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Interactive Fiction Competition Opens
Sargent1 writes "The 2004 Interactive Fiction Competition has opened for business. The yearly competition, now celebrating its tenth anniversary, is for short pieces of interactive fiction. At this point IF authors can sign up to take part in the competition, and everyone can learn how to judge the games when they are released in October of this year. If you're not sure what interactive fiction is, take a look at Slashdot's recent review of Twisty Little Passages, a book on interactive fiction from Adventure (and earlier antecedents) to present day."
Ahh I remember those, the only thing that ran on my old 286
Open door
You cant open this door
Close Door
The Door Isint open
Attack Door
Your Hand Hurts
Get Life
You go outside, blinded by the sun, you procede to the comic book store only to be beaten up on the way there, you then return home only to be taunted by CowboyNeal.
that people are still making text based adventure games. They sure do pass the time like nothing else. That and text games can be made by anyone with a little bit of programming knowledge and too much time on their hands, thus creating a great variety of games not seen in other genres.
_____
Thank you.
But I made the wrong choice at some point and wound up dead.
Lojban would be ideal for interactive fiction--it's parsable like any computer language. Homonyms are just a silly artifact prevalent in English that obscures the interesting subject of computer linguistics.
-I am an elective eunuch.
I'd love to see this a Graphical Adventure contest like this one recieve the kind of coverage and participation that the interactive games get.
It's seems so sad to me that modern games seem so devoid of creativity. I pray for the day that the immense processing power of todays gaming machines are applied toward making a truely innovative and creative game, instead of ones that simply remake the same old FPS with better graphics.
No, it's not such a difficult concept. It's simply a synonym for "Text-based Adventure Game". For those of us who were not yet born when the genre started, it's Quake _without_ the visual feedback, or the sound, or the mission objective. It's the Quake of a time when computers were not powerful enough to play Quake. Now, for some reason, some people are still in love with the old way ... and these are good people .....................
;-)
___________
says a young programmer & weblog newbie to even younger programmers
Ye see a FLASK. Obvious exits are NORTH, SOUTH, and DENNIS.
The website says For this reason, the use of a language designed specifically for IF, such as TADS, Hugo, Inform, or ADRIFT, is recommended. Who in the world uses that ??
The language websites for Hugo, Inform etc explain that they have been designed specifically for text based adventure games.... Talk about specialization !!!!
Any way I have registered and am going to do plain old C ( okay, okay C++)
Ye find yeself in yon dungeon. Ye see a SCROLL. Behind ye SCROLL is a FLASK. Obvious exits are NORTH, SOUTH and DENNIS.
What wouldst thou deau?
>go dennis
Ye arrive at DENNIS. He wears a sporty frock coat and a long jimberjam. He paces about nervously. Obvious exits are NOT DENNIS.
>talk to dennis
You Engage Dennis in a leisurely discussion. Ye learns that his jimberjam was purchased on sale at a discount market and that he enjoys pacing about nervously. You become bored and begin thinking about parapets.
More here.
I remember my old BBS had a door game I ended up actually paying for.
L.O.R.D: Legend of the Red Dragon
What a game. Kind of like a MUD too.
Those were the days. I wish there were still some BBSes (dialup) alive and thriving... I'd go sign up, maybe even pay for it.
So I see this story has the pacman icon. Pacman, however, is not a good example of interactive fiction.
You are at the center of a maze. To your front and rear are rows of dots that recede into the distance.
> forward
As you move forward, your open mouth causes you to consume a dot.
> forward
Your bulbous body thrusts forward once more, another dot disappearing into your maw.
> back
You turn around. In the distance you can see a ghost, coming right for you!
> down
You can't go in that direction.
> up
You slip into a side passage, continuing to dine on dots. Ahead there is a turn to the right.
> right
You turn, but a ghost is waiting for you right around the corner. There is no time to react, and you run right into it.
You are dead. Your score is 14/1000.
Play again? (y/n)
I noticed a good concept of choose your own adventure book over at somethingawful.com
e pi cs/photoshop/04-16-04-media/sparsely.jpg
Yeah....
http://images.somethingawful.com/inserts/articl
You can't beat photoshop fridays... not even with a really big stick.
"You should always go to other people's funerals; otherwise, they won't come to yours." -- Yogi Berra
Those interested in the contest might want to check out these resources for getting started with Inform. And for a short ten-minute adventure, I will engage in some self-publicity and recommend Escape from Station V.
I could never enter that. Everything I tried would wind up being colored by The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. That game has so thoroughly embedded itself in the choose-your-own-adventure part of my brain.
With likes like these, who can blame me?
"You wake up. The room is spinning very gently round your head. Or at least it would be if you could see it which you can't."
"A tree outside the window collapses. There is no causal relationship between this event and your picking up the toothbrush."
The coolest voice ever.
It really exists guys. Don't we all just love our text mode pacman! > Up The ghost looms ahead! Download it here: www.freewebs.com/dansworlddomination/PACMAN.EXE
Help Fight SPAM today!
The biggest problem with graphical adventures is that you must represent what your character is playing with graphically. You can't represent something that isn't obvous and the scenes must be uncluttered to keep your adventurer excited.
Let's take an example the standard cliche, taking stuff outta the trash. In IF, you can alude to stuf being in the trash, you can mention the trash can and hope the adventurer looks, you can relate a story about trashcans or you can hint to look directy. With graphical adventures, the trashcan looks like the recyclebin in Windows. Heaped full of papers one minute, take one sheet out and it's empty. It's pretty blunt when you think about it.
IMHO, most of the creativity was used to dress up a rather repeditive game genre.
~~~
Click here, you know you wanna!
Interactive Reality may require a larger investment in order to get a satisfieing level of game play, but the rewards are better, not to mention the graphics are like none other, and the tactile interface is truely ground breaking.
Unfortunatly, i am a broke student and can't afford to play. My stack of quarters will only go so far, so I am stuck in the "pinball" level.
I don't like the cut of your jib, young man!
Adam Cadre's stuff is pretty cool. IF isn't dead, not by a long shot.
Cue 150 comments of
"yeah but nobody wants to buy a text-based game"
Business isn't willing to pay for products, innovation and careers, so we get brands, mortgage commercials and layoffs.
You find yourself inside a dark room. There is a locked door in front of you. You have a key in your hand.
Input: open door
The door is locked.
Input: use key
What for?
Input: use key with door
You can't use the key with that.
Input: look door
The door is plain brown. There is a lock keeping it close.
Input: use key on lock
You get shocked.
Diego
diegoT
I loved Infocom from the very beginning, not only because they made great interactive fiction / text adventures, but because they had really funny ads.
One of the best was a picture of a brain with the caption: WE STICK OUR GRAPHICS WHERE THE SUN DON'T SHINE.
Honorary Member of Jackie Chan's Kung Fu Process Servers
Time to load up Zangband (www.zangband.org), and describe my short, 15-minute adventure.
is this really the same guy who is a /. editor? why would he get a job here if this was true? there must be another side to it all if the /. guys have given him a job.
just read /. every day
Sims is well aware of the total lack of ethics and morals involved in his actions, and even seems proud of it at times, and naturally continues to describe himself as a "journalist" to anybody he can trap in a corner at parties (to which he was never invited in the first place, naturally).
As most people know, being a scumbag is no barrier to employment in the media these days. In fact it's probably become a prerequisite...afterall, if you have to be a criminal now to be in the Whitehouse, why should journalism be any different?
Until Michael Sims is tossed out on his bony ass by the people that run this joint, respectability shall continue to elude Slashdot, just as it shall forever be beyond the reach of Michael Sims, the sleazy crooked cunt.
Lots of BBSes still around that you can access via telnet:
http://www.3dham.com/telnet/
...by the esteemed David Wong. Warning: some of these stories will be quite possibly the stupidest thing you'll ever read.
I'm probably at the karma cap. Mod up a funny troll instead, it lightens the mood
>Y
You open SUBMISSION. It is an article on FREE SPEECH that bashes the Bush Administration. You possible actions are (P)OST, (R)EJECT, or (T)EST FOR DUP. (P/R/T)
>T
Archives shows that this article is a duplicate of one posted 8 hours ago. POST anyway? (Y/N)
>N
Article posted!
Well, that would explain a lot, wouldn't it?
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
While I agree that interactive fiction doesn't need graphics, there's plenty of interactive fiction which does have graphics and which, in my opinion, greatly benefits from having graphics.
For example, Neverwinter Nights and its Aurora toolkit provide excellent tools for creating interactive fiction with the ability to do all the sorts of things you can do in a text-based IF environment. But it renders these fictions in an attractive real time near 3D environment. The game engine does have some flaws - in my opinion it is based too ridigly on Dungeons and Dragons, and some aspects of gameplay are a bit mechanistic in consequence - but it is a worthy successor of such game engines as the Infocom ones.
It would be possible to argue that Neverwinter is to Infocom as film is to printed books, but I think this would be a mistake. It is no harder or more complex to create IF in Neverwinter than in Infocom (indeed, I personally find it easier). It seems to me that Neverwinter and Infocom (and my own LISP based text game engines of twenty years ago) fall into the same category: frameworks for the creation of interactive fiction.
As an aside, does anyone know of other modern interactive fiction toolkits which compare to Neverwinter Aurora? Much as I like it, I'd like to try anything else that's good and around.
I'm old enough to remember when discussions on Slashdot were well informed.
Do you have any links to IF projects created with Aurora? I don't see how you can use that engine to carry on significant text-based interaction with the player. I'd be very interested in being proven wrong.
Dahlmann tightly grips the knife, which he may have no idea how to use, and steps out into the plain.
You're missing the point. All projects created with Aurora are interacive fiction by definition. There's no significant difference between
There is a box here.
> open the box
You don't have a key.
and just clicking on a box in Neverwinter. No, generally, user type-in is not a mode of interation the Aurora toolkit supports, but that isn't necessary for interactive fiction.
Of couse this does limit interaction with NPCs to choices from menus of predetermined speaches, and personally I find that a little limiting and disappointing. But that isn't the point. A game created with Aurora is just as much Interactive Fiction (and, at least potentiall, just as rich and deep interactive fiction) as games created with the classic text adventture toolkits.
I'm old enough to remember when discussions on Slashdot were well informed.
Well, that depends on who's doing the defining, I'd say. But I'm not unsympathetic to your point of view.
There's no significant difference betweenand just clicking on a box in Neverwinter.
Correct... because neither example represents IF writing of any quality. The important thing isn't how you open the box (clicking on it versus typing 'open the box'), but in how real the box appears to the user.
Textual description, unlike textual input, is not something I consider optional in a genuine IF game (despite what I wrote in the Montfort review about how we shouldn't be so quick to leave games like Deus Ex or Half-Life out of the IF canon.) When I walk into the room and see your box for the first time, a true IF engine should do more than just tell me about the presence of the box. It should show me what I've found, in a way that graphics alone can't (easily) accomplish:
No, generally, user type-in is not a mode of interation the Aurora toolkit supports, but that isn't necessary for interactive fiction.
Agreed (personally).
(snip) But that isn't the point. A game created with Aurora is just as much Interactive Fiction (and, at least potentiall, just as rich and deep interactive fiction) as games created with the classic text adventture toolkits.
To that, I'd have to say "show me the money."
Dahlmann tightly grips the knife, which he may have no idea how to use, and steps out into the plain.
Again, I think you're raising objections without really thinking. Certainly there's no point (in Neverwinter) in writng that the box is on the table, because the user can see it's on the table. But you can, of course, add a rich textual description of the box which the player will see if they inspect the box. Sure, they right click and choose an eye simbol from the radial menu instead of typing inspect box , but that's purely a difference in user interface style.
And there's no difficulty at all in Neverwinter in assigning NPCs speach acts triggered by (very) specific events. You could either surround the table with a trigger zone which causes Anrael to make that speach when he first enters the zone (or every time he enters the zone, or only if the box is shut, or...) or else you could override the OnOpen behaviour of the box to cause Anrael (if present) to make the speach.
I'm not aware of anything you can do in any text-based interactive fiction engine that you can't do modulo user interface differences with Neverwinter. Nor, really, is there very much you can do with Neverwinter which you can't do (modulo user interface differences) with the best of the text-based interactive fiction toolkits. Neverwinter, despite its rather pedantic D&D roots, is an interactive fiction toolkit - but with (generally good quality) graphics.
And that is the money.
I'm old enough to remember when discussions on Slashdot were well informed.
Adventureland
Pirate's Cove
Mission Impossible
Voodoo Castle
The Count
In Voodoo Castle, there was a cast-iron pot in the game. I typed: smoke pot
and the game replied: That's illegal!
The day Microsoft creates a product that doesn't suck, it will be known as the Microsoft Vaccuum Cleaner!
Wow! It is absolutely wonderful to see that IF still has such a loyal following. I grew up on IF games and still have several IF titles for the PC. I even still have some "choose your own adventure" books on my shelves. Regardless of what they can do with graphics today, nothing compares with what you can do within your own mind. The realism you can get with text based games such as IF and MUDS allows you to truly step into the "role" of your favorite characters and live that alternate life most people only dream of. I always enjoy a good book more than a good movie just as I enjoy a good IF game as much if not more than a good graphic adventure. If you have never gave IF a chance, or are too young to remember it then check out the articles above and give it a shot, you won't regret it ;)
Jay Dale "If you're not living on the edge then you're taking up too much space!"
I agree with your claim that NWN's Aurora toolkit is essentially an Interactive Fiction toolkit. In fact, as evidence, I would not point to the Neverwinter Nights campaign or any particular one of its user-made modules (although I haven't played many), but to Planescape: Torment, which was essentially created using a precursor of Aurora, has a similar interface, yet features an extremely sophisticated story with far more raw text than any Infocom game I've ever played (granted, Infocom games were limited by the memory of the "lowest common denominator" computer in their day).
What I do have contention with, though, is the ease of creating something unique with the Aurora toolkit--as you pointed out, Aurora is to film as Inform/TADS/etc are to books, and as such I think Aurora does require a lot more effort on the part of the author (or authors), especially when they want to create something that isn't already a "prop" created by Bioware or another designer. When I was using the Aurora toolkit, I found myself constantly having to find the "closest thing" to whatever objects or people I wanted populating my world; and the final result always looked a lot like something out of the Neverwinter Nights campaign, no matter how unique and "different" I tried making it. In fact, the only things that really separated my module from something Bioware or anyone else might have made were the item descriptions and dialogue I wrote: pure, simple words. With text-based interactive fiction, however, words shape far more than descriptions and dialogue.
Using Inform or TADS, it would be possible for a single person to write a fantasy epic, a contemporary coming-of-age story, a futuristic social commentary, or a science fiction mystery. If they were to try the same thing with Aurora, the only one they could really do on their own would be the first; any others would require a good bit of 3d modeling, texturing, 2d art, sound effects, and (optionally) music.
On the programming end, I would also contend that making any major modifications to Aurora would be fundamentally more difficult since you're dealing with a real-time 3d world, whereas text-based IF uses a turn-based textual one.
Granted, these two things are like apples and oranges, but I felt that using Inform was far easier than using Aurora; with Aurora I spent a lot more time trying to figure how to do what I wanted to do, whereas with Inform I just "did it" and things almost always seemed to work the way I expected them to. Granted, a lot of this is because Inform and TADS are also far better documented than Aurora (at least when I used Aurora, which was back in 2002).