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2004 Interactive Fiction Results

Posted by Zonk on from the go-W-young-man dept.

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.

15 of 132 comments (clear)

  1. Play In Firefox by sbszine · · Score: 5, Informative

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

    --

    Vino, gyno, and techno -Bruce Sterling

    1. Re:Play In Firefox by sbszine · · Score: 2, Informative

      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).

      --

      Vino, gyno, and techno -Bruce Sterling

    2. Re:Play In Firefox by Peter+S.+Housel · · Score: 4, Informative

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

  2. Link to the original article by the_mighty_$ · · Score: 4, Informative

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

    --
    VI VI VI - the editor of the beast!
  3. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 3, Informative

    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  4. Re:Other Infocom Interpreters by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

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

  5. Re:Best interactive fiction? by QuantumG · · Score: 2, Informative

    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.

    --
    How we know is more important than what we know.
  6. Celebrate the future, but remember the past by Staplerh · · Score: 2, Informative

    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!

    --
    "There's no success like failure, and failure's no success at all."
    - Bob Dylan
    1. Re:Celebrate the future, but remember the past by daniel_mcl · · Score: 2, Informative

      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.

      --
      I used to read Caltizzle. I was a lot cooler than you.
  7. Blue Chairs should have won by skybrian · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.

  8. Dang, I totally spaced the deadline (months ago) by tenzig_112 · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.

  9. Re:histogram of ratings by AceCaseOR · · Score: 2, Informative
    Um... IMDB.com does do this... for example

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

    --
    Zagreus sits inside your head, Zagreus lives among the dead, Zagreus sees you in your bed and eats you in your sleep.
  10. Better than Z-Code by Macrobat · · Score: 2, Informative

    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.

    --
    "Hardly used" will not fetch you a better price for your brain.
  11. Check the newsgroups for reviews by slvi · · Score: 2, Informative

    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

  12. Re:Inform by Bastian · · Score: 2, Informative

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

    Inform homepage