Hello! I’m returning to the IF community after a twenty-year hiatus.
I’m a software engineer by trade. I also write traditional fiction as passion projects, mostly crime and speculative fiction. I’m wrapping up my latest novel and found my thoughts returning interactive fiction, so I waded back into the fray…
The game engine I first learned on in the 1990s was TADS. The game I’m developing today uses TADS 3 and adv3Lite. It’s based on a short story I tried writing (after several fits and starts) in the 2000s about a peculiar form of writer’s block. (Yes, I had writer’s block for a story about writer’s block.) I have high hopes I can finish it in TADS and call it “done.”
I also recently started a TADS 3 cookbook wiki, in the hopes of collecting as much sample code as possible for the community to use to write great TADS games.
Hi, I’m David Marques. I am 71, programming for over 40 years, since retirement making simple usually educational apps and games for fun and for my grandchildren.
When I started in technology after a brief career as a scientist, I worked at DEC and played Dungeon on the DEC-20. I liked it better than any electronic game I have played. At the time, I thought MUD and MOO would be huge and have great potential for education, but that turned out to not quite work, graphics was everything, and I am artistically-challenged. So my tech career was mostly in publishing (science and education) R&D technology. I only found out recently about Inform, so I thought I’d give it a try (still with education in mind). Just a beginner, but having a blast.
My name is Catherine – “Cat” for short. I am working on 3 Inform7 projects – 2 currently in “walk-through” stage with not much but Easter eggs for players to find (no real plot), and one simple 3-room game that I actually hope to get beta testers to help with just so the can say “Yes/No” on if I am giving players an actual CYOA. I have only been seriously writing for about 4 months, and am trying to figure out how to post works to a personal website, which means figuring out the answers to a lot of important, boring technical details that have already probably been answered on the forum.
I am also a quiet member of the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators (I do black&white stippling you can find on my Instagram page) and I like near future science fiction. I live in close range to Boston, so when the in-person meet-ups start there again instead of being virtual, I hope to attend.
I work on a MacBook Pro, so I don’t know yet how that limits what I hope to program. I want to write my next project for the an upcoming Hackathon in October, so I must learn to finally post my executable content online in a work-safe manner. If I can somehow do so on GitHub (which I just discovered), please tell me. Or if I have to set up a GoDaddy website, or Wordpress, or something newb-friendly, I will be happy.
I really don’t mean to be clueless, I am more of a writer than a programmer, which is why I am trying to learn as quickly as possible, so not to be a mindless pain.
Thanks for listening to a Lit Graduate ramble . . . (I should have taken more common sense computer classes!)
itch.io is often a good bet for posting game-adjacent things: if you have an HTML file, or a zip file containing an index.html and associated resources, you can upload it as a project and check the box saying that it’s a web thing and it should pretty much just work.
Hi all, I’m Quindo (they/them). I’m an artist from Las Vegas. I’ve always loved playing text adventure games and always wanted to make one. Never knew what they were called until I started to really look into it and found the Holy Grail (IFDB site). I’ve really enjoyed Shade. I’m barely a writer, don’t have a lot of coding experience but I’m trying my first game on Inform 7 on MacOS.
IF’s are a really beautiful medium. There’s so much engagement and possibility for intersection with problem solving and imagination. Ultimately, I just love games and want to make games. This forum’s been really helpful in my work so far. I’m grateful for all you brilliant people who’ve made all this possible. It’s really cool stuff. Anyway, I’m a n00b.
Wellcome to IF world.
It’s a great thing that you are so enthusiastic. I am a player, not a writter, but I let myself to tell you about reading reviews and play some example and singular games to learn how to create a game and discover new ideas. In addition, there are many source code games available.
You can post here any quote you have to get answered.
One game “Adaptive Defense” is very short and simple, once you understand what it is about.
The “To Samarkand” is a result of my trying several different things. The location descriptions came from my research for an app, and I thought going through these locations would be fun. I think it is still fairly easy, though perhaps longer than ‘easy’ should be? A bit complicated to test, so there might be bugs.
Neat! I’ve only taken a very short look yet, but your games both seem to have unusual settings, quite intriguing.
I’ll hopefully find the time to play more of them later, but I wanted to give three small bits of advice about “To Samarkand” quickly:
I think it would be a good idea to incorporate the directions which lead to the other locations directly into the description of the current location, so that the player does not have to use the “roads” command so much.
Mentioning the viable compass directions is a useful convention in interactive fiction / text adventures, and since “To Samarkand” has a close connection to geography, it would fit even better than usual.
I think you could just append a sentence at the end of each location, for example:
“From here, the Silk Road leads north to Vikramshila.”, or “A southern route leads to Tamralipta, while Nalanda lies to the west.”
(I noticed that “Adaptive Defense” also doesn’t seem to mention the “exits”/compass directions, which is unfortunate, because without an equivalent of the “roads” command, the player will not know where to go, except by trial and error – unless I was missing something there. That setting admittedly does not lend itself so well to compass directions, but it would be good to have some indication of where to go. Since you’re using Inform 7, you could for example adapt the example “Indirection” from the documentation, in order to give the directions other names.)
I think it would be good if you include a “help” command which briefly lists the useful commands that you mention at the beginning of the game, just so that the player can get a quick reminder without having to restart.
The map shown at the beginning is a really nice touch! I think it would be great if the player could enter “map” at any time in order to display it again.
And you could also consider adding your games to the Interactive Fiction Database over at https://ifdb.org/.
(Probably needless to say, but be aware that people will publicly rate and review the games, which can be nice and can result in very valuable feedback, but can also sometimes be frustrating, depending on how it turns out, of course).
I hope you get good feedback, but please don’t be disheartened if the feedback turns out to come in slowly, because at the moment, the annual IF competition is running, which is a very big deal here and usually absorbs a lot of the attention of the community. You’re of course very welcome to play and judge, too! You can find the games over at https://ifcomp.org/ballot.
Thank you, great advice, I had the roads listed at the end of each description, but took them out for the roads. But mostly that was my laziness. I will put it in both.
I wondered about help. Thanks for the nudge, I will add it.
Great idea of ‘map’, I will add.
My games have unusual settings because I am always exploring ways to create educational content in games or stories. As I spend some time studying something, I work it into a game both to help me remember it and to see if I can make educational content more interesting.
Hey! I’m Chloe (she/her). I’ve been playing IF on and off ever since middle school - it’s definitely been one of my persistent hyperfixations lmao. My specific IF tastes tend to fluctuate, but I tend to prefer longer parser-based games. I’m a huge fan of complex puzzles (though I feel no shame in using hints when I need them), but recently I’ve been diving into the more Lovecraft-inspired games. Currently making my way through Anchorhead, which I’ve somehow never played.
I also desperately want to write my own story, and I’m currently teaching myself how to use Inform, but I’m in my last year of high school and have very little time to work on it. :,) someday
Welcome, play, enjoy and share your impressions.
Chloe, you’re at highschool and talk about playing since middle school? This is your site by sure couse you own the “gift”, you are an adventurer and if enthusiast.
Please, tell us more about the games you have played till now.
I mean, I’ve dabbled in a lot. My introduction to IF was through Fallen London and A Dark Room, and then when I was younger I played a lot of Choice Of games? I remember playing Dreamhold at that time, and maybe starting Hitchhiker’s guide? I definitely never finished that. I eventually started playing more visual video games (although I still prefer games that don’t require a huge amount of skill, like SDV and Book of Travels), but recently I’ve come back to IF. I’ve been playing mostly longer parser games, and made my way through a lot of Emily Short’s stories (counterfeit monkey was actually my reintroduction to the genre), and I played A Beauty Cold and Austere, which as someone who’s good at math, I absolutely loved. Right now I’m going in between playing the IFcomp games and classics (as I mentioned earlier, I’m currently playing Anchorhead).
I’m Jens, and used to play text adventures and graphic adventures as a teenager in the 80s. Can’t remember if I ever managed to solve any by myself (“Asylum”, maybe). My mother tongue is German, so I can use that as an excuse why I often got stuck.
It may have helped to improve my English, I’ll never forget “HATCH EGGS”, but forgot in which adventure it was needed (and I’m pretty sure I didn’t came up with it by myself).
There always seemed to be two hearts beating in me: One for the arts (although I’m not an artist), one for science (although I’m not a scientist). Maybe that’s why I find the interactive fiction so intriguing: Because of its combination of story and ‘nerdyness’. I’d love to try writing my own text adventure, but as a dad of a little one there is not much time, so it’ll probably take a long time until I get there. Anyway, I find Inform 7 an interesting language, keeping the techie stuff to a minimum so that one can focus on the story - at least that’s my impression at the moment. I’ll probably will start a project in English, because learning how to write a text adventure in German seems to be too challenging - it’s probably better to make first steps in English first, but I may first play some adventures to get a better feeling again about nice puzzles and stuff.
