Design and documentation journal for my interactive fiction (text games); also reviews and other miscellaneous stuff.

Thursday, October 15, 2009

Dynamic Descriptions

Part of the challenge of trying to make a game that's going to be played over a long period of time is to keep the material fresh. Even in some of the shorter IF pieces, I've noticed that room descriptions can get stale; what to do when the player will probably see the same room description dozens of times throughout the story?

I'm toying with the idea of trying for semi-dynamic room descriptions - that is, some elements would be static (there's always a wall here, a house there), but mostly not. The game would pull together a description from various things - weather, time of day, player's physical/emotional state, what's in the location - and give a paragraph describing what the player notices.

Tricky to do in a way that feel fresh and coherent, but something to consider.

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