Implementation methods in interactive fiction

Thu, 27 Aug 2009 – 15:06:20 +0000

Emily Short has an interesting post charting the “whole gory evolution [...] of my implementation strategy”. Useful comments follow about the more general programming issues, and both Andrew Plotkin and Mike Gentry comment on their own implementation methods.

(As it happens, I was in a few of the same undergraduate Classics classes as Emily Short. When I saw that someone by that name had just released a game called Galatea, I knew immediately that it would be very good, and very clever.)

The comments to Short’s post highlight what I’ve always found interesting about interactive fiction as a form. Some focus on the programming methodologies (XP and Agile Programming), others focus on the texture of the game-world. Both, of course, are essential; as always, IF is a narrative at war with a crossword.

By James Crowley | Posted in Ephemera | Tagged , , , , , , | Comments (0)

Actually, that wasn’t as cathartic as I’d hoped.

Tue, 25 Aug 2009 – 00:10:16 +0000

Quote of the day:

[W]hen you get to the point where you see watching Zombie Lake as some kind of solemn obligation, it’s a circumstance that bears some investigation.

That’s Todd of Teleport City, part of the latest roundtable from The B-Masters Cabal. I’ve been reading B-movie reviews from these folks for years—hell, I still think of Braineater and 1000 Misspent Hours and Counting as “the new guys” even though Braineater joined the Cabal at least 6 years ago!—and it’s absolutely fascinating to see which gaps they have in their knowledge, and how they respond to the new input. (And You Call Yourself A Scientist!’s typically insightful dissection of Jurassic Park has been followed by a nifty comment thread as well.)

I must admit that this particular roundtable is fascinating to me because it’s built around precisely the sort of thing that makes many self-proclaimed cinephiles and movie nerds squirm: an admission of ignorance.

In that spirit, I’ve just had a look at the TOC of Danny Peary’s invaluable Cult Movies and have to admit:

  1. I’ve never watched Forbidden Planet all the way through, even though that film’s Id Monster is crucial to my reading of The Shape / Michael Myers in John Carpenter’s Halloween.

  2. I’ve never seen The Red Shoes—widely regarded as one of the best British films ever made—because at one point in my life I deeply resented Martin Scorsese. Scorsese wisecracks in Roger Corman’s autobiography that

    There’s no such thing as studying film at NYU. At NYU they made you study Wild Strawberries. […] Every morning at NYU you had to light a candle to Ingmar Bergman.

    Well, Martin Scorsese was my film teachers’ Ingmar Bergman, and I got tired of lighting damned candles to him. Which meant that the artists Scorsese couldn’t stop being enthused about—Minelli, Pressburger & Powell—were dead to me. So, no Red Shoes.

  3. Okay, last confession, and this one is really painful for someone who claims to love B-Movies. I’ve…I’ve never seen The Rocky Horror Picture Show. When I was a teenager, I avoided it (for the same reasons that Wil Wheaton did). As I got older and become more of a film buff, it seemed as though I had to see it on a big screen, with a crowd, at midnight. And that still doesn’t appeal to me at all. So I still haven’t seen it.

By James Crowley | Posted in Ephemera, Journal Entries | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments (0)

A bad week for screenwriters

Thu, 06 Aug 2009 – 16:02:25 +0000
  1. Budd Schulberg (1914–2009).
  2. Blake Snyder (1957–2009).
  3. John Hughes (1950–2009).

Budd Schulberg (On the Waterfront) and Blake Snyder (Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot) were very different writers, but each was a craftsman with a family history in showbiz. (Schulberg was the son of a studio head; Snyder did voice work as a child for his father’s Roger Ramjet cartoons.)

For what it’s worth, my favorite Schulberg book is The Disenchanted, a roman à clef based on F. Scott Fitzgerald and Schulberg himself. Among other great bits, there’s an amazing drunken stream-of-consciousness "appreciation" of Charlie Chaplin’s man-child film persona by the Fitzgerald character. (Ironically, the novel plays out rather like Chaplin’s own later film Limelight.)

Blake Snyder was more famous for being a how-to guru than a screenwriter; his books (Save the Cat! and Save the Cat! Goes to the Movies) emphasize commercially-viable, Hollywood-style projects. Unlike most Hollywood gurus, though, he actually had multiple real film credits, and wasn’t automatically dismissed by working writers: both John Rogers (Leverage) and Alex Epstein (Bon Cop / Bad Cop) thought he was on to something. (Plus, you know, Snyder never named names to HUAC. That might matter to some people.)

Update: Damn. John Hughes as well. (And I know it’s horribly cynical of me, but I wonder when the backlash will begin at how much more attention this death gets, especially online, than the "worthier" Schulberg’s death does.)

By James Crowley | Posted in Ephemera | Tagged , , , | Comments (0)

I Broke Twitter

Thu, 06 Aug 2009 – 11:46:52 +0000

Just went to use Twitter for the first time in months (I don’t even follow people, except through Google Reader), and the site is down from a DOS attack. Oh, well.

By James Crowley | Posted in Meta | Tagged , , | Comments (0)

Hell’s Ground (2007)

Sat, 02 May 2009 – 01:11:03 +0000

I was inordinately pleased to learn, while working my way through the archives at the invaluable Horror-Movie-A-Day, that Omar Khan made a horror film. The often-wry reviews posted at The Hot Spot Online (A/K/A the most awesome ice cream shop ever) can be helpful in learning a bit about the context of Bollywood/Lollywood horror movies.

By James Crowley | Posted in Ephemera | Tagged , | Comments (0)