Author’s Ideas Blog

Posted on

Steam Highwayman – Barsali’s Caravan

I’ve returned to Fabled Lands as a stimulus for my Steam Highwayman writing.  I like the short, pithy passages that leave a lot to your imagination.  However, there was never a great deal of conversation in those books and I find dialogue fits into a responsive text very naturally – in fact, it’s one of the easiest and most pleasurable things I write.  So I’ve drafted this encounter with a gipsy family: Barsali’s Caravan.  It gives a flavour of the style of mini-quests I’m intending to include as you explore the world of Steam Highwayman.  Different options would be available to you depending on whether you have collected certain objects, or have certain skills.

I’ve also just begun experimenting with customising colours on Twine, the tool I use to create this.

 

 

Posted on

Psalm 119 129-136

Your statutes are wonderful;

therefore I obey them.

God’s words are intended to provoke us to wonder: I say, what is this living voice, this guide, this life?  I cannot comprehend it with my mind, yet I love it – I love him!  I obey out of devoted wonder.  All of your laws are for my good – the prompting of the spirit will always bring good fruit, so do not fear it.

The unfolding of your words gives light,

it gives understanding to the simple.

The light of a clear day and joyful hope – all from an unfolded word.  But it is in unfolding – in the process – that at last I understand – not just knowing about God’s words, but knowing them, ‘gnawing’ them like Petersen, living them – and seeing them in Jesus in the Gospel.

I open my mouth and pant,

longing for your commands.

Yes Lord – the prompting of your spirit and the leading of other believers, I long for them.  Teach me to love your scriptures even more as well.

Turn to me and have mercy on me,

as you always do to those who call on your name.

Satisfy me, O Lord!  Give yourself to me!  I am hungry and I seek real bread.  I want to feast on you in my heart, Lord Jesus – to eat with rejoicing.

Direct my footsteps according to your word;

let no sin rule over me.

In every stepping place – every single footfall – I long to have your spirit close to me, empowering me, checking me, so that I am continually walking in your way.  Then let sin depart from my life, Lord, sanctified in you.

Redeem me from the oppression of men,

that I may obey your precepts.

Yes, God, you take nothing that is not already yours.  You made me, invented me, possessed me, so you can redeem me back.  I wouldn’t live in the worldliness of human culture, I’d rather be bought out placed somewhere I can obey.

Make your face shine upon your servant

and teach me your decrees.

This is the only way for me to learn, Lord – if I see you and experience you.  That is your teaching – the only real teaching – to expose yourself to us and to show us yourself.  Your servant is ready to look up during his labours when he hears his master’s voice.

Streams of tears fall from my eyes,

for your law is not obeyed.

Touch me, then Father, with sorrow for sin and ungodliness.  Let me have this full life that grieves deeply, hopes heartily and acts upon its intentions boldly and clearly.  Only you are God and in you is all life.  Amen.

Posted on

Verses 121-128

I have done what is righteous and just;

do not leave me to my oppressors.

How can someone claim to be righteous?  Only by God’s indwelling: God cannot leave the new me because he is the new me – I am founded on him and his character.  My once-upon-a-time oppressors, I should pray to be delivered from returning to them.

Ensure your servant’s well-being;

let not the arrogant oppress me.

Well-being relates to our identity as servants of a good master.  We are free of the oppression of the arrogant particularly because the arrogant admit no authority other than themselves- they cannot assume authority over us because we are in a more direct, essential chain of command.

My eyes fail, looking for your salvation,

looking for your righteous promise.

It’s a full-time job, seeking God.  I seek your kingdom on Earth, Lord, your salvation for the people, until day fails and night falls.  If I spent the entirety of every day looking for the application of God’s promise to the day, I wouldn’t be wasting my time.

Deal with your servant according to your love

and teach me your decrees.

To do all this we must embrace the Father’s – the master’s – love for us and let him change us.  What a relief to be taught his will – that we do not have to invent a new way of living, but have a teacher ready and willing to explain to us how we must behave and to help us do it.

I am your servant; give me discernment

that I may understand your statues.

Like a servant entrusted with keys that can unlock his master’s wealth, discernment allows us to understand God’s statutes and then follow them, apply them around us, anticipating his justice, anticipating the natural consequences of people’s actions.  However, ‘no longer do I call you servants’ – John 15:15.  Jesus invited us into a place of understanding we inherit the keys ourselves.

It is time for you to act, O Lord;

your law is being broken.

A bold plea to God – but always relevant – like the inscription on the Clock at St Nick’s church in Nottingham – it is time to seek the Lord.  Always relevant.  Somewhere, in some heart, God’s law is always being broken, but he does desire for us to gain as much a hunger for justice as he has, and does desire for us to ask him to intervene wherever his law is being broken – including in my own self.

Because I love your commands more than gold,

more than pure gold,

This is the security against sin and unrighteousness that the Holy Spirit can give us: a desire for God’s word – a deep love and passion –  that jealously consumes all of our attention, so that there is no spare desire for sinfulness!  What a wonderful prospect – to grow in our desire for God and to become used to his justice until we, eventually, are freed from our pleasure in sin.  Like the hymn: ‘Take away our love of sinning, Alpha and Omega be, End of faith, as its beginning, Set our hearts at liberty.’

and because I consider all your precepts right,

I hate every wrong path.

This is exactly where the scriptures should lead us: a preference for one path, however difficult, is based on considering God’s instruction preferable to every other choice.

 

Posted on

A Quatrain from Southwark

Only go beneath a Southwark railway bridge, look up and stand,
See every straight rib rivet-plugged and patterned by hand,
See flanges and box-girders painted pigeon-white and blue,
Only wonder at what we used  to do.

Posted on

Wagamama Ramen Quatrain

​I visit Wagamamas for a bowl of ramen noodles,

Recuperate, read a book, sit and draw some doodles.

The portions are so generous, the broth full of umami,

That any other option for a ramen would be barmy.

Posted on

Steam Highwayman – A Responsive Map

Try exploring this story: steamhighwayman0-3

I’ve now completed a demo map to explore on your velosteam: 14 passages or ‘rooms’ that respond to the order and time in which you visit them, generating unique text and interactive traffic events.  I haven’t got any graphic interface for this yet – it exists purely as the relationship between passages.  But I have sketched it here to help you locate yourself:

wp-1476283462121.jpg

One of the underlying ‘vanilla’ engines of this story was always to be your ability to rob any passers-by, either creating story-lines as you become despised or hated by particular groups or simply making easy money.  This means that in true open-world fashion, you will need to be able to interact with all the traffic that comes your way.

At the moment these interactions are very rough, but essentially different sorts of road (main road, road or lane) and different times of day (day/night) will be more or less likely to generate different classes of traffic (pedestrians/farm vehicles/goods vehicles/guild vehicles/locobuses/private steam carriages etc).  You may be able to hail them and get rumours or rob them – reminiscent perhaps, and purposefully, of the sail ahoy mechanic in Sid Meier’s Pirates Gold.

I intend to keep working on this demo map until all the major modules are working.  So far we have:

  • A weather generator
  • A clock
  • An inventory
  • Health and wound counters
  • A rudimentary fight system (not yet plugged into the encounters with traffic
  • A fence where you can sell items (with still some bugs)
  • A pub where you can rent a room
  • Locals who will give you a rumour to investigate (and the space for many more)
  • Characters who will remember you
  • A wreck engine that will leave destroyed traffic at the side of the road
  • New today – the ability to wait somewhere until nightfall or morning

I mean to finish writing Squire Lynch’s quest, finish the interactions with the guild engines and create a quest at a nearby steam fairground.  Still haven’t done anything about my pistol engine…

Also I’ve got some lineation and matching issues with the generated text in my passages.  I’m slowly building more reliable templates so that in a completed version, everything should look seamless.  Other bugs include:

  • Unresolved fights
  • Unwritten encounters with private steam carriages and quest vehicles
  • Some difficulties with { and [ trailers
Posted on

Steam Highwayman – Status coding

This morning I’ve been working on those priority checks – the variables that will test whether you’ve visited a location before, what factors will influence the generated text there and the counters that generate time, the phase of the moon and the weather.  I’m going to head out to do some of the creative part soon, thinking about the way I want these passages to sound and look.

I had a long chat with my brother Jack about this and we agree that there’s no point having long passages of description clogging up a reader’s enjoyment of what is essentially a story.  In the Fabled Lands series, passages are typically around 60 words, and that suits a smartphone fine, so I’m hoping to extrude the all the vital information in a few pithy sentences.

Posted on

Steam Highwayman – In progress

It’s been a good morning.  I’ve been teaching the locals at the Sign of the Spyglass to gossip – as well as to keep track of your visits there.  Should they tell you of the wicked Squire Lynch, you should find a new quest opening up, in which you dole out some justice to an overbearing landlord.

Most of my recent writing has been coding systems that keep track of various story variables, so it’s nice to be starting on writing a mini-story within the tale.  However, though I’m sketching dialogue and event options there are a few things I need to complete before you’re able to to stop Squire Lynch’s speedy chariaeoli, defeat him in a duel, humiliate and rob him.

  • The high-level code that decides, when you visit a location, what variable-generated information to give you.  These are pieces like descriptions of the weather and scenery, designed to be wrapped into the particular writing of any specific passage.  I want every visit to every major to be unique, tailored to the time of day, state of the sky, and the various random chances of other traffic on the road.
  • I need to complete my engine allowing you to fire a gun.
  • I need to complete my guilt engine – the tracker that will remember every sin and misdeed committed in the name of your own wealth or even for the good of the poor…  It will all be significant later.

These are what I’ll be working on for the next week or two.  Using variable text to create interesting and significant passages is really my aim.  Many interactive fictions dispense with description because a reader skips them naturally, hurrying to the action.  I’m trying to embed important information and other options within text.  If it rains, that will effect your ability to chase a high-speed steam wagon.  If you’re in a wood, you may have simple sub-quest options related to objects you carry – such as cutting wood or finding a particular mushroom.  I hope to give the reader the ability to complete actions in any reasonable place, rather than at a specific quest location.

Posted on

Steam Highwayman – Intro Narration

I was just mucking around with sound editing software and an intro for Steam Highwayman that came out of my head.  So here’s a little taster I made last week.

That’s Brahms’ 3rd Symphony in the background – a very quick choice – inspired by the old Ladybird story cassettes we had with classical soundtracks to excellent stories like Around the World in Eighty Days and Tom Sawyer.

Posted on

Steam Highwayman – Wounds Process

I’m spending a lot of my writing time working on an interactive fiction project, Steam Highwayman, written using Harlowe 1.2.2 on Twine 2.

This morning I has mostly been building a process by which the protagonist can suffer, bandage and heal wounds. This should slot into my story so that the reactive text remembers if and where you were wounded, editing your options in seamless prose.

And a scar on the eye may unlock the option of an eyepatch. Oooh, Intimidation+1, eyepatch,