My IF history book, Learning from the Best of Text, has been released

I’ve updated my history book Learning from the Best of Text to include acknowledgements and have released it on Github here:

Due to popular demand, a ‘chicago’ version has been added in pdf, epub, and docx formats that uses that author name and year for citations. The original version with superscript APA-style citations is also available.

Thanks to everyone who helped this!

This was funded by a grant from the IFTF:
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I realize that IFComp is still ongoing, so I don’t expect anyone to drop everything and check it out now, but I’m so grateful to the funding of the IFTF (and to those who donated), and to the many proofreaders. I wanted to publish it now to fulfill my responsibility to the IFTF in a prompt manner.

I did most of the fun parts 5 years ago but dreaded the large amount of work left to make this publishable, so this would not have been completed without the community assistance I received.

While I’m not planning any changes any time soon, I’m happy to record any typos or errors found.

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Yay! Congratulations, Brian.

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Thanks, I appreciate the support!

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Congratulations!

Curiously, are you planning to update in 4 or so years with the newer IFComps and XYZZYs? (Speaking of which, I know it’s IFComp but I haven’t heard much about the XYZZYs recently…)

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That’s a good idea, maybe I could update every time Ryan Veeder has a birthday or so.

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Wow! Looking forward to it!

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Was Ryan Veeder @Afterward born on leap day?

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I don’t know if it’s real or a bit, but his exposition he does every four years is leap year related

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My mood once I searched for my name first thing in the book...

Seriously, though, great job with this. It’s cool you got a grant to do this and you earned every penny of it.

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I have the ePub version loaded on my Kindle. Thank you!

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Goodness, I need to open my eyes and ears more; I’d missed this announcement. I don’t know when I’ll have the time to read this tome, but I’ll certainly try. Fwiw, I recently replayed The Magic Toyshop (1995) and geez, that game didn’t age well. I did catch the Curses ref when it showed up, but only because I remembered enough from my walkthrough of it. I did NOT pick up on every Trinity ref I needed, even though I’ve also written a walkthrough for that game too.

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I will read it carefully and slowly. Thank you for this great book.

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Downloaded :+1:

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I’ve started reading, but the section on the first IFCOMP made we want to test some of the games, so my reading of the book has now stalled :sweat_smile:

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