Age?
Miron Schmidt
Hi!
I have always wondered what the average age of the r.a.i-f community is.
Now, I understand that most of us have to be old enough to have experienced
the old magic when it was still fresh. At this age, it starts to be
considered rude to ask for details.
Nevertheless, I _have_ wondered.
From what I've heard, most of us are around my own age, give or take. So may
I make a start.
I'm 25: 26 in two weeks (hey, if anyone happens to be in Berlin at the time,
you're invited to my birthday party :)).
Any volunteers?
--
Miron Schmidt <mi...@comports.com> PGP key on request
WATCH TV... MARRY AND REPRODUCE... OBEY... PLAY INTERACTIVE FICTION...
Matthew Amster-Burton
Miron Schmidt <s59...@tfh-berlin.de> wrote:
>I have always wondered what the average age of the r.a.i-f community is.
>Now, I understand that most of us have to be old enough to have experienced
>the old magic when it was still fresh. At this age, it starts to be
>considered rude to ask for details.
>Nevertheless, I _have_ wondered.
As Neil D. put it, I'm far too young to remember Watergate. In fact,
I was born over a year after Nixon resigned.
Matthew
(Political junkie)
Andrew Plotkin
Obfuscation, obfuscation... I'm 27.
In the spirit of prying, I'll point out that in the "About the Author"
section of Jigsaw, Graham admitted to having been born in 1968.
--Z
--
"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the
borogoves..."
Allen Garvin
In article <33B00B17.MD-...@tfh-berlin.de>,
Miron Schmidt <s59...@tfh-berlin.de> wrote:
>Hi!
>
>I have always wondered what the average age of the r.a.i-f community is.
>Now, I understand that most of us have to be old enough to have experienced
>the old magic when it was still fresh. At this age, it starts to be
>considered rude to ask for details.
>Nevertheless, I _have_ wondered.
>I make a start.
>I'm 25: 26 in two weeks (hey, if anyone happens to be in Berlin at the time,
>you're invited to my birthday party :)).
Oh boy! Another pointless thread that will be posted to millions of machines
throughout the civilized world and will cost the net hundreds (if not
thousands) of dollars.
I'm 28, and I got my first adventure game (Zork I) when I was 13.
--
Allen Garvin
------------
eare...@faeryland.tamu-commerce.edu
http://faeryland.tamu-commerce.edu/~earendil
John Francis
In article <erkyrathE...@netcom.com>,
Andrew Plotkin <erky...@netcom.com> wrote:
>Matthew Amster-Burton (mam...@u.washington.edu) wrote:
>> Miron Schmidt <s59...@tfh-berlin.de> wrote:
>
>> >Now, I understand that most of us have to be old enough to have experienced
>> >the old magic when it was still fresh. At this age, it starts to be
>> >considered rude to ask for details.
>> >Nevertheless, I _have_ wondered.
>
>> I was born over a year after Nixon resigned.
>
>Obfuscation, obfuscation... I'm 27.
>
The first release of ZORK was a year away.
(To save you time searching the history files, that makes me 48)
--
John Francis jfra...@sgi.com Silicon Graphics, Inc.
(415)933-8295 2011 N. Shoreline Blvd. MS 43U-991
(415)933-4692 (Fax) Mountain View, CA 94043-1389
Unsolicited electronic mail will be subject to a $100 handling fee.
J. Holder
In a fit of lunacy, Miron Schmidt (s59...@tfh-berlin.de) escribed:
: From what I've heard, most of us are around my own age, give or take. So may
: I make a start.
: I'm 25: 26 in two weeks (hey, if anyone happens to be in Berlin at the time,
: you're invited to my birthday party :)).
I'm 26, 27 in August. Sorry I won't be in Berlin... :(
: WATCH TV... MARRY AND REPRODUCE... OBEY... PLAY INTERACTIVE FICTION...
> WATCH TV
You are watching an inane program called "Married with Children"
> MARRY AND REPRODUCE
After watching that show, you decide against it.
> PLAY INTERACTIVE FICTION
You whip out a copy of I-0, and have some fun!
--
John Holder (jho...@frii.com) /\ http://www.frii.com/~jholder/
UNIX Specialist, Paranet Inc. <--> Raytracing|Fractals|Interactive Fiction
http://www.paranet.com/ \/ Homebrewing|Strange Attractors
Mary K. Kuhner
I'll be 34 next week. Played Scott Adams and Infocom games when I was
an undergraduate in college, on my squeaky new Atari 800 with cassette
tape player. It took me years to become willing to do save/restore
after the bad experiences I had with that thing.
But I think I've played more IF in the last year than I ever did back
then.
Mary Kuhner mkku...@genetics.washington.edu
Mark J Musante
Andrew Plotkin (erky...@netcom.com) wrote:
> Matthew Amster-Burton (mam...@u.washington.edu) wrote:
> > As Neil D. put it, I'm far too young to remember Watergate. In fact,
> > I was born over a year after Nixon resigned.
>
> Obfuscation, obfuscation... I'm 27.
Zarf, I'm sure your obfuscatory talents will improve once you've
reached 30, like me.
Oops.
- Mark
wo...@one.net
Hi Miron,
Miron Schmidt <s59...@tfh-berlin.de> wrote:
>I have always wondered what the average age of the r.a.i-f community is.
> ...
>From what I've heard, most of us are around my own age, give or take. So may
>I make a start.
>I'm 25: 26 in two weeks (hey, if anyone happens to be in Berlin at the time,
I'm 37, first ran into IF with the granddaddy of them all--the Fortran
version of Advent running on a DEC PDP-11 when the game was still
distributed on paper tape, which was probably back in 1976 - 1977.
The perfect game to play on those nifty new CRT terminals...
Respectfully,
Wolf (starting to grey around the muzzle)
Matthew T. Russotto
In article <33afff33...@news.u.washington.edu>,
Matthew Amster-Burton <mam...@u.washington.edu> wrote:
}Miron Schmidt <s59...@tfh-berlin.de> wrote:
}
}>I have always wondered what the average age of the r.a.i-f community is.
}>the old magic when it was still fresh. At this age, it starts to be
}>considered rude to ask for details.
}>Nevertheless, I _have_ wondered.
}
}I was born over a year after Nixon resigned.
Ack, a young'un!
I'm old enough to remember playing "Star Trek" on a state-of-the-art
printing terminal connected to an acoustic coupler. I think I saw
"Adventure" on that terminal too, but I didn't really get into it
until I got an Apple ][ with the Microsoft version.
--
Matthew T. Russotto russ...@pond.com
"Extremism in defense of liberty is no vice, and moderation in pursuit
of justice is no virtue."
ryb...@anok4u2.org
16...please don't hate me....
peace___anarchyfreedompunkinteractivefictionslackantiinfinityyellowoi!2o3.
/ -\--- Rotund \/ ! "Live long & | ryb...@connix.com
(/ ) Pigeon \00_| fuck off!!" |Its always after MidNite
\o-o/ _||_ Riot Nrrrd | www.connix.com/~rybread
-------------------==== Posted via Deja News ====-----------------------
http://www.dejanews.com/ Search, Read, Post to Usenet
Torbj|rn Andersson
Miron Schmidt <s59...@tfh-berlin.de> wrote:
>I have always wondered what the average age of the r.a.i-f community is.
>Now, I understand that most of us have to be old enough to have experienced
>the old magic when it was still fresh. At this age, it starts to be
>considered rude to ask for details.
>Nevertheless, I _have_ wondered.
Well, I'm 26, and I first got access to computers in the early
eighties, so in theory I should be old enough to have seen at least
some of the old magic while it was fresh.
However, since these were Swedish computers, the availability of
software was somewhat limited, and adventures were almost unheard of.
INFOCOM NOSTALGIA WARNING!!!
And even when I finally got access to a computer which could play
Infocom games, the computer stores here tended to take a rather dim
view on text games, basically telling me that I didn't really want to
play them, and what I really want to play was this neaty graphical
game.
While I had played some Infocom games (pirated, I have to admit), it
wasn't until much later that I finally managed to order some from the
US. I don't remember what year this was, but Beyond Zork had been
written, Triton were distributing the games, and Infocom had started
to look into graphical games, although none had been released yet.
I still remember that day. I was home sick when the games finally
arrived: Trinity (I'm still trying to make up my mind on whether it's
great or just plain weird) and Deadline (which remains one of my
favorite games). I was amazed at the packaging for Deadline. Come to
think of it, I still am.
After that, I ordered quite a number of Infocom games through Triton,
until they suddenly, tragically, became unavailable, and I kept
ordering them from England (and even a few from Swedish stores) until
1991. Most of the ones I ordered from England, alas, used the later,
not as robust, box design, and arrived in a rather sorry state.
And, of course, I ended up buying the Lost Treasure of Infocom
collections to fill most of the remaining holes in my collection,
although there are still games I wish I had in their original
packaging. Some day, perhaps ...
Ah, the memories ...
_
Torbjorn
John Wood
Miron Schmidt <s59...@tfh-berlin.de> asks
>I have always wondered what the average age of the r.a.i-f community is.
Dunno, but if you want a data point, I'm 32 (33 next month).
John (who got married last saturday 8-)
Patrick Kellum
[I would quote, but as usual I never recived the orignal post, it'll show
up next month (not kidding)]
Well, I'm an old fart, being 26 I'm the oldest of all my friends which
really makes me feel real old sometimes.
My start in IF was a pirated copy of Zork III for the Apple IIe givin to
me and my classmates by my computer teacher (he also gave us each a copy
of Strip Poker ;-) Ahhh, I miss being 15.
I didn't really get totally hooked until I started a BBS and found out I
could use text adventures as on-line games. After playing them for hours
I became hooked.
Patrick
---
"Every weekday morning the school bell cast its glamour over the
surounding hills, calling the young to classes. They came running
down the slopes and leaping over the streams, out from caves and the
hollows of trees and suburban tract homes, impelled by powers greater
then their own to gain an education."
"The Iron Dragon's Daughter" by Michael Swanwick
Urpo Lankinen
>16...please don't hate me....
I'm 18. Why should I hate you? B-)
I got my first touches to IF via Petteri Järvinen's book
"Mikrotietokoneet" (published 1986) which contained transcript (with
Finnish translation) from the beginning of Zork I. I *loved* the
game, though I was unable to get it. Later, I bought
Zork II for Commodore 64... for 20 FIM (USD $4 ?)... Sheer luck.
--
Urpo Lankinen || www...@iki.fi || http://www.iki.fi/wwwwolf/
Stephen Granade
On 24 Jun 1997, Miron Schmidt wrote:
> I have always wondered what the average age of the r.a.i-f community is.
I'm 24. I don't know what the average age is, but I could guess:
73.
Stephen
--
Stephen Granade | "It takes character to withstand the
sgra...@phy.duke.edu | rigors of indolence."
Duke University, Physics Dept | -- from _The Madness of King George_
Laurel Halbany
Miron Schmidt <s59...@tfh-berlin.de> wrote:
>I have always wondered what the average age of the r.a.i-f community is.
>Now, I understand that most of us have to be old enough to have experienced
>the old magic when it was still fresh. At this age, it starts to be
>considered rude to ask for details.
>Nevertheless, I _have_ wondered.
I started to play I-F when my dad took me to the technical school he
taught at; he'd leave me in the computer room to play games while he
was busy. I don't know if the Adventure on their mainframe was
FORTRAN, but I rather suspect so.
----------------------------------------------------------
Laurel Halbany
myt...@agora.rdrop.com
http://www.rdrop.com/users/mythago/
Mordacai
I would appear to be one of the young ones in this group, at 17. This is
an interesting situation in that, frankly, it's a good age for computer
gamers, so I've played a lot of the current graphic games as well as i-f,
and I've learned from both. My first connection with i-f was in fifth
grade when my teacher (Mrs. Martinez, who I still claim was the best
teacher I ever had) got a group of us together in the ancient computer lab
and gave us Zork. We went wild, and, from that day on I've loved i-f and
have wanted to write a piece of my own. I admit, being one of the
youngest here, I'm a little intimidated; I've sunk about 40 work hours
into my little game so far and am hoping it'll be able to stand on it's
own out there in the cold, harsh world ;)
Ian
mord...@ix.netcom.com
"I'm more of a man than you'll ever be and more of a woman than
you'll ever get." -Angel, RENT
GElli84119
I was exactly 0 years old when Infocom got started
Jim MacBrayne
>>I have always wondered what the average age of the r.a.i-f community is.
>>From what I've heard, most of us are around my own age, give or take. So may
>>I make a start.
>>I'm 25: 26 in two weeks (hey, if anyone happens to be in Berlin at the time,
Funnily enough, I've often wondered about this as well but didn't have
the brass neck to make the posting. I'm pretty much of an occasional
lurker here only.
Equally funnily enough, most of the ages I've seen tie in pretty well
exactly with what I'd imagined.
I'm 54, so that makes me the grandaddy of you all!
Jim
-----------------------------------------
Jim MacBrayne
jm...@medusa.u-net.com
http://www.medusa.u-net.com/jmacb.htm
CIS 100411,461
-----------------------------------------
J. Holder
In a fit of lunacy, Jim MacBrayne (jm...@medusa.u-net.com) escribed:
: I'm 54, so that makes me the grandaddy of you all!
So you're saying Uncle Bob and Uncle Volker aren't the oldest of the crowd
anymore, Grandpa Jim? ;)
J. Holder
In a fit of lunacy, ryb...@anok4u2.org escribed:
: 16...please don't hate me....
More likely, you'll find that we are happy that IF is still interesting, and
can appeal to you as a programmer!
J. Holder
In a fit of lunacy, Stephen Granade (sgra...@phy.duke.edu) escribed:
: On 24 Jun 1997, Miron Schmidt wrote:
: > I have always wondered what the average age of the r.a.i-f community is.
: I'm 24. I don't know what the average age is, but I could guess:
: 73.
You're just saying that because we all act like old farts, constatntly
bitching about this and that, and "the good (bad?) old days"...
Hmmmph!
<ALERT=NOSTALGIA>
My first experience with IF was at a family day at my father's workplace,
Los Alamos National Labs, in 1978. I sat down in front of a high-tech
green screen (next to a few old teletypes) and played Crowther & Woods
"Adventure" on some old DEC platform. I was a ripe eight years old.
In 1980 I enrolled in a BASIC programming class at the High School
(it was a summer school course, and I got special dispensation to
enroll) where I learned my first programming chops on a PDP11/780.
Late that year I got my first PeeCee, an Atari 800 w/ 16Kb RAM and a
screaming tape drive. For almost $800.00. ->SIGH<- Ah, how fun
it was, Zorking about (after a RAM upgrade and a floppy drive).
Okay, I'm making myself sick. I hate to think about everyone else...
</ALERT>
RayDunakin
I'm 42, and I've been writing adventure games (Another Fine Mess, A Mess
O'Trouble, Twisted!) since I got my first computer about 5-6 years ago.
chris markwyn
I'm 20, 21 in November. The first IF i played were some old AGT games that a
friend gave me, on an original IBM PC. After that I played the Zork trilogy
and Hitchhiker's on the Apple IIe at school. I didn't really get back into IF
until I went to college, got an e-mail account, and stumbled across r.a.if and
the Unnkullia games.
--Chris M.
Graham Nelson
Miron Schmidt <s59...@tfh-berlin.de> asks
>I have always wondered what the average age of the r.a.i-f community is.
29. Actually, I just got an award which is only available to
people under 30, with a feeling of being just in the nick of
time.
--
Graham Nelson | gra...@gnelson.demon.co.uk | Oxford, United Kingdom
John Francis
In fact it might make some of us look on you more favourably.
Your excruciatingly bad entries in the 1996 interactive fiction
competition (which are the primary things we have to judge you by)
become a little more understandable when we remember what it was
like to be sixteen (I think I can remember that far back ...).
This is a test
J. Holder (jho...@deimos.frii.com) wrote:
: My first experience with IF was at a family day at my father's workplace,
: Los Alamos National Labs, in 1978. I sat down in front of a high-tech
: green screen (next to a few old teletypes) and played Crowther & Woods
: "Adventure" on some old DEC platform. I was a ripe eight years old.
I remember going to my father's workplace and having to play *Yahtzee*. I
bet your dad could beat up my dad, too. I'm 26.
Stephen Robert Norris
Miron Schmidt wanted to know how old we are:
26.5. My first encounter with adventure games was a Scott Adams thing, and I
immediately thought "I can do better". I wrote a much better parser in basic
for the C64, with all the rooms in data statements. You could do things like
"get all but the rock". Once I found the Infocom adventures I was hooked :)
I guess that first start was in about 1982...
Stephen
Julian Arnold
In article <33b0b98d...@news.one.net>, <URL:mailto:wo...@one.net> wrote:
>
> Miron Schmidt <s59...@tfh-berlin.de> wrote:
>
> >From what I've heard, most of us are around my own age, give or take. So may
> >I make a start.
> >I'm 25: 26 in two weeks (hey, if anyone happens to be in Berlin at the time,
I gave my age a while ago, so you'll all know it if you were paying
attention.
Of course, I'm a bit older now (still no game :).
Jools
--
"For small erections may be finished by their first architects; grand
ones, true ones, ever leave the copestone to posterity. God keep me
from ever completing anything." -- Herman Melville, "Moby Dick"
StarrGirl
> arrived: Trinity (I'm still trying to make up my mind on whether it's
> great or just plain weird) and Deadline (which remains one of my
> favorite games). I was amazed at the packaging for Deadline. Come to
> think of it, I still am.
>
So what were those pills in the original deadline folder really? I got
the game I think I was 13 years old and I sooo wanted to eat them
because I knew they couldn't be harmful since if they were they wouldn't
have been able to package them in a game! If you go to Computer shows
and even thrift stores you can find the originals sometimes. The disks
of course are unusable unless you got a spare Apple lying around, but
buying them for the packaging has come to mind. The biggest
disapointment for me when the games were re-released was that they came
with that big book which didn't even come with all the information you
needed! (example, the radio station info for Ballyho)
Sorry I know this has nothing to do with CREATING the games, but I just
had to reminise for a moment.
Martin DeMello
On 24 Jun 1997 18:59:56 GMT, jfra...@dungeon.engr.sgi.com (John
Francis) wrote:
>In article <erkyrathE...@netcom.com>,
>Andrew Plotkin <erky...@netcom.com> wrote:
>>Matthew Amster-Burton (mam...@u.washington.edu) wrote:
>>> Miron Schmidt <s59...@tfh-berlin.de> wrote:
>>
>>> >I have always wondered what the average age of the r.a.i-f community is.
>>> >Now, I understand that most of us have to be old enough to have experienced
>>> >the old magic when it was still fresh. At this age, it starts to be
>>> >considered rude to ask for details.
>>> >Nevertheless, I _have_ wondered.
>>
>>> As Neil D. put it, I'm far too young to remember Watergate. In fact,
>>> I was born over a year after Nixon resigned.
>>
>>Obfuscation, obfuscation... I'm 27.
>>
>When I was 27, IF consisted of ADVENT. In FORTRAN.
>The first release of ZORK was a year away.
>
>(To save you time searching the history files, that makes me 48)
I'm 21 (rapidly tending to 22). I started off with a BBC Micro some 11
years back, which had a lot of great adventures available (and a lot
of not-so-great ones :-) ). I remember finishing (and enjoying) Twin
Kingdom Valley, and getting totally stuck on Snowball (has anyone
played either?). And you're right about the sense of magic that seemed
to imbue all but the most cursorily-written games.
Martin
Carl Muckenhoupt
27, if you must know. And my first adventure, at the age of eight, was
Scott Adams' Adventureland. The original version, in TRS-80 BASIC, not
the later form with the game engine in assembly language and the
standardized data file format. (You actually had to wait several seconds
for your commands to be processed...)
--
Carl Muckenhoupt ca...@earthweb.com
EarthWeb http://www.earthweb.com/
David Dyte
Miron Schmidt wanted to know how old we are:
28. In 1982 I played Dungeon at school on a PDP-11 and was addicted
pretty much immediately. Mind you, I was also addicted to Super Star Trek.
At a new school the next year, a friend of mine (who shall remain
nameless but will read this post) acted as computer while I played
Scott Adams adventures he had memorised, during a stunningly dull
hiking camp.
Once I got my Vic 20, well I already knew how to solve Adventureland,
and things went from there...
- David Dyte
Florian Beck
Graham Nelson <gra...@gnelson.demon.co.uk> writes:
> Miron Schmidt <s59...@tfh-berlin.de> asks
> >I have always wondered what the average age of the r.a.i-f community is.
>
Yes I can resist...
Anyway, I'm 25. Below average, but not out of place. Tough it seems
I'm very new to the IF community: I have *finished* my first IF game
about a year ago. I have first *played around* with IF 2 years ago
when I installed Linux (which comes with dungeon). And I have vague
memories of encountering a IF game some ten years ago which featured
???urga-mauls???)
Question to IF authors: Is it normal to have started about ten games,
discarded them all and therefore having zero lines of code after one
year of writing?
--
Flo
Mark Hultz
On June 25th,
Florian Beck <h729...@sun1.cip.fak14.uni-muenchen.de> wrote:
> Question to IF authors: Is it normal to have started about ten games,
> discarded them all and therefore having zero lines of code after one
> year of writing?
>
Is it normal to start them, or to discard them? Personally, I start quite
a few, finish some, but discard nothing. (Secretly, I'm holding them in
reserve for my Lost Episodes Archive!). My advice is to keep at it!
By the way, in further response to the Age question, I'm 34.
Mark Hultz
hu...@hometel.com
Gerry Kevin Wilson
22. But I swear, I'm really 84 at heart.
--
My new email address is: whiz...@pobox.com.
If that's too long for you, try g...@pobox.com.
Andrew Plotkin
Florian Beck (h729...@sun1.cip.fak14.uni-muenchen.de) wrote:
> Question to IF authors: Is it normal to have started about ten games,
> discarded them all and therefore having zero lines of code after one
> year of writing?
I think it's much more common to have ten unfinished games lying around,
each with zero lines of code -- but I'm going to get back to them,
honest, I'm not discarding anything...
--Z
--
"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the
borogoves..."
Gnimish
Well, I'm 19--a youngen' for IF--whose first IF game to play was Sorcerer
sometime around its release. I have since played a few, but didn't really
have access to a lot of them until buying the Lost Treasures of Infocom Vol
I. (I missed the second one. Dammit.)
Just last week I got a copy of the Masterpieces of Infocom CD. I was
enthralled. I began searching through directories for more info. You can
imagine my surprise when I learned that IFs not only had two newsgroups,
but new ones are still being written. It didn't take me two minutes of
searching the IF ftp site before I decided that I, too, must try this
thing. I am a Film/Video and Theater double major. I am a writer. I
can't think of anything more difficult or rewarding than breathing life
into a section of interactive text. To truly take people somewhere of
their own volation. Their mind's supply the magic.
I may be a youngen, but I bring with me many a computer game disillusioned
friend!
Matthew Griffin
RayDunakin <raydu...@aol.com> wrote in article
<19970625192...@ladder02.news.aol.com>...
William R Sherman
In article <...>, Miron Schmidt <s59...@tfh-berlin.de> writes:
> Hi!
[snip]
>
> Any volunteers?
Odd that you bring that up now, since it's also a major thread
in another newsgroup that I read -- must be something in the air.
> Miron Schmidt <mi...@comports.com> PGP key on request
As for me: 33. Which puts me at the age just before the home
computer revolution took off, so when I went to school, I was
basically the only kid playing with computers, and everyone
was amazed that a kid could understand how to use computers.
When my high-school decided to add a programming class (my
senior year), they didn't want me to take it since I knew more
than the math teacher who would be teaching the course -- and
I'd been working in a computer store for two years by then.
This is all for context btw, I don't consider it bragging, because
I'm sure most in this ng have similar experiences.
Anyway, as far as I-F goes, I'm still a newby. Despite the fact
that I've been reading r.a.i-f since 1991/2 when I found this cool
program called ITF that allowed people to play infocom games on
their UNIX machines (SGIs, which I used exclusively). That prompted
me to go out and get LTOI I (later II (much later MOI)). Now, I
still haven't gone an finished any games, so most of my playing
experience is still limited to two games: Adventure and Dungeon
(ie. the complete Zork).
My fondest memories were as a freshman in college playing Zork
on my terminal (dialed up to a VAX 780 at 300 baud) with my
roommate, and a big 1.5 liter bottle of wine -- on a few Friday
nights that my fraternity didn't have a party. Often other
guy in the fraternity would stop by to help. Again, as a sign
of the times, my terminal/modem was the only sign of computer
technology in my house at the time.
Prior to college, I played Adventure on some CPM S-100 bus
machine and loved it. I had also seen some Adam's games on
TRS-80s (model I), but was fairly unimpressed. Adventure even
inspired me to begin writing my first "text adventure" -- for
my HP-CV calculator. I came up with a simple world, and
simpler parser, but never really implemented much.
I hope to enter the (co-ed) fraternity of I-F authors soon,
but I have some other writing that needs to get done first.
(that which I am currently procrastinating from doing.)
Ahhh, how cathartic.
BTW, despite not authoring anything yet, I really love this
newsgroup. It has probably the lowest S/N ratio of any USENET
group I've ever seen (in 15 years), and by far some of the best
discussions -- from the programming, theory and media points
of view. Even the off-topic discussions are interesting.
Bill
/*************************************************************************/
/* Bill Sherman (wshe...@ncsa.uiuc.edu) */
/* National Center for Supercomputing Applications */
/* University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign */
/* Og - "You want to do mankind a real service? Tell funnier jokes" */
/* Spinner - "but facts don't always reveal the truth" */
/* Robin - "Yeah, but I always figure that's the writers' fault" */
/*************************************************************************/
-
Miron Schmidt wrote:
>
> Hi!
>
> I have always wondered what the average age of the r.a.i-f community is.
> the old magic when it was still fresh. At this age, it starts to be
> considered rude to ask for details.
> Nevertheless, I _have_ wondered.
> I make a start.
> I'm 25: 26 in two weeks (hey, if anyone happens to be in Berlin at the time,
>
> Any volunteers?
>
> --> WATCH TV... MARRY AND REPRODUCE... OBEY... PLAY INTERACTIVE FICTION...
17
I had a BBC B when I was 5-10, and we had 'Circus', but I never really
played that. I played some graphics-text hybrids on it though, like
some educational one set in a tower with completely pointless maths
puzzles in it, and one set in space which I never got anywhere on.
I only got seriously into IF when I had an Archimedes 3000, and Acorn
User put Inform, Advent, and Curses on the cover disk.
--
Nicholas Daley
<dal...@ihug.co.nz>
ryb...@anok4u2.org
In article <5or9q7$dfl$1...@europa.frii.com>,
jho...@deimos.frii.com (J. Holder) wrote:
>
> In a fit of lunacy, ryb...@anok4u2.org escribed:
> : 16...please don't hate me....
>
> More likely, you'll find that we are happy that IF is still interesting, and
> can appeal to you as a programmer!
I was being slightly sarcastic. Guess my humour is just too hip for you
ancient 29 year olds!! :) IF has always been a love of mine..first game
kings quest 4, secodn mcmurphies mansion. I was 8 or soemthing...anyone
got the copy of SPAG lying around? I anonymously did a horrible review
of TESS in it, so I've been around awhile. Kinda.
-------------------==== Posted via Deja News ====-----------------------
http://www.dejanews.com/ Search, Read, Post to Usenet
ryb...@anok4u2.org
In article <5os455$f...@fido.asd.sgi.com>,
jfra...@dungeon.engr.sgi.com (John Francis) wrote:
>
> In article <8672101...@dejanews.com>, <ryb...@anok4u2.org> wrote:
> >16...please don't hate me....
> >
I was being silly!
> In fact it might make some of us look on you more favourably.
> Your excruciatingly bad entries in the 1996 interactive fiction
I know they were bad, but did they actualyl cause anyone mental angst or
phyiscal pain? If not, i don't think I did much harm, and I was
surprized that I beat my first stupid game which I found to be quite
clever..
> competition (which are the primary things we have to judge you by)
> become a little more understandable when we remember what it was
> like to be sixteen (I think I can remember that far back ...).
You check out Nimble or my Candy betas? Nimble I'm thinking of canning,
but candy may be my first real try, spell checked and all.
Neil Brown
>17
>I had a BBC B when I was 5-10, and we had 'Circus', but I never really
>played that. I played some graphics-text hybrids on it though, like
>some educational one set in a tower with completely pointless maths
>puzzles in it, and one set in space which I never got anywhere on.
>
>I only got seriously into IF when I had an Archimedes 3000, and Acorn
>User put Inform, Advent, and Curses on the cover disk.
Funny, that's almost exactly my story, except that on my BBC B I played
'Adventure' by Kansas Soft (not the 'Adventure' we all know and ?love?)
and later, Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy. Oh, and I'm slightly older
than 17.
______________
Neil James Brown
ne...@highmount.demon.co.uk
http://www.highmount.demon.co.uk
Neil Brown
In article <m3u3im6...@loki.lrz-muenchen.de>, Florian Beck
<h729...@sun1.cip.fak14.uni-muenchen.de> wrote:
>Question to IF authors: Is it normal to have started about ten games,
>discarded them all and therefore having zero lines of code after one
>year of writing?
It's not unusual (as our Tom would say). I've only had one game released
so far, and there are another two in the pipeline that may just see the
light of day, but there are something like twelve other games I've
started in a rush of enthusiasm and stopped working on a few days later,
bored with them. They all seemed like really good ideas when I began
them, but they weren't good enough to sustain my interest for very long.
You haven't literally discarded (ie deleted) your source code listings,
have you? If you go back to them, you may find that there are one or two
that aren't as bad as you originally thought. That's what happens with
me, anyway.
Patrick Kellum
For some reason, William R Sherman was chatting and out came these words of greatness:
>senior year), they didn't want me to take it since I knew more
>than the math teacher who would be teaching the course -- and
I had an experance like this in, I think, 5th grade. They just got in a
bunch of Commodore PET computers and none of the teachers knew the first
thing about computers so I got the intense ego-boosting pleasure of
teaching a class how to operate and program a computer. Biggest ego-boost
I ever got :-)
>BTW, despite not authoring anything yet, I really love this
>newsgroup. It has probably the lowest S/N ratio of any USENET
>group I've ever seen (in 15 years), and by far some of the best
I've been on the internet for about four years now and this is the most
on-topic newsgroup I've read. Trully my favorite and the first I read
every day.
Patrick
---
"Every weekday morning the school bell cast its glamour over the
surounding hills, calling the young to classes. They came running
down the slopes and leaping over the streams, out from caves and the
hollows of trees and suburban tract homes, impelled by powers greater
then their own to gain an education."
"The Iron Dragon's Daughter" by Michael Swanwick
Patrick Kellum
For some reason, ryb...@anok4u2.org was chatting and out came these words of greatness:
>You check out Nimble or my Candy betas? Nimble I'm thinking of canning,
>but candy may be my first real try, spell checked and all.
I hope you finish Candy, looked interesting (although I got a little ill
in the kitchen).
Patrick Kellum
For some reason, Neil Brown was chatting and out came these words of greatness:
>started in a rush of enthusiasm and stopped working on a few days later,
>bored with them. They all seemed like really good ideas when I began
>them, but they weren't good enough to sustain my interest for very long.
I tend to start a new game every couple of months, usually based around
some weird idea (outcome based on the feelings of an NPC, weird magic
system, Sonic The Hedgehog as a text adventure, weird stuff like that).
Someday, I hope to actually start something that isn't based on a gimic,
then I might actually finish it :-)
Miron Schmidt
I myself wrote:
> I have always wondered what the average age of the r.a.i-f community is.
Wow. That's far more answers than I would have expected. Lots of lurkers,
too.
I hope it doesn't disappoint anyone too much if I admit that I only really
wanted to test my new news server and didn't know what to write. :)
The average age seems to be a trifle higher than I thought; more thirty-ish
then twenty-five-ish. I'll make a small anonymous statistic when the thread
has died.
OK, so many people also gave a little personal IF history. Here's mine then.
The first adventure I played was Zork I on a C-64 around 1983. I was
instantly hooked, although I didn't quite grasp the concept of solving
puzzles then. It was the atmosphere that had me squirming in my seat.
After that, Zork II, Adventureland, The Count, The Masquerade.
Lots of adventures on the Apple II, which was the time I first actually
_solved_ a game (Back in Time, anyone remember that?).
I started to write my own somewhere around 1987, 88, using AmigaBASIC. My
parser sucked so bad that I soon dropped it, desperately looking for a
programmer to write around my stories.
Those problems got solved when I discovered ADL, and I started lots of games.
Finished only one, though: a birthday-present for a close friend. You may
have noticed that Ralph claims to be my 10th project, and so it is. The other
publically available is Dark Army (project 005), meant solely as a
programming example in ADL, as it is still unfinished.
Anyway, thanks for your enthusiastic responses (I have really seen worse
waste of bandwidth); I'm looking forward for the postings yet to come.
Volker Blasius
Jim MacBrayne wrote:
>
> I'm 54, so that makes me the grandaddy of you all!
But not by much; in 6 weeks I'll have caught up. :)
Volker
Big Mad Drongo
- (-@-.-) wrote:
: I had a BBC B when I was 5-10, and we had 'Circus', but I never really
: played that. I played some graphics-text hybrids on it though, like
: some educational one set in a tower with completely pointless maths
: puzzles in it, and one set in space which I never got anywhere on.
The educational one was 'L'. One of my favourite adventures of all time,
that one. I remember having particular trouble with the tree-planting
puzzle, though strangely I managed the telephone quite quickly.
Adrian
J. E. Butterfield
John Francis wrote:
> In article <erkyrathE...@netcom.com>,
> Andrew Plotkin <erky...@netcom.com> wrote:
> >Matthew Amster-Burton (mam...@u.washington.edu) wrote:
> >> Miron Schmidt <s59...@tfh-berlin.de> wrote:
> >
> >> >I have always wondered what the average age of the r.a.i-f
> community is.
> >> >Now, I understand that most of us have to be old enough to have
> experienced
> >> >the old magic when it was still fresh. At this age, it starts to
> be
> >> >considered rude to ask for details.
> >> >Nevertheless, I _have_ wondered.
> >
> >> As Neil D. put it, I'm far too young to remember Watergate. In
> fact,
> >> I was born over a year after Nixon resigned.
> >
> >Obfuscation, obfuscation... I'm 27.
> >
> When I was 27, IF consisted of ADVENT. In FORTRAN.
> The first release of ZORK was a year away.
>
> (To save you time searching the history files, that makes me 48)
> --
> John Francis jfra...@sgi.com Silicon Graphics, Inc.
> (415)933-8295 2011 N. Shoreline Blvd. MS
> 43U-991
> (415)933-4692 (Fax) Mountain View, CA 94043-1389
> Unsolicited electronic mail will be subject to a $100 handling fee.
I'm 15. BTW, if this looks like part of John Francis' post, it's not. If
it does it's becausemy newsgroup program is new and I haven't figured it
totally out yet.
Ivan Cockrum
In article <33B00B17.MD-...@tfh-berlin.de>, Miron Schmidt
<s59...@tfh-berlin.de> wrote:
> Now, I understand that most of us have to be old enough to have experienced
> the old magic when it was still fresh. At this age, it starts to be
Hi, Miron,
I'm 29. The first text adventure I recall playing was one of Scott
Adam's, at age 14 or 15, then I played another about a year later. But it
wasn't until playing HHGTTG at 17 that I really got hooked. After that, I
went out and bought every Infocom game I could get my hands on. I even
started writing a game based on Frank Herbert's "Dune." Spent most of a
summer, coding it in Basic. Unfortunately, the game eventually became so
big that it couldn't be read into the RAM of my Apple IIc, and my
AppleBasic manuals were of poor help in figuring out how to read/write to
disk.
-- Ivan
Matthew Amster-Burton
whiz...@uclink.berkeley.edu (Gerry Kevin Wilson) wrote:
>22. But I swear, I'm really 84 at heart.
Then surely you're familiar with the fine pop song "When I'm 84" by
English national heroes the Beautiful South. A worthy rejoinder to
Paul's classic.
Matthew
Mikko P Vuorinen
In <8672101...@dejanews.com> ryb...@anok4u2.org writes:
>16...please don't hate me....
I remember when I was 16. I was a nerd who never went out and never had
even kissed a girl. I just sat at my computer playing games (and writing
occasional text adventures in Basic). Now I'm almost 24, I go out now and
then, I have more than kissed a girl, but I still sit at my computer
playing games and IRCing. And I envy those with a life :)
Anyway, the first piece of I-F I played was a C64 adventure called Token
of Ghall. I think I was 10 or so and my English was quite awful at the
time. And then came Eureka and my English skills improved a lot because of
that game. I'll never forget the day I learned the verb 'use'.
And so I got hooked on text adventures and tried to play as many as
possible on my C64. Then I got an Amiga and got my hands on some Infocom
games. And then I got a PC and access to Internet and found the Archive
etc. And now I'm here writing this silly article.
--
)))) (((( + Mikko Vuorinen + Olen hypannyt
)) OO `oo'((( + mvuo...@cc.helsinki.fi + 240 korkeutta
6 (_) ( ((( + http://www.helsinki.fi/~mvuorine/ + Activisionin
`____c 8__/((( + Dilbon@IRC + Decathlonissa.
Staffan Friberg
Andrew Plotkin writes:
> In the spirit of prying, I'll point out that in the "About the Author"
> section of Jigsaw, Graham admitted to having been born in 1968.
Of course... All truly great people was born in 1968. ;)
/Staffan (You get a million minus points if you read this before my
other post to this thread.)
BTW. Hi again, everyone! I'm back.
--
/Staffan
Rick Langer
Miron Schmidt <s59...@tfh-berlin.de> wrote:
>I have always wondered what the average age of the r.a.i-f community is.
I seem to be toward the upper end of the scale at 40.
>Ask old guy about adventure games
The old geezer says, "Well... I remember getting hooked on 'puters in
'77, programming a Cyber 70. Went nuts when I discovered Adventure.
First system I bought was an Apple ][ Plus (black case, marked as Bell &
Howell). Had to settle with Super Star Trek -- in those days we typed in
our own code -- and Wizardry until they wrote Zork. Yeah, Infocom's
heyday ... things were good back then. Glad to see you young 'uns know a
good thing when you see it. Nelson's a wonder for givin' us Inform ..."
He continues to mumble incoherently as you tip-toe away.
--
Rick Langer (rla...@tiac.net)
TCC - Transcontinental Computer Consulting
Staffan Friberg
Miron Schmidt writes:
> Nevertheless, I _have_ wondered.
> From what I've heard, most of us are around my own age, give or take. So may
> I make a start.
> I'm 25: 26 in two weeks (hey, if anyone happens to be in Berlin at the time,
> you're invited to my birthday party :)).
>
> Any volunteers?
Going to your party or revealing our age? :-)
I'm 28.
/Staffan
BPD
erky...@netcom.com (Andrew Plotkin) wrote:
>Obfuscation, obfuscation... I'm 27.
>In the spirit of prying, I'll point out that in the "About the Author"
>section of Jigsaw, Graham admitted to having been born in 1968.
I'm 26, and rather horrified to learn you guys aren't that much older
then me but are still much better authors. I mean, you've actually
finished writing more then one short competition game... ;-)
BPD
athol-brose
In article <5otbog$fqg$3...@neko.syix.com>,
Patrick Kellum <pat...@syix.com> said (among other things):
>Sonic The Hedgehog as a text adventure
You are on a strip of lush, green lawn. To the west is a rope-and-log
bridge over a waterfall. To the east, the ground slopes sharply upward, as
if it were half of a skateboarder's half-pipe. The top of the quarter-pipe
is roughly eight feet up.
There is a ring here. There is a ring here. There is a ring here. There is
a ring here.
A nervous mechanical porcupine paces back and forth.
>examine porcupine
A red shell with yellow spikes? That's not the proper color for a
porcupine! It must be one of Robotnik's robot helpers!
>jump
Whee!
The porcupine is getting agitated!
>land on porcupine
Splat!
[Your score has gone up by 100.]
>take ring.g.g.g
Ring!
[Your score has gone up by 10.]
Ring!
[Your score has gone up by 10.]
Ring!
[Your score has gone up by 10.]
Ring!
[Your score has gone up by 10.]
>go east
Unable to build up enough speed, you fall backward, ending up where you
started out.
---------------------------
Nah. I just can't see it. :)
--r.
--
r. n. dominick -- cinn...@one.net -- http://w3.one.net/~cinnamon
some things are just pictures - they're scenes before your eyes
Brad O`Donnell
Miron Schmidt wrote:
> Any volunteers?
I'm 20, and that means I've been playing IF for well over half
my life. I think about text adventure design more than anyone
should.
First Game: A poorly designed GW-Basic game of unremembered
content or author. (But I was trapped anyway :)
--
Brad O'Donnell
"A story is a string of moments, held together by memory."
John Francis
In article <8673061...@dejanews.com>, <ryb...@anok4u2.org> wrote:
>In article <5os455$f...@fido.asd.sgi.com>,
> jfra...@dungeon.engr.sgi.com (John Francis) wrote:
>>
>> In article <8672101...@dejanews.com>, <ryb...@anok4u2.org> wrote:
>> >
>
>I was being silly!
>
>> In fact it might make some of us look on you more favourably.
>> Your excruciatingly bad entries in the 1996 interactive fiction
>
>I know they were bad, but did they actualyl cause anyone mental angst or
>phyiscal pain? If not, i don't think I did much harm, and I was
>surprized that I beat my first stupid game which I found to be quite
>clever..
More of an annoyance than actual physical pain. There were a *lot*
of entries in the competition, and not enough time to play them all.
The time spent playing your games meant I didn't really have enough
time left for "sherbet". Do you think that was a good tradeoff?
>> competition (which are the primary things we have to judge you by)
>> become a little more understandable when we remember what it was
>> like to be sixteen (I think I can remember that far back ...).
>
>You check out Nimble or my Candy betas? Nimble I'm thinking of canning,
>but candy may be my first real try, spell checked and all.
I haven't tried it yet. But judging by the preliminary reports I have
seen on this newsgroup, it seems to be a considerable improvement.
I hope you get some good feedback - I'll let you know what I think
when I find some time to play it. I'll swear the days are getting
shorter - I never seem to have any spare time nowadays.
Katy Mulvey
On 25 Jun 1997 23:13:20 GMT, This is a test <rsim...@access4.digex.net> wrote:
>J. Holder (jho...@deimos.frii.com) wrote:
>
>: My first experience with IF was at a family day at my father's workplace,
>: Los Alamos National Labs, in 1978. I sat down in front of a high-tech
>: green screen (next to a few old teletypes) and played Crowther & Woods
>: "Adventure" on some old DEC platform. I was a ripe eight years old.
>
>I remember going to my father's workplace and having to play *Yahtzee*. I
>bet your dad could beat up my dad, too. I'm 26.
Hmm. I got to play Dungeon. (I'm 27). I remember Dad taking me in to
work (Computer Consoles, Inc., later bought by Northern Telecom) and
showing me the secret commands I needed to enter to play Dungeon.
(Something along the lines of 'cd /usr/_games; dungeon')
My fondest Dungeon memory, though, is getting Dad to print out the
"instructions" section on computer paper, and using it as a prop in
a school play when I was 11. The play was a musical called "The Gigo
Effect", and I got to be a singing, dancing, computer Glitch.
Let's see, other gaming memories:
+ I remember playing Planetfall with a friend on a Macintosh, and
figuring out how to retrieve the key.
+ Solving the Royal Puzzle in Zork III, on our Atari 800. In
retrospect, I probably wasn't as close to solving it as I
thought I was -- I had all 7 points, and got to the end game
area, and even with clues from a BBS, I could never make the
Implementor follow my instructions.
+ Typing in innumerable games (in BASIC) of all sorts (including adventure
games) from Antic magazine. Wonder if those are still around
anywhere, or if Mom got rid of them when they moved...
I've never written an adventure game, although I've thought about
it plenty of times. I never seem to keep my enthusiasm up past
the very beginning of the planning stages.
Katy
--
Katy Mulvey
Home: mul...@frontiernet.net http://www.frontiernet.net/~mulveyr/Katy
Julian Arnold
> [...]
> Question to IF authors: Is it normal to have started about ten games,
> discarded them all and therefore having zero lines of code after one
> year of writing?
Oh yes.
Jools
--
"For small erections may be finished by their first architects; grand
ones, true ones, ever leave the copestone to posterity. God keep me
from ever completing anything." -- Herman Melville, "Moby Dick"
GIOVANNI RICCARDI
I'm 21 and I've started to play IF only 2 or 3 years ago with a copy od
ADVENT.
I would started years ago if I only knew English.
\IIIII/
(o) (o)
---oOO-- (_) --OOo----------------------------------
"How do you know I'm mad?"
said Alice. "You must be,"
Giovanni Riccardi said the Cat "or you
g.ric...@speednet.it wouldn't have come here."
Terracina Italy
- L. Carrol "Alice's
Adventures in Wonderland"
----------------------------------------------------
Branko Collin
I wasn't going to add to this thread... honest!
On Thu, 26 Jun 1997 01:22:08 -0600, ryb...@anok4u2.org wrote
>In article <5or9q7$dfl$1...@europa.frii.com>,
> jho...@deimos.frii.com (J. Holder) wrote:
>>
>> In a fit of lunacy, ryb...@anok4u2.org escribed:
>> : 16...please don't hate me....
>>
>> More likely, you'll find that we are happy that IF is still interesting, and
>> can appeal to you as a programmer!
>
>I was being slightly sarcastic. Guess my humour is just too hip for you
>ancient 29 year olds!! :)
It's so hip we could throw it on the barbecue and feast on it all night.
(Ah, that was the humour of the good old days.)
Well, since I am in this thread now, I might as well admit I am also
29 and deeply ashamed. All my contemporaries have these great projects
on their credits and me... nothing.
Well, at least I have received my first review a couple of weeks ago,
for a comic book I helped write.
My first adventure was also my first game. Christmas 1984, a pirated
version of Pirate's Adventure. And although I have long since started
buying my software, I am afraid my copy of Pirate's Adventure is still
illegal (dl'ed from the IF-archive). Well, if the police come and get
me, I'll just say YOHO.
--
Branko Collin
col...@xs4all.nl
"Druppels, druppels, op mijn glas, druppels druppels druppels"
Joe Mason
"Re: Age?", declared Matthew T. from the Vogon ship:
MT>Ack, a young'un!
At 27? Nah... I'm 19.
Joe
ş CMPQwk 1.42 9550 şVegetarians eat vegetables-Beware of humanitarians
Giles Boutel
Gerry Kevin Wilson <whiz...@uclink.berkeley.edu> wrote in article
<5osknf$1...@agate.berkeley.edu>...
> 22. But I swear, I'm really 84 at heart.
> --
Ah - you're just a young fogey :)
26 as of this sunday, first played IF in '78 (advent - what else?). Wrote
my first complete game 18 years later.
-Giles
Jay Goemmer
The esteemed Jim MacBrayne <jm...@medusa.u-net.com> waxed verbose thusly:
>>>I have always wondered what the average age of the r.a.i-f community is.
>>> [snip]
>
>Funnily enough, I've often wondered about this as well but didn't have
>the brass neck to make the posting. I'm pretty much of an occasional
>lurker here only.
>
>Equally funnily enough, most of the ages I've seen tie in pretty well
>exactly with what I'd imagined.
>
>I'm 54, so that makes me the grandaddy of you all!
Ah, Jim, you're just a *whipper-snapper!* ;-D
My dad was 81 in March, my older brother will be 50 in September,
and my driver's license (which is actually *accurate*) tells me that
I'm 35.
--For the record, I'll qualify for an additional 0.5 years on July
3rd. ;->
So I guess you'd pass as an older brother, a second cousin, a lost
uncle . . . but *not* Grandpappy! :-D
--Jay Goemmer
Jay Goemmer
>Question to IF authors: Is it normal to have started about ten games,
>discarded them all and therefore having zero lines of code after one
>year of writing?
Only *one* year? ;-D
I've been at it for 3, and only now is *one* of them (but *not* the
biggest one, i.e., my "masterwork") nearly ready for release.
--Jay Goemmer
Paul E Coad
Miron Schmidt <s59...@tfh-berlin.de> wrote:
: I myself wrote:
: > I have always wondered what the average age of the r.a.i-f community is.
: Wow. That's far more answers than I would have expected. Lots of lurkers,
: too.
: I hope it doesn't disappoint anyone too much if I admit that I only really
: wanted to test my new news server and didn't know what to write. :)
I've been lurking around here for the last year or so. I about a year
ago rediscovered if when I came across a copy of the map I made while
playing Zork for the first time. It sparked some good memories.
My first experience was at a Dungeons and Dragons "convention" around
1980 or so. There were a bunch of PETs setup running something which
could have been Adventure. It was pretty cool. Around 83 or so I
played a pirate version of Zork on an Atari 800. When I bought my
800XL in 1984 I bought Infidel with it. I played a some during
the following years, school took up most of my time, but came back
into the fold a year or so ago. I've now got MOI, I played many of
the games in the last competition, and I am collecting the original
packages. Although time is limited, I am playing again.
One more thing. I've been playing mostly on my PalmPilot using ZIP.
I've been playing Sherbet in line at the DMV, in airports, hotel rooms,
malls, and a few other odd places. I have few large blocks of time
free lately so it is taking me a long time to finish. My only complaints
so far, have to do with help/hint screens and the limited screen size.
: Those problems got solved when I discovered ADL, and I started lots of games.
: Finished only one, though: a birthday-present for a close friend. You may
: have noticed that Ralph claims to be my 10th project, and so it is.
I liked Ralph. Sometimes playing IF is like being a dog running around
trying things while trying to find my bone. It was very refreshing.
Almost forgot. I'm 31. Back to lurking.
--pec
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Saved From The Dumpster Collection: http://www.crl.com/~pcoad/machines.html
Remove the .zz to email me, yada, yada, yada.
Magnus Olsson
In article <33B2BC0D.MD-0.19...@swipnet.se>,
Staffan Friberg <staffan...@swipnet.se> wrote:
>Andrew Plotkin writes:
>
>> In the spirit of prying, I'll point out that in the "About the Author"
>> section of Jigsaw, Graham admitted to having been born in 1968.
>
Hmm - my sister was born in 1968, but I can't claim that honour myself
:-). I'll be 33 this year, so it seems like I'm close to median age
for this newsgroup.
--
Magnus Olsson (m...@df.lth.se, zeb...@pobox.com)
------ http://www.pobox.com/~zebulon ------
Not officially connected to LU or LTH.
Jason Melancon
On 26 Jun 1997, Katy Mulvey wrote:
> My fondest Dungeon memory, though, is getting Dad to print out the
> "instructions" section on computer paper, and using it as a prop in
> a school play when I was 11. The play was a musical called "The Gigo
> Effect", and I got to be a singing, dancing, computer Glitch.
Let's see, now . . .
We are the Glitches and we're here to say
We're gonna cause distortion every day.
We're gonna bring computers to a halt,
And when the systems fail it's gonna be our fault.
We're gonna do whatever disconcerts,
Destroying kilowatts and megahertz.
We're gonna wipe out all your memory--
Wait and see!
Sound right? (I'm a scant ***ON-TOPIC ALERT*** 24, and I was probably
a little older than 11, since I remember having to mouth the words or
sing in many keys simultaneously. Apparently, the change came shortly
after auditions.)
> Let's see, other gaming memories:
Most of my earliest text gaming was on a friend's C64, with (probably
pirated) Zorks 1-3, Deadline, and Starcross. He showed me them just
as a sort of curiosity, because he hated the things. However, I was
of course fascinated, so I had to wait probably five years and get my
first computer, a Commodore(!) 8088 clone, to get into IF.
> I've never written an adventure game, although I've thought about
> it plenty of times. I never seem to keep my enthusiasm up past
> the very beginning of the planning stages.
>
> Katy
Me neither. But if you're already a programmer, unlike me, you've got
a real edge. Regardless, we should all keep at it, and I'm sure we'd
all love to see what you've got.
Jason Melancon
p...@cordoba6.ns.itd.umich.edu
the average age of the r.a.i-f community is.
>examine woodwork
Deep, rich walnut. Oddly, there seems to be something in it.
>look in woodwork
Yes, there -is- something there. It seems to be a lurker.
>oops
Rather.
The lurker says, "I'm twenty-four, actually, and've been reading this
newsgroup upwards of three years, actually. Only one post in all that
time."
>put lurker in woodwork
Not bloody likely. The lurker continues, "I said to myself, I wasn't
going to post much until I'd finished a game. Ha! Now that serious
work is underway (on three simultaneous projects, of course) my resolve
has weakened. I -like- this group too much."
>lurker, enter the woodwork
The lurker peers at you curiously, before going on. "My first IF
experience was in fourth grade." He pauses introspectively,
as if trying to figure out what age that was, then gives up. "It was
Scott Adams's _Pirate Adventure_, on the then state-o'-the-art
TI-99/4A. A teacher for a summer course I was taking had the module
and tape at his lab, which he let me play briefly, and I was enchanted.
I managed to cajole him into letting me take it home to continue
playing - but it had to be returned the next day, as it had been the
last day of the class)."
>take woodwork
The thin nails holding the trim give way before your application of
brute force. With an unpleasant crack, a long bit of trim snaps off.
The lurker declaims, "In an access of excitement, I managed to solve it
by two a.m. (Though I did have to get special dispensation from my
mother to remain up that late. Well do I remember the deadly mamba
snakes and the mongoose.) I was, in fact, hooked. I acquired as many
Scott Adams tapes as I could, found Crowther & Woods for the Apple IIe,
and found the Zorks, _HHGTTG_, and several others during Junior High, and
vigorously attacked the task of writing a text adventure in TI Extended
Basic. Happily, I do not believe it has survived."
>hit the lurker with the long bit of woodwork
The broken board connects satisfyingly with the lurker's head, stunning
him.
>terminate post
Terminated.
Plant Kingdom (p...@cordoba6.ns.itd.umich.edu)
--
"You, Sir, talk like a Rosicrucian whole will love
nothing but a sylph, who does not believe in a sylph,
and who yet quarrels with the universe for not containing
a sylph." --Thomas Love Peacock, _Nightmare Abbey_
-------------------==== Posted via Deja News ====-----------------------
http://www.dejanews.com/ Search, Read, Post to Usenet
Per-Erik Nilsson
On Thu, 26 Jun 1997, Joe Mason wrote:
> "Re: Age?", declared Matthew T. from the Vogon ship:
>
> MT>Ack, a young'un!
>
> At 27? Nah... I'm 19.
>
> Joe
>
I'm 22. Have been playing IF for more than ten years, but still haven't
designed any games... except for that really stupid game me and a friend
wrote as part of a LISP-course last year, you don't want to see that one,
believe me (besides, it's in Swedish so most of you won't understand how
worthless it really is :) ! And like most(?) people here, I've made a few
games in BASIC.
/Pelle Nilsson
Gunther Schmidl
Well, I'm 20 (21 in December) & am almost embarrassed to say that my first
games ever were Maniac Mansion & Space Quest II, hearing of Infocom only
long after its downfall (when LTOI first came out)...
Interestingly, I posted the same question on rgif about the same time
without having looked at raif... :)
--
+------------------------+----------------------------------------------+
+ Gunther Schmidl + "I couldn't help it. I can resist everything +
+ Ferd.-Markl-Str. 39/16 + except temptation" -- Oscar Wilde +
+ A-4040 LINZ +----------------------------------------------+
+ Tel: 0732 25 28 57 + http://linz.info.at/students/gunther.schmidl +
+------------------------+----------------------------------------------+
+ Gunther...@jk.uni-linz.ac.at - remove "SPAM" before replying +
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------+
Miron Schmidt <s59...@tfh-berlin.de> schrieb im Beitrag
<33B00B17.MD-...@tfh-berlin.de>...
> Hi!
>
> I have always wondered what the average age of the r.a.i-f community is.
> Now, I understand that most of us have to be old enough to have
experienced
> the old magic when it was still fresh. At this age, it starts to be
> considered rude to ask for details.
> Nevertheless, I _have_ wondered.
> From what I've heard, most of us are around my own age, give or take. So
may
> I make a start.
> I'm 25: 26 in two weeks (hey, if anyone happens to be in Berlin at the
time,
> you're invited to my birthday party :)).
>
> Any volunteers?
>
>
>
>
> --
> Miron Schmidt <mi...@comports.com> PGP key on
request
>
> WATCH TV... MARRY AND REPRODUCE... OBEY... PLAY INTERACTIVE FICTION...
>
>
jken...@himail.hcc.com
In <33B00B17.MD-...@tfh-berlin.de>, Miron Schmidt <s59...@tfh-berlin.de> writes:
>I have always wondered what the average age of the r.a.i-f community is.
I'm 48; my wife is 38. I started with Microsoft Adventure and Zork I and II on
my new IBM PC in '82; she started about a year later with a no-save-feature
Adventure for Wang word processors, and actually managed to finish it.
After we married in 1984, we were regular Infocom beta testers. (The
first betas of AMFV [but it was PRISM, then] and Journey were -- interesting.)
+mos...@mercury.net
>whiz...@uclink.berkeley.edu (Gerry Kevin Wilson) wrote:
>
>>22. But I swear, I'm really 84 at heart.
>
>Then surely you're familiar with the fine pop song "When I'm 84" by
>English national heroes the Beautiful South. A worthy rejoinder to
>Paul's classic.
>
>Matthew
Jeez . . . I thought is was "When I'm 64!"
Who knows...the volcanic dead in Montserrat have diverted my
interest--d'ya spose you fry or quit breathing first?
Robert Simpson
> BTW, despite not authoring anything yet, I really love this
> newsgroup. It has probably the lowest S/N ratio of any USENET
> group I've ever seen (in 15 years),
Just for that, I'm not going to tell you how to make money fast.
Staffan Friberg
Magnus Olsson writes:
> >Of course... All truly great people was born in 1968. ;)
>
> Hmm - my sister was born in 1968, but I can't claim that honour myself
> :-).
Oh! It's close enough... :)
--
/Staffan
Joe Mason
"Re: Age?", declared John Francis from the Vogon ship:
(the words belong to Rybread Celsius, actually):
JF>>I know they were bad, but did they actualyl cause anyone mental
JF>angst or >phyiscal pain? If not, i don't think I did much harm, and I
JF>was >surprized that I beat my first stupid game which I found to be
JF>quite >clever..
_Rippled Flesh_ caused me severe, extreme disappointment. I thought the
first few rooms were *brilliant* (if the grammar was cleaned up). Then
the whole thing came crashing down...
Joe
ş CMPQwk 1.42 9550 şHe who dies with the most toys is dead.
Martin DeMello
On 28 Jun 1997 01:24:36 GMT, "Robert Simpson"
<rsim...@access.digex.net> wrote:
> BTW, despite not authoring anything yet, I really love this
> newsgroup. It has probably the lowest S/N ratio of any USENET
> group I've ever seen (in 15 years),
Didn't you mean 'highest'? As in more signal, less noise?
But I agree, not only does this group have a high S/N, it is one of
the most friendly and polite groups as well (can't recall a single
instance of flaming).
Martin
Rick Dague
I'm 31. My brother and me had about fifty pirated disks (did we ever pay
for software?) when I was 14. We had Zork II and III, some Scott Adams
games, but the first I remember solving was Softporn.
>LOOK TOILET
This baby looks dangerous!!
--Rick
Richard G Clegg
Martin DeMello (vi...@emirates.net.ae) wrote:
: I'm 21 (rapidly tending to 22). I started off with a BBC Micro some 11
: years back, which had a lot of great adventures available (and a lot
: of not-so-great ones :-) ). I remember finishing (and enjoying) Twin
: Kingdom Valley, and getting totally stuck on Snowball (has anyone
: played either?).
Snowball was superb. I finished it in the end without too many clues.
Worm in Paradise I needed a lot of help with. Return to Eden was
incredibly tough tho'. It seemed to take me an age just to do the first
20 moves. Nightmarishly difficult game.
--
Richard G. Clegg Only the mind is waving
Dept. of Mathematics (Network Control group) Uni. of York.
email: ric...@manor.york.ac.uk
www: http://manor.york.ac.uk/top.html
Matthew Amster-Burton
34...@gte.net (Jason Melancon) wrote:
>On 26 Jun 1997, Katy Mulvey wrote:
>
>> My fondest Dungeon memory, though, is getting Dad to print out the
>> "instructions" section on computer paper, and using it as a prop in
>> a school play when I was 11. The play was a musical called "The Gigo
>> Effect", and I got to be a singing, dancing, computer Glitch.
>
>Let's see, now . . .
>
> We are the Glitches and we're here to say
> We're gonna cause distortion every day.
> We're gonna bring computers to a halt,
> And when the systems fail it's gonna be our fault.
>
> We're gonna do whatever disconcerts,
> Destroying kilowatts and megahertz.
> We're gonna wipe out all your memory--
> Wait and see!
Omigod! I was in this play when I was 11, too! I don't think I was a
glitch, though. I was one of the people who panic when the glitches
arrive. Katy Mulvey, you are my long-lost sista!
Matthew
FemaleDeer
Well, I remember Watergate. BTW - The Watergate hearings were the most
gripping television I have ever see, before or since. Especially when
Butterfield mentioned that tapes had been recorded in the oval office.
What a stunner that was. (We thought we'd find out everything, which, of
course, we didn't.)
Well, back to IF. I played a lot (not all, not the Zork series) of the
Infocom games, either when they first came out or about five years after,
on my... apple IIc.
I think that dates me. (Yep, I still have original game packages and the
interesting stuff that came in them. No, my Don't Panic button is not for
sale.)
Femal...@aol.com
"If builders built buildings the way most programmers program, civilization would fall apart with the first peck of a woodpecker."
FemaleDeer
>From: Florian Beck <h729...@sun1.cip.fak14.uni-muenchen.de>
>Date: 26 Jun 1997 02:09:22 +0200
>Question to IF authors: Is it normal to have started about ten games,
>discarded them all and therefore having zero lines of code after one
>year of writing?
I would say it is not abnormal. I started another game before the one I am
currently writing. I finished about 1/4 of that one so far. I think I
will finish this game (fairly soon), then get back to the original one,
which will be the first of a trilogy. The game I am working on now has
turned out to be too big, too involved and too much work, now I know
better, the next one will be simplier. Oh well. It helps to be a
programmer (which I am), it helps to like solving tricky programming tasks
(which I do), it helps to be able to think up puzzles (which I have
difficulty with) and it helps to be able to write (which I am not sure I
can). Other than that, it helps to be slightly obsessed (or crazy,
whichever comes first).
P.S. (I am, gasp, almost 50. The reference to Watergate and apple IIc may
not have dated me enough. I might as well be honest, I earned dem darn
years.)
FemaleDeer
>So what were those pills in the original deadline folder really? I got
>the game I think I was 13 years old and I sooo wanted to eat them
>because I knew they couldn't be harmful since if they were they wouldn't
>have been able to package them in a game!
I still have them. Course they do have brown spots all over them now (ugh,
so I am not going to try to eat them now just to tell you what they are).
But they look like Alkaseltzer or Rolaids.
FemaleDeer
Charles Koo
Gerry Kevin Wilson wrote:
> 22. But I swear, I'm really 84 at heart.
> --
> My new email address is: whiz...@pobox.com.
> If that's too long for you, try g...@pobox.com.
Hey, I'm 22 also! Right on! Although I'm actually 69,105 at heart.
--
"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one
persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all
progress depends on the unreasonable man."
-- George Bernard Shaw
Russell can be heckled at
http://sdcc8.ucsd.edu/~rglasser
Francis Irving
On Tue, 01 Jul 1997 09:00:38 -0700, Charles Koo <quie...@msn.com> wrote:
>Gerry Kevin Wilson wrote:
>
>> 22. But I swear, I'm really 84 at heart.
>> --
>> My new email address is: whiz...@pobox.com.
>> If that's too long for you, try g...@pobox.com.
>
> Hey, I'm 22 also! Right on! Although I'm actually 69,105 at heart.
>
OK, OK. If it's a club of people who are 22, then I'd better put my hand
up to... (but I only lurk...)
Francis.
Home: fra...@pobox.co.uk Work: fra...@ncgraphics.co.uk
Piers Johnson
Carl Muckenhoupt (ca...@earthweb.com) wrote:
: 27, if you must know. And my first adventure, at the age of eight, was
: Scott Adams' Adventureland. The original version, in TRS-80 BASIC, not
: the later form with the game engine in assembly language and the
: standardized data file format. (You actually had to wait several seconds
: for your commands to be processed...)
Close to me, I guess.. I'm 29 a few weeks back. My first adventure would have
been .. Pyramid Adventure on a TRS-80, you know, the one with the dwarf that
said "you be weird, cut that out" if you typed GET/TOUCH/GRAB DWARF. :)
I quickly discovered Infocom and stuck to them. My brother probably still
has the original HHGTTG packaging somewhere.. I remember playing a version of
Adventure on the mainframe of Qantas Airlines here in Sydney in 1983.
I played Scott Adams games later on, when I got PC version of them.
Must have been around '86, when I finally got a PC.
I wrote a DooM take-off, called FooM, in TADS a couple of years ago - more
as an exercise in concept than a serious game, although some of my testers
complained about it only being one level. I wasn't going to do *that* much
work. I'm still marvelling at the quality of Curses. I regularly play it
again, just to enjoy the prose. I think it's even better than Infocom ever
were.
--
pi...@socs.uts.edu.au kal...@ftoomsh.progsoc.uts.edu.au
http://ftoomsh.progsoc.uts.edu.au/~kaleid/ (WWW home page)
Nick
On 28 Jun 1997, Robert Simpson wrote:
> > BTW, despite not authoring anything yet, I really love this
> > newsgroup. It has probably the lowest S/N ratio of any USENET
> > group I've ever seen (in 15 years),
Nick
Uncle Bob
Well, I'm close to being the oldest on this list, but I'm not...I know
for sure Volker is older! (But not much). Let's just say that I'm
nearly twice as old as many of you.
My intro to I-F came in 1979 when, in the course of buying a minicomputer
for my company, I came across Adventure and Dungeon. I begged a copy of
the source for Adventure, took it home, and ported it to our Honeywell
mainframe. (I am not joking, I really did. This was the start of my
career as an I-F porter of sorts.)
After rediscovering I-F in 1990 or so, I've been threatening to write
some games "as soon as I have time." Heh. Those of you younger
correspondents who think you'll have more time when you get a little
older: it doesn't quite work out that way.
"Uncle" Bob Newell
Phil Goetz
Age: 30.
First adventure: Scott Adams, on cassette tape for Apple ][+, circa 1981.
The Count, or Pyramid of Doom.
Formative influence: The BYTE Dec 1980 or 81 issue on Adventure, which had
source code for Lost Dustchman's Gold and Pirate Adventure. I learned more
about programming from that issue than from any book or class.
I also want to announce that last week, after years of determined effort,
I finally had an article accepted to rec.humor.funny! Also, I earned my PhD.
Dr. Phil
go...@cs.buffalo.edu
http://www.cs.buffalo.edu/~goetz