I am thinking more and more that we/you should move this discussion to the new forum

Girl in the box: don''t worry, they are just jealous
Usually, you would get this kind of "hey! *that* is easy" reaction from coders because what you write is actually readable by any literate person, while their work is more cryptic, and thus it must be harder But I''ll assure you that most developers I know are quite illiterate ...

Anonymous poster : I had a debate once about the merit of telling a story First vs Third person in the context of RPG (that is, as a DM, would you make people play any other way than 1st person).
I still don''t know what''s best. I think for combat it is still interesting, as you tend to create more details (the player) when you are looking from outside, while being inside is more frenetic, intense, but you seem to have less power (see the opening sequence of Private Ryan, see any FPS fighting system vs a 3Rd person fighting system...)
As for 2nd person ... well, it doesn''t see to annoy players to be told what they are doing, as most of the time, if I do so, it''s because they would bother describing mundane task, and doing it for them allow me to add a note of lyrism in the description ... or sometimes, they wouldn''t know what to do, and I simply start them on the right track. People like to be helped, but not to obviously, give them choices...

2nd person for description though, is quite annoying. You see, you hear, blah blah blah. I dunno, it just sounds as too much. For actions, though, I don''t see an alternative.

Selkrank : maybe you are just like me who hate painting on something bigger than A4 paper. Oh my Fine Arts lecturers would always annoy me and force to use massive paper sheets, but in the end, I just love working on small scales. I guess it can happen for writing as well. I just don''t understand how you can dissolve and add fluff in a story so much that the story can be summarized in a few lines, but take up hundreds of pages ...
But I am quite happy with my texts, so far. I had never written something that long.

There ya go, moved to game writing at popular request, though I hate losing these threads.

About writing in games: You ask "1st person, 2nd or 3rd.". How about none?
"There''s a table in the center of the room, underneath the crystal chandelier. Several people are sitting around it, playing cards."

This is impossible for some situations:
"One of the people at the table hears the door opening, and turns around to face it ([you, me?] )"

Give me one more medicated peaceful moment.
~ (V)^|) |<é!t|-| ~
ERROR: Your beta-version of Life1.0 has expired. Please upgrade to the full version. All important social functions will be disabled from now on.

that''s third person, AFAIK.
he/she/it/they (in english )
The problem you describe is even worse/more visible in P&P RPG, as it is much more difficult for people to make the distinction between "I" the player and "he/she" the character. The advantage is much more descriptive dialogs between the DM and the players, but on the other hand, it''s a bit more confusing, jsut as you say.
"The bandit decides to slap the huge barbarian in front of him. Obviously, he must not be alone, but what will the barbarian do?"
"Who, me ?"
"uh,yeah, the barbarian, that would be you !"

mmm

damnit...i was looking for this thread. why didnt anybody tell me it moved to this forum!?!

anyways...i think that stories are only efective in certain types of games. who would want to see a story in a racing game? or what about a simcity, or a fighting game(well, lets wait to see how the bouncer turns out first)

as far as fps go, i mostly just see the story as a way of making different levels. this doesnt exactly go for the quakes, but for other fps like perfect dark, or duke nukem. the only reason for the little cutscene/story, is so the player now knows that they are going into outerspace, to play on the alien spaceship. this is story? not hardly. the developers just said to themselves..."hey...wouldnt it be cool if we did a level on an alien spaceship!" "that doesnt fit in with the rest of the game though!" "so what? we can just do a little cutscene/story sequence showing the character needs to go to the spaceship!"
i may be very wrong in this, but it is how i see many games being made. flame away.

rpgs are a different matter entirely though. without a good story, then the game falls flat(in my opinion). the same for adventure games. most of todays games stories are so cliched, so tried and true, that nothing new is coming to these games. of course there are many exceptions to this, but often, the gameplay is a let-down for these games. i mostly see one or the other - good story/bad gameplay - or - bad story/good gameplay. its just a toss-up between the developers.

now i am all for good stories. there is nothing better than a good story. but that''s not for everyone. i just dont think that we should start putting stories into games that dont need them. if the game stands up by itself, then the story just might get in the way. leave it out. "you cant please everyone all of the time."

-Luxury

Lux, till today I didn''t even know there was a forum to move it to!

A lot of people are making a lot of assumptions about how I want games to be made. It seems like you guys feel I want to put more story in games. Not true. Quake is fine with the quantity of story it has now, and so it Diablo. Any more might interfere with gamplay, and you guys know I think gameplay is pretty crucial.

I just want to have those 2 or 3 lines of story to be better written, is all. And we need a writer to do that properly...

>>About writing in games: You ask "1st person, 2nd or 3rd.". How about none?
"There''s a table in the center of the room, underneath the crystal chandelier. Several people are sitting around it, playing cards."<<

The example you give is third person. A literal definition of third person is, "A set of grammatical forms used in referring to a person or thing other than the speaker or the one spoken to." If you have a statement like the one above, where no specific speaker is identified, it is assumed that the speaker is an unknown "narrator" and that they are speaking in third person, because they are not referring to themselves or anything that happened to them. You being the author, most readers will assume you are the narrator.

I think what you are thinking of is what is called the omniscient narrator, who does not necessarily focus on just one character. The omniscient narrator knows everything and will tell the reader about different characters and follow more than one character around. You find this in Final Fantasy games.

There is also the subjective narrator, also called "subjective third person", who follows only one person so closely that it''s almost like being in first person -- you know what''s going on in their head and their heart, but have no clue what''s going on in the minds of other characters. This is like Monkey Island, where Guybrush is a third person character but tells the player what is on his mind. We don''t know, however, what is on the mind of any other character unless they say so. This is a little of a stretch, but I think it qualifies.

I''m glad to see you guys do, indeed, know what second person is. That''s the one that everyone forgets after they graduate from high school. :-) Now, about the spelling around here ... (kidding!!)

I think the ''no-person'' example would actually fit well with second person. As opposed to the endless ''you-see-such-and-such'' lines, you describe things in a neutral way, until you need to worry about the character''s thoughts / actions. Might keep all the ''you''-ing from getting too obnoxious.

In general, though, I think second person works best with present-tense narration, which in turn is the best way to involve the reader in an interactive scene. But it seems like a lot of game writing is actually pure dialogue, which would make it a moot point, wouldn''t it?

-Moth

I think the main problem is, how do you communicate with yourself? How do you capture thoughts?

You don''t think things like "I see a chair over there". You think "There''s a chair over there."
You don''t think "I see a person looking at me", you think "Why is that geezer eyeballing me?".
However, it''s intrusive, because these are probably NOT your thoughts! So unless you SEE the guy looking at you, and it doesn''t have to be verbally communicated, it''s always going to be a little awkward.


People might not remember what you said, or what you did, but they will always remember how you made them feel.
~ (V)^|) |<é!t|-| ~

My thoughts are like that.

I''ll say "You need to go to work."
"I don''t want to go."
"But you have to."
"Shut up."

and it goes on from there for a while

I do happen to agree with land fish. He made a good point when he made mention that there has NEVER been a game that has stood the test of time as ONE OF THE GREATEST games that everone aroudn the world knows of, whether they play or not.

God EVERYONE knows what STAR WARS was - a movie. Even if they havent seen it, they know of it. Perhaps the only game close to that level of fame was PONG. thats because it was really the first real game ever made on a pc....

I am a published author ( of fantasy fiction ), and I am also a programmer. I am currently turning the book i wrote into a game. its a dman good. It offers things that others don''t because BOOKS move DifferentlY than the same old boring movie or game story. Do you know how long the story was for doom??? it was only 3 pages long!!!!!! my novel is 330 pages long! I believe what landfish is saying is

THE GAME INDSUTRY NEEDS CONTENT, NOT MORE GRAPHICS CARDS/API

I agree.

Amen to LandFish.



to Code, or Not To Code