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Interactive Fiction Then and Now
Flipkin writes "Interactive Fiction was immensely popular in the 80s and believe it or not has a strong, albeit small, following today. MobyGames takes a look at the origins and history of Interactive Fiction and where it is heading." These games really were some of the best I've ever played.
Try Metamorphoses and Photopia. The former is known for its diverse ways of solving the puzzles; the latter is known for its nonlinear plot, touching story, and controversial lack of influence over ultimate outcomes. (Slight spoilers in the Wikipedia entry.)
Playing Adventure on a PDP-11 at the local library was the primary reason I got into computers. Now, as a Software Architect with 20 years experience, I can safely say that computer games did me good.
I just saw a great sig on another thread:
You are in a maze of twisted little posts, all alike.
"No matter where you go, there you are." -- Buckaroo Banzai
TSR produced a short-lived D&D-based series of books that were actually mini RPGs. There was a tearout character sheet/bookmark in the front, you rolled up your character, and then you started reading. You'd get up to a part where you had to pick a lock or fight a monster. Depending on your stats and the die roll, it'd tell you to turn to different pages. It made the whole Choose Your Own Adventure thing more interesting because you could sit down and go through the same book/story multiple times with different outcomes each time.
This guy's the limit!
You have:
no tea
tea
I am convinced that this started life as a bug. The 'no tea' joke was great, but the 'no tea' item led to weirdness. Then they added the 'common sense' line to cover for the workaround to stop people doing things like dropping the no tea. Then someone did some really bad acid and decided to incorporate it into the plot as a puzzle...
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
I, like many people, started playing Zork at college instead of studying in my CS classes. Later, the Infocom games were lots of fun on my old Atari 800, and even today I still have all of the Infocom games on my PDA, there are a number of PD ZMachine interperters, I use ZipARM on my PocketPC. One thing I didn't see mentioned was the horribly abortive attempt for Infocom to break out of the game business into the database arena with Cornerstone, which eventually brought the company down. Just think, if they had made a go of it Office and maybe even M$ might be afterthoughts.
I am certain that the need for focus and persistence to complete the game of Adventure (and later a number of Infocom titles) served me well in my computing career. I started programming in 1972 and later specialized in Software Testing and Software Quality Assurance.
I found that software testing is like playing a game of Adventure:
There are lots of little treasures (low-priority bugs), but once in a while I'd discover just the right "incantation" and locate one of the *really valuable* treasures: System Crash, Infinite Loop, Data Corruption, and Major Security Hole!
There is one significant difference, though... testing has much better pay! :)
FWIW: I first played Adventure in 1978 on an IBM Mainframe (3033) running MTS (Michigan Terminal System) at RPI. Someone in my dorm had found it on our system and we spent the next several months competing to be the first to complete it. I can't recall if I was first, but I *did* make it to Adventure Grandmaster with a perfect score of 350. I was later able to get a copy of it on magtape and a printed listing... I think I may still have them in a box in storage, too.
I was an active collector of Infocom games until recently, but I had to give up because (1) I eventually acquired all 35 games and (2) the special edition versions of the game still sell for incredible prices. Check out this copy of Starcross that just sold on ebay for $500. People still have fond memories for these great games.
"The White House is not an intelligence-gathering agency," -- Scott McClellan, Whitehouse spokesman.
Man, you've just unleashed a tide of nostalgia by reminding me of Deathtrap Dungeon. I can picture that multi-eyed monster on the cover and the descriptions of foul-smelling corridors and poisonous balls of mould.
Did anybody else ever read the Nintendo Adventure Books? They were quite big back in junior school, I can remember them being featured at a book fair in our assembly hall and we all used to swap them with eachother.
Memories...
Mother, do you think they'll like this sig?
Hands down, STILL my favorite game ever. I love CStrike, Oblivion, and Unreal, but no other game affected me so much after I finished it. Its led to my healthy dose of skepticism and paranoia that I have today!
Definitely go check it out if you are into these at all. I believe there is still a telnet server out there where you could play these games online...
I sig, therefore I am.
"The big problem with IF is that you can't do whatever you want. You're limited to what the creator was able to forsee and program."
Not really true any more. Authors like Emily Short with 'Savoir-Faire' have included a degree of simulation into their work. This means they do not have to predict the result of every choice the player can make, but rely on the game engine to do the right thing as it's treated as normal physical interaction.
Here's a page on the liquid modelling in 'Savoir-Faire'
http://emshort.home.mindspring.com/liquids.html
exeprt:
# Some materials, such as cloth, are absorbent
* Placing an absorbent object in a liquid or pouring a liquid over the absorbent object will cause it to become wet
* Absorbent objects remember what kind of liquid they contain
* Squeezing an absorbent object will dry it
o Squeezing an absorbent object into a container will move a quantity of the appropriate liquid into that container
o Squeezing a wet absorbent object over another object, or wiping another object with a wet absorbent object, will cause the other object to become wet
* Absorbent objects, if white to begin with, will take on the color of the liquid in which they are dipped, assuming that color is not 'clear'
Bleh.
:(
I've played some MUDs. Even wrote a browser-based MUD-like game. I guess they *can* be IF-like, but I don't think that's as common. I've found MUDs to have room descriptions that are way too long, and intereactions/responses that aren't nearly long enough. It's like the effort goes into room creation, not gameplay. Plus, I don't really want to commit to one game for a long period of time. Double plus, authors of IF can work on a single game and make it work right, where MUDs just keep on going, with varying levels of consistency. I've never seen a MUD that emphasizes the *fiction* in Interactive Fiction. Invariably you can point to examples to contradict this, so feel free.
So yeah... bleh.
:::: Mike Snyder