Would anyone be interested in interactive fiction that is really good fiction?
The genre seems to focus mostly on game play and puzzle solving more than plot
most of the time, and if there are multiple endings they consist of one way to
win and a thousand ways to die. Now, I can understand the attraction for
gaming. I like a good game myself! But if you heard of an IF title in which
every choice led somewhere interesting, and no matter how you played it would
give you a good story, would you be interested? The reward here would be the
same reward you get from reading a book, only this book changes every time you
read it. No puzzles, no games.
Would text and illustrations be enough to make it commercially viable, or do
you think the flash of animation and/or digitized video would be needed?
And now to ask some advice: Those of you who create IF for computers, what
tools do you use? Do you bash things out at first with something like a help
file editor? Or do you use something like Hypercard, Director, or ToolBook? On
the finished end of things, is something heavy duty called for, like C++ or can
I get by with Delphi or Visual Basic?
Stay cool!
W. Scott Simmons