{"id":1125,"date":"2018-06-22T12:26:30","date_gmt":"2018-06-22T17:26:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rcveeder.net\/blog\/?p=1125"},"modified":"2018-06-22T12:26:30","modified_gmt":"2018-06-22T17:26:30","slug":"cragne-manor-an-anchorhead-tribute","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rcveeder.net\/blog\/2018\/06\/22\/cragne-manor-an-anchorhead-tribute\/","title":{"rendered":"Cragne Manor: An Anchorhead Tribute"},"content":{"rendered":"

We are halfway through 2018 but this is still <\/span>technically<\/span><\/i> the 20th anniversary of Michael Gentry\u2019s <\/span>Anchorhead<\/span>. <\/span><\/i>Close enough.<\/span><\/p>\n

We would like to mark this occasion, pay tribute to one of our favorite games, and have a ton of fun by creating a sort of companion piece\/homage\/loving parody\/grotesque imitation. When I say \u201cwe,\u201d I mean all of us, en masse, including you.<\/span><\/p>\n

I also mean Ryan Veeder and Jenni Polodna, the organizers of this project.<\/span><\/p>\n

HERE\u2019S HOW IT WORKS:<\/span><\/h2>\n

A strong female character wanders the halls of a decrepit mansion. Her husband is in danger. She has to help him. Each room into which she points her flickering flashlight teems with arcane danger and unspeakable history. Each room has been designed and written by a different author.<\/span><\/p>\n

If you volunteer to participate, you\u2019ll receive a prompt that goes something like this:<\/span><\/p>\n

BOILER ROOM: A staircase leads up to the kitchen. The door to the southwest is locked. The rusty key is in here.<\/span><\/p>\n

Then you\u2019ll have about a month to make this room. You\u2019ll do this by doing <\/span>whatever the heck you want.<\/span><\/i> Do you want to design a really nasty puzzle standing between the player and the rusty key? <\/span>You should do that.<\/span><\/i> Do you hate puzzles, so you want the key to just sit there on the floor? <\/span>Definitely do that.<\/span><\/i> Should there be a nameless horror from beyond space hanging out in the boiler room? <\/span>No. Or, yes. It\u2019s your call.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

What if the details you implement contradict details written by somebody else for a different room? <\/span>That\u2019s okay. If it somehow renders the game unplayable we\u2019ll figure something out.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

What if the prose in your room is tonally or stylistically inconsistent with the prose in other rooms? <\/span>Good grief I hope so. Otherwise why would we have a bunch of different people doing this?<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

I mean, this is an homage, so as you\u2019re doing whatever the heck you want, you should do so within the context of Anchorhead-style cosmic horror. Or, if not <\/span>within the context of<\/span><\/i>, at least <\/span>with an awareness of<\/span><\/i>.<\/span><\/p>\n

OKAY BUT SERIOUSLY HOW DOES THIS WORK:<\/span><\/h2>\n

The rooms you design will be stitched together by the organizers in Inform 7, and once we\u2019ve made it work, we\u2019ll unleash the monstrosity that results. That means the rooms themselves will be built in Inform 7.<\/span><\/p>\n

If you don\u2019t know from Inform 7<\/span><\/i> because you use some other authoring device or you\u2019re not a programmer, you can still participate: If you draw up a detailed design document for your room with all the necessary prose, the organizers can translate it into I7 for you.<\/span><\/p>\n

If you do work in Inform 7<\/span><\/i> you\u2019ll be given a Compliance Sheet with a long list of Best Practices to ensure that your code can be plopped into the main project without breaking anything in anyone else\u2019s rooms\u2014while hopefully not constraining the content of your room, which, as I say, should consist of <\/span>whatever the heck you want.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

The organizers predict that, even if our Compliance Sheet is very well thought out, and even if every participant follows it exactly, combining all these hunks of code into a single working game may possibly turn out to be a nontrivial task. So expect that part of the process to take a while.<\/span><\/p>\n

Speaking of time, here is our (still fairly malleable) schedule:<\/span><\/p>\n

June 22 (Today):<\/b> We are right now calling for your intent to participate. Email cragne@jennipolodna.com and commit to participating.<\/span><\/p>\n

July 6 (2 weeks from today): <\/b>This is the deadline for your intent to participate. When we know how many participants we have, we\u2019ll draw up the game\u2019s map and figure out who’s writing what. This might take a few days.<\/span><\/p>\n

July 9 (A few days after that):<\/b> You\u2019ll receive your prompt. If you don\u2019t think you can make it work\u2014because you really hate boiler rooms, or something?\u2014we\u2019ll find you a different prompt.<\/span><\/p>\n

July 13, 20, and 27:<\/b> We\u2019ll encourage you to submit a draft of your room each week leading up to the deadline. These check-ins aren\u2019t mandatory, and we\u2019re not necessarily expecting you to have anything presentable ready on the 13th. (I know I wouldn\u2019t.) We do want multiple chances to look at your rooms while they\u2019re in progress, though, so we can identify room-to-room conflicts (like two people both writing about \u201cmud-slick galoshes\u201d) and resolve them earlier rather than later. <\/span><\/p>\n

August 3 (6 weeks from today): <\/b>This is the deadline for your room. If you can get a couple people to beta test your room before this, that\u2019s great. If you can\u2019t, that\u2019s fine. We want it to be amazing, but we\u2019ll settle for it being playable.<\/span><\/p>\n

August 31 (10 weeks from today): <\/b>After a generously-proportioned period of futzing around, the organizers release the finished game\u2014our finished game.<\/span><\/p>\n

SO HERE\u2019S WHAT YOU DO NOW:<\/span><\/h2>\n

Email cragne@jennipolodna.com and say \u201cYes, I want to contribute to a massive, ridiculous, collaborative tribute to Anchorhead, and I can get my room done before August 3, if you give me just under 4 weeks notice of what room I\u2019m supposed to do.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

HOLD ON I HAVE TWO MORE THINGS:<\/span><\/h2>\n

Maybe you\u2019re thinking, \u201cOh, golly, when Ryan and Jenni say \u2018including you,\u2019 I\u2019m ever so sure they don\u2019t really mean little old me.\u201d <\/span>Whoops! You are wrong.<\/span><\/i> We need as many Anchorhead-heads as we can get to help us out. Remember how many rooms Anchorhead had? <\/span>We want to have a ton of rooms<\/span>.<\/span><\/p>\n

Maybe you\u2019re thinking, \u201cHeck and dang! Ryan and Jenni announced this at the worst possible cussin\u2019 time, because I\u2019m a busy individual and don\u2019t have four blasted weeks to make a good room!\u201d <\/span>Here\u2019s the thing: <\/span>You don\u2019t have to craft a huge ridiculous room. You can write up a creepy hallway, add a couple moody details, and be finished in an hour. I wouldn\u2019t actively encourage anybody to go small, but if you <\/span>want<\/span><\/i> to go small, or you <\/span>need<\/span><\/i> to go small, let us know, and we\u2019ll assign you a little room. Something that\u2019s on the way to something else. Your room\u2019s smallness will magnify the bigness of what lies beyond. <\/span>As long as that\u2019s what you feel like doing.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

TO REITERATE:<\/span><\/h2>\n

Email cragne@jennipolodna.com and let us know you want to contribute.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We are halfway through 2018 but this is still technically the 20th anniversary of Michael Gentry\u2019s Anchorhead. Close enough. We would like to mark this occasion, pay tribute to one of our favorite games, and have a ton of fun by creating a sort of companion piece\/homage\/loving parody\/grotesque imitation. When I say \u201cwe,\u201d I mean […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1125","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-text-adventures","category-video-game"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rcveeder.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1125","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rcveeder.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rcveeder.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rcveeder.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rcveeder.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1125"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.rcveeder.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1125\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1127,"href":"https:\/\/www.rcveeder.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1125\/revisions\/1127"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rcveeder.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1125"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rcveeder.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1125"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rcveeder.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1125"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}