Slashdot Mirror
Interactive Fiction Competition 2000 Begins
karma_policeman writes: "(For those who don't know, the IFcomp is a competition among free, text-based games.) On Oct. 2, judging is scheduled to begin in the 6th annual interactive fiction competition. Anyone can play and judge the entries over the next six weeks. If you enjoyed the old text adventures, you'll likely enjoy the games in the IFcomp. Especially considering the parsers and writing in today's free competition games often surpass those in their commercial ancestors. There are 54 entries in this year's competition; it's well worth your time to take a look at it."
good gracious, I thought I was the only one to remember those! Wow, yeah, you were part of the ACT team, it was all cold-war type stuff, like jummp a little man across the river or (my favorite) guess the passcode to the nuclear device before the timer went off... Those were SO cool, although I hardly ever managed to type the whole thing in on my little commodore 128. I should go on ebay and see if anyone's selling copies of em, they were good entertainment.
Come to think of it, maybe someone _should_ start bundling some sort of simple interactive games into children's stories, a cdrom or a disk that held part of the story. To get to the end of the book, you have to beat the game or something like that. Or maybe even to teach some tech skills, read in the source from disk, compile, run, debug, I dunno. This seems like it would have a lot of potential to revive this "old" idea...
Maybe if I was a hacker with kids to raise, I'd get really into this.
Check my Go-related blog for beginners: DGD
When Inprise is done porting Delphi to Linux, I'll have to port it over. Until then, just boot over to Windows if you have it, or recommend it to your OS-impaired friends.
--
Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
Starship Titanic took Adams and 30odd other people two years to produce. In the end it didn't sell enough to recoup costs!
Part of the UK launch included a signing session at the HMV shop on Oxford Street. A representative from ZZ9 Plural Z Alpha, The Official Hitch-Hiker's Guide To The Galaxy Appreciation Society turned up to hand out flyers. In two hours, maybe three people showed up!
It's about fifteen years since the Infocom Guide game came out and people still talk about it. I can't imagine people talking about Starship Titanic in fifteen years, can you?
Whether this reflects on how text adventures were more compulsive, or that Adams has completely lost it these days, is another thing...
Hacker: A criminal who breaks into computer systems
"Information wants to be paid"
obBitch: man, I submit this each year, and of course /. doesn't post it, and this year they do. Michael is cool.
/., so all of you check out the last couple of years comps as well:
p etition95.html
a 091100h.htm?terms=linux
f my games are the nicest darnded reviews me every got..... and play my games, for weird stuff: look for Rybread Celcius or bad reviews, one in the same... btw, Graham Nelson is a genius for reverse engineering the infocom data structure... I know I can't spell ...oh yeah, and my own feeble IF page here theres a message board for posting about the comp games.
obBitch2: the first year I don't enter, and damn, it gets
btw, ftp.gmd.de is going to be hammered, so check some mirrors at
http://ifarchive.org/
http://ifarchive.org/indexes/if-archiveXgamesXcom
replace the 95 with appropriate year.
usenet: rec.arts.int-fiction
rec.games.int-fiction
For those using linux, about 90% of the games should work for you, if not more. Check out
http://interactfiction.about.com/library/weekly/a
here for help.
www.textfire.com is good and ifiction.tsx.org is a hoot
http://members.dencity.com/petro/reflect.html
http://members.dencity.com/petro/ludite.html
o
i know i cant spel
when Push Comes to Shove
I just finished an incredibly good game that was every bit as rich and involving as any of the old text adventures. It's called 'The Longest Journey'. You can't get it directly in the United States, you have to import it from Europe. (apparently no distributor in the States wants to pick it up, which is STUPID -- this is the best adventure game I've played in years, probably better than Grim Fandango.)
Caveat: it starts pretty slow. The first ten hours or so (this is a LONG adventure) are interesting but won't leap out at you. But if you stick with it, it becomes just amazing further in. It's a shame there's not more wow factor early on.
I imported mine from www.softwarefirst.com. It ended up costing a bit less than $40 including shipping, and I got it about a week after I ordered. They'll tell you the price in pounds, and your credit card company will convert it to $ for you automatically. It was every bit as easy as ordering from a US-based dealer, with the sole exception that you'll only know your final price to within about 50 cents until you get your bill.
It's not just 'as good as' the text adventure games. It's BETTER. And I've played all the Infocoms and a good chunk of the freeware ones up 'til about last year. I speak from experience. Highly recommended.
The Longest Journey is probably the finest example yet of what storytelling on a computer can be like.
True, but really, at least the people who are talking about ADVENT have at least the basic idea of what interactive fiction is. I get the feeling that at least half of the Slashdot audience has no idea what interactive fiction is, because they weren't using computers in the '80s. I wonder if it is possible to interest people in modern text adventures if they've never played Zork?
Anyone? Anyone?
Votezone.com already have this moda aeration system, at least something down the same line as it. Basically what you have, is a certain rank. You can vote on software, write reviews, etc. on this site. The rank you have lets you do a higher amount of posting in one day, hand out more merit points, and have your votes on a forum weight more, thus you r score counts more than the basic one. There are also other privilidges which exist, going along with it.
There are a couple of things they're doing new this year. They're selling t-shirts and CDs with all the games at cost -- not bad for a completely fan-run competition. To participate, all you have to do is download the games, play five or more before November 15th, and then rate them on a whole-number scale from 1 to 10, 10 being best. You can record your scores on the actual site, assuming the site isn't Slashdotted then. Afterwards there's a lot of discussion about all of the games, with plenty of feedback to the people who wrote the games.
Sargent
Anyone remember this game? It was on Major BBS's back in the days before MUDs were big (or anything on the Internet really).. I can remember memorizing the entire maps. writing telemate scripts to follow players (and other cruel things).
I think that is quite possibly the best text-adventure game ever.. Anyone know if that game is available anywhere (telnet?)...
Greg
I am just worried that the original disks are going to start to fail from old age/bad environmental conditions/etc.
I think this stuff qualifies as abandonware, since there is pretty much no hope for commercial gain, indeed, it would take some hacking to get them to run on a modern MS OS. (DOS boot disk at least)
-
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
Many games were released, some challenging, others utterly awful. There were hundreds of games released, some from big software houses. Delta4 produced some really hillarious games. IIRC the author is now working in the anti-virus sector.
The Quill improved with time. Graphical capability was available as an add-on, and later still data compression to allow really big games.
I once got truely stuck in once game, and spent one day hacking around the data file format to find out what to type and where to get around one nasty puzzle. I then applied this to other games, but got stumped with the ones using data compression.
Yes! I remember these! :)
I used to read them at school and doodle in the margins of the book the debugged code, then go home and type them into my IBM pc/Jr...
:::Speaking of which, anyone else got one of these "future of computing" flashs in the pan..?
My dad should have gotten suspicious when he went back to buy it and they threw in the 13 1/2 inch color monitor, the extra cordless keyboard and DOS 2.1 for free... I think they were just trying to get the damn thing out of the door before they had to deny that they ever existed (and deny they did! I swear, a month later, they said "the IBM pc-what?)
Run. I like water. Push My rutabaga.
That's sad. Of course, he was mobbed at E3 in Atlanta when word got out that he was signing the free Starship Titanic posters they were giving away.
I got my poster, but, I've never bought or even played the game. I guess it's a generational thing, as I tend to lump those style games as Myst clones. There are far easier was to look at ray-traced eye candy.
Of course, people do idolize Myst and 7th Guest, so maybe the genre just peaked a lot more quickly than text adventure.
But don't worry, being part of the Wolf/Doom/Quake generation, I'm now deathly bored of all the new titles of the 3d genre. All things must pass, I guess.
--
Well, it is a yearly event, so get ready for next year. Check out the specialised languages, such as Inform and Tads, before trying anything in a more conventional programming language, because you get a parser, and, for those two, at least, portability, for free...
--Arcum
Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy! :)
*me sighs deeply remembering the fun she had playing it on an ATARI when she was like 4* i had been reading for a year and yet I was playing the game.. does anyone know of a Windows playable format? the 5" floppy drive on the ATARI is broken and I had this craving the other day to play it
~me
MP3 StorySprawl
You can read and write the stories and links over at StorySprawl.com.
tunesmith
skkkoooonnnggggkkk ptui
You are sitting at your computer. Your 14.4 modem is humming, and your browser is open to a blank window.
> OPEN slashdot.org
Loading....done!
>READ SLASHDOT
1. "Masturbatory Habits of Geeks in Post Columbine Era - by JonKatz"
2. "Signal11 Looses Virginity...to Natalie Portman!!! - by CmdrTaco"
3. "Linus Admits he Decided to Write Linux While on LSD - by CmdrTaco"
4. "BSD: FooBSD 0.0.0.2d Released -by Michael"
5. "Interactive Fiction Competition 2000 Begins -by Michael"
>OPEN 5
Loading....done!
>REPLY
You need to specify how to reply.
>REPLY INSIGHTFUL
Sorry faeryman, I cannot allow you to do that.
>REPLY INFORMATIVE
Sorry faeryman, I cannot allow you to do that.
> REPLY SOME STUPID PIECE OF CRAP THAT ILL WRITE AT 2:30 AM WHILE DRUNK AND IF THE MOD_SQUAD BETTER GIVES A +5, Funny TO ILL SOIL MY PANTS
Posting...done!
>OPEN beowulf.org
Loading....done!
>IMAGINE
Imagine what?
>IMAGINE A BEOWULF CLUSTER OF THESE THINGS!!!!!!!
*drool*
With love,
,
faeryman
Anyone remember the Adventure Game Toolkit? All the coding was done with numerical indices (ie, you told the compiler that ROOM 4 exited NORTH to ROOM 7) and a lot of the parser and things were hardcoded, but it was loads of fun. I actually had a significant portion of a game written, but then I switched to the incredibly superior Inform and my procrastinating habits finally caught up with me. I do intend to complete a game at some point though...
TO BUY A NEW CAR WOULD MAKE YOU SEXUALLY ATTRACTIVE.
Probably have a bigger audience nowadays,
though ironically fewer people probably have
access to a BASIC compiler now than back then
(when almost every home computer came
bundled with it). But including a CD-ROM
with Perl wouldn't be too hard. Actually be a
better language to use, give kids some
knowledge of non-linear programming without
making them worry about all those variable
declarations or header files.
<oftopic>
I know what you mean I cut my teal on QBASIC and dos 5/win3.1.
Then Win98 came (still had my good oll 486/sx 20).
This cool guy (geek cool) Showed me *nix and bash
So I grabed a linux distro redhat 5 (just out of date @ the time)
I was amazed at how the command line didn't have to suck
I never used a wintell box since
My SusE box has 'bwbasic' mabey you have one to
</oftopic>
I once played Quest if that counts for somthing?
Oh mod gods please dont troll me It's only my second post
--red5
I know I'm going to hell, I'm just trying to get good seats.
At least you had feet. Back in my day we didn't have feet. We walked on our hands.
And books. We didn't have books. We had tree bark with carvings on it. And we had to use our teeth to move the pages, since our hands were frostbitten from walking in the snow.
And snow. We didn't have snow. We had giant hunks of ice that dropped randomly from the sky. That crazy Sky Ice killed 1 out of every 3 kids I knew.
You little ruffians have it too easy these days. Damn that Al Gore and his cursed Internet Machine!
------
Let me give you the lowdown
Yup, I remember - I still read it every so often. I never really managed to finish the adventure without getting blasted, eaten or something like that.
:)
Those where the good old days, when real men were real men, real women were real women and small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri were small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri...
All browsers' default homepage should read: Don't Panic...
Sorry. Open-source creative endeavors are just another name for authoring by committee. They don't work. What you want is a MUD, not IF.
That's probably a little out of reach for now. But what about a game that figures what the player seems to enjoy (mind bending puzzles, traps, fighting, strategy, etc), and works to change the game for more of that aspect.
It's an idea...
How pleased I am to see IFComp finally mentioned on Slashdot! I know people in the IF community have been trying to have this happen for at least the past couple of comps. I hope that this will help to not only generate more IF players, but also authors.
One that note: I see folks have mentioned 'em, but nobody has done the service to the truly lazy and linked to 'em, so allow me then then to list off some favorite sophisticated interactive fiction authorship engines:
Inform, based on the parser Infocom used in its games (as of the late 80s), is a fully object-oriented language with a C-like syntax. It's my personal language of choice for the little bit of IF dabbling I've done; you can see the source for a small and silly game called 'Calliope' I wrote for last year's competition (I came in 23rd, heh (but I got to win an Honest Bob CD anyway, hurrah)) linked from my own IF info page(which also has the compiled game, and links to lots of other modern IF games (much better than mine!) and authors I like). Inform is also open-source, and binaries exist for any platform you might reasonably care to name.
There's also TADS and Hugo, about which I know little, but are both popular enough with other authors to be worth checking out for the interested newcomer.
Have fun!
J
MacOS Open Source
jmac
I feel obliged to mention another Linux interpreter for Infocom and Inform games that is not mentioned in the referenced pages. Check out:
http://jzip.sourceforge.net/
-- John
I've searched and searched and searched... what were the names of those books??? I remember them fondly... they gave BASIC source written for a few popular machines (PC, C64, something else IIRC), and porting the code in the books to the esoteric BASIC on my Mattel Aquarius (hey, I grew up poor... hell, I'm still poor) was fairly deep-magic hacking for a third-grader, which is what I was when I got my hands on those books. But what were the names of those books???
Someone help!
J
Yup, just another example of bloatware. Why do so many fit onto a CD? Because IIRC, LSL&Land of the Lounge Lizards was half a dozen 5 1/4s. Kings Quest was the same way. And all this on a 286. In EGA (or VGA if you had the cash).
Responding to your post: do we really need to share these games? Aren't the old game disks only a couple bucks anyway? Rather than give them away, we should just educate the unaware as to what they are missing out on.
Planning to be moderated ± 1: Bad Pun.
the parsers and writing in today's free competition games often surpass those in their commercial ancestors
..From getting the bird in the cage to Spelunker Today, the thing oozed class.
Aye they do, but do they have the sheer playabity of the classic adventure?
If you should not have played it, go to Snacky Pete's for a copy.
You should try Age of Wonders. It is kind of an RPG, kind of a millitary strategy game. Reminds me a little of Civ. Demo version on download.com, comes with two scenarios, which is like 20 hours of gameplay. Has a steep learning curve at the beginning, but if you stick with it, its pretty good.
-
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
and while we're on a nearby subject, ZORK was the greatest text game of its day.
INTERACTIVE
great comedy company.
Even these are having a comeback, a biggie on the student circuit is DopeWars, basicly trade wars with drugs
....and on the subject of trading games: Elite, will we see its like again?
Uhgg Slashdot, you got me excited again. I was just thinking of what *I* might enter, when the post said that JUDGING has begun.
Kind of silly, Slashdot.
I can't spell or type, but that doesn't mean I'm unusually stupid.
And I had to walk both ways through 6 feet of snow to the library to get them.
-
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
I miss the good old days of BBS'ing with great text-based games like Trade Wars and Usurper. I really think the quality of gaming has gone way down hill since computer/console-based graphics capabilities have risen. Sure Quake 52 (or whatever they're up to) has incredible graphics, but will it ever match the addictiveness of games-of-old? I for one, vote no. I'd have to say the last game I REALLY enjoyed was the original Sid Meier's Civilization. I remember the summer night I bought that game in high school, and I played it non-stop for about 2 days...
You might get eaten by a Grue...
> Use Brass Lantern
I don't know what "Use" means.
It is dark.
> Turn On Brass Lantern
You are in a cavern.
There is an exit to the north.
> N
You are in a great hall.
It says "News for Nerds. Stuff that matters."
The room is full of passages.
> N
You see a display case in front of you. It says 'hof'.
There are exits to the east, west, and south.
> E
You fall through a trap door.
You are in a deep cavern.
There are trolls lurking about.
> Talk to Trolls
The trolls heckle you.
You are moderated down.
You feel less intelligent.
> E
You step into a pool of slime.
You see an amulet on the ground.
> Take Amulet
You have the Amulet of Karma Whoring +2
> Wear Amulet
You radiate light.
The trolls cower in fear.
You now have secret slashdot knowledge.
> Go Home
Using your new mastery of Slashdot, you go to your homepage, which is 'slashdot.org', because you have no life.
> Shut Up
You feel less intelligent.
> Post to slashdot
You post to the most recent article.
Would you like to hear what the article is about?
--> No
What kind of post would you like?
--> This is not News for Nerds
You are moderated up to +2; you get three replies
> Read replies
Anonymous Coward: j00 suck Karma Whore; I 0wn j00!
> Moderate trolls down
You can't moderate and post in the same account
> Switch to other account
You have no mod points.
Your other account was bitchslapped for abuse.
> Complain to Malda
There is no reply.
> Switch to kuro5hin
Your karma was 253 out of a possible 64,
giving you a rank of Old-school Karma Whore.
# _
---
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
There used to be some Choose Your Own Adventure stuff on the hidden sids of
Why are people posting fake adventure scripts that read like ADVENT, or tearfully reminiscing about playing Infocom games or reading adventure books?
The IF contest isn't about paying homage to old classics, it's about writing new ones. Play Photopia. Play Spider and Web. These are new styles, new ideas, new puzzles. Don't judge these games on 1980s commercial game merits; they're not month-long adventures with arcane puzzles to keep you going; They're short stories packed with innovation. Well, at least the good ones are. And it's your job to find those good ones and vote for them.
Does my bum look big in this?
Hey, if you like IF you might also enjoy writing or reading collaborative fiction.
Basically, you read what others have written, and at the end of each contribution the story can be continued by anyone in any direction (as many branches as you like). If you don't like any of the choices you can add you own (or add something anyway just to make the story richer).
We have set up a website to do this (Prosebush). And so far the response from people has been great! There are a few stories that are coming along really well, a few that are really silly, etc... All the guys involved in building the site were fans of old-school text adventure games and choose-your-owns... They really inspired the site in many ways...
--8<--
--8<--
I miss M.U.L.E. That was a great game!
Does the microsoft bug-tracking database count as interactive fiction?
No Star Trek IF Porn in the running! Infidels thats all anyone reads... :)
But seriously, has someone hacked together a IF system, like TADS, for palm yet? Writing the instructions would be tedious, but would certainly make you look busy in those meetings.
So far I've gotten all my Karma from telling people they are wrong... :)
I've been waiting for this one myself. Funcom, the same people making the SFMMORPG, Anarchy Online, also made the Longest Journey from the same engine. I understand L.J. has finally found a U.S. distributor, and should hit the shelves in November, though I couldn't tell you who is putting it out.
The state of adventure games is miserable otherwise. Does anyone else think story telling and interactivity are basically at odds with each other? I really didn't have the patience for Grim Fandango, I liked the story but got really pissed at how contrived the puzzles were. It got to the point that I wished I could click the "I give up, show me the rest of the game" button.
For anyone who missed it, here's a link to Old Man Murray's spot on analysis of the death of adventure games, very funny: clickI used to be a cynic, then I got disillusioned with it.
"This is easily the most amusingly horrible work of IF I've ever seen." - the first review
grep -ri 'should work'
Age of Wonders is a great game, Age of Empires 2 is a good games too, im really waiting for Warcraft III right now though, and Black and White. Black and white especially, looks like it has a great interface.
Shit adds up at the bottom...
If you want to respond to a Jon Katz story, turn to page http://slashdot.org/faq/editorial.sh tml #ed700
If you want to respond to a CmdrTaco story, turn to page http://slashdot.org/faq/editorial.sh tml #ed600
If you want to suggest a story, go to page http://www.kuro5hin.org
Got Rhinos?
This just sounds like a text based game competition. Contrary to popular belief, text based games are alive and well.
The mud connector has a listing of over 1500 mu*s, which, to the uninformed, is a Multi-User Whatever, normally Dungeon/Domain, but has grown to include Mushes etc. In a mud, everything is text based, and multiuser is the norm. On mud I used to play on had around 100 people on it at a time at its most popular (around a year ago). For the serious, I recommend a good mud client, Zmud seems popular (windows and shareware though), but any telnet client will do.
Also, games like Nethack are still being maintained and expanded. Pure text (although a QT interface is out there), for single player, but Nethack will always be on the top of any gaming list for me due to the style of gameplay.
Ah, textbased. Sometimes (as in the case of many muds), it has the habit to be bad. In other cases (yah, nethack!) it can be the best gaming out there. Then again, blowing someone's head off, such as in quake or doom, is satisfying, and no mud will every match the visual appeal of 8 wolves chasing you, a single halfling, to the guards (a scene I've seen from Everquest).
Well, i remember funny little text adventures myself, but those adventures just wouldnt satisfy the kids from todays world, i think they just need glamourous GL graphics and surround sound.
But whenever i have the urge to do some textadventures i'll just login to a MUD.
There are several nice muds to go online with and do some text adventureing. A nearly complete list of International muds can be found at www.mud.de .
Greets
Timo
A small mailbox is here.
> OPEN MAILBOX
Inside the small mailbox is:
a leaflet
> GET LEAFLET
Taken.
> READ LEAFLET
"WELCOME TO SLASHDOT!"
SLASHDOT is a game of adventure, danger and low cunning. In it you will explre some of the most amazing territory ever seen by mortals. No compter should be without one!
A nasty-looking troll, brandishing a bloody axe, blocks all passages out of the discussion.
Your sword has begun to glow very brightly.
> _
--
If (like me) you wanted to try out some of the games, head over to the 1999 competition page.
OpenGL Killed the TTY star. Sure, there are cool 3d games out now, but it seems like there aren't really story tellers attached to them. Douglas Adams, for instance, worked with hoards of sweaty programmers to diagram a fabulously addictivt text game, hhgttg. His last attempt, however (Starship Titanic), was basically a modern attempt at the same thing, but not as good because they had to paste graphics onto it to get the attention of the 30 second attention span crowds to be commercially successful
I say, throw down your 3d games of oppression! Throw down your Quakes, your Half Lifes, and get yourself some Leather Goddess of Phobos! Get some Zork, get some Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy! Hell, get Adventure!
Hello, Sailor!
The babel fish sails across the room and into an open waste hatch!
Anyone can make not tea, access denied!
HIT THORBAST WITH SWORD!
See? It's all there, all in those little characters, many of you can probably remember where those lines are from.
If anything, a true geek should marvel at the efficiency of a text based game. After all, wouldn't you say that compressing a vivid picture of Joe's Bar or a Vogon Airlock into 100 bytes (in the form of the character description) is incredible?
As I was very fond of TradeWar and all the other types of RPG during my BBS days, I want to become one of the "judge", but the link
I really want to relive the FUN TIME I HAD during the text-based RPG period.
Can someone please help me, and tell me exactly how to join?
Thank you !!
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
obBitch: man, I submit this each year, and of course /. doesn't post it, and this year they do. Michael is cool.
obBitch2: the first year I don't enter, and damn, it gets /., so all of you check out the last couple of years comps as well:
btw, ftp.gmd.de is going to be hammered, so check some mirrors at http://ifarchive.org/
http://ifarchive.org/indexes/if-archiveXgamesXcomp etition95.html
replace the 95 with appropriate year.
usenet:
rec.arts.int-fiction
rec.games.int-fiction
For those using linux, about 90% of the games should work for you, if not more. Check out http://interactfiction.about.com/library/weekly/aa 091100h.htm?terms=linux here for help.
www.textfire.com is good
and
ifiction.tsx.org is a hoot
http://members.dencity.com/petro/reflect.html
http://members.dencity.com/petro/ludite.html
of my games are the nicest darnded reviews me every got.....
and play my games, for weird stuff: look for Rybread Celcius or bad reviews, one in the same...
btw, Graham Nelson is a genius for reverse engineering the infocom data structure...
I know I can't spell ...oh yeah, and my own feeble IF page www.pushove.com/if here
when Push Comes to Shove