4 ms·

Loved the books as a kid and one of the first programs I wrote was a straight up port of one of the books into the computer. Lots of print and if then statement

Loved the books as a kid and one of the first programs I wrote was a straight up port of one of the books into the computer. Lots of print and if then statements. I wasn't artistically inclined so none of the illustrations made it into the port. After a positive response from a few classmates I gave copies to, I thought about selling them but was crushed when my mother explained copyright to me. One thing I noticed after reading a couple of the books was the gap between those written with a set world and those where the world state altered depending on your choices such as hearing a noise and if you open a door, you find out it is a ghost but if you go outside and look through the window, you find out it is an alien. I was torn because on one hand, it felt like the author was just making stuff up (which of course they were, it was fiction) but the different branches being so different made for more interesting reading when exploring the different possible outcomes.

michaericalribo 4y ago
Weird!! This is such a strange and fascinating approach to narrative. This is kind of a stretch but… This reminds me of tabletop RPGs, like D&D (more fixed world, DM-mediated / -adjudicated, there is a single Truth to be learned) vs Old School Renaissance games (randomized outcomes for many interactions, for any number of things in the world). It’s a different attitude towards how the world unfolds: does the world create itself as you discover it (player driven narrative), or do you discover the world that objectively exists? Something something metaphysics :)
- aidenn0 4y ago
  As a DM, I felt my job was to provide the illusion that the world was fixed, but "behind the scenes" the world was definitely not fixed, so that the players would get an interesting outcome regardless of their choices; with no "turning the pages back" option in D&D, the illusion can be maintained better than with CYOA.
ZeroGravitas 4y ago
The book Life's Lottery by horror author Kim Newman plays with this (and is inspired by Choose Your Own adventure books) Review (with spoilers, though not sure that concept applies here) by Interactive Fiction author Emily Short: https://emshort.blog/2015/01/05/lifes-lottery-kim-newman/ https://emshort.blog/2015/01/05/lifes-lottery-kim-newman/
- Apocryphon 4y ago
  I love Kim Newman for his Anno Dracula series, as well as his other genre-deconstructing work. "Coastal City" is a neat little jaunt through the progression in superhero comics, and The Night Mayor is quite a surreal VR love letter to film noir. Had no idea that he wrote a CYOA about a young man in '80s Britain! Sounds like Netflix owes him some inspiration credits for their own Bandersnatch streaming CYOA.
importantbrian 4y ago
Funnily enough, the first program I ever wrote was a choose your own adventure on my TI-83 while I was supposed to be doing my math homework.
dylan604 4y ago
I had so much hope that with DVDs, Choose Your Own Adventure style content would become a large-ish segment. Unfortunately, it just didn't do what I wanted. So when I became a DVD programmer in the late 90s, I was searching for a CYOA style project to work on to the point of trying to produce it myself. People kept complaining about the difficulty of writing the script. Years (decades) later, Netflix did their attempt at it, but saw the interactive bit flop so that majority of people just saw the "default" decisions made for them. Just never could find like-minded people to make this work to the level I was hoping.
- aidenn0 4y ago
  The Netflix one was so much fun, but "watching" it with my wife was a bit eye-opening for why the interactive bits might not be as popular; I would push for making obviously bad choices just to see what happens, but her reaction was just "Why would you want to do that?"
  - WorldMaker 4y ago
    Which is why I think that of Netflix's experiment here the Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt "finale movie" was possibly the height of the art form. The obviously bad choices are always an excuse for more jokes and more punchlines and opportunities for surprise guest cameos from the show's previous seasons (and weird closure of multiple seasons of strange guest characters). The show's previous seasons already engendered enough of a feel of "anything can happen" that made most playthroughs, even "bad" ones, fun, and especially yielded a strong reason to see the entire play graph to catch all the endings and all the cameos and all the jokes. It actually had answers for "Why would you want to do that?" and in ways that fans of the show's previous seasons would expect. From my experience, many of the other CYOA properties that Netflix attempted didn't have that multiple seasons of loyalty to wild "anything can happen" jokes and reasons to explore the interactivity in depth, but the UKS CYOA certainly had a lot of charm and fun. (Aside: one of my favorite gags was the UKS CYOA's gag Netflix Skip Intro button.)
    - aidenn0 4y ago
lkbm 4y ago
> Loved the books as a kid and one of the first programs I wrote was a straight up port of one of the books into the computer. Lots of print and if then statements. This was also my first program, except I quickly discovered that I didn't have the patience to type in a whole book. Gave up after a few pages. My subsequent programs were meandering self-written choose-your-own-adventure stories, though without plot or anything. It was a lot more fun than mindlessly typing in a text, but also not anything of interest to anyone but me.
scelerat 4y ago
> Loved the books as a kid and one of the first programs I wrote was a straight up port of one of the books into the computer Same.
jasonwatkinspdx 4y ago
I forget the name, but as a kid my brother had a choose your own adventure style book where you had to type in a BASIC program listing to get the page number for the next part to read. I was preschool age at the time but was able to get through it.
JKCalhoun 4y ago
Yeah, how non-deterministic. I don't think I want to live in that world.

michaericalribo 4y ago

Weird!! This is such a strange and fascinating approach to narrative. This is kind of a stretch but… This reminds me of tabletop RPGs, like D&D (more fixed world, DM-mediated / -adjudicated, there is a single Truth to be learned) vs Old School Renaissance games (randomized outcomes for many interactions, for any number of things in the world). It’s a different attitude towards how the world unfolds: does the world create itself as you discover it (player driven narrative), or do you discover the world that objectively exists? Something something metaphysics :)

aidenn0 4y ago
As a DM, I felt my job was to provide the illusion that the world was fixed, but "behind the scenes" the world was definitely not fixed, so that the players would get an interesting outcome regardless of their choices; with no "turning the pages back" option in D&D, the illusion can be maintained better than with CYOA.

ZeroGravitas 4y ago

The book Life's Lottery by horror author Kim Newman plays with this (and is inspired by Choose Your Own adventure books) Review (with spoilers, though not sure that concept applies here) by Interactive Fiction author Emily Short: https://emshort.blog/2015/01/05/lifes-lottery-kim-newman/ https://emshort.blog/2015/01/05/lifes-lottery-kim-newman/

Apocryphon 4y ago
I love Kim Newman for his Anno Dracula series, as well as his other genre-deconstructing work. "Coastal City" is a neat little jaunt through the progression in superhero comics, and The Night Mayor is quite a surreal VR love letter to film noir. Had no idea that he wrote a CYOA about a young man in '80s Britain! Sounds like Netflix owes him some inspiration credits for their own Bandersnatch streaming CYOA.

importantbrian 4y ago

Funnily enough, the first program I ever wrote was a choose your own adventure on my TI-83 while I was supposed to be doing my math homework.

dylan604 4y ago

I had so much hope that with DVDs, Choose Your Own Adventure style content would become a large-ish segment. Unfortunately, it just didn't do what I wanted. So when I became a DVD programmer in the late 90s, I was searching for a CYOA style project to work on to the point of trying to produce it myself. People kept complaining about the difficulty of writing the script. Years (decades) later, Netflix did their attempt at it, but saw the interactive bit flop so that majority of people just saw the "default" decisions made for them. Just never could find like-minded people to make this work to the level I was hoping.

aidenn0 4y ago
The Netflix one was so much fun, but "watching" it with my wife was a bit eye-opening for why the interactive bits might not be as popular; I would push for making obviously bad choices just to see what happens, but her reaction was just "Why would you want to do that?"
- WorldMaker 4y ago
  Which is why I think that of Netflix's experiment here the Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt "finale movie" was possibly the height of the art form. The obviously bad choices are always an excuse for more jokes and more punchlines and opportunities for surprise guest cameos from the show's previous seasons (and weird closure of multiple seasons of strange guest characters). The show's previous seasons already engendered enough of a feel of "anything can happen" that made most playthroughs, even "bad" ones, fun, and especially yielded a strong reason to see the entire play graph to catch all the endings and all the cameos and all the jokes. It actually had answers for "Why would you want to do that?" and in ways that fans of the show's previous seasons would expect. From my experience, many of the other CYOA properties that Netflix attempted didn't have that multiple seasons of loyalty to wild "anything can happen" jokes and reasons to explore the interactivity in depth, but the UKS CYOA certainly had a lot of charm and fun. (Aside: one of my favorite gags was the UKS CYOA's gag Netflix Skip Intro button.)
  - aidenn0 4y ago

lkbm 4y ago

> Loved the books as a kid and one of the first programs I wrote was a straight up port of one of the books into the computer. Lots of print and if then statements. This was also my first program, except I quickly discovered that I didn't have the patience to type in a whole book. Gave up after a few pages. My subsequent programs were meandering self-written choose-your-own-adventure stories, though without plot or anything. It was a lot more fun than mindlessly typing in a text, but also not anything of interest to anyone but me.

scelerat 4y ago

> Loved the books as a kid and one of the first programs I wrote was a straight up port of one of the books into the computer Same.

jasonwatkinspdx 4y ago

I forget the name, but as a kid my brother had a choose your own adventure style book where you had to type in a BASIC program listing to get the page number for the next part to read. I was preschool age at the time but was able to get through it.

JKCalhoun 4y ago

Yeah, how non-deterministic. I don't think I want to live in that world.