2004 IF Competition Games Available

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).

zcode intepreter in j2me

[gl4ss]

http://www.gizmo-a-gogo.org/ZeeME/ [gizmo-a-gogo.org].

it's pretty cool, even if not so mature.

Adventure games committed suicide

[sahonen]

I hate most adventure games. The only ones I can stand are the Lucasarts variety. This article [oldmanmurray.com] pretty much sums up why. For those who don't want to RTFA, it's basically the frustration factor. In the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Infocom adventure, as well as several others, you have to do a couple things in the beginning of the game in order to win it. If you don't, you will still be able to progress to the critical point where you need them, at which point you will have to RESTART YOUR GAME FROM THE BEGINNING. The seriously destroys the fun factor. Also, many puzzles are needlessly arbitrary, such as the disguise puzzle in Gabriel Knight 3 pointed out in the article. They're simply puzzles for the sake of puzzles that have solutions that no sane person would actually guess. The solutions to these puzzles can only concievably be attained by randomly clicking on everything and seeing what happens, which seriously ruins your suspension of disbelief.

Re:"use-laser-on-floyd dept."?

[Anonymous Coward]

>examine laser
The laser, though portable, is still fairly heavy. It has a long, slender barrel and a dial with six settings, labelled "1" through "6." This dial is currently on setting 5. There is a depression on the top of the laser which contains a new battery.
Floyd produces a crayon from one of his compartments and scrawls his name on the wall.

>turn dial to 3
The dial is now set to 3.

>use laser on floyd
I don't know the word "use."

>shoot floyd with laser
The laser emits a narrow beam of light which strike Floyd. "Yow!" yells Floyd. He jumps to the other end of the room and eyes you warily.

>version
PLANETFALL
Infocom interactive fiction - a science fiction story
Copyright (c) 1983 by Infocom, Inc. All rights reserved.
PLANETFALL is a trademark of Infocom, Inc.
Release 37 / Serial number 851003

"Last version was better," says Floyd. "More bugs. Bugs make game fun."

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