…if we want to? 
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I absolutely loved those books (and other similar series, like Fighting Fantasy, Lone Wolf, etc.) I didn’t realize that Bantam had let the trademark expire and it was picked up by a different company, who now continue to published (modified) original CYOA books. I also found this history page on their site pretty interesting. I think my favorite was The Mystery of Chimney Rock, apparently written by Edward Packard, who is credited on Wikipedia as the inventor of the CYOA style “gamebook”, the first of which he wrote in 1969, called Sugarcane Island (I’ve never read that one, will have to check it out). It was not published until 1976, however. I’m not sure how the 1969 date was authenticated. There were CYOA-style books published in the UK as early as 1972.
If Sugarcane Island was indeed written in 1969 that may make Edward Packard the great grandfather of interactive fiction (in ‘analog form’), predating Crowther & Woods. I wonder if there were any written works of IF that used “randomly nonsequential numbered passages” with choices to jump to other parts of the story that predates Sugarcane Island?
-virtuadept
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Uh, hi. I’ve been around for a few years but never introduced myself. Figured I’d correct that since I’m getting more interested in IF again.
Age: 50
Location: Chicago
Started off with: Zork I on the C64 c. 1983
Other interests: Doctor Who, cats, music that gives people headaches
Also known for: Asking dumb questions on raif back in the mid-to-late '90s
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Hi Daniel! Welcome to … well, I think you’ve been here before? I’ve never actually explored raif before, so I’m not sure about the similarities.
(We met earlier on the ZILF server. I also like Radiohead, if that gives you a clue. )
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Yes! We appear to make up the “Radiohead fan” contingent of the ZILF server 
I’ve actually had an account here for a while as well, although the last time I used it was to ask questions about the feasibility of writing a Bard’s Tale-style CRPG in Inform 7 (a quest I eventually abandoned on the grounds that I have NOWHERE NEAR the amount of technical know-how to pull such a feat off…)
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Made an announcement thread before even introducing myself, I suppose I should remedy that now. XD
Hi everyone, I’m Stephen Big. I’m Romanian, I turn 33 next week. I’m a musician. If anyone’s interested, I have two ongoing musical projects on bandcamp: The Groovy Times and Oceans of Stars.
I also write. I started off writing through an online game called NationStates, which got me into conworlds and worldbuilding. Then I started writing fanfics and publishing them on AO3.
I ended up finding about Twine thanks to a friend, Arrow S. Morgan, who previously used it for two chapters of their fic Group Chat. I had an idea I thought might make a good Twine project, and I went ahead and did it. I signed up for this social media site called Pillowfort, and that’s where I met @Norbez, who encouraged me to sign up here as well.
I don’t have a lot of experience with IF. I remember playing Adam Cadre’s Photopea, but I can’t remember if I played any other IF games. I did play some visual novels with branching paths and stuff, like Suzerain. And I’ve played some Choice of Games works. I bought Hollywood Visionary on Steam, lol. And now I’m considering buying Cliffhanger on Steam as well because I’ve replayed the first 3 chapters quite a lot by now. XD
I don’t know how to code - at all. I once took a web design course to try and polish my CV and I barely remember much from it. In general I guess I just use a computer, rather than know how it works. I think without Twine I never would’ve made something that resembled a game. Arrow told me back then that writing in Twine is about as difficult as “formatting a Reddit post”, which was very good news for me. XD
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I didn’t have any coding background either-- none at all, and I picked up Inform and found it very learnable. This forum is full of my disaster threads where I try to learn something and everyone patiently helps me, but I do eventually learn. If you decide to try the parser side of IF, Inform is well worth a shot.
Welcome! It sounds like IF is a next natural step for you.
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I didn’t have any coding background either-- none at all, and I picked up Inform and found it very learnable. This forum is full of my disaster threads where I try to learn something and everyone patiently helps me, but I do eventually learn.
That was me with Twine too, haha. Went into the Twine discord, ended up asking a lot of questions about code and Somnium or Maliface would answer them. The most embarrassing was when I wasn’t getting the different endings to show up right because I accidentally capitalised the variables. XD
Yeah, I think you’re right. I wouldn’t be able to code a “proper” game, but with IF, I can at least, uh, imitate the interface of a game. I guess I just gotta rely a lot on HTML and CSS and JS to make it look right. Now that I made my first Twine game, the next one’s gonna have to look better, LMAO.
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Hot take: it really doesn’t, you can make whatever you want to make.
(I just took a quick look at your game – I actually like the art style, and all the LA detail! I’ve worked closed to a lot of the places you cite, and it all feels pretty plausible setting-wise).
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Oh, thank you! I’m glad you liked it 
I guess it’s just kind of a personal thing. I finish an album and then part of me thinks “oh, man, the next one’s gonna sound better”, haha. Like I learn some stuff in the process of making it or get some new VSTs or whatever and the next one’ll apply those.
It’s kinda the same here I suppose. I wrote the text in Word and then transferred it to Twine, so I didn’t futz around too much with the formatting and mostly just went with Harlowe’s defaults. But hey, I saw some people in the Twine discord make some more impressive art styles or screens for their games and it made me think “huh, so that’s possible, I guess I could experiment with other stuff next”.
To give you an example, while I was making Clothes Commissar, I had this idea to align dialogues left and right on the screen, based on what character was talking. I had to drop that idea because it wasn’t working out right, especially not with character portraits added in. If I do that in another Twine project, at least now I know I’d need to have 3 boxes set up first - 2 for images on the left and right side and one longer one in the middle for the text.
It’s similar to how when I make albums, I try to make the liner notes at least look like they could’ve been actual albums, lol. I look up liner notes on discogs and stuff, take notes on how I can structure them, and then put in stuff like that to hopefully look like actual CD releases or something. XD
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Twine is, AFAICT, good for prototyping story UI, so I concur.
Best regards from Italy,
dott. Piergiorgio.
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Definitely is! I guess you just gotta use web design stuff to spruce it up after.
Hello! My name is Shark, I’m 24 years old and from the United States.
I’ve always enjoyed text-based games, CYOA games, and any game where you can insert yourself into a world and mess around with it.
I have a lot of ideas and a lot of passion projects, but they’ve never really taken off.
I’m honestly not really good at coding or learning how to code unfortunately, and I’ve finally given up and decided to join a forum so that people smarter and more experienced than me will hopefully give me the answers I need! I might not be very active because my life is just a little hectic, but I’d like to at least be here, for now, for this ridiculous project I’ve decided to work on, and do my best to find answers for my questions, and maybe learn a little!
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…doo doo doo doo doo doo! 
Welcome!
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Hello and welcome @Shark , perhaps you find a solution that envolves less coding. Maybe this is something for you:
- Inform7 which is in a language that looks exactly like English.
- Gruescript which is less coding I think.
- StoryMate which has a clickable editor GUI.
Inform7 example:
The Cobwebbed Room is a room.
That’s a room declaration. Easy, right?
A Youtube video about Gruescript (the first 7 minutes are blabla in my opinion) :
Other authors will probably give more detailed advice and tell about other solutions…
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All of those seem really interesting! Thank you so much for recommending them to me, I’ll be sure to check them all out Gruescript in particular seems very fun for a shorter, less-involved project!
It might sound a little silly, but I really like how everything’s color-coded. It makes it easier on my eyes somehow, haha.
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Hello! I’m Sunny (online alias), I’m 15 and from NJ (is everyone here an adult??). I’ve wanted to make an IF for ages – I’m a jack-of-all-trades and master of none when it comes to coding and I’ve been writing stories since elementary school. Any tips for getting started?
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Some are mathematically…
There are people of all ages here. All walks of life. I honestly don’t think you’ll find a more diverse, small community. Stick around long enough, and you’ll see what I mean. I represent the uneducated, incorrigible curmudgeons that lurk around here. There’s only one of us, unfortunately, but I hope to expand the club one day.
I would make a new post on these forums that states the games that inspired you to come here and maybe the authoring tool you plan on using. You’ll get all sorts of help and suggestions; even alternative tools that might better fit the types of games you want to make.
The biggest hurdle for new IF authors is recognizing the tools available and how to get started with them (Twine was especially confusing at first, for me). There are so many tools though. Some are well hidden from even Google searches, to be honest.
One site that I had wished I had known about early on is IFWiki. Competitions are listed in the calendar, which is a great way to share your games and find inspiration to actually finish a game properly.
Also, the authoring tool page is invaluable, if you’re the kind of person that likes to tinker.
→ https://www.ifwiki.org/Category:Authoring_system
Anyway, welcome to the community!
…and get off my lawn!
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Almost everyone.
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Welcome! It always makes me happy to see youngsters in IF. A lot of us are old farts, but we’re mostly really immature at heart.
Figure out what format (parser, choice) you want to write in and then just get going. You can ask a zillion coding/design/authoring/publishing questions here and you’ll get all the technical support and help you want. So dive right in and don’t be afraid to ask for help.
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