[I7] Thoughts on game presentation

[Emily Short]

On Feb 6, 2008, at 3:13 PM, Andrew Hunter wrote:

> Ideally, we'd like a packaged game to start up immediately, or at  
> least present itself in its own way, so when the player starts up  
> the interpreter for the first time they are presented straight away  
> with the game they downloaded, with the seamless ability to find  
> more later on. My thoughts on how this should be achieved is where  
> the compiler comes in.
...
> The interpreter, on finding it has a library of exactly one game  
> containing a title page would display this by default instead of the  
> list of games. The user would click a link, or press a key, and be  
> taken to the game itself. Once they'd played the game, they could  
> use the same page to navigate to the 'related games' in the IFDB:  
> perfect for introducing newcomers to IF.

This sounds very appealing to me. I do a fair amount of IF-promotion  
these days on independent game blogs and the like, and get consistent  
feedback from people who are confused about how to get a game running,  
even if I've given what I thought were foolproof instructions.

> There's a further step, though. While thinking about embedding HTML  
> in games, I started wondering about doing the opposite: embedding  
> the game in HTML. The idea is that the game provide a 'gameplay'  
> page, which embeds a plugin provided by the interpreter to display  
> the game's content: this would allow the game to create a unique  
> look for itself, and would also allow the designer to use standard  
> tools to create it.
>
> The plugin could provide for communication via javascript - the  
> simplest way perhaps to just expose something like CocoaGlk's  
> existing automation system, which would be adequate to create  
> something like the BBC's hitchhiker's game.
>
> Perhaps communication could also be done directly via requests on a  
> custom URL scheme - this would require some interpreter support, but  
> such requests could be presented as glk streams to the game. This  
> would allow the page surrounding the game to update itself using  
> techniques like AJAX. Embedding flash or Silverlight content would  
> be possible, too, which would make it possible to relatively easily  
> create very rich interfaces.


Here I am not sure I know enough technically to envision what you have  
in mind: are we thinking of a graphical frame around the game, or  
something along those lines?

I'm a little bit cautious about things that would make certain games  
dependent on a specific interpreter, but on the other hand I think  
there's some interesting stuff we could be doing; newcomers to IF,  
especially those attracted from outside by I7, seem to want to do  
various UI tricks that the community mostly hasn't worried about. So  
offering them the opportunity to try would probably be a good thing,  
or at least produce some interesting experimental results.

-- Emily