intfiction.org

Hello,

My name is Ben, 24, I'm from Slovenia. I'm a student of electrical engineering (about to graduate) with too much time on my hands, and Interactive Fiction has been one of my main hobbies for quite a few years. I also love music (playing and listening to), hiking, and Steel Panthers: World at War. 8)

My very first taste of IF was a hilarious Legend's masterpiece called "Eric The Unready". I still think this is one of the best (and funniest) games ever made, and I can't possibly recommend it enough. I played some other Legend games as well (especially both "Gateways" and the "Spellcasting" series - which I still believe Harry Potter is based upon 8O), and some modern titles (though I'm afraid I have lots of catching-up to do in this area).

Since I also love to write, it wasn't long before I started to fiddle around with Inform 6, trying to create a game of my own. So my first "exercise" in designing IF was a recreation of a certain act from "The Dig", a graphical game by Lucas Arts, and to my surprise it actually came out quite well.

However, I realize that I will never be able to write a truly solid game; it's the language that's causing the problem. Though I have the general grasp of English, which is good enough for everyday chat on forums and such, it's not nearly enough for what is required from an IF author. I'll never be able to express myself quite as well in English as I can in my own language, Slovene.

So at the moment I seem to be on a special quest: I'm desperately trying to wake up (or create from nothing, for that matter) our own, Slovene IF community. In my country, the IF medium seems to be completely overlooked, which is just sad. So last October I even made a translation of Inform 6 libraries to Slovene (if anyone's interested, they're located here: http://sloif.freehost386.com), and now I'm trying to recruit some other enthusiasts like me to actually write some Slovenian games. So far, I haven't had much luck, but I'm not willing to give up just yet.

Anyway, so far I really like these forums and I think I'll spend quite some time here in the future. Cheers!

Welcome to the forums, Ben. Have you written all of your IF in Slovene so far? It might be worth a shot to write a game in English, though I know there's only so much time in the day to do all the projects you want to do (let alone do them in more than one language). I looked over your site and it made me want to learn Slovene! Good luck.

Thanks for the kind words, George!

Yes, time is definitely the problem (at least truly dedicating it to just one activity). So far the only thing I am able to show in English (though it's very basic) is the mentioned adaptation of The Dig (http://www2.arnes.si/~blipov/TheDigDemoEng.z5), but I do have a few other projects open as well. One of them, I think, is very good in concept - but I'm not sure how soon (if at all) it'll be finished... It seems that I'm quite quick and enthusiastic when it comes to building up the "frame" (coding etc.), but filling it with words (especially in English, of course) takes time...

Anyway, like I said - my current goal is bringing IF to Slovenia, and if I manage to attract at least half a dozen "followers" here, I'll consider it a job well done. In the meantime, I'll keep on reading, playing, and dreaming about this fascinating medium I've grown so fond of. No matter the language.

Cheers!

Hi, I'm slg. I actually registered for the forums a long time ago but never posted till now... I discovered Infocom games when I was 7 or 8 and of course loved them and then Sierra's games. And then in high school I started fiddling around with Inform but didn't do anything seriously till college. In the last few years I've been working on my Triform library, which I think is nearly ready for a 1.0 release, and my IntroComp 2006 entrant The Art of Deception.

OK, you've got my curiousity up...Triform?

It's an alternative to the Standard Library which does a lot of things that Platypus and Onyx Ring do, but in different -- not necessarily better ways -- and adds some others. Last weekend I managed to shake out some persistent bugs. There is an old beta in the IF Archive.

Hello all!

My name is Ben, I am 29, and for the moment reside in California. As I received the fabulous birthday present of unemployment this year, I have been obsessively working on my first game. It should be finished next year (I hope!) It is a Kafkaesque comedy/fantasy/tragedy/drama/philosophy game that is mysteriously exploding in 10 different directions as I write it.

Some of my favorite games include Infocom classics such as Trinity and Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, LucasArts titles such as Maniac Mansion 2, Loom, and Monkey Island, and RPG/Adventure games such as Worlds of Ultima 2 and Planescape: Torment.

It's nice to see that some people under 25 are working on interactive fiction. My worry has always been that it will die a slow and decrepid death as the children of the 80s age!

Allow me to be the first person to introduce themself this year - Hi! I'm JayDee.

I'm about 24 years old, live in Australia, and study at uni. Theoretically study, anyhow. Most of my time is spent in these PC labs, on forums and the like. Oops.

I played some text adventures when I was younger, and I played around with game making in AGT. Thankfully, nothing remains of those attempts. (My ZZT game on the other hand, I do still have. It was somewhat complete, though.) I later heard about Inform somewhere, and the whole z-machine architecture fascinated me even though I probably had never played an Infocom game. Ever since, I've been meaning to get further into the whole IF scene, and maybe someday I will.

Hallo. You, gentle forum-goers, can refer to me as Kell, or something along those lines. 21, Indiana, U.S. resident, who's been hooked on gaming since Mattel's Intellivision...well, when my mother introduced me to theirs at least.

I want to think my first IF-esque game was, uh...probably something called Hugo's Adventure (or something like that). Graphics, real-time, moved with the arrow keys, however you paused the action to input commands like your usual IF variety: get key, throw torch at mummy, etc. Though I could be wrong, there's been so many over the years. >_<

Right now I work, take care of my grandparents, and play games and read to pass the time. My skills lie along the lines of writing, programming (though I'm still a nub), and manual labor. But that last one's often of little fun. D:

Got the heads up on IFComp 07's crop of games from Games For Windows (and 1up.com's) freebie round-up. Was slowly playing my way through them when I found this place when looking for reviews and such.

Nice to (sort of) meet you all!

Welcome Kell and JayDee! It may be a little quiet on the forums at the moment, but I've noticed that discussion tends to go in bursts around here.