Interactive Fiction Competition Opens 99
Sargent1 writes "The 2004 Interactive Fiction Competition has opened for business. The yearly competition, now celebrating its tenth anniversary, is for short pieces of interactive fiction. At this point IF authors can sign up to take part in the competition, and everyone can learn how to judge the games when they are released in October of this year. If you're not sure what interactive fiction is, take a look at Slashdot's recent review of Twisty Little Passages, a book on interactive fiction from Adventure (and earlier antecedents) to present day."
The Farthest I ever go (Score:5, Funny)
Open door
You cant open this door
Close Door
The Door Isint open
Attack Door
Your Hand Hurts
Get Life
You go outside, blinded by the sun, you procede to the comic book store only to be beaten up on the way there, you then return home only to be taunted by CowboyNeal.
Re:The Farthest I ever go (Score:4, Funny)
INVALID COMMAND
OPEN THE DOOR
INVALID COMMAND
OPEN THE FUCKING DOOR
DON'T USE NAUGHTY WORDS
I'd get to the point where I'd throw the damn thing out the window, only to realize a day later I should have typed:
OPEN THE NORTH DOOR
*sigh* Damn Infocom.
Re:The Farthest I ever go (Score:1)
It took forever and a day just to load the damn game--and another couple days to stumble upon the proper syntax for getting out of the initial room:
OPEN THE NORTH DOOR.
Then there was LSL, Space Quest, and Police Quest. Those were actually fun. If not equally frustrating. I mean....libbed lubed lubbers? WTF? And that bum and the apples...what was up with that guy?
Re:The Farthest I ever go (Score:5, Interesting)
Curious. I can't remember any Infocom game that bluntly replied "invalid command" (Most reply like "I don't know the word "foo"). Infocom's competitors did ocassionally write less glorious parsers, however.
Besides, Infocom parser excelled at figuring out the ambiguities. In above case, it'd say something like "Which door do you mean, the north door or the south door?"
And besides, they usually had a little bit more clever replies to frustrated players, like:
>damn
Such language in a high-class establishment like this!
=)
Re:The Farthest I ever go (Score:1)
I've played enough Infocom games to know that this is bullshit. Maybe you're thinking of some other IF developer, because had you been playing an Infocom-developed game, the exchange would've gone:
It's good to see (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:It's good to see (Score:4, Interesting)
I tried to enter (Score:1)
Try lojban, not English. (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Try lojban, not English. (Score:2)
Re:Try lojban, not English. (Score:4, Interesting)
Still, I'd give you a mod point if I could just for bringing up something I think is interesting. Constructed languages like Lojban would be interesting in computer games -- they could replace "made up" languages of magic, or aliens, or even be turned into logic puzzles. The better ones have an underlying order that can often be sensed, even if the language itself is totally foreign.
I'll go back to A.C. lurking now, I just wanted to make sure others didn't think someone was schizophrenically responding to their own post.
Re:Try lojban, not English. (Score:3, Interesting)
Creative gaming design lost? (Score:5, Interesting)
It's seems so sad to me that modern games seem so devoid of creativity. I pray for the day that the immense processing power of todays gaming machines are applied toward making a truely innovative and creative game, instead of ones that simply remake the same old FPS with better graphics.
Re:Creative gaming design lost? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Creative gaming design lost? (Score:5, Insightful)
I think the main reason you don't see a graphical competition is because the tools are so much more in-depth. Skill aside, it is somewhat easier to describe a vast scene because you can draw on the player's own knowledge and creativity than to have to painstakingly model every detail of it. Think of like that big tree from Rivne or something- describing would likely be a bit easier than modeling it in 3D.
Not that IF games are very easy to produce; in fact, though it is easy enough to make fun of their short comings, allowing for every possible outcome a person could possibly type in is a difficult task.
Sometimes I think we don't have all the concepts of a 'game' nailed down yet from what they started in the days of text adventure. I really enjoy books, but sometimes there are movies, such as Star Wars, that just wouldn't work like a book. I think that graphical games can show just as much creativity as an IF game, and IF games can suck just as much as the latest FPS.
Why pigeonhole gammers? (Score:5, Interesting)
Let's take an example the standard cliche, taking stuff outta the trash. In IF, you can alude to stuf being in the trash, you can mention the trash can and hope the adventurer looks, you can relate a story about trashcans or you can hint to look directy. With graphical adventures, the trashcan looks like the recyclebin in Windows. Heaped full of papers one minute, take one sheet out and it's empty. It's pretty blunt when you think about it.
IMHO, most of the creativity was used to dress up a rather repeditive game genre.
Re:Why pigeonhole gammers? (Score:2)
IF:graphical games::book:movie
Each format has strong points of its own.
To say that IF can do everything a graphical game can is wrong; to say that graphical games are unilaterally better than IF is equally wrong.
Re:Creative gaming design lost? (Score:2)
Interactive Fiction (Score:1, Informative)
___________
says a young programmer & weblog newbie [afriguru.com] to even younger
Re:Interactive Fiction (Score:1, Funny)
Re:Interactive Fiction (Score:5, Insightful)
Interactive Fiction is a genre that focuses on a story - that includes plot and character development, dialogue, and creativity - and it allows the player to interact with te development of that story. You don't see much (if any) of that in Quake.
Good interactive fiction doesn't need (and doesn't have) graphics for the same reason that pictures don't make a good book any better.
Re:Interactive Fiction (Score:2)
While I agree with your point I don't understand why this has to be such a black and white issue. It seems as if most of the posters here are of two camps:
1) Don't like graphics because it restricts our imagination.
2) Play games exclusively for cutting edge graphics and effects.
I.e. the movies vs. books camps. But some of my favorite gaming experiences fell somewhere
Neverwinter, and graphics in interactive fiction (Score:3)
While I agree that interactive fiction doesn't need graphics, there's plenty of interactive fiction which does have graphics and which, in my opinion, greatly benefits from having graphics.
For example, Neverwinter Nights [bioware.com] and its Aurora toolkit [bioware.com] provide excellent tools for creating interactive fiction with the ability to do all the sorts of things you can do in a text-bas
Re:Neverwinter, and graphics in interactive fictio (Score:2)
Re:Neverwinter, and graphics in interactive fictio (Score:2)
You're missing the point. All projects created with Aurora are interacive fiction by definition. There's no significant difference between
There is a box here.
> open the box
You don't have a key.
and just clicking on a box in Neverwinter. No, generally, user type-in is not a mode of i
Re:Neverwinter, and graphics in interactive fictio (Score:2)
Well, that depends on who's doing the defining, I'd say. But I'm not unsympathetic to your point of view.
There's no significant difference between
and just clicking on a box in Neverwinter.
Correct... because neither example represents IF writing of any quality. The important thing isn't how you open the box (clicking on it versus typing 'open t
Re:Neverwinter, and graphics in interactive fictio (Score:2)
Re:Neverwinter, and graphics in interactive fictio (Score:1)
Re:Interactive Fiction (Score:3, Insightful)
Anyway, yes, there are many people who still like IF, and there's a thriving community based around it. Once cool thing about it is that just about anyone who learns one of the many IF authoring languages can write one. This leads to many interesting works that wouldn't be
Obligatory Homestar Runner reference (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Obligatory Homestar Runner reference (Score:1)
Program in Martian ??? (Score:1, Flamebait)
The language websites for Hugo, Inform etc explain that they have been designed specifically for text based adventure games.... Talk about specialization !!!!
Any way I have registered and am going to do plain old C ( okay, okay C++)
Re:Program in Martian ??? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Program in Martian ??? (Score:1)
Re:Program in Martian ??? (Score:5, Informative)
You also don't have to worry about cross-compatibility with the IF languages. Both of these languages create pseudo-code that runs under a virtual machine. Sort of the way Java works. If you code in C++, even if you write it to be truly portable it will still need to be compiled on each machine people want it run on.
To each his own, but you should at least take a good look at Inform/TAGS/Hugo.
Re:Program in Martian ??? (Score:1)
True. Infocom's original inform language was one of the first (the first?) to create a machine independent byte-code. Java avant-la-lettre!
Re:Program in Martian ??? (Score:1)
Inform was created in 1993, over a decade later (the Z-machine was created in 1979). The link between the two is that Inform compiles into Z-machine files, which are the same format as the ones Infocom used. It's a new(ish) compiler that simply outputs the older Z-machine format.
The actual Inform language is, as far as I know,
Re:Program in Martian ??? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Program in Martian ??? (Score:2, Interesting)
Besides, games written in Inform have (by default, at least) the same look-and-feel as the classic Infocom games. How cool is that?
Re:Program in Martian ??? (Score:2)
The parent was completely right in his sentiment, though, that you're a fool to try to write your own parser if all you want to do is make your own bit of IF. Writing a parser is a decidedly non-trivial exercise. Best to just use one
-Erwos
Re:Program in Martian ??? (Score:3, Insightful)
The other major benefit to using one of these langauges is that they compile to bytecode, and can be used an an insanely varied number of platforms, including Palm devices,
Re:Program in Martian ??? (Score:2, Informative)
Well, about every serious interactive fiction author (especially Inform and TADS).
The language websites for Hugo, Inform etc explain that they have been designed specifically for text based adventure games.... Talk about specialization !!!!
What's wrong with specialization? There are so many things that are the same in every int-
Re:Program in Martian ??? (Score:2)
Obligatory Strongbad (Score:5, Funny)
Ye find yeself in yon dungeon. Ye see a SCROLL. Behind ye SCROLL is a FLASK. Obvious exits are NORTH, SOUTH and DENNIS.
What wouldst thou deau?
>go dennis
Ye arrive at DENNIS. He wears a sporty frock coat and a long jimberjam. He paces about nervously. Obvious exits are NOT DENNIS.
>talk to dennis
You Engage Dennis in a leisurely discussion. Ye learns that his jimberjam was purchased on sale at a discount market and that he enjoys pacing about nervously. You become bored and begin thinking about parapets.
More here [homestarrunner.com].
jimberjam? (Score:1, Funny)
L.O.R.D (Score:2, Interesting)
L.O.R.D: Legend of the Red Dragon
What a game. Kind of like a MUD too.
Those were the days. I wish there were still some BBSes (dialup) alive and thriving... I'd go sign up, maybe even pay for it.
L.O.R.D - You can still play it (Score:4, Informative)
http://www.3dham.com/telnet/
Re:L.O.R.D (Score:1)
Not quite LORD, but very close: Legend of the Green Dragon [lotgd.net]. Web browser based version, complete with hideous overblown ANSI colors and keyboard navigation. And it's open source too. =)
pacman? (Score:5, Funny)
You are at the center of a maze. To your front and rear are rows of dots that recede into the distance.
> forward
As you move forward, your open mouth causes you to consume a dot.
> forward
Your bulbous body thrusts forward once more, another dot disappearing into your maw.
> back
You turn around. In the distance you can see a ghost, coming right for you!
> down
You can't go in that direction.
> up
You slip into a side passage, continuing to dine on dots. Ahead there is a turn to the right.
> right
You turn, but a ghost is waiting for you right around the corner. There is no time to react, and you run right into it.
You are dead. Your score is 14/1000.
Play again? (y/n)
Re:pacman? (Score:5, Funny)
> [press right button on D-pad]
You have found another cutscene! Feel free to grab another soda and order a pizza or two, because lord knows our animation studio has created 30 minutes more of stunning footage depicting some relatively unimportant and excessively corny love sequence between two minor characters! [music begins to play].
Hrmmm (Score:2, Interesting)
Yeah....
http://images.somethingawful.com/inserts/articl
You can't beat photoshop fridays... not even with a really big stick.
Interactive Fiction rules (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Interactive Fiction rules (Score:4, Informative)
For example, most of the higher-ranking games don't let you mess things up (e.g. by "shattering the crystal key" or whatever) and they let you UNDO actions if you find that you don't like how things are going.
Hitchhiker's Guide (Score:5, Interesting)
With likes like these, who can blame me?
"You wake up. The room is spinning very gently round your head. Or at least it would be if you could see it which you can't."
"A tree outside the window collapses. There is no causal relationship between this event and your picking up the toothbrush."
Re:Hitchhiker's Guide (Score:5, Informative)
>Go Underdogs [the-underdogs.org]
[Using your web browser]You see a website offering tons of cool underrated games
>Examine Games [the-underdogs.org]
You see a list of hundreds of IF games"
>Get HHGTG [the-underdogs.org]
You download one of the best IF games ever
>Play game
[using Frotz [csubak.edu]] You play for a while before feeling a presence behind you. The lights go out. You have been eaten by a grue.
IF Pacman (Score:3, Interesting)
interactive fiction? (Score:2, Funny)
Unfortunatly, i am a broke student and can't afford to play. My stack of quarters will only go so far, so I am stuck in the "pinball" level.
Recent IF games (Score:2, Informative)
Ok (Score:3, Funny)
"yeah but nobody wants to buy a text-based game"
Re:Ok (Score:3, Insightful)
Which is probably why they're free these days.
Re:Ok (Score:2)
>
> Which is probably why they're free these days.
Wrong.
The commercial text gaming business is BOOMING.
http://www.thresholdrpg.com
http://www.topmudsites.com
http://www.mudconnector.com
Re:Ok (Score:2)
Re:Ok (Score:3, Interesting)
Yeah, and soon they won't want to buy novels, or short stories, or watch television for more than 10 minutes, or listen to more than one verse of a song, or read, or think.
It's too much trouble. It's too inconvenient. It's not FAST and EASY, like everything on television says it should be.
When the last poet puts down their pen, how long before the entirety of life takes on the dull gray color and stale smell of money? How long before "nobody car
Misunderstanding.. (Score:5, Funny)
You find yourself inside a dark room. There is a locked door in front of you. You have a key in your hand.
Input: open door
The door is locked.
Input: use key
What for?
Input: use key with door
You can't use the key with that.
Input: look door
The door is plain brown. There is a lock keeping it close.
Input: use key on lock
You get shocked.
Diego
Re:Misunderstanding.. (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Misunderstanding.. (Score:2, Informative)
Infocom's greatest ad campaign (Score:4, Interesting)
One of the best was a picture of a brain with the caption: WE STICK OUR GRAPHICS WHERE THE SUN DON'T SHINE.
Re:Infocom's greatest ad campaign (Score:5, Informative)
Awesome, time to.. (Score:1)
Re:For truly interactive fiction... (Score:1)
Interactive Fiction... (Score:2, Informative)
Slashdot Editor: The Game (Score:1, Funny)
>Y
You open SUBMISSION. It is an article on FREE SPEECH that bashes the Bush Administration. You possible actions are (P)OST, (R)EJECT, or (T)EST FOR DUP. (P/R/T)
>T
Archives shows that this article is a duplicate of one posted 8 hours ago. POST anyway? (Y/N)
>N
Article posted!
Well, that would explain a lot, wouldn't it?
Scott Adam's Adventure Games (Score:1)
Adventureland
Pirate's Cove
Mission Impossible
Voodoo Castle
The Count
In Voodoo Castle, there was a cast-iron pot in the game. I typed: smoke pot
and the game replied: That's illegal!
Re:Scott Adam's Adventure Games (Score:1, Informative)
A step back in time (Score:1, Interesting)