It looks like these updates will be monthly, which means there's only one to go after this one, before the IFComp release deadline! I'd be stressing about this, but thankfully I'm well on target in regards to word-count, with more than half the script written and most of the city and its history either planned out or vividly detailed in text already.
Right now, the work as product only exists in the script and fragments of music, but this will be swiftly rectified in the next few days, thanks to Aliceffekt allowing me use of his Interactive Fiction Sandbox, Paradise as a platform. This will be a first for an independent work (Not counting the many, many miniature works making up Paradise of course), but hopefully this will pave the way for more to come.
I've set up a project page for the work, with a short blurb an in-fiction quote, here. As you can see from that page, I've all but settled on the title "To Burn in Memory". Though I'm totally up for feedback on this, the question this month will be about music. When I'm on the web — whether on a site or an Interactive Fiction work — music has a strange etiquette, and I haven't nailed down the best way to handle it. The system I'm currently considering is simply to have a short piano motif play on entering an important area. These motifs are not diagetic (Existing in the work's fiction), but will be implicative about the locations they inhabit and the characters they represent, the interplay of which I'm hoping will result in some interesting insight into both for the listener. You can hear a selection below.
My problem with this music system is quite simple: I dislike silence, and will likely myself put on music when confronted with it. Problem is, whatever the frequency the motifs are played, if someone is playing their own music on top this will not result in a good experience. Is this just a big deal for me, or does anyone else expect similar issues? If you want to check out works that use a similar system, Porpentine's latest few works are a really good example of this! Also, for those curious as to the relevance of the painting this week, there's a hint to it in last month's update. And one last burning question: does anyone have a preference as to spaces enclosing an em dash?