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Running a Storyworld

Page history last edited by Bill Maya 15 years ago

We've waded through a lot of theoretical mud to get to this point, and at long last we're ready to see this baby in action. There's one last bit of work we need to do:  hook up our Verbs to the start of the story.

 

In the Verb Editor, open the System Verbs menu and choose the very first Verb, "once upon a time."  Every single storyworld starts with this Verb, which launches the story.  We need to tell it what Event to begin with.  Let's set it up so the first thing that happens is that FredpunchesTom.

"Once upon a time" has one Role, "Fate." Delete this Role and add a new one called "Fred."  Click on AssumeRoleIf, and choose "AreSameActor."  Our script will be:

 

AssumeRoleIf

     AreSameActor

ReactingActor

          Fred

 

Click ReactingActor, then use the "ActorConstant" dialog box to select Fred.

 

Next, delete the default Option "OK" and add the Option "punch." (click once on "punch" in the pink column, then click on the green "+" next to the Options box).  For the Acceptable Script, use this:

 

DirObject: Acceptable

     AreSameActor

CandidateActor

          Tom

 

Desirable and Inclination both default to 0.0.  Leave them that way for now. 

 

Click on the Properties box.  Change the Audience to Anybody, and add a 3ActorWordSocket

 

This insures that "once upon a time" will be followed by FredpunchingTom. Since Tom is the first Actor in the list, the human player gets to play Tom (i.e., get punched).

So now we are finally ready to play this storyworld! Look under the Lizards menu and select the menu item "Storyteller Lizard." (What's a Lizard?  Briefly, it's a tool to assist the author in designing storyworlds.  See Lizards for more detail.)

 

A new window will appear.  If you've played a storyworld, it will look familiar:

 

 

(For more on how to play a storyworld, see the How to Play page on the official Storytron website.)

 

Click the period after "I OK" on the right half of the screen.  Now you'll see:

 

 

This is the first Event in your new storyworld. Fred punched Tom.  You, playing Tom, now get to decide whether to punchFred back or run away fromFred.  Go ahead, punchFred. He'll punch you back. Punch him again. And again. And again. Note how realistically this simulates the observed behavior of males of the species Homo Sapiens in bars. When you get tired of this game, choose "run away from." Guess what? The story ends! Well, what did you expect? When somebody runs away from a fight, there's no more fighting left to do!

 

OK, OK, War and Peace this wasn't. But it's a start. Close the Storyteller window, and you're back at the Verb Editor.  Next we want to make this storyworld a little richer, a little deeper.

 

Next Tutorial: Enriching the Storyworld

Previous Tutorial: Acceptable and Desirable

 


Creative Commons License  This tutorial by Storytron, Inc. is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

 

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