Interactive Fiction Ideas

Postby uemndlr » Thu Aug 26, 2010 1:29 am

Dear tuggers,

OK so I've been lurking here for almost two years, and before that reading forums like this one for about ten years. I never wrote much stuff in them, because I don't have many experiences which fit here. When I was young I really sucked at tying, I played these games with a friend of mine, but usually it took us about ten minutes to get free.

I remember one incident, we were maybe ten or twelve years old. He was tied to a pole in our garden, and my mother came home, met us there and stroke up a conversation with him. She was casual and ignored the fact that he was tied up -- whereas I, totally embarrassed, proceeded to sheepishly untie him.

On the other hand, the stuff I do today with my wife is nice, but lacks the suspension of a really good story.

Anyway, the reason I write this is that I need some help.

I'm writing an interactive fiction game (aka text adventure), where the player's character is a girl which spends most of the time with her hands tied behind her back. Yeah, I admit, I like this kind of stuff. And I enjoy putting her into situations which would be completely trivial, if only she could properly use her hands. But since she can't, she should need a lot of MacGyverism and cunning solutions.

For example, she is in a kitchen (of course all the sharp knives are in the upper cupboard she can't reach) and has to cook coffee. And then, she must turn the door knob, while carrying a cup of hot coffee. This kind of stuff.

So I wonder if you have any ideas for puzzles like this? Tasks which are made complicated by tied hands, and ingenious solutions?

Re: Interactive Fiction Ideas

Postby Fan_Of_Blindfolds » Thu Aug 26, 2010 3:11 pm

Dude. I write IF. This idea is freakin' awesome.

What language are you using? If it's Inform 7 (which you SHOULD be using ;P ), I can help out with code. Even if you're not, I can help out with puzzle design and stuff like that.

Also, how far along are you in creating it?

One thing I'd like to see (and my username should tell you why) is a blindfold scene.

Re: Interactive Fiction Ideas

Postby uemndlr » Mon Aug 30, 2010 4:12 am

I tried Inform 7 once, years ago, and I didn't like it too much. Probably it was me. I remember struggling with different wordings for my stuff, and with different ways the parser would misunderstand me.

So I guess I prefer Inform 6. Z-engine, definitely, because I rely much on my Palm Centro for playing and also for writing. Also, I don't mind the programming.

I started a little thing once, it was (supposed to become) the story of a slave girl in 18th century South America. Of course she would be tied up a lot, too. And then she would discover some super power of hers: When she is tied up and nude, all men are sort of hypnotized and help her with anything she asks, except untying of course, which would break the spell.

I already had programmed some things, e.g. you could have her wade in the swimming pool, which makes her dress wet. This allows her to enchant and befriend the guard, who helps her remove the wet dress. (You don't want to catch a cold, do you?) And then he allows her to go for a little walk outside in the night; a tied and naked girl wouldn't wander far, would she?

Well, I got stuck on this one, because I thought maybe the story might be a little bit corny, after all. Also I fell into the trap of doing all the programming and postponing the writing, thus "facing a pile of 50 room descriptions to write" (http://www.inform-fiction.org/manual/html/s51.html) which indeed kills enthusiasm.

I found out that I cannot switch between programming and writing all the time. When I'm programming, I'm not inspired to write good prose, and when I write prose, I don't want to think about variables and counters. So this time, I thought I'd start with a "mock transcript" (http://raddial.com/if/theory/make_if_fast.html) and program the intelligence later.

My new story is a secret agent story, but from the perspective of the bondgirl. It starts with the protagonist on a beach, having a credit card stuck in the back of her swimsuit, which she uses to buy a pair of sunglasses. Then when she swims in the middle of the bay, she has a cramp and seeks help aboard a ship. She climbs up a rope ladder and overhears a conversation of the ship owner, a certain Dr Doe. (Not sure about the name yet, but of course he has a PhD.)

Then, when she climbs onboard, she is struck unconscious and awakes to find herself hogtied in the cargo compartment. After a while, secret agent Jim Bound (dito about the name) appears and starts to untie her. But he is interrupted and runs away, leaving her with her hands still tied behind her back.

There is a sharp stairrail on which she can cut the rope and free herself, but this is a red herring: As soon as she leaves the cargo compartment, she will be caught and sent back to the hogtie. On the other hand, if she walks around with tied hands, people will assume it's supposed to be like that.

In the end, I plan to have her choose whether she helps Jim Bound or Dr Doe, which results in alternate endings.

So far I've written some funny scenes, e.g. the coffee cooking I have already mentioned. Now I'd like to have more of this stuff, to make some neat puzzles.

I want to write tie-up IF because simply there is none. The only thing I know is a brief scene in Anchorhead (terrific game, BTW!). Oh, and "Spider and Web", but this doesn't really count as tie-up IF for me.

So if you write IF too, please go ahead and include some interesting scenes! I agree, a blindfold scene sounds great. It must be fun to fumble around in darkness, only relying on feel, hear and smell.

What kind of IF do you write?

Re: Interactive Fiction Ideas

Postby Fan_Of_Blindfolds » Mon Aug 30, 2010 10:44 am

First off: Inform 7 is the easiest thing to use ever... after a few days of mind-numbing consulting the manual about once a minute. >.> Still, I'd recommend switching to it (but not in the middle of a project).

Anyway. A lot of that sounds pretty interesting, and I'd be glad to help with puzzle design, etc. Do you have any form of IM?

I may start on a project like this myself, though executed quite differently. What I'm probably going with is a game where the player-character has her hands tied behind her back (like in your idea), but can create portals (like in Portal ;P ).

And in answer to the last line: Normally fantasy that tries new stuff (eg. formulaic spells). Because I always try to push the limits of my own creativity, I've never actually managed to finish anything to the extent where it could be released (though I had some pretty impressive technical stuff on my old hard drive before it got formatted).

EDIT: And yes, fumbling around without being able to see is quite fun.

Re: Interactive Fiction Ideas

Postby uemndlr » Tue Aug 31, 2010 3:29 am

Hmm, I guess I'll give Inform 7 another try, then.

Portal, never heard of this game. This one? So, no idea what "creating a portal" means :-) Some sort of teleportation?

I found that it's not so easy to have a good excuse for having the protagonist walk around with tied hands. After all, unfortunately ;-) this doesn't happen every day.

Another interesting plot could be inspired by this music video (Tori Amos: Spark). She was abducted and put in the trunk of the car; the kidnapper runs the car against a tree; she flees from him blindfolded and with tied hands.

And, finally, not only the fumbling around is fun, buy also describing it in IF should be exciting. Imagine: Tied hands and feet, blindfolded, maybe gagged, you can crawl in several directions, feel things with your hands, bump into walls, try to stand up leaning against them, hop in several directions, trip and fall, and start over. Eventually you can free your feet (how?), open the door and get out. You feel gravel or leaves under your feet (if you take off the shoes), indicating the terrain. You hear a car; it could be the bad guys, so better hide beneath the bushes. You hear cows, so there could be a barbed wire fence, better watch out. You smell water... you get the general idea.

Re: Interactive Fiction Ideas

Postby Fan_Of_Blindfolds » Tue Aug 31, 2010 4:24 am

I'm referring to Valve's game Portal, which is a sort-of FPS where the player's gun creates portals. You can have two out at any time, and anything that goes into one comes out the other.

My excuse is that she's testing a portal device created by her brother and he wants that as part of the test to force her to use the portals as much as possible. Or something. That needs a bit of work. >.>

(Another idea would be a very abstract game - maybe somewhat along the lines of Emily Short's Metamorphosis. In such a game, the explanation given could be equally abstract... Servant has to wear a blindfold as part of master's magical ritual, or something.)

Also, do you have IM of any kind?

Re: Interactive Fiction Ideas

Postby uemndlr » Tue Aug 31, 2010 5:57 am

Yeah, this sounds like fun: Brother invents a portal gun. "Hey sister, look what I invented, here step through this blue shiny thing!" Sister refuses, until he ties her up and pushes her in. She finds herself alone somewhere completely different, oh and thanks a lot bro for forgetting to untie me.

Metamorphosis, yes! Thank you for reminding me of this beautiful game. Very nicely written, and the "servant girl" theme really struck a chord within me, you know what I mean.

Sorry I forgot about the IM question. Unfortunately I cannot share my Skype name in this context, but I guess I could get an ICQ account or something like this. During daytime I might not have much time for chatting, but maybe some evening? Oh BTW, what time zone are you? I'm in Germany [GMT + 1]. I assume you might have guessed that English is not my mother tongue.

Re: Interactive Fiction Ideas

Postby Fan_Of_Blindfolds » Tue Aug 31, 2010 6:33 am

Yeah, this sounds like fun: Brother invents a portal gun. "Hey sister, look what I invented, here step through this blue shiny thing!" Sister refuses, until he ties her up and pushes her in. She finds herself alone somewhere completely different, oh and thanks a lot bro for forgetting to untie me.

Actually, that's not what I had in mind. I was thinking that she'd be testing it voluntarily... I dunno, your idea does sound like a lot of fun. I'll probably end up doing both, somehow... ;o

Metamorphosis, yes! Thank you for reminding me of this beautiful game. Very nicely written, and the "servant girl" theme really struck a chord within me, you know what I mean.

I know exactly what you mean. ;P I dunno, if you want, we could do a bunch of tie-up IF games, one with a servant girl theme.

Sorry I forgot about the IM question. Unfortunately I cannot share my Skype name in this context, but I guess I could get an ICQ account or something like this. During daytime I might not have much time for chatting, but maybe some evening? Oh BTW, what time zone are you? I'm in Germany [GMT + 1]. I assume you might have guessed that English is not my mother tongue.

I'm in GMT - 5, which complicates things...

Have you ever used IRC? I just set up an IRC channel (#tieupif). Go to http://02.chat.mibbit.com/ and put #tieupif as the channel and whatever you want for your nick. (Don't change any of the other fields.) Then, press the Go button next to Channel.

Re: Interactive Fiction Ideas

Postby uemndlr » Wed Sep 01, 2010 4:59 am

Actually, that's not what I had in mind. I was thinking that she'd be testing it voluntarily... I dunno, your idea does sound like a lot of fun. I'll probably end up doing both, somehow... ;o


Yes, and send her to an enchanted forest... Surely there's a lot of fun adventures a tied girl could go through in one of those. Dangerous animals, annoying pixies...

I know exactly what you mean. ;P I dunno, if you want, we could do a bunch of tie-up IF games, one with a servant girl theme.


Do you always do a bunch of games at a time? Wow... this Inform 7 must be really efficient! I'd be happy to finish one game, even as a pre-alpha version.

I'm in GMT - 5, which complicates things...

Have you ever used IRC? I just set up an IRC channel (#tieupif). Go to http://02.chat.mibbit.com/ and put #tieupif as the channel and whatever you want for your nick. (Don't change any of the other fields.) Then, press the Go button next to Channel.


Oh, IRC, good idea. Yes, I have used it, a long long time ago. I just checked that channel, it works but it's empty. Well, I'll try again tonight, if I'm not too tied up.

Re: Interactive Fiction Ideas

Postby Fan_Of_Blindfolds » Wed Sep 01, 2010 5:35 am

Yes, and send her to an enchanted forest... Surely there's a lot of fun adventures a tied girl could go through in one of those. Dangerous animals, annoying pixies...

I like the way you think. And, maybe that girl in the image I linked to in that thread could be worked in as an NPC, somehow? I really like that image/idea. ;o

Do you always do a bunch of games at a time? Wow... this Inform 7 must be really efficient! I'd be happy to finish one game, even as a pre-alpha version.

At one point I was working on two IF games, a forum, and several StarCraft 2 projects. My ideas tend to die out by what amounts to natural selection, though... I'm trying to take things one at a time now. I means if/when we get anything finished, we could do that as our next project. Though I'm probably getting way ahead of myself.

EDIT: Tell me what times you can be on the IRC and I'll try to be on at those times. I'm on now and will be for somewhere between an half an hour to an hour.

Re: Interactive Fiction Ideas

Postby uemndlr » Wed Sep 01, 2010 6:21 am

Actually, your link in the other thread leads to a whole page of images, I don't know which one you meant, since none of the persons is actually tied up or something... Anyway, enchanted forests are great because it gives a lot of freedom about what might happen. You can have her taken prisoner by a pixie king, and ordered to perform three special quests for her freedom... You can have a puzzle of getting up a tree with tied hands and the solution is that the tree is sentient and lifts you up if you ask nicely... Stuff like that.

NPC is a good thing. How would an NPC react to meeting our tied girl? Help her? Tie her up some more? (Blindfold!) And why? I think it's better to have a game with few, but more interesting NPCs than a lot of them who react dumbly -- because maybe we don't have the resources to implement many NPCs.

About IRC, I'm on, too, but I don't see you. Server is "Mibbit [webirc]", is that wrong?

Re: Interactive Fiction Ideas

Postby Fan_Of_Blindfolds » Wed Sep 01, 2010 7:33 am

Actually, your link in the other thread leads to a whole page of images, I don't know which one you meant, since none of the persons is actually tied up or something...

Gah, the link broke somehow. It was originally to a picture of girl/woman with both of her arms tied to high-up tree branches. (Edit: Found the link. http://fc00.deviantart.net/fs70/i/2010/ ... micalX.jpg Okay, I had been misremembering what exactly the image looked like, apparently... I had been remembering the ropes as a lot shorter and the one between her hands as a lot longer.)

Honestly, I'm sort of starting to like this enchanted forest idea more than the portal idea. ;o The portal one is early enough in development (obviously) that stopping it won't be a waste of much time at all.

I definitely agree with you about the NPCs. (Have you ever played Galatea? It's a game where the entire gameplay is conversing with a single NPC. But I digress.)

I had to leave the IRC for a while, but I'm back on now. (I see you in the channel, but you're not responding.) I'll be able to stay on for quite some time this time.