eddyfate

A few months back, I talked about poking around with Inform 7 and working on an Agent Patriot text adventure. I realized recently that I'm not going to come back around to this -- I just have too many other projects going on to give this the attention it deserves. I learned a lot from working on it, but after repeatedly banging my head into walls with trying to get the system to do what I wanted, I've decided to abandon the project.

However, since the Agent Patriot universe is open under Creative Commons, I'm going to throw my cobbled-together code out to the Internet, in case anyone else wanted to pick up the project (or at least see how horribly I botched it). You can download it from my Dropbox account here:

Agent Patriot I -- Blitzkrieg: New Amsterdam

I also used Inform 7 to test out some of my initial ideas for Whitechapel. People really interested in the minutae of my process can check out the Inform 7 files for that project as well:

The Whitechapel Project

You will need to download Inform 7 to use either of these files. You should be able to just expand them, move the folders to Inform 7's "Projects" folder, and open the project in Inform 7.

There's a chance I might flirt with Inform 7 down the road, but I think I'll approach it with a story that's actually suited for the medium, instead of trying to work an existing piece of fiction into the IF format.

Originally published at The Whitechapel Project (for MP3s and polls, click this link). You can comment here or there.

Just a quick note on the scheduling of Whitechapel, and how I’m going to fuck it up right out of the gate.

Currently I’m planning to post something at least once a week — one week will be an episode of Whitechapel, then when the voting closes the following week I’ll do a set of author’s notes on the previous episode, as well as some thoughts on the voting. It’ll be kind of a post-mortem of the episode and the week’s voting wrapped into one entry. Then the following week will be the next episode, and back and forth like that until the novella’s done.

However, next week I’ll be at GenCon just when the voting wraps up, and I won’t be getting back until the following Monday. Then I’ll have to catch up on work, which will be crazy. So, I’m going to do the author’s notes around August 19th, and the second episode will be up August 26th. I’m hoping that once I get Whitechapel’s schedule going at a steady pace that I’ll be able to sneak some other fiction in once in a while as well — I have a couple more Mosaic stories nearly ready to go, an Agent Patriot story to finish up (from four fucking years ago) and some initial ideas for the first few parts of a Katrina Night serial.

But that’s in the future. For now, it’s all about getting over this GenCon hump.

P.S., 40 votes already on episode one! Kick ass!

Originally published at The Whitechapel Project (for MP3s and polls, click this link). You can comment here or there.

First, a quick Whitechapel update. Episode 1 is written, and I have some final revisions in mind before I record it. I still have to work a little on my reading speed (which is why I gave myself more time — I’m anticipating quite a number of takes the first time through), but overall things are looking good for the August 5th release.

I did want to take a moment to point out that the Whitechapel Project site is, in fact, more than just the Whitechapel novella (although I anticipate it will likely be the majority of the site’s focus — hence the name). I had been considering a blog for my fiction for quite some time, but it wasn’t until Whitechapel that I had a project big enough to warrant the initial start-up work¹. But I always expected that other fiction would cluster around this site — in fact, if you check out the “About the Project” page, I’ve already got a couple of other projects in mind.

What I didn’t expect is that I would start getting more ideas right away.

( Read the rest of this entry » )

So on Sunday I got a weird idea to make a small computer game. There are tons of free options to make a variety of computer games, and I figure since I work for a video game company, I should learn something about the process. However, I'm not a programmer nor an artist, so my options quickly got whittled down. I was about to toss out the idea as just a lark when I stumbled across Inform 7.

Now, I'm no stranger to text adventures (or as they're known as now, "interactive fiction"), both when they originally popular and the resurgence of innovation in the medium in the 90s and early 21st century. I fell out of touch with it around the time I started seriously freelancing, so I missed the release of software that lets you program IF games in English.

PROGRAM IN ENGLISH.

I have been obsessed with this ever since. As I dig into it, it's not nearly as magical as it first seemed -- getting the software to do things like combat requires some heavy coding (or "rules creation" in Inform terms) -- but there's also an active community of people who create extensions Firefox-style that you can plug into a game. The only downside so far is that they're usually pretty hefty (for a word game -- 256k is actually a meaningful amount of space), but for what I'm doing, that's fine for now.

After going from pointless and random noodling to wanting to making something cohesive, I decided that a wacky pulp story would work well with an unambitious text adventure, so I dusted off my old friend Agent Patriot and started working on an actual adventure. In three days, he hasn't left his office, but I'm building a lot of the infrastructure.

I can't entirely explain why this appeals to me so much. I've written a bit for EVE Online, as well as another MMO project, and I've learned that writing for a video game is very different from both fiction and RPG writing. Playing with Inform 7, I'm getting a lot of that same vibe that I did working on those projects. The big difference for me is that I can compile the program and see my results right away, so I can modify and stretch the story as needed based on the limitations of my software or my knowledge.

But this does lead to situations like last night, when I stayed up until past midnight trying to keep a character from continuing to clean Agent Patriot's office after he died. I finally figured it out, only to realize that it didn't matter -- the game probably shouldn't continue if that character died anyhow. But that work isn't thrown out, because I learned a LOT about how to construct similar situations in future, and I've increased my options for later story development.

(I admit that I just cheated and got a combat plug-in. It works almost exactly how I wanted it to, so it was a LOT of work I just didn't need to do.)

I've always liked writing fiction to tell a certain story, and I've always liked writing and running RPGs to let others tell a story as well. But somewhere in the middle there's a range of collaboration between writer and audience that I want to explore more. This is one avenue -- I have another one kicking around as well (the elusive "Whitechapel" idea I've mentioned) that I want to wait until we've moved before I pursue further. And emprint has shown me a third avenue that I like as well. Maybe we should collaborate on a project at some point.

This does mean that my original idea of trying to get back and committing to daily wordcounts is kind of shot, but I think this is all valuable work to improve my skills as a writer overall. As technology continues to evolve, I think there's going to be new ways to close the gap between writer and audience, and I can't see how that kind of interaction will do anything but help me to become a better writer overall.

It all started with me making a quick PDF of "One Patriot Too Many" last night for naamaire to read. And then... well, my muse went a little crazy.

THE AGENT PATRIOT LIBRARY
For people who have no idea what this "Agent Patriot" business is, this is probably the best place to start.

The first three complete stories of Agent Patriot (from xiombarg) are up in PDF format. I tried to get it to look a little like a pulp magazine. I also did a quick spellcheck and grammer check on each story (because I know it's rough getting that right when you're dashing it out on LJ). I've also put the Creative Commons legal information in each story, and posted the first four parts of "One Patriot Too Many" for anyone else who has trouble reading it on my LJ. As I hear of more completed AP stories, I'll PDF those as well. If people want to contribute art to these stories, let me know. The number scheme is fairly arbitrary in the order that the stories came out, with the digression that "The Blood Queen" has to thematically take place after "Ghost of Genius" and "One Patriot Too Many" - hence why it's numbered before the almost-complete "The Dark Infection".

Anyhow, enjoy.

2009 Edit. That website is down. The best collection right now of the Agent Patriot fiction is here: http://www.livejournal.com/tools/memories.bml?user=xiombarg&keyword=patriot&filter=all

I've slightly rewritten "One Patriot Too Many", Part I, Part II, Part III, and Part IV.

Feel free to reacquint yourself with the story while I work on the new parts. :)

I was digging through my old moleskine (Journal One), scrounging for some ideas to work into my Modern Pulp project, when I found something I didn't expect.

The missing plot piece for "One Patriot Too Many".

I had originally abandoned this because I ended up going on my UK trip, and afterwards got so caught up with life that I forgot where I was going with the story. I was sure I hadn't written it down. But sure enough, there were a few lines scratched out, along with a decent amount of detail on the second story (the story I was planning to salvage for MP instead - side note: Modern Pulp actually might have a home outside of LJ - currently exploring an option now).

So, if I get time and energy, I might go through, plot out the rest of OPTM, polish parts I-IV, and write up the rest. If I do, I think I'm going to go ahead and finish it all up before I post anything. From there I'll decide what I want to do with the second story, "The Blood Queen".

Oh, and I did a couple of hours of solid work on Midway City. Nothing spectacular, but it chipped away at my "to do" list. If I keep this up, I should have a draft done by the beginning of June, giving me two weeks to rewrite before I send it into editing.

The Story So Far: Author's Prologue, Part I, Part II, Part III

Part IV ( Read more... )

The Story So Far: Author's Prologue, Part I, Part II

Part III ( Read more... )

The Story So Far: Author's Prologue, Part I

Part II ( Read more... )

Author's Prologue

Part I ( Read more... )

A couple of years ago, there was talk between some people and me about starting up a "cyber-pulp" magazine. It would be a regular PDF magazine with a number of authors contributing serial stories. The idea never got off the ground floor, but I had my mind set on a modern pulp of sorts. Some of my ideas made it into Midway City, and I still would like to write some serial fiction for that someday.

A few months back, I made a separate account for writing exercises. I ended up scrapping it (although I moved the few exercises I did back to my main journal - here and here) mainly because I wasn't using it enough to justify not just using my main journal. However, the original journal was called "The Many Lives of Shannon McCrae", because I debated making it a sort of pulpy serial of a guy who was reincarnated into various lives. It didn't happen.

Yesterday, I noticed that xiombarg has been writing his own modern pulp serial called "Agent Patriot". He also released his Agent Patriot material under the Creative Commons license. I read up on it, and mentioned that I might be interested in contributing.

Today, I have a handful of notes for my first Agent Patriot adventure.

When will I get around to writing it? Don't know - with me being fairly busy at work and having no internet access at home, it probably won't be until after my surgery. However, writing some campy Doctor Who-inspired pulp goodness seems like it will be a lot of fun.

So watch this space for One Patriot Too Many, coming soon.