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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.
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?
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.
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.
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
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.
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<--
Does the microsoft bug-tracking database count as interactive fiction?
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).
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.
> _
--
Well, most MUDs are incredibly primitive in comparsion to an Infocom (or Inform) game, which this contest is about. I've never seen a MUD with a decent parser or plot. Essentially, MUDs are interactive Scott Adams' adventures rather than interactive Infocom adventures. If your only idea of a text adventures is from MUDs and the primitive adventures on floppy disk-less early 80s micros, you are really missing out on a lot.
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?
> TELL TOLAN ABOUT IF
Actually, interactive fiction is still developing. It depends on good writing skills, clever puzzles and good plots. Some of the more feature-enhanced interpreters out there let you use color, images and music, but they games themselves still have to be good in order to rank well in one of these contests. There's a good list of modern IF games at Bals guide to IF. Inform, Hugo, and TADS are great game engines that are still going strong today. Get yourself an interpreter and download some games!
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