Hypercompendia

It was just a month or so ago that I mentioned somewhere an idea of a computer game that mimicked surgery, showing the inside of the human body that can both be a learning experience and a fun (buzzer sounds–you've nicked an artery!) playing game. Now don't scowl at me; there was a game called Operation by Hasbro that's still in existence after many decades.

But the reality has come to pass, and it's for real surgeons. As a learning tool, I would think it's a marvelous idea, and as a focus on individual surgery, it's got to be an aid that can greatly enhance the chances of sucessful surgery. After all, with so many more surgeries becoming the less-invasive robotic method, this would seem a natural pre-op measure.

Now, someone should come up with a reasonable version for those budding surgeons out there.

Thinking I was downloading just a game, I ended up in the online “Wild West” game and chose the name Quinton Garcia. I’m a gunfighter.

Unfortunately, I’m not real quick on the draw so I’m likely to get shot dead in the streets the second I poke my nose out.  I am a handsome devil though:

Haven’t been here for a long time, but find that the newest student portfolios of animations are absolutely superb!  Ringling College of Art and Design

What talent!  What fun!

Some neat new pieces over at Alan Bigelow’s Webyarns, including an interactive cartoon that brings in a bit of animation.

Intrigued by references to Outbreak via Mark Bernstein and Chris at Gimcrack’d I got a chance to play with this hyperdrama a bit this morning.  My first thought, just in the five seconds of the opening screen, was Night of the Living Dead.  The original movie made in 1968 was the first time I’ve ever left a movie (or turned off the TV) in all my horror-loving years.  I remember that since no one would see it with me, I went to the drive-in alone and, loaded up with popcorn and soda, sat back in the summer evening to enjoy.  And at the point where I just couldn’t take any more–okay, scared–I unhooked the speaker off the car window and went to hang it on the post but it made a small clink that got two girls in the next car screaming. Just recently I fell upon the movie on TV and in the safety of my own home, with my husband asleep in the next room, watched it all the way through.

Well Outbreak is indeed a zombie movie and not too bad at that. Somehow though, the small screen of a laptop monitor doesn’t project the fear for this–while playing with games such as Silent Hill II did indeed get my pulse hammering. I found myself just as inept at Outbreak as with all such interactive stories I’ve played–including IF.  I got killed several times before I found my way past the danger.

As Chris notes, there’s some odd combinations of outcomes based on moral decisions made, but then, when is doing the right thing always a guarantee of success? This, as with most video games, is geared towards personal survival.  In truth, TV reality shows have this purpose, and sadly, appear to mimic a society that also follows this principle.

The neat thing is that horror is the perfect genre for hyperdrama, providing that ability that’s been kept from us for years: “No! Don’t open that door!”  With hyperdrama, we can indeed lead the protagonist to safety, or if we’re feeling evil, to his doom.

After several plays I did get to a point where the combination of moves kept me alive–but only by backtracking which is a nice feature that I wish life itself would offer.  Via a map (below), the interactor can retrace his steps and make that “other” choice.  In summary, I guess I’d like to see more of this type of hyperdrama; in an age where even commercials are animated based film of real living people, it’s kind of neat to get back to the reality–or pseudo reality, since after all, it’s film–of life in gaming.

Absolutely awesome stop-animation clips from Carlos Lascano.  Haven’t had a chance to see them all, but Inspiration is one that the artist says is created entirely from still photos and presented using Photoshop, After Effects and Final Cut Pro.

This is what I’d love to be able to do, and what I can only sit and enjoy and share by linking.  What talent here!

This post at Interactive Planet by Victor Gijsbers on Useful Psychology may be an extension of a discussion at Hypertext 08’s Workshop that focused on Chris Crawford’s Storytron and the building of certain character traits within interactive gaming. I just got a chance to glance through the beginning but it looks like an interesting trail of thought:

We don’t want situations like this:

> attack john
No, you are not violent enough.

Been wanting to do another visual poem since screwing around with Recycling a couple years ago. That was worked in Photoshop with drawings and photographs I’d done just to come up with something, and laid out in Windows Movie Maker. 

I’m intrigued by the medium of animation–though since I’d had Albert Einstein toss his head across the courtyard to Socrates in Alice I’d recognized my limitations early on. Really should just take a course in animation or really buckle down to learn the basics on my own but I’m too easy on myself and let the training slide. I did enjoy the manipulation of images though, and maybe there’s a way of fooling around with that as long as I can either take the photos myself or get down again to drawing.

But even as I’m no writer, I’m even less the poet and even less, if possible, the artist.  But poetry is short and simple and filled with imagery and feeling–or should be. Yet I’m a one-man-show here and it’s all just a learning thing rather than some kind of contest.  The challenge is to me; the challenger is only me as well.

Another new project direction and a start: a poem to match with animated graphics:

Thinking
he knew everything of earth
he stole the wings of a butterfly king
and fled

drinking
from rosy cups of peonies and
milky lilies nodding as courtesans waving
him by

lifting
above soft brushing of  the trees
painted emerald green, he spiraled higher
then

crushing
wings against a solid sapphire
sky, a frozen reflection of the sea
he fell

crashing
lying broken as the stones
now streaked blood red with wanting
more

Been playing with Inanimate Alice this morning and while I’m not nuts about the repetitive musical background, the story is nice and the graphics are great (Story #4 just came out recently).

I’m wondering, though; while it isn’t called a hypertext (do arrow pointers count as text?), it isn’t exactly interactive beyond the do you click to go forward and progress the story in a pretty linear path determined by the author, or do you click back a frame or two, or just click out? We recently had a discussion on what is hypertext exactly, and how it is similar to and different from the defined works such as interactive fiction, or the word hyperfiction or hyperlinks.  How much interactive user input is required beyond turning ‘pages’ to qualify it? Are user choices necessary so that alternate paths must always be created within the arrangement? In this piece, the only choice to take an alternate was to choose one of four hands that pointed in different directions, or a room of a house plan, or to choice an "album" of photos clearly marked as ‘school’ or ‘home’ etc.  All brought the reader back to the intersecting point to then choose another.  As a matter of fact, I believe the previous paths were no longer available for choice (always to me seeming to say "you dummy, you did that already" so we’re not even going to give you that option.").

The graphics are great though, and this is an interesting form of new media that I really am getting more and more intrigued by, enough to likely work on it by starting to add more into the Tinderbox projects file.