Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The enduring allure of Choose Your Own Adventure books

newyorker.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 96 posts

Re: The enduring allure of Choose Your Own Adventure books

#61

Post by lkbm »

Mountain_Skies wrote: post #13

Loved the books as a kid and one of the first programs I wrote was a straight up port of one of the books into the computer. Lots of print and if then statements. I wasn't artistically inclined so none of the illustrations made it into the port. After a positive response from a few classmates I gave copies to, I thought about selling them but was crushed when my mother explained copyright to me. One thing I noticed a…

> Loved the books as a kid and one of the first programs I wrote was a straight up port of one of the books into the computer. Lots of print and if then statements.

This was also my first program, except I quickly discovered that I didn't have the patience to type in a whole book. Gave up after a few pages.

My subsequent programs were meandering self-written choose-your-own-adventure stories, though without plot or anything. It was a lot more fun than mindlessly typing in a text, but also not anything of interest to anyone but me.

Re: The enduring allure of Choose Your Own Adventure books

#62

Post by scelerat »

Mountain_Skies wrote: post #13

Loved the books as a kid and one of the first programs I wrote was a straight up port of one of the books into the computer. Lots of print and if then statements. I wasn't artistically inclined so none of the illustrations made it into the port. After a positive response from a few classmates I gave copies to, I thought about selling them but was crushed when my mother explained copyright to me. One thing I noticed a…

> Loved the books as a kid and one of the first programs I wrote was a straight up port of one of the books into the computer

Same.

Re: The enduring allure of Choose Your Own Adventure books

#63

Post by jasonwatkinspdx »

Mountain_Skies wrote: post #13

Loved the books as a kid and one of the first programs I wrote was a straight up port of one of the books into the computer. Lots of print and if then statements. I wasn't artistically inclined so none of the illustrations made it into the port. After a positive response from a few classmates I gave copies to, I thought about selling them but was crushed when my mother explained copyright to me. One thing I noticed a…

I forget the name, but as a kid my brother had a choose your own adventure style book where you had to type in a BASIC program listing to get the page number for the next part to read. I was preschool age at the time but was able to get through it.

Re: The enduring allure of Choose Your Own Adventure books

#64

Post by mncharity »

Using gaze tracking with a CYOA-structured video or book permits another aspect of oral storytelling - noticing and adapting to listener interest. Attention focused on some character gets more scenes with them. Or the opposite?

For personalized science education, might one wander the richly interwoven tapestry of stories that is science, following one's interests? I've shown people IBM's stop-motion cartoon drawn with atoms, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oSCX78-8-q0 , and they'd often ask about the ripples. IBM wrote supplementary content on them, perhaps because of such common interest. But when watching yt alone, its hard to engage, to follow up. Links in the description? Pop-up cards? With gaze tracking, one might notice the attention, and provide opportunity in that teachable moment. As if a mentor, tutor.

Gaze tracking without extra hardware is still rough. And patents. But slowly it's becoming something to explore.

Re: The enduring allure of Choose Your Own Adventure books

#67

Post by samcgraw »

Ha! Two fiction-based posts on HN in two days? Love to see it :)

Shameless plug, but: I've been working on a site that was inspired by CYOA (although not exactly the same): Storylocks.com [https://www.storylocks.com/]. It's a simple way for multiple people to write stories together. Fiction writers unite!

Re: The enduring allure of Choose Your Own Adventure books

#68

Post by spookthesunset »

Eleison23 wrote: post #25

I was addicted to this series as a child. It is heartwarming to know that they were largely produced by single fathers. They definitely made a connection with me in my youth. I particularly remember the "Spacecraft 54-40" story, and how it had a thread that could not be reached by conventionally making choices. For me, these stories were durable and engaging. I could read a book more than once because it had lasting…

I think the book you are referring to is "Inside UFO 54-40" - https://www.amazon.com/Inside-UFO-54-40-Edward-Packard/dp/05...

Re: The enduring allure of Choose Your Own Adventure books

#69

Post by samcgraw »

tunesmith wrote: post #47

A few author friends and I have been using a "collaborative branching fiction" site I wrote 25 years ago. Took it out of mothballs when Covid hit, spruced it up in some ways. Now it has a react component that graphs the DAG of the stories (threads can merge together, loops are not allowed), lets you filter by un-concluded threads with some nice animation. I wrote some software that will project how big the story will…

This is awesome! I had a similar thought with my own site I got started on at the beginning of Covid: Storylocks [https://storylocks.com]. It has nowhere near the level of intricacy that your site has it seems, but really cool to see other folks experiment in a similar way!

Re: The enduring allure of Choose Your Own Adventure books

#70

Post by tedmcory77 »

I made my own version of this my my dice company a while back on Facebook messenger (linked to our company site). It was great to see the inserts we did with the product getting used and people going on adventures linked to the different sets. I don't know that it actually drove any sales, but it was a labor of love that I still remember fondly.
Post reply on HN