Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments
Search

News for nerds, stuff that matters

Slashdot Log In

Log In

Create Account  |  Retrieve Password

Interactive Fiction Then and Now

Posted by Hemos on Mon Apr 24, 2006 07:59 AM
from the infocom-4-eva dept.
Role Playing (Games) Entertainment Games
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.
+ -
story

Related Stories

[+] Technology: Free Visual Novel Design Engine Released 143 comments
Ayaka Hahn writes to tell us that they have just released a free game construction kit designed to make Visual Novels easy to construct. The "Blade Engine" was based on a professional Visual Novel engine being used in Japan with the hopes that it would spark greater interest in this medium in the west. From the press release: "In the West, there is a stereotype of: "Visual Novel = Dating Sim Game = Hentai", but that is wrong. Visual Novels CAN be Dating Sim games, Ren'ai games, Bishoujo games but also can be Sci-Fi, Fantasy, Adventure and Horror Fiction games, or anything that the user's creativity comes up with."
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.

Interactive Fiction Then and Now 50 Comments More /

 Full
 Abbreviated
 Hidden
More
Loading... please wait.

  • Choose Your Own Adventure Books! (Score:3, Informative)

    by RockModeNick (617483) on Monday April 24 2006, @08:02AM (#15189210)
    Were my first interractive fiction, I used to love those. Especially the ones where you could die really easily.

    • Re:Choose Your Own Adventure Books! (Score:4, Informative)

      by voice_of_all_reason (926702) on Monday April 24 2006, @08:16AM (#15189279)
      The best ones had the endings derived totally on luck, where even choosing the most logical and safe path would lead to your untimely demise. I liked that Packard guy who wrote the later ones (shiny covers). The earlier editions had stuff like "To run from the bear, turn to page 37. To fight him off with your fists, turn to page 129". And you always knew the endings were in the back :)
      • 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 d

        • Re:Choose Your Own Adventure Books! (Score:4, Informative)

          by ronfar (52216) on Monday April 24 2006, @08:50AM (#15189475) Journal
          I have one, Knight of the Living Dead [gamebooks.org]. It's pretty well written, by some guy named Allen Varney [slashdot.org]. I loved some of the dialogue in that game.. oh, and the neat picture of the one vampire lady taking a bath...

          Now, Tunnels and Trolls [flyingbuffalo.com] made this their focus for a while. I have a ton of Solitare dungeons for T&T.

          Chaosium had their Alone Against series, though I think there were only two, Alone Against the Wendigo and Alone Against the Dark, I have both. Pagan Publishing published a similar solitare scenarion Alone on Halloween [trollandtoad.com] which I do not have, and looking at the current price probably never will.

          Oh, and there is something called Fighting Fantasy [fightingfa...ebooks.com] which is apparently British, so I missed out on that.

          Still, being an angry loner as a teenager really paid off for me, as you can see....

        • Re:Choose Your Own Adventure Books! (Score:4, Insightful)

          by PatrickThomson (712694) on Monday April 24 2006, @09:03AM (#15189544)
          In practice though, nobody did them. Why? because a failed luck stat either lead to death or a fight, and a failed fight lead to death. Noone's going to go back to the start of the book because they rolled a 5.
    • 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 [wikipedia.org]? 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...
    • "Especially the ones where you could die really easily."

      I had a set where - no matter what set of choices I made - I always was killed by ninjas. No, seriously; "Oh no, there's a tornado outside! Do you: get into the storm cellar (turn to page 54 and be killed by ninjas hiding in the storm cellar) or face it head on (turn to page 86 and be killed by ninjas falling out of the tornado)?

      Madness, I tell you.
      • 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...

  • No mention of MUDS?!? (Score:5, Informative)

    by elrous0 (869638) * on Monday April 24 2006, @08:03AM (#15189220)
    How can you write an article about IF and not mention MUD's, which continue to be popular even today? These games not only continue the text-based adventure tradition, but they also allow for interaction with other players within the text "world."

    -Eric (former alum of the Kobra MUD)

  • Slash interface (Score:5, Funny)

    by LiquidCoooled (634315) on Monday April 24 2006, @08:04AM (#15189227) Homepage Journal
    > 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.

  • Go to page 177.

    Page 177. You are in the future. [Describes grim future]. You are affecting events around you which causes a collapse in time space. No longer will you be able to get back to your friends or save the planet from [insert name of evil man]. Game over.

    Oh boy, those were the days!

    Seriously though, they had some really cool sci-fi/fantasy in those books, pretty much as good as any conan book or similar.

  • Where it's heading? (Score:5, Funny)

    by mccalli (323026) on Monday April 24 2006, @08:08AM (#15189239) Homepage
    MobyGames takes a look at the origins and history of Interactive Fiction and where it is heading.

    I can tell you that. Currently it is in a maze of twisty passages, all alike...

    Cheers,
    Ian

  • You have:

    no tea

  • Some good amateur IF (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 24 2006, @08:15AM (#15189270)
    Try Metamorphoses [wurb.com] and Photopia [wurb.com]. 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 [wikipedia.org].)

  • Adventure (Score:3, Interesting)

    by tedgyz (515156) * on Monday April 24 2006, @08:20AM (#15189295) Homepage
    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.

    • 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:

      • Adventure: Explore cave and collect treasure.
      • Testing: Explore code and collect bugs.

      There are lots of little treasures (low-priority bugs), but once in a while I'd disc

  • For The Escapist issue 7, I wrote " > Read Game," a similar article about the history of text adventures and current trends in interactive fiction.

  • Grues (Score:3, Funny)

    by Rik Sweeney (471717) on Monday April 24 2006, @08:27AM (#15189330) Homepage
    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
  • Ahab: LFM [White Whale] need rezzers pst

  • Good games (Score:3, Informative)

    by Rekolitus (899752) on Monday April 24 2006, @08:32AM (#15189366)

    Myself, I reccomend Return to Ditch Day [wurb.com] and The Plant [wurb.com] (as well as Adam Cadre's works [adamcadre.ac].)

    Anyone else played these?

    • My personal favorite: Anchorhead [wurb.com] (go here [ministryofpeace.com] for a review). It's very well written, has a delightfully creepy atmosphere, and is almost free of glitches.

      Try Hunter, In Darkness [wurb.com] for something slightly different (but at the same time strangely familiar).

  • I haven't played most of the games mentioned in the article, but there's one specific type on interactive fiction I love: Sierra ones.

    I didn't have an Internet connection until I was 16 or so, so I spent a lot of time playing these damn games. Police Quest 1/2, Leisure Suit Larry 1/2/3, Space Quest 1/2. In my opinion these are some of the best games ever made. I recall at the age of 5 spending half an hour guessing the answers to the 'age verification' questions in LSL1. That game rocked, despite me not und
    • I recall at the age of 5 spending half an hour guessing the answers to the 'age verification' questions in LSL1.

      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?

  • Recommended book and game (Score:4, Informative)

    by MythMoth (73648) on Monday April 24 2006, @08:39AM (#15189403) Homepage
    I recently read "Twisty Little Passages" ( http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0262134365/ [amazon.com] ) 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/ [paperstack.com] (requires Java) or download the ZCode files from Dan's site: http://www.dfan.org/IF/ [dfan.org]

  • No mention of online IF? (Score:5, Informative)

    by aussie_a (778472) on Monday April 24 2006, @08:50AM (#15189479) Journal
    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 [ironrealms.com] 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 [armageddon.org], 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. [armageddon.org] 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.

  • Interactive Fiction (Score:3, Interesting)

    by mknewman (557587) * on Monday April 24 2006, @09:07AM (#15189557)
    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...

  • Play these games on PalmOS (Score:3, Informative)

    by wrecked (681366) on Monday April 24 2006, @09:15AM (#15189596)
    I play these games on my Palm with Frotz [csubak.edu], 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.

  • Measure the Love in Dollars (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Expert Determination (950523) on Monday April 24 2006, @09:15AM (#15189597)
    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 [ebay.com] copy of Starcross that just sold on ebay for $500. People still have fond memories for these great games.

    • Re:look around (Score:5, Funny)

      by Rob T Firefly (844560) on Monday April 24 2006, @08:10AM (#15189250) Homepage Journal
      >witty reply

      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.

      • Re:look around (Score:5, Funny)

        by allanc (25681) on Monday April 24 2006, @08:48AM (#15189463) Homepage
        >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)
        • Good. I even see you've managed to incorporate slashdot math, where -1+5 = +5. Not to mention I always love this one:

          > tell moderator things copy-pasted from TFA
          (Score:+5, Informative)

        • 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 elemen

All trademarks and copyrights on this page are owned by their respective owners. Comments are owned by the Poster. The Rest © 1997-2009 Geeknet, Inc.