Teaching Game Design with Inform7

Douglas Kiang @dkiang

TodayInteractive Fiction (IF) and Inform7!

• What?!• How to create & assess!• Our experiences in the classroom!• Other examples!

Game Design!• Basic game design steps to follow in creating IF’s using Inform7 !

Once upon a time...There was a teacher in a 4th grade classroom who needed to engage his students in practicing and learning their vocabulary/spelling words...!!so he invited Interactive Fiction into the classroom!!...and started on a game design adventure.

So what is interactive fiction?

What’s the appeal?You get to be involved in the story and make choices along the way. You can re-read the story, making different choices and see how those decisions change the story, what happens to you and where you end up.

Student

Teacher Students need to pay attention and think about what they have read, because they are going to have to make a decision based on that information...a decision that affects the rest of their experience with the story.

Power of 3

Story Game

Technology

It's a story!It's a game!

It's both!

play A-221

http://tinyurl.com/n4k69tf

What is Inform7?Inform 7 is a 'natural language' programming language that makes it easy for even those brand new to programming to create their very own interactive fiction.!!!

Inform 6 Inform 7

‘Natural’?

old

Inform 6 Inform 7

new

9-year oldsnew to

programming

played IFs first

started creating their

own!

played IFs first

IF and Wordly Wise list #1

Word Room Command/ Description

Variant

accustom anywhere wear hat accustomed

assign Room 302 ask Professor Bacon about something

assign

alert anywhere open spell book

budge 1st Floor Foyer take cauldron

burly 2nd Floor Hallway x student

companion 1st Floor Hallway x cat

compatible Outside Castle Hall x Ron

concept Room 302 ask Hermione about something

concepts

distract Outside Castle Hall x Ron

jostle 1st Floor Landing1st Floor Foyer

room descriptionreach inside cauldron

jostledjostles

obedient Room 302 x Professor Bacon disobedient

obstacle 3rd Floor Hallway x Room 301

patient Hallway by Foyer enter office patiently

pedestrian 3rd Floor Landing2nd Floor Landing

x windowx window

pedestrianspedestrians

retire Room 302 x Professor Bacon

played IFs first

started creating their

own!

• start with story!

• KISS: 1•2•3, one character, two rooms, three objects!

• create a map of your world!

• Write the code (source text)

• share (beta test) and revise cycle

• polish and publish

Game Design

started creating their

own!

It all starts with a story and a map...

You’re a robot in a space station and you need to find the supply room to replace your batteries before they run out.

You’re a player stuck in the desert. You must find your outpost and mine for diamonds.

You’re a gummy bear from District 12. You are in the Candy Games and need to survive against all the other gummy bears to win.

You’re a princess in a rundown castle. You are cursed and must break the curse before it possesses you!

started creating their

own!

user-friendly error messages

Please! Be kind to yourself!

• Learning Inform is like learning any new language. It takes time.

• Everyone gets error messages.

• The more you practice, the better you’ll get at writing with Inform7.

Polish and Publish• Dot your ‘i’s and cross your ‘t’s, grammar and

spelling, cover art!

• Can players figure out what they need to do? Does your IF ‘make sense’?!

• Descriptions and responses to possible actions !

• Is the IF ‘winnable’?!

• Advice: So it’s not obvious you’re a n00b or How to polish up your Inform7 game and avoid the most common first timer mistakes.

Students• Ability to create stories that play like a game using technology

• Social: read, play, share with others

• Their IF can be anything they want it to be

• Can and do continue outside of class

Teachers• Encourage your reluctant readers!and writers!

• No plagiarism! Code sharing, yes!!

• Project-based & Student-centered!!

• Beta testing is also a way to do collaborative peer review

• Cross-curricular!

review of game design steps1) Play IF’s!2) Organize...!

• Your thoughts: What’s your story?!• Your world: Map it!!

3) Write the code!4) Beta test & revise cycle!5) Polish & Publish!!

“Organizing is what you do before you do something, so that when you do it, it is not all mixed up.”!

A.A. Milne, Winne the Pooh

Play Testing

• First 10 min.!

• Tester plays the game!

• Says thought process out loud.!

• Author takes notes!

• Author is silent! No help or hints!!

• Next 10 min.!

• Author interviews Tester and asks questions e.g.,!

• “What made you examine the wall..?”!

• “Did you ever think about using the axe..?”

“A book can show you a new world, interactive fiction puts you in that world.”

History

research

You are a doctor of the future. You have been micronized and injected into a cell of a human who is very sick. All around you are the different parts that make a cell function properly. But something’s wrong here! Your mission is to find out what is wrong and fix it before time runs out... for you and your patient.!

!Inside Cell!>_

Science

“The coolest looking hat...” (from A Day for Spelling)

You see an old weatherbeaten door with a tarnished brass knocker.!!

>_

cross curricular

• core subjects!

• mapping = math, social studies/geography!

• story = spelling/language arts!

• simulations = history/science!

• programming = thinking logically = math!

• art = cover art, maps

other educational objectives met

• collaboration: working together!

• problem-solving!

• planning and project management!

• giving and receiving feedback!

• individual expression and creativity!

• revising work to achieve a polished product

Assessment?

• Code or content?

Assessment?

Complete

Compiles

Commented

Effective

Efficient

high school

• programming class!

• made games for the 4th graders to play!

• nice cross grade activity

One more time...why interactive fiction?

• innately appealing: Story/Game/Technology!

• blank slate, it is what you want it to be !

• cross-curricular!

• FREE

Inform7 website

Zoomzblorb player (no code)

Informcode editor (code visible)

Brendan Desilets’s site

Inform for Students wiki

http://ifdb.tads.org

So now you know...Interactive Fiction (IF) and Inform7!

• What?!• How to create & assess!• Our experiences in the classroom!• Other examples!

Game Design!• Basic game design steps to follow in creating IF’s using Inform7 !

resourcesImages, Materials, and Websites referenced in this presentation

• Snood Slide http://snoodworld.com/ • Mii created using Nintendo Wii • Choose Your Own Adventure: The Throne of Zeus by Deborah Lerme Goodman and Million Little Mistakes by Heather McElhatten • Images from Kidspiration software by Inspiration Software, Inc. • Inform7 IF: A-221 by Brendan Desilets • Inform6 code sample, http://www.inform-fiction.org/examples/Museum/Museum_2_4.html • Smiley face icon, http://www.smiley-faces.org/ • Inform7 IF: A Riddle by Brendan Desilets • Cycle icon, http://whartonmagazine.com/issues/spring-2012-2/15458-2/ • Screen shots of code from A Mission in the Forum by Jeremiah McCall • Screen shot of Roman Clothing page, http://www.vroma.org/~bmcmanus/clothing.html • Animal Cell image from Biology, ed. Miller and Levine, Prentice Hall, 2006 • Screen shots of 1893: A World’s Fair Mystery Demo Version, http://www.illuminatedlantern.com/?page_id=106 • Screen shot from Google image search • Screen shot from http://gamingthepast.net/ by Jeremiah McCall • Screen shots from inform7.com/ and the documentation included in the Inform7 software • Screen shot Teaching and Learning with Interactive Fiction, http://if1.home.comcast.net/~if1/ by Brendan Desilets • Screen shot Inform for Students wiki, http://informforstudents.wikispaces.com/ by Mary R. Kiang

• Thank you to the students of Mr. Schwengel’s 4th grade class and Mr. Kiang’s Intro to Computer Science class, 2011-2012 for their enthusiasm, creativity, and hard work creating Interactive Fiction using Inform7!

• Thank you to Graham Nelson for creating Inform7 and thanks to the whole Inform online community for all their guidance and support.

other places to go to find out about interactive fiction in schools

The Haunted School on Horror Hill: A Case Study of Interactive Fiction in an Elementary Classroom, Shawn Graham!!http://carleton-ca.academia.edu/SMGraham/Papers/602644/The_Haunted_School_on_Horror_Hill_A_Case_Study_of_Interactive_Fiction_in_an_Elementary_Classroom

They find that the process of creating the game helped improve literary and social skills amongst the students. The creation and playing of the game had enormous positive benefits for increased literacy skill. It also had the pleasant side effect of fostering class unity and improving the social skills of the students as they worked together to create the game. Benefits In terms of literacy benefits, the game/story/interactive fiction makes a virtue out of what is often a frustrating aspect of the computer: it responds to exactly what you have typed or commanded, and not what you intended. The story cannot progress if even one letter is mistyped (although it can be  programmed to respond with helpful hints when common mistakes are made). This requires that students take their time and repeatedly spell high frequency words perfectly. In addition, playing the game is fun so reading, which for many of these students is a very frustrating, unrewarding experience, became fun. Creating and playing the game placed the students in a leadership role. Students wanted to help each other  within the group setting, so that they could complete the story and play the game. The stronger students helped the weaker students to spot and understand errors of grammar. When presenting and playing the game, the older students helped the younger students to understand the story and move the narrative forward. They also helped the younger students to read each section and spell words correctly !As one of the students said about regular computer games after the project was over, “y’know, sometimes, graphics get in the way.”

Edutech wiki entry on interactive fiction http://edutechwiki.unige.ch/en/Interactive_fiction

Emily Short’s Interactive Storytelling, Teaching IF, http://emshort.wordpress.com/how-to-play/teaching-if/ !IF to Learn with... http://ifdb.tads.org/viewlist?id=pq5ep1nc1nnkfw

• Playing, Studying and Writing Interactive Fiction (Text Adventure Games) , Dennis G. Jerz, http://jerz.setonhill.edu/if/