Hey there, I've been experimenting with how to write a script for a video game before actually starting any programming or production. I figured this would be helpful for heavily narrative games, such as an RPG or something like Half-Life. Coming from a filmmaking background, I like the idea of being able to map out exactly what's possible in a game, regardless of technical details like controls or graphics rendering and whatnot. The only problem is that while I personally like the example I managed to throw together at 3 AM last night, I don't know if it's as human-readable and effective as I think it is. In other words, I'd like to playtest my writing technique. I have the first, short level of a game which I envision as something action/adventure-y written down in this format. It's a short and (hopefully) quick read. If you (yes, YOU, [name of person reading this]!) could take a look and give me some feedback (i.e. do you get what's going on, and what would make you understand it even more, etc.), I'd really appreciate it. It's in this blog post (after a couple small paragraphs of intro): http://plankhead.com/blog/games/322 Thanks.

When I view your page, the background color and the small font were killing me, but after enlarging it a few times it reads fine.

How does Burke talk with no head?

The font size and background color made it unreadable? I spent what seemed like hours working on trying to make my stylesheet look good...I thought I increased the font size from the default. Odd...what browser are you using? And was the background not an almost-white purple?

And as for Burke's vocal ability...um...uh...well...he um...HE'S AMERICAN! Yeah! And real Americans don't NEED heads to talk! You don't want the TERRORISTS to win, do you? Oh, what's that? Blaming the terrorists is so last year? Ummm...Obama says he can talk. That's why. Yes we can let an eyeball man talk.

I'm glad those were the only two confusing things though. I was afraid it might be the branching dialogue...

I am using firefox, I right-clicked on your background image and saw that it was supposed white-violet gradient, but when I viewed your page, it was YELLOW-violet gradient. The font size of your script was smaller than the font size of your description above it. I think that the font size I saw (for your script) is 8 or 10, while the description size is 12.

Yeah, it's supposed to be a yellow background with a blue gradient attached to the bottom (the white is PNG transparency). But that's supposed to just be on the sides. The actual text is supposed to display on an off-white background in the center. That background takes about a half second to appear while the page loads, though, I've noticed. The font size is readable to me, but I guess if the light background doesn't appear for some reason, it might be a problem.

We should probably keep talking about this in someplace other than this thread though.