Kindly prepare for reading a rambly wall post.
Hello, all. I’m Shaunak, an Indian mid-teen who fell down the rabbit hole of interactive fiction at the very start of 2022. I’ve been an avid reader since childhood, and I’ve always had a deep fascination with programming and computers. While I don’t remember exactly how I discovered IF, I do remember that I somehow ended up on The Dreamhold page on eblong.com (I think I faintly recall being redirected to it from Wikipedia). Curiosity and fascination led to more exploration: dabbling in a lot of IF pieces, reading articles and enjoying the works of art that is IF, and here I am today.
Sadly, however, due to the limited time that is available to me, largely thanks to the restricting TM Education System, it’s been near-impossible for me to have the motivation to finish a singular piece of medium to large-length parser IF. The farthest I’ve gotten is in Anchorhead and in Eat Me, and that too, only halfway through in both. There are about 15 or more long parser-based works which I’ve started playing but never finished. This list includes games such as The Dreamhold, Spider and Web, Lost Pig, Counterfeit Monkey, Toby’s Nose, Blue Lacuna, etc., off the top of my head. Maybe my attention span is to blame for this, but again, I’ve tinkered around in Anchorhead for 3 hours straight. Considering I never game for that long of a stretch, that may be something to say about the quality of the writing.) The only games I’ve completed are Galatea, 9:05, Violet and Heliopause. I’m currently playing Hadean Lands.
Perhaps my main (personal) gripe with parser games is that sometimes I miss solutions to obvious puzzles, and end up giving up on them. Checking the solution from a transcript destroys the charm of exploring, and afterwards, I don’t feel like returning to the game to complete it. Perhaps it is what is popularly known as a “skill issue”, one that may or may not be fixable.
Anyways, this is my first attempt at interacting with the rest of the community. I’ve recently begun thinking about developing my own IF in my sparingly little spare time, and I have come up with some great ideas to start with if I do say so myself. I’m going through the documentation and watching some great videos to teach myself Inform 7, and I’m proceeding well, more or less.
Now, of course, I joined this forum some time ago, and for a reason. I want to discuss how my ideas hold up to current IF standards and people’s preferences, and what ideas I should be looking to expand upon. Is creating an “Authoring” personal thread for said discussion the best way to go about it? Please inform (pun intended) me of what I should ideally do.
A little thought has come into my mind a few times as I’ve browsed this forum and lurked for the past week or so: I’m probably younger than most frequenters of the forum. I feel young in here.
Well, I’d rather not make this too long. Thank you for taking some time out of your day to read this rambly wall post introduction that may not have made sense at times. I look forward to talking to you all in the future.
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