2004 IF Competition Games Available 78
An anonymous submitter writes "For the last ten years, the readers of the Usenet newsgroup rec.arts.int-fiction have held a yearly interactive fiction competition. For fans of the old Infocom games as well as for newcomers to the genre, the competition is a chance to enjoy some of the best short adventure games available anywhere. And now, this year's entries are finally available for public testing. Visit IFcomp.org to download the games and interpreters for all of your favorite platforms. For the next six weeks, judges will play, score, and review." The website explains Windows and Mac installation pretty well; you'lll have to figure it out on your own for Linux but there is plenty of help available (i.e., "apt-cache search infocom" for Debian).
Text games are very much alive (Score:5, Informative)
Don't Panic..... (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/hitchhikers/game/guide .swf
Re:Adventure games committed suicide (Score:4, Informative)
>ASK GMFTATSUJIN ABOUT Z-CODE INTERPRETER (Score:4, Informative)
>CLI.
Frotz [csubak.edu] is a great CLI interpreter with lots of ports to other OSes. A very good place to start, keeps it simple, and brings back all the nostalgia of white-on-black text.
>OOPS, X.
If you're dedicated to X, try Zoom [demon.co.uk]. It handles later versions of Z with graphics and sound as well.
>OOPS, PALM.
For those on the go, Frobnitz [newsguy.com] is a Z-Code machine for Palm Pilots, but I've found it has some weird display kinks. One really nice feature, though, is that you can extended-click a word on the screen and get a pop-up menu of common commands like Take, Examine, and so on, all pre-selected with the word in mind. It takes longer to explain than to learn how to use.
Re:Adventure games committed suicide (Score:5, Informative)
The blog for Interactive Text (Score:3, Informative)
it's good. and has a silly name.
Re:ASK GMFTATSUJIN ABOUT Z-CODE INTERPRETER (Score:2, Informative)
For those of us with a PalmOS device with OS 4.0 or later, I suggest trying CliFrotz [sourceforge.net] from Sourceforge. It supports the high resolution displays often found on the Clies and the Tungstens. It's based on the Frotz core and supports V6 graphics. Nice.
For those new to IF, play Adam Cadre's games (Score:3, Informative)
Some more mirrors (Score:2, Informative)
Please use responsibly!
Re:HOW many interpreters??? (Score:5, Informative)
There are also several second-tier platforms (Hugo and Adrift for example), which attract less people, but have enough followers to survive. They are usually less discussed on r.a.i-f (except for the occasionnal whats-the-best-platform flamefests) but often have dedicated forums where fans gather. They attract a slightly different bunch of people than TADS/Inform/r.a.i-f, for example it looks like Adrift attracts people more in interested in quick-n-easy graphical development.
Then there are many other platforms, either older ones that have done their time, or platforms that never really took off. Alan was in this tier, but is right now going back to second tier, with a new major version in the works after several years without updates.
Overall, the reason there are so many platforms is that there is no commercial competition, and that several (if not many) people enjoy writing their own platforms (a not uncommon subject of discussion on r.a.i-f). A handful of fans is enough to have games produced for a platform and sometimes submitted to IFComp, so every year or so you are in the need to download an exotic interpreter of some sort.
That said, note that judges do not have to play all the games, especially those for which there's no interpreter on their OS. Playing five games is the minimum to become a judge, and as you can see, a TADS and a Z-Code interpreter are more than enough to cover that.
Karma Whoring Link Fest (Score:3, Informative)
Glulx: http://www.eblong.com/zarf/glulx/ [eblong.com] (looks like a 32-bit Z-Machine)
Inform: http://www.inform-fiction.org/ [inform-fiction.org] (this is the infocom virtual machine)
Hugo: http://www.generalcoffee.com/hugo.html [generalcoffee.com]
Re:ASK GMFTATSUJIN ABOUT Z-CODE INTERPRETER (Score:3, Informative)