Introducing Ourselves

Iā€™m not surprised. Thereā€™s a reason why it was #1 in last yearā€™s IFComp.

Welcome! Simply put, you got nearly all parser mediums covered except for Adrift and the lesser used ones like Hugo, Alan, etc.

3 Likes

Welcome Peter,

Nice to meet you too.

Good luck finding your way through Curses. Iā€™ve tried once or twice but I put it aside for when I find the time and dedication to push through.

Great to see you learning or just dipping your big toe in so many development systems. Thereā€™s a lot of combined experience on the forum, so if you have any questions about any of them, youyā€™ll probably find an answer here.

5 Likes

Welcome!

I donā€™t know whether youā€™ve tried FrobTADS already; it should be compilable on Linux and MacOS. Github has a newer version than tads.org:

6 Likes

Iā€™ve been here a couple of weeks but never actually introduced myself. I grew up with text adventures in the 80s on various 8-bit computers and eventually created a few of my own in BASIC. Recently I have entered the 2024 Spring Thing with Voyage of the Marigold, a game I had been kicking around in my head for a couple of years before it escaped.

I occasionally blog at https://sheep.horse/ because dot horse domains are too stupid not to be used.

19 Likes

I did look into FrobTADS, but the version on the website didnā€™t build properly and I hadnā€™t gotten around to trying to one on Github yet. But I just downloaded it and the installation seems to have worked correctly, aside from a few (ignorable?) error outputs during the installation process! Thanks for giving me the kick to actually get it working. Now to learn TADSā€¦

6 Likes

Welcome Andrew. I just enjoyed and aced your Planet from Doctor Who or Hair Care Product Quiz. For my success I can thank my classic Who knowledge being good, and also, my ability to identify the garbagey spelling stratagems used by those who work in advertising being good.

-Wade

5 Likes

I just enjoyed and aced your Planet from Doctor Who or Hair Care Product Quiz

Well done, now try this quiz on for size:

This one ainā€™t for me :slight_smile: Iā€™ve only very occasionally watched any TV drama that commenced after the year 2000. I would always go and watch or rewatch a feature film instead. EDIT - Tried, got 8/20. Not bad considering some were just based on my knowledge of the subject matter of a show (e.g. Quantum Leap) and not on ever having watched it.

-Wade

2 Likes
>say "Hello."
(to yourself)
There is no reply.

Hello all. Quite late to the party. Grew up playing Zork and Hitchhikerā€™s Guide. Lived some life.

Recently watched Get Lamp and wondered how far text adventures must have changed over the last few decades. So many games to play. So. Many. Games.

One of Plotkinā€™s quotes got to me. Basically he says, the first thing youā€™re going to type when you sit down to play is something the computer wonā€™t understand. And your thought is: the author spent all their time on this. But really the author has a freight-trainā€™s worth of assumptions about what you should already know and what the parser can do. And theyā€™ve worked exceptionally hard to use it for particular effect for their particular story.

He ends with this:

Itā€™s a total failure for newcomers.
I wish I had a fantastic story to tell you about how Iā€™ve solved this problem. I do not.

Natural language is tremendously complicated and complex. Acknowledging that, why does it seem that parsers are still problematic for newcomers? (Iā€™m probably just uninformed. Fill me in.)

Reading lots of pins and getting familiar with resources. If you have the-one-thing-I-wish-I-had-known-about-when-I-joined-the-forum and care to share it, Iā€™d love to hear from you.

13 Likes

Welcome!

We talk about this All. The. Time. ALL the time. New opinions and ideas would be welcome.

I wish Iā€™d known how genuinely nice and helpful everyone is. When I first got here I spent months worrying about the stupidity of my questions and squinting suspiciously at folks, waiting for the trap of meanness and ugliness of the internet to bite me. After a couple of years, I have to say that either this place is really as cool as it seems, or thereā€™s a very long game being played.

11 Likes
ALERT: Forum member AmandaB is still displaying a positive attitude towards us.
The 7-year timer to trigger the 7-year hate cycle appears to be malfunctioning.
Corrective action imminent.
13 Likes

I KNEW IT. Next comes the bucket of pig blood. I must say, everyone has played their parts admirably til now.

10 Likes

I would like to.

Most likely the latter. Just take the above sentence with a Matterhorn-sized mountain of salt. This forum is generally nice, helpful and encouraging, given how (relatively) supportive most people were when I reviewed their stuff for IF Comp, Seedcomp, etc. And how I playtested their stuff- they were kind and patient enough.

However, there can be cases where you can accidentally- given your good intentions- rub people the wrong way and things can turn out to be very nasty. I wonā€™t give details but it did happen to me once. I wish that people could have been clearer with me about how they think and feel, perhaps. That is what I wished I had known about.

Edit: some stuff just should be under wraps for now. Anyway, this is the place to ask for reviews, playtesters and event organising volunteers.

As for why parsers are still problematic, sigh. Sometimes we have no idea what to do. Or what item to use, where to go, who to talk toā€¦

3 Likes

We have a cool jam to help with that :stuck_out_tongue:

People are as nerdy (some are even more) as you are about IF, and they will gush about it if you let them (and you will learn so much).

9 Likes

I didnā€™t realize how small and tight-knit this community is, for what itā€™s worth. Iā€™ve put my foot in my mouth on more than one occasion, but ultimately weā€™re all here because we share the same passion. Youā€™ll never find a more supportive and enthusiastic group than with these fine folks here.

10 Likes

Itā€™s okay to write a lot. People will read it.

12 Likes

Bugs are purely evil. Ask for testers, ask for more testers, and check every nook and cranny of your game millions of times over. Itā€™s hilarious how much you wonā€™t find no matter how much you look.

Also, itā€™s recommended to check out ifdb.org for games that might interest you, browse polls or make your own, and have a lot of fun playing games! Also, lots of games I thought werenā€™t very fun at first, and then I tried them and they were some of my favourite games. Examples include Counterfeit Monkey (Emily Short), Fairest (@AmandaB), and most of all, Eat Me (Chandler Groover). Beginnings are the hardest to do well. Oh, and middles. And the ends of games. :joy:

Also, like most of the others said, weā€™re really all here to enjoy a close hobby that only a fair few love. Almost all of the time, this is the only hobby Iā€™ve seen where people donā€™t let things such as ā€œI donā€™t really like romance in general, so Iā€™m giving this a 1ā€ happen. The frequent reviewers (Brian, Mike, Rovarrson, and many many others) almost always I agree with their reviews.

Oh, and write what you like and donā€™t let the dislikers get in the way of it, as long as youā€™re well-intended in your meaning!

9 Likes

Hey everyone, I just wanted to express my excitement about joining here. Pretty new but Iā€™m so loving this community already.

(I keep running out of likes, so Iā€™m desperately logging on everyday trying to get Member!)

Iā€™m Tracey.

FINALLY like-minded people! (Thereā€™s no hand-on-heart emoji so these will have to do: :raised_hand_with_fingers_splayed::heart: :heart_hands: )

I love this too and will also take your word for itā€¦


Bio

Just browsing this community, itā€™s like combining the best of game design and writing/storytelling, and I love it so much.

I have 7-8 hobbies that I like to switch my time between, with the first three being most frequent so far: computing, politics, writing, music, language learning (currently Russian), cooking, drawing, game design.

Iā€™ve worked professionally as an iOS programmer and video content creator. Iā€™ve written articles for and still do proofreading as a volunteer for a small dissident-revolutionary newspaper.

I briefly studied game design for 6 months or so but didnā€™t finish the course.


Project

Iā€™m going to make a new topic for this and then link it here, because it got rather long.

21 Likes

Hi Tracey,

Iā€™m glad you are here and look forward to your work.

4 Likes

Good day (or night) Iā€™m Tekka and Iā€™m completely new to programming on twine and I was very interested to make a story, Iā€™m glad it seems this community is abundant

16 Likes