Introducing Ourselves

Welcome to all!

Hi Suho, welcome back to the world of IF! Since youā€™re in Cambridge, MA, do you know about the Peopleā€™s Republic of Interactive Fiction?

Hi Everyone,

Iā€™m brand new to this forum. My name is Nathan, Iā€™m in my mid-30ā€™s, and I live in Las Vegas.

I remember somehow getting into IF as a teenager. I actually played around with an IF programming language (I donā€™t remember which one) before I ever actually played IF. Besides that, I have extensive experience with DnD/GURPS/Most roleplaying games, and played MUDs for years.

Iā€™ve been in and out of the IF scene since 2001, mostly lurking on the newsgroups and a little at ifMUD, as well as following the IFComp. Iā€™m glad to be back! I really enjoy reading about IF (no really - dissertations, articles, books), playing IF (Iā€™m playing through some Infocom and random stuff Iā€™m finding on the IFDB) and creating IF (Iā€™m learning Inform7).

I look forward to reading through posts on this message board and getting more engaged in the IF community.

Thank You,

-Nathan

Welcome Nathan! Glad to have you. Thereā€™s actually an interesting new multiplayer IF system in testing, which Iā€™m sure youā€™ll run across if you read the posts here.

Hey all, iā€™m Hazel. Iā€™m 20, and from England.

I recently became interested in interactive fiction through the never-ending stream of Twine games that show up on Itch.io, and since Iā€™ve discovered those my interest has spread to interactive fiction in general.

Iā€™m also interested in writing, so Iā€™m currently in the process of writing a Twine game, and I also run a Discord server for the discussion of IF/twine.

Itā€™s a pleasure to meet you all.

Hi there Hazel!

Iā€™m not a lurker on itch.io, but it sounds like I need spend more time there!

Also, check IFDB for the latest and classic IF releases including Twine.
ifdb.tads.org/

Planet IF is a really useful IF blog aggregate for news and writing by many people creating, preserving and promoting IF.
planet-if.com/

Hi everyone,

Iā€™m John, 34, from England but now living in Vancouver, Canada. Iā€™m a writer of both interactive and non-interactive fiction, and Iā€™ve previously worked in the games industry. I launched my first Twine game, Seedship, earlier this year. Right now Iā€™m working on my second game, which Iā€™m planning to enter into the IFComp. Iā€™ve dabbled in playing interactive fiction for ages, but recently Iā€™ve become hooked on Choice of Games games.

Looking forward to getting to know you!

John

Hi John!
I played a short bit of Seedship and itā€™s pretty fascinating. Iā€™m sure itā€™s not the only space colonization/survival/resource management game, but this is really well done! I especially like how the readings all appear at different rates realistically and sometimes will flicker. Very impressive.

Thank you! I was pretty pleased with myself when I got that flickering to work right. :slight_smile:

Hi, John.

Seedship was great - not just as a game, but as a little science fiction story, too. With small touches you made me really care about the player character and its mission.

Looking forward for more games from you.

Thank you! And Iā€™m intending to enter this yearā€™s IFComp, so youā€™ll see something new from me there.

Welcome to Vancouver from a Vancouverite, John! Seedship is boffo, and Iā€™ve heard the same from a number of friends who all discovered it independently. If youā€™re game for a distraction, you should send a proposal to the Active Fiction Project, who post up small geographically-based CYOAs around town a few times a year. Youā€™re probably better connected than I in your relevant fields, but if you have any Vancouver questions please donā€™t hesitate to look me up! Cheers.

Hello everyone,

I am happy I found this place. Writing an interactive fiction has been in my head for quite a while.

I am a published author (not in English so you do not know me) and I grew tired of it. I do not want to publish anymore. I have been through a personal drama that ruined a lot of my positiveness, and even before that, I am actually quite bitter at the experience of publishing. I tried six times and in the end all that remains is a deep feeling of unsatisfaction.

But I am overcoming this and decided to write again, downgrading myself to amateurism because it feels better this way. And the world of literature suffers of such an acute sclerosis that I feel like I can do better than that if I walk out of it.

I have been toying with the idea of writing an interactive fiction for various reasons but I have very little experience of it. I played a handful of CYOA books when I was a teenager. I played a few videogames based on a storyline and I enjoyed them a lot, they considerably influenced my future writings, but all of these games are from the nineties. I am terribly out of touch with whatever is being done today and I am very intimidated by this forum where everyone seems to have gone much further than me, and I feel like whatever idea I have will sound ridiculous and clichƩ - like you already did it all and whatever I had in mind has been done over and over again. But I am willing to give it a try.

I hope to find some help in finding the right software to develop my story. I do not require much technology but I would like to try it at my pace, as this is primarily a hobby - which does not mean I wonā€™t do it seriously. I will take my time anyway.

Nice to meet you all, I will try to contribute as much as I can, if by any chance I can help anyone with my humble contribution to whatever conversations are going on.

Welcome! Have you looked into Choicescript at all? It does a good job of allowing literary-type games, which are almost book-like but allow for choices and stats.

Thanks Craig - I was thinking of using Twine. I do not know about Choicescript but I will look into it.

The way I see it, there would be opportunnities for the reader to click on several options to go to other parts of the story. I would need to have hidden stats (mostly variables) so that some choices are made automatically. I wanted to include the opportunity for a reader to get involved and immersed by carrying an inventory. It is nothing complicated and I can find my way around it as long as I can use variables. I will take a look at Choicescript anyway! Any good work to see in Choicescript, to give me an idea of what it can made?

You should try Choice of the Dragon and/or Creatures Such As We to see some of the possibilities.

ChoiceScript sounds like a match. Stories are generally prose-heavy with high-level choices. The stats can be revealed or not. You can direct the reader to a bookmark based on a stat, or gray out unselectable choices if you want the player to be aware of them.

Also, CS has a new IDE that helped me a lot.
choicescriptide.github.io/about/

Thank you guys I will definitely check these, in particular ChoiceScript! I will let you know what I think about it.

Long-time player, first-time author, here. Nice to meet you all! I am going to try to submit something for IFComp 2017.

Question: I just tried to make a post in ā€œInform 6 and 7 Developmentā€ but after submitting it I donā€™t see it, and my profile says I have 0 posts. Iā€™m guessing itā€™s waiting for approval, or I donā€™t have submission permissions because Iā€™m new, or something? I tried looking at the FAQ, but it doesnā€™t have many specifics on that point.

Thanks!

Welcome Chris! Yes, your very first post goes into moderation to be approved before it appears, because we sometimes get a whole lot of spammers showing up. But now that it has been approved (which it has) you can post freely. Again, welcome! And we should probably add that to the FAQ.

ā€¦hold on, it looks like I canā€™t actually edit the FAQ. That seems like a general FAQ about this kind of forum software. Hmm.