Indie Interview: Mike Rubin pt 1
At the Utah Indie Game Developer's Meet last month, I had the chance to meet Mike Rubin (aka "Rubes"), who really impressed me with a demo of the upcoming game "Vespers 3D." Vespers 3D is actually a 3D Interactive Fiction (I.F.) project, based upon the award-winning text-only Interactive Fiction game called, coincidentally enough, "Vespers."

My discussion with Mike was split between discussion of his adaptation of Torque Technology to drive this project, and a conversation about the design issues he faced coupling the explorative, deliberate gameplay of Interactive Fiction (AKA "Adventure Games") with the visceral, immersive experience of first-person perspective, fully 3D graphics. Mike seemed very soft-spoken and unassuming, and kept praising the artists he'd worked with to create this demo.

While he was very open with the possibility that this experiment might fail, I was struck by his passion for the project, and how well he'd thought through the design issues. When the opportunity struck to interview him about his project, I was thrilled by the chance to pick his brain a little more. I hope you'll find it as fascinating as I did!

The interview is pretty huge, so I broke it two parts. You can read part 2 by clicking HERE.

Rampant Coyote: So tell us a little about yourself. Who is Mike Rubin?

Mike Rubin: Best I can tell from Wikipedia, I'm a videographer with ties to Apple and Lucasfilm, a middle east scholar, and a musician whose best known work is on "Blue's Clues." I really don't recall anything like that in my past, but then again there's a lot of my life I don't remember well. Mostly what I know is a life predominantly in medical research, now as an assistant professor at the University of Utah School of Medicine. It's an interesting hobby while I pursue my life dream of getting my own personal entry in Wikipedia as the father of three-dimensional interactive fiction.


Rampant Coyote: Steve Taylor of NinjaBee told me to ask you about Missions of the Reliant. Was that you? Want to tell us about that one? Steve tells me he played it a TON, and wanted to know if you have another version planned.

Mike Rubin: Yeah, that was the game that was supposed to "get it out of my system." It was a shareware game I made for the Mac back in the early/mid-90's while I was in graduate school, mostly because I had always wanted to make a game and I had to give it a try. I based it on that old ASCII Star Trek game, where you moved around from sector to sector wiping out Klingons, only this time I made it with isometric 2D graphics and a different storyline. It was a lot of fun, and I learned an incredible amount -- particularly how bad I was at marketing and post-production crap. But it got some recognition in MacUser's annual shareware awards and it made enough money to buy a few more beers and brats in grad school. The fact that Steve remembered it is amazing, although I'm not sure he should really be admitting to playing a "ton" of it. I've thought about trying to go back and modify the code to release the full game for free, but I've got enough on my plate right now as it is.

Interesting, now that I think about it; in that game I took what was originally a "text"-based game and put a nifty graphics front end on it. Now I find myself doing the same thing with Vespers and text IF. I wonder what that means.


Rampant Coyote: It's gotta be destiny, man! Back when I was a kid, "Interactive Fiction" was just called "Adventure Games." The early Colossal Cave adventures, and the timeless Infocom games like Zork and Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, motivated me to learn to program myself so I could create these absolutely incredible experiences. I came across the term, "Interactive Fiction" about ten years ago. Is there a difference between "adventure games" and "interactive fiction?"

Mike Rubin: I think there are some differences, but the fundamental concept is pretty much the same. I would say that the term Interactive Fiction evolved as a way of reflecting the greater literary approach that is now being taken in the writing of these games. Many IF authors spend a great deal of effort on the quality of the writing and its contribution to the game experience, rather than focusing entirely on the puzzles. And there are some experimental IF games that have taken this approach to new and interesting places.

I really cut my teeth on some of those old games; I remember spending far too much time playing Original Adventure on my dad's hulking Northstar computer, followed later by Scott Adams's wonderful, albeit laconic, adventure games. Those early games, although certainly literary in their own style, concentrated more on relatively simple puzzle-solving; any semblance of story was thin and basically emergent from the puzzles. Then Infocom came about, and I would say that most people would identify that as the start of real IF. The games shifted focus from being centered around puzzles to being centered around stories. The puzzles were still there, of course, but it became more about the writing, and the quality thereof. I think those were probably the first games that you would begin to identify with the term "fiction".

The term "adventure game" can still apply in many cases, though. Lots of IF games are about exploration and adventure, but many also additionally have some of the components of true fiction, such as plot, characterization, dialogue, and so forth. IF has come a long way since the 80's, and there are some really sophisticated works out there.


Rampant Coyote: What technology was Vespers originally built with?

Mike Rubin: Vespers was written using Inform (version 6). A newer version has come out
since then (Inform 7), which is a real advance in writing text IF games
because it uses more natural language.


Rampant Coyote: So what made you decide to implement Interactive Fiction in 3D? What made you think it would be good match, and what do you hope to accomplish with this title?

Mike Rubin: I'm still not sure if it's a good match, to be honest; that's what we're looking to find out with this experiment. I guess there are two main reasons I thought it was worth trying. One reason is that I've always enjoyed the freedom of movement and exploration that first-person games (FPS) provide, particularly those with really compelling worlds. But typically, FPS games don't want you to spend a lot of time exploring and experimenting with things; usually you have a straightforward goal and the idea is to complete it and get to the next level. Well, text IF is all about exploring and experimenting, so this would be a way of incorporating those things into the 3D world.

The other reason is that I think there is a growing sense of dissatisfaction with mainstream games, particularly FPS-style games. So much emphasis is placed on the graphics, and story is really just an afterthought used to loosely tie together the various levels. Half-Life got all this credit for having a great "story", but come on -- that was a fragfest, not a story. But again, text IF is all about developing story and characters and interactivity, so once again this would be a way of giving 3D games something they've been missing.

There are other reasons as well, like trying to bring a greater sense of interaction to 3D games by using a text parser and forcing the player to really think about what to do next -- not just click click click. Some of the recent graphical adventure games do this to some extent, but I like the increased options that a text parser can provide compared with mouse clicking.


Rampant Games: So why did you choose a 3D remake of "Vespers," rather than an original title?

Mike Rubin: Well, I decided if I was going to try this, I needed to start with a reasonable goal: create a small prototype game, like a proof-of-concept. I thought the best approach would be to base the prototype on an existing IF game -- and specifically a really good one, so people would hopefully enjoy it while they're trying it out. So I checked out the latest entries from the 2005 IFComp (the annual IF Competition, at www.ifcomp.org), which is open only to IF games that can be completed in two hours or less. The first one I looked at was Vespers, a game by Jason Devlin, which had just been voted the winner of the competition.

It was fantastic, and it had all the elements I was looking for: a compelling story, great characters, a perfect setting (small but well visualized) -- and it was short. It was easy to envision bringing the game to 3D life. So I e-mailed him after I finished playing it, presented him with the idea, and he was sold. He remains intimately involved in the project -- probably the way an author would be when his book is being made into a movie.


Rampant Coyote: I imagine that going from a text-only game to a full-blown 3D world came with a lot of challenges. What sort of challenges did you face, and were any of them unexpected?

Mike Rubin: It's probably safe to say that most things were unexpected, since I had no idea what I was getting myself into. Although many of the challenges are difficult and problematic, I'd probably also say that they are a source of great enjoyment. Jason, N.R. Bharathae (our modeler and artistic lead), and myself have had many great e-mail conversations about how to implement a particular feature of IF which is simple to do in text but horrendously complicated in 3D. (Well, *I* think they're great, those guys are probably sick of me e-mailing them all the time to complain about something else.)

One of the earliest issues that came up was the concept of "scope." In text IF, the game world is divided up into well-defined rooms or locations. So at any one point in time, you can easily determine which game objects are "in scope" (those objects the player can interact with). Usually that's whatever is in that room, plus whatever the player is carrying in inventory, and it's simple to calculate. But in 3D, rooms are more difficult to define. I tried defining scope as whichever objects fall within a particular radius of the player, but then you have to take into account walls (if an object is behind a wall, you can't really interact with it), field of view (if an object is behind the player, should he be able to interact with it?), and so on. You don't have to take these things into account in text.

Most of the other problems are similar in that they deal with the issues raised by introducing spatial relationships into the equation. How to drop objects when the player is standing right in front of a wall; how to deal with certain commands when the player is standing at funny, unexpected angles; how to handle placing objects inside or on top of other objects. The list goes on and on, and there are still lots of outstanding issues that we haven't worked out yet.


(Click HERE For Part 2)

Labels: Adventure Games, Interviews, Torque

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