"Choose Your Own Adventure" On Your iPhone 135
If you spent a good portion of your childhood reading the classic "Choose Your Own Adventure" books, you'll be glad to know that you can soon waste countless hours at work turning to random pages on your iPhone. Edward Packard, one of the original authors of the series, has helped create an app called U-Ventures which uses special effects to create a story in the traditional Choose Your Own Adventure format. From the article: "The first U-Venture is a sort of a sequel to a classic title, The Cave of Time. In 'Return to the Cave of Time,' the U-Venture, 'you go back in the cave — you don't have a choice on that,' Packard tells NPR's Neal Conan. But from that point on, the reader chooses her own course."
Oh, really (Score:5, Insightful)
Is anything so simple and trivial that it can be done in basic HTML suddenly news when you can add the words "on the iPhone"? Still, after all these years? It's as if Slashdot has a spam filter that is automatically bypassed by the phrase.
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Wait till you see the next article - a nostalgic snake game for the iphone done *entirely in JavaScript*. The app actually opens a browser for you. And the web page is public [patorjk.com]. But there's now an app that opens that web page FOR you.
Now that's revolutionary.
A nasty looking dwarf throws a knife at you! (Score:2)
Port the InfoCom stuff. And Colossal Cave. Render the glowing, green text to resemble the phosphor of a slump-back Tektronix terminal, like the computing labs had in 1979.
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YES! - but green on black... :-)
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The slashvertisement tag is redundant in the apple section.
(Press releases for hipsters. Stuff that's shiny.)
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Yep. An ad.
Choose-Your-Own Adventure lost its appeal for me once I got my first 8-bit computer. Text adventures like Zork or graphics adventures like Activision's MindShadow offer the same appeal, but with many more forks that the limited ~200 page book format. In fact, here is Zork if you want it for your iGadget: http://www.crunchgear.com/2007/08/14/zork-for-the-iphone-you-were-eaten-by-a-grue/ [crunchgear.com]
Heck you could turn your iPhone into a Commodore=64 if you wish and play any of its ~5,000 game library
Even the BBC are at it (Score:2)
I agree. And here in the UK, even the public funded BBC will be happy to give national coverage for your Iphone App, even if it's as trivial as just displaying an image [bbc.co.uk]. Next time I write an application, I'll be sure to submit a press release to them.
So much for the lie that the BBC don't advertise.
Re:Oh, really (Score:4, Interesting)
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This is pretty cool and something I've never considered getting into before however I don't think your linked site goes far enough.
Imagine a site that not only allowed you to collaborate on interactive stories but also added inventory, hit points, etc. Basically pre-recorded D&D in text form. Anything out there similar to that?
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Try "Kingdom of Loathing".
http://www.kingdomofloathing.com./ [www.kingdo...athing.com]
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Imagine a site that not only allowed you to collaborate on interactive stories but also added inventory, hit points, etc. Basically pre-recorded D&D in text form. Anything out there similar to that?
Most MUDs? Granted, they won't all meet your personal standard of what's close enough to that description, but there's enough variety out there that at least one should.
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Project Aon is an effort to post the old Lone Wolf game books to the webpage medium...
http://www.projectaon.org/en/Main/Home [projectaon.org]
I'm also seeing similar book apps in the App Store which give the player a chance to pick starting stats to influence gameplay progression. (One I found involved the player RPing as a dragon, hoarding treasure and defending territory from other dragons and human kings and wizards. I forgot the name, though.)
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Re:Oh, really (Score:4, Insightful)
What's really sad is that Choose Your Own Adventure books have been available ever since the iPhone got the Kindle app. So this isn't even something new to the iPhone.
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THE END
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It's not just that these new books are for the iPhone, but that it's Edward Packard writing them.
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Wrong. Slashdot would never have mentioned it if he did it for any other medium. Ever looked at the Apple section? Of course you have -- you can't block it from the front page (just like Idle). It's just an endless stream of raw advertising sewage. All just to keep Apple relevant, and Slashdot irrelevant.
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If you switch back to the Classic view, you can block Apple, Idle, Your Rights Online, etc. With the Dynamic index, so far as I can tell you can only block "editors" (useful for kdawson stories). Am I missing something, or is the Classic view actually more functional than the Dynamic one in this regard?
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Crimminy, you read an slashdot article about "Choose Your Own Adventure" and don't know who Edward Packard is? Did you just open it up to post this rant?
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Is anything so simple and trivial that it can be done in basic HTML suddenly news when you can add the words "on the iPhone"?
But the iPhone let them add a few extra features over just plain HTML. If you hold don't hold the iPhone exactly right, you get eaten by a grue.
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My girlfriend ended up a lesbian Oracledb admin who's only staying with me for free internet access. I hate my phone.
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Indeed. Nothing beats the Access this webpage On The Iphone [slashdot.org] story - although this story is basically "You can run this app On The Iphone", which comes pretty close.
Using phones to access the web or run apps stopped being impressive around 2003, and could be done even by dirt cheap "feature" phones by 2005. But now in 2010 with all the Iphone hype, it's like we've gone backwards technologically in terms of phone expectations. Next thing you know, Apple users will be pleased if they can even make a phone call
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I think we come here just to read the commentary from the folks who complain about Apple posts while contributing to the problem.
How does complaining that Slashdot stories shouldn't be used for spam/advertising, add to the problem? Does their response somehow result in more spam stories being posted? That makes no sense.
There are plenty of other sites if you have software to advertise (Download.com, Freshmeat, etc). I write in my spare time for Windows and Symbian (both platforms far bigger than Iphone, inc
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Sure, and then there are all the people astroturfing Apple, and unable to stand any criticism of their loved company. It's a must read :)
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What "proprietary language" was this game implemented in?
Well fuck... (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm writing some text adventures for iPhone and Android at the moment. Beaten to market by a few months! Ah well, it's a pretty obvious update to the old books. I imagine we'll see a lot of these. They can be pretty fun.
Wow, iPhone SPAM on Slashdot? (Score:1, Informative)
Ten years ago who would have believed Slashdot would turn into an Apple PR/SPAM site?
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If they dont get the look and feel right, find your inner Linux and make it work.
Dont do a Google and keep MACS.
Soon you will be rich like Jobs.
Dont Wozniak any aircraft.
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True. My consolation is that the idea itself isn't original. There's a certain inevitability to text adventures appearing on mobile devices. The selling point is going to have to be the quality of the adventure rather than that it exists. At least after the initial Slashvertisment wears off.
Thanks,
H.
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Sorry - noted on both issues. I didn't know about the one-line preview thing as I've never used it. In my defence, I'd like to plead it's a pretty inconsequential story. ;)
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I didn't know about the one-line preview thing as I've never used it.
Eh... not sure how you miss the one-liner previews (unless you just have all comments either hidden or full – it’s the “Abbreviated” threshold in the D2 system). In any case, I suggest also selectively using <quote> instead of <blockquote> when you want the preview to skip the quotation and show your comment.
I.e. the Abbreviated form of your post shows your quotation – “On an unrelated note, if you absolutely must use Slashdot for inconsequential”, but t
does it have a point in this medium? (Score:4, Insightful)
The thing that made choose-your-own-adventure books interesting was essentially hacking a limited notion of interactivity into a non-interactive medium, by asking users to manually enact GOTOs. But on a computer, we have interaction sort of built in, so the hack is uninteresting. Sure, you can still do it, and people might still like reading them, but it's not really its own category of thing, and we've had it forever. You can do it with a set of HTML pages linked to each other, or before that, with hypercard pages, and people actually did so, a long time ago [wikipedia.org], and did it more interestingly.
Re:does it have a point in this medium? (Score:5, Informative)
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Wow, I haven't heard anything about those books in years (decades, even).
Awesome site. Thank you.
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Cool - I'm going to have to burn some time on this after work. Thanks for the reference!
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Wow, I haven't read a Lone Wolf book since 1994 or so. Good times!
I got inspired by Lone Wolf and created a Hypercard program (1992, I was 12 at the time) that served as a framework for creating (and then playing) those types of books.
For creating the books, it had a nice branching builder that let you input text/images/sounds for each page, then you could indicate which branch went where, input more text/images/sounds, insert battles and encounters, etc. It also supported a "plug-in" structure where you
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There's nothing special about it. It's just a new medium for an old idea. But if the idea is still good then its not without value. It may not make it much of an IT story though, I grant you.
Re:does it have a point in this medium? (Score:5, Funny)
And the iPhone is all about hacking a limited notion of interactivity into a fundamentally completely interactive medium...
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Indeed:
Choose Your Own Adventure book as directed graph [seanmichaelragan.com]
I have this hanging on the wall of my cube.
Digitized digital bookmarks. (Score:5, Funny)
Mr. PACKARD: Well, we have a bookmark feature. So, for instance, if you get to a choice and - you can bookmark that page. And then if you go on, you make your choice and you go on to various other adventures and you finally come to an ending, but you want to see what would have happened if you go and made the other choice, you can go back there. But otherwise, you know, you get to the end of the story. We don't want to make it - we didn't want to make it so you just could flip back and forth aimlessly like some kind of computer game. We wanted to make it where there's a real story, and it goes on and on surprisingly long and - or usually, unless you come to a bad ending.
Oh good. I was worried there wouldn't be a way to do this. I vaguely remembering keeping two to three fingers firmly inserted in various sections of the book to backtrack if I made bad choices. I wonder if my imaginary /. girlfriend appreciates what I learned by doing this in the 3rd grade >.>
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I wonder if my imaginary /. girlfriend appreciates what I learned by doing this in the 3rd grade
What are you talking about? There are no imaginary girls on slashdot.
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Personally I’d just prefer a working “Back” button. Sort of like a regular browser would have if this whole thing were implemented in HTML and hyperlinks... hint hint.
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Get real interactive fiction (Score:5, Informative)
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Folks should definitely check out that implementation of the z-machine. It's build in story search/downloading is just fantastic. Now everyone download and play "Blue Chairs", "Photopia", and "Spider and Web".
For starters.
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Fabled Lands? (Score:2)
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No idea if java runs on the iStuff though.
I thought Jobs had decided that Java wouldn't run on the iPhone because it's too flakey and insecure. Has this changed?
Been able to for ages (Score:3, Informative)
I have the Warlock of Firetop Mountain, and the second Creature of Havoc comes out I'll be buying that one too.
Cheers,
Ian
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Hah, I bought the Deathtrap Dungeon app. Truly a masochistic book if ever there was one. I must have died thirty or forty times before I finally got through.
I'm torn, here. (Score:3, Insightful)
Zork, for lazy people (Score:1)
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I likeyed the FMV ones like silent steel (Score:2)
I liked the FMV ones like silent steel. But alot of the other ones sucked real bad.
Does any one have a iso of all 3 disks of Flash Traffic: City of Angels?
Choose your own adventure? (Score:2, Funny)
Lone wolf (Score:2)
I only ever made it through 2 of those books in my youth because that's all I could afford, but I loved the RPG aspect of the book over CYOA books (a favorite of mine when I was even younger).
Oh Noes! (Score:1)
Choose your own adventure (Score:2)
I'm on my own "choose your adventure" story. It is sometimes called "real life." ;)
Choose your adventure (Score:2, Funny)
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Unfortunately real office life isn't nearly as exciting as the books:
Page 50: You deny your manhood. In return you get a foot on the fast track ladder for promotion but you never make it to the top without the right connections or nobby background. On your deathbed you regret that you lived your life as a worm and not a lion.
Page 69: You drop kick your boss and set his desk alight! Reliving the two minute thrill of it gets you through the first week of your seven year jail sentence. Eventually you sink into a downward spiral of self-destructive behaviour.
Wait, don't some iPhone users already play this? (Score:2)
I understand it's popular in some cities like New York and San Francisco.
I hear it's called "Get a Decent Signal Adventure."
The problem is no matter how many times you go back, the story ends the same way. You're dead.
Rack me.
54-40 (Score:2)
Big (Score:2)
Movies (Score:2)
I just watched Big for the first time in like a decade or two, and they totally had this idea in there. Funny to see this coming out in the 21st century instead of hoverboards... I'd love to see that iPad app. Strap one iPad to each foot and go!
Isnt (Score:2, Funny)
Haven't they had one of these available for a long time. An adventure that only a small percentage can ever make it through to the end. I think they call it "customer service".
Mario in Choose Your Own Adventure Format (Score:2)
Here is Mario in Choose Your Own Adventure Format:
Choose Your Own Adventure World 1-1 [destructoid.com]
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What about those of us that are gestalt entities, you insensitive clod.
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But from that point on, the reader chooses their own course.
What if it's a line? Or a plane? Or, is this absurd example of political correctness meant to suggest that only points can be the start of stories. What is wrong with "geometric concept"? Using "geometric concept" actually lets the sentence make sense rather than sound idiotic.
Change the phrase in the summary to: But from that geometric concept on, the reader chooses their own course. It's common sense, not fucking rocket science. It also keeps everyone happy because it's dimensionless.
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Using "their" all the time can become boring and in a couple of cases, slightly misleading. A good approach is to use "his" sometimes, and "hers" others. Just don't mix them up in the same paragraph.
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'He' has always been considered gender neutral when referring to an arbitrary person. It's just the radical feminist propaganda than has made using the generic 'he' verboten. Look at modern English from 1970 as far back as you care to, and you'll see that this is the way the language works. It's much better than using a plural pronoun just because the generic 'he' may offend someone who will probably also be offended by something other triviality in your message.
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I try to support things from first principles. There's no good reason why "he" should always be used over "she" and a reasonable case for supporting both so long as you are consistent within paragraphs / examples. Therefore a shift to using both "he" and "she" makes sense to me.
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There's no good reason why "he" should always be used over "she" and a reasonable case for supporting both so long as you are consistent within paragraphs / examples.
Except perhaps that “he” has always been used over “she” and the PC decision to start using both of them as gender-neutral pronouns is really just confusing?
Alternately, you could look at it from this perspective: it’s bad enough that I have to stop and think to figure out whether “he” means a male or a generic individual – now I’ll have to stop and think to figure out what “she” means too?
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That's my point - I don't always have to pick the same one. I am magnanimous. All genders get their chance to be an impersonal pronoun. I don't think it confuses anyone and it removes some lingering gender-bias from the language.
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But in this thread, the only person offended was someone who was offended over the use of "her".
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[citation needed]
Sure, it's "just" wikipedia, and everyone can edit it, but it says that "they" and its derivatives have been used singularly since the 1500s.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hir#Singular_.they [wikipedia.org]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singular_they [wikipedia.org]
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When it’s plural, perhaps? /facepalm
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Someone tried it. It's hard to get people to use a new word you just invented though, because it makes you sound like a dick. Grok, for example. (There can be few things more funny than listening to someone trying to convince someone else to use 'grok' instead of 'understand'.)
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What is wrong with the word " their "?
It's a plural and indicates that there is more than one reader making the decision. 'Its' is just as valid.
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It's a plural and indicates that there is more than one reader making the decision.
dictionary.com disagrees with you:
their /ðr; unstressed ðr/ Show Spelled[thair; unstressed ther] Show IPA
-pronoun
[...]
2 (used after an indefinite singular antecedent in place of the definite masculine form his or the definite feminine form her ): Someone left their book on the table.
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Well, that’s just their opinion.
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Well, that's just their opinion.
And that of every other dictionary I have access to here. The only reference I have that even suggests this usage is incorrect is Fowler's The King's English, which comments that it is disputable, but suggests that "his" is preferable in this case. That book was published in 1908. The language we speak now is noticeably different from what was spoken then; singular they and their are now much more common than they were at the time and are now almost universally accepted.
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Whoosh. (I’m reasonably certain that “their” opinion at dictionary.com is based on more than one person’s input.)
Anyway, it means both: “their” is semantically plural, but in usage it is used to refer to an indefinite singular individual because no other English word serves the purpose.
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/they [merriam-webster.com]
usage They, their, them, themselves: English lacks a common-gender third person singular pronoun that can be used to refer to indefinite pronouns (as everyone, anyone, someone). Writers and speakers have supplied this lack by using the plural pronouns. The plural pronouns have also been put to use as pronouns of indefinite number to refer to singular nouns that stand for many persons. The use of they, their, them, and themselves as pronouns of indefinite gender and indefinite number is well established in speech and writing, even in literary and formal contexts. This gives you the option of using the plural pronouns where you think they sound best, and of using the singular pronouns (as he, she, he or she, and their inflected forms) where you think they sound best.
It is ambiguous in some contexts and the complaint raised by deniable is a valid complaint. In most cases where it is ambiguous whether you me
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I'll admit it's probably wrong, but my assumption was that the protagonist was female. The "Choose your own adventure" books always placed the reader in the role of the protagonist.
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The protagonist was always "you", not a specific gender.
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I though "you" was plural. Isn't "thou" singular?
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I hope you are either joking or not a native English speaker. Sometimes the humor is so dry on Slashdot that I just can't tell.
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Ah, apparently it was French TV [wikipedia.org] that screwed things up.
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What makes a good man go neutral? Lust for gold? Power? Or were you just born with a heart full of neutrality?!
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I seem to remember reading a sequel to The Cave of Time called "Return to the Cave of Time" as a CYOA book. SO is this a reprint of that book, or is it a new work?