(Text) Games for (Space) Crows

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2011-08-07T17:29:00.003+01:00

Love, Hate and the Mysterious Ocean Tower

2011-05-10T21:08:00.001+01:00

For the Speed IF Jacket 4 event...

Love, Hate and the Mysterious Ocean Tower
A brief story of love, romance and cosmic horror.

Originally written in a week, this interactive vignette whisks you through a world where terrible powers and inhuman foes threaten the very existence of humanity - and the only one who can save us is a magnificent bastard in pink trainers.

Since that initial week of work, I've spent some time fleshing the thing out (with plenty of help from my trusty beta-testers). It's still a small game, but the setting is much more fully implemented, and I threw in a few additional endings for good measure.

--PLAY ONLINE--

Love, Hate etc. is available to play in your browser via Parchment.

--DOWNLOAD--

Or you can download the story file (mirror|random mirror) and run it with a Z-machine interpreter.

See this page for help finding an interpreter. I use Frotz, while others swear by Gargoyle.

Okay

2011-05-02T20:11:00.000+01:00

This week, seriously. Just want to pass it in front of a couple of testers first.

SPAG 60

2011-04-26T20:43:00.000+01:00

Issue 60 of SPAG is now available here. Among other things, it includes an interview with none other than me, which you'll find down here.

Coming Soon: A Small Something

2011-04-16T15:23:00.002+01:00

Last week I took part in this little event. Kind of a game jam in which everyone makes a contribution to the ideas behind every other entrant's games.

I think my game was a bit too big for the time I had to work on it, so I'm not going to crow about it yet. It needs a fair bit more implementation, although it is basically playable as it stands (just a bit sparse and buggy as well).

Expect a proper release some time over the next week or two.

XYZZY Awards 2010

2011-02-27T10:09:00.003Z

Rogue of the Multiverse was nominated for four XYZZY Awards, and won Best Individual NPC.

You can read a transcript of the awards ceremony here. If you want to skip to my acceptance speech, written by the Imbroglio's most wanted scientist herself, just search the page for "giant turtle".

Congratulations to all the other winners and nominees - especially Matt Wigdahl, who walked away with no less than seven awards for Aotearoa.

The Blind House

2011-01-24T21:56:00.004Z

The Blind House
By: Amanda Allen

Another entry from IFComp 2010, this one exudes creepiness and evocative emotion. It's well worth giving it a try - although if you're anything like me, you'll be left wondering exactly what's going on and how you're supposed to affect it.

You can grab the story file from here, which you'll need to run with an interpreter from here (I used WinGlulxe).

I also needed this walkthrough, which, unfortunately, doesn't take you through everything in the game.

Divis Mortis

2011-01-22T14:55:00.005Z

Divis Mortis
By: Lynnea Dally

Another entry from last year's IFComp, Divis Mortis is a straightforward game of exploring a zombie-infested hospital and fighting to survive. The tone is possibly an acquired taste, veering between unapologetic silliness and effective atmosphere, but if you liked the black humour of Romero's classic Living Dead films, it's worth giving this one a whirl.

You can download the story file for Divis Mortis here, or play it online.

Aotearoa

2011-01-20T20:40:00.005Z

Aotearoa
By: Matt Wigdahl

The winning game from IFComp 2010 is in many ways the direct opposite of my own entry. Where Rogue of the Multiverse is extra terse, Aotearoa is quite wordy; where I saw the competition as an opportunity to make a game without newbie-friendly amenities, Matt Wigdahl crammed his game full of tutorials, hints, keyword-highlighting and neat convenience features; where my game prizes focused interaction, Aotearoa is deeply implemented in its responses to unprompted commands; where I prioritised an easy flow, the puzzles here are involved and offer multiple solutions.

A family-friendly adventure through an alternate New Zealand where dinosaurs never died out, Aotearoa simply oozes craft and attention to detail - it's so jam-packed with cool stuff that it absolutely deserves its place at the top.

You can play the game online here.

Face Time

2011-01-19T19:45:00.004Z

Face Time
By: Noyb

Interesting coincidence: Noyb's Face Time was released as part of a "masquerade" event that obscured its authorship, and it was Noyb who resolved a little matter of authorship confusion arising from my last post. Staying faithful to the theme: in this game, exactly who's who (and whether it matters) is quite the issue.

At first, Face Time may not seem very promising: a visual novel without any character graphics, it hits you with adolescent angst from the get-go. But persevere and it becomes apparent that this is actually a neat little deconstruction of typical romance/relationship games.

Starborn

2011-01-18T22:40:00.002Z

Juhana Leinonen's Starborn is a short, keyword-only IF game about the home-sickness of someone who's never been home. More of a vignette than a full-blooded story, it's well worth the five or ten minutes it takes to complete.

You can play it online here.

Drive to Succeed

2011-01-13T21:57:00.006Z

If I don't release at least a demo for this, you may waft unpleasant smells in my direction.

Wikileaks Stories

2010-12-23T12:10:00.002Z

Just a heads-up that Wikileaks Stories is looking for games of all shapes and sizes that are inspired by revelations from the eponymous "unexpected outbreak of governmental transparency" (as one might call it).

There's already at least one text adventure in the works, as well as a planned contribution by Molleindustria.

Rogue of the Multiverse

2010-12-14T22:27:00.001Z

Taking second place in the 16th Annual Interactive Fiction Competition...

Rogue of the Multiverse
A runaway adventure, careering through time and space.

Welcome to Dryzandia, convict 76954. Oh, you're a human? We don't get many of your kind around here, and when we do they don't last for long.

Escape? To where? There's nothing out there but barren wasteland and a saurian civilisation that'll eat you alive. But... every so often one of you alien inmates gets selected for some government programme or something. I don't know what they do there, but it can't be worse than this place... Can it?

--DOWNLOAD--

-Download the latest version (zipped) [Mirror] [Random mirror]
-Download the original competition version [Random mirror]

--INSTRUCTIONS--

-The latest version includes a Windows executable version that you can just double-click to run.
-Linux and Mac users can play the game by running the included .t3 file with an interpreter from this page.
-If you're not sure how to play, enter the commands ABOUT or INSTRUCTIONS.
-If you get stuck, just enter HINT.

Ready to Cram

2010-12-13T22:45:00.003Z

In addition to fixing the bugs and small annoyances that I know of, I've also made the following changes: the full score option at the end will do something a little different (I'll let you find out what for yourselves) and examining yourself will list any body parts that are injured (just like in real life).

Now I just need to give it a once over and pluck up the courage to cram it into the intertubes.

Checks and Embellishment

2010-12-12T22:45:00.002Z

I have met my deadline, in that I've fixed the bugs I know about and have a page ready to publish and link to the little sidebar image on the right.

But before that I want to play through the game to be reasonably sure I haven't broken anything. And I also want to add something that's been bugging me: a more flavourful response to FULL SCORE at the end of the game. Watch this space.

(One of the more dreary activities I engaged in was sifting through the different creature and structure types to make sure I've caught all the instances of objects with text copied and pasted from other objects. The worst part was finding the odd piece of prose I really liked and then realising that the chances of any given player encountering it are minimal.)

Oh Right

2010-12-09T19:52:00.001Z

I keep getting distracted, so I've resolved that this weekend is when I'll finish a bug-fixed version of Rogue of the Multiverse and give it a proper release page.

Or your money back.

Rogue of the Multiverse: What was I thinking?

2010-11-24T21:56:00.006Z

One of the interesting parts of the IFComp experience is reading a couple of dozen reviews that speculate on your design decisions, and having to remain silent. It suddenly makes you feel all bottled up, even if you don't normally go into the design of your games publicly. So I guess that's why you now get a post about why I did what.

I'm posting this before my more general release post on the game because it will be full to the brim with spoilers and I'd therefore like it to appear further back in the Crowchives (that is what they are called). It goes without saying that if you haven't played the game, don't read this post. Although, I suppose if you're not planning on playing the game, it can't hurt - and it might even change your mind. Okay, let's get started.

The Title

I guess I have an interesting relationship with titles. A lot of people think Dead Like Ants is a weird title. I like it. Rogue of the Multiverse, on the other hand, well, it's a title alright, but I probably could have done better. My main inspiration was looking up synonyms of “thief” in a thesaurus, and picking the one that sounded the least criminal.

I was also kind of thinking about roguelikes – which, when I play them, amount to brief excursions to randomly generated worlds that quickly dismember and then kill me. I wouldn't claim that RotM is a roguelike, even partially, but it may to a slight extent mirror the experience of a typical roguelike protagonist.

Why IFComp?

If you've ever seen me express an opinion in discussions revolving around IFComp, you might have been surprised to see me actually enter the event. In a nutshell, I think there's too many rules for my liking, and, at least until recently, IF authors have been too reticent to release games outside the competition. I've always maintained that it's entirely possible to get your games noticed outside “the comp”, where they'll have a much more organic relationship with their audience – and with the growth of the IFDB and Intfiction.org, I think this view is now much more widely accepted than it was two or three years ago.

But, having said that... well, the thing is that the audience you get probably won't actually be in the traditional IF community, or at least that's how it's always seemed to me. It's always felt like there's an internal core, a caramel centre if you will, of IF players for whom IFComp is Interactive Fiction, and anything outside the competition never gets on their radar.

So the past year it's been on my mind to enter a small game in the competition just as a way of saying “Hi” to those folks.

The Two Projects and the Seven Dwarves

This past year I've worked on quite a few disparate projects. First is what I maintain is a really cool idea, but which, after prototyping, I'm convinced requires a rethink and possibly a complete change of format. Graduating from that, I was struck with inspiration for how to tell the story of these two characters who have been haunting me for a couple of years now. At this point I have now defined a mostly complete plan for their game, and just need to find the time and energy to make the damn thing (it would probably be my biggest project yet, in terms of breadth and length). And then I'm working on ideas in Flash, and also prototyping little random ideas that crop up.

Which is all great, but by this point it's August and I have nothing for IFComp.

“Hang on a minute lads...”

I don't know where the idea for Rogue of the Multiverse came from. In my memory the development period is just a blur of frantic work on the game eating up all my spare time, hopeless longing for its completion, and eye strain. Most projects warrant a little page in my diary at the start of their development with a brief sentence explaining my initial idea: “Entirely keyword IF”, for example, or “An ant climbing a tree.” But Rogue of the Multiverse just leaps straight into scribbled to-do lists, interspersed with random lines of dialogue and actions I suspected might break the game.

Did RotM lose anything by being developed so quickly? Inescapably, yes. But did it lose anything good? No, not so much.

The Missions

I saw the missions as being the core of the game, but, unfortunately, always in pretty much the same guise they're in now – a guise which almost every reviewer saw as simplistic and not especially fun.

Given more time, I would only have made a greater variety of worlds. Post-apocalyptic ones were high on my list, along with a city being attacked by a giant monster, and an ocean environment. I also didn't get around to adding any instant-death worlds – volcanoes, gas giants, monsters' stomachs, that sort of thing. I would have eventually implemented “story worlds” with specific maps and gameplay (one of my first and favourite ideas would have been called “Chimp World”), but, crucially, only appearing in between “normal” missions.

I am pleased that at least one reviewer enjoyed these missions the way they were intended – as a simple, shallow and silly adventure through worlds where merely encountering an octopode in a corset is supposed to be satisfying without trying to interact with her, but for the most part I agree that the gameplay of moving to grid co-ordinates while being dismembered isn't good enough to support itself for long.

I had – and have – a lot of ideas for how Rogue of the Multiverse could be a larger game, but they all revolve around the player taking more missions, rather than making the missions themselves more interesting, which I think has to come first. I think the fix that people really had in mind was much more richly implemented mission environments, but that, well, that's kind of not what I was going for.

Bigger or Deeper?

A few reviewers tried to guess what my intent was with the missions, and the game in general. Was I parodying dungeon-grinding RPGs? Was I trying to present a cut-down, all-action game? Well, I did have an intent, and it was this: to argue that an IF game can be shallow and still be fun.

There's a pretty universal ethic in the IF community that deep implementation is good, and shallow implementation is bad. It's not just that the deeply implemented game says, “The feather has an iridescent sheen.” where the shallow game says, “You see no feather here.” It's that the ideal is the command “>PUT FORK IN TOASTER” should prompt a witty response about electrocution.

I don't think there's anything wrong with that. If a game can do that, it's great. But I also strongly believe that those IF games that, whatever literary genre they may belong to, are all ultimately of the “find object, use verb with object” genre should not hold a monopoly. There can and should also be text games that focus on action, or choice, or exploration, or resource management, or calculated risk taking, or other things that nobody has thought of yet.

Rogue of the Multiverse attempts to show that a limited game can still be one with a strong character, cool stuff to do and a memorable world. It tries to find ways to allow a player access to a broad spectrum of things without implementing any of it especially deeply. Is it successful at this? Well, the mileage varies between players, but I think it at least shows that this isn't a fruitless route to take.

Brevity and focused interaction are, I believe, a viable alternative to encouraging players to expect the game to respond to any syntactically correct command.

Dr. Sliss and "Friend"

Dr. Sliss has proven to be a bit of a Marmite character. Some people love her. Some people hate her. Nobody seems ambivalent or on the fence. I'm really happy with that.

The character who is a problem is the player character. I had hoped that players would project themselves into the role, but there aren't enough opportunities for the player to express themselves, so it doesn't work out. Getting to choose your outfit is cool, but pyjamas are not a meaningful personality trait.

The Distinct Object

>X STRIDERS
Large and primitive bipeds with long tails and stubby proto-feathers.

>X FEATHERS
You see no feathers here.

Well, I don't like that. But having written almost a hundred different types of object and creature to randomly appear on mission worlds, implementing their constituent components as well seems like a Sisyphean task of the “take a flying leap” variety.

So, the message “you see no distinct feathers here” was born. Probably not the best one I could have come up with, but the idea was to set expectations. “Yes,” this message tries to say, “if you see an object in the text, you should be able to interact with it. But not at too fine a level of detail.”

Did it work that way? No, probably not. But I still think it's less jarring than the original.

The Bugs

Inevitably, there are bugs in the finished version. And it really irks me. At least two mission objects include incorrect text. It's also possible to completely derail the game at one point. Otherwise, though, I think it's mostly solid.

The Future

What next for Rogue of the Multiverse? Well, given that I've been meaning to release a new version of Snowblind Aces for so long that I've forgotten why I thought it was necessary, I wouldn't hold your breath. A new version of RotM that fixes the most basic issues I've seen, and includes a Windows executable version is probably the best you'll get.

Still, the idea of coming up with better mission gameplay and expanding the game to involve alternate routes - including autonomy from or antagonism with Dr. Sliss – well, I find the notion theoretically appealing. On the other hand, if you want me to forget about a game and start focusing on other projects, a great way to do that is by making me keep silent about it for six weeks. And all I really wanted out of this was to make a small game and enter it in IFComp – on which count, mission well and truly accomplished.

No, Really

2010-11-23T20:46:00.002Z

I am writing up a post on Rogue of the Multiverse. But first I need to pour out a lot of words - and then, preferably, to delete half of them.

Huzzah!

2010-11-16T19:47:00.006Z

The results are out: Rogue of the Multiverse came second in IFComp.

Now that the rule of author silence during the competition no longer applies, I suppose there's quite a bit I should post about: a proper release post for the game and an image in the sidebar, for example, and a discussion of my design decisions. I'd also like to post about some of my favourite entries to the competition. And a new release of the game with some bug fixes and a Windows executable version is probably in order.

Before I get around to all that, though, I'd just like to say a heartfelt thanks to everyone who played and rated my game, whatever rating you gave it, and to all those who posted reviews online. Please treat yourselves to a banana.

Some Relevant Images

2010-09-30T20:09:00.005+01:00

All images public domain.
Bee image released into the public domain by Ferry Schneider.
Sad face released into the public domain by Harlekin96.

Well Then

2010-09-29T20:25:00.004+01:00

So I found an object that responds to (and, half the time, refers to itself by) the wrong name. I'm too nervous to upload a new version now, especially because my Internet connection has suddenly decided to become extra flaky. It'll have to stay.

I really need to just walk away from the thing now. It is what it is. My testers did a fantastic job in a short timespan, but by its very nature this is a game where no-one (myself included) has yet experienced every situation the player can encounter.

So my game may be a little rough around the edges, but I like to think it has a strong personality and a sturdy constitution. It may not be a work of interactive literature, or a head-scratching puzzler, but it has something entertaining to offer you, and I hope you'll all enjoy delving in and discovering it for yourself.

Check the IFComp website on Friday, and, at some point, in some time zone, my entry should be available there for download. During the competition, I won't be able to discuss the game publicly, but there'll be an email link in the game and on the IFComp site if you want to contact me about it.

Thanks all.

Done. I hope.

2010-09-28T20:11:00.002+01:00

My last tester found a couple of small issues that I almost didn't think were worth updating my version on the comp site, until I noticed that as part of my own testing I'd actually removed the fix for the worst bug in the game found by a previous tester. D'oh.

But, what's there now is what's there. I have to stop working on it at some point before the deadline, so, well, here goes nothing.

Finish line in sight...

2010-09-27T19:32:00.003+01:00

I've uploaded a tentative final version to the IFComp site, and passed the game along to my trusted final tester...

Come Thursday, the deadline passes...

Finishing Up

2010-09-26T19:39:00.001+01:00

I've still got reports from a couple of testers to go, but nothing left on my list to do.

Today I created a little PDF "feelie" to go with the game.

Nothing to Report

2010-09-24T21:21:00.001+01:00

Made a couple of small additions.

Okay...

2010-09-23T22:40:00.002+01:00

Hints are finished. Hopefully there are no major issues left to be found by my last few testers.

Starting to feel, dangerously, like I can relax.

La La La

2010-09-23T00:04:00.001+01:00

A few more bugs fixed. I also got started on the hint system. More than half done, but obviously not going to be finished tonight.

Exterminator

2010-09-21T22:54:00.002+01:00

I was hoping to have a night off, but many of my testers got back with timely bug reports and I had a long list of things to fix instead. On the plus-side, I'm now more confident this thing will offer at least some entertainment.

Zzzzzzzzzzz

2010-09-21T01:40:00.002+01:00

Tonight I resolved not to go to bed until I'd completed all the work on my list.

Now very tired, but ready to embark on the second phase of testing the shit out of this thing.

So Close

2010-09-19T23:34:00.003+01:00

By my reckoning I must have defined over a hundred objects these past couple of days. I'm now pretty exhausted.

Left on my list: one small part of the game, and a few things that don't work as nicely as they should.

Day On

2010-09-18T20:00:00.001+01:00

At least some of it. I suspect I could have this thing in a reasonable state of completion if I put in a proper day's work on it tomorrow.

And since I've got less than two weeks left, that would probably be a good idea.

Day Off

2010-09-17T18:59:00.001+01:00

Spent half an hour killing a few little bugs and rough patches.

Now going to take a day off from this thing.

Still Progressing...

2010-09-16T23:33:00.002+01:00

Finally adding content to the thing that needs content, automated something else for the player and implemented something I missed right at the start of the game.

-1

2010-09-16T00:06:00.002+01:00

Wasn't able to work on the thing much today. Sort of finally in a good position to start adding that damn content. Still need to finish the ending. I think finally getting this thing onto the final stretch is going to have to wait for the weekend, but I'm going to start soliciting testing and feedback now...

Actually, right now I'm going to crawl into bed.

0

2010-09-14T23:42:00.002+01:00

I wasn't looking forward to finding a way to disallow this particular set of actions. And then I realised: actually, just allow the action and have the relevant character say something about it.

If you know what I mean.

Which you don't.

Uh-oh, it's zero hour. I made a concerted effort today to implement all the scenery I needed to. I've also done a bit of work on that vaunted mid-game content.

I still need to add a lot more content, and finish off the epilogues. And there's some stuff that can wait, like the hint system.

But what I have by tomorrow evening should be very testable. If you're one of my regulars, expect me to hit you up with an email tomorrow to check you're alive/available.

1

2010-09-13T23:33:00.003+01:00

So tired. Cannot wait until I'm not working on this thing anymore.

It's now possible to play the game through from beginning to end. Probably. I haven't actually tried it. And there's a lot of unimplemented stuff left in the final act.

Still, I guess all that's left at this point is scenery and content. And Wednesday I'll release a private beta to my poor, poor volunteers. It may have some bits missing, but hopefully it'll be enough for testing and development to both progress.

2

2010-09-12T23:46:00.002+01:00

Phew, I can't even remember everything I got done today.

All that's left now is:

1. Fully implementing the third act (there's some gaps at the moment, so you can't play the game all the way through).

2. Adding all that mysterious "content" I keep mentioning but never explaining (I finished off one minor kind today).

3. Miscellaneous bits and bobs - a few rooms with missing scenery, some stupid actions that succeed, the hints system etc. etc.

I've certainly achieved way more than I expected. I'm not sure I'll meet my self-imposed beta deadline, but unless my testers discover Serious Problems, I should have something to release in the comp.

Probably.

3

2010-09-11T21:17:00.002+01:00

Implemented the game's other major NPC and an important widget.

Now all that's left is to add the content that will make the main gameplay/puzzle/thing interesting, put the logic and scenes in place to reach the endgame and, well, implement the endgame.

That'll take no time at all, I'm sure.

¬_¬;

4

2010-09-10T23:55:00.002+01:00

Did a little work on the endgame, didn't finish anything.

Alternating between extreme optimism and pessimism when it comes to the deadline.

5

2010-09-09T22:58:00.002+01:00

I've drawn a line under the game's first act. I've also finally planned out the third and final act. The second act still has a couple of big things outstanding including all that content I mentioned.

I am making huge leaps and bounds with this game, but I'm starting to think I may not meet my deadline. Hopefully the weekend will give me the time I need to make even more progress.

6

2010-09-08T23:17:00.002+01:00

Worked on a smattering of small features today - which means I added a lot of ticks to my to-do list, without gaining the satisfaction of feeling I finished anything important.

7

2010-09-07T22:23:00.002+01:00

Okay, I've completed the highest priority aspects of the second most important gameplay mechanic (such as there is gameplay). (The first most important bit is already kind of complete, but kind of also waiting for me to generate shit-tonnes of content for it.) I also implemented a piece of labour-saving automation for the player that's been bugging me.

Looking at my list, the "must-have" items are looking more and more doable within a short time-scale, while the "would-like-to-have" items are seeming a bit too optimistic. (And there are few things so outlandish and involved I didn't even bother to put them on the list.)

Although, actually, some of these lowest priority items are the kind of things you see in a game, go "Wow! Look at that!" and then completely forget about (or get annoyed at the unexpected complexities they add). Sometimes working to a tight deadline is just what you need to make you cut out unnecessary crap.

8

2010-09-06T23:04:00.003+01:00

I've got all the main locations in place now, and I've polished off the direction system (something I came up with for another project and am rather fond of).

I did perhaps spend a little too long writing random chatter for an NPC and implementing a useless widget for one room.

Next I'll work on this thing that I won't tell you what it is.

5 days done, 9 to go...

2010-09-05T21:52:00.002+01:00

Well, I now have a roadmap of features to tick off. There's over twenty things I still need to add, where "thing" can mean something relatively simple - or something relatively... not simple.

So, time to schedule work and prioritise.

There's a first time for everything, it seems.

IFComp Go, Go, Go!

2010-08-31T22:33:00.002+01:00

Last minute idea, last minute sign-up!

I've got just over four weeks. I'll be beta-testing whatever I've got after two weeks.

That doesn't sound like long, but two weeks is all the time I had for development and testing for Snowblind Aces, and 168 times longer than I had for Six-Chamber Champion. Also.. this is kind of not going to be a standard text adventure.

But... it's also going to be the most text adventure-ish game I've made.

I'd say more, but I think part of the fun of IFComp is being (pleasantly?) surprised by the games on release day.

Rightio

2010-08-22T19:58:00.002+01:00

I've been quiet lately, partly because I've not been sure which of the several projects I've toyed with was going to get done, also partly because I was hoping to have something I could chuck at IFComp. That ship has now sailed, but on the plus side I now have a plan laid out for a complete project. Nothing too ground-breaking, but probably something that falls under, "If you liked my other stuff, you'll like this."

Now, the other project I've hinted at in previous posts (which isn't the one I have nicely planned out)... I've had a tussle with it in TADS, but I'm now considering developing it in Flash instead. Imagine Poizoned Mind, but with more plot and less jokes - and in your browser.

I also started prototyping a small game featuring Nate and Ivy, but I've run into a wall in terms of TADS and its ability to work well with keywords. Their further adventures are kind of on hold until I can either wrestle TADS into submission, get my head around Inform or come up with a system of my own... But rest assured that I will be going back to them - I mean, I've barely started foreshadowing their secret arch nemesis!

Starting out...

2010-07-07T22:51:00.003+01:00

A bunch of demos have been released as part of Introcomp, the IF competition that's looking for "the beginning bits of the best IF game ever."

As for me, well, I'm working on something. I'm just not sure what.

"Good Morning, Mr. Phelps."

2010-05-17T22:17:00.003+01:00

I gave myself a schedule for this thing. I'm not running behind, yet, but I'm worrying about scale.

What I want to do this week is to get the structure of the game in place, from start to finish. This is actually my normal modus operandi, and, without going into why I did something different this time, I think getting this done will do a lot to take the pressure off.

With the skeleton down and sorted, it's just a case of fleshing it out, and if things don't get fleshed out as much as they could do, well, no biggy. But right now I'm slogging along at a slow pace and looking at a finish line that's a lot further away than I want it to be.

So this is my short term aim. Although there's a million-and-one other things I need to worry about as well.

2010-04-07T21:13:00.001+01:00

You didn't hear this from me, but I'm starting to make progress on something.

XYZZY Me, XYZZY You

2010-03-21T19:02:00.004Z

The XYZZY Awards ceremony was held yesterday. I didn't win anything, but Walker & Silhouette was nominated for Best Writing and Best Player Character (Ivy), and Dead Like Ants was nominated for best NPCs.

You can see all the nominees and winners at the IFWiki page.

Six-Chamber Champion and the 371-in-1 Pirate Kart

2010-02-28T09:51:00.002Z

For some reason I decided to do the 371-in-1 Klik & Play Pirate Kart II: Klik Harder event this weekend - at least for just the one game. The idea is definitely for quantity over quality, and games must be completed within two hours - so I just knocked up this short game of chance.

It's far from perfect, but in any case, you can find two hours of my hard work at the page for my entry here.

I've also got a zip containing an updated version - and a .t3 version for you non-Windows types - here.

And finally, why not check out the other entries tagged with Interactive Fiction?

Updates:
Version 2 - fixed a few typos and bugs.
Version 3 - gave the thing a general polish, changed some things that were bugging me, anticipated a couple of silly actions.

SPAG 57

2010-02-18T19:08:00.002Z

Issue 57 of SPAG is out here. There's a nice review of Walker & Silhouette right at the bottom.

For the record, I haven't played King of Shreds and Patches yet, and I now might understand why some people were able to figure out the 'murder weapon' in W&S so easily...

Still Alive

2010-01-26T18:52:00.002Z

Hi there. I suppose I've kind of taken the past month off, but I'm starting to gather together my plans and get cracking again. I've got a couple of different collaborations on the horizon, as well as two ideas for IF games that I finally want to try and get done. Looking further ahead, I do intend to go back to Ivy and Nate - but I want to work on other stuff first, to prevent W&S burnout.

And in the short term, there have been some interesting text games by other people over the past couple of months that I want to mention here, as soon as I find the time and energy to sit down and play them.

2009-12-28T17:35:00.002Z

Walker & Silhouette is now available from the IF Archive. This is probably the most stable of all the download links available, so if you have (or are thinking of) linking to the zip directly, please use:

http://www.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/tads/WalkerSilhouette.zip

Or for a random mirror:

http://mirror.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/tads/WalkerSilhouette.zip

Update-me-do

2009-12-16T19:08:00.002Z

I've slipped version 9 of Walker & Silhouette into the existing download links. This fixes a couple of small glitches you may have seen if you tried certain standard IF actions, and also leaves out the superfluous Picasa.ini files that got swept up in the last zip.

Unless I seriously botched something up with this update, this'll be the last version of the game. I'll upload it to the IF Archive over the weekend (although it may be some time before they process it, I'd imagine, especially over Christmas).

What's next?

2009-12-13T10:53:00.002Z

Right, I'm going to wait until next weekend, then upload a version of Walker & Silhouette that fixes any problems that have cropped up. I'll upload it to the IF Archive too, which should provide a more stable download link than the present Googlepages one...

Walker & Silhouette - Download

2009-12-09T19:08:00.013Z

Misfits in a strange city; crime fighters grappling with the weirdest mysteries; rivals who become partners until the last:

Walker & Silhouette
A keyword only adventure.

Team up with a dashing detective and an iconoclastic flapper to solve absurd and unfathomable crimes in this interactive story - where you control the action just by typing or clicking highlighted words in the text.

Walker & Silhouette uses a similar keyword system to Blue Lacuna, and experiments with applying it to various forms of interaction: talk, investigate, solve puzzles and fight villains... using only single word commands.

--DOWNLOAD--

-Zipped Deluxe Package [Mirror ] [Mirror 2] [Randomised mirror]
-Contains: Windows version; story file for Linux and Mac interpreters; quick-start instructions.

--Release History--

Version 8: first release (update: amended the HTML docs for Linux).
Version 9: update that fixes two non-serious glitches.

Stick a fork in it...

2009-12-06T19:05:00.002Z

Okay, just gonna wait for any last minute bug reports and then I'm finally calling it quits on this thing. Barring any serious calamities, release day is Wednesday.

2009-11-29T21:24:00.001Z

Squeezing the last few bugs out this thing. Check back next Sunday for another update...

Almost there...

2009-11-22T14:19:00.002Z

I've finished the 'meta' aspects of the game that I still had to add - the hints, the manual, fleshing out the scoring system a little. I just want to get in a final round of testing and proof-reading to check I haven't broken anything, and then it's release time...

Ça va bien.

2009-11-15T14:49:00.002Z

I must say, it's been nice to be able to step away from the project for a while - just working on bug fixes, spelling errors etc. Hearteningly, the scene I thought was the game's weakest has passed pretty much unremarked, and it's the scene that I had the most trouble working on that's (perhaps unsurprisingly) now become Public Enemy #1.

The biggest thing left on my list is adding the hint system. As far as I'm concerned hints are a non-negotiable necessity in a game of this type, but that doesn't mean I don't hate implementing them. It's all the pain of checking flags and states - and none of the fulfilment of world building and characterisation.

Learn it up, player.

2009-11-12T20:20:00.004Z

Here's a peek at the HTML manual I'm planning on including with the thing.

Walker & Silhouette

2009-11-09T21:29:00.002Z

Testing phase... begin!

First tester... selected!

Tester name: Pacian!

Get to it, you lazy dog! Oh, wait...

Coming Soon

2009-10-21T00:24:00.001+01:00

My next game is nominally complete. Don't get too excited: there's still a lot of work I want to do before I release it - ranging from embellishments to bug fixes, possibly making significant changes to one whole section - and ultimately beta testing the thing.

(I also need to settle on a title.)

IFComp... Away!

2009-10-02T20:57:00.002+01:00

The IFComp games are available for download. I'm not going to cover them here, at least not until the competition is over.

Getting There

2009-10-01T20:15:00.004+01:00

Making stuff is hard. But it's still gonna get made.

Extra! Extra!

2009-09-02T23:23:00.003+01:00

Read all about it! Absolutely nothing to read about! Extra! Extra!

The Interactive Fiction scene has gone quiet in the run-up to IFComp, and there's a dearth of new text and text-ish games, although three demos are being released for Introcomp.

I've also taken a bit of a holiday from my work in progress / intensive planathon of the remaining sections, and my hopes of releasing it before IFComp have breathed a raspy death rattle. The IFComp results typically seem to come out in mid November, so I might try and release the game on my birthday (the 21st), or just before Christmas.

Silent Conversation

2009-08-15T12:38:00.003+01:00

Silent Convseration
By: Gregory Weir
Format: Browser
Play it|Blog Post

Gregory Weir's latest of his monthly games is a platformer that takes place within the texts of various public domain works. It's arguably not as fun as just sitting down with the books themselves, but Weir conjures some truly striking landscapes and effects out of their words.

Cacophony

2009-08-03T19:39:00.003+01:00

Cacophony
By: Owen Parish
Format: Z-Code
@IFDB|@IFWiki

Cacophony is a surreal, well written adventure that seems to empasise the puzzley more than the literary.

Work In Progress: Yuck

2009-07-28T21:19:00.001+01:00

I'm working through the parts of the game in the order players will see them. I've completed most of the fourth one (of seven in total).

Town; Afternoon in the House of Secrets

2009-07-26T22:50:00.004+01:00

Town and Afternoon in the House of Secrets
By: Anna Anthropy
Format: Browser

These two games are simple, succinct, and controlled entirely by clicking hyperlinks in the text. They're notable to me in particular because of how similar they are to what I'm attempting to do with my current work in progress, and they also happen to be fun, well written adventures to boot.

Of the two games, Town presents less of a challenge, but also, I think, makes better use of the format.

The King of Shreds and Patches

2009-07-20T19:59:00.005+01:00

The King of Shreds and Patches
By: Jimmy Maher
Format: Glulx
Homepage|@IFDB|@IFWiki

The result of over two years development, The King of Shreds and Patches is a Lovecraftian mystery set in a carefully researched depiction of Elizabethan London.

The game includes a graphical map, a hint system, and a (perhaps incongruously chatty) tutorial mode for those new to Interactive Fiction.

Work In Progress

2009-07-19T14:54:00.002+01:00

So I'm working on a short, keyword-driven IF game following the adventures of a pair of crime fighters in a retro-futuristic, 1910s/20s styled city. I've planned seven separate locations, each with their own little puzzle, conversation or event, and so far the first two are pretty much done.

This has been a good two or three months in the planning, but hopefully implementation will be finished in a month or two.

My Uncle George

2009-07-18T10:45:00.000+01:00

My Uncle George
By: Filipe Salgado
Format: Z-Code
Homepage|@IFDB

My Uncle George is a short, deeply implemented game with a strong narrative voice. It's not perfect - there are a few typos and the player seems to take more of a reactive than active role in events - but it's short and to the point, and it's relatively rare to see an IF game with such a strongly characterised PC.

IF Progressive One

2009-07-17T20:15:00.000+01:00

IF Progressive One
By: The IF Progressive Team
Format: Z-Code
Homepage|@IFDB|@IFWiki

This is a rather strange little thing. I'm all in favour of unusual titles, but such a dry moniker seems like a short, unfair route to obscurity. IF Progressive One is the result of 'an experimental IF game project in collaborative authorship' - possibly inspired by Alabaster. Eight different authors worked on the game, each subsequent author being allowed full access to all the preceding segments.

Where Alabaster pulled off the impossible feat of having a very strong, unified voice, despite its collaborative authorship, this game goes quite in the opposite direction. The first segment is a richly described, puzzle-free and wonderfully characterful piece of IF. The second... Well, it begins like this:

Suddenly there are almost no descriptions, and the player is still expected to... well, there's no obvious direction or motivation for this segment either, or hints (so this is where my time with the game came to an end). Still, a game that can change from completely fiction focused to a completely old-school puzzler at the drop of a hat suggests that those interested in collaborative IF might find this to be an experiment with very interesting results.

SPAG #55

2009-07-17T19:36:00.001+01:00

SPAG - the Society for the Promotion of Adventure Games - is a quarterly e-zine featuring reviews and articles on Interactive Fiction. Issue 55 has just been released here.

I'm not just plugging it because it features a glowing review of Dead Like Ants.

Welcome

2009-07-14T21:56:00.000+01:00

Coming soon to an Internet near you.