[audio:thebutchersboy.mp3]
The Butcher’s Boy by Half Asleep
Another lovely contemporary rendition of an american (Appalachian in this case) folk song.
Another tragedy for a young girl in the lyrics…
She went upstairs to make her bed
And not one word to her mother said
Her mother she went upstairs too
Saying, “Daughter, oh daughter, what troubles you?â€
“Oh mother, oh mother, I cannot tell
That butcher’s boy I love so well
He courted me my life away
And now at home he will not stayâ€
“There is a place in London town
Where that butcher’s boy goes and sits down
He takes that strange girl on his knee
And tells to her what he won’t tell meâ€
Her father he came up from work
Saying, “Where is my daughter, she seems so hurtâ€
He went upstairs to give her hope
And found her hanging from a rope
He took his knife and cut her down
And in her bosom these words were found
“Go dig my grave both wide and deep
Place a marble slab at my head and feet
And over my coffin, place a snow white dove
To warn the world that I died of love
alternate lyrics and sheet music here
We implemented the last behaviour today. That makes for a total count of 70 behaviours. Behaviours are things that the characters can do. It’s a concept from the Drama Princess engine that we use in the game. And even though Chris Crawford is famous for saying that interactive storytelling requires thousands of verbs, we’re pretty proud to have exceeded the classic amount of 5 verbs (turn right, turn left, move forward, move back, and fire) quite a bit.
To be fair, there’s actually a few behaviours that won’t be used anymore, remnants of Drama Princess tests and old versions of the game. “Bow to Greet” and “Wave” are not part of The Path and “Dance” didn’t make it either. But “Move Happy” is still there, “Go Home”, “Chase”, “Act Sad”, “Drink” and even “Pray”. Many of these behaviours can be acted out by several characters. But some are reserved to a single one (often because of the limits of asset creation -each behaviour typically requires a unique animation for each character- or sometimes because it’s not appropriate to the story -things that a certain characters would never do).
In Drama Princess, behaviours are like little programs that run at the very bottom of the software structure but that are capable of influencing the entire game. I’m not sure if that’s a good idea -I’m not a programmer ;). But it’s very practical. And it works quite well. Each behaviour can be entirely unique, though several share common elements (like go to a certain spot, or look at an object -which , I guess, are extra verbs that I didn’t count separately).
All the behaviours we need for The Path are in the game now. But they are by no means finished. Many require a lot of tweaking and fixing. And we also need to quite extensively author the rules by which characters can choose to act out certain behaviours. As you may or may not know, all characters in The Path (including the avatars) are capable of autonomous behaviour (at least in the main part of the game). They choose to do things based on what’s around them and how they feel about those objects and characters. Since these feelings change, so can does their behaviour. A lot of our authoring now involves limiting the freedom that the characters have. Because they have no intention to simply act out our story. We need to force them a bit. We’re like the directors of a troupe of anarchistic actors. It’s fun, but…
