2004 Interactive Fiction Results

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2004 Interactive Fiction Results

Posted by Zonk on Tuesday November 30, 2004 @11:37AM 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.

17 of 132 comments (clear)

Play In Firefox by sbszine · 2004-11-30 11:40 · 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 GMFTatsujin · 2004-11-30 13:55 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  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?
2. Re:Play In Firefox by Peter+S.+Housel · 2004-11-30 14:09 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  Yes, there's Malyon, a z-machine interpreter written in Emacs Lisp.
Link to the original article by the_mighty_$ · 2004-11-30 11:41 · Score: 4, Informative

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

--
VI VI VI - the editor of the beast!
Comment removed by account_deleted · 2004-11-30 11:46 · Score: 3, Informative

Comment removed based on user account deletion
Re:Other Infocom Interpreters by Anonymous Coward · 2004-11-30 11:55 · Score: 3, Informative

Oops.. link should be http://www.cs.csubak.edu/~dgriffi/proj/frotz/ Other Infocom Interpreters
Long live the Z-machine by murderlegendre · 2004-11-30 11:56 · Score: 3, Interesting

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?

--
There's a Starman, waiting in the sky / He'd like to come and meet us, but he hasn't got the time.
Great IF by Anonymous Coward · 2004-11-30 12:01 · Score: 3, Interesting

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
Half-Life 2 in ASCII! by Tackhead · 2004-11-30 12:16 · Score: 5, Funny

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?
Blue Chairs should have won by skybrian · 2004-11-30 12:19 · 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.
Game reviews by zbik · 2004-11-30 12:21 · Score: 4, Insightful

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:Leave a Message by lightspawn · 2004-11-30 12:24 · Score: 3, Insightful

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) by tenzig_112 · 2004-11-30 12:25 · 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.
histogram of ratings by j1m+5n0w · 2004-11-30 12:28 · Score: 4, Insightful

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.
Coming soon - Slashdot Adventure by Magickcat · 2004-11-30 13:16 · Score: 3, Funny

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. >

--
Si tacuisses philosophus mansisses. If you had kept quiet, you would have remained a philosopher.
Re:MOD PARENT UP by ryanmfw · 2004-11-30 14:02 · Score: 5, Funny

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

--
Hurricane Ivan: A 17th century prison collapsed. All of the inmates escaped.
Great... by flatface · 2004-11-30 16:51 · Score: 3, Funny

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