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Interactive Fiction Competition Opens

Posted by michael on from the kill-floyd-with-laser dept.

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."

7 of 99 comments (clear)

  1. Interactive Fiction rules by scrod · · Score: 3, Informative

    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.

    1. Re:Interactive Fiction rules by RyatNrrd · · Score: 4, Informative
      ...and you might like to look at the list of winners from last year and perhaps warm up on some of the better ones. If the last Interactive Fiction game you played was Zork or Advent, you might be pleasantly surprised by how far the genre has come.

      For example, most of the higher-ranking games don't let you mess things up (e.g. by "shattering the crystal key" or whatever) and they let you UNDO actions if you find that you don't like how things are going.

  2. Re:Program in Martian ??? by Perseid · · Score: 5, Informative

    Yes, but Inform and TADS already have excellent text parsers written for you, making life much simpler once you know the language. So you have to ask yourself which is more convenient - learning a new language to get a free parser or writing the parser yourself in a language you already know.

    You also don't have to worry about cross-compatibility with the IF languages. Both of these languages create pseudo-code that runs under a virtual machine. Sort of the way Java works. If you code in C++, even if you write it to be truly portable it will still need to be compiled on each machine people want it run on.

    To each his own, but you should at least take a good look at Inform/TAGS/Hugo.

  3. Re:Program in Martian ??? by Zurd · · Score: 5, Informative

    If you already know C, you're MUCH better off just spending a couple of hours picking up the idiosyncracies of Inform. 99% of your work will be wasted if you try to write IF from scratch in C.

    --
    The Kingdom of Loathing
  4. L.O.R.D - You can still play it by phrenq · · Score: 4, Informative

    Lots of BBSes still around that you can access via telnet:

    http://www.3dham.com/telnet/

  5. Re:Hitchhiker's Guide by Horizon_99 · · Score: 5, Informative

    If you're a fan and haven't played it, or just feel like taking a little trip back:

    >Go Underdogs
    [Using your web browser]You see a website offering tons of cool underrated games

    >Examine Games
    You see a list of hundreds of IF games"

    >Get HHGTG
    You download one of the best IF games ever

    >Play game
    [using Frotz] You play for a while before feeling a presence behind you. The lights go out. You have been eaten by a grue.

  6. Re:Infocom's greatest ad campaign by Conspiracy_Of_Doves · · Score: 4, Informative

    Pic

    --

    Technoli