To be quite honest, my physical and mental health has deteriorated to the point where what remaining energy I have, I prefer to invest in the game proper and into coding. I still have a lot to say and, indeed, a backlog of text ready for editing and publishing; I just don’t think there is much of a point in doing so.

The primary reason is quite simple: no one reads this site anyway. I have access to the statistics and can see what’s happening here. It doesn’t matter what I post here if no one sees it. In fact, even this explanation will go unseen and meaningless.

Partially, the posts here were also made to address the issue of my mortality so people would have something to work off even without me. But in case something were to happen, people involved in the project will have access to my personal notes, which have all of those things unsaid here.

On top of that, the reception (or feedback) to anything I had to say here… and I’ve gotten very little of that… has been unilaterally negative and dismissive. Let’s say it did little to encourage me to keep going.

Maybe, if things change, I’ll return to posting here. But right now, I think this is it.

Note: I am aware that the game’s developers are trying to fix some of the issues I’ve described in this article or, at the very least, alleviate them to some degree. Hopefully, this means the game will improve with time, but we’ll see.

(Please note that I’ll only use press kit images here.)

So, a bit of context on the game. In essence, this is Cultist Simulator 2, but it does a lot to try and address a lot of the issues with the previous game. It’s not exactly like CS, but it’s also very much not unlike CS and that goes both for the strengths and the issues present in both games. It also takes place in the same setting, which at some point gained the moniker of “Secret Histories” and is, technically speaking, the third game in set therein. However, The Lady Afterwards is not a computer game, and it’s honestly more of an interactive art collection.

1) Librarian Simulator

So, what even is Book of Hours?

That is a difficult question to answer concisely, but I’ll try to, at the very least, try to answer it coherently. And the first thing we should establish is that it’s a life simulator game, although one making heavy use of abstract, symbolic, allegorical, and referential elements for its presentation. While there is a lot of explicitly stated material you will interact with, you will have to fill in some of the blanks to make total narrative sense of what you are doing. And I think that’s fine. The game presents a strong enough case through its presentation and tone that I’ve not had any issues doing so.

It’s also a role-playing game, both in the sense of having those so-called “RPG elements” (an inventory, character attributes, skills, character progression mechanics), even if they don’t look like you usually expect them to look. But more importantly, it’s a true RPG in the sense of how you use those mechanics to express a character you have in mind.

It is also a card game, but not in the sense you expect those to play when you hear that term. Book of Hours is what we call a tableau game. Unlike most card games you might be familiar with, here you do not focus on decks, drawing cards from decks or playing them from your hand to some central play area. Instead, the cards, laid out before you, are your play area; they are presented there to you face up, and you manipulate them to play the game.

And that play comes down to resource management. You manage your cards, your workstations (that is to say, places where you can put those resources to work), your time (as the game does play out in real-time, though you can pause at will), and items in the world (which are not unlike cards, but you cannot carry them with you quite as easily). Your goal is to be the keeper of the Hush House library and maybe a bit more, but I don’t want to get too deep into spoilers.

And finally, it’s not a punishing game, as it tells you. And this is absolutely true, but it is also the most significant difference between Book of Hours and Cultist Simulator. While the latter is a difficult, obtuse mess of a game, this one is merely obtuse and a bit of a mess (I would say palpably less so, yes).

2) What’s so great about it?

(I realise what you see here might be confusing, but let me assure you there is indeed a cat and it purrs.)

Secret History games and their predecessors, the Fallen London games (if you are not familiar with those, you like what I’m talking about, but my criticism is putting you off, try those; they are… more manageable due to a more conservative approach to the interface), have one huge, massive and very important thing going out for them:

THE ATMOSPHERE

Taken from a mechanical perspective, the games are not particularly complex, nor deep, nor engaging. They are complicated, yes, which without a redeeming feature would make them even worse, but how you play them very likely isn’t the reason why you’d want to.

The appeal of these games are the pictures they paint in your mind. And those pictures are delightful. Book of Hours is an absolute delight to the senses. The way it looks and sounds compliments the text, and the writing itself is very pleasing. It captures this essence of Librarianhood and taps into the Secret Histories setting’s occult lore to give it just that little bit of extra spice. You could very much remove the occult from this game, and you’d still have an excellent librarian simulator, but you’d also get a lesser game than what it currently is.

I will also compliment the interface in regard to the tactile feeling of performing actions in game, which is hard to capture with such an abstract interface. Still, the various ambient noises of locations combine with the sounds made by items as you manipulate them and altogether blend with the rest of the game seamlessly. My favourite is the little kitty that makes little mrps and purrs as you manipulate it, which will no doubt surprise no one who happens to know me.

Thus, hiring some assistance to help restore the library, talking with them about the weather, serving them some tea or wine and then talking some more before committing them to work. At the same time, you pick up an occult text and try to unearth its secrets, and it all comes very naturally. Even if what you do in the game might be just a hazy representation of those events, it feels good to do it.

3) So why not recommend it?

(Behold, the Wisdoms view, the bane of your existence if you choose to play this game.)

Well, apart from the niche appeal the game possesses in its own right, it’s… rough around the edges. Cultist Simulator was worse, but while Book of Hours fixes those issues, it creates new problems as it goes along.

Now, you might think that what I’m swinging at is how obtuse the games are. I don’t think that their obtuse nature is a problem, as much as it is an actual draw, as it very much aligns with real occult research. Both games contain everything you need to figure out what you’re supposed to do and how… It’s just that as you continue to play, the interface falls apart around you under the deluge of more and more stuff you can interact with, a huge part of which goes directly into your tableau.

Cultist Simulator and Book of Hours have the same fundamental issue: they lack an efficient way to look for what you need at a given moment. Sure, with enough time, you will find those things, as you can just pause both games and take your time. You can also try to help yourself by taking notes and self-organising the spaces in the game. You are a librarian, organising the books is your job, that’s fine.

But let me just tell you about upgrading Soul cards because that’s when I really started wanting to stop playing. The first problem comes from the Wisdom panel. It took me almost two hours to upgrade five cards, not because I didn’t know what I was doing, but because every time I tried to upgrade a card, it triggered a long, drawn-out process of sorting my skill cards, to find one I can potentially use for the upgrade. Much of this is because it’s tough to tell what a skill is by looking at its card (it’s just abstract artwork and a title). When you mouse over it, things get quickly explained by the Aspects, but you need to do it one card at a time, and you might have… a few dozen of them. And there’s just no way to search cards by Aspect in any reasonable way. You can mouse over an Aspect (they are the attributes that describe things, those little square pictures/glyphs; for example, Terrance the Chicken might be Scale 3, Sky 1, Beast, Comfort, Co-operative; that might not tell you much right now, but as you play the game it quickly starts making sense) but that means you need to find something with that Aspect and then mouse over the icon. Some Aspects are scarce, and some things (like upgrading Soul) require multiple inputs, each of which has specific requirements defined by several Aspects.

There are more, numerous in fact, QoL issues with the interface, and it is by far the weakest part of the game. It looks great, but it actually actively gets in the way of playing the game.

But that’s how Weather Factory games are; possibly, maybe, hopefully we’ll get some mod that can fix some of this.

Another point of criticism I’d like to levy against the game is the randomisation. While it seems that you will be able to finish the game regardless of how the random elements play out (the layout of the books in the library primarily), you can have better or worse starts. With a good start, you can do a lot, often at once, and keep a pace for progressing through the game. With a bad start, everything becomes slow and tedious. And to an extent, I’d much prefer to go out in a blaze of glory due to my mistakes (Cultist Simulator) than to just keep getting suffocated by the game’s unwillingness to throw me a bone.

Now, this section is a little bit longer, but I hope that explains the issues. They are not fundamental problems with the game’s design but rather with the implementation of the interface.

And to sum up, ultimately, those problems aren’t even the reason why I’d not recommend this game. It’s just more so that the game is not for everyone, and it’s really something you should look at individually and subjectively, and decide.

]]> https://esotericgame.wordpress.com/2023/10/13/impressions-book-of-hours/feed/ 0 2325 esotericdev BoH-centred-1000 19 1 2 5 3 https://esotericgame.wordpress.com/2023/10/13/so-you-want-to-be-a-video-game-writer/ https://esotericgame.wordpress.com/2023/10/13/so-you-want-to-be-a-video-game-writer/#respond Fri, 13 Oct 2023 16:29:05 +0000 http://esotericgame.wordpress.com/?p=2319 Realistically, you don’t need any qualifications. Really, from how we’ve seen the industry shape up, if you can put “I tweet 28 times a day” on your resume, you are already overqualified for the position. But let’s assume you want to actually contribute to something more… artisanal, shall we say? Well, here are some things you might want to consider.

So video games are rather special. For how much some people want them to be like movies, they are actually very, very different, especially when you start including player input into your game. It doesn’t need to be a lot; even just a few mostly “meaningless” choices can impact the player’s experience. And the more you work with the unique aspects of the video game medium, the more the way you write might need to deviate from conventional (a.k.a. linear) writing.

So, what do you need to keep in mind if you want to stretch the boundaries of what a video game can do narratively and through writing?

1) You and the players

While maybe not the most pressing matter when writing a game, after all, the player is removed from the process until much later, it might still be best to consider your relationship with the player first.

The modern approach to this issue is that the player is beneath you and mostly a kind of hindrance to your great work. This is just about the worst stance to take on the matter. As a writer, what you are, at the core, is an entertainer, providing entertainment to your audience. As a video game writer, you can do so in a much more involved way by striking up a conversation with your player.

When considering the player, there are really just a few things to take into account to make sure most everyone is satisfied with the experience. Of course, much of it comes down to providing a compelling narrative in the traditional sense, but you might need to present the player with choices at some point.

Choices do not need to lead in vastly divergent directions. More often than not, a narrative choice will just end up being swept under the rug to keep the scope of a game within meaningful bounds. Such a case doesn’t need to be wasted, though. It’s still possible to offer the player something expressive to choose. Something that would let them define how their character feels or what they think. What’s important is to offer a few compelling (at least 2) alternatives. Video games with non-linear writing usually count as at least some kind of vestigial role-playing game, and such choices might play into the role your player wants to portray or, alternatively, how they want to portray it.

The player is not the character; they are much more like an actor portraying a specific role within a play. And much as an actor, they can add their own spin on it within the bounds of the script.

Finally, any narratively polarising choice can often do with an additional neutral option. Something non-commital that lets the player manoeuvre around situations where none of the choices sit well with them.

Of course, sometimes the game might call for something more significant, but due to game design limitations, there will always be only a limited number of meaningful forks in an interactive narrative. Sometimes none at all. But, taking into account what I’ve written above, that doesn’t preclude presenting choices that are subjectively meaningful to the player.

2) You and the programmers

Another important group of people are the programmers you will work with. Writers often don’t think of themselves as technically competent. But the requirements video game writing might present are not that steep either.

In most cases, a writer needs to understand what they can and cannot do with their non-linear writing. I’ll have another article about this specific topic up at a different time, so let’s just focus on the gist of the issue for the moment.

When the player can resolve various situations in different ways and tackle parts of the game in a freeform order, a need arises for the game to respond to these differences. Thus, when writing, it might be necessary to check what the game knows about what has happened, either overall or just recently, and work that into the flow of the story. Otherwise, the story might become incoherent. Even if you write each of the parts well in their own right, it might be that the way they come together, through the player’s choices, doesn’t add up.

Sometimes, it’s necessary to take a step back, look at everything that is (or might be) happening, and adjust accordingly. Not only will that make the narrative stronger, but it’s also much appreciated by many players.

The mistake many writers make is to assume this means they need to learn to code. But in reality, it just requires some agreed-upon way of expressing when something you write might happen. This works both on the scale of whole scenes within the game or even specific words used in dialogue. Such qualifiers can usually be expressed using natural language. For example, “If [it’s raining], then [the character should be holding an umbrella” is as formal as things need to be expressed. It can be formally seen as an implication, with an antecedent representing the condition and the consequent describing the outcome of the condition being true.

This is elementary formal logic, a topic I’ve written about before.

There’s a bit more to it, but I’ll cover that in more detail on a different day.

Thus, video game writing requires a little bit more consideration than traditional writing (for whatever medium). Narratives always have moving parts, but with conventional writing, we can always puzzle out where they go and how, and that never changes. Video games differ because they have unknown variables, both in the strictly technical sense (i.e. the variables in the programming behind the game) and in the form of the biggest unknown of them all: the player.

The role of a video game writer, performing their craft for a narratively non-linear game, is as much the writing itself as managing those variables. And it is the point of failure for many people, including those who otherwise can be even great writers. It’s a different situation that requires a different set of skills. But, at the same time, with a bit of effort and learning, it’s very much manageable, and the audience will most definitely feel the difference.

]]> https://esotericgame.wordpress.com/2023/10/13/so-you-want-to-be-a-video-game-writer/feed/ 0 2319 esotericdev https://esotericgame.wordpress.com/2023/10/03/lore-manhede/ https://esotericgame.wordpress.com/2023/10/03/lore-manhede/#respond Tue, 03 Oct 2023 13:35:49 +0000 http://esotericgame.wordpress.com/?p=2312 Disclaimer: The following document fragment is presented from an in-character perspective, it should not be taken as the truth of the setting.

Context: It would, at least superficially, seem to follow that mages, understanding so much more about the nature of reality, the mind and the “soul” would have some greater understanding of the fundamental nature of the “I”. Yet, they have pierced one veil only to find their vision clouded by a wider breadth of solipsism. And it doesn’t seem as if humans are the only ones.

The substance of the body.
The substance of the soul.
Search as you may.
You will not find the essence of man in either.
~ Cicero the Thrice-dead, 3rd century AD

To some, this is heaven, and they are right.
To some, this is hell, and they are right.
To some, this is a man, and they are right too.
~ Unknown, 13th century AD, speculative

As our knowledge of the world grew, we assumed that the very nature of man would reveal itself to us in time. We were wrong. Indeed, our continual studies showed a shocking unknowability of the human condition.

The body is not a puppet to the soul; instead, both kneel to some separate will. Or so we believe that there is a component of the human condition still hidden from us. But, where could this element, this true or hidden soul, reside? It seems dubious for it to simply dwell somewhere within the supernal realm of dreams where we cannot reach. Does it then suggest a higher supernal domain still, one that exists elsewhere entirely? But is that not multiplying existence beyond need? Once humanity believed in a multitude of physical and metaphysical realities, yet now we know them to be two. Then does this too possibly contain a simple explanation?

We do not know.

The nature of manhede lies firmly beyond our grasp and perhaps in a way where speculation may do more harm than good. We do not even yet know the right questions to ask, and even less so, to give answers to them.

But we are not the first to ask, regardless, about the nature of the human condition and manhede.

The philosopher-mage Cicero, the Thrice-dead, wrote in his conversations with Alba of the Elder God Anthropos. To him, humanity was, but a force of nature manifested from this God, no different than how any other phenomenon is the flesh of the Elder Gods manifest to us in the awoken, physical realm. Thus as Cicero saw it, manhede was but an illusion, not a choice driven by our will, but a predetermined outcome, the nature of the human condition no different than it is for a rock to fall when cast into the sky.

But this, too, while considered insightful, does not seem accurate. And we find this in the words of our great brethren in the Cosmos. Asked about the nature of its existence, the great being It That Peers From Behind The Veil gives an enigmatic answer:

I am the lynchpin driven from the Cosmos down into the Dream; I am, therefore, I am.

The great beings oft repeat this notion. And It That Peers (if I may allow myself to shorten the name of That Which Dwells Beyond The Veil) in particular calls back to it many times, in confusion, when questioned about the nature of its hede. It echoes that of the Living Beings:

Ehyeh asher ehyeh.

Perhaps that is the truest answer possible to give. The answer that we simply are.

So, let’s start with getting things ready. We’ll need to make some changes in the game’s configuration to enter, let’s call it, “creator mode”. In the main menu, go to Options, then Configure Game, and scroll down to the bottom of the page. There are two options there you need to set. Developer Mode needs to be set to Enabled, and Cache Mode needs to be set to Disabled. Note that the second of these two options has a negative impact on game performance; if you want to just play around with what’s in the game, it might be better to revert those options. After accepting these changes, you will note that new entries are available in Options. Press the Run Console button, where we’ll be testing our modular writing.

1) The console

Here, we’re looking at a way to tell the game engine to run code and observe the results. Don’t worry; we won’t be doing programming; what we’re doing here is classified as a formal grammar.

Let’s try something straightforward to begin with: type or paste (copy and then press the Paste button) this line into the input, then press Submit:

p: Hello, Reader!

The command stands for print, and it will print anything after the colon while resolving so-called non-terminal symbols. In the previous article, we discussed how a modular writing system has to have some way of inserting said writing into the game. For this system, these non-terminals are one of the ways of telling the engine to pull and insert something from a file. We’ll be discussing the details of this shortly, but for the moment, let’s start with a demonstration.

p: [^data\phrase\hello$all$no-resolve,hello,casual,friendly,dont-finalize], Reader!

This line tells the system to use the file data\phrase\hello as a source (this file is inside of data.zip; you don’t need to take it out of there, nor do you need to put your own files inside of data.zip), and we want a line from it that possesses all of the following tags: no-resolve, hello, casual, friendly and dont-finalize. The exact way this works is out of the scope of this lesson, as this is a non-trivial source, but it does match with what we’ll be doing; we’ll just be a bit more direct about it. As a concept, however, calling back to the previous article, I did mention we will need to tag our content; this is one side of what I meant. We’ll look at the other side when making our own source file.

B.t.w. we can generate a few such lines all at once like this:

loopn 10: p: [^data\phrase\hello$all$no-resolve,hello,casual,friendly,dont-finalize], Reader!<br><br>

This means repeating the following command 10 times, and the <br> at the end is the HTML way of saying “go to the next line”.

2) A source file

Let’s go to the folder where we have our engine executable, that is to say, where you have the Esoteric.exe file you use to run the game. I’m going to guess that you have your file extensions hidden, and as such, the file appears as just Esoteric. That’s fine; it doesn’t bother us in any way. We want to create a text file here called apple.txt, but again, with hidden file extensions, this will just be a text file called apple.

Now, open that file in Notepad. I personally use Notepad++, but the standard one provided with Windows is fine.

Let’s add two lines to it:

eat;You eat the apple.
crush;You crush the apple in your fist!

We now have two lines here, examples of modular writing on the level of sentences. Each of the sentences is given one tag. For the first, that’s eat; for the second, that’s crush. The semicolon then divides the tags from the content. It’s best to not have any spaces before or after the semicolon, but it is possible to put one after it. We just don’t.

Now that we have some content in our source (pssst, remember to save the file, or else the engine can’t read it), we can call to it, much in the same way we did with the hello file before.

loopn 10: p: [apple.txt$all$eat]<br><br>

We’ll be using this line for testing a lot! So when I say we want to run our test, I mean running this line in the console.

As we run this test, we see that the line tagged with eat is pulled from our source and inserted here. But it’s rather pointless, considering there’s just one option. So, let’s diversify our writing a little bit, let’s change the content of the file to this:

eat;You eat the apple.
eat;You consume the apple.
eat;You devour the apple.
eat;The apple disappears down your applehole.
crush;You crush the apple in your fist!

And let’s rerun the test. Now, the output changes to pull one of those four options randomly, or so it seems. It’s not that simple, but for the moment, we don’t need to worry about anything more.

3) Building a paragraph

Now that we have a working source file let’s do something bigger. Let’s construct a whole paragraph describing taking a bite of the apple. For the moment, the structure will be simple: we pick up the apple, bite it, and put it back down, three sentences forming a short paragraph of writing together. Oh, also, we’ll be removing the crush line. We don’t need it, and removing it means I need to copy less code here:

eat;[apple.txt$all$pick-up]
pick-up;There is an appealing-looking, crimson apple on the table; you pick it up. [apple.txt$all$bite]
bite;You raise the apple up to your lips and sink your teeth into the slightly waxy surface, the juicy flesh underneath spraying flavourful liquids into your mouth. [apple.txt$all$put-down]
put-down;You return the teeth-marked apple to the table.

I would highly suggest that you try to write your own sentences as an exercise.

The approach we’re using here is called a regular construction. That means that once we run our entry point (tagged with eat), each sentence will insert the following one. This could also be done differently, like so:

eat;[apple.txt$all$pick-up] [apple.txt$all$bite] [apple.txt$all$put-down]
pick-up;There is an appealing-looking, crimson apple on the table; you pick it up.
bite;You raise the apple up to your lips and sink your teeth into the slightly waxy surface, the juicy flesh underneath spraying flavourful liquids into your mouth.
put-down;You return the teeth-marked apple to the table.

Currently, there is no difference in the content generated by both approaches. However, we’ll see where it matters as we go further into this tutorial. Overall, it is my firm opinion that a regular construction is the superior way of building paragraphs out of sentences; as such, we’ll just continue on with the first version. What we need is a bit of variety, so let’s make three variant sentences per each tag:

eat;[apple.txt$all$pick-up]
pick-up;There is an appealing-looking, crimson apple on the table; you pick it up. [apple.txt$all$bite]
pick-up;A scrumptious red apple sits on the table nearby; you snatch it daftly. [apple.txt$all$bite]
pick-up;Upon the nearby table sits an appetising red apple. You reach out and pick it up. [apple.txt$all$bite]
bite;You raise the apple up to your lips and sink your teeth into the slightly waxy surface, the juicy flesh underneath spraying flavourful liquids into your mouth. [apple.txt$all$put-down]
bite;As your teeth dig into the fruit’s waxy skin and juicy flesh, the rich, tart flavour coats your tongue. [apple.txt$all$put-down]
bite;Your lips close around the fruit as your teeth tear out a chunk of the flesh, cutting into the skin. The apple sprays its juices into your mouth, filling it with flavour. [apple.txt$all$put-down]
put-down;You return the teeth-marked apple to the table.
put-down;The apple returns to its perch on the table, now with a chunk taken out of the side.
put-down;Having a nice bit, you put the apple back on the table.

Do note that while these are “sentences” in the modular writing sense, in terms of literal writing, we can divide them up into smaller sentences if we want to.

Now, if we run our test, we get a variety of different outputs. There are 27 unique combinations for these 9 lines. That might not be enough for an often repeating segment of text, but it serves for our presentation here.

This is a modular paragraph at its most basic, so let’s still work on it a little bit more.

4) Adding subrandomisations

One thing we can do is add some subrandomisations. What do I mean by that? Well, let’s just do this for the lines tagged as pick-up. We can identify that a few synonymous constructions are being used there. The apple can be either red or crimson; it can be described as scrumptious, appealing-looking, or appetising. And it can be either picked up or snatched from the table. Let’s make it so that all lines can use those alternatives. To do so, I’ll employ a simple in-line non-terminal.

p: [?First alternative|Second alternative|Third alternative]

If you run this line in the console, you will note that it always resolves to one of the texts divided up with the bar symbols (|). We can use this in our texts (note that I’m only showing the altered lines here):

pick-up;There is [?an appealing-looking|a scrumptious|an appetising], [?crimson|red] apple on the table; you [?pick it up|snatch it]. [apple.txt$all$bite]
pick-up;[?An appealing-looking|A scrumptious|An appetising] [?crimson|red] apple sits on the table nearby; you [?pick it up|snatch it] daftly. [apple.txt$all$bite]
pick-up;Upon the nearby table sits [?an appealing-looking|a scrumptious|an appetising] [?crimson|red] apple. You reach out and [?pick it up|snatch it]. [apple.txt$all$bite]

If you rerun the test, you’ll note the non-terminals resolve in such a way that our synonyms are used by all lines.

5) You… you… you

One rather unfortunate effect of the English syntax is how often it’s possible to repeatedly start a sentence with a pronoun. Generally, this leads to rather monotonous and uninteresting writing, though sometimes it is quite unavoidable. Still, we can do something about it here.

For our bite and put-down lines, let’s mark the ones that start with “You” or “Your” with an additional tag ~previous-you. This tag signifies that the previous sentence started with you; the tilde indicates that we don’t want this tag. Next, when we call the following sentence in our pick-up and bite lines, we’ll pass previous-you to our non-terminal if that line starts with “You”:

eat;[apple.txt$all$pick-up]
pick-up;There is [?an appealing-looking|a scrumptious|an appetising], [?crimson|red] apple on the table; you [?pick it up|snatch it]. [apple.txt$all$bite]
pick-up;[?An appealing-looking|A scrumptious|An appetising] [?crimson|red] apple sits on the table nearby; you [?pick it up|snatch it] daftly. [apple.txt$all$bite]
pick-up;Upon the nearby table sits [?an appealing-looking|a scrumptious|an appetising] [?crimson|red] apple. You reach out and [?pick it up|snatch it]. [apple.txt$all$bite,previous-you]
bite,~previous-you;You raise the apple up to your lips and sink your teeth into the slightly waxy surface, the juicy flesh underneath spraying flavourful liquids into your mouth. [apple.txt$all$put-down, previous-you]
bite;As your teeth dig into the fruit’s waxy skin and juicy flesh, the rich, tart flavour coats your tongue. [apple.txt$all$put-down]
bite,~previous-you;Your lips close around the fruit as your teeth tear out a chunk of the flesh, cutting into the skin. The apple sprays its juices into your mouth, filling it with flavour. [apple.txt$all$put-down,previous-you]
put-down,~previous-you;You return the teeth-marked apple to the table.
put-down;The apple returns to its perch on the table, now with a chunk taken out of the side.
put-down;Having a nice bit, you put the apple back on the table.

While this reduces the number of possible generations, it does make the remaining ones a bit more elegant. Modular writing often requires a degree of finagling the balance between the breadth of what can be generated and the quality of the generation.

Interestingly, if you did what I asked initially and wrote your own content, we could now combine our files to vastly increase the number of outcomes that can possibly be generated.

We can still improve this, but I’d like to leave that to the third part of this tutorial. This one is lengthy already. We can then talk a little bit about alternative constructions and modular writing that takes different paths.

Now for your “homework”, why not pick a writing prompt (like, let’s say, “sniff a rose”) and write your own modular description of the action?

]]> https://esotericgame.wordpress.com/2023/08/29/mechanics-modular-writing-part-ii-a-practical-lesson/feed/ 0 2302 esotericdev mw001 mw002 mw003 mw004 mw005 mw006 mw007 https://esotericgame.wordpress.com/2023/08/29/mechanics-modular-writing-part-i-the-concept/ https://esotericgame.wordpress.com/2023/08/29/mechanics-modular-writing-part-i-the-concept/#respond Tue, 29 Aug 2023 08:32:16 +0000 http://esotericgame.wordpress.com/?p=2290 Alright, so here’s something we’ve not done in a bit. I’ll try to write a tutorial on something. This will be a three-part tutorial; the first part will go over the basics of modular writing and the specific context the next two parts will follow.

So, let’s start with the question of what even is modular writing.

Simply put, it’s the process of writing and tagging (adding descriptive attributes) the script to be used by a system (like a video game) that will select the written text and insert it into a broader context based on those tags. Likewise, it will involve the tagging of situations where the system should draw from some specific pool of modules and insert it in the marked spot.

Video games are not the only place where modular writing is used, but it’s the perspective through which we’ll discuss it. You might also note that my description of this tagging process is rather vague. And that’s because that strongly depends on what we’re doing. So, let’s review a few examples of modular writing used in video games and consider what tags should be used for that text.

1) Examples of modular writing

So, let’s imagine a role-playing game. This game has non-player characters, as they often do, and these characters can sometimes perform something called ambient chatter. That is to say, they will speak a phrase at random or provoked by some trigger. Modular writing, in this case, relies on providing a pool of options for the characters to say and marking which is appropriate for what character. So you might have one that works only if the character is a dwarf, another that doesn’t work if it’s an elf, and then the following only makes sense when said while it’s raining, but some might be even more specific and can only be said by a man during a thunderstorm in the 4th act of the story. It’s purely up to the game’s structure, what tags make sense and how they are applied.

Something bigger might involve writing a series of random events the player may encounter. This involves more than just writing the events on their own, which might also cross over into interactive writing (i.e., commonly involving a conversation tree or forest). Still, at the core, we start by defining where and how the random event might be triggered; oh, this one happens on a road because it involves a travelling merchant, this one might happen in any wilderness location, and then that one can happen only at night, etc. However, as we go down to interactive writing, it might also be the case that the event’s context affects how it has to be presented for it to make sense.

Let’s imagine we have that travelling merchant. Let’s say he expresses worry about bandits operating in the area, but then it may be the case that the player character has already murderhobo’d the local bandits, and as such, create a case where we can adjust the event based on the state of the world. Were this event to trigger when the bandits were still terrorising the local countryside, the merchant may express worry about the exact situation. However, if the bandits were already dealt with, the merchant might instead refer to the problem as having gotten better but preferring to still be careful as he travels through the land. (Note also, that this is an excellent way to acknowledge that the player has an effect on the world without needing to actually do/change anything.) This is also a case of modular writing, as the different lines within the module must also be correctly tagged for the system (or the data entry person) to recognise what should be done to trigger the correct one. Modular and interactive writing go hand in hand when more refined interactive writing is applied.

2) Module scale

Based on the above examples, we can see different scales on which modular writing can operate. The biggest modules are the events, but then we can wonder how low it can go. Personally, I’d divide the scales as such:

a) Events: Like the example with the merchant, this is a whole, possibly complex interaction. We have a character show up, and we can interact with them, possibly in different ways. Maybe there are a few hooks to use game mechanics for various benefits (barter for items, pickpocket the merchant, kill him, help him get to the nearest in, and so on). An event would be compromised of multiple, interactively connected paragraphs.

b) Paragraphs: Bigger segments of text, though not necessarily actually a paragraph. It’s more about a certain threshold, where it forms a complete unit. Modular writing at this scale might involve those ambient character lines from the first example. Things we just need to insert into an appropriate place. There’s no interactivity.

c) Sentences: A paragraph (like the one mentioned above) might be composed of one or more sentences, each of which might be handled from modular writing. In this case, we can swap out parts of the bigger text (like the case from the example, with the merchant referencing the bandits) and substitute it either to match some conditions or purely to make something repetitive more diverse.

d) Words: Likewise, a sentence might be seen as composed of words, some of which might be swapped out through this same process of modular writing. This is a case I’ve not discussed above, but this happens when you make a character, and the game can reference that, most commonly by swapping out pronouns. Variable pronouns are in the (vast) majority referenced when a writer marks a spot for a pronoun to be inserted into. Of course, it can also be other things, like character names, to give another common example.

The game we make makes use of modular writing across all four of these categories, but most often around the level of sentences, as our systems commonly assemble the visible text sentence by sentence, sometimes going deeper to play around with the words.

3) Modular writing quality

It should be noted that proficient modular writers are rare. Part of this is the low demand for in-depth modular writing; part, though, can be (from my experience) attributed to people not being willing to step out of their comfort zone and try something new. To paraphrase something I’ve heard once, “I’m a writer, not a programmer”. Because I guess only programmers are capable of creating non-linear content or something like that. This is, of course, nonsense, but there is indeed a palpable lack of resources for modular writing. So, let’s consider what constitutes good writing in this style.

a) Fit for purpose: I would say that, to begin with, modular writing should be fit for purpose. Whatever slot the module might be inserted into, it should fit there. This involves purely technical aspects like character encoding to more writing-specific issues such as tense, person or style.

b) Diversity: Modular writing is usually employed to offer diversity in repetitive situations. When you have a character do an ambient quip, you do it to break the static monotony of a situation, preferably in ways that make it seem more alive. When you randomise events during some activity, it’s to break up that activity and make it a bit different than it was every other time the player did it. When going down to the level of building texts with sentences and words, the point is to output diverse texts. (We’ll speak about that a bit more at the end because I want to make a particular note of it.)

c) Reusability: For practical purposes, modules should be written to not be too specific. An overly specific module shows up rarely, meaning it does not contribute to the diversity of the situation quite as much as it could (though, of course, sometimes it’s fine to make a rare joke/easter egg module that is supposed to not show up too often). As a general rule of thumb, the bulk of modules written to service a specific need should be interchangeable in the broadest way possible, considering the least number of factors that would prohibit their use when the system takes a tally of available options.

4) Sentence diversity

Now, I mentioned that the concept of diversity can be expanded on just a little bit more for modular sentences. The advice below applies to many systems of modular writing but is, in particular, commonly considered in my own efforts.

a) The beginning and end of a sentence really count. Something about the human mind leads us to pay more attention to the beginning and end of words and sentences, it would seem, and as such, for modular sentences, it’s important to provide diversity in that area, at the simplest level, it’s about the modules that will slot into a specific place, but also when stringing modular sentences together, there are techniques to eliminate repetition there too. The biggest offenders are pronouns. “I”, “you”, and “he/she” often make their way to the beginning of a sentence (in English, at least) and should be treated with a bit more care than when writing linear text.

b) The length of sentences should vary. This isn’t something most people think about, but it does come up in modular writing specifically. If modules keep to a similar length, the block they produce will also be of comparable size each time, which stands out. As such, it’s sometimes worth adding extra flare to a specific sentence, maybe even splitting it into two, going on a digression or making particular note of some detail.

c) As great as diversity is, sometimes it’s possible to stumble into issues when trying to vary up a sentence. Specifically, it’s essential to consider if what we add matches what can possibly come before and after. When the same module is used in two radically different places, going into “what” is happening is safer than going into “why” it is happening. The latter will risk reducing the reusability of such a sentence, while the former is generally safer. Consider a situation where you open a door. The physical process of opening the door is appropriate for cases where the character does or doesn’t pass through it. However, speaking of why the door is being opened might conflict with one of those options. In general, I’d call this trying not to overstep player agency; the player can probably provide their reasons well enough.

d) If possible, consider sub-randomisations: Most systems that support modular writing (though not all) will also offer some means of sub-randomisation. In the context of modular sentences, it’s some method of randomising a specific word using synonyms. Rattling off a few alternatives takes little effort but can change the sentence just enough to give it some more freshness.

In the next part of this tutorial, I’ll show you how to use the Esoteric engine to do some sentence-level modular writing. It will be a more practical tutorial, but we’ll do it with the knowledge of what’s written above. It will be a step-by-step tutorial using the system itself, and if you follow it, you will be able to see your results in the terminal.

Context: Mages cling together for mutual protection and support. But yet, there are those who find themselves outside of the pack. Those born from affairs with the non-magical folk, or who live in those parts of the world where, even in the modern times, mages lack a strong presence. Those who are often consigned to unavoidable death through their isolation.

In the discourse surrounding demi-mages and hedge wizards, a commonly brought up statistic is the high mortality rate among both groups, correlating with their disconnect from the broader society of mages. One may thus wonder what is the nature of this correlation and if there is anything that can be done to prevent it. The simple answer is, unfortunately, that the correlation is causative, and there is little that may be done about it.

This a cruel judgement, but let us elaborate on the problem.

We all understand that there are entities in the wider Cosmos and within the Dream that either predate upon mages or see us as a danger that must be eliminated. We developed systems and structures to ensure our safety within this society we have built for ourselves over the millennia. At the base, the parents protect their progeny, and we congregate into small groups, encouraging mutual protection of the group members to maximise the possibility of our legacy (genetic and memetic) being maintained in the future.

But the magically gifted living outside of this structure must fend for themselves and face three issues that lead to fatal consequences.

First, the trivial issue, the lack of a support network in cases of emergency. This is, of course, the consequence of being essentially forced to fend for themselves, or rarely in small groups that, by chance, managed to find each other. Such outliers are the most susceptible to predation.

Second, without access to the knowledge we accumulate, these individuals are oft doomed to repeat the errors of our past, to not heed basic safety guidelines of which they know nothing, and thus trespass into dangerous boundaries.

Third, without guidance in their young years, these outliers, in particular hedge wizards, do not match the arcane aptitude of a traditionally trained mage. This makes them not only the most vulnerable from the perspective of visibility and group support but also the least capable of defending themselves.

As such, they are often deemed to be self-correcting errors.

It was our mistake to allow them to be born into this world and not find solace and protection under our wings.

And so, they die.

Context: Mages are still people, and people like to make themselves feel special. Here are two excerpts from a book describing the various “rituals” mages participate in, since childhood. These rituals have no major arcane meaning and exist only to celebrate the mage, the mage’s family, or some particularly important dates through the year.

Passage of the Birth Star:

The passage of a mage’s birth star shall be observed. Upon its culmination, a candle shall be set alight and placed in the highest window of the mage’s dwelling. There shall be merriment and celebration.

While Norma celebrate the day of their birth, we instead celebrate the culmination of their birth star. The day on which the star shines highest in the night sky, or at least there-about.

Traditionally, a candle used to be set in a window to signify this, but over time we adopted the way of the Norma. So now, we instead put the candle upon a cake, but as there is always only one candle, it can be a more elaborate one.

Young mages receive presents from their family. In particular, on the 16th and 20th birthday, it’s common for the young mage to receive objects of esoteric and arcane importance: wands, orbs, ceremonial blades or grimoires. These objects are sometimes passed from generation to generation, being the same items received by their parents at around the same age. It’s generally accepted that if both the mother and the father stem from a lineage, one of the gifts should come from each parent.

If multiple children in a mage community celebrate their rite of passage on the same day, it is not uncommon to have them celebrate together.

For magi that have reached maturity, the rite of passage takes on a more personal and subdued form. If it is observed publicly at all, it is an event celebrated only with the circle of closest friends and family. In such a case, it’s common to light a candle placed upon the table by which the meeting transpires or return to the old tradition of putting it in the window.

Mages steeped in this culture more strongly associate their age with the number of times their birth star culminated, rather than based on their birth date, as Norma do. Among mages more removed from the culture yet still partially observing its traditions, instead of the exact day of a star’s culmination, a mage selects a date within the symbolic bounds of its zodiac sign. This date also serves as their fictional birth date.

The Robe Ceremonies:

Upon reaching certain thresholds of their journey, mages receive a robe coloured after the four stages of the magnum opus. These robes symbolise the steps taken by the mage towards self-actualisation and self-perfection.

As a young, fledgeling mage first manifests their Cauda Pavonis, it becomes unavoidable that they will wake up to the sacred world around them. That is the time for the child’s mother or father to speak with them about the nature of reality and the unavoidable destiny of their bloodline. Usually, this is the time for the young mage to receive their first robe. The black robe many of us have worn in our childhood as we began the studies of the arts and took our first steps into the society of mages.

Once the young mage is ready to begin their independent studies, they shed their black robe and replace it with a white one. This signifies the point where they are prepared to commence their studies in a subject of their choice, either beginning their great work or learning to continue an already established path of study.

When a mage gains recognition within the general society of magi, they receive their third, yellow robe. These robes are bestowed upon a mage in recognition of their research and require a publication history on the cutting edge of a field of arcane study.

The final robe, which many mages do not even aspire to wear, is the red robe. These are bestowed only on those who have either reached a conclusion or significant breakthroughs in their great work.

In particular, the first two Robe Ceremonies are often conducted as celebrations involving a small party thrown in honour of the young mage. Cake and presents, and in particular, the passing down of a focus for the young mage from their parents. For many more prominent European families, it is considered a tradition to bestow a wand in addition to the black robe and a ceremonial dagger with the white.

The latter two are, more often, kept away from the public eye. Those attending the more prominent centres of magical education might still relate to smaller, official ceremonies. However, it is much more common for them to be conducted in privacy, with few attendants.

In some circles (the aforementioned centres of magical education), the Robe Ceremonies also correlate to the bestowal of academic titles. The white robes indicate a Master of Arcane Art, the yellow robes are reserved for a Doctor or Arcane Art, and distinguished academics wear the red robe.

These four robes symbolise the stages of the great work, in particular, as understood to be the transmutation and refinement of the self.

It should also be noted that not all mages honour this tradition, and there is no taboo related to the colour of the robe one wears as long as it is not worn to deceive other mages.

Context: Artificial intelligence is a very current topic, and granted that the timeline of the setting’s world closely follows our own, they are dealing with their own emerging AI boom as well. But how do mages interact with this trend? They are, after all, not in the least opposed to technology, indeed they are often on the very bleeding edge of science. Thus, they will have their own things to say about the topic of AI.

Though it would not be until the 1820s when the Difference Engine would be born from the mind of Charles Babbage, the fundamental question of what is necessary to perform Veränderung (or the instilment of change within the world through arcane means) had already been asked before.

The oldest record of such considerations comes from the, so-called, Scroll 281, a pseudepigraphy attributed to the Zugot Shemaiah and Abtalion during the 1st century BCE, though much suggests it is a work based on an unknown earlier text. Unfortunately, the contents of the heavily damaged dissertation upon the necessities of the soul contain many partial, unclear and difficult-to-translate passages and ultimately are incorrect in their conclusions, in so far as we understand them.

Indeed, within modern occult, it is even disputed if a soul, or Einheit, is necessary to perform Veränderung within the Leib – the waking world of the Elder Gods. Unfortunately, we all too often lump together the work we perform that defies the unchanging nature of the Elder Gods and that which operates on our understanding of, shall we say, the laws of physics.

With such understanding, though a distinct sense of self, which catalyses the emergence of an Einheit, is necessary to work with the domains of the mind, it is not required for all arcane efforts. Thus, the Difference Engine would be capable of performing many tasks the mages of the day were forced to resolve by hand, including the laborious mathematical work required to chart fractal space.

Regrettably, the work on the Difference Engine, and its successor, the Analytical Engine, bore few practical fruits, for it was not until the 20th century that the designs of these machines became feasible to construct using our technology. During that time, though, they were quickly put into work, testing in practice the theoretical work of such luminaries as Pierre Joseph Louis Fatou and Gaston Maurice Julia.

Today, our computers are capable of calculating and implementing in practice models of higher dimensional constructs that remain nigh incomprehensible for a human being. The physical constraints imposed by human bodies and senses do not apply to machines, allowing them to physically interface with higher-dimensional and exotic matter objects with unparalleled ease. However, only ontological constructs have ever displayed the capability of interacting with the collective subconscious – through being a physically embodied Einheit.

But that does not preclude a future in which a man-made creation develops a soul, or more properly – a sense of self. After all, what is a human body if not a machine driven by electro-chemical processes? At the same time, it might be necessary to first understand what the Einheit truly is. Then, with a proper theoretical basis, the instigation of a nascent artificial soul might be possible.

Context: What is the difference between reality as it objectively is, compared to reality as humans understand it? When you forget something, do you know you’ve forgotten it? When you’re wrong, do you realise there’s a mistake in your thinking? If a human holds a belief in a particular reality, isn’t it, to them, the reality of existence?

We often hear that collective unconsciousness dictates the consensus of reality. But what does that really mean?

What is consensus?

The term itself implies, perhaps misguidingly, an active agreement between multiple parties. Perhaps, as if it would be every individual consciousness agreeing to what reality might be.

But the collective is not that structured. It’s composed of currents of thought and feeling, like the breath of something titanic, in and out, in and out, washing over our minds. We do not shape it, we bleed our emotions and thoughts into it, and it carries those hues elsewhere, tainting us all with this touch of colour.

That hue is the consensus.

A primordial stain of emotion, thought, and desire, some of it spewed and directed at us from those with whom we share intense bonds. But some is nothing more than the background noise of billions of minds screaming in the unfathomable distance.

This consensus cannot affect reality. The flesh of Elder Gods is what it is. Belief cannot create force, or energy, or matter. But it can guide us. It is a wave that throws us into situations that already exist, plucked from the prescience of an idiot-savant.

But even then, that would suggest there is a need for such a focal catalyst to exist.

Insidiously, what the consensus can touch may be merely our perception of reality. The elements we choose to focus on and the ones we gloss over.

Humans do not perceive or remember true reality. All there exists for us are the qualia of our Mask and memories that grow increasingly distorted with every moment. As if they too dissolve into the roiling chaos of the collective unconsciousness, where they are forgotten.

That is consensus and how the mind shapes it, not by affecting the underlying material reality of the Elder Gods’ Flesh but instead by our beliefs about what happened and how. This is the illusion of the world we all harbour within our minds. And this illusion may be manipulated consciously by a mage but unconsciously by the ebb and flow of humanity’s Shadow.

Let’s examine a few instances where consensus comes into play.

As a mage, you are undoubtedly familiar with the rejection of magic among the Norma. This rejection is primarily influenced by the collective unconsciousness of humanity, which inherently dismisses the concept of true magic. Consequently, we find ourselves in a peculiar position where we can openly discuss our magical arts with them. Yet, they remain disinterested and unable to retain any information we might share. This reaction can only be overcome by undeniable physical evidence of the supernatural, but even then, it proves fatal for the Norma.

We have extensively studied this phenomenon, and our findings are consistently similar. For instance, the O’Connor and Daugherty study surveyed 183 Norma who were deliberately exposed to fragments of arcane knowledge in a controlled environment. The survey results showed the following:

26% of the participants remembered the conversation as pertaining to literary fiction;
21% had no firm recollection of the conversation;
21% recalled the content as being related to a recent theatrical or television release;
20% identified the discussion as being about a popular fantasy video game or tabletop game;
8% mistakenly associated it with New Age pseudo-religion;
4% provided widely varying accounts that were personally significant but unrelated to the conversation;

One week later, only 84% of the participants had a clear recollection of the conversation. Two weeks later, a staggering 91% could not recall the conversation at all and instead presented unrelated false memories about the study.

The conversation slipped out of the established consensus reality, although this distinction may be subtle for young mages.

Nevertheless, it is essential to note that the conversation did occur and revolved around topics related to the arcane understanding of the world. From a strictly materialistic perspective, soundwaves were undoubtedly propagating through that room. However, we must consider the impact of this conversation on the realm of thought. The reality of the dreamlands is just as valid as that of the waking world.

In the dreamlands, the influence of what those Norma heard was erased to a large extent, suppressed by the collective unconsciousness, and replaced with false memories, eventually fading into oblivion. It was rendered inconsequential to human actions. And if something can no longer shape our future or guide our choices, can we truly assert that it actually transpired?