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Exercise: Parser as Character

Typically in parser games the parser itself is treated as an omniscient but disinterested party, sometimes snarky but never actively involved. Violet treats the parser as the narrator, and separate from the player character. This required a tremendous amount of work to displace the vanilla default responses, but results in a game with one of the strongest voices in IF history.

While all games don't have to do this, it's a good reminder that all the words in an IF game are an opportunity for character and setting.

Exercise Objectives

Play the game with a notebook beside you, observing the parser responses.

Play tasks

Log the first thirty or so turns, making a note of whether the response is in Violet's voice or the Inform 7 parser.

Push the boundaries of the game by doing silly actions (JUMP, TASTE, SING, or EAT DESK). See which ones are handled by Violet's voice and which fall through to the parser.

Track what you learn about Violet, your relationship and related topics. Note which facts are provided by which actions, and whether the core puzzle-solving actions tend to reveal more character or not.

Post-play tasks

After playing through Violet, do these exercises in a session or two.

Writing exercise

Write ten to fifteen parser responses to unexpected commands in a character voice you define in advance — but don’t write the character description down for the reader. Then hand the responses to someone and see if they can describe the narrator. If they can't, then perhaps the voice is decorative rather than constructive.

Design exercise

In drawing, the negative space is the space around the focus of the picture and is just as important as the focus. Design a scene with a negative space character — one in which they never appear, but their impact on the scene is almost as if they were there.

Take care not to Poochy the character. Just make their presence and character felt through the player character and environment.

Implementation exercise

Take a small scene from a parser game, yours or someone else's, and play through the first scene with the transcript on. Then go back and replace every default parser response with a character's voice. This includes errors, refusals and examinations. You can replace the response in the parser itself or just in the transcript.

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