

Awesome Visualisations of Choose Your Own Adventure books - wakeless
http://samizdat.cc/cyoa/

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Locke
I love how casually detailed this article is. Touches like the subtly blinking
blink tag -- and the subject matter itself -- lead me to believe there are
gems here waiting to be discovered on subsequent reads.

"13 months and 11k lines of code later, i’ve finished up the choose your own
adventure project"

From: <http://etc.samizdat.cc/2009/11/the-rules-of-the-game>

Yes, this is an impressive effort.

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psyklic
Fantastic article. I just wanted to point out -- if you click on the links on
the top left navigation, you can see the graphs/animations/etc for _every_
book. This wasn't obvious until I read the entire article!

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NathanKP
Down at the bottom is a link to a footnote with more information about the
software and coding used:

<http://samizdat.cc/cyoa/#fn3>

Edit:

Wow! I just found the digitized Choose Your Own Adventure book with jump
history:

<http://samizdat.cc/cyoa/#/zork>

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asnyder
This is just so well done. The overview, the gallery, the animation, and play.
It's remarkable. This must've been a labor of love.

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markbao
He's also created a digital version of a book that is browsable and shows your
jump history here: <http://samizdat.cc/cyoa/#/zork>

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wakeless
I didn't see that, nor did I see the blog. This guy is like the gift that
keeps giving.

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markbao
:) - a number of people who saw the page didn't take note of it, thinking
'cyoa' was the name of the site, or something.

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scorxn
Christian Swinehart is at the top of his field, working for a legendary design
company. <http://samizdat.cc/me>

Funny how because he's not a familiar tech name, everyone here assumes he's an
upstart.

~~~
mhartl
Thanks, you just answered my question posted above. Work at this level rarely
comes out of nowhere.

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gcv
What a fantastic article. I wonder how more rules-oriented gamebook series [1]
would fare in this type of analysis. They do tend to lead to an "ideal"
ending, as the author noted, so perhaps they wouldn't be as interesting. The
progression graphs would be interesting to see, though.

[1] Such as Joe Dever's wonderful _Lone Wolf_ series. The republished versions
available at projectaon.org --- and apparently back in print now --- are just
as much fun as I remember.

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tptacek
The graphics are (mostly) Python+nodebox. This guy has a monstrous talent.

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adriand
I loved those books and I had a system for reading them. Each time I had to
make a decision that involved me jumping to one page or another, I would fold
the corner of the page. Each time I hit an endpoint, I would travel back to a
folded page and then make a new decision to see where it would take me.

Funny how memory works. I don't think I've recalled my system for reading
these books for years, perhaps more than a decade.

~~~
mattmichielsen
I did the same exact thing, or left fingers stuck in all the choice pages.
Maybe that's why recursion came easy to me years later in my early programming
classes.

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cool-RR
Not related to the content: Check out the cool "side notes" mechanism that
site has! Click the cross symbol after the phrase 'from the beginning.'

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mhartl
Wow. I mean, who is this guy? This is just breathtaking.

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wakeless
This really reminds me of the old Joshua Davis experiments.

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steve_mobs
someone needs to bring the choose your own adventure genre back.

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detcader
Now if only this type of visualization was used for something _useful_...

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andreyf
While I see why you got down-voted, I can't help but agree. This is design-as-
art, and it's an insult to true design. Why are top-tier designers visualizing
choose–your-own-adventure books? Yes, it's pretty, but in the meantime, I'm
looking at code all day using monospace fonts of ~100 characters. The input
device through which I express my intentions would been not unfamiliar over a
century ago. So while it's nice to see pretty pictures, and I appreciate the
enormous efforts put into them, I'd much rather this guy use his PhD in
Computational Neuroscience to help my brain visualize code.

~~~
msie
_This is design-as-art, and it's an insult to true design._

Huh?

 _Why are top-tier designers visualizing choose–your-own-adventure books?_

Actually, only _one_ guy is doing something he loves, as a hobby, and he gets
to learn a lot of _useful_ stuff at the same time.

 _I'd much rather this guy use his PhD in Computational Neuroscience to help
my brain visualize code_

So, how far do you think he'll get doing something he may have no passion for,
for somebody like you?

~~~
andreyf
Oh, no, he's more than free to do whatever he wants, for free or for pay. I'm
just saying it would benefit me if he developed a passion for revolutionizing
IDE's - or more generally, making something that's equally artistically wow-
ing and useful :)

~~~
vessenes
Most artistic (and programming) pursuits include the idea that it's good to
take a sabbatical, a little rest, a change in direction.

I don't think it's controversial to say that doing something different is
generally regarded as a good way to learn new things, things that apply back
to your 'real' life or job.

So, I have a more hopeful view: I loved his work on this admittedly trivial
topic. It was beautiful, and inspiring. I'm looking forward to seeing what he
does with the results of all his labors. After reading the page, I have no
doubt he will apply his skills to things that you or I might one day benefit
from.

So, be positive! And grateful he published this thing, this is roughly the
equivalent of a master's thesis in info-design someone put out on the net for
free. I loved it.

