Interactive fiction is becoming popular again, especially multiple choice “choose your own adventure” style games because they are so easy to play on smartphones. They are actually being sold in stores again, on Steam and on the mobile app stores, and there are many tools now to create them without having to program.
I worked on some tools myself over the past 15 years or so. In fact, I’ve written software that lets you create visual novels right in the browser, without programming and even software that lets you create sophisticated text adventures like Infocom’s famous Zork in the browser without programming.
You would just write “take the lamp” and then the computer creates an item called “lamp” and infers from the command “take” that it can be taken and dropped. Write “open chest” and the chest becomes an item that can be opened and closed, write “put lamp into chest” and the chest also becomes a container that can hold items. Examine the chest and you get a default description “There is nothing unusual about the chest”. Click on the text and you can edit it to say something more appropriate.
All without any programming. You just play the game as if it already existed and by doing so, create it. This already gets you 90% of the way there and for more complex interactions, I built a rule based system that lets you create anything you could imagine without having to learn a complex user interface or programming language first. Text adventures, due to their open world nature and the natural language processing that is involved, are easily the most complex of the three basic types of interactive fiction. Multiple choice software I haven’t worked on, but that’s the easiest of the three and very similar to visual novels from a technical standpoint.
And what has that got to do with Steem?
I’ve always wanted to make a website where you can easily create interactive fiction and share it with others. On Steem there seems to be quite a big community of writers and people interested in interactive fiction judging by the popularity of my own articles on that topic, so I thought I’d try and see if there is enough interest in me developing a Steem based website which would allow you to create all three kinds of interactive fiction without programming, that other people can then play and upvote if they like it. So you’d actually be able to make money creating visual novels, text adventures and choose your own adventure games without having to go through the complex process of selling them in a store. I think this could lead to some really high quality and interesting new stories being written.
I also really want to support the concept of neverending stories, that you can update with new content regularly and without the readers losing their progress. Imagine a detective story where readers can solve cases and new cases are added all the time, while you don’t lose any of the progress you made so far (like money you made from working on prior cases, relationships with people you met and so on).
Since Steem posts can only earn money in the first 7 days, it would be best to release your fiction chapter by chapter, so that’s something I’ll keep in mind when designing the software. Later on when Smart Media Tokens are available, that might be an option too, so that the 7 day limitation could be removed. You do of course retain the full rights to your stories, so you could also use Steem to finance the development of your story chapter by chapter and then sell the finished product in a store. I could add export functionality for Mac/Win/Linux/iOS/Android if there is enough interest to pay for the development costs of that.
Exporting as a downloadable .html file is something I'll do for sure, so that you can freely share, sell or do whatever you want with the stories you create without having to rely and be dependent on my website, I prefer freedom to vendor lock-ins.
I’d start the website with the multiple choice style interactive fiction, then add visual novels just because it’s basically the same so I can reuse a lot of the code and then finally text adventures in the style of Zork. While I might reuse some code of tools I’ve already written, it’s probably better to just rewrite everything from scratch, I’ve got a decade more experience now and there are much better programming languages and frameworks for the web today. But since I already know how to do it, it won’t take that long.
Due to my work on Columns for Steem, a Tweetdeck style interface for Steem, I’m already very familiar with Steem programming as well, so that shouldn't be a problem either.
So let me know if you’re interested by upvoting and it would be great if you could leave a comment telling me if you’re more interested in writing or reading these interactive stories (or just upvote a comment you agree with), which of the three types of interactive fiction you like best (Visual novel, choose your own adventure, text adventure) and any other feedback you have.
If there is a lot of interest, I’ll start working on the website right away and release the first basic version in about two weeks which will allow you to create and play some basic multiple choice stories, and then I’ll add new features once a week. I think this would be a great, novel addition to the Steem platform that might also attract some new people.
Dude, what can I say - yes please do this, it sounds awesome.
If you open source it right from the start I will definitely consider contributing. I've just recently started working on a text adventure engine too, and I also have a bit of experience writing bots and such for Steem, so the stars have aligned.
So far it looks like there isn't much interest in the idea, although it could always be that it was bad timing when I posted it and nobody saw it, so maybe I should repost it in a few weeks and try again if it stays that way. Can't work on any more hobby projects right now since I got way too many of those already, so unless there is enough interest to make at least a bit of money with it, I'll have to postpone the idea. I'll do it at some point for sure though because I really want to use it myself :)
I don't think that is the best metric for determining if an idea is good or that a project will be successful. My approach is to do whatever I think is the best idea. No offence but you don't have that far of a reach, and yes I think post timing can matter a lot unfortunately.
I have a lot on my plate too so I know the feeling and that is definitely a good reason to postpone, no point in burning out.
Well I'm very interested, I'll look forward to any beginning on this project.
Yeah my reach is probably close to zero here, I did have a few extremely popular posts but that might have been sheer luck. While 440 followers would usually be more than enough, I think due to the nature of Steem, the vast majority of those followers are actually just spam followers trying to get more followers themselves by following but without any interest in actually reading my posts. Do you know if there is a Steem app that can show you some data about that? Figure out based on voting and commenting habits which of the followers actually engage? Would be interesting to see if my instinct is right on that and how many are actually real followers. Based on my own observation I'd guess something like 20 people :)
Yea not really sure, you could write a little script to take a look. @shaunmza, who once contributed to FOSSbot Voter with me, created Steem Followers, which is focused mainly on the order of events rather than information about followers, but you can check it out here: https://steem.makerwannabe.com
Yea, 440 ain't that much on Steem. I always read your stuff and I think you're under rated. You also don't have much of an investment so that might be a red flag for some people.
Anyway this project rocks, you should do it!
Yeah sadly had to sell off about 230 Steem Power because I needed the money. Although in hindsight it would have been a good decision anyhow because I sold when the Steem price was much, much higher than it is now, so it won't cost as much to get it back when I can afford it again :) And thanks for the nice words, much appreciated!
I guess I could at least work on a very basic version of the site, multiple choice stories only, and see if that gains any traction. I'll think about it :)
Please do. If you want to collaborate on the design of it before investing time then draw up some design / spec docs on a GitHub repo and I will contribute via PRs.
Very cool idea! I've wondered before if I might be able to embed an interactive fiction story made out of something like twine.
You could only embed a Twine story in a Steem post if the Steem website you use supports it, which none do. My site would work like DTube does for videos for example. The Steem post generated by the site would have a screenshot, a description and some data like word count, number of branches, tags and so on and allow you to comment on stories through Steem, but would otherwise just link to my website where you can then read the actual story and easily find others.
Love the idea! I'm a writer, and would be very interested in working on a text adventure! Any updates on the software? Any means to get in touch? 😁
Hi, sorry about the late reply. Since there was barely any interest in the idea I've shelved it for now. I do plan to write an improved version of Ink though, which is right now the easiest and most powerful software for creating interactive fiction in my opinion, much better than Twine.
I plan to use the same script language Ink uses, which is basically something like Markdown for writing interactive fiction without programming, but I'll rewrite it using the Red programming language, so you won't need to use a giant Electron app and a Windows only compiler, instead it'll be a 1 Mb real native app on Mac & Windows and soon Linux and Android as Red adds support for those targets.
Compiling to web is also planned for the Red language, so at some point I can probably use it to go back to the initial idea of combining interactive fiction with Steem on a website.
More gameplay oriented interacive fiction often display things like RPG stats and health, Twine games often do that. With my version of Ink, this won't be done with HTML but real native operating system widgets, your stories will be compiled to native machine code.
I'll probably start working on that in a month or two, as time allows. The parser for Ink's scripting language will be part of my guide for the Red programming language. At the top of the guide you can also find my email address if you want to contact me privately.
In the guide I will just cover writing the compiler for the script language, so it can be used as a drop in replacement for Ink's Windows only compiler. The next step is to create my own interactive fiction authoring software using it, with lots of added features. One thing I want to do is replace the simple programming language you can use in Ink with the Red language, so that you have a real programming language available to use when you need to do more advanced things. While I was using Ink I noticed that the programming language it uses is just way too limiting, it makes things harder not easier. While Red is a real programming language, one of its goals is to be easy to use for beginners, so it seems like the perfect fit here.