A (non-threatening) little dwarf comes out of the shadows
blackrosequilts
You are seated at a computer in your room. Suddenly, you stop typing an
email and gaze out a small window to the east, filled with desire.
It has been so long since you felt it that takes you many long moments
to realize what this desire is: it is the dawning of An Idea That Wants
To Be Expressed. After so long, why and how such a yearning should fill
you is beyond your comprehension.
>click news button
You leave off typing the email and fire up your disused newsreader.
>click subscribe
A window pops up, quickly populating itself with newsgroup hierarchies
>type int-fiction
The newsgroup hierarchies disappear, to be replaced by three lines:
alt.binaries.games.int-fiction(3)
rec.arts.int-fiction(15132)
rec.games.int-fiction(3834)
>subscribe rec.arts.int-fiction
Done.
As you browse the newsgroup, there are a few names you recognize a few
that you semi-hemi-demi-sorta-maybe recognize (because you're bad with
names) and many that you don't. You have a sense of wonder at the
staying power of some individuals: old-timers from what you view as your
hey-day of interactive fiction, the mid-90's. Since the news-server
inexplicably offers you postings as far back as March 24, 2006, you see
the announcement of the Inform 7 public beta.
You haven't written a game since Inform 5, and you feel vaguely
terrified. Even your name has changed, and you have no desire to
identify yourself by the dusty old one.
Shaking your head, you download Inform 7 and play with it. Though it's
been 10 years since you last wrote code of any kind, your mind refuses
to budge from object-oriented thinking. You minimize Inform 7 and go
back to browsing, realizing there are many things you no longer know.
The IF-archive at ftp.gmd.de seems to have disappeared!
Realizing you could easily google around, you decide to post a query
because you also hope an old-timer can give you a brief synopsis of the
last 10 years of interactive fiction.
>type query
You type:
It's been a long time, and I was wondering if someone would be so kind
as to give a little history of what's been happening in the world of IF
since 1996, if that's even possible. :-)
>post query
After a brief hesitation and a flash of terror, you press the send button.
***Your message has been sent***
-kseniya mierzejewska
Parham
That was great, man!
Claps.
Happy to have you back after eleven years (almost) and although back then
I'd be about 5 years old only, I congratulate your sense of interactive
fiction, although I'm not the one to decide on these things because I'm not
an experienced one like you, but anyway.
--
Parham Doostdar.
Lighttech Interactive. http://www.lighttechinteractive.com
"blackrosequilts" <blackro...@netscape.net> wrote in message
news:45a7bbcd$0$5217$4c36...@roadrunner.com...
u...@mail.ru
blackrosequilts wrote:
>> [SNIP]
> >type query
> You type:
> It's been a long time, and I was wondering if someone would be so kind
> as to give a little history of what's been happening in the world of IF
> since 1996, if that's even possible. :-)
>
> >post query
> After a brief hesitation and a flash of terror, you press the send button.
>
> ***Your message has been sent***
>
> -kseniya mierzejewska
Sure, it's not so easy to do that, especially for someone who didn't
even know IF existed back in 1996;). But here are a couple of links
that may be more helpful than I am:
http://home.grandecom.net/~maher/if-book/index.html - a history of IF
by Jimmy Maher, the current editor of SPAG. A very comprehensive work
that covers the subject pretty well.
http://www.brasslantern.org/community/history/timeline.html - a
timeline of IF by Stephen Granade, the permanent annual IF-Competition
organizer since 1999. It's a short "pomace" of most important events in
the IF world (unfortunately, it ends somewhere around 2000).
Oh, well, and you can find the IF-archive under
http://www.ifarchive.org.
Valentine
Jim Aikin
> been 10 years since you last wrote code of any kind, your mind refuses to
> budge from object-oriented thinking. You minimize Inform 7 and go back to
> browsing, realizing there are many things you no longer know.
This topic has been thrashed over endlessly during the past year. Here's my
thumbnail summary (which others will doubtless disagree vehemently with):
Inform 7 is something entirely new. It offers a friendly interface for those
who have writing aspirations but little or no programming experience. A lot
of people seem to like this. It has a great IDE (integrated development
environment) but is still in beta, which means it's still somewhat in a
state of flux.
Inform 6 is still around. It has the same strengths (and weaknesses) it has
always had. If you recall I5, you'll probably be able to get up to speed
with I6 quickly.
TADS 2 is still around, but has been superseded by TADS 3. I would call T3
an "expert system." Arguably it's the most powerful IF language/library
available today, but its learning curve is steep enough to discourage the
casual user.
Welcome back. Have fun!
--Jim Aikin
Neil Cerutti
> Sure, it's not so easy to do that, especially for someone who
> didn't even know IF existed back in 1996;). But here are a
> couple of links that may be more helpful than I am:
>
> http://home.grandecom.net/~maher/if-book/index.html - a history of IF
> by Jimmy Maher, the current editor of SPAG. A very comprehensive work
> that covers the subject pretty well.
>
> http://www.brasslantern.org/community/history/timeline.html - a
> timeline of IF by Stephen Granade, the permanent annual IF-Competition
> organizer since 1999. It's a short "pomace" of most important events in
> the IF world (unfortunately, it ends somewhere around 2000).
>
> Oh, well, and you can find the IF-archive under
> http://www.ifarchive.org.
An excellent and compehensive resource for Inform happenings is
http://www.firthworks.com/roger/informary/index.html
It goes back to 2001, so you will miss a few developments.
_Once And Future_ was finally published. Were you here for that?
You must remember the massive prelude. ;-)
--
Neil Cerutti
When my brain exploded, it was the best thing that ever happened to me. I have
such a better life now. --Sharon Stone
Adam Thornton
blackrosequilts <blackro...@netscape.net> wrote:
>It's been a long time, and I was wondering if someone would be so kind
>as to give a little history of what's been happening in the world of IF
>since 1996, if that's even possible. :-)
Major new versions of TADS and Inform (and probably Hugo and, relax,
dwhyld, ADRIFT).
Copyright threads.
Adam Cadre.
And, of course, "Antler Job."
Adam
Dot Net Developer
blackrosequilts wrote: (lots of stuff)
> A (non-threatening) little dwarf comes out of the shadows
..and was subsequently lynched by a pack of cybertrolls.
;-)
Daphne Brinkerhoff
> You haven't written a game since Inform 5, and you feel vaguely
> terrified. Even your name has changed, and you have no desire to
> identify yourself by the dusty old one.
Hmm, your last name is instantly recognizable to one who was also
around back then. Your current handle only confirms it. :)
Other people have listed great sites. One place that probably wasn't
around then is
It's excellent for looking up things like award winners/nominees/comp
entries.
And also the IF Ratings site might be good for you to figure out if
you'd like to play anything from the last 11 years.
<http://www.carouselchain.com/if/>
Not sure if it's been updated lately, but if it only goes through
January 2006, it will still be very useful to you.
> It's been a long time, and I was wondering if someone would be so kind
> as to give a little history of what's been happening in the world of IF
> since 1996, if that's even possible. :-)
Among many other things, less abstract talk on the newsgroup and more
nuts and bolts. I was reading old posts last night with the word
"rope" in them, that's what I'm thinking of. It used to be, someone
would post "I was thinking of doing X" and everyone would speculate,
"Wouldn't that be cool? You could do this, or that, or the other
thing, and it might have these ramifications, and it would be
popular/unpopular/controversial, wow, what a great idea." Now they
answer you with "You can do X with this Inform 7 extension/with this
TADS 3 function." Whether this is an improvement, I'm not sure, but I
think it is.
--
Daphne
Neil Cerutti
> Among many other things, less abstract talk on the newsgroup
> and more nuts and bolts. I was reading old posts last night
> with the word "rope" in them, that's what I'm thinking of. It
> used to be, someone would post "I was thinking of doing X" and
> everyone would speculate, "Wouldn't that be cool? You could do
> this, or that, or the other thing, and it might have these
> ramifications, and it would be popular/unpopular/controversial,
> wow, what a great idea." Now they answer you with "You can do
> X with this Inform 7 extension/with this TADS 3 function."
> Whether this is an improvement, I'm not sure, but I think it
> is.
There was a shift around Adam Cadre's heyday. He practically led
the charge in telling people to shut up and make it.
--
Neil Cerutti
u...@mail.ru
"""Daphne Brinkerhoff wrote:
"""
> blackrosequilts wrote:
> > You haven't written a game since Inform 5, and you feel vaguely
> > terrified. Even your name has changed, and you have no desire to
> > identify yourself by the dusty old one.
>
> Hmm, your last name is instantly recognizable to one who was also
> around back then. Your current handle only confirms it. :)
>
> Other people have listed great sites. One place that probably wasn't
> around then is
>
> <http://baf.wurb.com/if/>
>
> It's excellent for looking up things like award winners/nominees/comp
> entries.
>
> And also the IF Ratings site might be good for you to figure out if
> you'd like to play anything from the last 11 years.
>
> <http://www.carouselchain.com/if/>
>
> Not sure if it's been updated lately, but if it only goes through
> January 2006, it will still be very useful to you.
>
Well, if we talk of that kind of resources (which are more like guides
than overviews), we can't slide round the IF-Wikipedia:
http://www.ifwiki.org.
There are many, MANY other great web sites, but I think the ones listed
would be enough for a start.
Valentine
blackrosequilts
ROFL
-k
blackrosequilts
> Among many other things, less abstract talk on the newsgroup and more
> nuts and bolts. I was reading old posts last night with the word
> "rope" in them, that's what I'm thinking of. It used to be, someone
> would post "I was thinking of doing X" and everyone would speculate,
> "Wouldn't that be cool? You could do this, or that, or the other
> thing, and it might have these ramifications, and it would be
> popular/unpopular/controversial, wow, what a great idea." Now they
> answer you with "You can do X with this Inform 7 extension/with this
> TADS 3 function." Whether this is an improvement, I'm not sure, but I
> think it is.
>
I would tend to agree. As I get older, I'm becoming less patient with
speculation and more interested in an answer to the question at hand. I
never was much of a philosopher.
On another note, I've been playing with Inform 7 and realizing that the
syntax is free enough I can structure the code as if it were
object-oriented.
I suddenly have a huge number of puzzles floating around in my head, but
in the interest of relearning Inform (I remember almost nothing of
Inform 5, oddly enough), I'm working on a simple little game with about
5 rooms and a few easy puzzles. I have a *great* deal to relearn about
how objects interact with one another and how the actor interacts with
the environment.
I'm trying to decide if I should keep one puzzle idea that involves a
*very* slippery floor. But then, I haven't closely examined the
available extensions either. It might be quite feasible, or it might be
beyond my fledgling abilities; I haven't relearned enough to decide.
For the moment, I'm puzzling out what to do with a very large room that
has a clear division down the middle and a single narrow area where
passage is possible from one side to the other -- whether to code it as
one room or two.
And thanks for the warm welcome, all.
-km