Teaching Fish to Converse
After spending the last 16-odd months getting ELECT up and running, I now have to turn my attentions to adapting that sit-read-and-click educational tool into an integrated narrative experience inside a traditional console game. That game being Original Fin.
The upshot is that it involves more or less redesigning ELECT's ACE (Augmented Conversation Engine). Why? Because the console game needs to emphasize some things the ACE is admitedly very bad at, including
* It needs to flow quickly
* It needs to take player game actions, not just conversation choices into account when reacting
* It needs to model characters that are not Iraqi
* It needs to be easy to navigate with a gamepad, not a mouse
* It needs to be an integrated part of a game system, not the game itself
In addition to these changes, it's something of a writing challenge, since we're working extra hard to humanize fish, and in a far more complex manner than Finding Nemo, mind you.
A major challenge, which I welcome input on, is the interface. I have this sense that the ideal interface for console conversation hasn't been thought of, yet. We live and die by speed, is what I've been saying all weekend in regards to this. You ought to be able to fly through menus and ooptions in an intuitive fashion that minimizes reading and flipping between layers and submenus while still having a great deal of control over what's being said.
I have these dark thoughts that the LucasArts people back in ye good olde dayes of adventure games were on the right track with their picture-based UI that let you combine symbols and clicking on objects int he world to construct dialogue. Of course it was limited and rail-driven, but maybe the idea was solid... it's hard to tell this late at night.
The math behind Minerva, the first conversation counterpart is done. I have some dialogue to write, but it looks like she flies just fine.