Heirs of Infocom: Where interactive fiction authors and games stand today

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2013/06/heirs-of-infocom-where-interactive-fiction-authors-and-games-stand-today/

by shawndumas • 13 years ago

76 19 13 years ago

hga• 13 years ago

YES! It never occurred to me, but the limited interfaces of smartphones are a perfect arena for interactive fiction without the grossly expensive visual collateral of so many modern PC and game station games.

fpgeek2• 13 years ago

For the most part, with the exception of keyboards. Without a physical keyboard, you're either giving up screen real estate (i.e. text you can read) or the keyboard is appearing and disappearing (which I find breaks my immersion in the game). Games are still playable, but there are also interface annoyances, sadly.

ferdo• 13 years ago

I'm not ashamed to say that I still play Hamurabi/Sumer after all these years...

pronoiac• 13 years ago

I expected to see more about Twine.[1] It's really simple, but it lets you build a "Choose Your Own Adventure" story easily. People who haven't programmed before have picked it up and done interesting things with it. I like the HyperCard analogy.[2]

[1] http://gimcrackd.com/etc/src/

[2] http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/twine-and-the-art-of-person...

jmspring• 13 years ago

Big fan of Frotz on iOS. I've played a few z-machine games over the last couple of years.

Funny thing is, my primary "in bed" reading device is also my iphone -- light, good screen, and easy to shut down when I am done.

300bps• 13 years ago

I like Frotz as well - play it on my Windows Phone 8 (Nokia Lumia 928)

limmeau• 13 years ago

How does Frotz deal with the "no interpreters" rule in App Store?

fpgeek2• 13 years ago

Technically, the rule is "no interpreters that download code". To get around it, it bundles a decent chunk of the if-archive in the app and then registers as something that can open z-machine game files (so you can use Frotz to open a game from Dropbox, after downloading in Mobile Safari, etc.).

ott2• 13 years ago

It was fun playing the old Infocom games on Frotz (just add the Z3/Z4/Z5 sources using the file transfer feature on iOS). For iOS, the sources are at http://code.google.com/p/iphonefrotz/ and http://sourceforge.net/projects/jfrotz/ is an Android port for those who prefer to roll their own.

hobb0001• 13 years ago

Heh. Reminds me of the days when I used to run a Z-code interpreter on my Palm V.

Avshalom• 13 years ago

So if you're interested I recommend Emily Short: https://emshort.wordpress.com/ as a general guide/jumping off point to the modern scene

pfedor• 13 years ago

Specifically, Bronze is a good game to get started, with some game features and a help system designed for beginners.

dsr_• 13 years ago

And anything that Zarf writes or recommends.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Plotkin http://www.eblong.com/zarf/if.html

curiousdannii• 13 years ago

If you haven't played Spider and Web, you need to! One of the undisputed classics: http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=2xyccw3pe0uovfad

tunesmith• 13 years ago

FYI, Reconstructing Remy does appear to be available for iOS now.

m0nastic• 13 years ago

I have a soft spot for interactive fiction. The only game I ever finished writing was an IF game that took place on my college campus (I created it using AGT[1], and was impressed that I could keep track of time to have locations behave differently when visited.)

I was super proud of myself for about a half a day before my roommate showed me that he had created our dorm as a level in Duke Nukem 3D, which proceeded to occupy all of us over a local IPX network for weeks.

It seems like smartphones and tablets definitely represent an opportunity for a resurgence, You could even utilize the platforms built-in text-to-speech and whatnot.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adventure_Game_Toolkit

nvmc• 13 years ago

I thought all the AAA publishers switched to interactive films after they gave up on making video games.

b0rsuk• 13 years ago

I recommend Anchorhead (1998). Inspired by Lovecraft, very well written. Puzzles are either simple or very logical, the biggest danger is that you miss an item or don't map properly. Atmosphere is at least as good as in Lovecraft books. And it's free.

Yuioup• 13 years ago

I was curious to see if I could get my hands on the documentary but the order page says "US Only". Is there a way for us Europeans to get a hold of a copy?

Heirs of Infocom: Where interactive fiction authors and games stand today

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