hermitgeecko | Entries tagged with interactive fiction

It is my pleasure to report that the IntroComp version of Phoenix's Landing: Destiny (a text-based epic fantasy game) is live and out in public. Along with its 5 competitors. I haven't had a chance to scope out the competition yet (it is, after all, past midnight and I've been on a plane all day) but I will have to do so ASAP.

Here's the voting link:

http://www.xyzzynews.com/introcomp/

Some pertinent competition rules....

- Authors may not vote.

- Beta testers are allowed to vote, but only on games they did not test.

- Everyone else in the entire world may vote on as many or as few entries as they like, on the usual 1-10 scale (10 being the best). However, they are asked to judge games with one thought in mind, and one alone: "How much do I want to play more of this entry?"
We ask that judges please refrain from posting reviews of the IntroComp games during the judging period, so as not to taint the voting process, but feel free to send feedback directly to the authors prior to the voting deadline — after all, the best prize that authors receive is feedback, right?

If you have any interest, I encourage you to go play and vote and so forth. The voting deadline will be on September 5, 2008, with winners announced two days later on Sunday, September 7 at 2:00 PM Eastern.

Current Mood: accomplished

"Brass lantern in pocket...
Got potion, I'm gonna use it
Intention -- I feel inventive
Gonna map out, map out, map out mazes...."

Current Mood: cheerful

I cannot blame the vanishing popcorn and ice cream on another memory lapse. I can blame it on puzzle vision, though. "Must... be... powered... for... puzzle!"

I spent four hours last night playing Puzzle Pirates (www.puzzlepirates.com).
Mostly, I don't pillage on Puzzle Pirates, because mostly, I play Alchemistry. It's a patient, untimed game where you connect swirly tubes with pots and fill potions of different colors. I treat it a bit like Nethack -- it keeps my hands and the front of my mind busy while the back half muses.

Since my initial departure from Puzzle Pirates in... 2003, I think... and my semiofficial return last week, Puzzle Pirates has acquired sea monsters. (Semiofficial: I'd been dipping in and out of free gaming for a couple months, but I gave them some money last week.) Sea monsters live in Atlantean outposts. It is possible to get a map there... but you'd better hurry if you do, because your map will only last eight days before crumbling to bits. And when you get there, it's freakin' scary.

I gave this a try last night.

( If you play Puzzle Pirates and haven't experienced Atlantis, it's conceivable you will find this spoilery, so I'm dropping it under a cut. )

In other news, I feel and look significantly more human today, for which I am glad. Tomorrow will be an Effective Work Day.

And today is one of the "judges wait impatiently" days for the 13th Annual Interactive Fiction Competition. Games come out tomorrow! You can be judge! http://ifcomp.org. Bounce bounce bounce bounce bounce....

Current Mood: cheerful

From the Wikipedia entry on Malinche Entertainment:

"Malinche Entertainment claims to be working in the tradition of early interactive fiction developer Infocom. Sherman claims to have sold 150,000 copies of his games as of May 2006.[2] He claims the business is profitable.[2]"

Now, I have no particular love for Malinche Entertainment; frankly, Howard Sherman is annoying, and there's not a lot of respect lost between him and the greater IF community.

With that said... sentence #2 is a claim. Sentence #3 is a claim. After all, we can't check those things (unless Sherman opens up his complete financial records for viewing, which seems Highly Unlikely.) But what about sentence #1? Malinche is an interactive fiction company; Infocom was an interactive fiction company. Malinche celebrates Infocom's legacy visibly (they ran a piece on the 30th anniversary). Malinche demonstrates the same weird errors that some Infocom games demonstrated. Isn't this close enough?

Then again, I suppose you have to define "the tradition of early interactive fiction developer Infocom" in order to argue that statement. Still, I wouldn't bicker.

Not that I'm going to change the article, mind you. This is a bigger can of worms than I want to play with (and also, my ability to break Wikipedia should not be underestimated. I fear wikis, just like I fear computer guts.) I just saw the "claims" "claims" "claims" continuing for three sentences and thought it was silly.

Current Mood: amused

I discovered a couple days ago that Inform 7 is out. I've been too busy playing with it since then to write anything about it.

What is Inform 7? From http://www.inform-fiction.org:

Inform is a design system for interactive fiction, a new medium for writers which began with adventure games in the late 1970s and is now used for everything from literary narrative fiction through to plotless conceptual art, and plenty more adventure games too. Since its introduction in 1993, Inform has become a standard tool.

Three years in the making, Inform 7 is a radical reinvention of the way interactive fiction is designed, guided both by contemporary work in semantics and by the practical experience of some of the world's best-known writers of IF.

An easily learned but flexible one-window user interface makes the cycle of writing and testing rapid and painless. Inform creates, manages, edits, indexes, tests, and even helps to publish works of IF without fuss or screen clutter.

This is the official blurb. Inform is a design system for text adventure games. There are many of these, including Inform 6 (this version's predecessor), ADRIFT, and TADS. However, Inform 7 is INCREDIBLY FREAKING COOL. What makes it cool? Witness:

"Cave Entrance"

The Cobble Crawl is a room. "You are crawling over cobbles in a low passage. There is a dim light at the east end of the passage."

A wicker cage is here. "There is a small wicker cage discarded nearby."

The Debris Room is west of the Crawl. "You are in a debris room filled with stuff washed in from the surface. A low wide passage with cobbles becomes plugged with mud and debris here, but an awkward canyon leads upward and west. A note on the wall says, 'Magic word XYZZY'."

The black rod is here. "A three foot black rod with a rusty star on one end lies nearby."

Above the Debris Room is the Sloping E/W Canyon. West of the Canyon is the Orange River Chamber.

The bold-font text above is working code. If you copy and input it into Inform 7, it runs and compiles. It produces four rooms and two objects. You can pick up the objects and walk around the four rooms.

I am joyous and delighted and eager to play with this. If you've ever had an interest in text adventures, I commend it to you highly.

I am much with the w00ting about this.

Current Mood: giddy

Rather to my surprise, I figured out the premise for my National Novel Writing Month novel today. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanowrimo) I hadn't planned to think about it until November came around (November, Novel, they go together) but the idea politely grabbed me by the throat and I went "erk!" It involves a world in which humanity rejected the space program in the wake of the Apollo/Saturn 204 disaster (aka Apollo One -- more details at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_1).

It's a bit worrying because it requires actual research rather than just running with it. Research slows down writing, and NaNoWriMo is about pushing the writing pace. But November is traditionally a slow month at work, so I think I'll have time to research then and write when I get home. And I'm excited about this.

Theoretically, I also have an IFComp entry (http://ifcomp.org/) to finish by Sept. 30, too. 2005, Year of the Competition. But I might win stuff if I actually complete my IFComp entry, and I would like to win stuff. We'll see.

Current Mood: anticipating

On a whim, I donated 6 original sonnets as a prize to an interactive fiction competition. I figured it would be an interesting donation even if it wasn't a very valuable one. One was to be written about the author's game, and the other five were to be written to subjects of the author's choice.

You know what? The 3rd place winner chose my sonnets. Because of the way that the prizes were set up, this means he wanted them more than he wanted a DVD player, a copy of Mysterious Journey II, an autographed paperback copy of Neverwhere, or $60.00.

This made me feel very cool.

And I liked his game, too, which made me happy.

Current Mood: pleased

Despite lousy dreams last night involving bastards killing my kittens (kittens I don't actually own, but did in the dream) for entertainment, I am determined to be cheerful today. Here are three things to be cheerful about.

1. I can feed Thula her breakfast (food pellets) out of my hand now. It's like feeding a horse: put the pellets in my hand, make the hand very flat, wait. It's neat because I can feel all the silly woofling as she nibbles and breathes. I usually don't feed more than a little bit this way, though, because she eats breakfast much more slowly than carrots.

2. If you have any interest in interactive fiction, the 2005 Spring Thing came out a few days back. Feel free to play and vote. http://www.springthing.net/2005/ I've downloaded the games, but I haven't started playing yet. Having donated a rather odd prize to the mix, I have some curiosity as to how this all works out. There's also a cash pool of $340.67 riding on the matter.

3. If you have any interest in the Great Old Ones, see http://www.cthuugle.com/. It doesn't seem to work per se, but is still pretty cool. It also links to Tales of Plush Cthulhu, which is cool all in its own right.

Have a good day!

Current Mood: chipper

The good news:
My supervisor gave her consent for me to attend the UNC-CH Human Resources course in Intermediate Sign Language.

The bad news:
There are so few people signed up for this course that I think it's going to be cancelled.

The good news:
I'm buckling down, cleaning, and packing to move to a cheaper apartment in February. This is the most important part of getting my berserk financial situation under control.

The bad news:
I have no idea how we're going to pay the January rent. I suspect my grandmother is going to be involved, and then I will feel hellaciously guilty (or guiltier, considering the amount of money I owe my parents already.)

( Everything else is hidden under this cut. )

Geek, over and out.