Introducing Ourselves

General
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Hi, I’m Rachel (@Nycteris on Twitter). The first games I ever played were text games on the Commodore Vic 20. In college I wasted SO MUCH time on MU* - and tried coding some, but didn’t know what I was doing. I’ve been meaning to get into writing a game for decades. A few years ago I went to code bootcamp and switched careers, and then realized that I think I actually know how to program now (?). I checked out Twine, then realized I just don’t see any games “of the style I enjoy” in Twine and came back to Inform to try again.

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Welcome, Rachel! I’m right with you on wasting so much time in college on MU*! Plus, I’m getting into Inform 7 myself. Been going through Jim Aikin’s Inform 7 Handbook, which is a joy. I’d recommend it if you haven’t heard of it.

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Welcome to both of you!

Jim Aikin’s Text is a very good reference.

There is a hard copy available at this link if you are interested.

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Hello, I’m Jason, owner of fightingfantasy.net previously fightingfantasy.org (long story, hospitalization, domain name lapsed, painful memories etc.) since 1999. Home of my homebrew languages ABML and SEL. Can’t believe I’ve only just learned of your forum. Got a FB group?

Oh I made a meme btw, hope it doesn’t get me banned as soon as I begin…

gamebooking3
gamebooking31000×1500 263 KB

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Awesome meme. Now I actually want to hear that band strike up and Ewan McGregor do the VO.

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I’m Harry. AKA Ramstrong. I left IF a long time ago due to destructive Usenet community. But someone referred me to this group. I have been lurking for some time and I like what I see. So, I’m thinking of returning to IF, especially since the format has tremendous potential for growth.

I use Raspberry Pi exclusively, those activities that I cannot do with a smartphone. I see that many systems have sprung up and went. I’ve been lurking down by Emily Short’s Narrative IF, as well. It looks interesting, although I’m not sure that’s for me.

Does anyone here use Mike Taylor’s ScottKit? I think that looks convenient to use as Introduction to IF Tutorial (as a writer).

Here’s hoping this community will grow even better.

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Hi Ramstrong,

Welcome.

I use an RPi 4 as my primary computer. It is ideal for Inform 6 and Dialog development. I am currently working on an entry for the Punyinform Jam1.

Inform 6 and TADS are my preferred development languages. Both have a wealth of tutorial documentation. Dialog does as well. Inform 6 well maintained and Dialog is still technically in beta but very functional.

Adventuron also has a very good introductory learning website.

Lots of opportunities and good support here on Intfiction.

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Hi fos1,

I like Inform6. I downloaded it and will try to get something done this weekend. Thanks for the pointers for other devkits, too.

I tried to install scottkit, but unsuccessful. I suspect some kind of missing library for Ruby. Unfortunately, I don’t know Ruby. Not sure which forum I should take this to.

Thanks again for the welcome.

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933

Hello, my name is Kory. I used Inform 7 for a gaming event. The theme for the event was to make a game under 1.44 MB in 2 weeks. Thanks to some of the help I go on this forum, I was able to complete my game and enter into the contest.

I have previous game development experience with some other engines too.
RPG Maker VX Ace
RPG Maker MV
Visual Novel Maker
Pixel Game Maker MV
Solarus
Ren’Py

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Hi Kory,

I enjoy themed game jams. There a couple going on now, one Parser Comp starting in a few days and Punyinform Punyjam1 which ends in a few days.

Consider joining ParserComp.

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Hi! I’m Tim, an American history graduate student working on making a historical interactive game for my final thesis project. I grew up on Zork, Wishbringer and all those classic Infocom titles. Hopefully I can learn Inform 7 well enough to pull it off. Here’s hoping…

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Welcome!

There are not enough historical games out there. I wish you all the best with yours.

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> z
Time passes.

A newcomer, having lurked like a grue for decades out on the periphery of the interactive fiction community, steps into the light.

You see Joshua here.

> x Joshua

He is a happily married cis-het father of two with pink skin, thinning hair, too many degrees, an obscenely excessive number of hobbies and an audaciously absent Oxford comma.

“For the first time, I am finally going to finish a game! I’m committed to submitting to PunyJam#1. This has been a long time coming!” he chirps, cheerfully.

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Thanks! Some of the historical tidbits I picked up from games of my youth are still with me. Hopefully I can perpetuate that.

:slight_smile:

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Hi, I’m Frank. I’ve been posting to the forum for a while.

My first run-in with text adventures was when I was perhaps 7 or 8 back in the eighties. I used to spend the summers with my grandparents. My grandfather had an MS-DOS PC with some games including “Stugan” (“The Cottage” in English). This game was amazing for a kid like me who had relatively recently learned to read and write. I really enjoy MUDs and text adventures to this day, but it’s a bit of an on and off thing, as other things come along and steal attention intermittently.

Fast forward to when I was 11, and I managed to talk my parents into letting me use some money in a savings account to buy a computer: a Commodore Amiga 500 computer (still my favorite). Just so that I wouldn’t use the computer for just playing games, my mother sent me to weekend classes in BASIC programming, and I quickly realized: “wow! I can make my own text adventure games now!”. I’ve been making my own small text adventures, mostly for my own personal enjoyment off and on in the last 30 years or so now (time flies!) using various programming languages.

On this forum I’ve mostly been posting on the topic of Scott Adams games. Since I discovered them perhaps 10 years ago, I was struck by the elegance of the concept, more than the actual merits of the games themselves. I believe (perhaps foolishly) that the simplicity of this approach has more merit than people give it credit for.

The most serious IF/text adventure projects I’ve made are related to the Scott Adams engine:

None of the above projects are abandoned, and if you’re using them and you run into some problem, I’ll be happy to help out. The world just has too many interesting things competing for time and attention sometimes and priorities are hard to make.

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I’m interested in ScottKit. I tried the Ruby version by Mike Taylor, but some missing library means I couldn’t get it to run. I see that sk2sadat is in perl. Am I correct in assuming that it does not depend on external library, and that the syntax follows ScottKit instructions? If so, then I’ll get it and hopefully will finally be able to create my own SA game. Thanks.

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I’m Bob, I’m 51 and I recently began learning Inform 7. I have 20 years general programming experience but I’m still getting acquainted with the basics of Inform 7.

I’m a language enthusiast in general, and together with programming, it’s fun to play with objects in this space. I’m interested in short stories or concept puzzles with bizarre parameters.

I’m already thankful for the help I’ve received while browsing around the forum!

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Hi Bob. An Elf named Bob just guided me under the mountains to bring me to Troll-land. (I’m playing The Lost Children by Larry Horsfield). When we arrived, he promptly fell asleep. You wouldn’t happen to be that Bob, would you?

Anyway: welcome Bob.

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Understand “Bob” as a member of intfiction.org. Understand “Bob the Elf” as Rovarsson’s guide. Instead of asking Bob if he is Bob the Elf: do nothing.

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I don’t speak Inform 7. I program in ADRIFT. Could you rephrase that in terms of “must/must not”-conditions? In a dropdown-menu so I can understand… :upside_down_face:

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