Santa Susana High School

Tale of many paths

The construction of my Interactive fiction

Jeremy November

CP English 12

Mrs. Bradley

November 20 2015

November 1

My Senior Project is based on my life spent playing video games, and my

admiration for the storylines that they hold. I was inspired to take on this topic as my
project largely from a game called Bioshock Infinite, and another one called Fallout New
Vegas where your choices mattered, and could alter the end results of the game. This
form of storytelling stuck with and inspired me to start an interactive story, where the
player can make choices that can affect how the story develops. As of when this paper
is finished, the game will still be in its early stages of production. However, rest
assured, this research will lead to an end result of a finished, or at least a half finished
game.
Choice is what gives people the freedom to do anything, and with that choice,
many people choose to find entertainment. If you have ever read a book, you might
understand the lack of freedom you have as the story progresses. You cant affect the
characters choices, but what if I told you that you could? An interactive fiction is an
advanced form of storytelling where the reader can alter the way that their story
progresses by choosing from set choices that they deem to be best. Usually these
interactive books are short, and if they are not, then they are open to the public to edit
and expand.
What if I told you that I have created a long story with multiple choices; that was
built by me alone. For my senior project of creating a video game, challenges I will
have to face, include, and are not restricted to: Learning basic coding, researching and
deciding on a program to use, designing a story, and find a good target audience to test
play the finished product.

November 2

I am an amateur writer who fell in love with video games, from that love I decided
to combine the two, to create a game that consist only of story and code. Throughout
the year, I have been studying coding, and testing concepts with my program to try to
build a masterpiece. Although I am aware that it might not equate to such magnitude,
with hard work, it can become such a feat in adherence to my current level of skills.
However, taking on this challenge would require hours of work and study, with many
tedious tasks, and micromanagement of my time. Once I was able to understand that,
learning what was needed for this project became simple. Now with what I have
learned, I will explain my process. First, I will describe my history of coding, and how I
came to learn what was necessary to complete this project. Second, I will examine my
search for a program to use, and how I made that choice. Third, I will discuss the actual
story.
Starting in Computer Applications in my junior year, I met a freshman named
Monty, who was teaching himself to code. It was after I had befriended him, that I had
learned of this, and from that I was able to be introduced into Codecademy, the website
he had used to learn to code. During that year, I was foolish and tried to teach myself
JavaScript, however it did not hold well, as I did not know HTML and CSS at the time.
After hopelessly failing to grasp JavaScript, I gave up on the notion and decided to try
again in senior year. This trial and errors event, unfortunately, did not yield any
knowledge to aid me on my project, but it instead gave me a motivation to and a place
to learn how to code. When I began anew with my studies in Codecademy, I started
with HTML and CSS. In the beginning, I did not truly understand the value of code.
Read a few lines or paragraphs describing a simulated world. Type a command. The

November 3

computer first tries to figure out what you want to do, and then checks to see whether
you can do it. The computer prints out some more text, describing whether or to what
extent your action has affected the simulated world (Jerz). Coding is what can build
worlds from commands, and as the quote says, the extent of your actions can change
what the world you create looks like.
Just like all good things, however, coding must start small at a beginner
language. ... although HTML is employed in such works currently only for its formatting
abilities and to provide command shortcuts (Montfort 14). HTML is the basic coding
language, that most other languages depend on. I would need knowledge of HTML and
the higher up languages to be able to build my game. Due to that fact, learning HTML
would be an obvious task, and it would lead me to move onto better coding, which I will
need later on in the later stages of the game.
After learning to code, I began to develop my thoughts on how I would make my
story. One of the many engines I looked at was Twine. Twine is a computer program
that I found and downloaded to use, and to aid me on my project. Twine combines
HTML and JavaScript with a simple Wiki syntax to create hypertext works. Created by
Chris Kilmas to allow others to make "interactive stories," it has a growing following. Its
simple interface and editor has helped many first-time writers and developers,make
games and compose stories with very little programming knowledge (Cox). Twine,
despite the learning stretch it would be to have to learn how to use it, was the best
choice for me, so I spent a couple days learning how to use it, and put its tools to use in
making a story.

November 4

After passing all the technical items, I began to look at what my story would be
like. Writing about interactive fiction is a lot like writing about, well, writing itself. It can
be a highly personal thing. Like the writing process itself, really. Full of pulling teeth and
burning the midnight oil sometimes. It's never an easy task and making a game as part
of it just adds to the troubles. (Cox). Evaluating my ideas, I decided the best option was
to use any and all ideas. A game usually has a lot of content, so I came to the
conclusion, that my book should too.
Once I decided on my program, that is when I thought about the material of my
book, and where I slowly came to a realization. Do it. Make something. Start with the
beginning, middle, or even end and start to build in a direction. Use the plot as
guidance. Write the characters into a place try to imagine what they might do to or with
each other (Cox). When I tried to follow Coxs methodology, I had trouble forming a
story. Writing seriously made it hard to make many entries because each one took so
long. After days of thinking on it, I decided that my story would not have an exact plot,
but would move randomly as it went on, to keep the reader surprised as things jumped
out of the blue. It was a hard decision to make, but my story moved from serious to
humorous, in approximately one week.
As I continued work on my game, I began to expand more on the functions and
widgets of my program and began to think of ideas for adding graphics. Through the
CSS, that I learned and the javascript I am learning, I will be able to add visual appeal
to my story. This leads to one step, that I will need to find someone to draw some
graphics for certain backgrounds. My plan is to have environments shown as a
background and I also hope to code an inventory for the players convenience. I

November 5

personally, feel that luxury items such as these will help make the game feel more
complete as it will add a visual appeal that was not there before. With each addition of
extra items, the consumer will be more and more interested in my product.
One last note I would like to touch on is my audience, after thinking about my
game I had to try and decide on a target audience that would be interested in my game.
I took some time to think on the matter, and what I decided on was this: if my game is
humorous it has to be target to a younger crowd, however, if I was to place references
and hidden jokes; then the game becomes a game for teens. With my target audience
in mind, making the game would be simple matter.
Though I still have a long way to go, this research will help me to make my end
product. It might have taken a while, but with all these factors researched and learned, I
will be able to create an interactive fiction with code and writing. Learning how to code,
Ive learned HTML and CSS, to learning about programs and finding the perfect one for
me. I discovered the process and the flow of stories, so I could figure out what my story
would be about. Finally, I learned how I would interact with my users. My Senior Project
is to write an interactive fiction. It required that I learn to code, design, write a story, and
understand the functions of a interactive fiction. After mastering these skills, I was able
to start my story with help from the research I did, information I already knew, and what
my research helped me learn.

November 6

Works cited
Jerz, Dennis G. "Playing, studying and writing interactive fiction (text adventure games)." Jerzs Literacy
Weblog. Seton Hill University. Web.< http://jerz. setonhill. edu/if/index. html (2000).

Cox, Dan. "Interactive Fiction: Text Adventures - Tuts+ Game Development Article." Game
Development Tuts+.8 Aug. 2013. Web. 17 Sept. 2015.

Montfort, Nick. Twisty Little Passages: an approach to interactive fiction. Mit Press, 2005.

November 7

Annotated Bibliography

http://jerz.setonhill.edu/intfic/
Jerz, Dennis G. "Playing, studying and writing interactive fiction (text adventure games)." Jerzs Literacy
Weblog. Seton Hill University. Web.< http://jerz. setonhill. edu/if/index. html (2000).

DG Jerz explains, in this speech he had given to a college english class, the origins of
Interactive fiction and its difference from Text-based adventures. He recorded his speech in
typed text and posted it to his website where it was made open to the public. Many people have
cited this document as it describes the origins of both and the difference between them in a very
concise manner.
https://media.lanecc.edu/users/logek/wid/examples/
Loge, Ken. "Writing & Interactive Design Examples." Writing & Interactive Design Examples. N.p.,
n.d. Web. 17 Sept. 2015.
Ken Loge compiled a database of early text-adventures and interactive fictions. In his database it
also included the programs required to make these early games and some of the processes used to
make them. This wasnt a scholarly source but I feel from looking at the program and the old games;
I will learn how to make my own.

http://gamedevelopment.tutsplus.com/articles/interactive-fiction-text-adventures--gamedev-9996
Cox, Dan. "Interactive Fiction: Text Adventures - Tuts+ Game Development Article." Game
Development Tuts+.8 Aug. 2013. Web. 17 Sept. 2015.
Dan Cox provided a large guide to understanding the differences between Text-based Adventures
and Interactive Fiction. This guide covers not only the differences, but also the creation methods. His
explanation opened up many ideas and names of programs and websites that people use to make
these games in the modern day.

November 8
https://books.google.com/books?
hl=en&lr=&id=XWI7YIU3QnAC&oi=fnd&pg=PP1&dq=interactive+fiction&ots=CnUZiZ47Tq&sig=
bwsN9gr2BO-Dlu0nrHvteJLzfyE#v=onepage&q=interactive%20fiction&f=false
Montfort, Nick. Twisty Little Passages: an approach to interactive fiction. Mit Press, 2005.
NIck Monforts book talks about all the small details of making interactive fictions and the
intricate way of making diverging paths in the story. Unfortunately I was not able to learn much
from the preview but with luck I might purchase the rest of the book for my project or if I can find
it at a library, even better.
http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-540-27797-2_14#page-1
Donikian, Stphane, and Jean-Nol Portugal. "Writing interactive fiction scenarii with DraMachina."
Technologies for Interactive Digital Storytelling and Entertainment. Springer Berlin Heidelberg, 2004. 101112.
The passage from Stphanes paper talks about Interactive fictions roll in Digital Storytelling and in the
video game world. From the passage I was able to see their point of view of the immersion of the player
in an interactive fiction. However the full paper costs way too much for me to get the full copy but the
information on the immersion could come in handy for a quote or two when talking about the immersive
effects of the Interactive fiction

http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/phl/summary/v029/29.1tavinor.html
Tavinor, Grant. "Videogames and interactive fiction." Philosophy and Literature29.1 (2005): 24-40.

In his article, Grant focuses on the role of interactive fiction in Video Games. While discussing his
experiences trying the game, Grand Theft Auto 3, Grant explains the interaction with our emotions while
playing a game. The interaction that for him led to guilt and heart-ache over what he did in the game even
though he harmed no real person and did no actual crime. His paper looks at interactive storytelling from
a more psychiatric approach.

http://www.computer.org/csdl/proceedings/vr/2000/0478/00/04780071.pdf
Anstey, Josephine, Dave Pape, and Dan Sandin. "The Thing Growing: Autonomous characters in virtual
reality interactive fiction." vr. IEEE, 2000.

In the paper supposed to be found on this source, is a paper that speaks about creating autonomous
characters. Unfortunately the site is having problems and I have yet to read it but I am checking the

November 9
website eagerly waiting for the problem to be fixed and read the contents of the paper that people have
cited for its usefulness.

http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=317431
Bolter, Jay David, and Michael Joyce. "Hypertext and creative writing."Proceedings of the ACM
conference on Hypertext. ACM, 1987.

A highly downloaded and cited piece of work that, unfortunately, costs a decent amount of money.
However, the monetary problem of the paper isnt apparent as his sources are available to all without
buying; so I go to the sources directly. His paper, for me, will become a database for other papers to read.

http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-540-27797-2_7#page-1
Peinado, Federico, and Pablo Gervs. "Transferring game mastering laws to interactive digital
storytelling." Technologies for Interactive Digital Storytelling and Entertainment. Springer Berlin
Heidelberg, 2004. 48-54.

In the short preview that is given to us, Federico explains how game mechanics work towards making an
interactive fiction. His summary speaks of how to use many different game patterns into interactive fiction.
However pricy the book is, it might be worth buying the chapter just to learn more than what the preview
shows.