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Thursday Mevening
By Corvus | October 5, 2007
On alternating weeks Ms. Z and I vacate the apartment and give the other a mevening to themselves. You might wonder why I, who am now self employed and working from home, might need an evening in the apartment to myself? Well, mevenings have a very particular restorative quality. It isn’t about the activity I engage in, but the mind set. I’ve referred to it as re-indexing the mental database. It’s a bit of a Zen state wherein I acutely focus on not focusing.
Last night, as you may have guessed by now, was my mevening. So, at the tail end of a week spent writing, networking and coding, what did I do with my night? Did I watch a movie? Have a beer? Relax?
Nope. I worked.
Well, sort of worked. I didn’t work on any of my current projects, or make any progress towards deadlines. I didn’t do anything directly related to the HoneyComb Engine, or the Drachurae Cycle manuals. Instead, inspired by the Emily Short‘s posts on current IF Comp ’07 entries and Mischa Krilov’s discovery of Inform 7, I decided to take a look at the IF engine for myself.
It was a heck of a lot of fun.
The last time I poked at IF was in the mid 90s when I downloaded TADS. Monitors being substantially crappier then, I printed out hundreds of pages of documentation and secured them together with a large industrial binder clip. I probably read the first sixty pages or so before I went off and designed levels for Heretic II blade matches instead.
Inform 7′s most compelling feature is its programmed syntax which reads a little something like this:
The Chorus is a backdrop. The Chorus is everywhere. The description of The Chorus is “You can’t see anyone from the chorus of voices here. Perhaps they’re all in your mind.”
Understand “people” as The Chorus. Understand “voices” as The Chorus.
The State of Confusion is a room. “You are in a state of confusion. It is very bewildering. Up might be down, blue might be red, happy is more than likely sad. People who aren’t here seem to be whispering about you behind your back. A large fish floats around the room, humming a mournful dirge to itself.”
The State of Confusion is in Your Mind.
So I spent about half the mevening reading documentation and improvising a surreal sort of adventure (yes, the sample code above is part of it). My intent is to keep working on this piece which I’m tentatively titling This Modern Life, adding new components and features as the documentation suggest it. Once I’ve got a little more than flying fish with a penchant for depressing anthems, I’ll publish the results and update every few weeks as I add to it.
I’ll be sure to provide links to interpretors so you can actually view it. There’s a Firefox extension called Gnusto which I hoped meant you could just click a link and play it online, but it doesn’t appear to have been updated since 2004 and won’t install on Firefox 2.0.
So I said I spent half the mevening playing with Inform 7. How did I spend the other half? Playing Phantom Hourglass, of course! I’m considering how to approach a critical look at this game without heavily referencing the other modern Zelda games too much. I’m thinking that it might not be possible. So, if I am to discuss the oeuvre rather than a single game, which games ought to be included? I’m guessing I need to at least go back to Ocarina of Time, but what about all the handheld Zelda games? Sheesh. Perhaps I’ll settle with comparing it to its most direct ancestor, Wind Waker, with references to Twilight Princess in order to contrast the visual style.
Now, if you will excuse me, I have a lot to get done today. I’m going on a bit of a trip this weekend and there’s a ton of stuff to get done before I leave this evening. Have a good weekend!
Tagged:inform-7, interactive-fiction, levitating-fish, mevening, phantom-hourglass. | No Comments »
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