On 19 February 2022, on the Intfiction forum, Ryan Veeder began a topic entitled Ask Ryan with the words:
Do you have any questions—especially questions for me, specifically? I would be happy to answer them. I want to make myself available to anyone who has questions.
Here is the theme music for this service.
This page is an index to the subsequent oracular statements.
Questioner
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Question
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Answer
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Grueslayer
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The first three questions ever, including a question about Inform 6
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Answers, including "I don’t know anything about Inform 6."
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Hanon Ondricek
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Three more questions, including "Why are you so cool?"
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Three more answers, including "I’m afraid I don’t know why you find me to be so cool."
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Dan Fabulich
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Several questions, including asking for advice to new authors
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Several answers
- MY ADVICE TO NEWBIES WHO WANT TO TRY THEIR HAND AT WRITING INTERACTIVE FICTION
- HOW OR WHY I GOT INVOLVED IN INTERACTIVE FICTION
- HOW OR WHY I WAS ABLE TO WIN MY FIRST IFCOMP
- HOW PATREON IS GOING
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Tobias
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More questions, mainly about specific games
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More answers
- ON “THE COMPLETE GUIDE TO KOHOLINT”
- ON “RYAN VEEDER’S MUD WARRIORS”
- ON WHETHER I KNOW OF BITSY AND MY TAKE ON THAT CONTROVERSIAL TOPIC
- ON HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN
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P.B. Parjeter
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Are you Canadian?
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I live in Iowa
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bg
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Meta question
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Meta answer
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Henrik Åsman
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Status of Craverly Heights
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Seems like the kind of thing that will never go away
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P.B. Parjeter
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Question about camera implementation in Robin and Orchid
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Emily Boegheim did all the work
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severedhand
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Technical question about Cragne Manor
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I don't remember
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ausgerechnet
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What was the inspiration for Castle Balderstone?
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A book I wrote called ‘MOTORCYCLUS’ and Other Extremely Scary Stories.
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Dannii
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What should we know about Nautilisia that we probably don’t?
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It's secretly “based on” a poem by Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr
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Magnus4444
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Multiple questions
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Multiple answers
- 1. Was ‘You’ve…’ your first ever game? Or did you have a play around a few times before you hit your stride with that one?
- 2. What’s your process like for creating a game? Do you tend to map out the locations and plot first or do you start with a particular kind of interaction you’re interested in? Is it different on different games?
- 3. Does the implementation form a big part of that? So, are there things that you rule out as being a headache relative to the pay off for the player and so on?
- 4. Wrenlaw is quite different in tone and experience from the other three - was that more autobiographical as a piece?
- 5.1. What parts of your games have you been proudest of?
- 5.2. Are there any parts of implementing them that really drove you nuts at the time?
- 5.3. Which games of yours should I play next?
- 6. What are a few games of other authors that you’ve really admired and why?
- 7. My son (12) is quite into computer games so I’m keen to get him into IF - he’s asked me to make him a game featuring the SCP Foundation - any tips for a first time coder?!
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Robb Sherwin
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Comment masquerading as a question
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Nathan
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Are The Ascent of the Gothic Tower versions different?
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They should be the same.
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Nobody
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Unsolicited link to video of presentation at USCHaCCSE-LitRG
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Jason Love
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Your socks are gorgeous so how does one become funnier?
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Start from first principles
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Pinkunz
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Question about player agency
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Answer about discovery, and not being able to see the limitations of the world
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Magnus4444
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Questions about Ryan Veeder's Authentic Fly Fishing
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Answers
- 1. As an author, can you keep adding to the game? So, could you add extra episodes / areas etc and then just recompile the game?
- 2. Roughly how many badges are there?
- 3. How do the time sensitive features work? Is there an amount of time IRL that a player has to keep coming back before certain events trigger?
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Magnus4444
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Follow-up questions
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Follow-up answers
- Would clearing the cache on my browser affect this?
- Do you get data on when and where the players are playing from?
- Have any other games followed this route of having different days / different events linked to real world data etc?
- This seems a great way to create more of a live event around a game - for example, a game that had to be played over a week with different stages unlocking each day…
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Pinkunz
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Implied questions
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Answers to questions inferred using ", am I right?"
- One of the reasons you’re experimenting with unannounced date-locked content is to foil efforts at strip-mining a game of all its endings, collectibles, and Easter eggs, right?
- The exclusive hosting of both Ryan Veeder’s Authentic Fly Fishing and Ryan Veeder’s Bram Stoker’s The Dracula Files , beyond driving traffic to your website and preventing the proliferation of disparate versions of the same game, helps discourage folks from decompiling the game, right?
- You could update an online-only game to render people’s walkthroughs incomplete, right?
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David Welbourn
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Post about walkthroughs
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I always enjoy reading David’s walkthroughs for my games
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David Welbourn
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Question about Ryan Veeder’s Authentic Fly Fishing
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Jason Love
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Questions about planners and Winter Storm Draco
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Answers
- ON THE SUBJECT OF PLANNERS
- ON THE SUBJECT OF THAT COMBAT SYSTEM
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