IF Quake Takes Fragging To Whole New Level

Thanks to ShackNews for pointing to the impressive technical feats showcased at the unofficial IF Quake page, which bills itself as "...a port of id Software's Quake 1 engine to the Inform programming language." The site includes riveting in-game screenshots, and the FAQ page has important info on bugs with this genuinely playable, downloadable Alpha release, noting: "IF Quake interfaces directly with the Quake engine, which was obviously not designed for [this advanced] output. The errors you see related to audio and OpenGL are due to the fact that the engine is being tricked into thinking it's running normally." Rumors that John Carmack will be switching Doom 3 to this impressive new engine are yet to be substantiated, however.

Comments

Re:FPS games are just not playable with text

[citizenc]

Check out TTYQuake. :)

works

[Profe55or Booty]

if anyone's waiting for someone to confirm, there is an actual game on that site. obviously not as advertised, but there's a game. haven't found anything too interesting yet, but i'll be damned if i don't beat this thing.

Re:Are the downloads real?

[lxs]

No, you just need the quake.z5 file in the ifquake folder and an infocom interpreter like frotz. Basically, it's a text adventure that pokes some gentle fun at quake 1.

>n

East Slipgate Room
As you walk up the plain wooden stairs, the metal bars retract into holes in the
ceiling, like some sort of medieval supermarket door. To call the area you walk
into next a room would be a deep insult to rooms everywhere (and lord knows
they're an easily offended lot). This closet has two very small bodies writhing
in agony on the walls and an archaic-looking metal slipgate in front of you to
the north. And that's it. Clearly the designers of this room expected you to be
wowed by the aquatic passageway they installed in lieu of a normal door to the
previous room.

>examine bodies
The bodies are crucified to the walls on your right and left. They seem to be
emaciated, but also rather small in comparison to your ample girth, suggesting
that these were perhaps some unfortunate Leprechauns who had one too many drinks
on St. Patrick's Day. Interestingly, they appear to be thrashing about in near
unison, making you wonder if they were in fact some sort of synchronized agony
team.

>

and so on.

Re:Inform programming language?

[darc]

The inform language is an object orienated programming language designed for easy implementation of text based adventure games. It uses a well defined object hierarchy structure, that allows you to define parent child relationships easily, as well as move stuff around. The syntax is similar to C, but not quite, and a bit quirky with commas in parts.

Most uses of inform are with the Library, a selection of functions and support thingies written to facilitate IF writing.

It's turing complete, if you were wondering.

Very nifty. Chief competetor is TADS.

"Complete" list of April Fools Jokes for 2004

[Urgo]

I'm trying to keep a list of all the sites pulling pranks for 2004. Visit the site to see the up to the minute list and to submit new ones.

Current list:

www.urgo.org
mrtwig.net
southparkx.net
www.suprnova.org
www.cowsponge.com
Google
Slashdot
fark.com
www.thinkgeek.com
www.pimpworks.org
www.whirlpool.net.au
planetnintendo.com
Google Job
evercrest.com
www.heise.de (not sure if its a joke.. german)
www.homestarrunner.com
Weekly World News

Files mirrored

[loonyboi]

Hi everyone...I've moved the actual downloadable files to FileShack, as my server's being hammered relentlessly:

All three versions can be downloaded here:

http://www.fileshack.com/file.x?fid=4807

Thanks!

-jason

PS: YES, this is a real game.