Timeline
An Earth Turning Slowly began its life as a handful of half-baked ideas for fantasy stories some months before Shufflecomp began. The first manifestation was a setting-heavy plot I had dreamed up while flying over the Alps: the working title was “Denver International Airport”, and the premise held that there are giants dwelling in the clouds (think Jack and the Beanstalk), but, being comparatively insubstantial, they are being driven to extinction by unwitting pilots and their airplanes' engines. It opened with a group of giants realizing that they were headed for the eponymous airport. The other precursor revolved around a girl with a memory-storing charm, which she hid in a cave away from society to starve it of memories; she wanted it to capture the entirety of an upcoming dance, which would be her and her boyfriend's first. Unfortunately, the cave becomes the site of a soldier's murder, and several parties go after the charm as the only definitive evidence. The girl, in the meantime, tries to salvage the privacy of her memories and recover the charm before the big day.
In their short-lived combination, I had a girl named Morgan entrusting knowledge of a MacGuffin to a boy she is interested in, Arthur, only to have him surreptitiously steal it during a stormy walk home. She continues to involve him in the search, mistaking his faked support for the real thing. Eventually word of her plight reaches Joanna, an inventor, who proposes visiting the cloud giants with her flying machine, as they would have witnessed the crime. I was trying, in this iteration, to present everyone's actions as motivated by their trying to be a hero. The case for Arthur, however, was fuzzy.
Bláveröld and the Armatron were of course inspired by the Fireflies music video, but the idea that Arthur was fixated on the stegosaurid's welfare took a while to germinate. If you look at the relevant shots, you'll see that the Armatron grip is rather far back, and that point stuck with me. Then, while brushing up on my knowledge of dinosaurs, I came across the field of paleopathology, and an explanation for that positioning presented itself. I gave Morgan the title “exopaleopathologist” on the pattern of “exogeologist”, which I knew from reading a certain blog. And then, after branching my research into ethical guidelines for wildlife veterinarians, I finally nailed down Arthur's worldview.
Writing
This being my first speed-IF (my first IF, in fact), the writing process didn't go quite like I hoped. I learned that five interactive chapters is a little ambitious for three weeks' free time, and I fear that a lot of the writing you see is only my second draft. On the other hand, the process was very educational: I'm usually picky and glacial when it comes to fiction; never before have I been able to “just write” like this deadline made me.
Other casualties of the time limit were some of the story branches I had sketched out. Now, if you diagram the CYOA structure like Sam Ashwell has been doing with other stories, you'll see a preponderance of multiple edges. They give the graph a puzzlegrass-like look, which is somehow fitting.
Coding
There were three things I wanted to accomplish with An Earth Turning Slowly:
- giving the open-ended feel of parser-based IF while running a choice-based world model;
- vary the temporal scope of the underlying choices; and
- providing feedback on commands before the player commits to them (in particular, whether the command is understood, and, if so, what it means in context).
I think the interface accomplished goals 1 and 3 fairly well, though I can see some readers unhappy with the amount of text between prompts. Goal 2 fell somewhat—but not entirely—by the wayside. In any case, I've posted the work as part of the IF Practice Club, so we'll see what kind of feedback it garners there.
Feedback
Thanks again for reading! If you have thoughts or suggestions, I would welcome them on the IF discussion forum or via e-mail.