Slashdot Mirror
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.
Were my first interractive fiction, I used to love those. Especially the ones where you could die really easily.
-Eric (former alum of the Kobra MUD)
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
> L
You are on slashdot.
You can see the headlines.
> Read headlines
There are 12 old articles.
> N
You are in the mysterious future.
There is 1 article here.
> RTFA
I'm sorry, you cannot do that.
> open article
You open the article in the mysterious future.
> L
It is empty in the comments section, You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
liqbase
I can tell you that. Currently it is in a maze of twisty passages, all alike...
Cheers,
Ian
I don't know how to "witty reply."
>clever reply
I don't know how to "clever reply."
>lame reply
You make a lame, cliche-ridden Slashdot post, probably having something to do with Netcraft or "Star Wars."
There is an angry moderator here.
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
no tea
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
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
I'll always remember the line
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
It always excited me, as back then it was the only sort of sex I could get.
Come to think of it, that still is.
sigh
Summation 2
Dang, why didn't the link go through? The URL for "Read Game": http://www.escapistmagazine.com/issue/7/12
Myself, I reccomend Return to Ditch Day and The Plant (as well as Adam Cadre's works.)
Anyone else played these?
I recently read "Twisty Little Passages" ( http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0262134365/ ) by Nick Montfort which despite its horribly self-consciously academic approach (it's all about developing a "theory" of IF for lit. crit. purposes) still has some interesting sections about the history of IF and comparing the various approaches to the field against each other.
It also introduced me to my favourite work of IF, "For a change" by Dan Schmidt, which is really proof that the genre has more to offer than you might have expected. He's a genius, and it's beautiful.
Give it a go online here: http://paperstack.com/for_a_change/ (requires Java) or download the ZCode files from Dan's site: http://www.dfan.org/IF/
--- These are not words: wierd, genious, rediculous
That's quantum mechanics - the universe was in a superposition of containing organization x and not containing it, and by turning to page 137 or 25 you collapsed the wavefunction. Either that, or it was a neat way of making sure you could re-play the game without knowledge of what was going to happen if you took a different turn early on...
>examine moderator
This moderator looks like a pasty white Linux geek who hasn't left his parents' basement in at least a month. He is unsubtle, and quick to anger.
>attack moderator
The moderator is unphased by your ad hominem attack
(Score:-1, Troll)
(Your karma has just gone down by one point)
>tell moderator about linux
The moderator already knows about linux.
(Score:-1, Redundant)
(Your karma has just gone down by one point)
>tell moderator about linux superiority
You tell the moderator stuff he already knows about how much better Linux is than Windows. Even though he already knows it, he likes hearing about it.
(Score:+5, Insightful)
(Your karma has just gone up by five points)
Wow, I'm really surprised that this article could completely miss online IF (otherwise known as MUDs). Not only are there commercial entities successfully running online IF (such as Iron Realms it allows for a much larger story to be told.
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 so with MUDs, which are able to have long and rich stories. The reason MUDs are able to overcome this limitation is that they have staff running it all the time, who are constantly adding new code updates and story updates.
An example of a player run storyline is in ArmageddonMUD, which is based on Dark Sun. In it a player playing a dwarf decided to free his fellow dwarves who were slaves in the obsidian mines, and lay seige to the city-state that had kept them enslaved. This was entirely thought up by players, and with the staff's help, done by the players.
MMOs sometimes attempt to be roleplaying games, to enable an interactive story to be told. But they're even further limited by the fact that, you can't do what you want. You can only do what animations have been coded. Again, MUDs don't have this limitation, with any action being able to be provided by emoting. MUDs have the advantage over IFs in that they are multiuser. Whereas in an IF there's no-one but yourself.
So I'm very surprised that something discussing interactive fiction, including it's future (which IMO are MUDs, with more and more being created every day while others continue to be run for over 10 years), didn't feel the need to mention MUDs.
Yes, but the confusion is that Interactive Fiction was called Adventure Games long before these graphical ones (which evolved from the textual ones) came about.
Anonymous Cowards suck.
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 downloaded LSL1 last year.
It started asking the age verification questions. I stare blankly. My answers convince it that I'm three years old.
No, I'm TWENTY-THREE you stupid game. It's 2005! You have to be like forty to know about all that crap these days!
You'd think they'd have it phone home over the net to get updated questions each year. Lack of foresight, huh?
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.
Brain hurts from too much reading. Must click graphics...
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 play these games on my Palm with Frotz, a Z-code interpreter. Frotz exists for a variety of platforms, including Unix, Windows CE, GameBoy Advanced, Windows, KDE etc. Many of the interactive fiction games are in Z-code format.
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.
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.
Since we're now delving into the realm of personal opinion and subjectivity, I disagree completely.
The tactile component of the maps and notes are very important. They allow the player to transcend the exegesis in a physically immersive way that computer-assisted gameplay simply cannot provide. In fact, I would argue that having a computer keep track of this information spoils the suspension of disbelief by introducing -- in most cases, and with the exception of the teletype itself -- anachronistic elements of game play. Furthermore, many puzzles I have encountered were only revealed throught discoveries made via mapping, and would have been immediately reveald had the computer provided an automap (from the first maze in Zork one, to the catacombs in Christminster 30 years later).
Perhaps automapping should be provided for people who can't be bothered to immerse themselves, like "Easy" levels in today's FPS: where you can skim the surface to get a feel for the game without a commitment. But a dimension of the richness is clearly lost.
However, I find that your not-so-subtle horn-blowing claims of being an older IF veteran stand in stark contrast to your words, and so I question the former.
https://www.accountkiller.com/removal-requested