Sburke42's Blog

Capt. Sidewinder continues.. March 31, 2010

Part III

As Henry, Jules, and Alex embarked on their journey to the center of the earth, I mean Mark Twain’s underwater steam powered laboratory, an eerie silence fell over the three men.  Where were Twain’s trained fish and dolphins that usually came to inspect newcomers?  Bell quickly pulled out his steam powered rotary phone and called Twain’s lab.  “No answer”, he said solemnly.  “How far away are we, Jules?”.  “Just about 20,000 leagues, I’d say”, said Verne with a smirk as Henry and Alex rolled their eyes in unison.

As they approached the lab they could see that it was still smoldering.  They were at first confused as to how a place could be smoldering underwater, until they got closer and realized that it was covered in lava.  “It seems that Weishaupt beat us here”, said Billy.  “Lets go back and report to Sidewinder before he leaves our time.

Sidewinder’s ginormous zeppelin still loomed outside his temporary headquarters in Manchester and the three men hoped that they weren’t to late to catch the other two..

Part V

My Experience with IF: Adventure and Shade March 10, 2010

When we learned about and discussed interactive fiction in class, Adventure was the first one I had ever played.  Because of this and my limited knowledge on interactive fiction, I had to read to help pages and FAQs to get my bearings down for this kind of media.  These were mostly things like learning commands like “look”, “pick up”, “turn on”, and so on.  I also found that you have to use navigational commands to move locations like “east” or “west”.  I eventually got the hang of this thing (kinda) and started to traverse the world of Adventure.  I then finally found out that there were even short commands for the IF like just “e” for east and I found myself traversing the countryside of forests and valleys with just the touch of a single button..what power!!  But alas, my fascination with this was soon ended after I fell down a dark pit and died.  I was reincarnated but it just wasnt the same after that.
With Shade, I thought the whole thing would be much easier.  No valleys or forests to explore.  Just this tiny apartment area.  However I found this was not the case.  After a good 30 minutes of looking where I thought was everywhere for those damn tickets, I couldn’t take anymore.  Just when I was about to quit, I looked in the closet one more time and when I looked inside the jacket…there they are!  Success! Now I can continue, right?
Wrong.  After this meaningless search for the tickets, I thought I would finally have some kind of motivation of purpose for my interactive fictional life, but no..i was unfulfilled.

This was when I discovered that IF just wasnt for me.  Not to say that its not for everybody.  In the middle of class, I looked over at JoDee’s screen and what is she doing? Playing Adventure.  Replying to my puzzled look she said, “I just cant get enough of this stuff now!”

Collaborative Narrative continues..somehow. March 9, 2010

Previously..

“I see you have met MY new trusty sidekick.”  Mrs. Jones looked puzzled, but then her fears were cemented when Brett let out a cackle as he walked to stand beside Ocheltree.  “Brett, how could you?!?”, Mrs. Jones exclaimed, “after all these years”.  “You know why!”, snarled Brett.  “I cracked after your class. All those damn blog posts and that horrendous collaborative effort narrative. You know what a mess that turned into!”.  Brett was steaming now and had to be calmed by Ocheltree.  Gary then turned to Mrs. Jones and said, “You obviously have no idea whats going on here, do you?”.
(he might as well have said this to the readers of this story..)

Next Time on Collaborative Effort Narrative!..