Blog

Trying My Hand at Interactive Fiction

I worked on converting my story "Choice, In Sequential Order" into an interactive fiction story using a program called Twine. It was somewhat easy to learn the basics, but I want to learn more about both Twine and Inform. I would love to be able to create something as complex as the old Infocom games using Inform. I remember countless hours in our school's computer lab, either typing in commands, or huddled around three or more friends watching the story unfold in all its green-screen glory. This dynamic continued with stuff like Ultima III. I was the cartographer, pushing pins into the cloth map "gimme" the game included to mark locations of secret places, dungeons, etc. I still have a soft spot in my heart for interactive fiction. I learned that I was not alone. Every year, there are the XYZZY Awards to honor the year's best in that field. There's also a new...

Maine Vacation

Just like on the tin: I'm in Maine, on vacation for a week. Some interesting notes, in no particular order. I found out how to actually pronounce the "Ayuh" affirmative, as per the boatload of Stephen King books I'd read Maine loves its ice cream very very much--there are ice cream places all over, sometimes within sight of each other There are thousands of tiny blueberries growing along the sides of the road in many places I saw a young bull moose! It was a massive animal, and we kept the car in gear just in case it didn't like us very much. I feel very fortunate to have seen a moose my first time up here (some of our group hadn't seen moose in several years). Now, back to my regularly scheduled vacation....

What I’m Learning From Edgar Wright and “The World’s End”

I watched "The World's End" the other night, and found it to be an outstanding piece of storytelling. The basic premise is: Gary Knight, wanting to relive his self-professed "best night of his life" cajoles his estranged friends into trying to try The Golden Mile, and complete it this time. This is told in obvious flashback, where we get to see just-out-of-school Gary, Andy, Steve, Peter and Oliver as The Fateful Night played out. . . And then, we see Gary King in his present context: telling this to the other participants in some type of group therapy or 12-Step program. He stares off into the distance, a smile frozen on his face. Note: the Golden Mile is comprised of 12 pubs, a detail Edgar Wright likely included in the story as a parallel of the 12-step program. I won't go into all the particular layers in the movie (and there are), since...

s

Ultimate Design

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, iudico omni consectetuer pro id, ex eam viris semper, eros utinam instructior vim ne. Ne wisi dolores usu, eam dolores mediocrem in, eos integre deterruisset ex....

w

Strongly Branded

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, iudico omni consectetuer pro id, ex eam viris semper, eros utinam instructior vim ne. Ne wisi dolores usu, eam dolores mediocrem in, eos integre deterruisset ex....