Introducing Ourselves

General
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Hello everyone,

Name: Stephan “Joey” Cottrell
Also known as: “The Foxaroo”, “Michael Sauerpüss” and “Sebastian.”
Location: Sydney, Australia
Age: 40 this year (born 1969).
Profession: Client Service Officer grade 1 (and I hate it).
Tertiary qualifications: 1991 Associate Diploma of Data Processing AKA “That utterly useless TAFE course which was 5 years out of date when I graduated.”
Handicap: Dyslexic - Ver*y slow learner.

First started playing IF with colossal cave and was enthralled at the descriptions such as “walls that are frozen rivers of orange stone” and the Sorceror’s Lair where “incandescant blue light drips from above and evaporates before hitting the floor” (or it was something like that). Then I moved onto Zork and the other Infocom games including Deadline, Suspended, A Mind Forever Voyaging, Hitchhiker’s Guide,Bureaucracy, Leather Goddesses of Phobos (not all of which I was able to finish).

Wanted to write my own games, but didn’t get very far since I needed to program them from scratch. Recently found Inform 7 and have embarked on my first project that I hope will be fairly simple. Already I’m running into problems already and hope to find people who can give me advice. I’ll post my immediate difficulties in another thread.

My first project is taken from the Dr Who series where the player is a young Time Lord/Lady whose Tardis has crashed and needs to scavenge for tools and components to get it working again. My hope is that the linear nature of the puzzles will make this not too difficult a project to complete.

My long-term goal is to write an IF based on The Goon Show, which will be highly challenging due to the laws of physics being almost completely ignored in the style of that show.

I’m a fair writer of prose and programming, though I’ve had no formal training whatsoever in Object-Oriented Programming. I’m in the very shallow part of the learning curve at present and would really appreciate some help.

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Well, this won’t be my first post, but only now I found this corner :slight_smile:

My name is Leandro Ribeiro and I’m a physics teacher in Portugal.

I remember playing text only games when I was a kid (something for the ZX Spectrum), but I never got to know and love the genre fully. I read/played alot of Fighting Fantasy books (Aventuras Fantásticas, in Portugal) and I’m a graphic adventure game lover.

Recently I found myself playing a game called Violet. Beeing both an adventure game and a literature lover, I thought that the IF world had much to give me. I also thought I could give writing an IF work of my own a try.

And now I’m learning two things: Inform7, to code the game, and correct english, so that I can write the game as I would in portuguese.

I’ll need help, of course; I’ll pest you about it, of course :slight_smile:

Regards,
Leandro

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Would you believe I had almost the entire Aventuras Fantásticas collection? :slight_smile:

Welcome aboard!

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Hi!

Not much to say about me, just that I’m a newbie to IF. I like to write (although I don’t do nearly enough), so I’m working my way through the i7 manual in the hopes that eventually I’ll be able to take a stab at writing my own games. :slight_smile:

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Hi there, I’m Mike. I’ve been on and off raif for years, but I decided to step into the modern world and check this site out.

So hello! If you don’t know me from over there, I’ll mention a couple marginally relevant things:

Right now I’ve sort of given up on ever producing anything substantial, but I’m enjoying being an armchair IF developer. I am a computer programmer in the field of computational linguistics, so IF is never far from my mind.

I’m just barely old enough to have been an Infocom fan when Zork was new, but I’m really pleased with the direction IF has taken in modern times. I’m still working my way through the Masterpieces, though, and I will probably post a few more Infocom reviews.

I’m also a musician and I have an interest in audio for IF or even audio-only IF.

I live in Philadelphia.

Nice to meet you all!

  • Mike
127

Hello,

Steven Westwood here. I go by the name username Ste. I used to be called Hoais (due to an accident when I was registering) Anyway, I’m mostly new to this board and like IF. Correction. I like it a lot.

The first IF I ever played was Supernova by Apogee Software. (It’s now freeware and is still available.) I was completely captivated by it. I played it on an old TravelPro Notebook in the family’s garage one summer. Ah, those were the days… :slight_smile:

I never was able to finish it, though. However, I did finish Beyond the Titanic, by the same author.

I am trying to learn as much as I can about Inform and make a game. It’s my dream to make a game on the caliber of Infocom. Also, one of my goals is to promote the awareness of IF and get people interested in it.

Anyway, I am glad to be here! :mrgreen:

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I didn’t know Apogee had made IF. (I think of Wacky Wheels when I see their name.) Looking the game up, I see that it’s by Scott Miller. Producer and co-designer of Wolfenstein 3D, Raptor, Terminal Velocity, Max Payne and Prey, according to Wikipedia. Interesting.

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Yes. Apogee was started by Scott Miller out of his house. :slight_smile: As far as I know, those were the only two IF games they made. Tip: Run Beyond the Titanic in DOSBox (a free dos emulator at dosbox.com/) or it will crash with an error.

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Hello!!!

My name is joseph and I am an IF newbie. I first found ADRIFT and thought it was cool. Then I found Inform 7 and was blown away. I am an electrical engineer and 38 years of age. I live in Southern California. I am currently learning the ropes of I7. I do my best to find the time it takes to learn I7 and to create IF as my two sons keep my on my toes. But I would not change that for anything.

I am glad to have found the forum and to be here among other fans of IF!!

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Welcome Joseph!

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Hello all,

I’ve been playing IF for a couple years. The first game that I really sunk my teeth into was the Adrift game “The PK Girl” by Robert Goodwin, which turned out to be a great introduction to IF.

As far as platforms, I really have no preference and even enjoy playing older AGT games.

Having my introduction out of the way, I’m looking forward to delving deeper into the forums and am hoping that I may have something useful to add when the time comes.

P.S., I really don’t have a decent explanation as to why I’ve been a member for a year without posting. I’m surprised I haven’t.

133

Hello!

My name is Rob O’Hara, but most of my online friends know me as Flack (short for Jack Flack). I live in Oklahoma and I’m in my late 30s. Married, two kids, and I work for the man doing domain administration, network management, and computer security.

Our first computer was a TRS-80 Model III, which we got back in 1980. I cut my adventuring teeth on that machine playing the old Scott Adams adventures. A couple of years later my dad sold the TRS-80 and got an Apple II. A few years after that, my dad went the PC route while I got a Commodore 64. I spent the majority of my youth behind the keyboard of a 64. In the mid 80s my parents opened a small local computer software store, where I spent my time after school hanging out and playing games “demonstrating them” for customers.

So, anyway, here we are today. I dabble in a ton of different hobbies. I’ve written and self-published a couple of books: Commodork: Sordid Tales from a BBS Junkie and Invading Spaces: A Beginner’s Guide to Collecting Arcade Games. I collect full size arcade games (I have about 30 or so at the moment). I record a semi-regular podcast called You Don’t Know Flack, which focuses on some geeky aspect of my life. I used to collect video game consoles and games for them as well as old, retro computers, but I’m kind of at the point where I own most of what I set out to buy and I’m out of room to display anything else! In the middle of all of this, I update robohara.com on a regular basis. Whew.

To be honest, up until six months ago I hadn’t thought about text adventures since the early 80s. I’ve been following the development of Get Lamp, which got me re-interested in the topic. Back in the day I tried to write a few of my own text adventures, although I didn’t have the skills to write the game engine back then. After talking with Robb Sherwin on multiple occasions, he pointed me toward Inform. I’ve written a couple of very small adventures in Inform over the past few months, mostly just to learn the language. I’m not a programmer by trade, but I’ve written several VB apps and know enough scripting to let me be lazy at work, so I’m familiar with the concepts.

I’m kind of excited about all of this right now because, as both a writer and a “computer guy”, this seems like something I should be doing. I’m still learning the ins and outs (read: the basics) of Inform, but I’m really looking forward to putting together some neat stuff with it in the very near future!

1 Like
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Welcome Rob, and a belated welcome to Silas!

I saw your “interactive review” of Get Lamp, Rob. I thought that was a great idea for getting familiar with the language, and it was enjoyable to “read.”

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Greetings to the community!

I thought I’d introduce myself and represent the moniker “Jeff” (as there seems to be a bit of a lack of them here in the forum). :wink:

I’m 53, a retired IT professional who now drives an over the road semi for a living (less stressful than IT ever was!). My interests lie in developing my faith, being with my lovely wife of 23 years and sailing small boats. I’m also a guitarist of 35 years experience with a love for playing the blues. I read voraciously and the Barnes & Noble salespeople just smile and nod their heads knowingly when I enter the local B&N store. (Now I have a Nook with 3G and download content while I’m on the road).

I first started playing computer games in 1975, a text only version (printed out of course) of Star Trek on a PDP 11 at the University of Missouri in St. Louis. Not that I was attending there at the time (I was enlisted in the Navy) but a friend of mine had access to it and we were allowed to mess around when others weren’t using it.

I bought my first personal computer a few years later, a Timex Sinclair 1000. Playing games like “Hunt the Wumpus” triggered something in my gray matter and I was hooked! Later, on the Commodore 64, text based games like the Zork series, the Hitchhikers Guide, Gateway II and others, lead me down paths of imagination that still draw me in to this day.

I’ve been messing about with different IF authoring systems, and I must say I like Inform the best. TADS is very capable as well, but after writing programming code for a lot of years, TADS code is just a bit too much like what I used to write for a living! Inform’s syntax reminds me more of the “predicate calculus”, a formal logic system used in things like computer linguistics, an area that I’ve had a consistent interest in for many years. I hope eventually to write an extension, if possible, to give Inform users a chance to write code that allows the system to respond in a more “intelligent” conversational manner. We’ll see how that progresses.

I also see a new IF market emerging in tablet computers, such as the Ipad, the Archos 5, the HP Slate and others. Perhaps we’ll see an IF Renaissance in the coming years! :slight_smile:

Well, a bit longer than I intended, but if you got this far, thanks for reading! I see a number of familiar names here from the int-fiction newsgroup and I’m looking forward to being part of this wonderful community!

Cheers!

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That’s quite a journey, Jeff! I envy you for getting out of the computer business.

I have similar feelings about Inform. I’ve grown to like Python quite a lot, but sometimes I just want something different. In fact, I’ve been working on an extremely complicated text parsing routine in Python, and I keep thinking “I should really rewrite this as a rules-based behavior, so I can easily access some kind of “why the rule failed” message…”

I look forward to seeing what you produce with I7.

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Hi capmikee … Yep, it was fun while it lasted!

Now I find myself with time to devote to other pursuits. I drive week on, week off for my current employer so I have time to mess around with other stuff. I think I spent most of my IT life 24/7/365 keeping systems up … “Home? You mean I live somewhere besides HERE?” :open_mouth:

Good luck with your parser. I’ve always thought Python was a very cool scripting language and used it myself quite a bit over the years. Between Python and the Bash shell, I think they covered 98% of my maintenance and automation tasks.

However, Inform’s rule-based system is very intriguing. It also looks quite flexible though I’m really only starting to study it in depth. I still need to understand how the rules are parsed and “fired” but that will come along. I used to mess around with an expert system called CLIPS: clipsrules.sourceforge.net/ when I was working on an intelligent weblog processor. Cool stuff, and I’d like to see if I can implement something similar, but simpler, in Inform7. If it works out, I think folks may find it interesting…

Cheers!

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Welcome to the forums!

Getting out of IT was the best decision I ever made - nowadays I’m on the road, too, driving a bus in local traffic. Very much less stressful than IT - in IT, I kept taking my work with me whenever I went home (I was in software engineering), getting stressed out and finally into the point where I couldn’t sleep for more than 2-3 hours a night, and even that in parts, and couldn’t look at a computer without feeling sick in my stomach. And that was while I still was studying IT and working in it on the side! (And it’s one of the reasons my previous marriage broke up…)

So in the end, I decided to quit IT and do something else - ended up driving a bus, which I’ve now been doing on average 37.5 hours a week for the last two years, and find I again enjoy living, find I again enjoy computers… and my new wife and the kids we have (one a step-daughter, 3 1/2, while our son is a little over 2 months… and by force, i’m about 6000 miles apart from my family, but we’re working on getting that taken care of).

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Thanks for the welcome rioshin! I’m happy to hear that you’ve also found “happiness after IT” as well. It’s a funny thing, we’re both doing jobs that are considered “low tech” compared to what we used to do, yet, there’s satisfaction to be had … :slight_smile:

During the years I did IT, I also owned and operated a small local Internet provider company, which I built from the ground up. It took a lot of time and dedication, lot’s of burning the midnight oil, traveling withing a 6 state area, etc. Fortunately, my second (current and last!) wife was very understanding. There were a lot of nights I “brought work home” and brooded over things and she was there for me.

So, if you’re willing to say, how is it that you’re separated from your family? 6000 miles is a long, long way. :frowning:

Cheers.

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Yeah, I’m willing to talk about it. :slight_smile:

After my divorce, when I felt ready to start looking at maybe entering a relationship again, I happened to stumble upon a Filipina. Well, we started talking, we fell in love… and I visited her in the Philippines last November. We ended up together, she ended up pregnant - and this summer I was there again, this time ready to say the “I do”'s in front of the judge and to be there for the birth of our son (who looks very much like me!). We’re currently in the process of handling the requisite paperwork in getting them over here - her, my step-daughter and my son, but it’s slow - seeing they live in a third-world country, it’s natural that I must support them, which means I can’t afford to pay for all the paperwork as quickly as I could otherwise, and still manage to save money for their tickets here. A hard situation, being 6000 miles apart, but we’re managing it - in the year and a half that I’ve known her, we’ve managed 10 weeks together. And now it’s looking like it’ll take at least a year until I get to see her and the kids again, other than online. Rough on the emotions, but if I were given the option to do it all again, knowing what I now do, I wouldn’t even hesitate. :slight_smile:

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Well, my friend, that’s and interesting story! I spent some time in the Philippines in the '70s, the islands are beautiful and the people very pleasant. I hope you’ll see your family soon and I applaud your dedication and perseverance! I know how tough it can be to be separated from loved ones myself. Hang in there and before you know it, it’ll all be said and done! :wink:

Cheers!