In October I will be releasing a Choose Your Own Adventure Game in collaboration with horror writer Ghoul Shadows.
I am both an enthusiast and collector of choose your own adventure books, so as I have gotten more and more practice with scripting and multi-media design it was going to be inevitable I was going to try my hand at interactive fiction.
As you may know with my previous game Nevermind The Clown and to a lesser extent The Projection I enjoy making games with RPG maker, but outside of it's intended use for predominately JRPGs.
I use RPG Maker MV now because the native language is Javascript. Technically I could make a whole project now just with Javascript but the interface for developing a text based game has a very nice ease of accessibility and it's export features.
Eventually I would like to try and do a full javascript title in the future but I am at the moment fascinated with what limits I could push the MV engine to. Imputing my own style of artwork for example or creating a point and click title are ideas I am thinking about in the future.
The nature of javascript and html lend itself very openly to the cyoa format due to how the different sections are linked and formed in an index.
The interesting thing I find is perfect harmony when a grid based or flowchart pattern is implemented correctly. Like electrons passing through circuits or a drop of dew rolling down a leaf, actions and choices and how we connect them forms an almost meditative approach to creation. In the digital space these translate to almost perfect compositions in nature such as when we lay stones next to each other or drawing a spiral into sand.
start
Yes. No.
Which Way?
the end
Do You Want to try again?
creating a Choose Your Own adventure story in print or digital is seen sometimes as a complex challenge, but breaking it down or drawing it out gives it a rather honest and raw minimalism.
One of the first games in interactive fiction games Colossal cave adventure also known as ADVENT or Adventure released in 1977 was made by cave enthusiast William Crowther who explored the mammoth cave system in Kentucky. I can imagine just how exciting it would have been to have been to be inspired by rendering the passages in a real place into a space other players can explore.
Back to the Scarlet Gallery, I approached Ghoul initially because I like his work and also with more progress and availability with tools for creating Interactive Fiction, I thought it a fun experiment to develop a CYOA.
With the fun part aside, without a program like Twine (which automatically maps out the main body of text as you go) this had to be done the old fashioned way, with pen, paper and a hand drawn sequence of which Ghoul did all the hard work.
Not only did he write his story, he had to also place it into technical terms (EG. A1B2C3D4) for me to slot each section in bit by bit and that isn't an easy thing to do because 100% every piece has to go in the right place or the whole thing will brick itself. It was a very left side/right side of the brain type of collaborative process and it's been quite a relief to actually work alot more faster towards a goal.
As you may know with my previous game Nevermind The Clown and to a lesser extent The Projection I enjoy making games with RPG maker, but outside of it's intended use for predominately JRPGs.
I use RPG Maker MV now because the native language is Javascript. Technically I could make a whole project now just with Javascript but the interface for developing a text based game has a very nice ease of accessibility and it's export features.
Eventually I would like to try and do a full javascript title in the future but I am at the moment fascinated with what limits I could push the MV engine to. Imputing my own style of artwork for example or creating a point and click title are ideas I am thinking about in the future.
The nature of javascript and html lend itself very openly to the cyoa format due to how the different sections are linked and formed in an index.
The interesting thing I find is perfect harmony when a grid based or flowchart pattern is implemented correctly. Like electrons passing through circuits or a drop of dew rolling down a leaf, actions and choices and how we connect them forms an almost meditative approach to creation. In the digital space these translate to almost perfect compositions in nature such as when we lay stones next to each other or drawing a spiral into sand.
start
Yes. No.
Which Way?
the end
Do You Want to try again?
creating a Choose Your Own adventure story in print or digital is seen sometimes as a complex challenge, but breaking it down or drawing it out gives it a rather honest and raw minimalism.
One of the first games in interactive fiction games Colossal cave adventure also known as ADVENT or Adventure released in 1977 was made by cave enthusiast William Crowther who explored the mammoth cave system in Kentucky. I can imagine just how exciting it would have been to have been to be inspired by rendering the passages in a real place into a space other players can explore.
With the fun part aside, without a program like Twine (which automatically maps out the main body of text as you go) this had to be done the old fashioned way, with pen, paper and a hand drawn sequence of which Ghoul did all the hard work.
Not only did he write his story, he had to also place it into technical terms (EG. A1B2C3D4) for me to slot each section in bit by bit and that isn't an easy thing to do because 100% every piece has to go in the right place or the whole thing will brick itself. It was a very left side/right side of the brain type of collaborative process and it's been quite a relief to actually work alot more faster towards a goal.
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