Sean Bouchard

Here is an IF project that I did for World Building last week. Please, try it out and send me comments!

A couple notes for anyone who would be interested in playtesting: This is not a complete game, in the sense that it doesn't have an end state, a goal, or even a player character. I just wanted to explore Emily Short's approach to storytelling through environment and conversation. (See Floatpoint and Alabaster for examples.) So, you won't get much context about who you are or why the two characters are willing to talk to you, but (hopefully) you will start to get a sense of the world that they inhabit through the conversations. All that said, I'd love to get feedback from people. This is the first time I've done something quite like this, and I'm interested in building it out further.

Play Black Swan online!

First of all, thank you to everybody who stopped by last week for the get-together / brainstorming session. I had a great time, and got a lot of great ideas, so I'm going to hold another get-together this Sunday. All are welcome! Fun, games, baked goods and pizza (or some sort of non-pizza food, as the group decides) will all be present. We'll start around 2:00 on Sunday the 2nd, but let me know if you can't make that time.

Continue reading "Sunday Playtest / Playdate" »

Greetings, all. I don't know about the rest of you, but I miss the creative fervor that pretty much filled my days just a few short weeks ago, B.S.B. (Before Summer Break). I'm working on my 491 game this summer, but it just isn't the same without other people around to bounce ideas off of and get excited with. So on Sunday I'm going to have a brainstorming session for Suits, and take the opportunity to have a little mid-summer get-together, as well. What do you say?

Continue reading "Sunday Get-Together/Brainstorming Session" »

Brenda Braithwaite recently made some comments that I consider controversial, and I responded. If you're interested in interactive fiction, you might be interested in this.

Continue reading "New Post at Softcore Gamer: Greatly Exaggerated" »

I was a little at a loss as to what to do for this assignment. I came up with half an idea for something recombinant based on Jane Austen Unscripted, but I didn't have time to develop it. So I opted for lots of particles. Particles make everything better.

Continue reading "CTIN544 Story Assignment" »

For a CTWR518 assignment from last week, here is my slideshow presentation on HanakoLand, a theme park based on the properties of Hanako Games.

Continue reading "HanakoLand" »

A CTWR518 assignment from a couple weeks back. My randomly-generated prompt called for a wealthy person for a protagonist, a ship at sea for a setting, and a murder for an inciting incident.

One note: I didn't intend to name the main character after Jack Nicholson's character in The Shining. It seemed like a good name in my head and I didn't realize why it sounded so familiar until after the story was turned in. I'll retcon that, though, and suggest that in the future it becomes popular practice to name children after the villain in old movies.

Continue reading "Story-o-matic" »

For a CTIN544 assignment, this program demonstrates use of the networking library built into Processing.

UPDATED: Fixed a bug in the server and extensively commented the code. No longer including compiled builds, but leave a comment if you need one. You can compile it yourself on any system using Processing.

Continue reading "CTIN544 Library Assignment (Updated)" »

I just posted a new entry, Getting in Trouble, over at my blog Softcore Gamer. It contains a brief review of Dangerous High School Girls in Trouble, recently nominated by the WGA for best writing in a video game in 2008, and a long digression about grinding as a necessary feature in RPGs.

I just posted a new entry, Learning Curve, over at my blog Softcore Gamer. It might be of interest.