Pre-production: Trial and Error

“Shark Bait” is a surreal Interactive Fiction game involving: A boy and his older brother,  a science experiment gone awry and a mysterious fish tank. I didn’t have a pinpoint moment of inspiration on the concept but brainstormed by thinking about what kind of game I, myself, would want to play. I came to the conclusion that I wanted the game to be entertaining, to the point and have an engaging story line with a quirky feeling to it.

I ended up going with a fish tank as the main setting because It lent itself to interesting possibilities for rooms and settings such as a kitschy ornamental castle, coral caves and a giant Conch shell. Additionally, I was intrigued by the level of interactivity objects in an underwater space could posses and how movement and action in water is different than that on land. Anything from interacting with the various marine life themselves to the bubbling aeration of the tank’s pump. The game itself was moulded around those first concepts and images.

The process, at first, has had the feeling of decorating a room around one cherished piece of furniture or specific painting. This has proven to be beneficial because my initial concepts are providing me with a sort of navigation to my original thoughts.

However,  I am anxious about how I can adapt the concepts I have come up with into the Inform 7’s language and code. For instance,  I want to feature a sea horse as an animal within the game that can be ridden and am anxious as to how this can be achieved. At first I was going to slightly modify the vehicle example John Timmons posted on the New Media Log but now I am also going to try to find an example of code online that has been used to enable a player ride a horse or similar animal. Mainly in hopes of keeping the seahorse’s semblance of being part of nature.

Other aspects I am still cautious working with are before rules and the direct sequential language that using them requires. It can be difficult to perfectly code the actions you want to be prior to a reaction and cover all of the bases.

Specifically, in my game, there is a before rule in which you have to talk to a statue of a mermaid before you can ride a sea horse in order to be able to withstand the bubbles coming from the fish tank’s pump. That one occurrence would have to be broken down one object and action and subsequent reaction at a time. You have to ask yourself, “What happens if the player talks to the mermaid but doesn’t ride the seahorse.” or “What happens if the player tries to just swim over the aerator.” and so on.  Like a string of Christmas lights it could all plug in perfectly or you could be stuck with that one dead bulb, who knows where, and spend the night taking each bulb out one at a time . However, I found some help on the snippets page for before concepts and the examples are helping me become more accustomed to before rules.

I am also finding that it is much less overwhelming to build the game one section or concept at a time. I am First adding rooms and their descriptions, then adding objects and their descriptions and finally making those objects move and behave as a final step. This allows for a clear picture for anticipating which actions the player may want to take within your game and also just simply keeps your thought process more organized.

I have been enjoying the problem solving aspect of Inform 7 and surprisingly haven’t been overtly frustrated by the trial and error situations it tends to promote. I’m also fond of the fact that the Inform 7 environment enables the writer to create a work of fiction in which anything can be created and interacted with. However, the literal language of the programming balances this and is pleasantly methodical so that when used properly by the writer, it leaves the player still having a sense of control and navigation. Which is important to maintain player interest and enjoyment.