Navigation


Home
 
Register a new account  
Log in to view your messages  
For Posterity (And Intrigue)
Forum Index   Θ   Help Desk

Reply to Topic Create a Topic
Bartleby
Registered



Post Posted: Mon Jun 10, 2013 9:48 am      Reply with quote

I have been reflecting a lot lately about how incredibly much was added to the gameworld by in-character writings on That Game That Shall Remain Nameless. I could probably go on and on for pages about how enriching they were to both write and read, but I'll just list a few key points in no particular order:

1.) Reading things written by characters who died or retired before one could meet them lent a sense of continuity and history to the world. Sometimes writings, if preserved, would go back years and years of IG time, and characters could have a lasting impact on a world they only inhabited for a brief time.

2.) We're all playing a text-based game, in which I think most of us are engaging in a bit of artistry with the way we express ourselves, but there's not much opportunity for characters to do that kind of thing ICly without a way of recording one's contribution. Starving beat poets! Rappers! Think of the possibilities!

3.) It's great to have a way of passing around a concrete (and sensitive, what fun) collection of information (the secret Codes, or just embarrassing personal details) in a way they might be intercepted or altered by others, either at the time or much later.

I had some fun times writing books and some fun times reading them, and they really enriched my experience of the game world. Now, I realize that this sort of already exists in the code, with the addition of laptops on which one can save text. But obviously these can only be used by people who are educated (and who have laptops but that's a separate issue), and perhaps there is some reason for this kind of opportunity to be restricted to only educated PCs, but I'm not sure what it might be at the moment.

If there is some intentionality behind it, I would be curious to know what it is. If not, I would like to earnestly propose the possibility of something that doesn't require education filling this need -- my first thought (and it's just a suggestion, there might be other ways to handle it that I haven't thought of) is that there might be audio recording devices, something like the hand-held tape recorders (and now digital recorders) that writers and so on use nowadays. Obviously one would have to acquire one of these devices, but from there they might be able to make an audio recording and play back audio recordings others had made, perhaps saved on data sticks or computer chips or something.


View user's profile  Send private message  Go to Top
I would prefer not to.
Holmes
Dictator in Absentia



Post Posted: Mon Jun 10, 2013 10:02 am      Reply with quote

That's a fair idea. Consider it something I'll add tomorrow.

View user's profile  Send private message  Go to Top
Throttle
Administrator



Post Posted: Mon Jun 10, 2013 1:14 pm      Reply with quote

No game shall remain nameless! I'm a great proponent of discussing how things worked on other RPIs (mainly SOI and Arm, granted) and using those experiences in the making of this game. I bring them up in almost every post. They're the history of the genre; they're important. Just figured I'd say that.

Anyway, I actually talked to Holmes about simplifying writing before we opened the game, but I think the verdict was that the language code (upon which writing was entirely based) had been disemboweled back when Kithrater concocted the code for Alpha. There were attempts to restore writing back in the Grungetown era via datapads, but it never really caught on and hardly anybody used it because it was impractical. I wanted to make it possible to simply write on a scrap of (synthetic) paper with a pen, but we didn't have a coder to look into it. That's something that might be changing.

If I had my way, it'd be possible to write both on paper and with graffiti. I don't really know what would need to be done in order for this to work, and the future development of PRPI is more in Holmes' hands than in mine since my main objective was to just make sure the game actually got made moreso than being head admin, but it's definitely something we've discussed before and at least wanted to do something about.


View user's profile  Send private message  Go to Top
Holmes
Dictator in Absentia



Post Posted: Mon Jun 10, 2013 6:26 pm      Reply with quote

Throttle wrote:
No game shall remain nameless! I'm a great proponent of discussing how things worked on other RPIs (mainly SOI and Arm, granted) and using those experiences in the making of this game. I bring them up in almost every post. They're the history of the genre; they're important. Just figured I'd say that.

Anyway, I actually talked to Holmes about simplifying writing before we opened the game, but I think the verdict was that the language code (upon which writing was entirely based) had been disemboweled back when Kithrater concocted the code for Alpha. There were attempts to restore writing back in the Grungetown era via datapads, but it never really caught on and hardly anybody used it because it was impractical. I wanted to make it possible to simply write on a scrap of (synthetic) paper with a pen, but we didn't have a coder to look into it. That's something that might be changing.

If I had my way, it'd be possible to write both on paper and with graffiti. I don't really know what would need to be done in order for this to work, and the future development of PRPI is more in Holmes' hands than in mine since my main objective was to just make sure the game actually got made moreso than being head admin, but it's definitely something we've discussed before and at least wanted to do something about.


I think the old datapads are currently in the game and craftable, but don't hold me to that.

Anyways, I'll add audio-recorders tomorrow and check into that.


View user's profile  Send private message  Go to Top
Onasaki
Registered



Post Posted: Mon Jun 10, 2013 9:44 pm      Reply with quote

Holo-Movies!!!

View user's profile  Send private message  Go to Top
padweld999
Registered



Post Posted: Tue Jun 11, 2013 12:17 am      Reply with quote

god, if my character had a little audio-recorder he could speak into, he would use it every time I logged in for the day, and maybe more than once.

View user's profile  Send private message  Go to Top
Display posts from previous:   
Page 1 of 1   Θ  
Jump to:  
Reply to Topic Create a Topic


You cannot post new topics in this forum
You cannot reply to topics in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum
You cannot delete your posts in this forum
You cannot vote in polls in this forum
Featured artwork used on Parallel RPI given permission for use by original artists macrebisz and merl1ncz.