This year, Inga Pflaumer released the first interactive story. We decided not to miss this chance and asked our users to tell us about this long and exciting journey - from the idea to the publication of the game in the AppStore. "It's not that difficult, I'm sure, if you wish, everyone can repeat my path" - was her answer. As a result, the story of how to create the first interactive story has grown into a whole series of master classes. This series begins with the simplest (or perhaps the most difficult) stage - creating a literary basis for your story.

So, “Writing an interactive story. Introduction: On Writing and Reading».

About writing and reading

There are hundreds of studies that support the importance of reading. Reading broadens one's horizons, teaches how to interact with people and behave in different situations, helps to develop one's own views and get to know strangers. At the same time, you have repeatedly heard sighs: “Ah, the new generation reads much less!”. But this is not entirely true. The new generation reads just as much as the old. It reads even more. In addition to books and news, the new generation reads blogs, messages, statuses, forums and game subtitles.

Reading has not become less, it has simply become different, because we live in a different era, in an era of interactivity and instant access to information. Perhaps instead of sighing for the times when the grass was greener and the trees taller, we should try to find new ways of reading?

Some statistics:

• According to a survey conducted on FriendFeed, already in 2008, an average person spent 3-4 hours per day - communication in in social networks, forums and other communities and another 2-3 hours to read the feed of friends.

Of course, this is a slight exaggeration. Interactive stories are not a new trend in literature. Once the majority computer games were textual and in order to play the game, it had to be read. Then, influenced by the development of computer graphics, images and action came to the fore. Unfortunately, on the way to eye-pleasing stories, it was the literary, plot part that faded. And interactive stories are an opportunity to bring the story and plot back to the fore.

In some way, every story is interactive. How we perceive the text, how we draw the events taking place in it in our imagination, depends on many things: on our mood, on how attentive we are, on how interesting the events taking place in the text are, and even on how noisy the room is. After all, the minimum level of interactivity is available to us with any book - we can always close it and stop the plot development.

Some statistics:

• Amazon says for every 100 printed books sold online, there are 114 books. electronic format designed for use with a Kindle reader.

Moreover, we are all storytellers. Everyone can tell a story. It’s just that someone will be better able to write it down on paper, for someone to draw key events, and for someone even to role-play it. Do you want to try your hand at being a storyteller? Great, then this series of master classes is written especially for you.

What is an interactive story?

An interactive story is a work of fiction in which the course of events is not rigidly defined, but depends on the reader/player. By choosing the actions of a character or event, the player changes what is happening in the story (remaining within the limits set by the creators of the work) and receives an "individual" story that developed according to his choice and his actions.

Master class plan

As part of the "Writing an Interactive Story" series, you will find eight consecutive workshops dedicated to different aspects of writing a story.

You are reading the first master class right now. And then you are waiting for:

• Part 1: Planning
• Part 2: Starting from the Idea
• Part 3: On the role of the reader
• Part 4: Meet the characters
• Part 5: Character arc and text structure
• Part 6: Interactivity and details
• Conclusion: What to do next?

While the tutorial series is intended to teach readers how to write interactive stories, it can also be very helpful for those who are not yet ready to enter the interactive world and want to write a linear story that can simply be read from the beginning. to the end, like a book. But if you are suddenly interested in new opportunities that open up interactive stories, new levels of interaction with the reader, who in an interactive story becomes not a spectator and observer, but a direct participant in the plot and a co-author, you will find a lot of interesting information. Read, practice and feel free to ask questions.

Structure and homework

In the master classes of this series, you will find not only text with explanations and stages of work on the plot of an interactive story. At the end of each master class you will find:

1. Questionnaire. Don't be afraid, its purpose is not to check how you learned the material. The questionnaire includes questions that you need to ask yourself. These are questions about your story, your plans, and your ideas. Try to answer them honestly and in detail, only you yourself will need answers.

2. Homework. This is the best homework in the world, because no one will check it. In the homework block, we offer information for further study, reflection, or assignments to work with your own story.

3. Examples. The best way to learn information is through examples, right? Therefore, examples from other interactive stories and projects will surely help you better understand the information received and, perhaps, apply some of them in practice.

So what is next?

This series of master classes is devoted exclusively to working with text. But if the topic is interesting, we will definitely ask the author to talk about working with graphics and even code. It will be so great to see your interactive stories on our website!

The beginning of the formation of the largest electronic library in Russia was laid by the company OAO AK Transneft, which in 2008 financed the development of the Internet portal Runivers. The facsimile historical library became the core of the project; on its basis, a consolidated encyclopedia, a search engine, and various thematic galleries were built.

Today, the interactive history library contains many bibliographic reference books, books on military history, encyclopedias, descriptions of travel and land development, atlases, magazines, books on philosophy and much more. For the first time, a facsimile copy of the Complete Collection of Laws appeared in the public domain Russian Empire, military encyclopedias of tsarist times, various archival documents.

If earlier in order to view them it was necessary to apply to Moscow or St. Petersburg libraries with a request, wait for weeks and rewrite information in the reading room, today it is enough to register on the site and download the desired book.

Thematic projects interactive story

Interactive history is becoming more and more popular among Russians thanks to thematic projects. They are developed by specialists of the Runivers project together with representatives of the Russian State University for the Humanities. Sections such as "History of State Institutions", "Political History of Russia", "History of the Cossacks" and others are being created and supplemented. These projects are especially interesting for those who want to independently understand the history of Russia and all neighboring states, to understand the role of Russia in the world in past times and now. Only real historical documents, drawings, photographs are presented here, interactive maps on history are being developed.

History is a complex and multifaceted subject. And while adults compose huge volumes, delving into details, children want to see everything with their own eyes. The school hours of history are clearly not enough to appreciate the deeds of the ancestors and immerse themselves in their way of life. The historical series "Chronograph" by the publishing house "Labyrinth Press" is not just educational interactive books for children, it is real game in art and in history. Before you is an amazing synthesis of literature, popular science text and printing art. Historians, reenactors, museum workers, collectors of antiquities worked on these publications. This is practically a wide open window into the past, through which you can look into the era of Peter I or 1242.

Battle on the Ice
The book immerses the reader in the XII century, the era of Alexander Nevsky and the battles with the Teutons. Already with its cover, it conveys the entourage of the era - steel plates of armor peep through the snow powder of "secular" dust; in the middle, as from the very heart of the book, a formidable cavalry rides out. This is the world of the north, cold and ancient Russian cities - Izborsk, Pskov, Novgorod the Great - where knights and princes fight for faith and freedom. It is no coincidence that the team of book artists was headed by Denis Gordeev, a recognized expert on medieval culture. The book is both static, thanks to the description of weapons, armor and historical references, and extremely cinematic - ice rises on the pages, forever burying heavily armed warriors in the waters of Lake Peipsi.

"Battle on the Ice" is not just an interactive attraction, but an occasion to turn on the fantasy, to explore, to feel the spirit of a harsh time through the thickness of centuries, to see with your own eyes how cities and fortresses gradually rise, how mind and courage win a crushing victory. Here you will find excerpts from ancient Russian chronicles, the famous Novgorod letters, and at the end of the book - a clever game that will captivate the child and help him put everything he learned from the book into his head.

Peter I
This edition of the Chronograph series differs from the others in that it is dedicated not to an event, not to a battle, but to a person, but to a person-epoch - Tsar Peter I. It is not an easy task to tell about him - sometimes a whole monograph is not enough to fit the story of his board completely, but the compilers of this interactive encyclopedia, thanks to the help of historians, reenactors and collectors, brilliantly coped with all the difficulties.

Just as the incredible king himself, and later the emperor, had a special vision and flair, so the book itself impresses with its multidimensionality, thoughtfulness, pages full of surprises and secrets. Each turn here is a full-fledged scene from Peter's life, each has its own story, its own drama, its own intrigue. And all the wonders of cardboard and paper, all three-dimensional structures, valves, books, accordions, "frogs" and tabs - in order to show the world that is changing right before our eyes. Here Peter builds a fleet and opens a window to Europe, fights and studies with extraordinary passion. Contagious, right?

Battle of Borodino
Before you books about the first Patriotic War, the war of 1812: "Battle of Borodino" and visually and thematically continuing it "In a terrible time". The main task of these books is to show the child the war with Napoleon as contemporaries saw it: generals, officers and simple people. They cope with their task perfectly - panoramic spreads, documents, portraits, maps and excerpts from the press make it possible to feel and feel the whole historical layer.

▫ Many different structures feed on such Xs and Ys. Both legal and criminal. By the way, crime also performs its ecological function in society. Retired racketeer Mikhail Orsky told NSN that traditional crime should become an ally of the authorities in the fight against dangerous ethnic groups. You can treat Putin differently, but he really broke the back of organized crime. However, I do not really understand why to finish off the remnants? Who will keep the street? Who will control the situation with ethnic crime? I hope this topic is directed against some corrupt teams like Arashukov and other embezzlers of people's property, and not against this traditional thieves' crime. She already has nothing to earn from, ”he added. The interlocutor of the NSN said that the greatest danger now poses ethnic criminal groups, whose activities are much more difficult for the state to control. Thieves have certain limits, and the state knows what they can do and what they will not do. Traditional Slavic street crime will be replaced by ethnic groups. Only they will be called clans or fraternities. They won't find common language with law enforcement officers. The Tajiks are the most dangerous ethnic group. They had Civil War and they know what it's like to kill. There are hundreds of thousands of Tajiks on our territory. And plus they have a lot of dough, because there are drugs. http://clck.ru/FFQTH
▫ The call of love In our life, the most beautiful things are not bought at the price of money. The clear Sun shines from the sky for nothing and the Moon smiles at us from the sky. For nothing, the rain pours on the plowed fields with abundant generosity. The wind strokes our hair for nothing, the oak leaves are torn with a strong hand. As a gift, we enjoy the singing of birds, dawns, sunrises, sunsets. We meet with relatives, loved ones, and we breathe the air not for a fee. For nothing, the rain pours on the plowed fields with abundant generosity. The wind strokes our hair for nothing, the oak leaves are torn with a strong hand. No coin can pay for an unusual caress for a child, For spouses, tender hugs, for love, for selfless friendship. But the most precious thing, the most precious thing, was given to us by God as a gift in Jesus eternal salvation, accept and smile cheerfully. Look how He bows to you, and understand that, like the light of the clear Sun, the most beautiful things in our life are not bought at the price of money. For nothing, the rain pours on the plowed fields with abundant generosity. The wind strokes our hair for nothing, the oak leaves are torn with a strong hand. For nothing, the rain pours on the plowed strips with abundant generosity! The wind strokes our hair for nothing, the leaves are torn from the oak with a strong hand !!!

I am the author of the QSP platform, well-known in certain circles, designed to create text (sic!) Games.
Such a rare genre is little covered in Runet, so I really want to correct the situation and briefly talk about interactive literature and QSP in particular.

This is my first article for the Habra community, so please don't kick too much :)

Introduction

In our time of “popcorn” cinema and no less primitive video games, when the graphic component almost completely replaces the stereotyped plot, rarely does a person think about trying something else, something that will allow him to spend time with interest. Some, who have not yet forgotten what books are, return to them, and some discover the world of interactive literature, in which everyone can try themselves both as the main character and as the creator of their own book. own world. All you have to do is use your imagination...

So, what is "interactive literature" or, in the English version, "Interactive Fiction"? In the broadest sense of the term, this is any kind of fiction that is distinguished by a non-linear development of the plot, according to the actions of the reader (in the computer version, the user). From interactive literature (IL) in Russia, Dmitry Braslavsky's book-games are known, who took the western series "Fighting Fantasy" as the basis for his books. But this article will consider exactly the computer version of interactive literature, most of which are the so-called text games, or "text quests", which have become widespread. The history of the development of text games began at a time when computers, without which life is now unthinkable, acquired keyboards and displays, and later a mouse. It is generally accepted that the first computer text-based game was "Adventure", or "Adventure", written in 1976 by two computer scientists from Stanford, Will Crowther and Don Woods. The game was text-only, controlled by simple text commands such as "verb noun" and consisted of wandering through a labyrinth of caves in search of treasures and magical artifacts. It was this game that played a colossal role in the development of a whole genre of computer games. In the summer of 1979, several students from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology created the Infocom company, which published about 30 games of this genre over the ten years of its history. It was this company that introduced the term "Interactive Fiction" into circulation and served as the basis for imitation of all subsequent developers of computer text games. The cover of the first Infocom game, Zork I, is used at the beginning of the article.
The further development of computer capabilities could not but affect the genre of interactive literature - graphics, musical accompaniment and a multi-window interface appeared in games, but the main driving force of the genre was and remains a literary text and, as a rule, a non-linear plot. An additional advantage of the games of this genre is their low requirements for system resources and cross-platform, that is, you can play them on the most antediluvian computers, and on handhelds or cell phones.

In the process of development of computer interactive literature, it turned out that text games were divided into games with text input, using the so-called "parser", and games that use menu controls. Due to the fact that people's thinking is different, it is more convenient and clearer for someone to manage input using the menu system, and for someone it is better to use a parser, so these two methods coexist quite comfortably with each other.

Interactive Literature in Russia

It is worth considering separately the development of IL in Russia. It so happened that text games gained popularity first in America, and then in Europe, mainly due to the fact that the text was in English. Simple grammar in English greatly simplified the parsing of the entered phrases by the program. But in Russia, for the Russian language, this was a difficult task, so games that control through the menu, sometimes also using a simplified parser (entering names, titles, numbers), have become widespread.

In the early to mid-90s in Russia, a home computer based on the Zilog Z80 processor - ZX Spectrum (mostly “compatible” with it) became available to the general consumer, using a regular home TV as an output device and allowing you to download programs and games using a cassette recorder. A lot of games written for Spectrum "a also came to Russia, and with them text games, which players also fell in love with because of the combination of fiction and the player's ability to influence the ongoing development of the plot, which is characteristic of these games. So in Russia, its own In the late 90s, with the development of the Internet, a platform in Russian appeared for creating text-based games with menu control, called OrcZero, which gave impetus to the further development of both platforms and games.

Platforms allow game authors to concentrate on writing the game itself, bypassing the creation of a game interface and standard libraries, that is, things that can be unified. Games of this genre, developed from scratch, without the use of platforms, as a rule, have many drawbacks. Established platforms, on the other hand, offer some kind of interface standard, also providing possible portability between different operating systems and hardware. Typically, a platform includes an "engine" for playing games, development tools, and documentation. An important component is the community of authors and players, thanks to which beginners can get help on various forums and chats. A little later than the release of OrcZero, another "menu" platform appears, with more features and convenience, called Universal RipSoft Quest (URQ). The peak of URQ's popularity falls on 2001 - 2004, during which time about one and a half hundred games were created for this platform (unfortunately, most of the games are of poor quality).

Quest Soft Player

In late 2001, another menu-driven platform was released called the Quest Soft Player (QSP). It differed from URQ in a more thoughtful "engine" and syntax of the language, having received fairly wide support from game authors.
There were dozens of QSP fansites, with the number of games quite large, but still smaller than for URQ. At one time, the “war” between the platforms took on the appearance of a sacred one, this was reflected not only on websites and forums, but even in games.
To put an end to it, in 2004 QSP was completely redesigned, gained cross-platform and received many improvements, after a while seriously pushing URQ. In addition to stand-alone games, QSP is used in the online project "Heroes of War and Money" (more than 1.2 million players), as a platform for in-game quests.

In this article, we will take a closer look at the Quest Soft Player, choosing which you will get all the advantages of "platform" games, namely ease of development, rich features for both beginners and more "advanced" authors, extensive accompanying documentation, cross-platform and a large community authors and players. There are many different games written for QSP.

This player is free and available for download on the official website (http://qsp.su), where you will also find a catalog with best games under this platform. For Windows users, it is advisable to download the so-called "Player Pack", which includes a player installer and some good toys. For those who use Linux, there is also a version, after downloading which you just need to unpack the archive - no installation is required. If desired, you can build QSP "manually" - the source code is available under the GPL v2 license. There are versions for Windows Mobile and PSP.

Launching games on QSP is very simple: after downloading the game archive from the site, unpack it into any folder, after which in the player select the menu item Quest → Load game and specify the game file from the archive. The player interface is intuitive and will not create any particular difficulty for you.

Among the development tools, we note 2 tools - the QGen editor and the TXT2GAM utility. QGen is designed specifically for writing QSP games. TXT2GAM is a console utility that allows you to develop games in any text editor.

And now some screenshots:

Game "You are a millionaire!":

Game World Consciousness. Level 13":

QGen game development environment:

Interactive literature competitions are regularly held in Russia, often with material rewards. So, in 2008, the annual QSP-Compo competition was organized, which had the largest prize fund in the history of Russian IL.

At present, computer interactive literature is actively developing, since there are enough opportunities to realize one's creativity; more and more quality and interesting games. The fact is that it is quite possible for one person to create an outstanding product, and thousands of fans will be able to evaluate the result. And in this text games are closely related to the genre of fiction. Everyone can try themselves in these games, not only as main character, but also as the creator of his own world, his universe, and no graphics can replace what our own imagination can give us.

Any help from your side is welcome, including development assistance.
With all questions and wishes, welcome to the forum (