Hi everyone, my name is Michael and I’m many things: teacher, artist, animator. I also was and still am a huge fan of interactive fiction growing up - particularly graphic and text adventure video games.
I’m also here to promote, if I’m allowed, my latest project Misadventure Adventure (obviously where my username came from). It is a ‘slow paced’ piece of interactive fiction, basically a story with sections that you can vote on the outcome and it will be reflected each fortnight in the next story chapter.
We also allow comments to become canon - for instance, right now we are taking suggestions for unique creatures and monsters to occupy the world which I’ll be drawing and animating in the story as they appear.
We’re in the setup phase at the moment, so far people have voted on who the protagonist will be, the locations that the story will start in and continue into but next Friday the first chapter will be released in story form with additional illustrations and even some animation.
I know that this particular form of interactive fiction is not the norm here but I don’t really know where else to suggest it and your community feel like they might enjoy signing up - it’s free. There is a paid option but it’s just to donate really, completely unnecessary.
Sorry for the brazen promotion were just really excited about this project and want as many suggestions and votes as we can get!
Just another IF player and dreamer. I’ve been a part of ifMUD under the same username for a little over three years now, but I hadn’t taken the time to join intfiction other than reading the occasional linked post. The 2022 Parsercomp announcement was the most recent time I’ve been sent here, so I figured it was past time to join. I have a game I’ll be opening up to beta testers for Sping Thing soon, so there’s that. If any MUDkins are around, greetings. Also, if you haven’t visited ifMUD and you’re into interactive fiction, it is probably worth at least a visit. I have an interest in experimental features in IF and IF outreach. As for myself, I have a degree in Geophysics, but work remotely for a small non-profit centered in healthcare. Life is strange. Finally, my mind picks at the naming convention for this site: Intfiction. The other three choices that come to mind: Interactivefic. Interactivefiction. Intfic. Curious if there was thought behind the choice or if it was arbitrary.
Fair, but the intfiction.org domain was registered on August 1st, 2006. Intfic.com was registered on October 10th, 2014. Intfic.org was registered the same day. Intfic.org was an option without a close conflict for over 8 years.
The forum and site name goes way way back to days of yore and…I believe arose out of usenet? As specified, several websites have jostled historically for “interactive fiction” domain name and various permutations of “intfic(tion)” .org .com .net etc. over the years.
I’m shocked that nobody has ever at least outlined a bit of the history of the site on IFwiki. I know @zarf and likely others lurking who might know the whole story.
EDIT AFTER RESEARCH: from actual Wikipedia - the name did evolve from the original Usenet newsgroup:
After the decline of the commercial interactive fiction market in the 1990s, an online community eventually formed around the medium. In 1987, the Usenet newsgroup rec.arts.int-fiction was created, and was soon followed by rec.games.int-fiction . By custom, the topic of rec.arts.int-fiction is interactive fiction authorship and programming, while rec.games.int-fiction encompasses topics related to playing interactive fiction games, such as hint requests and game reviews. As of late 2011, discussions between writers have mostly moved from rec.arts.int-fiction to the Interactive Fiction Community Forum.[22]
Hi, my name is Dan, 51 and live in St. Louis, MO (U.S.)
I have been a H.S. English teacher in an alternative school for over twenty years. Several years ago education was going through a “gamification” phase which I thought was stupid since education is already a game.
I started realizing all of the similarities. We award points and credits. Students can level up. There are objectives. If you fail, you can respawn (theoretically), our lessons are design with as a series of minor tasks leading up to the ultimate big bad boss of a test or essay. In summary we are a simulation of the real world in which students can safely experiment and learn.
The problem is that schools mainly focus on the grind, which some people love, but is not always the most fun. I began researching fun because I am tired of everyone talking about GRIT and homeWORK and WORKsheets. Why is education fun for me, but not for others. I found the “Fourteen Forms of Fun” on gamedeveloper.com and have been building from there.
This is a link to a presentation that I did at a conference last semester.
Welcome from another fountain pen fan! I’m quite a bit older than you, but never used them at school, and only got into them a few years ago. I find them much easier to write with than a ballpoint, and I like using ink from a bottle, so they’re good on environmental grounds too. My favourite pens are a Visconti Homo Sapiens LE demonstrator, my Lamy 2000 and a Leonardo with a huge #8 nib. All piston fillers. I also tend to hand draft my IF game designs in a nice journal with a fountain pen, and find it really helps me be creative.
Thanks so much for the warm welcome!! It’s always nice to run into another fountain pen fan in the wild. I mostly just use my little pink Kaweco for my diary- most of my school notes are drafted on my laptop or phone with my bluetooth keyboard! I’ll usually bring out a drawing tablet and connect it to my laptop if I’m working through maths problems or that sort of thing, though. I love using nice journals- I have one set aside for my diary of course, but another little blue number from Peter Pauper Press for thumbnailing out projects and brainstorming. You’ve got some lovely pens in your lineup!
Hi, we’re the Sunroses! We’re uh, relatively new to IF in general, but we’ve played some good Twine games, and got introduced to text adventrues via the game Stories Untold, which we’ve kind of been chasing the “vibe” of, really.
We love writing, music making, worldbuilding, and other such pursuits; we hope to be able to find some community or at the very least some assistance with our Inform 7 tinkerings on here <3
Wow, I agree. I would have loved an entire game like the first chapter of Stories Untold but with a better parser (or a more realized two-word one like Adventure) that played with the horror of the game creeping out. The moment I realized what they’d set up was so chilling and I wish they’d done even more with that.
Hi there, I’m Anne and I started playing parser games with Anchorhead during the lockdown last year. and now I’m playing through the classics and having a great time. It’s something I’d always meant to get into - I grew up with point and click adventures but never got around to playing the text based ones, although I did have some gamebooks as a kid and I’m definitely interested in choice based stuff too.
I’m a player more than a writer right now, although I might give it a go eventually. I’ve been lurking on here for a while but thought I’d say hello.
SCUMM still holds a special place in my heart as well. Welcome and have fun playing through that catalogue of games. I’ve found that there are more IF games made in the last 46 years than time left to play them. The more you engage with the IF community, the more you’ll find that your “need-to-play” list grows faster than your “played” list.
I am also a player, since PAW’s days I have coded no game.
Welcome, there are some obviously needing for authors but almost more needing for players which play, enjoy and then give some feedback to these authors.
Hello! I should probably introduce myself more formally as I’ve been here for a little while.
My name is Kit, and I first discovered IF via Zork when I was in high school. I found it fascinating but also very frustrating. Several years passed and I was working on a poetry project in college that became sort of a hypertext multimedia thing, and someone reading it told me they thought it would be well suited for Twine. So, I made a Twine game called Consciousness Hologram, then a sequel a couple years later called Universal Hologram, which I submitted to IFComp 2021. I had a ton of fun interacting with other authors, playing games, and reading reviews. During the comp I started working on another game (titled Computerfriend), which will be released during Spring Thing this year.
I’ve enjoyed poring through this thread over the last couple days; it’s a cool record of hundreds of remarkable but very different people who all share the same interest.
