Editing Starship Titanic (section)

===Writing===
The story was created by Adams, who wrote the game's script with [[Michael Bywater]]<ref name="Sydney" /> and Neil Richards.{{sfn
|Richards
|1998
|p=7
}}<ref name=Credits>
''Starship Titanic'' final credits
</ref> Additional dialogue was written by [[D. A. Barham]].<ref name=Credits /> Adams's inspiration for the game—particularly the objective of upgrading from third to first-class—came from an experience with airline ticketing personnel, where he was told he would be given an upgrade from economy-class tickets upon checking in for his flight, but found out upon arrival that the upgrade had not been arranged; he said the idea is based on the premise that "everyone wants a free upgrade in life".<ref name="Ind" /><ref>
{{cite news
|title=Games Evolve From Shoot-'Em-Ups; Computer and Media Giants Zap Away Over the $17 Billion Industry
|work=[[International Herald Tribune]]
|date=16 February 1998
|page=11
}}
</ref> Adams had devised a story concept to add an additional gameplay element where players would be able to enter the ship's data system as a "full realtime, flyable environment" and control how information flows through the vessel, but the idea was abandoned because, according to Adams, it was "a bridge too far".<ref name="Edge">
{{cite magazine
|title=Interview with Douglas Adams
|magazine=[[Edge (magazine)|Edge]]
|date=April 1998
|issue=57
|pages=24–26
}}
</ref>

Adams aimed to develop a text parser-based [[dialogue system]] as opposed to the drop-down conversation menus of contemporary adventure games, in which player have limited dialogue options.<ref name="Edge" /><ref name="Wired98" /> The text parser includes over 30,000 words and 16 hours of dialogue recorded by voice actors.<ref name="Newsweek" /> According to Adams, over 10,000 lines of dialogue were recorded for the game.<ref name="Sydney" /> In order to make conversations with characters convincing, The Digital Village's Jason Williams and Richard Millican created a language processor called SpookiTalk, which was based on VelociText, a software developed by Linda Watson of Virtus Corporation.<ref name=Credits />{{sfn
|Richards
|1998
|p=71
}} Producer Emma Westecott thought the processor was preferable as common [[text-to-speech]] programs "made the voices sound cold and distant". Douglas Adams claimed that they made "all of your characters sound like semi-concussed Norwegians".<ref>{{cite news
|url=https://avclub.com/douglas-adams-1798207882
|title=Douglas Adams
|last=Phipps
|first=Keith
|work=The A.V. Club
|access-date=2018-05-08
|language=en-US
|archive-date=23 June 2020
|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200623065447/https://www.avclub.com/douglas-adams-1798207882
|url-status=live
}}</ref> The bots in the game understood around 500 words of vocabulary and were capable of conversing with the player as well as each other. According to Westecott, the developers' intention was "getting into characters" and cited games such as ''Myst'' and ''[[Mortal Kombat]]'' as contemporary games that lacked "proper interaction" with human characters.<ref name="CrRv">
{{cite magazine
|last1=Faber
|first1=Liz
|title=Starship enterprise
|magazine=[[Creative Review]]
|date=December 1997
|volume=17
|pages=46–47
}}
</ref> Williams and Millican modified VelociText into SpookiTalk in order to improve recognition of complicated sentence forms from players, as well as reducing repeated responses, and retaining a character's memory of an object or topic as a conversation progresses.{{sfn
|Richards
|1998
|p=71
}}{{sfn
|Richards
|1998
|p=72}}{{sfn
|Richards
|1998
|p=73
}} Additional dialogue support was done by linguist Renata Henkes.{{sfn
|Richards
|1998
|p=101
}}<ref name=Credits />