Interviews

Most adventure game aficionados
get, at one point or another, an urge to create their own game.
Somewhere along the line, gamers started
to say, “Hey, I can do that!,” and thus began the world
of adventure game creators (Adventure Maker, SLUDGE, AGS, etc.) and,
for those old school fans, text adventure creators (Quest, SUDS,
etc.). And eventually came the inevitable: games like RHEM, Final
Destination, The Arrangement, Hope Springs Eternal, and countless
others. Companies like Mug Software, Malinche Entertainment and Got
Game Entertainment were born. With a little talent and perservance,
many proved that you didn’t have to be a team of 20+ to make a great
adventure game.

Well, the next generation
of create-your-own gaming is here, at least for all you text fans
out there! In early December 2005, Tony
Alicea’s new website, All
Things Happy, went live. As he puts it, “allthingshappy.com
was founded with the intention of building a place for creative writing
to flourish. It was designed to give its members a clear place on
the internet to showcase their writings and share what inspires them.
Through our standard writings, group writings, and text based adventure
games we provide a variety of ways to express yourself and get creative.
Above all, we want everyone to appreciate the mantra, the edict,
the focus and goal of creativity…to stay happy!” And indeed
it is inevitable that through sophisticated programs for poetry,
fiction, non-fiction, and IF, one will be very, very happy with this
site.

It was clear through my emails with Tony that he is working very,
very hard to improve the site and takes great interest in user feedback.
It is nice to see how updates are constantly being made to make the
All Things Happy experience more user-friendly and, well, happy!

What was the idea behind
All Things Happy?

I’ve always been a firm
believer in the power of creativity to enhance well-being, and
the positive personal effects of creative writing.
Yet, while there’s no better place than the internet to share
writings, I didn’t like any of the sites I tried out. They were
all either
clunky, slow, or advertisement filled. The other issue was that
a writer didn’t really have a “presence” – it was easy
on most sites for a story to get lost in the crowd.

I wanted to put together
a site that allowed for writers (both hobbyist and aspiring professional
writers) to have a place to
showcase their
works. I also wanted to do more than just post stories. I wanted
it to be a forum for creative inspiration through community interaction
and some unique writing styles that take advantage of the computer
as a medium.

What kinds of things can budding writers do with the site?

A new signup receives
their own bookmarkable “site” on
allthingshappy.com. They can direct others to this site, which houses
a mini-blog, an area to write about themselves, an area for others
to post messages and critiques, and an area for the writer to feature
their writings. Writers can also bookmark their favorite writings,
and create and join “creative think tanks” which are groups
which get their own simple bulletin board so as to interact and talk
about whatever inspires them. You can setup stories that you publish
to be visible to the world, or only visible to your think tanks.

The site lets you write
in 3 different styles. The first is standard fair – post a story.
The second is what we call “group writing
trees”. A writer can start a story, and many others can add
on their own second chapter. Many more, then, can respond to any
of those second chapters with a third chapter, etc. Then you can
travel down the “tree” of possible chapters, seeing what
kind of stories branch off from chapter to chapter, and even see
what happens by generating a random path from chapter one on down.

The third writing style
is our interactive fiction adventure games. I like to think of
our adventure games as a sort of “Uber-choose-your-own-adventure” stories.
Writers can build interactive text-based stories, and logged in readers
can save their games so as to come back later and finish (or backup
if they mess up).

There are example versions
of a group writing tree and of an adventure game on the site. Click
on “search writings” and you’ll
see both in the list.

Tell us about your adventure game creator.

Our adventure game creator
and player are entirely web based, and currently are purely text-based.
You can build and read on any
computer with internet access. Our games, though, aren’t like
the type of old school interactive fiction many might think of
(aka
Zork). Our site focuses on creative writing, so our adventure
games are much more about telling an interactive story than puzzle
solving.
So, the player is presented with a list of options to choose
from, instead of typing in commands.

That said, one can build
inventory items, “areas” which
have dynamic descriptions, and “characters” which one can
have dialogue with. Each area can have options (or “actions” as
we call them) which may do certain things such as add or remove an
item from inventory, or take you to a new area. Any action, piece
of dialogue, or pieces of description of an area can be adjusted
based on certain criteria.

So, for example, you may
set a particular action to be only available if the player has
a certain item in inventory, or has used a certain
piece of dialogue with a certain character. You would only want the
option “light the match” to appear if the reader has the
match in inventory. Or perhaps you only want an area description
to say “it is quite cold in here” until the user finds
matches and lights a fire. Then you would want the area description
to say “it is nice and toasty in here.” Things like that
are easy to do in our system. In this way you can build some classic
interactive fiction and choose-your-own-adventure scenarios.

That said, there are certain things that our system does not lend
itself to. Complicated dependency trees, mechanical puzzles (lots
of button pushing, etc) and the like are possible – but would be
rather tedious to implement. Again, our system focuses on building
story-driven interactive fiction. Its a way of writing a good story
and getting the reader literally involved. It isn’t very difficult
to learn, and it can be a lot of fun.

What has the response to the site been thus far?

We haven’t yet actively
advertised the site to the public. We have targeted specific groups
(such as adventure game lovers) to use
the site and give us their feedback. So, if you go to the site
you’ll find there are only a couple of stories actually published.
That doesn’t mean the site isn’t being used, but we are working
to make improvements and gather ideas from those trying out the
site behind the scenes.

Those that have used
it like the simplicity, variety, and the possibilities. Those possibilities
will only be truly realized
once the audience
begins to grow.

What are you most proud of about the site?

I’m most proud of the
adventure game creator and player. It isn’t an easy proposition
to build a web based text adventure builder,
but I think we built a model that isn’t too difficult to understand,
and yet is quite powerful. Games can be fun to build, and are
definitely fun to play.

What has been difficult about maintaining the site?

Balancing user opinions
on features is one difficulty. We have to decide what are truly
the best ideas to implement. We’ve also been
struggling with striking the balance between avoiding advertisements
and not wanting to turn off potential users with high subscription
fees. Right now our site has subscription fees listed (there
is a 30 day free trial you can sign up for). We’re working on being
able to lower those yet more. We are investigating the possibility
of having advertisement driven free accounts as well.

What are you currently
doing to improve the site?

We are constantly looking
for feedback, and we listen. We’ve already implemented updates
based on user input. We have implemented
some
AJAX technology – which makes things respond faster. There
are some ideas of simplifying various aspects of the site even
further.

Is there anything else you?d like to tell our readers?

I’d like to invite anyone
interested to come to the site and sign up for the free 30-day
trial. That number of days isn’t set in
stone – we have already extended it for others who are trying
out the system. But if you do sign up, you’ll immediately get a
fully
functional account. Then, read the help, and give it try!

Also as a caution, if
you do write something, remember that this is the internet. We
don’t people going nuts because they lost their
connection while they were typing. So we highly recommend writing
your actual prose on your computer and then copying and pasting
it into the browser.

Once you have that squared
away, please then use the “contact
us” form (a link is at the bottom right hand corner of the site)
to send us your thoughts. We look forward to hearing from you and
seeing what you create. Stay creative and stay happy!

Thanks for talking with us!

Thank you! It’s always
a pleasure to talk to true adventure game enthusiasts. I’ve been
a fan since childhood (my first was the
old DOS shareware game “Hugo II, Whodunit?” – and then
the original Journeyman Project took me over the edge). Adventure
on!

So, when you get a chance, I encourage all of you aspiring authors to check
out the wonderful tools that All
Things Happy has to offer! The gaming community
looks forward to what great things you all will create.