Slashdot Mirror
Interactive Text Adventures Come To the Kindle
dotarray writes with news that Amazon's Kindle will now play text-based adventure games, such as Zork. From the article:
"... And it makes a ridiculous amount of sense: text is gorgeous and easily-readable on the e-ink screens, the lack of color isn’t a problem, and – let’s face it – the sort of people who are likely to buy an e-reader are exactly the sort of people who are likely to love vintage games. ... The developers have also integrated a save-game feature so you can pick up where you left off, using Amazon’s Whispernet feature – and promise that they are looking to put more modern Z-machine games into the system, too. (Squee!) Unfortunately, it’s not perfect. The Zork family of games are notoriously frustrating (even when you’re not eaten by a Grue), and the Kindle’s text entry system doesn’t help with that, especially when entering numbers. A full keyboard would make things more fluid, but – really – if you want that, why not just play on your PC?"
You have been eaten by a Grue
this post is now diamonds!
For those who felt a creative urge when hearing this, take a look at http://inform7.com./ It's easy to use, but it helps if you're a programmer since the way the "english langauge" and grammar gets translated to objects and relations have some gotchas.
Emotions! In your brain!
FYI, the nook's touchscreen can double as a keyboard.
For those of you who want to read Slashdot on your Kindle, I've been told by a couple of people that AvantSlash renders it reasonably well. One day the flaws in the mobile version of Slashcode will be addressed and we won't need to use something like this to read Slashdot on the go.
As soon as I get my hands on a Kindle, then I'll make any updates to get it to look better but that won't be probably until after Christmas. Patches always welcome though.
Avantslash - View Slashdot cleanly on your mobile phone.
"Now we go ZORK man!! Z O R K!! Wuddayagonnado?? Wudyagunndoooo???"
Zork
"Damn".
Cwm, fjord-bank glyphs vext quiz
So you're ignorant of the great literary IF works, such as those by Emily Short. You really should check out the modern IF scene.
The annual competition is going on right now, and although there's a lot of crap, there's some gold in there too.
I still have hope that one day, one of the star authors (Stephen King, Ken Follett etc.) will write a "Choose your own Adventure" book, or a text adventure. I mean, the concept is so great, but all we get are "You are the hero fighting the evil wizard" style books.
Just take a look at the Interactive Fiction Archive. It's full of well written games. http://www.ifarchive.org
Btw, Stephen King is really funny to read but not an extradinary writer by any means.
Zork is somewhat overrated; it's from a time when adventure games were a grab-bag of fantasy cliches and "zany" objects. The past two decades have been spent retconning it into something grander than it actually was.
However, there's some amazing interactive fiction out there; atmospheric, tight writing. Totally immersive story. Brain-wrenching puzzles. It'd be great to read / play these on a Kindle. Some of my favourites:
Other couple I like are A Day for Soft Food (have you ever wanted to roleplay as a cat?) and Trinity (a mix of high fantasy and nuclear history)
Does my bum look big in this?
Have more fun in my archive here: http://kriston.net/games/
Kriston