Is there a part of the forum for asking writing-related questions? For example, at the moment I’m doing research for my next project, and I found this old map of home values in Los Angeles County in 1960, but it’s too blurry to read. Was curious if there’s any place I can ask Los Angeles experts if they can help decipher it, or if someone somehow knows any place to find a higher-quality copy. 
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There’s an Authoring… Story Research and Design section that might be a good fit? And I’ve lived in LA and done a fair bit of local policy advocacy, so I’m reasonably conversant with the neighborhoods (and patterns of housing values and segregation, which are largely the same thing through 1960) and might be able to help - I’m on mobile at the moment though so that picture is really blurry on my end 
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4 posts were split to a new topic: Cartography and Maps (off-topic and game-related)
Hi all, I’m Tom, a 45 year old software developer from the UK.
Been a fan of text based games (and text-based UIs in general) for a long time. First IF I played was The Hobbit on the ZX spectrum. Played a bunch of other games on that system, alongside physical gamebooks such as the Fighting Fantasy series
Later discovered PC adventure gaming (mainly graphic adventures from Sierra, and LucasArts), and eventually modern parser based games (favourite is probably Anchorhead).
I like games programming in my spare time, and fancied trying my hand at an adventure game, unfortunately I got sidetracked writing my own engine, which has (unsurprisingly) taken a lot longer than I anticipated. I’ll share that on the development systems forum in case anyone is interested.
Anyway, thank you for letting me join this community, and I’m looking forward to picking up tips on authoring IF.
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That’s how it seems to go, lol. Currently wrestling with that myself, lately.
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Well, I often end up skipping these “introduce yourself” threads and just lurking, but here goes.
I played some variant of Adventure on my childminder’s computer in the early 90s (the web is now resisting my efforts to figure out what platform exactly - some kind of Amstrad or Commodore?) and a year or two after came across (what I’m pretty sure in retrospect was a pirated copy of) Leather Goddesses of Photos on a friend’s Amiga. I don’t think we ever made it past the first few rooms, but I remembered the name of the game well enough that I noticed it on the Masterpieces of Infocom collection when I came across it in a game store’s bargain bin in 1999 or 2000 and decided to buy it. That happened to be exactly the time I discovered Usenet and so I spent a lot of the next few years hanging out on r*if and then ifMUD, producing lots of silly speedIF but nothing of real consequence.
I drifted away from playing so much IF a few years later but kept a periodic eye on the scene from a distance. It took me a long time to be convinced that the announcement of Inform 7 wasn’t an elaborate practical joke (natural-language syntax, really?). I played Violet, Suveh Nux, Counterfeit Monkey and maybe a few others when those games were new. My hard copy of the DM4 followed me from my parents’ house, to university, to four or five other houses, to the one I live in now with my wife and three kids.
I’m impressed at the ability of the IF community to document and preserve stuff. All of that silly speedIF I mentioned above is not only still on the IF Archive, it’s linked from my page on IFWiki - a site which didn’t even exist when I wrote it. The existence of Parchment means it’s easier for me to play my old games than it was at the time, even from my phone. There are even things on there I’d forgotten about myself (apparently I wrote the Inform port of AAS Masters?). In this particular instance, I’m not sure the loss to the community would have been tragic if no-one got to play Need! More! Toast! in the future - but at least if I do get around to creating anything of consequence, I know it’s unlikely to immediately vanish into the aether.
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Hello everyone,
I finally found a moment to follow tradition and introduce myself. I’m 50 years old, living in Normandy (France), and I’m a methods engineer in the IT field. I dabble in just about anything that lends itself to gaming: tabletop roleplaying (as a DM or a player, whether it’s commercial scenarios or my own creations), board games, wargames, murder mysteries (organizing and playing them), megagames (organizing and playing them), video games, CYOA books, and so on. Of course, the modern gaming landscape is so vast that I’ve only scratched the surface.
One thing that fascinates me in game design is the close interplay between the rules that govern the game’s universe (or its assumptions, premises, and laws), the game mechanics offered to the player, and the narrative design that embodies the temporal aspect, the progression. Philosophically, I’m a materialist, so it’s no surprise to me that these three aspects are really just three facets of the same thing, especially in the best games that stand out. Yet, it never ceases to fascinate me. Naturally, this led me to explore the work of Emily Short (her blog, in particular—it’s refreshing to read such intelligent thoughts these days) and discover Inform 7. I barely grazed the surface of the vortex before a janissary enchanter from the purple moon uttered XYZZY without my knowledge, and I found myself on this forum after six months of daily Inform programming by the holy glow of WI/RB. Emily and Graham, my new not-so-imaginary friends.
My goal is to adapt my homemade role-playing campaigns (which are heavily focused on investigation, dialogue, psychology, metaphysical anxiety, questions about the perception of reality—those kinds of things) into parser-based IF, to stage stories that follow one another. To this end, I’m currently coding a generic framework, a foundation upon which (supposedly) coherent worldbuilding, game design, and narrative tools will rely on. Starting in 2025, I’d like to publish at least one game/scenario per year, in English.
Apart from that, I’m not interested in competition; that being said, I think it’s great for setting goals and instilling self-discipline, and it would have benefited me a lot 25 years ago
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You have to love a forum where people will read this sentence and think “yes, that happens a lot” not batting an eyelash.
Ah, a man after my own heart. Welcome. There are some other veteran DMs and campaign writers around, myself included.
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Thank you for the warm welcome. You’re probably right, but I’m still a bit concerned about my new mental state. The other day, I answered to one of my children, who was asking me something while I was busy coding: “The player has a computer. The player has a brain. The Internet is a backdrop. The Internet is everywhere.”
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When The Sims came out the very first time and everybody was playing it obsessively I remember going into my actual kitchen to make myself actual food and reflexively thinking “I need a clear counter space right next to the food processor and a clear space to eat on the counter then the dish goes into the sin-”
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So, this is indeed the place where I can publicly confess that when I escort a stray insect from a room in my house back to the garden, at the cost of an unbearable interruption during a debugging session, I remember the option to spare monsters in Undertale.
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is this not simply another form of debugging?
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So relevant (and poetic) to consider things with this mindset!
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10 posts were split to a new topic: Too Many Legs [that lurk behind the bookcase]
Way back when DOOM came out I remember walking around my college campus and seeing trash barrels and thinking…BOOM.
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Hi, I’m atj! I’m new to interactive fiction and am mostly learning more about parsers as a player and things like Twine/ink for writing. Trying to play some of IFComp this year too. Hope you’re all well!
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Welcome atj,
Playing IFComp is a sure way to dive into the marvellous world of IF. I hope you enjoy it.
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I forgot to say it’s also the best way to meet the community at its most frantic, sleep-deprived, grue-hallucinating, underfed, and red-eyed. The general hubbub will die down a bit after the Comp, when we return to pondering whether the chewing gum could be used to fish the gold key out of the drain, and whether this should be accomplished as a blonde or a brunette.
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Hello!
I’m DWaM. I’ve been writing for over a decade now, starting with Ace Attorney fancases and then expanding to original mystery stories, visual novels and interactive fiction. My main inspirations are other mystery novels, Haruki Murakami and the When They Cry series of visual novels. I always try to go for something weird – primarily in the mystery genre, but I’m trying to expand to other stuff, as well!
I’ve made Twine games in the past, but this year I’ve decided to try my hand at the IFComp! I’m super-happy with my submission (and the fact I got it done to begin with!) I’m happy to see the IF genre is still alive and kicking!
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Greetings all. I’m Greg Simpson, and my first interaction with IF was with Adventure on a Vax when I was a co-op at GE in the 80’s. I played some rogue on some Unix boxes in college, and wrote an IF in the late 80’s using a DOS based program. Fell in love with Zork, and similar ilk after that, even introducing my young children to Zork Nemesis back in the day…I took the next 30 years off from IF, and retired after a long career in tech in 2021.
My first retirement project was to write a spy Novel called The Quantum Contingent (available everywhere). Just finished the sequel, and had some spare time while waiting for all of the publishing stuff to happen and stumbled across inform7…
What started as an experiment, coding some basic rooms and characters from my book turned into a laugh filled journey creating a tongue-in-cheek adventure game in the zork style based on my spy book universe.
This community is one of the most helpful I have ever encountered on the internet since I started on it at Purdue when it was just a wee network. If I had any coding problems, this crew could sort them out in record time.
Happily Married with two children, whom I will force to play my game one day, I’m enjoying this journey into my future and past.
I’m happy to meet you all and hope you have a wonderful day.
Greg
( my WIP is called Quotient, The Game, beta testers welcome, although I got ahead of myself and it’s already out in the public.)
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