Caltrops - Gamerasutra - Re: Storytron

Forum Overview :: Gamerasutra

by Bananadine 03/31/2008, 9:26am PDT

Don't you push me, I'm gonna make something with this too! I SWEAR TO GOD, DON'T YOU PUSH ME

Unless the storyworld engine still isn't out yet. They've been letting you make storyworlds for maybe a year, but I don't know whether the engine is actually available. I guess I have to check now. :(

Ice Cream Jonsey wrote:

Crawford is completely insane and will never, ever produce sellable content with his systems.

He's been saying they're gonna finally release the thing for real for like months. I share your skepticism about the likelihood that it will actually make much money, but it still seems pretty interesting to me. Storytron appears to let you put some real subtlety into characters, while constricting the user's interaction with them to a (potentially) very friendly point-and-click interface that only opens to you the degrees of freedom that matter, as opposed to letting you type any goddamned thing, which is anathema to an old Nintendo fan like me (even though I'm making a text adventure anyway for some reason). Inform 7 seems to be more focused on puzzles, which I can already find in games with friendlier interfaces, and reading, which I would rather do with books. Well now there's a shallow analysis! I don't really know much about these things. It would be nice if one of those Storytron people would publish an actual storyworld finally, so that one could find out whether Chris Crawford has actually forged the mighty weapon that will vanquish Roger Ebert as he claims (albeit not in quite those words).

Also I am totally ignoring whatever other interactive storytelling engines there are out there, due to the lack of the mad inventor element that Crawford provides (he makes for an interesting story himself, if nothing else). And because I haven't heard of any decent stories coming out of them either.