My name is ketsu, I’m 26, and I’ve never made an IF game before. I’ve been fiddling with Inform 7 and figured I should lurk here some to figure things out.
I suppose you’re honest, at least.
Hi everyone, this is an extremely late introduction, but I’m not good with them. I’m at the age where Dante wrote the Inferno, half-way between birth and the grave (give or take.) My first game was Zork and Zork II. I used the invisiclues to beat Zork II, never beat Zork I. I think the last old IF game I played was Hitchhiker’s Guide. I switched over to Sierra games after that, and on and on. I never lost the love for IF, though, and attempted to write IF games using AGT, and GAGs. When I ran out of flags in AGT, I quit. I couldn’t deal with managing a story with 255 flags.
After that, I attempted to learn TADS, then TADS 2. Wrote a few games, that didn’t crystallize into anything meaningful, and I probably still have most of them from then, from about 20 years ago.
I moved on from IF, focused on other arts. Read a lot of books. Played a lot of games. I followed the comps throughout the years, downloaded them and played them every year. I had one sticking point with IF, and it was the same as it was in the past: whenever I got hopelessly lost, I would quit. So the IF games I finished were few, even though I’ve played quite a few of them.
All of those ideas that were on the back burner had been turning over and over in my head. I took notes. I wrote outlines and characters, plots, etc. I had a lot of good ideas, but none of them, again, crystallized. I would go out of my mind with frustration, only to start over, only to start over again, and then start over again. During that time, I learned programming, studied story structure, and took classes on it.
Anyway, fast forward to the present. Through all of my time and trouble, I finally have a few stories to tell, that I think are pretty good. I had a story that was decent for last year’s Spring Thing, had one that was pretty much there for this year’s Comp, but it dawned on me that, even though I had a story, I didn’t have a game.
So, since the comp I’ve been developing a game with Inform 7. I have rediscovered a love for gaming, and want to create something that is incredibly fun to play, and tells a good story. If I seem opinionated, it’s because I’m new to this community, even though I’ve followed it for 20 years! 
(I’m such a dork.)
Anyway, that’s the first introduction I’ve ever written. I know there’s a lot of cool, like-minded, and freakishly intelligent people here. I hope to join the ranks. I have the freakish part down.
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Rick Yost here. My IF experience started only last year with the Zork Trilogy. Not long after I found Inform 7 and started messing around with it. Now I am considering entering the IfComp next year. I also go by masemauno on the IFMUD. I may be the youngest person on the site, being only 17 years old.
Does “masema” by any chance come from the name of the character in The Wheel of Time?
Why yes. yes it does. As does the Uno. They are both from Fal Dara.
Carai en Caldazar!
Wait, wrong part of Randland. Death is lighter than a feather, and duty is heavier than a mountain… and all that. 
Correct. However I am more into Elen sila lumenn’ omentielvo
It’s Carai an Caldazar.
You can either
a) shift suddenly from The Wheel of Time to Tolkien, or
b) be pedantic about Carai en Caldazar,
but picking c) all of the above is a little much, don’t you think?
Flaming geeks!
Yes i iz one. problemz bro?
There is no such thing as too much of anything nerd. And I am, whatever I say I am
If I wasn’t, then why would I say I am?
Sounds like a great start for an IF.
I should take the opportunity and introduce myself.
So I am Simon from Germany, 37 years old (soon 38) and working in a regular job which has not much to do with computers and programming.
When I was young I owned an Amstrad CPC computer. I did not even play the big classics, but some Melbourne House products such as “Kwah” and “Terrormolinos”. And there was a type-in game based on the movie “Back to the future” which kept me busy for some time; as I knew how to use Locomotive Basic, it was not difficult for me to develop a simple two-word parser similar to the type-in one, and I made up a short game of my own, just for me and a friend (it was rather silly, but funny).
I remembered the old times and searched the internet for text-based games about half a year ago, discovering that many people are still fond of interactive fiction today, and I was surprised how many games are available as freeware. So I got fascinated after a long time again.
As usual, if a topic fascinates me, I will feel tempted to make up my own stuff. I used Quest for some first attempts (which in the end are not too bad), then started to learn Inform 7 some months ago and already made progress with it. Some projects are quite finished, but I still optimize them. I remember the basic routines of Locomotive Basic, even after 20 years, and it is surely a help for understanding many concepts of Inform 7, like conditional phrases and variables.
I will do my very best.
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Hello all. I’m Wendy Nugroho, from Indonesia. Anybody here from Indonesia?
I’m a student of Sanata Dharma University in Indonesia and I’m studying Indonesian Literature.
I see no trace of Interactive Fiction in Indonesia so I’m going to keep finding. If it’s not going anywhere, I’m going to make my own trace as Indonesian. And I can’t move alone. Any hand stretched for me, I’d gladly appreciate it.
Welcome Wendy! Hope we can help you with whatever you want help with!
I see no trace of it out of the web. and, like it or not, the common language of the web is english
it’s hard enough to get 10 players for an IF, let alone outside this small community
but you can try…
Hello,
I’m xavea from Alberta, Canada. Currently 25 years old. I don’t recall my first IF game (unless a Carmen Sandiago game for MS Dos that was text with a few pictures counts. Does that count? Because that game is still pretty wicked.) but I do recall getting so completely hooked on a MUD in high school that my dad had to lock me out of the computer room so I would actually sleep at night.
I’ve been working on my first game in Quest, because I’m not a coding genius, but I’ve been poking a little bit at Inform as well and I think I might study up on that and attempt something with it at some point.
Good to meet you all!
Welcome to the zoo!
Welcome and well met, fair traveller.