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."

Comments

IF for beginners

[Angst Badger]

This is a shameless plug, but you can get my free-beer introductory interactive fiction package, Adventure Blaster, at download.com. It's Windows only -- a habit I swore off years ago -- but it's a nice intro with a spiffy Delphi-based frontend, loads of help files, hints, and tutorials, and it handles the rather messy business of installing the appropriate interpreters. It includes ten games ranked by difficulty, many of which are quite good. (My favorite is Ian Finley's Babel, a sci-fi psychological thriller set in the chilly arctic wastes.) This link should pull it up; otherwise just search for "adventure blaster".

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.

--

lp got messed up: links, linux, mirrors

[dayeight]

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 here theres a message board for posting about the comp games.
i know i cant spel

SlashdotIF

[faeryman]

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,

Write yer own

[jmac]

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

Interactive Fiction

[GigsVT]

During my childhood, Interactive Fiction was choose-your own adventure books.

And I had to walk both ways through 6 feet of snow to the library to get them.

:)
-

Re:Interactive Fiction

[nomadic]

Hey, those were great...like "By Balloon Over the Sahara". Though the computer brand of interactive fiction DID predate them. Come to think of it, there was a choose-your-own-adventure-like series based (very roughly) on Zork; kind of funny how an electronic game spawned a paper one...

FLASHBACK! Alright, this is a geek crowd, anyone remember that series of books where you the narrative was interrupted at parts, and you had to type in a program? Well, you didn't have to, but when the character in the book (who was actually supposed to be you) did, they gave you the source code to type in along with them. Everything was in BASIC of course, and you usually had to debug it in some minor way. Was kind of funny how the programs that controlled every time delayed explosives device or computer operated door were in BASIC. The books were pretty cool though, I rarely had the patience to type in the programs, but you could at least follow them and see what you were supposed to modify...

MAN that takes me back.

Ooh, anyone remember Badlands of Hark?
--

Re:Interactive Fiction

[nomadic]

I am the avarage teen punk geek. So this is way before my time. Do you have the Title/Author or better yet ISBNS?

Finally tracked them down; they were published by Scholastic back in the mid-80's, under the "Micro Adventures" title. Apparently they're out of print though, which is too bad; only online retailer who even lists them is Amazon. 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.
--

It is dark.

[pb]

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.

West of House

[Kartoffel]

You are standing in an open field, with a boarded front door.
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.

> _

--

OpenGL killed the TTY star

[Chairboy]

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?