2004 Interactive Fiction Results

silent_knight writes "Early in October, the 2004 Interactive Fiction competition began. The results are now in! Be sure to check out some of this year's best entries: Luminous Horizon, Blue Chairs, All Things Devours, Magocracy, and Murder at the Aero Club. All entries (and interpreters) can be downloaded together for Windows and the Mac from the download page." As mentioned in the previous story, Linux support for these games is also easily available.

Comments

Play In Firefox

[sbszine]

There's a Firefox extension called Gnusto that lets you play these games from your browser. Have fun : )

Re:Play In Firefox

[kesuki]

except that the hosting site is already struggling under a /.ing playing them from a browser is not a good idea right now unless you've got a local mirror or copied all the files locally or something ;) otherwise half way in you'll be waiting for everything to load until the server comes back up

Re:Play In Firefox

[sbszine]

playing them from a browser is not a good idea right now unless you've got a local mirror or copied all the files locally or something

Yes, downloading them and playing from the local copy is the probably the best idea. Or you could kill time by writing your own games (the language is called Inform and is pretty straightforward OO).

Re:Play In Firefox

[GMFTatsujin]

I hate to ask, but is there an emacs z-code interpreter? Has Firefox broken new "it's this kind of application but it also does *that*" ground?

Re:Play In Firefox

[xgamer04]

The 2004 comp entries seem to only be available (at least on the comp page) as a zip archive, so opening them individually off of the server wouldn't be too easy.

Re:Play In Firefox

[Peter S. Housel]

Yes, there's Malyon, a z-machine interpreter written in Emacs Lisp.

Re:Play In Firefox

[Anonymous Coward]

The individual games can be downloaded from the if-archive. There used to be links to the individual games on the archive on the comp site, but the links were to a mirror which has suddenly vanished. Here's a working mirror where you can download all the zcode games (they are the only ones that are playable in Firefox):

http://ifarchive.jmac.org/indexes/if-archiveXgames Xcompetition2004Xzcode.html

/Fredrik

Re:Play In Firefox

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, that's great stuff - gotta love the efficiency of elisp. Speedwise, it turns my P-III laptop into a C=64 with a floppy drive; if I set the faces to the right color, and write a script to bind 'load "*",8,1' to the right commands, it brings back tons of memories.

Or I could just use frotz.

Link to the original article

[the_mighty_$]

Here is the article announcing the beginning of the competition. May be interesting.

Re:Link to the original article

[Anonymous Coward]

Jesus, what a karma whore. Wow, you did a search and linked to the last article about this. +5!

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Best interactive fiction?

[Anonymous Coward]

Half Life 2, damnit. Graphics are just a layer of extra interface between the user and text.

Re:Best interactive fiction?

[QuantumG]

You know you're right? But if we reserve IF for people who can afford a game development team with artists and designers and all that extra expense we'll find far less gems than if we accept textual games as being valuable also. This applies as much to MUDs as it does to single player IF.

Re:Best interactive fiction?

[daniel_mcl]

I just played through most of Half-Life 2. Now, sure, sometimes it's fun to shoot things (or throw radiators at them), but the actual story components of HL2 are *nothing* compared to Blue Chairs, Gamlet, etc.

The issue isn't that HL2 is an FPS; if someone made a graphical game with anywhere near the literary depth of the stuff that's coming into IF annually, it'd be pretty impressive. Instead we keep getting Neuromancer rehashes and space operas.

Re:Other Infocom Interpreters

[Anonymous Coward]

Oops.. link should be http://www.cs.csubak.edu/~dgriffi/proj/frotz/ Other Infocom Interpreters

Long live the Z-machine

[murderlegendre]

I wiled away a lot of hours in my youth playing the classic Infocom games. It really warms my heart to see this format prospering _twenty years_ later. You can get a Z-machine interpreter for just about anything, from Athlon64 to PalmOS.

I wonder if any of the tradtional 'printed page' literary organizations will ever embrace I.F. as a legitmate form of literature, be it prose, poetry or just 'other'? Perhaps a Pulitzer for 'Best work of Interactive Fiction?

Re:Long live the Z-machine

[Macrobat]

I wonder if any of the tradtional 'printed page' literary organizations will ever embrace I.F. as a legitmate form of literature, be it prose, poetry or just 'other'? Perhaps a Pulitzer for 'Best work of Interactive Fiction?

Probably not. The whole point of celebrating an artist is to commend the choices he/she made. The whole point of IF is to give choices to the player. Granted, there's still a lot of decisions when you write a game, but not to the degree that pre-written fiction has

That's not to say that games don't have their snooty prestige points. Chess is probably the best example of this.

Re:Long live the Z-machine

[GMFTatsujin]

IANAIFA (blah blah Interactive Fiction Author) but I would contend that IF authors have to make more, not fewer, decisions than a pre-written author would for a work of the same length.

Pre-written authors need ultimately only follow one timeline where everthing happens in sequence; IF authors have to anticipate the player performing actions at any given time under different situations, and account for that. (Has the player got the dingus to go through the puzzle door? Has he talked to NPC #2 and subsequently learned about the Amazing Event? How is Sparky the Wonder Dog described in the rain versus when he's in his doghouse?) Also, IF that allows for multiple endings (like my current favorite, Slouching Toward Bethlehem) has to be flexable, yet credible under many circumstances, which means even more decisions on the part of the author.

Not to take cred from one or the other, but in order for the player to make choices, any choices, the IF author has to have anticipated them, made them, and accounted for them.

Maybe IF authors can be forgiven a little snootiness. It seems like a hell of a lot of work to me, and most players won't explore the game sufficiently to be exposed to all of it. (Yay, easter eggs!) Contrast with a written book, where it's just a matter of turning all the pages.

Re:Long live the Z-machine

[murderlegendre]

Probably not. The whole point of celebrating an artist is to commend the choices he/she made. The whole point of IF is to give choices to the player.

This was a very relevant comment, but it brings up another point.

There are numerous instances of art, in which the viewer is allowed to take their own path to the presentation. This can be as basic as the angle from which we choose to view a painting or sculpture, or as technical as an installation that contains audio / video / kinetics, and alows one to interact in a way that alters, and personalizes the experience. I don't think that the ability to personalize the experience with Interactive Fiction precludes it from the ranks of art, or literature as art.

Have you ever read a book, in a not totally end-to-end fashion? Ever skipped ahead to see what might happen, looked in the middle to get a sense of what the work was about, or never read the liner notes and foreword at all? There are even books that allow young readers to chose one of many paths through a given story. There are classes for childern's literature, correct?

If conventional literature is to be held up as art, then so should be Interactive Fiction.

Re:Long live the Z-machine

[GMFTatsujin]

(Whoops. Minor edit: my favored game's name is Slouching Toward Bedlam, not Bethlehem. Apologies to the author. I guess I don't love the game as much as I thought!)

Re:Long live the Z-machine

[kundor]

Printed page has already embraced Interactive Fiction. Ever hear of Choose Your Own Adventure books?

Re:Long live the Z-machine

[Macrobat]

I still contend (and I'm saying this from the point of view of someone who likes IF, by the way) that these are not choices you're describing; more like options or contingency plans. A choice, by necessity, means some things are going to be excluded (and, as the old saw goes, a work of art is judged as much by what's left out as by what's put in).

Moreover, even the best IF suffers from the inability to do any and every plausible action, and likely will for a long, long time. You can go up to the clerk, but if you don't have the money, but you can't buy the watch until you find the fifty dollars stashed in Uncle Jeb's mattress. You can't pawn off an old Stratocaster you used to play, because the author did not conceive of you playing it, and besides, there are no music stores or pawn shops in the vicinity. And you can't look them up in the Yellow Pages, because you don't need to use the phone in this game, so you don't have a phone book. Static fiction foregoes that illusion of real-world flexibility and instead focuses on the choices that make for the best story.

Re:Long live the Z-machine

[cuteseal]

"You can get a Z-machine interpreter for just about anything, from Athlon64 to PalmOS."

And not only that, you can actually write and compile them on just about any machine too! I had some fun with my Psion Revo a while back...

Re:Long live the Z-machine

[sbszine]

Or you're a really big T.S. Eliot fan.

I just started playing Bedlam today, and it's really great. Very atmospheric steampunk scenario, and some quite clever coding I imagine.

Re:Long live the Z-machine

[Anonymous Coward]

Just because they exist doesn't mean the literates have embraced them. They are no more embraced than IF is in the computer world of today, that is not at all. They are permitted to exist, but you can't say much more on either carbon or silicon.

DB.

Re:Long live the Z-machine

[b00le]

Not Eliot, W.B. Yeats "The Second Coming" Anyway "Bedlam" was orignally a corruption of "Bethlehem" for what it's worth...

Re:Long live the Z-machine

[netjiro]

I would like to chime in on parent's song.
I've authored and played lots of RPG "scenarios", adventures and camapigns, as well as written ordinary fiction and to some extent also computer games.
Writing a fixed story takes _far_ less work than authoring an interactive scenario.
When allowing for player/reader to make real choises you have to have a much more solid story, you have fewer tricks to use and you have to cover a lot more ground "just in case".

Re:Long live the Z-machine

[sbszine]

Now I feel foolish and wish I had paid a bit more attention in high school. Ah well, I remembered the bedlam == Bethlehem hospital for the clinically nuts bit at least. I wonder if the game is alluding to the connection or just indulging in wordplay.

Re:Long live the Z-machine

[Bambi Dee]

Maybe IF isn't quite there yet. Maybe it's being held back by it's object-manipulation-centric adventure game roots and the limits of its parsers and world models.

Nothing wrong with that, but some IF really isn't "games" anymore. By that I don't mean it's "something better", just that it's got little to do with, say, the rather formulaic in-jokey mock transcripts you see posted here. Even so, this story-oriented and/or experimental IF still functions along much the same lines as a "Zork"-style dungeon romp might, and the conventions thereof may be off-putting as far as outsiders are concerned. I'm not sure about that; I'm quite familiar with them and have been for a long time -- maybe there's a certain blindness as to just how demanding and frustrating even "puzzleless" IF can be for someone who expects something as user-friendly as a book.

"Readers" unfamiliar with IF may, for example, be disappointed to realise that IF does not, in fact, understand "natural language", but merely a subset (which the IF community itself is of course perfectly familiar with); "say 'what is your name?'" for instance is almost guaranteed to fail, but the seemingly more unlikely "put everything except the wooden flute in the battered tin box then lock the box with the silver key" might well work. (No, "Thy Dungeonman" is not an accurate representation of even the most crudely written TADS or Inform game.)

But I believe there's no reason why it couldn't be considered "legitimate" literature already. I think that an engrossing story, whether it's IF, novel, movie..., is *always* "interactive" to some degree simply because it engages (provokes, inspires, soothes, angers,...) the reader; however, IF can turn the reader/player into an accomplice, can make them feel as though they were actually directly responsible for them, can adapt the story in response to their input.

Oh, I'm sure a book can do some of that -- you might identify with one of the characters, you might linger on a paragraph, re-read it, picture it, you might "take the story to bed with you" and re-arrange it in your mind... no, a book isn't as static as is sometimes said. But it's still not you who causes the story to happen, even if you are partly responsible for whatever impression it has on you.

That to me is one of the reasons why something being a game-of-sorts, or a descendant of games, doesn't have to mean it's trivial. IF is not just a simulation with a player turned loose and making choices until some objective is reached by whatever means available. (Sure, you can treat it as such, as a puzzle whose logic is to be figured out and then turned against it...)

Another reason is the way IF can experiment with the relationship between player/player character. Part of the appeal of the "game" "Rameses" is trying to see whether you can change the protagonist's behaviour and attitude -- he's a depressed, lonely student, he's feeling terribly out of place, he's dwelling on the past... and he won't turn into a carpe-diem'ing adventurer just because you want him to. I'm not saying IF is actually and/or intrinsically better at letting you experience another's mind, but it's different to kinda be half the protagonist wrestling with the other 50%. It's different to try to change and fail than to just read about somebody not trying. Or something like that.

Give IF some time and if it doesn't actually get less accessible than it already is it'll eventually be "recognised" (more).

Re:Long live the Z-machine

[Dennis G. Jerz]

I'm an English professor who teaches interactive fiction in my classes whenver I can.

http://jerz.setonhill.edu/if

In the 80s, some librarians and middle-school teachers embraced IF as a way to get kids interested in reading. That's fine with me, but I prefer to look at IF as a genre of its own, with its own aesthetics and critial vocabulary.

Re:Long live the Z-machine

[Dennis G. Jerz]

I'm not sure the choices/options distinction is very useful, but you are right that authors of traditional fiction focus on a sequence of events that make the best story. But the best IF authors don't try to widen their world in order to permit every possible action... instead, they craft "refusal messages" that aren't stark, immersion-killing "You can't do that!" but that instead reveal character, motivation, help flesh out the back story, etc., all the while pushing the player towards that small subset of actions that have been implemented in such a way that when performed they permit the story to advance.

I don't think that the ability to do any and every plausible action will make IF better... IF is a hybrid between story and game, and the more freedom the player has, the less story there can be. But some enjoyable works of IF make very little pretense at having a story. Nick Motfort's "Ad Verbum" is a collection of word puzzles, wrapped into a kind of reverse treasure hunt.

There are other variables, too -- humor, dialog, an interesting world to explore, an engaging PC. All these things can make up for a game that only permits a small subset of possible player actions.

The annual contest hosted by XYZZY News has eight or ten categories "Best Writing," "Best Puzzles," etc., that illustrate the fact that what one IF fan thinks makes for a "good" story may not be another IF player's cup of tea.

At any rate, an IF author who wants to tell a story has to work hard to make the player WANT to choose those avenues that will advance the story. That's not the same thing as brute force coding that attempts to simulate the real world.

China: Do Not Upload These Works to the Internet!

[Anonymous Coward]

Geez. Do not upload these works of fiction to the Internet. The Chinese will immediately pirate them and sell them for pennies. The original authors? They receive no royalties whatsoever.

Look at what happened to "Star Wars I". It debuted in mainland China before the film was released in the West for general distribution at your local theater.

Somebody has to....

[D4MO]

In Korea, interactive fiction is for old people.

Re:Somebody has to....

[ryanmfw]

Is this the new "In Soviet Russia..." joke? Come to think of it, I haven't seen many of them lately, unless they involved old Korean people...

Re:Somebody has to....

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, way back in the "In Korea, e-mail is for old people!" article from earlier today, there was a thread of people sort of concluding that this is our new meme-of-the-week:

In Korea, only old people make up new memes.

Hell, someone's added it to the slashdot wikipedia entry already.

Re:Somebody has to....

[uhlume]

"In Soviet Russia, Korean old people are for YOU!"


God, I feel dirty, now.

Re:Somebody has to....

[TheRaven64]

I think you mean:

`In Soviet Russia, Korean old people are for YOU ... in Japan.'

Re:Somebody has to....

[harrkev]

In Soviet Russia:
1) Profit!
2) ???
3) All your Korean old people belong to us!

Wow. Four memes in one post. Is there one that I forgot?

Re:Somebody has to....

[Anonymous Coward]

Imagine a beowulf cluster of Korean old people in hot grits.

Interactive fiction eh?

[fenix_ix]

Interactive fiction eh? If i ever hear of an interactive mills and boon, i'll be using someone's head for golf practice.

Great IF

[Anonymous Coward]

I haven't played this years crop yet, but some of the past winners are amazing.

A must run: Photopia (Winner 1998) http://adamcadre.ac/photopia.html - not another D&D type adventure, that's for sure

Re:Great IF

[Euro]

Oh yes! Photopia! Great stuff. I've never been a great fan of interactive fiction (mainly because Zork and its sequels constantly stumped me when I played them on the venerable C64), but Photopia was truly an experience. I remember getting the chills when I finished it.

The great thing about Photopia is that for one, its puzzles are always obvious. So much so, that most of the time they don't even classify as traditional IF puzzles. There are some gems, however. Especially the IF mainstay, a maze, is done simply beautifully. Photopia focuses completely on story and that is a Good Thing by all accounts.

Another great (but very different) piece of IF is Winchester's Nightmare by Nick Montfort. I also enjoyed Narcolepsy (also by Adam Cadre and winner of the 2003 XYZZY award for best writing), although I never finished it.

Re:Great IF

[Feneric]

Along the same lines of story-focused IF capable of giving the chills I'd also recommend Shade. It's also fairly brief and can be traversed in a relatively short time.

Re:Great IF

[hrm]

Photopia is great. One of the few text adventures that can truly be described as "interactive fiction" . It sounds lame, but to explain why would give away too much of Photopia's plot.

I can also heartily recommend spider and web by Andrew Plotkin. More of a traditional puzzler, but with nice plot and NPCs.

Re:Great IF

[Anonymous Coward]

Support. Spider and Web has the Best Puzzle Ever.

Half-Life 2 in ASCII!

[Tackhead]

You are in a little white house near a forest on the outer edge of the Great Underground Empire. There is a computer on the table here.

> BUY HALF-LIFE 2
You cannot buy Half-Life 2. You can only rent it.

> RENT HALF-LIFE 2
You download a Steam client and supply your FrobozzcoCard number.

> PLAY HALF-LIFE 2
You cannot play Half-Life 2 on this computer without signing into your Steam account.

> LOGIN STEAM
You punch in your account information, but because you're in a little white house in the middle of nowhere, the computer's modem dials up the nearest internet provider and the game begins to download.

> WAIT
Time passes...
4.9 gigabytes remaining. (5.4k/s)

> WAIT
Time passes...
4.9 gigabytes remaining. (5.4k/s)
Your blood pressure just went up. (Oh, wait, this only *feels* like you're stuck in "Bureaucracy". Your blood pressure is actually just fine.)

> WAIT
Time passes...
4.9 gigabytes remaining. (5.4k/s)
Your UPS battery is fading.

> TURN OFF MONITOR
You turn off the monitor to conserve power. The only light is the "RD" light on the modem - a solid, but feeble, red. Clever.

> WAIT
Time passes...
You really think you can press "W" more often than I can tell you that Time Passes? I'm the computer here, remember? But have it your way - we'll skip a the next nine days.

> WAIT
Time passes...
It is dark. You are still unlikely to be eaten by a headcrab.
Grues, however, are another story

*** You have died ***

Your score is 0/150 (Victim of improperly-conducted usability study). Would you like to try again?

Re:Half-Life 2 in ASCII!

[Anonymous Coward]

i dont see how steam could save games from piracy? hl2 is already available in nosteam version in p2p networks.

Re:Half-Life 2 in ASCII!

[Anonymous Coward]

the tighter you close your grip, the more games that slip through your fingers

Celebrate the future, but remember the past

[Staplerh]

This may seem off-topic, but it is wihin the same genre and while it is great to see new Interactive Fiction (IF), if people are interested there are some of the true classics still out there on the net. While most IF afficianados have certainly played the IF version of 'Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy', if not it is available online at http://www.douglasadams.com/creations/infocomjava. html . It's not always up, but it is available elsewhere and some links are provided on that webpage.

This is the game that introduced me to the genre, and I've enjoyed it ever since. Can be extremely frustrating at times, but it is rewarding and thought provoking. Hopefully this new beed has come up with some 'easter eggs' to reward creative typing!

Re:Celebrate the future, but remember the past

[daniel_mcl]

As a a matter of fact, the BBC has commissioned a flash version of that game with graphics for each scene to promote their new HHGTG stuff.

Re:Celebrate the future, but remember the past

[bbc]

The BBC has published an illustrated version of this game (Flash required).

Re:Celebrate the future, but remember the past

[TheRaven64]

I remember that game. It was HUGE! 150K. Too big to fit onto the 128K flash in my Psion Series 3. I could just about squeeze it into the 256K of main RAM, if I put the Infocom interpreter on the flash card and didn't expect to have any space free for actual documents...

A great game, although getting a Babel Fish was a pain, and the parts being trapped in the dark were frustrating. As was failing to feed the dog at the start, and then getting half way through and being eaten by said dog because it was still hungry...

Re:Celebrate the future, but remember the past

[harrkev]

As was failing to feed the dog at the start, and then getting half way through and being eaten by said dog because it was still hungry...

Oh yeah???
Well, in the movie "the Crying Game," she's a MAN!

And in "The Sixth Sense," he's ALREADY DEAD!

Sheesh!

Blue Chairs should have won

[skybrian]

I played the first two when the winners were announced (because I was too lazy to judge this year).

Luminous Horizon is a well-polished game, but it's the third part of a superhero series and the story is nothing new. The most interesting part about it is the way it handles switching characters and hints.

Blue Chairs is far more interesting. It's hard to summarize, but it starts out with a drug trip at a party that turns into a dream sequence. Even if that's not your thing, it allows for some amazing writing. Highly recommended.

Re:Blue Chairs should have won

[Sigma 7]

Luminous Horizon is a well-polished game, but it's the third part of a superhero series and the story is nothing new. The most interesting part about it is the way it handles switching characters and hints.

Actually, that isn't the problem with Luminous Horizon. The main complaint produced by the people that hated the game was that the game felt much too short and railroaded. In particular, almost all of the puzzles (save one or two) can be auto-solved by talking to the other character.

The only manipulatable object would be the gizmos - they appear to be intended to solve one of the puzzles, but it turns out that they aren't really needed.

Blue Chairs is far more interesting. It's hard to summarize, but it starts out with a drug trip at a party that turns into a dream sequence. Even if that's not your thing, it allows for some amazing writing. Highly recommended.

Blue Chairs did have a somewhat weak beginning, and perhaps was a bit too wierd for some of the judges. The group of people that didn't like the game most likely didn't understand the concept or message behind the game.

After seeing the comments after the results were announced, I ended up liking the game - however, this was after the 2 hour rating session where I was placing my focus on the puzzle aspects (which were trumped by All That Devours).

There was one game that was widly considerd to be underrated: "Goose, Egg, Badger", as it's puzzles relating to interesting use of vocabulary (which I and some others didn't notice until judging was finished.) One other underrated game "PTBAD 3" was supposed to be a satire of bad text-adventures, but almost nobody understood that it was a satire - but even an improved rating wouldn't bring it past average.

(Not sure why the OP suggested "Murder at the Aero Club" and "Magocracy" - those were actually average and there didn't seem to be any visible reason why it should have been higher.)

Re:Blue Chairs should have won

[God! Awful 2]

One other underrated game "PTBAD 3" was supposed to be a satire of bad text-adventures, but almost nobody understood that it was a satire - but even an improved rating wouldn't bring it past average.

According to the authors "Stack Overflow" was meant to be a satire of bad text-adventures, whereas PTBAD3 was just meant to be a troll.

-a

Game reviews

[zbik]

It would be great if anybody who has tried one of these games could post something to give us an idea about it. "Luminous Horizons" is the only one I found with a README; it's a superhero adventure done in comic book style. http://mirror.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/compe tition2004/glulx/eas3/eas3info.txt My personal favorite from the IF Archive is Christminster, a quirky Pynchon-esque conspiracy puzzle. Reviews for this game (and more) are in Baf's Guide to the IF Archive: http://wurb.com/if/

Re:Game reviews

[Anonymous Coward]

1. Blue Chairs

You play the role of someone--I recall it being a university student, but I may be filling in details from memory--who takes a drug at a party.

The game basically consists of you trying to leave the party, and the events that occur along the way. There are subplots involving various characters, including romantic partners.

I thought the game was extremely well-written and refreshing in its execution. It is much more sophisticated than my brief description might suggest. The story is extremely nonlinear, and there are many routes through the game. I found myself replaying the game to discover alternate endings.

This nonlinearity, however, can be annoying at the same time, because it's not at all clear that some of the alternate routes through the game exist. Moreover, the party setting does seem a little trivial in some ways.

Overall, though, it was tied as my favorite game of the IF competition, and one of the most enjoyable and engaging works of IF I've played.

2. All Things Devours.

If I recall correctly, in this work, you play a scientist who returns to a secret government lab you have been working in to correct a mistake in order to prevent serious catastrophe.

The game has a strong element of suspense. Like Blue Chairs, it is very well written. The descriptions are succinct and engaging. The author was extremely effective in creating an atmosphere of suspense and dread, and does a good job of making what is a science fiction setting seem real.

The game, however, is turn-sensitive, so if you have a problem with that approach to IF design you might be turned off. I personally have never encountered an IF work where the turn-sensitivity was necessary and useful. In this game, however, it seems appropriate, especially given the story line. In that way it might be similar to A Change in the Weather, where you could make arguments to support either position.

I never completed the work, however, because I encountered a number of bugs that would crash the game. It also doesn't implement synonyms and the like as effectively as other games.

3. Luminous Horizons

A continuation of a series involving a super-hero setting. If you've played the other ones, this is familiar.

The series is well-written, creative, and humorous, and this is similar in that way. The author also tends to make good use of graphics, in a limited graphic novel sort of way.

I don't find the super hero theme compelling, but it's well written, and I think many would enjoy it. This and Blue Chairs were my two favorites of the competition.

4. Murder at the Aero Club.

A murder mystery, at an air club. Pretty self-explanatory.

I thought it was enjoyable. The writing is succinct and clear, and is well-written in that way. The setting and descriptions are also compelling and intresting.

I thought the puzzles were a bit simple, however, and too easy. I often felt that the answers where being shoved in your face, so to speak, and which that there was more subtlety in the puzzle solutions. I also thought that the game suffered from some technical difficulties with interactivity.

Some games I enjoyed that I thought I should mention were The Orion Agenda and Splashdown, both of which finished higher than some of the entries mentioned in the article. The games are very similar--almost identical in plot at places, like the beginning--but have different approaches to writing and puzzles.

Re:Game reviews

[Anonymous Coward]

Oops, I meant Identity, and not Splashdown.

I think :)

Here's the rankings:

1 Luminous Horizon
2 Blue Chairs
3 All Things Devours
4 Sting of the Wasp
5 Square Circle
6 The Orion Agenda
7 Mingsheng
8 Splashdown
9 Gamlet
10 Trading Punches
11 The Great Xavio
12 Goose, Egg, Badger
13 The Big Scoop
14 I Must Play
15 Identity
16 Murder at the Aero Club
17 Bellclap
18 Magocracy
19 Typo
20 Kurusu City
21 Blink
22 Chronicle Play Torn
23 A Day In The Life Of A Super Hero
24 Order
25 Who Created That Monster?
26 Blue Sky
27 The Realm
28 Redeye
29 Stack Overflow
30 Zero
31 Zero One
32 A Light's Tale
33 Getting Back To Sleep
34 Ruined Robots
35 PTBAD
36 Ninja v1.30

Re:Game reviews

[Sargent1]

I'm collating the reviews posted to the Usenet newsgroup rec.games.int-fiction at http://brasslantern.org/. I expect to have them up starting in a day or so.

/.'ed

[Kipsaysso]

Looks like we are breaking the mirrors.

Re:Leave a Message

[lightspawn]

If this story gets more than 50 comments, please kill me now.

Oh yes, the old "something is of no use for me, so it must hold no value to anybody else".

This is such a horrid mindset, and one so common today, that I could not resist the need to bring you one comment closer to your death.

Dang, I totally spaced the deadline (months ago)

[tenzig_112]

Oh, crap.

Anyway, here's Eric the Power-Mad Dongeon Master,
a z-code game that follows a night of D&D gone awry.

There are a few bugs, I guess, but folks say it's fun to play.

histogram of ratings

[j1m 5n0w]

I like how they show the results as a histogram of ratings. This makes it easy to distinguish a game that everyone thought was mediocre from one that a lot of people liked, but a lot of others didn't. I wish imdb, iblist, and all the other similar sites would do the same.

Re:histogram of ratings

[AceCaseOR]

Um... IMDB.com does do this... for example

But yeah, It'd be nice if iblist did do that.

Re:histogram of ratings

[j1m 5n0w]

That's cool, I guess I just never clicked on the yellow stars.

Re:Leave a Message

[Anonymous Coward]

You wouldn't know interesting if it jumped up and bit you in the ass.

Slashdotted

[Matimus]

anybody have a torrent we could use? I would like to check out these games before tomorrow.

Better than Z-Code

[Macrobat]

You should check out The end result has got a much more flexible syntax than Z-code interpreters, and writing the code should be pretty familiar to C++ -style coders. You can even use the Pascal-style assignment operator if you like, with a compilation switch. If you like that kind of thing.

Re:Better than Z-Code

[ChaosDiscord]

(Quick primer for people unfamiliar with these: TADS is an authoring system and playing system for text adventure games. Z-Code is a platform independent bytecode for text adventure games. Z-Code games were originally produced by Infocom using proprietary tools. Inform is a modern authoring system that also outputs Z-Code.)

TADS has its advantages (a friend of mine who wrote the above mentioned "Magocracy" used it to great effect), but it also has serious disadvantages that must be weighed. Perhaps its most serious disadvantage is that it simply isn't as portable as Z-Code. TADS pretty much has a single interpreter and iffy specs. The only real specs for TADS games is the TADS interpreter itself. Z-Code is well documented at this point with many interpreters being available. TADS interpreters require relatively modern processor and memory while Z-Code was designed to run on home machines from the early 1980s.

All of this boils down to: my old Palm III happily plays very recent Z-Code games but has no hope of running any TADS game. Thanks to Frobnitz I've got 9 games sitting on my Palm right now. Z-Code is so stable that I'm happily running a 4 year old version of Frobnitz

While the interpreter support for graphics is but a pale shadow of TADS, graphics are really the point, are they? Yes, some games greatly benefit from them (I do like the "Earth and Sky" games), they're hardly a requirement for most games. Beyond that the Z-Code spec is quite flexible.

As for the development language, while Inform does have some strange quirks, it's a fine language that reasonably expresses intent. And while I'm a C++ and Perl coder at heart, I'm not so attached to a particular syntax that I'll pick a language based on it.

Ultimately it's telling that TADS games rarely come up in lists of "great interactive fiction you should play." It's dominated by Z-Code games. Apparently Z-Code isn't that limiting.

Don't get me wrong, TADS does have advantages. It shines in graphics integration. The author of Inform has said, "This author at least has long admired the elegance of Mike Roberts's Text Adventure Development System (TADS)," in his own book on Inform and goes on to mention some specific features he likes. Personally I disagree with enough of the library design that I'm tempted to replace it with the Platypus library. But since I'm personally interested in maximizing the number people who can play what I write and I don't have any truly serious problems with Inform or Z-Code, I'll be using that.

(For anyone sold on my little spiel, check out the excellent and free Inform Beginner's Guide and Designer's Manual , the free development software, and an interpreter. Of course, TADS is just as free, so check TADS out yourself.)

Radley Manor: My dipply little IF effort

[StefanJ]

Around 1994, I wrote a little text adventure using BASICA.

It puts you in the role of a kid who has batted a baseball into an abandoned house. No combat, no way to die for that matter; you win by locating the ball and walking out the front gate with it.

I recently recreated it with INFORM, to get familiar with the system so I could do more elaborate games. You can smell and taste stuff, and there's a lot more detail in the room descriptions.

Here's the compiled file:

http://home.comcast.net/~stefan_jones/Radley.z5

Stefan Jones

Re:Leave a Message

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe is boring for you, beacuse you have a the latest and greatest video card.
but i can play this game with the resolution that my mind allowed.
Maybe you want to upgrade yours?

(and making another post to have you flatlined)

The Winners are all leaving.

[robdeadtech]

Too bad almost all the winners have announced their leaving the Cabinet.

Re:The Winners are all leaving.

[robdeadtech]

uh... Sorry I meant "they're" instead of "their." Sorry about that. Feel free to point that contraction cannon elsewhere.

Re:The Winners are all leaving.

[Anonymous Coward]

Cannon? Filled with poder, shot, goes BOOM?

I think you mean canon. And you thought you only made one mistake...

Re:The Winners are all leaving.

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, "their" is quite correct in that sentence, although "they're" could also be used.

Ah, the wonders of language... :)

Wot No Slashdot?

[cliveholloway]

Ah come on, we should have been way up there.

What with the misleading headlines and trolls, I'd have thought it was a no brainer.

cLive ;-)

www.tads.org. But I *did* hit the preview key!

[Macrobat]

Oops. That's www.tads.org.

Damn, 20 posts and slashdotted ...

[gstoddart]

I guess it's not nearly interactive enough for Slashdot. =)

Check the newsgroups for reviews

[slvi]

rec.games.int-fiction will soon be brimming with reviews for this year's comp games -- and there are quite a few up already. Here's the Google link, check for posts preceded by [IFCOMP] or [COMP04].

-s

Re:Leave a Message

[Anonymous Coward]

I could not resist the need to bring you one comment closer to your death.

/sign

Not offtopic

[Anonymous Coward]

HL2 does raise the IF bar in some respects. There are those who will (perhaps violently) disagree, but at the end of the day it's (a) fiction, and (b) interactive, and any further arguments are meaningless academic hair-splitting.

erotic interactie fiction?

[susa-no-o]

When I read this story, one thing popped into my head: Is there any erotic interactive fiction? (There is definitely enough amateur erotic non-interactive fiction.) If so, where can I get it?

Re:erotic interactie fiction?

[Anonymous Coward]

A few were mentioned in a recent thread on rec.games.int-fiction (visible on Google Groups -- search for "Orion Agenda").

Re:erotic interactie fiction?

[daniel_mcl]

It's called AIF (Adult Interactive Fiction), and if you're really interested you can pick up some stuff from the AIF comps. Be forewarned that a lot this stuff is generally really poorly written. Like any sort of "erotica," I suppose.

Re:erotic interactie fiction?

[kallisti]

BAF's Guide to the IF is a great resource for everything IF. To find what you're looking for, use the search by genre on the left. Afterwards, you can use the other buttons to find something really worth playing, as erotic IF is generally really bad. One exception would be I-0 (Jailbait on the Interstate) as its written by Adam Cadre, one of the best IF designers around.

Re:erotic interactie fiction?

[daniel_mcl]

You consider I-0 "erotic?" Are you crazy? (Minor spoiler follows)

>x jack
Face like a slab of processed meat by-products left out in the sun too long,
haphazard hair plugs that look like he rubbed a glob of rubber cement on his
scalp and head-butted a cat, teeth so stained and discolored he must brush them
with molasses... you really picked yourself a winner this time, Trace.

Jack turns his head and looks you up and down. "So, darlin', how old are you?"
he asks.
[Enter a number or type "refuse"]> refuse

"Not gonna answer, huh?" Jack says. "Well, I suppose it don't make no
difference. Y'look old enough to me!" He chuckles and puts his hand on your
knee.

>z
Time passes.

Jack slides his hand up your thigh.

>z
Time passes.

Jack slides his hand... er... all the way up. "I reckon it's time we pulled off
somewhere," he says huskily. "How 'bout it?"

>no
Jack sneers at you. "Let's cut the bullshit, okay?" he spits. "You knew whut you
were gettin' into when you got in the car." He veers off the road -- the barbed-
wire fences are gone, and it occurs to you for the first time to wonder how far
you traveled while you were asleep -- and drives through the trackless desert
until the road is out of sight. He turns off the ignition, sets the parking
brake, and with no further ado, throws himself on you.

In Jack's car, in the middle of the desert
You were never crazy about Jack's car to begin with, but it's now officially #1
on your list of the most loathsome places you've ever been.

Jack has you pinned to the seat, rendering you unable to keep him from groping
your breasts, which is intolerable enough, and licking your face, which raises
the distinct possibility that you'll never feel clean again.

Re:erotic interactie fiction?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey, I wouldn't normally post this, but you asked for it. Check out www.sexadventure.ca and www.hentaisexadventure.com for that sort of stuff. It is like choose your own adventure books, but with sex in it.

Hilarious stories, seriously. Pics too.

Re:erotic interactie fiction?

[susa-no-o]

Hmm. At first I was interested in erotic interactive fiction, but now, for some reason, I can't even think of reading one of these things. Oh, well.

Re:erotic interactie fiction?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, I'm surprised that people lump it with erotic IF just because it has sexual themes in it. Still an excellent game though.

Re:erotic interactie fiction?

[kallisti]

I-0 is generally included in lists of "Adult" IF, I intended to point out that this one is different, and I see that I didn't make that clear. Jack is particularly creepy.

Coming soon - Slashdot Adventure

[Magickcat]

Slashdot
You are on the Internet. A web page is full of text before you. It is Slashdot. The page is a putrid green and there are advertisments for Suicide Girls and nerd toys. Exits are Back, forward and home.
There is a menu here.

You hear a computer fan in the distance.

>Go to Journal.
No, I'm afraid you can't do that now. Perhaps later.

>Chat up chicks.
Surely you are joking.

>Read Slashdot.
An hour or two passes. You have achieved nothing.

You hear a computer fan in the distance.

>Post on Slashdot.
You manage to post +5 INSIGHTFUL about SCO and how what you'd like to do to Darl McBride. An angry and bored lone gunman moderates you 30% OVERRATED.
You manage to post +4 INSIGHTFUL.

You hear a computer fan in the distance.
You are hungry.

>Post on Slashdot.
You manage to post +3 INSIGHTFUL about your ideas about American Foreign Policy. A disguntled group of Neo-Facists, Trolls, and lowbrows have read your post. You manage to post +1 TROLL. Your karma is terrible. You loose all your friends who thought you really were a Bush supporter.

You hear a computer fan in the distance.
You are hungry.

>Get back to unemploymed life
Please put on your tin hat. Your final karma is BAD. CowboyNeal thinks you suck.
Goodbye.

Do you want to (L)Load a Saved game, (R)Restart or (Q)Quit.
>

Re:Coming soon - Slashdot Adventure

[Spy Hunter]

Thanks for my new sig!

Re:Coming soon - Slashdot Adventure

[Magickcat]

I'm glad you like it.

Oh, and you have still achieved nothing.

Re:Coming soon - Slashdot Adventure

[lxs]

>read slashdot

You're trapped in a labyrinth of duplicate stories all alike.
You hear CmdrTaco chuckling in the distance.

>read slashdot

You're trapped in a maze of silly poll options all different.You feel slightly annoyed by the missing options.
A gaggle of trolls cowers away from your superior karma.

>whack troll.

A bright flash of light, a hollow laugh... One more GNAA member banished to -1.

>smoke crack

Aaahh. The joys of having mod-points...

Re:China: Do Not Upload These Works to the Interne

[daniel_mcl]

Umm, it's hard to not pay royalties for something which is distributed to anyone for free...

Teaching Aid

[micah_gideon]

Has anyone out there ever tried to use Interactive Fiction to teach English as a foreign language? If so, how did you do it and did it work?

Re:Teaching Aid

[Johnny Doughnuts]

considering some of the odd grammar used in infocom games (in terms of commands), i couldn't see it doing much help.

Re:Teaching Aid

[Anonymous Coward]

West end of a wooden bridge
"Morning paints beautiful scenery...your brother, Thyras...your father, Kerthal...and your uncle Jerrus stand beside you. "

>say hello
And to you.

say I LOVE YOU MAN!
"you don't need to use the word "love"
(maybe we're in redneck territory)

>say do you ever have those days when you're feeling not so fresh?
You don't need to use the word "do"
(maybe this is Texas)

>say you ever have those days when you're feeling not so fresh?
You don't need to use the word "ever"

>say you have those days when you're feeling not so fresh?
You don't need to use the word "days".

>say you have those when you're feeling not so fresh?
You don't need to use the word "when".

>say you have those you're feeling not so fresh?
You don't need to use the word "you're".

>say you have those feeling not so fresh?
You don't need to use the word "feeling".

>say you have those not so fresh?
You don't need to use the word "not".

>say you have those so fresh?
You don't need to use the word "so".

>say you have those fresh?
You don't need to use the word "fresh".

>say you have those?
That doesn't make any sense.

>Ask Thyras
try asking Thyras about something in particular

>Ask Thyras about something in particular.
You don't need to use the word "particular".

>Ask Thyras about something.
You haven't encountered anything like that.

>encounter something
Better start with a verb.

Reminds me of an old John Cusak movie - one character was brought in from the orient, and learned English by extensively listening to Howard Cosell. I think it was "Better off Dead" or "One Crazy Summer"

Re:Teaching Aid

[Feneric]

I've actually used the IF-optimized language Inform as a teaching aid for computer science. It's a great introduction to object-oriented programming and concepts for beginners.

Re:Teaching Aid

[robbarrett]

I actually wrote an adventure game on a 16k RAM TRS-80 back in high school for my Latin class, following the escapades of Publius and Furianus around Rome. You could play in either Latin or English, switching dynamically between the languages. It was helpful for learning vocabulary, and reading the place descriptions was sometimes challenging. Of course the commands you give are intentionally bad grammar, but for reading it was great.

So -- I'm learning German now....any German adventure games out there? This could be fun!

Re:Teaching Aid

[bedouin]

I've thought of this a few times, but could never find a game suitable for the task. The best bet would be to write one on your own, seeking input from ESL learners along the way about its effectiveness. From the looks of things, it's not too difficult.

Another possible idea is using AI to teach ESL writing. You can send students out to chat rooms, but they encounter all kinds of difficult things: slang, insults, cultural confusion, etc. An AI program catered to ESL learners could be very beneficial, especially if it were able to make subtle corrections and suggestions about usage. Then, unfortunately, one has to be careful the AI isn't suggesting the wrong things (MS Word's grammar check is a huge culprit of this).

It's sad really when you go to various ESL conferences and see companies attempting to sell fancy Flash based software; all kinds of stuff that will just cost tons of money and sit in a lab with no one using it. People make big bucks selling the idea that the latest, most expensive technology will be the greatest teaching aide, when something very useful -- like text adventure games, could be crafted by a couple graduate assistants for free, and probably be of equal benefit.

It's a society intrigued by marketing buzzwords and pretty-graphics though, and it consistently loses because of its programmed gullibility and search for quick answers. It's kind of like a technological tower of babel. People don't realize that in their search to make things simpler, they're creating long-term dilemmas. So-called outdated technology from the 70s in this scenario is probably more beneficial than the latest and greatest.

Re:Teaching Aid

[Bambi Dee]

There are a couple, yes. The three most important formats are Z-Code (interpreter: Frotz, among others), T.A.G. (interpreter: T.A.M., Windows and Linux) and Floyd (interpreter: Floyd, Windows and Linux). As for games, some are on the textfire.de webzine's "Grand Prix" (competition) page (that's comp02, there're also 03 and 04). Of these I'd recommed "Der Angstbaum" (for T.A.M.), a fantasy adventure that almost plays itself (what puzzles there are aren't very difficult); if you're into spaceships and such try Starrider (for Z-Code interpreters). Good luck!

Re:Teaching Aid

[micah_gideon]

As an English teacher, I find I'm much more concerned with fluency than with accuracy because I feel accuracy will come with experimentation, but experimentation doesn't occur without the confidence of fluency. The reading aspect should go a ways towards increasing vocabulary and I think the interactivity would also be engaging. Even if the grammar is not keyword based and not real world, I think this is OK. What about using the old, pre-graphical MMORPGs, text based (BBS?) games? Then it could be opened up to learners all around the world, eh? Has anyone played with that?

MOD PARENT UP

[xgamer04]

"In Soviet Russia, Korean old people are for YOU!"

Hopefully, the cross-reference will create a memetic explosion that takes out both cliches at the same time.

Hopefully.

Re:MOD PARENT UP

[ryanmfw]

These things never die man, they just grow old and read email in Korea.

Re:MOD PARENT UP

[mbbac]

"In Korea, Soviet Russia is for old people."

Re:Inform

[Bastian]

It's not too hard to learn Inform, at all. The language's manual and tutorial puts most projects' documentation to shame.

Inform homepage

Extending the meme....

[Anonymous Coward]

"In Soviet Russia, a Beowulf Cluster of Naked Petrified Korean old people are for YOU!"

( Doesn't that leave a great picture in your mind ;-O )

Re:Leave a Message

[Anonymous Coward]

In the inmortals words of Nelson Muntz:

HA-HA!

http://www.snpp.com/guides/nelson.file.html/

ok, now you can die

yeah have to say it

[Anonymous Coward]

can i get a screenshot of these games how are the graphics

Re:yeah have to say it

[chascarrillo]

Sure - here ya go, right at David Wellbourn's reviews. (Okay, technically, they're not screenshots. Rather, they're creepily accurate HTML/CSS representations of the beginning to each of the games, but they're close enough.)

The Real Question...

[hunterx11]

Do they have good graphics? I mean, everybody has serifs these days, but how about ligatures? Surely the winners had sexier "fl"s and "ff"s than the losers.

Great...

[flatface]

This is just fucking great. 20 minutes after I install a GeForce FX 5950 I'm playing Interactive Fiction. Thanks, Slashdot.

Saugus.net Halloween Contest

[Feneric]

Saugus.net has also opened up their annual Halloween Ghost Story Writing Contest to interactive fiction entries. So far though there haven't been any takers.

It's a fun medium and it's a shame more people don't try writing for it.

This is a problem with the system. . .

[Fantastic Lad]

I sympathize with your situation, but the hard truth is that Software is not going to be so easily controlled. --So long as the medium of its conveyance is such that it can be infinitely replicated for zero cost and work effort, software will spread like fire.

I believe that it is possible to be indirectly sustained by giving freely of oneself. Giving in one area will create returns in unexpected areas. This system is based on invisible but universal principals and it works. --However, it requires Faith, purity of Intent and enough Flexability of mind so that one can see and capitalize on opportunities when they arise. These are not necessarily easy things to achieve, however, and while they work very well, (I find), it certainly doesn't hurt to attempt to understand the material aspects of the systems you want to survive within. Direct solutions must be understood as well as indirect ones. . .

This being the case. . . The ways I've seen to make money from software in its current paradigm are. . .

A: Create software which is large and complicated and not easily distributed. When it is easier to pay money for a hard copy than it is to hunt down free versions, people will be much more willing to pay. There's absolutely nothing wrong with aiming your efforts toward providing valuable services which do not easily lend themselves to free distribution.

B: Copy protection. (Which nobody has ever perfected to my knowledge.)

C: Control public perception and laws so that people with money feel the need to pay for software rather than take it for free. This seems to work well in corporate environments.

D: Combinations of the above.

Another alternative is to create societies in which people are paid for their value, as one of your models partly suggests. Programmers, like the bakers and builders, etc., would be given the means to live because they are valued by their society.

On the large scale, such a systems boil down to Socialism, which terrifies people because it inherently disallows greed and the possibility of massive personal wealth. --And there are too many corrupt people for such systems to work on massive scales. --It can be done in small groups, however, in bubble realities where people are paid what they are worth for providing their services to the rest of the group, (this is the model corporations and businesses follow). It should be possible to work this solution in different kinds of group which are less oppressive, I would think.

Of course, this is not made easy because the nature of today's world is one of increasing control and slavery. It is very difficult to be self-employed because the current paradigm is opposed to people having freedom.

So what options does this leave you with? Here are a few to consider. . .

1. -Learn some new skills. Computers are largely a tool of population and mind control anyway. Learn something which does not depend on them. The more skills you acquire and enjoy, the more power you have to make your way in the world. Problems within groups tend to be chaotic in nature; the more adaptable one is, the more valuable.

2. -If you want to focus your skill set within the digital world, then don't bother developing programs which already exist. This is very difficult, since virtually every conceivable application has already been made countless times, and those which have not been made well, are being steadily improved upon by hobbiests who are happy to work for free. Unless you can convince somebody to pay you to custom-build software for them, it seems like a very difficult task to make money within the realm of popular application software.

3. So what else can you make? I'd suggest making, Content. --Something which is new and which people constantly want replenished. New games. New stories. New music, etc. Various types of copy-hampering can be used to increase the

How sad ...

[Anonymous Coward]

That a news item about text adventures still cannot be posted without the vast majority of the comments (pro or con) centering on the fact that it has no graphics. Do the words 'non sequitur' mean anything to you people?

When the aliens come and ask us to sign a peace treaty with a secret rider clause in text beneath the fancy flash graphics, which permits anyone who ventures out on the following June 11 to be instantly subjected to laser vivisection, us readers will RULE ... YOU ... ALL.

In the meantime ... hope you enjoy the limits of what your computers can be used for, because they aren't on your motherboards, apparently they are in your minds.

DB.

Where to get the games directly

[Sargent1]

No, though there was one last year. Instead, you can grab the games from the various IF Archive mirrors:

ftp://ftp.ifarchive.com/if-archive/games/competiti on2004/
http://ifarchive.jmac.org/indexes/if-archiveXgames Xcompetition2004.html
http://ifarchive.flavorplex.com/if-archive/games/c ompetition2004/
http://ifarchive.giga.or.at/indexes/if-archiveXgam esXcompetition2004.html
ftp://ftp.guetech.org/pub/guetech/if-archive/games /competition2004/

-Your friendly neighborhood competition organizer

Re:and if you are interested in playing the classi

[harrkev]

Thank you for the links. People wanting to re-live the goold-ol-days should download this.

But for all IF noobs out there: do not play these first. This link takes you to the now-free Zork series. They are the "grandparents" of all interactive fiction (with Colossal Cave being the great-grandfather).

The point is that modern IF is generally story-driven. There is an actual plot and generally other characters involved. The Zork series is known as a "dugeon crawl." The location descriptions are quite imaginative, but the focus of the game is on solving puzzles, and NOT telling a story.

This is the reason that this genre was first called "adventure games" but now goes by the name of "interactive fiction."

Re:Leave a Message

[fastfinge]

I'm surprised so many people seem to care, and that the if-comp even gets /. coverage. Being visually impaired, I always assumed I, and maybe the authors, was the only one who bothered with these things, sort of like weblogs (the only people who read weblogs have webblogs). I know of the news groups, but I don't have a news server so have no involvement with them. With audio games (http://www.audiogames.net) even most blind people have stopped playing interactive fiction.