I guess conversation is where it’s at these days. Recently I began a series of blogs on conversation mechanics and how interactive fiction games can perhaps show the mainstream game industry how to do better dialogue (starting here, continuing here, and most recently here). Others have also recently jumped in on the action.
Over on Gamasutra, an article written by Brent Ellison popped up not long ago to define dialog systems because, as he says, “very little literature has addressed the mechanics behind character interaction in games.”
Ellison essentially covers the basic mechanics of different dialogue systems in games, including branching and non-branching dialogue, hub-and-spokes dialogue, and even parser-driven dialogue. He does a fair enough job of summarizing the more common systems, although he seems to focus primarily on interface and doesn’t quite venture into the more interesting territory of the mechanics required to produce smooth, [More...]
The Rise and Fall of Full Throttle
Over on Adventure Classic Gaming, Marshall Ratliff and Philip Jong have posted a nice summary of the history of Full Throttle, particularly of the time following the game’s success and during the planning and development of its sequels. I didn’t really know anything about that history, but as the authors state, “behind the success of Full Throttle was a [More...]