{"@context":{"rdf":"http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#","rdfs":"http://www.w3.org/2000/01/rdf-schema#","owl":"http://www.w3.org/2002/07/owl#","foaf":"http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/","dc":"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/","dct":"http://purl.org/dc/terms/","sioc":"http://rdfs.org/sioc/types#","blog":"http://vocab.amy.so/blog#","as":"https://www.w3.org/ns/activitystreams#","mf2":"http://microformats.org/profile/","ldp":"http://www.w3.org/ns/ldp#","solid":"http://www.w3.org/ns/solid#","view":"https://terms.rhiaro.co.uk/view#","asext":"https://terms.rhiaro.co.uk/as#","dbp":"http://dbpedia.org/property/","geo":"http://www.w3.org/2003/01/geo/wgs84_pos#","doap":"http://usefulinc.com/ns/doap#","time":"http://www.w3.org/2006/time#"},"@graph":[{"@id":"https://rhiaro.co.uk/2012/06/","@type":["as:Collection","ldp:Container"],"ldp:contains":{"@id":"https://rhiaro.co.uk/2012/06/shifting-focus"},"as:name":"Posts between 2012/06 and 2012/07","as:totalItems":{"@type":"http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#nonNegativeInteger","@value":"1"}},{"@id":"https://rhiaro.co.uk/2012/06/?before=https://rhiaro.co.uk/2012/06/shifting-focus&limit=16","@type":["as:CollectionPage","ldp:Container"],"ldp:contains":{"@id":"https://rhiaro.co.uk/2012/06/shifting-focus"},"as:items":{"@id":"https://rhiaro.co.uk/2012/06/shifting-focus"},"as:name":"Posts between 2012/06 and 2012/07","as:next":{"@id":"https://rhiaro.co.uk/2012/07/"},"as:partOf":{"@id":"https://rhiaro.co.uk/2012/06/"},"as:prev":{"@id":"https://rhiaro.co.uk/2012/05/"}},{"@id":"https://rhiaro.co.uk/2012/06/shifting-focus","@type":"as:Article","blog:bloggerid":"tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18505529.post-2898853773436372000","as:actor":{"@id":"http://www.blogger.com/profile/12227954801080178130"},"as:content":"
By sheer coincidence, I find myself neck-deep in creating a custom Interactive\r\nFiction engine during a year in which all kinds of new engines for authoring\r\nand enjoying interactive narrative are popping up. Many of these by\r\nestablished programming and literary experts in the IF community.
\r\nIt feels like every week Emily Short posts a\r\nreview of something new. Most of the ones I've seen recently are more of a\r\nChoose Your Own Adventure format than parser-based. Nonetheless, there is a\r\nlot I can learn about world modelling and code-free authoring from these\r\nsystems. Not all of them are open to the public for creating though. All of\r\nthem seem to be open to Emily Short, however, and she is doing a great job of\r\ndescribing and reviewing her experiences.
\r\nIt occurred to me a while ago that creating the interface for authoring pieces\r\nfor Palimpsest is potentially more interesting and important than examining\r\nthe reader experience when it's all done. Readers are much more fickle, and\r\nthose who spend time writing and creating are by definition the committed and\r\npassionate. I'm not saying the readers aren't. But a solid interface for\r\nauthoring is going to make it much more likely that good experiences for\r\nreaders are to be created. If I rush through the design and build of the\r\nsoftware itself so that I can focus on filling it with content then quizzing\r\nreaders about the immersiveness of their experiences - as was my original plan
\r\nI only have about two months left to work on this in the context of my MSc.\r\nWhilst I need something substantial to fill my final report with, I'm certain\r\nI'll be continuing to develop this in the future, and I'll only end up having\r\nto redo bits from scratch if I cut corners the first time.
\r\nI also have to think about what I want to get out of my MSc, and how I want to\r\nuse the opportunities I have studying in an art department compared to what\r\nwould be expected of me studying in a computing department.
\r\nI jumped on the idea of 'user study stuff' because I know how to do this in\r\nterms of software, and I know how to write a lot about it. Not that I don't\r\nfind the immersion thing interesting, but overall I think it would be more\r\nvaluable to both myself and any eventual users of Palimpsest if I produced\r\ndocumentation of detailed musings about the perhaps unfinished or forever-\r\nongoing development of a custom engine and authoring interface for Interactive\r\nFiction, rather than gloss over that to fill my report with lots of nice\r\nstatistics and quotes and analyses about reader experiences that are\r\nultimately invalid anyway.
\r\nAnd I can do this for an 'art' project, where the journey is equally, if not\r\nmore, important than the outcomes. Where for a 'computing' project, the\r\ndocumentation of the journey has in my experience generally been intended to\r\nbe a build up to an overarching theoretical or practical conclusion.
\r\nSo next up, look out for a discussion of the various engines for different\r\nflavours of interactive narrative that have been popping up / I've been\r\nnoticing recently, coming soon to a blog near you! (This one. This is the\r\nblog it'll be coming to. Not any old blog near you).
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