“You have probably never heard of Professor Moriarty?” said he.

“You have probably never heard of Professor Moriarty?” said he.

“Never.”

“Aye, there’s the genius and the wonder of the thing!” he cried. “The man pervades London, and no one has heard of him. That’s what puts him on a pinnacle in the records of crime.”

Of course, it’s not true that no one has heard of Brian Moriarty — this sort of slipped under the radar as far as I can tell, but Moriarty recently appeared at a M*U*S*H event and gave a little /rant on the state of text games.

Andrew Plotkin, Jota (I’m assuming Admiral Jota of Lost Pig), and Emily Short (again an assumption but I think the Emily in the transcript is the same) were there too — it’s an interesting read all around.

The log is typical of mush transcripts so I’ve liberally edited the thing into a more readable presentation — however keep in mind you lose out by not taking in the transcript in its unadulterated form.

Also note that this is an IF-heavy conversation taking place on a mush, with about equal representation from the IF and mush sides — so sometimes people are talking past each other with respect to what text games mean to them.

By the way, there’s a surprise appearance halfway through the log that I’m not including in my transcript — so check out the link above.

My edited transcript after the cut:

Alan DeNiro @ Grinding to Valhalla

Lest this get lost in the blogosphere, a link:

Reading the text: Alan DeNiro interview.

Didn’t know that DeNiro played muds (and maybe story games?). Cool stuff. For the unfamiliar, check out DeNiro’s Deadline Enchanter.

ergodic research group

Poking around to see what digital literature, e-lit, or interactive fiction journals and zines might be floating around I stumbled across an online installation of work, <terminal><in search of a new(er) digital literature>. On that page at the bottom there also is an extensive bibliography of sorts; many of those links are kind of kaput but there’s still some interesting stuff to be found, and the projects of the installation itself are all current.

Nearly all of that stuff is multimedia work. I haven’t really found a ‘zine of ergodic text’ or something like that, though I guess something probably is out there. I feel like something of that nature could fill a niche. Pacian has his new blog (Text) Games for (Space) Crows which approaches that idea, but what I’m imagining is a combination of that and the presentation of new works.

pawsy

One thing I’ve been going back and forth about is the virtue of trying to write IF with Python. On one hand Python is a great language for writing games; on the other hand I much prefer the Inform 7 syntax for a simple reason — in IF you write a lot of prose, and anything that makes that process both simpler and nicer to look at is a huge win. However that very same syntax becomes something of a stumbling block for me (well, to be honest — a tortuous maze) when you start doing anything complex. In this respect I like Python’s syntax much more.

Python already has a well developed IF system in PAWS. However as you can see in the Cloak of Darkness implementation the source itself reads much more like a TADS 3 file than Inform 7. I’m not saying that doesn’t make sense, only it’s not how I’d like to write ideally.

This got me to wonder — how would I like to write IF ideally? So here is a hacked up version of the Cloak of Darkness source above. Let’s see how the WP sourcecode markup works with this — after the cut:

pystil

I’ve been thinking for a while about something like a drawing tool for writers…something like Alchemy that I would write in Python, maybe using pyglet. I’ve always wanted to make tools as well as make games, but they seemed beyond my capabilities somewhat…I have some specific UI ideas I’d like to try in the software flesh (mainly — bigger text for godsake, though it may turn the tool into one only I would use). A couple of new developments inch me closer to my goal. It’s beginning to look like Nick Montfort’s nn, now known as Curveship, will have a release later this year. And then over at MudBytes in a thread where someone asked for help naming a mud framework/IDE written in Python, I thought of the name pystil. So…a narrative/text generation player/maker? Who knows.

IFDB at 1000

Well, I go on vacation, and the IFDB tops 1000 members! Curiously, since it launched and the initial run-up of people joining, the IFDB has doubled in membership about every eight months. Is there some physical Law of interactive fiction enthusiasts at work here?

IF tshirt redux

Cross-posting this from RGIF…

So in an attempt to tidy up the basement (you know how it is) I came across a box of…

IFComp in Public tshirts!

That’s right, the infamous tshirts from IFComp…2006? 2007? Whatever, one of these hot little t-shirts can now be yours.

Check out the tshirt:

These American Apparel tshirts are black cotton, in a variety of sizes, from woman’s small to men’s large, with a sweet IF design by the artist Sarah Bergman (http://driedesign.com/).

Quantities are extremely limited! I accept Paypal, personal check, or money order. Email me at georgeolivergo at yahoo to arrange orders. Prices, including shipping by priority mail, are at cost and as follows:

In the U.S.:

1 tshirt: $11.50
2-4 tshirts: ($9 x [number of tshirts]) + $5.00
4+ tshirts: contact me for details.

Outside the U.S.: contact me for details.

Be the only one on your block (heck, in your entire city? country?) with an IF tshirt! Help me make a dent in my basement! Everybody wins. Thanks.

George
georgeolivergo at yahoo.com

the end is nigh….

…of IFComp 2008. Voting ends today.

So this was kind of a weird IFComp. I don’t want to say it was an off year, as I think this was only my third year of playing and judging. But it felt off to me somehow.

The biggest thing that jumped out at me this year, and maybe this Comp was just the proverbial straw, is the severe lack of polish of most IF. Probably this has something to do simply with playing a lot more games in the last year or so, from hanging out at TIGSource. But for a competition which you have an entire year — hell, years – to prepare for, an unpolished game is, frankly, pretty ridiculous.

By polish I don’t necessarily mean implementation of game logic or spell checking or so on. I mean the stuff you see when you start the game and when you end the game, stuff like help and hints and credits screens. Some of this is tied to the presentation of interpreters it’s true. And I’m not saying people need to abandon interpreters and only bundle .exe’s with custom UIs or whatever. But a little effort goes a long way. I remember Deadline Enchanter from last year’s comp. Some people didn’t like that game at all (some did, including me), but that game was polished. You could tell the author cared about how that game came across to the player.

So I don’t mean to say this Comp was a total downer (I hate just saying that). So here are my must-plays of IFComp 2008:

Everybody Dies by Jim Munroe, illustrations by Michael Cho.

My highest rated game of the comp. I don’t remember how I stumbled across Jim Munroe’s homepage (a few months ago I think), but I was surprised and pleased when I saw a game by him in the Comp. Michael Cho was a serendipitous find through this game as well. Anyway, this game isn’t perfect in implementation, and I would have liked more options, but it really works as IF. More please.

Nightfall by Eric Eve.

Besides the fact of this being very well done, the thing I like about Nightfall is it feels like an Eric Eve game not written by Eric Eve. By which I mean, all of the trademarks of his games are here — solid implementation, good design, and so on — but it feels like he is really pushing himself as an IF author to do more ambitious works.

Violet by Jeremy Freese.

I’d certainly be remiss if I didn’t mention this game; though it’s not really my thing, it’s supremely well done.

There were many ‘almost there’ games this year, and a few which I’ll go back to at some point. And can I say I love the IFDB now? Thanks.