There have been some public and private discussions regarding interest in AIF - Adult Interactive Fiction. AIF historically has been a divisive subject and a historical sub-niche of IF that generally maintained their own forums and social spaces separate from mainstream IF.
As IF becomes a mature art form, adult subject matter with regard to relationships and sexuality have become more pervasive in games. On this forum we’ve kind of danced around it since we are all-ages (13+) saying it’s “okay to discuss, just content-warn and tag appropriately with spoiler blur…” etc.
Would there be interest in creating a specific AIF sub-forum that requires opting in to view content? This would require joining a group, and likely an assertion that the user is of appropriate age to view such content.
In this prospective forum, open discussion of AIF and related topics would be welcomed: authoring, discussing, playing, reviewing. Language and content restrictions would be relaxed. The sub-group would remain subject to our Code of Conduct and moderation.
The group would not be for sharing pornography or NSFW memes or links unrelated to gaming, and should primarily focus on discussion and constructive content. (It’s not solely intended as a “join this group so you can cuss all you want and discuss your private life” thing.)
All rules of the forum would still apply; content would continue be subject to moderation and removal, and members still held to community standards and could be booted from the group or subject to standard forum disciplinary actions for egregious misbehavior.
I would definitely opt-in to an AIF/Adult Game discussion forum.
It’s a great idea! But I likely wouldn’t opt in for that content.
I don’t like it, but as long as I don’t see it, it’s okay.
Knowing there is AIF/adult content would probably turn me away from this forum.
I’m happy with opt-in; I associate a lot of sexual content with negative feelings, and personally don’t want to see it on the main page, but I think having a private forum could actually help keep stuff off the main forums by making an outlet. Seems like a win-win.
Well, considering Origin of Love alongside Charm’s game made one reviewer on IFDB comment that Ectocomp had been surprisingly horny in 2022, I think it’s safe to say I’d be happy to join! The opt in approach sounds good. I’ve been planning on exploring similarly mature themes with a focus on gay relationships in my silly bo billy little Twines, so it’d be fun to have somewhere to discuss development with others!
The most adult theme I’m likely to explore in any of my WIPs is the bureaucracy for taxation in 18th century England, but the opt-in forum still seems like a good idea to me – there are some very specific AIF-focused design and coding issues that have glancingly come up in the main forums, so having an opt-in place to extend the conversations seems useful. Plus my potentially-uninformed sense is that some of the other spaces for AIF discussion out there have maybe a more bro-y vibe, so I think it’d be a positive contribution to have room on this forum to have those kinds of conversations, given that our overall culture may be more welcoming to many folks.
I’m a little notorious in my friend group for being extremely neutral about sexual themes. They sorta phase right through me, as though someone were describing the intricacies of how soup cans are manufactured.
I probably wouldn’t have anything to contribute, but I understand that people with the more statistically-common connections to these themes and experiences would probably find it to be an amazing and valuable resource when creating their games. It’s also a topic that I think deserves to be a lot more accessible than it currently seems to be. I’d also be kinda curious as to how the discussions there go, as sort of an outside observer.
I think the opt-in system is a great idea, too. Will it still be on this website? Like, a top-level category with a confirm-to-continue button?
Also, even if you’re not writing AIF, you might be able to help someone who’s writing erotica set on a space station but isn’t sure how to handle navigation!
One advantage of not separating the communities entirely (i.e. having a subforum here instead of just relegating it to another site entirely) is that we can share help and discussion on all the aspects of IF that aren’t specifically about sex.
There are other advantages as well. AIF has had literal decades of divergent evolution. There are conventions and, more interestingly, extensions used to solve problems we don’t typically have, or at least bother solving. Look at the standard hand-waive given to handling clothing in parsers; something like “just assume the PC is dressed appropriately for every situation unless told otherwise.” That doesn’t cut it in AIF. You need to not only know what someone is wearing, but each individual piece of clothing needs to be separately and fully implemented. Not a small or easy task. These extensions already exist. I’m sure there are folks here who can imagine some interesting NON-AIF use-cases (fashion-show, creating convincing disguises, dressing/preparing during an emotionally charged scene like your daughter’s wedding, etc) for a vigorously tested clothing extension. This is only one example. I promise you that there are potential gains to be made even by the most indifferent authors.
Daniel and pinkunz, indeed this is my main reasoning; aside the current nth debate on handling clothing, I can trace all clothing extension to the venerable xwear.t, whose perhaps is the ur-text of those extensions (being a trained historian helps…)
Layered clothing is the first one that came to my mind and, as pointed out by @pinkunz
I’ve seen more than a few threads over the years experimenting with armored combat. In many of these cases, the author also wanted to implement individual body parts – an AIF staple as well.
As someone who has been compelled to include a fully-implemented clothing system in all their games for literally no gameplay reason whatsoever, I would be really excited to see how the AIF community has been handling that.
I just want the characters in my game to have the option of dressing how they want lol.
Badparser, a tattooed arm is the obvious non-AIF instance of bodyparts, and I think isn’t necessarily confined to detective/mystery or sea/pirates IF.
Joey, you have surely noticed that something is already set up, but I think that even by Galatean standards, having NPC reacting to the PC’s external clothing is a tad too ambitious…
both (and everyone), the main bodypart I’m interested is the invisible one of a “Dungeon Master”; bodyparts has nearby all is needed, the most important that is always in-scope of the player (or, and is what matters, the reverse) allowing, I think, unprecedented flexibile designing (AIF players & devs will easily figure the little reference… ) but the idea is still a white whale on the draft board (so, because now everyone know my slov dev pace, if someone want to experiment with this concept, is more than free, is welcome, to do so…)
Oh, I don’t need the NPCs to notice; the player should get dressed up according to their own tastes and self-confidence reasons.
I’ve had a few ideas kicking around for calculating a “mood score” for outfits anyways. However, again, it’s more like giving the player the opportunity to express themselves a little bit during gameplay, not to be part of a problem-solving mechanic.
I actually did something similar to this in one of my games – the player had to dress up in a silly costume, and different accessories provided different boosts to a score tracking how ridiculous they looked. Beyond the puzzle-solving aspect, I think it was a fun time (at least, I found it amusing when reading player transcripts!) but yeah, setting things up so people couldn’t wear two hats, the pluralizing of pairs of shoes worked out, etc., took some work, so I can definitely see some non-AIF uses for these kinds of extensions!
I probably forgot to explain or it was buried in my usual Congressional-statement of a post. It would work almost exactly like the IFComp Author private forums. Members would request access, probably confirm their date of birth, probably have to be manually approved by me, and then it’s a category with a lock-symbol next to it signifying private.
Like the IFComp Author forums, none of the content would be accessible or suggested or shown to any members outside the group. My goal is to keep AIF discussion out of the public forum by making a specific secure place for it.
All members would still have to opt-in. If you’re interested in programming help, you won’t see any messages unless you’ve opted in and joined the group. It would be completely separate.
Once again, the general membership will not see anything in the private group. Layered clothing on its own is not unique to AIF and is frequently discussed in the normal threads. Emily Short wrote a detailed implementation of it in the original Inform 7 documentation.
I can’t stress this enough: THERE WILL BE NO CROSS-POLLINATION OF AIF TOPICS. That’s the intention of proposing a private group: We don’t want these topics to be foisted upon people who don’t want to read about them.
I’m a big proponent in my games of making sure nobody who’s not into what I’m putting out there doesn’t stumble upon it accidentally.
It is my hope there are some people who are ambivalent about content who would opt in and participate in any technical discussion but that is entirely at their discretion.
I meant cross-pollination of communities, @HanonO , not topics. As things stand, folks here don’t interact with folks there very much. Having a safe, separate, space for this interaction to incur will likely benefit everyone, even those who don’t take part. There will be ideas and inspiration that will happen in those spaces that will show up somehow, in a sanitized way, in the community proper. This would happen organically. Does the individual playing an IF RPG need to know where the armor-system came from? I think not.
It took me forever to find this community; I didn’t even know there were other communities out there. It feels like I just unlocked some hidden lore or something, lol
That’s kind of how it’s done now. I’ve asked questions but written “pseudocode” as an example. Not so much because it’s adult, but because I intended to keep plot details secret.
I don’t even understand where the dispute or argument is here. Nowhere did I suggest that these topics or threads would be discussed with the full community. I’m not sure what the intent is to shoot down the layered clothing example. You know there are useful extensions to be adopted. You’ve done it yourself. I was picking the clothing because it was the tamest of examples, not because it was the best example, as you just pointed out.
Nothing I’ve said is in opposition to the points you made above. There is no conflict. I was merely pointing out that fringe benefits exist. Just because someone thinks the moon landings were stupid doesn’t mean they don’t still benefit from velcro.
