Author Archives: Thanvir Hussain

The Pursuit of Truth

Game Story:

Taking place approximately 300 years from now on the distant planet Neptune, one man named Simon discovers an alternate travel path on the spaceship. The only person access to the ship being his longtime friend and upon questioning him, he learns his friend is obviously withholding information. Simon who always follows everything by the law and always internalizes his curious thoughts about his whereabouts and where he originated from decides to be spontaneous for once and embarks on a journey to the place which he was told ceased to exist, Planet Earth. After landing on Planet Earth, he soon discovers he is just a slave working for the human race who depend on him and his kind (A.I.) to supply things such as food. He also finds out at the end of the story that he is living in a simulation and questions whether he has any free-will.

Log Line:

In a place where nothing is ever questioned…until one curious person leads the journey for the discovery of the real truth about the past.

 

Hobby Algorithm – NFL Fantasy League

Algorithm: NFL Fantasy League (Football)

Step 1: Gather a group of friends that watch the same sport (In this case, it’s NFL football). You can play with strangers but it’s more fun with friends for trash talking.

Step 2: Choose destination for your own league you will create (Yahoo Sports, ESPN etc.)

Step 3: Decide whether you want the league rules to be either head-to-head or standard points.

Head-to-Head is essentially playing a new team every week and depending on their result of their matchup, a Win, Loss or Draw is recorded.

Standard Points – Total accumulation of points determine the winner.

Step 4: Decide on a Scoring Option (Standard Points is fine for beginners)

Step 5:  Preparation for the Draft: Conduct research on players and team’s based on your knowledge watching the NFL game and determine the list of players you plan on to draft to play for your team.

Step 6: Draft the players that will be on your team for the season. It is typically preferred to draft in the following specific order to ensure a solid balanced team. Running Back, Quarterback, Tight End, Kicker & Defense.

Step 7: Watch the games for both in which your players perform to determine what types of defenses they will excel in to give you the best chance in winning the matchup.

Step 8: Watch players you didn’t draft so see if their performance exceeds a player on your team to allow pickups via free agency (Players who weren’t drafted).

Step 9: Assemble your final team that you believe would you give the highest amount of points to win the matchup.

Step 10: Look out for player injuries and bye-weeks which will lead you to want to pick players up or create the proposal of trades.

Step 11: Rinse and repeat with adjustments of the lineup until the NFL season is over and based on your record, you will be able to win the Fantasy League championships.

Albano Video Assignment

  1. In your own words, explain the difference between a parser interactive fiction game and a choose your path interactive fiction game.

The differences between the two types of interactive fiction games are their paths to the gameplay and storyline progression. The choose your path interactive based games provides choices for the player to choose by showing various options and based on the selection, the actions of the character will differ and also possibly causing a unique ending based on the selections the user has selected.

The parser interactive fiction game on the other hand uses the input of the user to progress throughout the game by typing ‘commands’ and doesn’t traditionally offer change of storylines and character options but simply just the option to make simple commands such as ‘open door’ as opposed to choose your adventure options such as ‘Kill Trevor’, ‘Kill Michael’ which would result in a different ending story.

  1. Name an example of a parser game.

One example of a parser game is Void Quest which uses the Unity game engine and can be found at the following URL. https://gamejolt.com/games/VoidQuest/257270

  1. Name an example of a choose your own path game.

One example of choose your own path game is 80 Days that is available to iOS users. The game centers around being an assistance of English gambler.

  1. Why does she say interactive fiction virtually died out in the mid-1990s?

The interactive fiction virtually died out due to Activision acquiring Infocom and many contributions for its death. One of the reasons was not using the in-house packaging plant which wouldn’t have doubled the cost from 45 cents to 90 cents. Another reason for their failure was to the demand of production of 8 game titles as opposed to the four games they were used to.

  1. Why does she say poetry is an important element of interactive fiction writing? What example does she use?

Heather Albano considers poetry to be an important element due to the importance of text that is relied on for the interactive fiction based games. She believes words can create the atmosphere and also increase curiosity in terms of questioning the text such as the “Ropes span between buildings like enormous spiderwebs blanketing the city” that can be found in the example she uses from the game “With Those We Love Alive’ by Porpentine”.

  1. Why does she say that ambiguity is not only unavoidable but also necessary?

Heather believes ambiguity is unavoidable because of the limited amount of graphics and text the interactive fiction games provide resulting in the developers omitting certain things from the game and leaving the imagination of the player to take over.

  1. What’s important about complicity?

Complicity is important as it provides players to be accountable and in charge of the player’s action and allowing changing of the character’s actions based on the player.