I’ve introduced myself here before, but I’ve also just blogged about IFComp, including a retrospective on my own personal IF history Interactive fiction and me, and IFComp 2022 launches | Viv's Academic Blog
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meowdy y’all, my name is solace! my first experience with IF was when twine started to get popular in the early 2010s. cry$tal warrior ke$ha got me interested in twine, and i actually dabbled with it and made a little IF thing based on the salem witch trials for a class assignment.
@sophia is my good (great, even!) friend and their incredible work with IF got me thinking… plotting… scheming… and i am planning to dip my toes into twine again.
in my daily life i’m a biochemistry phd student. i like to crochet, garden, and ignore my responsibilities. B)
excited to be here and to get to know everyone!
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My name is William “caranmegil” Moore. I first got into interactive fiction on an old IBM 186 in the 80s where I played the first King’s Quest and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. Ever since, I’ve used those two as the standard for what I expect out of games and adventures. This includes interfaces.
By day, I’m a lonely Software Engineer in Kansas City, USA. By night, I’m a dad to two kids and husband to a lovely wife.
Outside IF, hobbies re tabletop RPGs, where I’m a forever DM, and dice games.
Here’s to comraderie we all get here!
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That’s a mood.
Welcome to the forums!
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Hello!
My name is Manon, a long time game-enthusiast of French origin. Even if I have found the IF world on the internet quite recently (about a year), I remember getting those CYOA books when I was a kid (mainly the ones that taught you stuff for schools 
).
I have been putting my hands into the pudding and created a handful of games since (more or less finished). I usually hang around the Tumblr side of the IF world (it’s busy there too :P) or the Twine discord. Though, I’ve been lurking the forum for a bit now too…
Ask me about food and you will get your ears talked off 
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Hello everyone.
I’m Eric, 55 years young. I started gaming and programming in 1983 with a Sinclair ZX Spectrum and BASIC.
Had a brief career as a VBA and VB developer.
Got into AIF games and remembered the adventure games from Spectrum days. To me IF is immersive. I attribute that to being a tactical learner. IF give that sense of feel and control.
I’ve made my own games in ADRIFT 3.9 and 4, TADS, Inform7, and Twine. I started a game in Twine for the public, for YA, but never finished it. That’s because I wanted it to have controls that Twine just didn’t have. And I ruled out ADRIFT as it just runs on Windows. I ruled out Inform7 and TADS as they limit their audience with needing to download an interpreter. So I decided to write my games in Python and with that make my own IF engine. I spent the summer writing the engine and now to test it, I’m writing a game. Whish me luck.
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Good luck with your custom engine! You might also take a look at Adventuron, which is consciously Spectrum-flavoured but runs in the browser.
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You don’t need to download an interpreter for either Inform or TADS, you can play games produced with either in a web browser with iplayif.com. For example, a link to play Counterfeit Monkey:
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To me, this is actually a feature. It lets me (and other players) keep their stuff offline on their local machine, and also keeps accessibility settings and readability adjustments standardized across all games, much to the benefit of screen reader users, those who need high-contrast text, and those who need specific fonts.
And, as a developer, the presence of interpreters allows me to focus more on game code and less on implementing bridges between the game and accessibility tools (outside of the usual game design pillars like not forcing ASCII graphics on those who can’t see them, or providing alternatives when possible.)
Best of luck! IF engine implementation was a lot more difficult than I had originally expected, lol.
I tried making one in Java but got really hung up on two things.
The first was screen reader support, because—to the surprise of no one who has an interest in tech accessibility—there are extremely few resources out there to clarify how this is done in practice, such as bridging Java Swing to a screen reader, and prompting it to read specific things when the output changes. This was not a feature I was willing to compromise on either, because IF is a unique genre in how it provides amazing experiences for all players, sighted or otherwise.
The other really difficult obstacle (which, frankly, finally broke me) was the inefficiency of implementing game worlds once the engine was done. I didn’t want to make a dedicated editor, because it would have just been a code IDE anyways, and didn’t want to create my own file types, because interpreting a custom scripting language was a problem I have already tackled a few times before (and this engine was supposed to save me development effort), so I had then considered making the game data in Kotlin, by importing the engine as a library.
Anyway, these two major problems were what finally convinced me to return to TADS 3, because I would have put in way more effort for way less output by continuing with the Java engine. (I’m in a spot in life where I gotta really budget and manage my time and energy expenditure, unfortunately…)
I’m very curious to see how the engine implementation goes when applied to a game! Let us know when you have a demo!
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Thank you. I appreciate your insight.
Am I a glutton for punishment? Sure.
I like to code, I used to code in Visual Basic. I find Python to be a nice high level language but also a powerful one that is not resource intensive.
I also have a clear vision on how this engine should work. So far it’s working as expected. I can navigate, examine, and ask characters things. I’m currently coding the inventory system.
I’m not having the engine do everything. The writing has to pull it’s weight. The game modules have to do their job as well. So the scope of the engine is limited. I want to keep it that way.
I saw what happened with ADRIFT from versions 3.9 which was great to 5 which was abysmal because it was so frustrating to work with. The scope creep became outrageous. To me that made no sense.
If I can pull this off it should be good. I should be able to make executable games for Windows and Linux, maybe even Mac. But we’ll see. I’m taking my time.
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Hi everyone!
I generally just go by spellmotif, but Hex or Rose are also fine.
I’ve made a few Twine games before, mainly for some very fun college classes, but I’ve always had a passion for them. I think my first exposure to them was Porpentine’s games. This is my first year playing through and rating IFComp games, and so far it’s been very fun, as well as being my main driver for joining the forum.
I now prefer SugarCube though I started out with Harlowe. All of my HTML and CSS knowledge comes from my 12-year-old self’s passion for computer science and my 14-year-old self’s dedication to having a pretty theme on Tumblr. I have been, and continue to be, an avid enjoyer of all wizard content. I also run a D&D game that’s been going on for around two years now! In my offline life, I’m a disability and queer studies scholar.
It’s great to be here! 
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Hiya! I’m Frankie and I’ve found myself settled here thanks to the IFComp! I’ve always loved writing and gaming as separate entities, but finally I have found the inspiration to combine these interests into a hobby. I’ve written a few small games and am currently helping a USC student with her game thesis as a narrative designer and writer. Hopefully in the future I can find some work in the field as well~
Super awesome to meet all of you!
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Hi everyone! I’m Kat. I got dragged here by @sophia (hi!!).
I’m a 21 year old senior in college, hoping to graduate in May with a degree in game design. I primarily write psychological horror visual novels and short TTRPGs, but I’ve been hoping to dive further into parser-based interactive fiction (especially after some classes on Infocom).
When not writing, I’m super into slasher films, and I collect old PS2 games. Can’t wait to meet everyone here!
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Here goes:
Olive oil or butter?
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Arrrg! Olive, of course.
… both. Part of my family is from the South, the other from the North. I can’t choose 
(But for real, different dishes will require different kind of fat.)
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Lard. Mmmhhh…
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Oh it’s great in stews and pies!
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I mean… I use both when I prepare pasta.
Olive oil and salt to prep the boiling water, and then butter to make the garlic powder and onion powder stick to the noodles.
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There’s this great stuff for when you wanna go all festive:
Powdered eggs.
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