Zach Baker: Story-Driven

So I was deeply involved in programming the non-player characters for a lot of Luxoflux’s True Crime games. One of the things that consumed a good part of my time was devising animation controls for the characters so they could walk along streets, respond to steering, follow paths smoothly, avoid potential collisions and use a range of movement animation. It worked pretty well by the time we were done, but it got pretty involved and there was no guarantee it looked good in all situations.

So I just saw (yeah, just now) this paper and its associated video from last years Siggraph:

Hokey smokes.

Having this technology is a dream scenario compared to what things were like on True Crime. We did a small subset of this work and fixed lots of problems that this approach solves. My congratulations and thanks go out to the authors at the University of Washington and their supporters, including Sony and EA. This is fantastic stuff.

Congratulations to Andrew Chung from Harvey Mudd College! He was selected to play in this year’s Jeopardy! College Championship and makes his appearance on tonight’s first-round game.

I’m sure the entire state of Wisconsin knows how it ends since it was taped a month ago, but I know I’ll be tuning in. There hasn’t been a Mudder in the College Championship since Rif (who is half man, half legend) won the 1998 tournament. Glad to see Andrew Chung bring HMC back to the College Championship. As is customary, I wish him the best of retroactive luck.

No matter how much you geek out over something, there’s always someone else on the internet geeking out even more. And they aren’t shy about letting you know about it!

Like, okay, I was excited to see the original Wall-E trailer that played before Ratatouille. I’ve been looking forward to Wall-E ever since hearing the unspeakably awesome SplineCast with Andrew Stanton… but there I go again. And yet, see, when I watch this, I’m clearly not in the same place about this movie:

Wow. I love how it’s in two parts.

Of course, this brings me to the alarming thing about the internet:

It makes you think you’re not geeking out that much… when you totally, totally are. And even more so for having fed your interest online. And yet, on the internet, it’s okay. You’re somehow, impossibly, among friends.

From Wikipedia to World of Warcraft to Facebook to Twitter, I think that the great social accomplishment of the internet is to make it okay to obsess over things because there’s always someone, or indeed many people, close at hand that are even more obsessed than you. I think I may even be being serious. In any case, it never ceases to amaze me.

Great talk by Bryan Helmkamp from WePlay for serious BDD-minded Rubyists like myself that goes over how they use RSpec’s story support.

By the way, did I mention you can also reach this blog by visiting story-driven.com? True.

Every story begins in mystery. The first mystery resolved is not of plot or character or setting, but in terms of expectations. The first mystery is this: what can the audience expect? Right from the title and incipit, the author begins to reveal the answer.

I just happened to drop by the website for star technology writer David Pogue, who does great video reviews and writes a blog for NYTimes.com these days. He has a sticky-note at the bottom of his personal site which says, to quote:

Pogue’s Pledge

This site is 100% free

of animations, ads,

annoying backgrounds,

java, frames, and

anything that blinks.

I love that because it has an attitude that the author has standards, cares about what you’re doing right now (reading his site), and is gently humorous. And of course, he gives it to you upfront, although after you’ve understood what the site is about.

Now, this isn’t something extraordinary he’s doing, it’s just a reflection of his taste as a discerning technologist who’s been around the block. But it’s presented as a manifesto, which gives it story weight. He promises you’re going to see this in action as you read on.

It’s important to give story weight to an audience right up front, and more so for short-form works where the audience is distracted anyway. Like, say, a website.

A short manifesto is great for this. And I love that it’s on a sticky note. When you have something titled “My promise to you,” who is not going to read that? “Whoa, I just got here and you’re making me a promise? What do I get? I’ll hold you to it!”

This brings up another point. When you talk to an audience for the first time, it’s not just setting expectations but also the beginning of a relationship. When I see David Pogue’s cute little sticky note, even if I like flashing things, I still feel like he has high standards and respect for me, the reader. How great is that?