Slashdot Mirror
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.
"IF Quake Takes Fragging To Whole New Level"
;)
HuH? If it does, what? What then!?
now if only they can make the text 3D.
... You might be eaten by a Shambler.
i am a soviet space shuttle
I contend that it is impractical, and quite possibly impossible to effectively play an FPS game using only text.
BANG! You're dead.
Shoot the red guy with what?
With the BFG.
Do what with the BFG?
Shoot the red guy with the BFG.
The red guy is no longer in the room with you. You see exits to the north and northeast. You hear a buzzing noise to the northeast.
NE
You ran into the red guy's Rocket. Your innards are splattered everywhere.
Hit space to respawn.
> I see no need to have the entire day of news completely ruined...
/. before.
Neither do I. That's never happened on
Check out TTYQuake. :)
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.
sig - .
We don't do no farkin' around these here parts, buddy. What site d'you say you was from? A good ol' fashioned Slashdottin'll fry ten servers before breakfast and still have time to read the comics. I don't think any fancy-pants farkin' can do that, boy.
"A witty saying proves nothing." --Voltaire
Oh, get fucking over it. If you don't like the jokes, go and do something else for the day, like read a book, or watch TV, or play a game, or whatever. Is your life so shallow that you think "news" on Slashdot is the high point of the day?
Do *anything* else, just don't come here and bitch about it.
What if life is just a side effect of some other process and God has no idea we exist?
And there's only 5 hours left of April 1st here in New Zealand. It's quite irritating, as you're never quite sure what timezone a website is using, so you effectively end up with 2 solid days of bullshit news stories.
Looks can be deceiving. Or CAN they?
Cheater!
*grumbles about wall-hacks*
Genocide MUD (link) was exactly that (well, it still is, but I haven't played it in 10 years). A multi player player killing game, insanely fast, using only text.
There'd be wars, like two teams, play until one team is dead, restart... or all vs all wars, etc. The game is a really nice MUD (text adventure style), with beautiful descriptions, monsters, treasure etc.
You run past the descriptions. The monsters explode on your entering the room, dropping their stuff, which you take immediately, to sell for weapons and healing, in the first half minute of the war.
The team play is quite complex, because of difference classes. I'm not sure if there are things like Mages in online FPS games yet? The mage could 'port' to other players, to help them defeat their opponent - or walk into a death trap. Mages were the most important position in the team, when I played.
Anyway, some of those nerds did 200+ commands per minute, without any sort of client (mostly w e n s of course, and you can make aliases). It was fast, it rocked, and it was exactly what you describe.
I believe posters are recognized by their sig. So I made one.
Rumors have already been heard that the Duke Nukem Forever team is eagerly waiting for this engine to become available.
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.
Tired of legitimate data sources? Try UNCYCLOPEDIA
Multiplayer is still just a puppy, but its coming together nicely. There still is a problem with excessive spawn camping, and its in debate right now whether or not the software should prevent it.
One guy started using voice recognition to play, which was quite a riot to listen to. As we grew more comfortable with the game we came across some other oddities: if you are a good typer and become familiar with the commands, it plays pretty much like the original quake. We even hooked it up so we had a team of IF players versus a team of graphical players, and the IF players won!
We've also receieved a lot of encouragement from a few visually impair folks. They complained about the lack of computer gains accessible to them.
Keep your eyes open for Multiplayer mode, it shoul d be a big hit. Depending on the ultimate success of the project, there are talks about working on Counterstrike next.
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
Belive in Technology and AMAZE yourself. -- RIP ZDTV/TechTV
editors want to play jokes? time to start modding the "First Post!"s up to +5 Informative
It has excellent bump mapping, but you need a braille tty device to take advantage of it.
GPL: Free as in will
Yes, it is.
Those who sacrifice security to condemn liberty deserve to repeat history or something. - Benjamin Santayana
Room: Slashdot Main Page
Directly in front of you are several stories. You notice a story about Quake with the notice 'Read More' beneath it.
>click notice
Room: Weekly Obfuscated Quake Story
You are now in an area that seems vaguely familiar. You immediately notice several trolls that are already attacking both the Quake story and a purple dinosaur.
Your score is currently +5 moderator points.
>attack trolls with mod points
You use all of your moderator ammo on the trolls, taking out a handful. There are still a few trolls left, but they leave you alone. The Quake story is now being protected by sensible readers, but the purple dinosaur is a hill of beans.
You see an opportunity for a karma kit. You see a notice marked 'Reply'.
>hit reply
You now see a Quake story with your post listed near the bottom, but in front of the trolls who are now attacking each other. Two moderators enter the room, closely followed by an Anonymous Coward and two morons who don't know how to read.
>hit submit story
Your post has drawn the attention of the others in the room. The faint smell of flamebait seems to be coming from just below your post. Five trolls have suddenly come back to life!
>attack flamebait with witty reply
Your witty attack has shot down one of the non-reading morons. One of the moderators takes care of the Anonymous Coward - he runs off to foul up some other room. The other moderator leaves behind a karma point.
Victory is yours!
insignificant sig
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.