Looking for writers

I have plotted out a number of Interactive Fiction games, where some of the early work was done using the adventure-writing toolkit from Micro User (a BBC computer magazine). In other words, games I’ve been working on for a while. A loooong while. All the work in the past decade or so has been entirely on paper. At present, I simply don’t have the experience to re-implement the games using the current generation of authoring systems, though with practice that will obviously change. In the meantime, I’d love it if people could help me with getting one of the games implemented (doesn’t matter which one) to help me get a better feel for what can (and cannot) be done.

I’d better clarify. There are three games I’m working on - a spy-fi, a sci-fi and a fantasy game.

The sci-fi is aimed at problems and solutions geared towards the hard sciences. For example, to create a specific colour of light, you burn the metal that generates that colour. You can’t connect a device to earth/ground unless the wire can take the load and said wire is actually connected to ground. And so on.

The spy-fi is loosely themed around the types of story found in the 60s TV series The Avengers, without being too much of a blatant rip-off. In other words, no fancy gadgets, no backup and very time-sensitive clues. (A bit like Infocom’s Deadline.)

The fantasy game borrows bits and pieces from mythology (mostly Celtic and Norse) and fantasy novels based on such mythology (such as Alan Garner’s books), again without trying to be too much of a blatant rip-off of anything. Complex challenges in the form of traditional riddles identifying what the actual puzzle is can be fun.

The problem I’m having is that the authoring kit for the BBC micro was nice and easy for a lot of things (it was GUI-based, you set flags, you test flags and that’s about it), but this was also a major limitation. It’s very hard to write complex games that way. On the other hand, systems like Gluxle and Inform 7 are not turning out to be that intuitive to me, the standards expected in IF have gone up heavily since the late 80s and early 90s, and I simply don’t have the skills yet to bring what I’m imagining to life the way I’d like on modern engines.

i strongly suggest continuing to read the documentation of Inform 7. its a great system made for writers who arent really programmers. it took me a good while to get the “hang” of it, but once i did, i can code the hell outta my game with little or no referring to the documentation. basically, it will “click” with u the more u work with it and really work on learning it. dont sell yourself short, if i can do it, anyone can! lol

plus there are tons of help vids and pdf’s out there for Inform 7. just keep looking and getting into the community’s websites and you will learn a lot. as i’ve been working on my huge game, ive done nothing but study the IF world and learn from it. so not just Inform 7, but also the opinions and advice of long-time community people. but again, keep at Inform 7, i bet thats the one for u.

So you’re looking for coders, not writers in the sense of creating descriptions and plot?

Maybe we should all get together on this as one big project, that is if everyone has time off from his or her own game.

I’d be happy to provide advice on Inform 7, should you wish it. PM me and we’ll talk.