4 ms·

I'm currently finishing my PhD on interactive storytelling--how rhetoric works in interactive stories, how they can function as models or simulations of social

I'm currently finishing my PhD on interactive storytelling--how rhetoric works in interactive stories, how they can function as models or simulations of social realities (and thereby help us understand the dynamics of positionality, race, etc.), and how they represent a broadened view of what K-12 CS might look like. I'd love to talk more if anyone's interested! * [Unfold Studio](https://unfold.studio/ https://unfold.studio/) is a web app for reading and writing interactive stories, using the programming language Ink. * [A draft](http://chrisproctor.net/media/publications/proctor_2018_unfold_studio.pdf http://chrisproctor.net/media/publications/proctor_2018_unfo...) article offering a conceptual framework, documenting the web application, and analysis of how student authors used it.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
ianbicking 8y ago
I clicked on Cliff Story randomly (https://unfold.studio/stories/1293 https://unfold.studio/stories/1293) and it reminded me a lot of the themes in a story my 11-year-old nephew made (https://ianb.github.io/Choose-Your-Own-Adventures/The-Bad-Bad-Kid.html https://ianb.github.io/Choose-Your-Own-Adventures/The-Bad-Ba...) - making abrupt and poor decisions, the resulting jail time, or getting into fights with other people. I'm guessing it's a way to ideate about impulsive urges.
xena 8y ago
I tried to register for unfold and it just 500's for me.
- cproctor 8y ago
  Huh--sorry! It just worked for me; i'll check the logs later today. Thanks for letting me know.
  - xena 8y ago
    If it helped, I was doing so via a google account.
    - cproctor 8y ago
      Ah--probably a result of Google deprecating Google Plus APIs. I thought I had a little more time; Google said "On March 7, 2019, all Google+ APIs and Google+ Sign-in will be shut down completely. This will be a progressive shutdown beginning in late January, with calls to these APIs starting to intermittently fail as early as January 28, 2019." Thanks!
      - xena 8y ago
        It's still failing for me
EwanG 8y ago
A tool I have used in the past (and one of the favorites for folks doing full Visual Novels) is "RenPy" which is based on Python - https://www.renpy.org/ https://www.renpy.org/ Not involved with the tool itself, but have created a few works with it and enjoy the fact it can run on so many platforms and target so many others.
- Posibyte 8y ago
  Another one that's been around for decades at this point is the Inform[1] platform. There's still an active group of people who produce all sorts of interactive fiction books in the vein of CYOA books that are of surprisingly great quality. [1]: http://inform7.com/ http://inform7.com/
  - WorldMaker 8y ago
    Yet another tool of note for writing CYOA interactive fiction is Twine (http://twinery.org/ http://twinery.org/), which has become a defacto standard of sorts of an interactive narrative writing tool more specifically for hypertext CYOA. For example of its growing ubiquity, it was admitted that most of the Black Mirror Bandersnatch CYOA episode was written and tested in Twine.
- barrow-rider 8y ago
  RenPy is the VN software that gave us, among others, DDLC and Katawa Shoujo.
defen 8y ago
What are your thoughts on the Bandersnatch episode of Black Mirror?
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
dcsan 8y ago
unfold seems nicely designed for narrative and preset choices, what are your thoughts about including a parser to allow more freeform choices? That would significantly increase the options you'd have to cover, but hints could focus the user in rewarding directions. I'm interested in using this type of story-telling to teach language learning, so student output/writing is as important as reading/input.
- cproctor 8y ago
  I don't think I'd choose Ink for parsing open-ended responses. Ink is an interesting language--it gives up some elegance in its programming syntax to gain more of a prose-like feeling. (I think the level of tradeoff is roughly comparable to HTML templating languages like Jinja2--it's an open question how an interface like Ink compares to block-based languages for beginners, but I'm optimistic). I am planning to include the ability to prompt for text input in an upcoming release, but the intent is more to support in-game identity-building. For example, you could prompt for the player's name and then refer to it later. I haven't looked much in to languages for open-ended interactive storytelling, but I thought Nick Montfort's dissertation was pretty interesting--a technical treatment of a system for heavy-duty worldbuilding. I'm also interested in using this system for language learning, particularly in multilingual classrooms/contexts. In some of the early classroom workshops, students were exploring how they get treated differently (and some people open up more) when speaking different languages.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

ianbicking 8y ago

I clicked on Cliff Story randomly (https://unfold.studio/stories/1293 https://unfold.studio/stories/1293) and it reminded me a lot of the themes in a story my 11-year-old nephew made (https://ianb.github.io/Choose-Your-Own-Adventures/The-Bad-Bad-Kid.html https://ianb.github.io/Choose-Your-Own-Adventures/The-Bad-Ba...) - making abrupt and poor decisions, the resulting jail time, or getting into fights with other people. I'm guessing it's a way to ideate about impulsive urges.

xena 8y ago

I tried to register for unfold and it just 500's for me.

cproctor 8y ago
Huh--sorry! It just worked for me; i'll check the logs later today. Thanks for letting me know.
- xena 8y ago
  If it helped, I was doing so via a google account.
  - cproctor 8y ago
    Ah--probably a result of Google deprecating Google Plus APIs. I thought I had a little more time; Google said "On March 7, 2019, all Google+ APIs and Google+ Sign-in will be shut down completely. This will be a progressive shutdown beginning in late January, with calls to these APIs starting to intermittently fail as early as January 28, 2019." Thanks!
    - xena 8y ago
      It's still failing for me

EwanG 8y ago

A tool I have used in the past (and one of the favorites for folks doing full Visual Novels) is "RenPy" which is based on Python - https://www.renpy.org/ https://www.renpy.org/ Not involved with the tool itself, but have created a few works with it and enjoy the fact it can run on so many platforms and target so many others.

Posibyte 8y ago
Another one that's been around for decades at this point is the Inform[1] platform. There's still an active group of people who produce all sorts of interactive fiction books in the vein of CYOA books that are of surprisingly great quality. [1]: http://inform7.com/ http://inform7.com/
- WorldMaker 8y ago
  Yet another tool of note for writing CYOA interactive fiction is Twine (http://twinery.org/ http://twinery.org/), which has become a defacto standard of sorts of an interactive narrative writing tool more specifically for hypertext CYOA. For example of its growing ubiquity, it was admitted that most of the Black Mirror Bandersnatch CYOA episode was written and tested in Twine.
barrow-rider 8y ago
RenPy is the VN software that gave us, among others, DDLC and Katawa Shoujo.

defen 8y ago

What are your thoughts on the Bandersnatch episode of Black Mirror?

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

dcsan 8y ago

unfold seems nicely designed for narrative and preset choices, what are your thoughts about including a parser to allow more freeform choices? That would significantly increase the options you'd have to cover, but hints could focus the user in rewarding directions. I'm interested in using this type of story-telling to teach language learning, so student output/writing is as important as reading/input.

cproctor 8y ago
I don't think I'd choose Ink for parsing open-ended responses. Ink is an interesting language--it gives up some elegance in its programming syntax to gain more of a prose-like feeling. (I think the level of tradeoff is roughly comparable to HTML templating languages like Jinja2--it's an open question how an interface like Ink compares to block-based languages for beginners, but I'm optimistic). I am planning to include the ability to prompt for text input in an upcoming release, but the intent is more to support in-game identity-building. For example, you could prompt for the player's name and then refer to it later. I haven't looked much in to languages for open-ended interactive storytelling, but I thought Nick Montfort's dissertation was pretty interesting--a technical treatment of a system for heavy-duty worldbuilding. I'm also interested in using this system for language learning, particularly in multilingual classrooms/contexts. In some of the early classroom workshops, students were exploring how they get treated differently (and some people open up more) when speaking different languages.