So, I did some searching and fleshed out the real-time tag on IFDB, but the newest thing in there right now (outside of z-machine abuses) is from the '80s. Someone did a tech demo recently of real-time parsing with I7, using the example of walking down a city block if I recall correctly, and there are a few extensions to deal with real-time stuff. But has there really been no new IF since the '80s based around a “Hobbit”-style real-time framework?
Edit: implicit follow-up question, if not why not?
Very true, though there may be ways to have the game adapt to individual rates.
In the comments on the “city block” example that Aaron mentioned, George suggested “the mud God Wars 2, which is a fully coordinate based mud with procedurally generated descriptions.” I tried it and thought it gave a sense of how an aggressively real-time IF might feel.
It looks like searching for the realtime tag, without the hyphen, produces a few more results. Although many of the results appear to be IF engine abuses rather than actual real-time IF.
The ones I can think of off-hand are Mr. Remote Mom (I think) from ToasterComp back in 2000, and Which Describes What You’re Thinking, from the recent Apollo 18+20 minicomp (which about as IF-like as, say, Eliza.) Both are small and frantic, and in Mr. Remote Mom the real-time stuff is implemented in a highly annoying way, with timed events often cutting off your command input mid-stream.
I agree, and I think real-time adds another layer to the simulation in a MUD. It helps define and package the model world further away from the human player. Internal game time goes bay at different real-world speeds in different MUDs.
Hey, I’m new here, but… isn’t there a certain overlap between ifdb, the if wiki (mainly the games info) and to some extent baf’s guide? Are they all being updated?
From what I can work out, Baf’s Guide stopped being updated some time in 2009. IF Wiki is still updated. It does strike me that there’s considerable overlap. However, what the Wiki does better is collate external reviews for games, and it gives a much clearer picture of what different people have written or tested and so on.
Yes. This is an overlappy kind of community, really. They serve similar functions, but distinct enough that they’re not redundant. In the same way, the functions of ifMUD overlap with those of intfiction.org, which overlap with those of Planet-IF, which overlaps imperfectly with the IF blogosphere, the activity of which is to a large extent determined by what’s going on on the various competition sites and collated by IFWiki, which…
It would be simpler if we had a smaller number of community locations with distinct, clear functions. But I think we’d be a lot weaker. (In the same way that the I7 devs have a strong interest in the continuing development and success of other platforms.)
There’s never been an explicit discussion about it, but I think a lot of us value a community of many smaller, cooperating services. Rather than trying to have one giant central source for All Things IF.
