Hello,
My name is Ben, 24, I’m from Slovenia. I’m a student of electrical engineering (about to graduate) with too much time on my hands, and Interactive Fiction has been one of my main hobbies for quite a few years. I also love music (playing and listening to), hiking, and Steel Panthers: World at War. 8)
My very first taste of IF was a hilarious Legend’s masterpiece called “Eric The Unready”. I still think this is one of the best (and funniest) games ever made, and I can’t possibly recommend it enough. I played some other Legend games as well (especially both “Gateways” and the “Spellcasting” series - which I still believe Harry Potter is based upon 8O), and some modern titles (though I’m afraid I have lots of catching-up to do in this area).
Since I also love to write, it wasn’t long before I started to fiddle around with Inform 6, trying to create a game of my own. So my first “exercise” in designing IF was a recreation of a certain act from “The Dig”, a graphical game by Lucas Arts, and to my surprise it actually came out quite well.
However, I realize that I will never be able to write a truly solid game; it’s the language that’s causing the problem. Though I have the general grasp of English, which is good enough for everyday chat on forums and such, it’s not nearly enough for what is required from an IF author. I’ll never be able to express myself quite as well in English as I can in my own language, Slovene.
So at the moment I seem to be on a special quest: I’m desperately trying to wake up (or create from nothing, for that matter) our own, Slovene IF community. In my country, the IF medium seems to be completely overlooked, which is just sad. So last October I even made a translation of Inform 6 libraries to Slovene (if anyone’s interested, they’re located here: http://sloif.freehost386.com), and now I’m trying to recruit some other enthusiasts like me to actually write some Slovenian games. So far, I haven’t had much luck, but I’m not willing to give up just yet.
Anyway, so far I really like these forums and I think I’ll spend quite some time here in the future. Cheers!