[rec.arts.int-fiction] Interactive Fiction Authorship FAQ (3/3)
David Glasser
Posting-Frequency: monthly
Last-modified: 1998/09/27
URL: http://onramp.uscom.com/~glasser/raiffaq/
Copyright: (c) 1998 David Glasser
[rec.arts.int-fiction] Interactive Fiction Authorship FAQ (3/3)
Maintained by David Glasser (gla...@uscom.com)
This posting contains parts 5 and 6 of the raif FAQ.
________________________________________________________________________
PART 5: Writing IF
________________________________________________________________________
This part of the FAQ answers the question "What has been written on
the subject...".
________________________________________________________________________
5.1: ...in general?
Several papers on IF design and theory are available from the
if-archive, in the directory "info/". These are all available as ASCII
files, although some also exist in other formats.
Graham Nelson's (gra...@gnelson.demon.co.uk) "The Craft of Adventure"
(available from the if-archive) is a treatise on writing interactive
fiction. This is currently in its 2nd edition and is also available
as TeX source. HTML versions are available from "The TADS Page" and
(http://www.gnelson.demon.co.uk/craft/).
Gerry Kevin Wilson (whiz...@pobox.com) has thoughtfully published his
views on designing and writing interactive fiction in "Whizzard's
Guide to Text Adventure Authorship" (available from the if-archive).
There are also two supplementary updates to this document.
Gil Williamson's (10027...@compuserve.com) book "Computer
Adventures, The Secret Art" is now available as "literary freeware"
(at http://www.duke.edu/~srg3/IFdesign/ca-tsa.zip). This is
primarily a "how to..." manual, and although many of the technical
details are several years out of date, the book contains
much of interest to the aspiring interactive fiction author.
The Oz Project, directed by Joseph Bates at the Carnegie-Mellon School
of Computer Science, is developing technology for high quality
interactive fiction. Focusing on the simulations behind the
interface (which they call the deep structure of virtual reality)
their goal is to provide users with the experience of living in a
dramatically interesting simulated world populated with simulated
people.
Michael St. Hippolyte's (ma...@interport.net) paper, "A Plot Beyond A
Line: New Ways to Be Nonlinear"
(http://www.users.interport.net/~mash/nonlin.html) looks at the
problems of linearity in interactive fiction, and suggests some
possible solutions.
David A. Graves's (d...@cup.hp.com) three papers, "Second Generation
Adventure Games" (which focuses on the physical world model, parsing,
text generation, and simple agent planning), "Bringing Characters to
Life" (a summary of the progress in Artificial Personality during the
70's and 80's), and "Plot Automation" based on his presentation at the
Computer Game Developer's Conference in 1991. All papers are
available from the if-archive.
Authoring system manuals may be of interest, even if you do not use
the particular system. Look for these in the if-archive, in the
directory "programming/<authoring system name>/manual/", where
<authoring system name> is, for example, tads. Also, there is online
documentation available for several authoring systems, as noted under
"[Online Documentation]" in the authoring system records in "What
authoring systems are available?", part D.
The "TADS manual" contains useful advice on designing an interactive
fiction game (chapter 6), some of which is TADS-specific, and some
honest information on the limitations of the text adventure format
(appendix B).
The Inform "Designer's Manual" details the step-by-step implementation
of a small game as a tutorial throughout the manual (this is, of
course, Inform-specific).
______________________________________________________________________
5.2: ...of the art of writing NPCs?
Phil Goetz (go...@cs.buffalo.edu) has made available two of his
papers, his overview of computerized interactive fiction (in DVI,
LaTeX, or HTML) and his notes on using SNePS (Semantic Network
Processing System, a knowledge representation and reasoning system).
Both can be found on his WWW page (http://www.cs.buffalo.edu/~goetz/).
Dancer's (ro...@brisnet.org.au) paper "'Smart' NPCs in Interactive
Fiction" (http://www.brisnet.org.au/~dancer/smartnpc.html) gives
theoretical and practical advice on writing believable NPCs.
[This link seems to be defunct. dancer.brisnet.org.au seems to exist,
but is unreachable.]
(See also: David Graves' "Bringing Character To Life" in 5.1.)
______________________________________________________________________
5.3: ...of parsing?
John Holder's "Parser Talk" gives some basics on how a good parser should
work. You can get it at
http://www.frii.com/~jholder/intfiction/parser.html
(See also: David Graves' "Second Generation Adventure Games" in 5.3.)
______________________________________________________________________
5.4: ...of plot/story in interactive fiction?
Paul Munn's senior project paper "The Application of Directed Acyclic
Graphs to First Generation Interactive Fiction" (available from the
if-archive) contains ideas on the use of DAGs in interactive fiction
and a TADS implementation of this, as well as information on the
evolution of IF, past and future.
"The Stage as a Character: Automatic Creation of Acts of God for
Dramatic Effect"
(http://rhodes.www.media.mit.edu/people/rhodes/Papers/aaai95.html), by
Bradley Rhodes (rho...@media.mit.edu) and Pattie Maes
(pat...@media.mit.edu), considers plot control in a multiple player
environment.
(See also: David Graves' "Plot Automation", and Michael St.
Hippolyte's "A Plot Beyond A Line: New Ways to Be Nonlinear" under
5.1 above.)
______________________________________________________________________
5.5: ...of the educational value of interactive fiction?
Brendan Desilets' (desi...@k12s.phast.umass.edu) series of articles
on interactive fiction as a teaching aid for middle school pupils is
available from his Web page, "Teaching With Interactive Fiction: A
Home Page for Educators and Other Readers." (See 6.3.)
A couple of 'zines can also be found at the if-archive, in the
"magazines/" directory:
"XYZZYnews," available in Adobe Acrobat format (.PDF) and plain text,
appears sporadically and usually contains two or three articles on IF
design, as well as sneak previews of upcoming games, spoilers/hints for
specific games, and the occasional game review. Each issue is available
from the XYZZYnews Home Page.
http://www.xyzzynews.com/
"SPAG" appears irregularly (approximately bi-monthly). Each issue is
chock-full of reviews of interactive fictions, both old and new. See
also the "SPAG mailing list" entry in 6.5.
For further references try Stephen Granade's (sgra...@phy.duke.edu)
"Interactive Fiction Bibliography" (October 1995), available from the
if-archive as info/if-bibliography.txt.
________________________________________________________________________
PART 6: Internet Index
________________________________________________________________________
6.1: What is the IF-Archive?
The if-archive is the world's largest and most comprehensive repository
of interactive fiction-related material, including authoring systems,
tools and utilities, papers, references, and reprints of magazine
articles, and of course games. The URL is
Every file in the if-archive, together with a short description, is
listed in the (text) file "Master-Index".
Uploads of new material are encouraged. Please send a covering e-mail
to the maintainer of the archive, Volker Blasius (Volker....@gmd.de),
with a copy to his loyal assistant David Kinder (dav...@monis.co.uk),
describing the purpose of your upload and what machines it works on.
ftp://ftp.gmd.de/incoming/if-archive/
(Please note the directory. It is *not* "/if-archive/incoming/" nor is
it "/incoming/". Files uploaded to the wrong place will probably die in
obscurity.)
The if-archive (though not the incoming directory) is mirrored at the
following FTP sites, one of which may be more local to you, and thus
faster and easier to reach:
ftp://wuarchive.wustl.edu/doc/misc/if-archive/ (also http)
http://ftp.nodomainname.net/pub/mirrors/if-archive/ (also http; ftp may not
work with web browsers)
ftp://ftp.funet.fi/pub/misc/if-archive/
http://mirror.aarnet.edu.au/pub/if-archive/
ftp://ftp.firedrake/if-archive/ (also http at www.,
fsp at fsp.)
http://www.ifarchive.org/
The last is no standard ftp mirror; it translates the structure of the
archive to HTML pages and displays the text from the Index files together
with the file names.
ftp.gmd.de requires "reverse DNS lookup" on their end for you to log
on. Basically, it means that they take your IP address (the unique
address given to each and every computer on the Internet) and check
to see if a domain name is associated with it. Good Internet providers
give you a temporary domain name when you dial up (or do whatever is
needed to connect). (I'm not referring to giving you a permanent
domain name like www.yoursite.com; I'm talking about something like
usol-phl-pa-26.uscom.com that is free for your ISP to give you.)
If ftp.gmd.de is unable to look up your domain name, you will not
be allowed on it. If this is the case, you should yell at your ISP
until they fix it. You can also use one of the mirrors, which
do not require reverse DNS lookup. However, the mirrors do not
mirror the incoming directory. If you need to upload something
and do not have the ability to connect to gmd, ask around on raif
or ifMUD, and you will find somebody to upload it for you.
Many files in the if-archive can also be fetched via links on the WWW,
and a complete browsable index can be found on Stephen van Egmond's
(svane...@home.com) "Twisty Pages." (See 6.3.)
If you cannot find a particular file in the location stated in this FAQ
or elsewhere, be sure to also look in the incoming directory, as well as
"unprocessed/" in the if-archive, as it may not yet have reached it's
permanent home. This is particularly true for recent additions.
Volker and David make a monthly post to several newsgroups, including
rec.arts.int-fiction, detailing all recent additions to the if-archive.
Any files added since the last post are in a file at the root of the
archive called new-since-last-post.
It is worth mentioning that the Infocom games ("The Lurking Horror,"
"Planetfall," etc.) are *not* legally available on the Internet. They
are still under copyright and may be bought. The exception is "Zork",
which is available for free download from the Activision Web Page
(http://www.activision.com/zorknem/zorki.html).
________________________________________________________________________
6.2: What is available via FTP?
Well, as has been mentioned above, the if-archive, or one of its
mirrors, is the place to go if you want to download interactive fiction
software. Really, if you can't find what you want there, you probably
won't find it anywhere.
The occasional file, especially games, may turn up at some of the larger
or platform-specific FTP sites, or on a relevant BBS.
________________________________________________________________________
6.3: What is available on the World Wide Web?
There are in fact a large number of WWW pages devoted to, or at least
relevant to, interactive fiction; too many to all be mentioned here. A
near-comprehensive list can be obtained by searching a Web search
engine, such as Yahoo (http://www.yahoo.com/), for the string
"interactive fiction".
Following is a short list of some of the best general interactive
fiction WWW pages and various authoring system-specific pages. Most of
the pages mentioned will contain links to other associated pages. Pages
concerned with playing interactive fiction as opposed to authoring, or
the history of a particular company (such as Infocom) or game (such as
"Adventure") have not been included.
........................................................................
Interactive Fiction
http://www.cre.canon.co.uk/~neilb/intfiction/
Here are links to articles on game design, information about several
authoring systems, a history of interactive fiction, and a taxonomy of
plot devices. The page is maintained by Neil Bowers (ne...@khoral.com).
........................................................................
Interactive Fiction - Welcome From the Mining Company
http://interactfiction.miningco.com/
Interactive Fiction (IF) Authorship
http://www.duke.edu/~srg3/IFAuthorship.html
Maintainer Stephen Granade (sgra...@phy.duke.edu) has gathered as many
IF links as he could find, sorted them, organized them, and annotated
each one. This MiningCo site also includes a weekly column and a Q&A
section.
To visit the MiningCo site you will need a Frames-aware browser.
As well as links to various articles on interactive fiction design and
the TADS and Inform authoring systems, his second page has a number
of useful TADS modules.
........................................................................
Twisty Pages/Interactive Fiction Criticism and Authorship
http://bang.ml.org/if-index.html
This excellent page, maintained by Stephen van Egmond
(svan...@truespectra.com), is an attempt to gather together many
resources (papers, news articles, reviews, etc.) relevant to interactive
fiction authorship and criticism in one place. There are also fully
linked HTML versions of every article in the rec.arts.int-fiction
archives.
This page is also notable for the excellent browsable index of the
if-archive which Steven has created.
........................................................................
John's Interactive Fiction Page
http://www.frii.com/~jholder/intfiction/
This site it the home of the Jzip web page, The Encyclopedia Frobozzica,
a discussion on parsers, and a link to a homemade search engine that is
loaded with IF links.
........................................................................
Oz Project Home Page
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/Groups/oz/
Scott Neal Reilly (ws...@cs.cmu.edu) maintains this page. Details of the
Oz Project, including a summary of its aims and links to several Oz
papers (gzipped postscript) are here.
........................................................................
Teaching with Interactive Fiction
http://k12s.phast.umass.edu/~desilets/
This page, maintained by Brendan Desilets
(desi...@k12s.phast.umass.edu), has information on using interactive
fiction in education, primarily for middle-school pupils.
........................................................................
AGT Home Page http://www.markwelch.com/agt.htm
This is the official Home Page for the AGT authoring system. It is
maintained by the co-author of that system, Mark Welch
(mark...@ca-probate.com).
........................................................................
The Alan Home Pages
http://www.pp.softlab.se/thomas.nilsson/alan/
These pages contain an HTML version of the Alan programmer's manual,
sample code fragments, and links to the Alan executables.
........................................................................
The IF Collaborator's List
http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Haven/1227/
http://crash.ihug.co.nz/~daleys/ifcollab.html/
As is evident, authoring interactive fiction requires a certain level of
competence in two main disciplines-- namely, computer programming and
(prose) writing. If you do not feel happy with your ability in either
one of these areas then the IF Collaborator's List, maintained by
Nicholas Daley (dal...@ihug.co.nz) may be of interest. It is a
little out of date, and some files were destroyed in a cracker's
attack.
........................................................................
Hugo - An Interactive Fiction Authoring System
http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/Academy/5976/hugo.html
This page is maintained by the author of Hugo, Kent Tessman
(tes...@cibc.ca). It contains information on the authoring system and
links to relevant files.
........................................................................
Hugo Homepage http://cub.kcnet.org/~jnichols/hugo/
Maintained by Jerome T. Nichols (jnic...@prolog.net), this page
has information and links of interest to the Hugo programmer, as well as
an on-line manual.
........................................................................
Inform 6: A Compiler For Interactive Fiction
http://www.gnelson.demon.co.uk/inform.html
Maintained by the author of Inform, Graham Nelson
(gra...@gnelson.demon.co.uk), this page has all the latest information
on all aspects of Inform, including HTML versions of associated manuals
and other documentation, such as the "Inform Designer's Manual," and the
"Z-Machine Standards Document."
........................................................................
Inform Programming
http://www.doggysoft.co.uk/inform/
This page, maintained by Andrew Clover (es...@csv.warwick.ac.uk), has a
history of the Inform library, and the usual links to various files.
Mike Phillips (mi...@lawlib.wm.edu) maintains a US mirror of the page.
It is horribly out-dated.
........................................................................
Rexx-Adventure http://www.io.com/~desantom/rad.html
This home page, maintained by the system's author, Mike DeSanto
(desa...@io.com) has information about Rexx-Adventure and links to the
downloadable files.
........................................................................
The TADS Page http://www.tela.bc.ca/tela/tads/
This page, maintained by Neil K. Guy (te...@tela.bc.ca), is an attempt to
create a central starting point for people interested in TADS. Of
particular note is the HTML version of the TADS manual, including the
2.2 updates (http://www.tela.bc.ca/tela/tads-manual/).
This site is very good.
........................................................................
The TADS Programming Page
http://www.df.lth.se/~mol/progtads.html
This page is maintained by Magnus Olsson (m...@df.lth.se) and has info on
and links to TADS stuff.
........................................................................
WorldClass Programming Page
http://www.df.lth.se/~mol/progtadsworldclass.html
Maintained by Magnus Olsson (m...@df.lth.se) this page concerns
WorldClass, a complete replacement library for TADS. There are links to
the WorldClass manual and some modules.
........................................................................
IF Dimension
http://www.tip.net.au/~mfleetwo/if/index.htm
Julian Fleetwood's page contains a variety of IF substance, including
summaries of recent raif postings.
________________________________________________________________________
6.4: Are there any interactive fiction-related real-time discussion fora?
You know, there is! It's called ifMUD. Basically, regulars from
the IF newsgroups sit around talking about things ranging from IF
writing to hints on games to general computer stuff to music to
monkeys, alpacas, and corn. It's fun. A sense of humor is
required. You probably shouldn't refer to it as a real-time
discussion forum.
The website for it is at:
<http://fovea.retina.net:4001/>
This gives information on it, and allows you to sign up for a
character. Once you have a character, you can connect by telnetting
to fovea.retina.net, port 4000.
More information on ifMUD is in a FAQ linked to on that site.
A few more facts to know:
+Sometimes (ha) the MUD's server or the MUD itself crashes; a backup
is at 208.221.8.3. (Same ports as original.) Lately, the crashes
have been more and more common, and we are using backups of backups.
ifMUD will return to retina sooner or later, though.
+Web-based CGI forms for some ifMUD stuff (fingering characters,
getting the full list of players) is available at my website:
http://onramp.uscom.com/~glasser/ifmud/
While at retina.net, check out
http://sadie.retina.net/
for Sadie Hawkins, a band formed of IF people. It is the official band
of this FAQ, by the way.
________________________________________________________________________
6.5: Are there any interactive fiction-related mailing lists?
SPAG mailing list
This list distributes SPAG magazine. The list is intended only for
distribution of SPAG and announcements from the editor. Submissions
should be sent directly to the editor, Magnus Olsson (zeb...@pobox.com).
To subscribe send email to spag-r...@df.lth.se with "subscribe <your
email address>" (without the quotes) in the *body* of the message.
........................................................................
Z-machine mailing list
Intended for discussion of the Z-machine, an abstract machine designed
by Infocom to run their text adventures, topics on this list include
details of Z-machine operation, its interpreters (ZIP, Frotz, etc.),
and compilers producing Z-machine code (i.e., Inform).
To subscribe send email to majo...@gmd.de with "subscribe z-machine
<your email address>" (without the quotes) in the *body* of the message.
________________________________________________________________________
6.6: What are those interactive fiction newsgroups again?
There are two newsgroups dedicated to interactive fiction.
The group to which this document applies, rec.arts.int-fiction, is a
discussion group for those interested in artistic or technical aspects
of interactive fiction, primarily the processes of and problems posed by
methods of design and implementation of interactive fiction, including
planning, plotting, programming, and writing. For further information
see part B (Introduction to the Newsgroup).
The other group, rec.games.int-fiction, is primarily for players of
extant interactive fiction games. Posters ask for help with or spoilers
for particular games, post reviews, and ask for information about games,
companies, and people. For further information see the
rec.games.int-fiction FAQ (occasionally posted to the newsgroup,
otherwise available from the if-archive in the directory
"rec.games.int-fiction/".