Introducing Ourselves

pokes head in Hello, I have been noodling with text games off and on since my teens, currently I am noodling with Twine specifically.

Hello and welcome! Happy noodling!

Helloā€¦!

Iā€™m Tsukum. Iā€™m a high school student and amateur writer/programmer. I discovered parser IF when looking for free games online when I was a little kid, and I was blown away, haha. Like, someoned combined my two favorite things EVER? Video games and books?! TOGETHER?! Since then Iā€™ve been hooked, really. (I am also partial to traditional ā€œvisual novelsā€ and that kinda stuff.)

Iā€™ve lurked here for a while, and Iā€™m finally making an account to be able to join in discussions. Iā€™m teaching myself to author in Inform 7.

Nice to meet you all!

Welcome, newcomers! Great to have more people here of all ages!

Initially posted this as a thread of its own but it seems better to be here:

Hi there! Iā€™ll be honest, I didnā€™t know such a community existed - though the world being what it is and the internet being infinitely deep, I always suspected that somewhere hiding beneath the flotsam of popular culture there might be.

I came a little late to the party, born in 1986. But we were poor and I didnā€™t get a computer until 1997, and it was an old IBM 286. A pre-installed copy of QBasic and a copy of ā€œCreating Adventure Games on Your Computer (1983)ā€ from the local library http://www.atariarchives.org/adventure/ was my introduction to that world. I still remember how proud I was of that first game. Unfortunately all remnants of the source code perished due to water damage on the antiquated 20MB hard drive of the 286. Around the same time I started playing MUDs, my longest and still-current playership being at Ancient Anguish (www.anguish.org)

Iā€™m really pretty excited that this community exists. I was actually looking for more books like the above mentioned, and came across a wikipedia article that mentioned this community. I was thinking about spending some time ā€œretro programmingā€ using BASIC for old-timeā€™s sake, as Iā€™m a professional developer these days working on websites and writing a MUD engine in my spare time. But Iā€™ve read some stuff that suggests youā€™re better off using tools specifically tailored to this purpose. Is that true? Thanks

If your goal is to make a game that people will play, an existing IF development tool is better. Theyā€™re polished, theyā€™re easy to work with, and they produced polished output from the get-go.

If your goal is to start a programming project on a retro platform, thereā€™s nothing wrong with that. Have at it. :slight_smile:

Hi all!

I was born in 1987, one year later than merlinfire, but I too was influenced by ā€œCreating Adventure Games on Your Computer.ā€ :slight_smile: In elementary school, that book and a few others taught me some BASIC, and I wanted to implement Monopolyā€¦ but I couldnā€™t even imagine how to write the Community Chest cards. I wanted them to be configurable data, but each card had special behavior.

Later I had some middle school friends who were into MUDs, and I was excited to study various systems for IF and MUD writing, including Inform and TADS. As I learned more about programming, I started sketching up a (really naive) programming language to represent PokƩmon TCG cards, and most of my projects since then have been programming languages.

Last year or so, I found the right friends to spark a different kind of motivation. I started actually building out some story outlines, drawing illustrations of my characters (if only to get the point across to a better artist!), and even a really basic procedural generator and a simple tabletop game. Iā€™ve hacked a little bit in Seltani, but I keep trying to use storytelling styles that donā€™t quite fit into that medium.

I still program, but as this writing trend continues, you may see some completed IF from me. :slight_smile:

For the moment, Iā€™ve signed up here just to offer bug reports on the 18 Rooms to Home thread. :smiley:

Welcome aboard!

Iā€™m not sure whether to be proud or embarrassed. I think Iā€™m going to settle for ā€œAchievement Unlockedā€.

if our birthyear is important, iā€™m from december 1987ā€¦

is there an age range to people who like IF?

I stumbled upon it just a month or two-three ago, i knew of its existence before thatā€¦ but seeing how accessible it is, i got so swept up in trying to make oneā€¦
Iā€™m not even that good at playing IF xD lots of fail.

I have IF friends ranging in age from 16 to 65. I donā€™t think it appeals to a specific age group over another. :sunglasses:

Just the smart cool people!

Edited this post to reply to the next post, because I didnā€™t want this to derail the introductions thread any further:
To clarify my intent: Smart, Cool, and Sexy are all subjective terms.
Yes, even Smart. Because my IQ is 163 and Iā€™ve got more stupid than most cats combined. #scienceā€™d

IF also appeals to some of us who are neither cool nor sexy, and not more smart than the average person.

(I get that youā€™re just having a bit of fun, but for some reason that kind of talk just gets me slightly annoyed.)

I think youā€™re cool!

You donā€™t know me.

Youā€™re still the guy who GOT ME ON TV. (Well, okay, it was Trumogottistā€™s ā€œFrasse and the Peas of Kejickā€ game being featured on TechTVā€™s ā€œCinematechā€ tv show, but since I helped betatest Frasse, I felt like I was on tv, too).

:stuck_out_tongue:

Hello

My name is Felicity and Iā€™m a writeaholic.

Iā€™ve been writing novels for longer than some of you have been alive (Iā€™m in my 30s, but I started early) and somehow only truly discovered IF this year. But I became obsessed fast. Iā€™ve finished two games (one of them 60,000+ words), outlined another, and Iā€™m writing a fourth one at the moment. There will definitely be at least one more this year, for the IF comp (yep, havenā€™t started that one yet).

One of the finished games is free via itch.io/jam/wag-challenge/rate/29091

It takes about twenty minutes to play, and is called THROUGH THE WOMBAT HOLE in tribute to Lewis Carroll.

Oh, and I have a regular-variety print (and digital) novel coming out in 2016, for those of you who still real non-IF stories :stuck_out_tongue:

Felicity Banks
@FBanksBooks
facebook.com/FelicityBanksBooks
FelicityBanks.wordress.com

Welcome to the community - so cool that you entered the WAG challenge! (I didnā€™t have the time to join, but it sounded like an amazing opportunity.)

Hi. I am Jeb. I am 6.

Hold the phoneā€¦ Eloise is 6.

cough

Anyways, Iā€™m actually in my early-30ā€™s. Married with children. Too many children.

Iā€™m a dreamer. I dream of one day writing full-time. Wait, I do that alreadyā€”as a technical writer. Just not in the capacity of fiction and interactive fiction. I am finding an engine to build my first IF work with (likely Undum or TiddlyWiki). My first work is going to be based on someone elseā€™s world (e.g. Mount and Blade), just to get my feet wet with writing fiction and the like. One day Iā€™ll hopefully, dreaming big, write original IF on an epic scale. I hope to have my first work done in about 6 months, no matter how small or incomplete. I guess thatā€™s enough for now. Iā€™ve ranted enough!