Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

New Text Adventures Compete In 22nd 'Interactive Fiction Competition' (ifcomp.org)

Posted by EditorDavid on from the maze-of-twisty-passages dept.

An anonymous Slashdot reader writes: 58 brand-new text adventures are now available free online for the 22nd Annual Interactive Fiction Competition. The public is encouraged to play the games, and on November 16th the contest's organizers will announce which ones received the highest average ratings. After 22 years, the contest is now under "the auspices of the Interactive Fiction Technology Foundation, a new, charitable non-profit corporation dedicated to supporting the technologies and services that enable IF creation and play..." according to the contest's organizers. "[T]he competition now runs on servers paid for by the IF-loving public, and for this I feel sincere gratitude."

2 of 25 comments (clear)

  1. Re:First by TheRealMindChild · · Score: 5, Funny

    You were eaten by a grue

    --

    "When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
  2. Re:Creating interactive fiction to learn programmi by agiacalone · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Inform is a great tool for creating interactive fiction. Since it requires logic, branching, etc. I always thought it'd work well as an introduction to some of the thinking that is required in the design of programs.

    It's interesting that you mention this. I actually teach a Theory of Programming Languages course at a state University, and the first (out of five) languages that I introduce to my students is Inform 7. I do so for a few reasons:

    1. It's a great introduction to "specialty" programming languages. An example of how languages can be created and used for highly specialized use cases.
    2. It's a very unique way of looking at programming (unlike Java, which has been drilled into the CS students since Freshman year).
    3. It has full language documentation in an accessible form, like grammar tree and parse generation tables.
    4. It's fun to make games and I think logic games fit in well with a Computer Science course in tandem with CS language concepts.

    Although, strangely, #4 is quite polarizing among my students. I only get one of two responses typically: "I hate it!", or, "This is awesome!". I guess game creativity isn't something that people usually take CS courses for...and since it's the "easiest" of the five languages to pick up, my students typically have a shortened time to learn it. So maybe that's it...