I thought about this last year, as I toy with writing IF a lot, mostly in Inform. I still think it would be an interesting idea but I'm not sure I would use the standard text adventure format, just because it makes it very hard to get the word count; you're having to think all the time about the relationship between all of your descriptions and the objects that they represent, and code them too. Unless it's a very boring piece of IF.
One thing I *might* suggest, though, is a more choose-your-own-adventure style of IF, along the lines of Japanese "dating sim" style RPGs - I did some research on the systems for those recently. Technically known as "visual novels". There is a package called Ren'Py (http://www.renpy.org/wiki/renpy/Home_Page) which is very straightforward to write in, and while it assumes you'll want to have graphics involved, you don't have to.
I think this would make it a lot easier to get the word count down as you can effectively write a standard novel and put a bit of plot branching in it. Some people write "kinetic novels" in the format which aren't interactive at all.
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2009-10-22 08:05 pm (UTC)One thing I *might* suggest, though, is a more choose-your-own-adventure style of IF, along the lines of Japanese "dating sim" style RPGs - I did some research on the systems for those recently. Technically known as "visual novels". There is a package called Ren'Py (http://www.renpy.org/wiki/renpy/Home_Page) which is very straightforward to write in, and while it assumes you'll want to have graphics involved, you don't have to.
I think this would make it a lot easier to get the word count down as you can effectively write a standard novel and put a bit of plot branching in it. Some people write "kinetic novels" in the format which aren't interactive at all.