Star Wars Uncut

starwarsuncut.com

You may or may not have heard of this project: the Star Wars movie (episode IV) was divided into 15 second clips, and, after reserving a clip, anyone could reinterpret the clip as they wished.

The entire project has been completed and is available on the site (or on YouTube).  I found some of the clips to be amazing—there are some very talented people out there—and some of the humor is simply outrageously funny.  If you are a Star Wars fan and have two hours to burn, then give it a look.

Here is one of my favorites clips:


Star Wars Uncut - Scene 248 from Jason Garrattley on Vimeo.

Linda, Linda, Linda

I saw a charming movie yesterday: a Japanese film entitled "Linda, Linda, Linda."

This is not a film for everyone, as it is in Japanese (with English subtitles), and it develops rather slowly.  However, it is quite sweet and touching as it follows four high school girls struggling to prepare themselves for a rock concert performance.

If you look hard enough, you may find it somewhere on the Internet.  Or if you wish to skip straight to the SPOLIERS and see how the movie ends, you can probably find that, too.

And, after watching the movie, you'll have that song in your head for the rest of the week.

>TELL OTHERS ABOUT LAMP.

I watched Get Lamp today.  The short review: I enjoyed the documentary for its nostalgia factor.

Director Jason Scott tackles the very broad subject of interactive fiction, covering the history of text adventures, the rise and fall of the industry during the 1980s, and the state of interactive fiction today.  There are interviews – and perspectives – from both developers and players (including fascinating interviews with several visually impaired IF players), and an amusing segment on puzzles.  There are also bonus feature-ettes which cover the Bedquilt (the RL caverns on which the original Colossal Cave/Adventure game is based), as well as a segment that focuses upon the history of Infocom and its games.  And that's all on disc 1!

The documentary is without a narrator leading the viewer from segment to segment – that is to say that Morgan Freeman is not there to tell the history of interactive fiction via lots of exposition.  Instead Scott allows the interviewees to tell the story, and this technique gives the film more of a low-key, intimate feel.  The pacing is pensive; Scott does not rush though topics nor does it linger on them.  What we're left with is a very large, broad overview of the world of interactive fiction.

What I love about this film is that it was done by an independent filmmaker who unapologetically loves the subject.  After watching Get Lamp, I wanted nothing more than to play Zork 2 again (and that's exactly what I did for the remainder of my afternoon).  If you ever played IF games and loved them, then I would recommend supporting this independent filmmaker and picking up a copy of Get Lamp.

[Edit: clarification on narration.]

>EXAMINE LAMP.

My copy of Get Lamp arrived in the mail today.  As I was oot-n-aboot, I did not have the opportunity to watch it today, but I am excited about seeing it.

I find it hard to believe that I've been waiting eight months for this movie.

PAX East, Day 1

Whew.  Today was a long day.  I attended one panel discussion and one movie, separated by four hours of waiting.

The panel discussion was Design An RPG In An Hour, lead by David Hill and his wife (whose name I don't remember).  It was a light and whimsical discussion that was heavy on designing game themes and less on game mechanics.  I suppose there's only so much that one can cover in an hour (the game that we decided on was Scoop! : a Game of Cold-Blooded Journalism! featuring dinosaur reporters trying to uncover tales of conspiracy).

I learned something important at PAX: if one wished to attend two back-to-back events held in the same room, then one may not linger around in said room; one must leave that room and reenter the line for the second event.  I missed the "Storytelling in the World of Interactive Fiction" discussion as a result.  I shall bear this in mind for the rest of the weekend when planning my events.  I'll need to look around for an online transcript or podcast of this missed panel discussion; it was a subject that I was really interested in hearing.

I had some down time, so I wandered around the exhibition hall and saw some neat games: of note was Power Gig, a competitor to Rock Band (but uses a six string guitar instead of a push-button guitar), as well as Open Chord, which is more of a do-it-yourself version of Rock Band.

Two other games caught my eye: Red Dead Redemption by Rockstar Games, a very impressive first-person shooter set in the Old West; and Limbo for the XBox, a moody black and white platform game.

Throughout the convention hall were Sumo beanbag chairs.  These things were pretty awesome.

My evening ended with previewing the documentary Get Lamp.  This was a more of a "very long trailer," as director Jason Scott phrased it.  The film is still being edited, so we saw a special director's cut that gave us a general feel for documentary.  One especially fascinating sequence concerned interviews with three blind Interactive Fiction players.  It was intriguing to listen to their perspective on playing these games (one player mentioned commented on the need for a light source: "It's dark and I can't see? Like, so what?").

I didn't stay around for the panel discussion, as the pace was a little slow and unfocused and I was finally all Conned-out for the evening.  There's still tomorrow and Sunday for more gaming and panel discussions.

All Right, Mr. DeMille, I'm Ready For My Close-Up

Today was spent cleaning up some artwork for a new area which is still under development.  It looks very nice and is ready for the next step: place it into a test server and see how it looks in game.

I also watched Pulp Fiction.

Jules: What country are you from?
Brett: What? What? Wh – ?
Jules: "What" ain't no country I've ever heard of.  They speak English in What?

Hearing that dialog reminds me that I need to revisit my NPC Theater Script.  I want this kind of dialog in Clan Lord.

Dances with NPCs

I saw the movie Avatar today.  I enjoyed it well enough, but I enjoyed it more the first time when I saw it under the title Dances with Wolves.  I wish that James Cameron's new film technology had a new story to go with it.

Thinking about Cameron's fancy digital movie technology lead me to think about storytelling technologies in Clan Lord.  I had mentioned earlier that I was designing a new script; I am moving forward with this storytelling tool in earnest.  I believe that it would be a great improvement to the game, and I could certainly make use of it.  The current NPC system works well enough, and I've managed to rig it so that there appears to be a little interaction between NPCs, but I'm not entirely satisfied with it.

It is my hope to get a bare-bones version of the storytelling tool up and running for V639.  Bells and whistles and shiny polish can follow on subsequent updates.  Then Puddleby may meet their own version of Neytiri – I mean Stands With A Fist.

His Girl Fordi

I've had this idea for a while about NPCs talking to each other.  I had envisioned NPCs sharing snappy banter, similar to that between Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell in the movie His Girl Friday.  NPCs can't do this currently*; they just stand around quietly and wait for someone to bump into them.  I want to change that, so I spent all afternoon developing a new script that will enable NPCs to converse between each other.  And when I say "developing," I really mean "designing."  I have a blueprint for how the script should behave, but I have not done any actual scripting.  I guess that currently categorizes the script as "vaporware."

I'm struggling a bit with how to prioritize this script.  I think that it's important enough to focus upon, for I could really utilize such a script.  I also think that it could blossom into a huge, labor-intensive project that would require more work than its yielded benefit.  I'll need to give this a little more thought; my availability for Clan Lord projects is diminishing, and as I mentioned earlier, I need to be smart on how I spend my time.

And while speaking about how one spends one's time: may I just express how simply amazed I am that His Girl Friday is available on YouTube?  Set aside 90 minutes and watch it.  Enjoy a great classic comedy.

*[Clarification edit: NPCs can't converse with each other in a way that I want.]

>GET LAMP

I am very excited about an upcoming documentary that premiers at PAX East next March.  The film is titled GET LAMP, and it covers the subject of interactive fiction.

In the age of Wii and accelerated graphics cards, it is easy to overlook (or forget, or ignore) a time when computer gaming was done entirely in text, running on machines that boasted 48k of memory (that's kilobytes, folks).  Interactive fiction, or text adventures as they were then called, were a mix of storytelling and puzzle solving.  These games did not use graphics nor joysticks; these were text-only games and required cunning and imagination from its players.  A well written game would draw the player into a world as seamlessly as a well written book, and you – the player – were the protagonist.

I spent many hours playing many of these games, and I was inspired to write my own interaction fiction.  I would stay up late and design puzzles, create stories and draw lots and lots of maps with dreams of one day writing them in BASIC.  I guess the only thing that has changed for me over the years is that I now dream of writing games in Socks.

It will be interesting to hear the development stories of such IF giants as Adams, Blank and Lebling, and Meretzky.  Did their mom tell them to shut off the computer and come to dinner as often as mine did?