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Interactive Fiction Competition 2002 Underway
An anonymous reader writes "The games of the 2002 Annual Interactive Fiction Competition are now available from the IF Archive. Visit it or ifcomp.org
to download the games."
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Hi, I'm the competition organizer. A few words of instruction and explanation. The basic idea is that you're to download and play at least five of the forty games, and then rate them on a scale of 1 to 10, where 10 is the best. Full instructions are in the competition readme file.
Most of the games run in a virtual machine, so you'll need to download interpreters for those machines. For the TADS 2 and 3 games, grab the unified TADS 2 and 3 source tarball for Unix. For the z-code games, try Nitfol or Unix Frotz. For the Glulx game, try Linux Glulxe or Solaris Glulxe. For the ALAN games, grab GlkALAN for Linux.
You've got until November 15th to vote. Even if you don't want to vote, feel free to play the games anyway. And if this really gets you jonesing to play more of the recently-released interactive fiction, stop by Baf's Guide to the IF Archive for reviews of many of the games on the IF Archive. Oh, and a minor plug for my IF site, Brass Lantern.
Stephen
Actually, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy came smack dab in the middle of the big text-adventure boom of the 1980s. If you want early, go check out the Zork trilogy or Scott Adams's games. (No, not that Scott Adams.) And if you'd like to try Hitchhiker's, it's playable on the web at Douglas Adams's site.
And if you want to get really geeky, go ahead and pick up a copy of Inform -- an IF authoring system. (IMHO, Inform is the *best* system, but that's open to debate...)
Oh, well, if you're going to mention Inform, I'll have to respond with links to TADS and Hugo.
Not all games require the use of a 128Meg NVIDIA card. Something that has been lost in todays wiz-bang game world is game content, and enjoyment.
OOTP4 (Out Of The Park Baseball) is a great example of this. Solid game. Miminal graphics. Rabid fanbase. Solid fun.
Don't fall for all of the eye-candy that is out there!
"This must be a Thursday, I never could get the hang of Thursdays."
If we visit their webserver enough, maybe it will become the International Fusion Competition. :)
slashdot!=valid HTML
If you're really interested, download my game-authoring utility -- Yonk 1.0b3 for the Macintosh. It'll let you write Inform-language games for the 2003 competition. :-)
I wrote one of these for my TI-81...well, it was more of a choose your own adventure, but come on...it was a calculator!
Mordor...a magical, mythical land where women are more rare than dragons--but where every man would rather find a dragon
You are drunk. You are in front of a 17" CRT Monitor attatched to a large, black tower case. There is a keyboard and mouse here.
> Post On Slashdot as AC
You Post. You are Moded Down.
> Damn.
....Well come on, isn't something supposed to happen?
IF I can find enough virtual machines that run on my visor then I'd totally do this. I think its the perfect platform for such interactive games.
;)
Makes sitting in the can for hours enjoyable!
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
Second: Note that you can play at least the zcode games on pretty much ANYTHING. Windows. Mac. Palm. You name it... I have a game in the comp, and it has *one* problem on my Handera (PalmOS) PDA. Most of them probably work fine.
My blog: http://www.seebs.net/log/ --- My iPhone/iPad app: http://www.seebs.net/seebsfrac/
Personnally, I've played five games already, and was lucky enough that the third on my list is one of the greatest I've played. If it doesn't win the comp, then hell, this means the comp was exceptionnally good this year!
Of course there's crap in these fourty games: the four other games I've played are not quite good (not bad, either). So, if you intend to discover Interactive Fiction, I suggest you try one of the "best-of IF" site. Either the ones Stephen mentioned, or The Best of IF.
From the top of my head, the best IF I've played recently is:
Here it is.
I've been working on getting stuff like this online.
So far, I've gotten, Matthew Russo's zplet working with a CGI front-end.
Next on the list is jetty, though this will probably take a bit (lot) more work, as its not very polished at the moment.
Anyway...I put MY favorite Inform games (those that work with the z-machine interpreter) online at this location.
I just added the competition's zcode section as well - it's
here.
Have fun!
One note: the reason that the applet asks for read/write permission is so that you can save. Its a security risk for you, perhaps, but why live your life in fear?
Mod me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!
I was born around the same time as interactive fiction. Which means that I was way too young to play it, and when I grew old enough to own a computer, the genre had already disapeared from the shelves. So, there's no sentimental, "remember-the-good-ol'-days" value for me in IF.
I discovered the genre at the same time as I discovered Linux, back in around 1996. Among the few games that shipped by default with, what was it at that time? RedHat, I guess, were a few classic Scott Adams (not the Dilbert author!) games. As soon as I tried them, I didn't completely... dislike them. I liked the idea, and I love to explore and draw maps, but they were too much of the (what I learned afterwards) "guess the verb" category, something that is rightly considered a major flaw in modern IF. So, I went on to other activities, and another Linux I installed later didn't contain them, so I forgot about IF (I didn't even know the term).
Then, somehow, I remembered them in 1998, and decided to give them a second shot. Looking on the web (was I still using Altavista? wow), I found not only them, but also other, seemingly better ones. So I downloaded Theatre (a good fantastic/horror game) and finished it straight. Man that was good! And from then on, I was hooked.
There's something in (good) IF you don't find in modern, 3D-graphics games: substance, content, plot, atmosphere, characters, adult themes (not that kind of adult - though such games exist, too).
Theatre and Anchorhead are two excellent horror games. The latter is simply the best game in the Lovecraftian genre - seriously, I mean it.
Worlds Apart is an excellent SF game. By SF, I mean Science-Fiction (with capitals), as in "the author created a whole new and fascinating universe for this game", and the prime motivation of the game is actually discovering it... and yourself.
Spider and Web, an excellent spy story, is told in way that is one of the most innovative I've seen. Used in a movie, a la "Usual Suspects", it would be excellent, but this is even more magnified in a gaming setting.
Most of the games by Adam Cadre are excellent too, from Photopia, which is an almost puzzleless game that left me astonished once I finished, to the excellent Varicella (read the intro of the game on his site, you'll understand I hope), I-0 (hot, hot) and Shrapnel (what a crazy storytelling - not for newcomers), it seems this guys only produces goodness.
Same goes for other people like Emily Short and Andrew Plotkin, but I haven't played their games yet, so I can't comment.
Babel (the second game I played) is an excellent thriller-like game, in which you are trapped in a somewhat devastated Antartic scientific station, and try to understand what went wrong... and who you are.
I could and should go on and on... I like playing games, but foremostly, I love to read - science-fiction, like a lot of the geeks around, though I don't mind some more classical books. IF marries the gaming and the litterature together, and has offered me emotions that I never thought I would experience in front of a PC; I'm more used to them in front of a theatre screen or with some dead-tree in my hand.
How many times have you been in bed, thinking again and again to the game you just finished (tetris-mares don't count!), pondering life, the universe and everything?
Damn, I can't believe I've just written all this incoherent stuff - I wish I was a good writer, and able to sum this up in a few brilliant sentences. Well, here's a shitty conclusion: IF can be great, go try some good one! (you have to see it for yourself, and so on)
I was born in 1978 - which means that in 1987, when I was exposed to my first computer (The Epson Equity II, most popular computer of all time by market share I think) I managed to hit the just-after-middle of the IF craze. Started with Wishbringer, and 15 years later, still have not finished Starcross, probably after 100,000 iterations of "Put rod ". I also never got the robot to let me open the screen door on the ship in hitchhikers. What's scary is I even remember that's the spot where I got stalled out 14 years later.
The Infocom boxes are still on the shelf at the rents with all of the other old school software from the 80's we just can't bring ourselves to throw out - although the glowing Wishbringer stone has long since been lost.
Of course, then my dad brought home a 1200 baud modem from work and I discoverred Opus 1.03b and Tradewars, and from then on it was just a matter of explaining why my parents couldn't receive phone calls anymore.....
Christ, I'm 24 and most of my memories of when I was 10 involve ASCII text. And I'm confessing on slashdot - excuse me while I go get laid.
-1 minute and 37 seconds later-
Ah, I feel much better now.
paintball
Ahh yesss. One of the more brilliant and annoying problems in the history of IF games. Every geek I know who remembers that game groans when reminded of the evil screening door problem!
Solution: Give the, 'No Tea' to the robot. It'll convulse in such a spasm of metaphysical wonder that it'll open the screening door wide.
Frustration taught me that one. "Well, fer crying out loud! Just try giving the damned robot every item in the inventory starting at the top. .
Question is, do you still have a 5.25" disk drive available to load Hitchhiker's back into your system so you can pick up where you left off?
-Fantastic Lad
Did anyone ever come across this press release from two years ago.
What happened to that? Did it ever happen, or did people come to their senses and realise that expecting people to play text adventure games which involved typing precise phrases on a fucking numeric keypad was an idiotic idea?
Personally, I've got nothing against text adventures, and even wrote some which are still floating around the internet to my eternal shame. But then again I don't take daguerrotypes or ride a penny farthing to the charabanc station. They're in the past...
"Information wants to be paid"
The IF-Archive is an excellent source of these games. Their collection is *massive*.
... nifty nappy.
However, if you're into uncommon and under-rated games in general - check out Home of the Underdogs if you haven't already. Not only does it review and describe many excellent games, but it has tons of full downloads of old games too.
One particular IF game that really caught my eye was Ad Verbum. It's premise is mostly to do with words. For example, there's a room who's entire description starts with the letter N. You quickly realise that only words starting with N work in the room (note, the exit to the room is south):
Neat Nursery
Nice, nondescript nursery, noticeably neat. Normally, nurslings nestle noisily. Now, none. No needful, naive newborns.
Nearby:
>take nappy
No! No! Negative, novice. Nasty notation.
>asdfg
No! No! Nefarious nomenclature. Narrate nicely, now.
>south
No! No! Negative, novice. Nasty notation.
>exit
No! No! Nefarious nomenclature. Narrate nicely, now.
>north
Northward? No, necessarily not. Not north. No noticeable notch, no navigable nook.
There's all sorts of other language-based puzzles in the game, and it's an excellent test of your vocabulary. Despite being a little short, i highly recommend it.
(Note, it's not part of this competition).
Yep. Hint book. Best money I ever spent on such a thing. Granted, I was 12 and not very clever so HHGTTG played "fair" would have kicked my ass.
And I wasn't coy with the hints; none of that "oh I'll just "uncover" the first one and see if I can figure it out..." nope- I just uncovered every damn "invisi-text" I could. You know, that hint book was a pretty good read all by itself!
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
You can also play old text games like Pirate Adventure online (in Javascript) here.
-markm (official Comp02 vote-taker)
Well, yes, I could put Suspended up there. I have it in zcode. However, I won't.
Unlike Hitchhiker's guide, the author wasn't kind enough to distribute a freeware version, so it's illegal to put it up. All of these games are on the up-and-up.
My ACTUAL personal favorite is the Enchanter trilogy, and I would REALLY like to put it up there.
Mod me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!
First off-
frobnitz is great- you can write in commonly used verbs and POOF they appear. You can also tap a word and your verbs show up around it... it does a great job of minimizing typing.
Second off- that damn stowaway- its awesome! Now I feel like a chump for buying one for $40!
Blow $40- keep your deluxe, play frobnitz- its a win-win!
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
You type the verbs ONCE into a menu item,
THEN it appears in your bar under the "..." section.
BTW: I have no association with frobnitz, I just think its damn cool.
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.