Talk:Building a New Interactive Fiction System

A couple of quick notes: First, I hate text where Random Words are Capitalized for No Good Reason. I don't know about everyone else, but I find capital letters to act as speed bumps when I'm reading something; they really slow me down. Wiki's typically use CamelCase as a way to generate quick links, but this wiki doesn't seem to support that.

Second, the first section of the page seems to confuse the concept of a world model with it's implementation. It starts with fairly good definition, but then gets derailed. Allow me to paraphrase Graham Nelson's definition from DM4:

[A world model] is a self-contained summary of the concepts and systematic organising principles used by [an interactive fiction system] to present the illusion of describing a physically real environment, with which the protagonist of a game interacts. All details of implementation [should be] ignored and [implementation details] either avoided or explained. While many of the rules are standard to all world models used for interactive fiction, some are not, and [the author should] remark on some of the more interesting cases. [One possible breakdown of a world model is] as follows: 1. Substance; 2. Containment; 3. Space; 4. Sense; 5. Time; 6. Action.

At this point, I would not discuss the rules that typically go into the six sub-sections that Graham lists. Remember, the point is not to create a world model, but to discuss the 'hows' and 'whys' of creating one.

-- Samwyse 06:36, 12 Feb 2005 (Central Standard Time)

Wiki links here are done with double square brackets, which I happen to like. Camel case gets annoying when you do things like time and stuff.

Since I created this article, I should probably set the tone. I'll review what's there and make changes soon.

--David Cornelson 10:53, 12 Feb 2005 (Central Standard Time)

Hi, I've added a link in the article to an idea for a Wiki Based Interactive Fiction System. I would greatly appreciate any feedback you have on this.

--Thomas Strohmann 14:58, 12 Feb 2005 (Central Standard Time)

I should have said: "Wiki's typically use CamelCase as a way to generate quick links, but this wiki doesn't seem to support that, so that's one less reason to use caps in the middle of a sentence."

As for my other point, if I get the time I'd like to make some massive edits: move a few paragraphs into their own pages, add a pointer to DM4, etc. And let me try to be clear here: I like most of the text, just not the way it's organized. I find that to be a common problem with the stuff I write; if I'm writing more than a couple of paragraphs, I initially just dump words on a page and then spend more time rearranging them than I did writing them.

Overall, this wiki looks like A Good Thing.

--Samwyse 08:03, 13 Feb 2005 (Central Standard Time)

Sorry, I'm a bit new to Wikis and have a bad habit of capitilizing Random Stuff. About the article, I know it's not too good. Just my thoughts.

~Dabreegster

Minor nitpick, I wouldn't classify the Magnetic Scrolls interpreter as primitive, its a 68k cpu emulator, thats a lot more sophisticated than AdvSys, AGT, Hugo etc.

Stu 20:17, 1 March 2006 (EST)