Man, I'll tell ya, I can't imagine how much writing is in large text-based adventures like Zork. So many different choices that need to be written. So many possibilities. I was just thinking about this today. Norht, South, East, West, Take This, Punch That, Open This, Drop That... Crazy! I'd like to know the word count for all the descriptions in some of these games. ~ J. J.
I remember, as a kid, reading multiple choice adventure stories. You don't get that many choices, actually. Multiple situations can lead the reader to the same set of pages. I suspect that in creating one, it's really a matter of designing a well thought out flow chart, so that good choices will inevitably lead the reader to a reward, while bad choices will send them to their doom, with some second place endings, as well.
Well, the lounge is for things other than the 'many aspects of writing'. I want to discuss this from a writing perspective, not as entertainment.
It's a discussion of computer games, and has nothing to do with writing techniques or problems. Games, movies, and such are what the Entertainment forum was created for. The Writing Issues forums are for discussing and solving writing problems and challenges. The reason the site is divided into forums is so people can find the information they are looking for without wading through a bunch of unrelated stuff. Please have some respect for those who are actually looking for answers about writing problems,
Not gonna argue with you Cogito. Words have meanings and the descriptions for this forum and the lounge give me every right to post here. If you feel it's a problem, you should quietly PM a mod, instead of clogging up this thread. Thank you.
Computer games? -- I thought text adventure video games disappeared by the late 80s. I was talking about Choose Your Own Adventure books.
And I thought JJ wanted to talk about the stories that are written for the games lol Some game developers look for writers to develop the stories, many more should, says she who wastes too much time gaming. There is the odd text based adventure game still out there, but you have to look hard.
It is more like a script rather than the game itself. Anyway, i think that despite the many different choices the actual number of different words recognizable by the game as commands is much smaller than you'd think. About 350 or so.
I'd have to say that's an interesting question. I used to play a mudd called Darkness Falls.. and Darkness Falls: The Crusade, and the writing was good. Considering there were three different realms, with hundreds and hundreds of rooms for each realm, along with hundreds of items, each with a description, and a brief description for every room you came across, especially for structures and stuff, and then you have quest lines involving the lore, and tomes you could pull off shelves to read, I'd venture a guess the word count for that game was in the hundreds of thousands, if not more. And to the above post, I have to agree, I feel like a lot of the writing was similar to a script, besides the descriptions of the rooms and scenery. All I know is the words ignited inside my mind, when I played, and though it took a month or two, to get acclimated to the scrolling text, I soon found myself immersed in a world that ran seamlessly in my mind, so much in fact, that if I had an opportunity to go back and play the game, even given today's technology, I'd do so without hesitation. But I don't feel the technique really differs from that of stories themselves. The goal of any writer is to create a lucid experience for the reader, right? To have sentences and paragraphs and scenes flow in such a way, the picture inside the reader's mind goes unaltered, and in some cases, when done well, make them feel as if they just watched a movie, after completing the story.
