1) Markiplier, a famous YouTuber has just made something fun and kid-friendly as an amateur film-maker that tests this same style of interactivity. It's actually quite entertaining, but at the end of each video, the 'recommended videos' which so commonly pop up after a YouTube video have been hijacked as 'decision tools' that send you to another video, all inter-linking both in story and in space. Here's the start of that wyrmhole: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j64oZLF443g
2) The Lone Wolf series by the late Joe Dever is a cool series I stumbled across as a kid wherein you draw out some basic character traits in the first few pages of the book and then proceed reading it using the character skills and a pencil to chart how you engage with the remainder of the book. It holds up surprisingly well and bridges that weird gap between game and story: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lone_Wolf_(gamebooks)
My reading can't quite keep up with how fast you're writing, but I caught this one and did want to say, should you decide to make a game, I'd love to help. It's a deep deep itch of mine. Love to collaborate.
Hi Eric! Interesting point about not keeping up with my writing due to the pace...makes me wonder if I should tweak some of the pacing (at least of the fiction). Hmmmm.
1. Yes! I stumbled upon Markiplier via Corridor Digital, but haven't yet found the time to dive into his new interactive game. Looking forward to doing so.
2. I think I may have had one of those, or something like it, back in the 80s. Rings a bell! I think I was always too impatient to actually do the character creation properly, though...
3. Excellent! I've listened to some of it and so far I haven't said anything stupid, although I do clearly get distracted away from the questions pretty much every time. :P
As for the game - be great fun to collaborate. Early days on that still, but I'll keep you posted.
This is very interesting, Simon. I once wrote a story that had alternate endings, but I never tried to figure out how I might make it functional in this way.
You mentioned that Twine is free to use. Is Ink free as well?
Ink is indeed free! Which is remarkably generous of Inkle. The program you download to work in it is also free, and produces the game in HTML that you can upload. Highly recommend giving both Twine and Ink a go. Probably in that order. :)
Mine was a very simple interactive story: Say yes and the character goes to Vietnam in 1969. Say no and he goes to Canada and evades the draft. Both stories unspool separately from that decision, which occurs relatively early in the narrative. I wanted to explore in my own mind where his life would end up following that decision.
I suddenly want to pick up that story again and finish it in a satisfactory way. I couldn't picture how to present it properly, and I eventually put it away. Thanks for helping me remember a story I've not thought about in four or five years.
Couple things, Simon:
1) Markiplier, a famous YouTuber has just made something fun and kid-friendly as an amateur film-maker that tests this same style of interactivity. It's actually quite entertaining, but at the end of each video, the 'recommended videos' which so commonly pop up after a YouTube video have been hijacked as 'decision tools' that send you to another video, all inter-linking both in story and in space. Here's the start of that wyrmhole: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j64oZLF443g
2) The Lone Wolf series by the late Joe Dever is a cool series I stumbled across as a kid wherein you draw out some basic character traits in the first few pages of the book and then proceed reading it using the character skills and a pencil to chart how you engage with the remainder of the book. It holds up surprisingly well and bridges that weird gap between game and story: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lone_Wolf_(gamebooks)
3) The podcast is up featuring you :) (https://anchor.fm/eric-jon-westerlind/episodes/Welcome-to-the-Triverse-feat--Simon-K--Jones-e1kqgin)
My reading can't quite keep up with how fast you're writing, but I caught this one and did want to say, should you decide to make a game, I'd love to help. It's a deep deep itch of mine. Love to collaborate.
Cya,
-ew
Hi Eric! Interesting point about not keeping up with my writing due to the pace...makes me wonder if I should tweak some of the pacing (at least of the fiction). Hmmmm.
1. Yes! I stumbled upon Markiplier via Corridor Digital, but haven't yet found the time to dive into his new interactive game. Looking forward to doing so.
2. I think I may have had one of those, or something like it, back in the 80s. Rings a bell! I think I was always too impatient to actually do the character creation properly, though...
3. Excellent! I've listened to some of it and so far I haven't said anything stupid, although I do clearly get distracted away from the questions pretty much every time. :P
As for the game - be great fun to collaborate. Early days on that still, but I'll keep you posted.
This is very interesting, Simon. I once wrote a story that had alternate endings, but I never tried to figure out how I might make it functional in this way.
You mentioned that Twine is free to use. Is Ink free as well?
Ink is indeed free! Which is remarkably generous of Inkle. The program you download to work in it is also free, and produces the game in HTML that you can upload. Highly recommend giving both Twine and Ink a go. Probably in that order. :)
Mine was a very simple interactive story: Say yes and the character goes to Vietnam in 1969. Say no and he goes to Canada and evades the draft. Both stories unspool separately from that decision, which occurs relatively early in the narrative. I wanted to explore in my own mind where his life would end up following that decision.
I suddenly want to pick up that story again and finish it in a satisfactory way. I couldn't picture how to present it properly, and I eventually put it away. Thanks for helping me remember a story I've not thought about in four or five years.
Good luck with it! It sounds like the kind of thing that would be very easy (technically, at least!) to do in both Twine and Ink.