having trouble with Inform, I might be able to help if you hit me up.

Good luck everyone!

(See, all the pun titles weren't taken. Just the good ones.)

So how does the Metaverse of Snow Crash stack up to our MOO experience? Well, the lack of visuals is the largest and most obvious difference. But the larger disconnect from reality in a MOO is what makes the most difference to me. The Metaverse is set up to work on reality's rules, only instead of moving physical particles and objects around it's all done by moving information. While the MOO is also set up to move (textual) information around, the rules are much less restrictive than the rules of the real world and by association those displayed in the Metaverse. We haven't gotten to the scene yet, but Hiro spends time programming a motorcycle for use in the Metaverse, where maneuverability is the only thing that matters. Why? Because speed is not controlled in a realistic way, nor are collisions. This is unusual for the Metaverse, which tends to emulate reality pretty well, but since transport is usually handled by the systems which were put in place as the Metaverse's popularity grew, personal systems for transport were largely forgotten.  read more »

I had a lot of fun working on the Aleph project--once I figured out what I'd be writing about, I was ready to go. The introduction of CSS made everything a lot more interesting, too, though I wish I'd been introduced to them earlier, since I feel like there's still a huge amount I don't know about CSS. In some ways, I wish I had had more time, since I could have expanded on my website in a lot of ways.

I approached it with probably too much of an eye for storytelling, rather than direct web design. This isn't really surprising, since I'm a storyteller by habit, but in retrospect I think with a little more time I would have been able to step back and consider more the aspects of form in the assignment over the aspects of content/narrative. On the other hand, I'm pleased with the way the website's form and content worked together, since Ella is a pretty concrete character in my head and I do think it looks like something she'd put together. So overall, I'm content with the way things turned out.  read more »

For my Aleph project, I had to consider how big of an impact I thought the introduction of VR to our world would have. Trying to imagine a hugely changed world, I found myself stumped, but once I pictured VR hitting more or less like the Internet has--something smaller, and often more personal--I had an easier time deciding how to create the site. I chose to use a family of characters I've written about before; Ella, the youngest sibling, uses VR to create places that remind her of her absent older brothers. To me, this is a more meaningful use of VR than the widespread absorption of "Lawnmower Man." It has a sincerity and it retains an essential humanity which I personally find more interesting. Therefore, while Ella is unwilling to allow her VR creations to be released to the public (and doing so would negate the point of the webpage), she uses the site as a way to a) show a little bit about the things she's made b) reach out to her brothers and c) display her writing. VR is essential to her situation as it gives her a way to experience what is absent in a very personal way which would not be possible in reality.  read more »

Aside from the fact that yeah, "Lawnmower Man" was a pretty awful movie, it did lead in well to the Aleph assignment. After seeing the VR world that Jobe creates (and was there any reason his name was Jobe with an E? Seems weird), we're forced to consider how we'd shape a VR world ourselves.  read more »

Borges has been one of my favorite short story writers since I first read "The House of Asterion" back at the start of ninth grade. His stories are always beautiful and strange; "The Aleph" is no exception. While it has no immediate connection to virtual reality, it does question the nature of reality, especially the way in which we experience reality. Our experience shapes what we perceive, not only in obvious ways like bias or phobias, but in less obvious ways like the way we can find faces in abstract shapes (pareidolia). "The Aleph" presents us with the concept of a thing which allows us to experience reality in a drastically new way. The narrator may see far more than he tells us--in fact, from the description, he probably does--but the things he chooses to focus on and the way he describes them shape the story. Similarly, the created virtual realities we conceptualize or deal with in our lives are focused to certain ends by our goals or our very nature.  read more »

Shade was not my first experience with interactive fiction--I'd played with a cluster of other IF games when I was young, including Zork, the Hitchhiker's Guide game (which is often hugely nonintuitive) and a couple of others. So the parsing system wasn't new to me. However, Shade was a lot more experiential and less puzzle-based than most IF I've played. There was a basic rhythm to everything: check list, attempt whatever the list is telling you to do, and then watch another part of your apartment turn into sand.  read more »