Hi Tracey,
I’m glad you are here and look forward to your work.
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Good day (or night) I’m Tekka and I’m completely new to programming on twine and I was very interested to make a story, I’m glad it seems this community is abundant
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Hello! I’m planning on submitting a game to IF Comp this year. It’s almost finished, so I’m hopeful at least.
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What kind of game. We want spoilers!
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Here’s my working version of the blurb:
On a dark and ominous night, two workers drive to the lake to do a job. It’s a dirty and difficult job, but somebody has to do it. It’s probably best not to think too much about it, or about the strange feeling that something horrible is lurking in the shadows.
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Hello. Mostly plan on lurking, but what would be a text adventure game with a lot of fight scenes in it? Though it may sound like an odd request, I tend to find action described through text quite compelling.
Anyways, nice forum this place has got.
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Hi Fernand! There really aren’t many fight-based text adventures out there, 'cause most is just “attack X” then a random damage dealt, then the other way, but that’s not super fun, because it’s a “kill X” over and over, etc.
And random dice roll style? Nah. Just UNDO if you get a bad roll. On and on. Which isn’t fun.
I haven’t found many that are worth it, but really, if you can do a text adventure with a range of types of attack and more complex “slice down at left arm” stuff, and each body part and moves… That would be really cool. I’d play that.
(Side note, generally recommended to post this in the “Introducing Ourselves” thread … 
I think the mods might move it just to keep everything tidy. But no problem just yet!)
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A post was merged into an existing topic: IF with fight scenes
Hello everyone. My name is Steve and I am an old toot who first experienced interactive fiction a LONG time ago. I was able to make a simple, silly experience for my kids several years ago and I have an idea now that I am thinking of doing.
Either my age is catching up to me or the details have changed because I am struggling to get going. I am not ready to tap out yet, but as it got late last night, I had the idea of checking into options.
Hopefully this is not in violation of forum rules and if so, admins please remove - but does anyone provide services? I would be willing to pay of course.
Thanks.
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Hi Steve!
So glad to hear of another old toot getting into writing IF at long last. This forum is very helpful and will answer any questions we can about design, coding, etc-- for free. I’d never have written anything without major help here!
First off: what program are you thinking of using? We can direct you to a lot of resources for getting started in any IF-writing tool out there, and there are committed whiz kids for each program who are excellent at solving problems.
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Thank you for the welcome Amanda.
I searched online and found Inform 7. To be honest,I have no idea what all the options are. I downloaded Inform 7 and read through most of the documentation.
I was/am somewhat confident because the information I read was basically what I remembered when I created the JH humor type story for my kids. I am not even sure what I used for this. I would have just searched then as well.
I have a few questions that will put my noob status on full display. When I did the story for my kids, it was for them so I never “published” it.
I have a crypto community that I want to play the game. Each story will eventually lead to a password they can use in real life for prizes. But, I am not sure if someone could just access the source file and “cheat” by finding all the answers. Another question I have is regarding game play itself. Do all games have to be hosted by a site - which would handle the rules and such?
I know I am exposing my very limited knowledge. And of course I am very aware that the average person may not think IF is as fun as I do so it could be a flop anyways.
Any direction or suggestions are greatly appreciated.
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Inform is a great place to get started, and you’ve done all the right things. The documentation is, er, dense, so asking a million questions about it is a daily occurrence here. I spend a lot of time searching here, because 80% of the time someone already asked that question and the answer is there.
Do not fear. Nobody could have been a ranker noob than me and I was afraid of people being mean to me about it when I first got here. But there will be no meanness. Start a thread with your questions. The proper place to do this is in the “Inform 7” section under the big bold “Authoring” topic on the main forum page for Inform questions, or under “General Design Questions” in the same place for more general questions.
This is a small community but we be mighty. The player base isn’t huge but it is seriously engaged. You will get technical help. You will get play testers. You will get reviews and feedback. All of it will be honest and constructive.
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I’ll echo everything Amanda said, and as to these points:
There are ways to extract much of the text from an Inform game file (they typically compile to a .blorb), but it’s literally just a string dump, and it’s not an easily findable option for folks who aren’t already engaged in IF. It’s also possible to obfuscate particularly important bits of text – like if there’s a password or key puzzle solution – so if that’s something that winds being helpful just ask!
As for online hosting, it’s not necessary, you can just send the game file out to folks – if you just send as a .blorb, they’ll need to install an interpreter, but that’s pretty easy. It’s also relatively simple to package the game file up in an html document with an embedded interpreter, so they can just run it in a browser without needing to download anything else.
Oh, and if you are looking for hosting, the IF Archive is available to upload stuff to, and many folks use itch.io for that purpose as well.
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This is awesome news!
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Like I said, I just did a search. If there are options that are better suited to noobs, I’m game to start there and work up to Inform 7.
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Some people have found their parser programming legs with Adventuron. The games look more like a ZX Spectrum offering but, you can use whatever font you desire (if you don’t like that pixelated look).
The classroom tutorial is excellent and you’ll have a working game in no time.
Use the super secret beta beta version for the latest features…
→ https://adventuron.io/betabeta/
However, the community for Adventuron mostly frequents their own Discord channel. Still, you’ll find a few here that can help.
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I assume from your post that you want to write parser based (typed player input) text adventures? In that case, Inform is a great choice because it’s a natural-language program that you write in English. But there are lots of people here who use TADS or Adventuron, etc, and who will extol its virtues to you. I use Inform because of the natural-language thing-- I had absolutely no programming background when I started writing IF, and it has served me really well.
There’s also a big, exuberant crowd of authors who write choice-based IF using programs like Twine, where the player clicks on options instead of typing.
All of these and more are beloved by their own users, but I can’t speak to whether they’re better or worse for beginners than Inform. I will say that if I can use Inform, anyone can, because it’s not possible to have less coding background than me. Since you’ve downloaded it, why not play around with it and see if it feels like a good fit? It’s a popular engine, so there are scads of examples of what the modern IF scene is doing with it over on IFDB if you feel like checking out a few new games. There are quite a few recommendations threads on the forum, but you can always start another one with whatever types of games you’d like to see.
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You’re not old.
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Inside, I am still 12. But I’m at that weird age in the 50s where you can no longer kid yourself that you’re middle aged unless you think living until 110 is a thing that can or should happen. Every body part still looks more or less usual if I view it from above, but seeing anything from underneath is a horror show. Like, the other day I was doing my crunches, which I am religious about, and I saw the skin of my forearm over my face and was like, “That is not my forearm. The skin on MY forearm has always, always been attached to the bone there.” Literally every month now something like this happens and the only explanation is that the oldening has set in. Also, I was annoyed at young people the other day and I had a “kids these days” moment and thought, that’s it. You are officially old, self.
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Love that word.
If you believe in reincarnation or the after-life or whatever, then it’s our bodies that age and our souls that continue to grow. I’ve met people whom I have considered to have old souls, and some of them are much younger than I. So in that context, perhaps, you have a pre-teen soul.
I like being older. Embrace it if you can.
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