intfiction.org

Hello everyone!

Thought I'd better say hello, I've been lurking for a while. I'm Will, a graduate student from the UK and a newbie to IF writing, although I have some experience working with the point-and-click design system AGS. I recently decided to make the switch to IF partly because, as a youngster, I always preferred text adventures to graphic adventures (I'd have started with Inform long before trying to make point-and-click games if I'd known it existed back then!), partly because I'm terrible at graphics, and partly because a catastrophic computer meltdown led to me losing an AGS game I'd been working on for the best part of two years, which (after much profuse swearing) I decided to take as an indication that my career as the next Ron Gilbert was not to be.

In real life I spend my days poking around in various parts of the ancient world in pursuit of an academic career, and am a keen musician (guitar, bass, drums and a few other more eccentric instruments). Anyhow, I look forward to meeting you all on the boards, trying as many of your games as I can manage and maybe - one day - putting some of my own stuff out there!

Another musician! Welcome here! I think I'm sending you a PM about those eccentric instruments....

Ouch! It seems most people (myself included) need something like that to happen before they learn to make backups.

(And "eccentric instruments" does sound intriguing.)

_________________
"The thing I like about deadlines is the wonderful whooshing noise they make as they go past."
- Douglas Adams

Hey guys, thanks for the welcome!

The instruments aren't really that eccentric - mandolin, ukelele, harmonica and a bit of piano (which isn't eccentric at all - or maybe it is, depending on how you play it!)

Trumgottist - it certainly was a hard lesson! Fortunately, nothing really important (like my Masters' dissertation!!!) was lost. I'm trying to see it as a positive. After all, it pushed me back in the direction of my earliest and most abiding computer gaming love, interactive fiction!

Hi all! I'll delurk and join in also. I'm Ken, and I guess I'm something of an old-school gamer. IF games were some of the first computer games I played (among Wumpus and Star Trek and others I suppose). I remember playing The Count, Savage Island and Zork (stored on cassette) on my Tandy Color Computer years ago - even before playing Adventure at my first "real" job way back when. I had actually written an IF game in BASIC on that Tandy computer from a template found in an old Games magazine. It wasn't a very long or intricate adventure, but I retain an appreciation for what it takes to write one.

Over the years I've enjoyed occasional IFs that I'd seen around: Dr Who Pyramids of Mars, Hitchhiker's Guide, etc. and the Hamlet adventure I've seen online. Heck, I'm still a fan and semi-regular player of Nethack. But somehow, until fairly recently, I'd overlooked the continued presence of text adventures/IF. I've been dabbling in a couple or so IFs now and, though I haven't solved any yet, it didn't take long for me to want to try writing another one. Initially I thought about writing it in C++ as a learning exercise and I still might, but then I stumbled into Inform. I don't know how it compares to other dev tools, but it's pretty cool.

It's a good thing Inform is so english-like, or I couldn't spend the time or distraction to try to learn it while studying C++. It has almost become a bit addictive... for awhile now I've been doing what many of you have maybe done already; going through the documentation and building a world loosely based on my abode, just to learn the ins-and-outs of creating space, objects, containers, doors, devices, people and stuff... you know. Inform does make it relatively easy once you get the hang of it, I have to say. Maybe C++ will come in handy later if I learn any improvements I could make to Inform.

In my regular life I've done and do graphics, desktop publishing and other pc support work from data entry and spreadsheets to VBA programming these days. Jack of many digital trades, still trying to master one or more. Since that intro ended up more winded than I'd intended, I'll just echo that I look forward to chatting, trying some good IFs and hopefully sharing some of my own along the way.

Awesome, a fellow ex-lurker! Good to know you kronos.

Hello,

I've been periodically paying attention to IF since about 2000. I admit that I've been oblivious to it, including the competitions, for a little while now, but lately I've felt the gravitational pull of the old black hole (I'll thank you, Thornton, not to run with that one; it's too easy (so is that one)) again. This time, I swear, I'm actually going to write a game. I swear it! I just need to learn TADS3 first. In its entirety.

It's nice to see that the message board is thriving. I was a little worried upon seeing the condition of raif.

Regards,
Aric

The most important thing to know is that I'm not johnny or johnnyr. I've got ifwiki and ifdb pages if you can find 'em. Hello!

Hello all, happy to meet you!

I'm Mark Phillips, 54, Watsonville, CA. I have a long background in experimental fiction and computer-based role playing games, including several dozen fiction publications. I'm a co-founder of the online games company SmartMonsters, which publishes a free large-scale RPG called TriadCity. SmartMonsters is a profound failure as a commercial business, but TriadCity is an artistic and technological success; among other academic citations our favorite is our appearance in The Cambridge Companion to Postmodernism, which cites TriadCity as their culminating example of postmodernist literature. TriadCity's in open beta, so if this interests you, please check it out. Links in my signature.

I'm excited to have found your community! Looking forward to participating!

--Mark

_________________
Mark Phillips
TriadCity on Wikipedia
www.smartmonsters.com

Welcome to the forums Mark. Your game sounded really interesting from the Wikipedia article (I'm a long-time mud player) so I tried it out (and discovered I had made an account there at some point but had forgotten all about it ). Quick question, is there a way to increase the font size in the client?