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."

Comments

Try lojban, not English.

[Thinkit4]

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.

Re:Try lojban, not English.

[Snarfangel]

Seeing Lojban mentioned somewhere other than a constructed languages group was kind of surprising. I know it shouldn't be -- Slashdotter's like arguing what features should go into a computer language, while Conlangers like to do the same with human languages, so there probably is a bit of crossover with people who like both.

Still, I'd give you a mod point if I could just for bringing up something I think is interesting. Constructed languages like Lojban would be interesting in computer games -- they could replace "made up" languages of magic, or aliens, or even be turned into logic puzzles. The better ones have an underlying order that can often be sensed, even if the language itself is totally foreign.

I'll go back to A.C. lurking now, I just wanted to make sure others didn't think someone was schizophrenically responding to their own post.

Re:Try lojban, not English.

[Sargent1]

Interestingly enough, there's "nuntalyli'u", a version of Colossal Cave translated to Lojban.

Creative gaming design lost?

[cwm9]

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.

L.O.R.D

[solid]

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.

Hrmmm

[Cylix]

I noticed a good concept of choose your own adventure book over at somethingawful.com

Yeah....

http://images.somethingawful.com/inserts/article pi cs/photoshop/04-16-04-media/sparsely.jpg

You can't beat photoshop fridays... not even with a really big stick.

Hitchhiker's Guide

[Faust7]

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."

IF Pacman

[JoeShmoe950]

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

Why pigeonhole gammers?

[wantedman]

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.

Infocom's greatest ad campaign

[The Gline]

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.

Re:It's good to see

[Maxim Kovalenko]

I couldn't agree more...and for a blast from the past for all you fans of text based adventure games: There are, of course the old games from Infocom and the http://infocom.elsewhere.org/ gallery which allows you to still play some of the originals online, and look at exhibits featuring the original accessories from nearly all the Infocom lines. Truly a step down memory lane.

Re:Program in Martian ???

[Dmala]

I've been judging the Comp for a few years now, and I have yet to see a scratch-written game that didn't suck. Not to say it couldn't be done, but in the timeframe of the competition, the specialized languages are a huge advantage.

Besides, games written in Inform have (by default, at least) the same look-and-feel as the classic Infocom games. How cool is that?

Re:The Farthest I ever go

[WWWWolf]

Curious. I can't remember any Infocom game that bluntly replied "invalid command" (Most reply like "I don't know the word "foo"). Infocom's competitors did ocassionally write less glorious parsers, however.

Besides, Infocom parser excelled at figuring out the ambiguities. In above case, it'd say something like "Which door do you mean, the north door or the south door?"

And besides, they usually had a little bit more clever replies to frustrated players, like:

>damn
Such language in a high-class establishment like this!

=)

Re:Ok

[cubicledrone]

Yeah, and nobody wants to buy poems either these days.

Yeah, and soon they won't want to buy novels, or short stories, or watch television for more than 10 minutes, or listen to more than one verse of a song, or read, or think.

It's too much trouble. It's too inconvenient. It's not FAST and EASY, like everything on television says it should be.

When the last poet puts down their pen, how long before the entirety of life takes on the dull gray color and stale smell of money? How long before "nobody cares" isn't just hyperbole?

How long before nobody can form the words to describe how miserable they feel because they can't read?

A step back in time

[Sylven_1969]

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 ;)