Sep16

September meetup (online)

by zarf on September 16th, 2021 at 12:58 am
Posted In: Meetings

The Boston IF meetup for September will be Monday, September 20, 6:30 pm Eastern time.

We will post the Zoom link to the mailing list on the day of the meeting.

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Sep03

Update on MIT meetings

by zarf on September 3rd, 2021 at 12:20 pm
Posted In: Meetings

Nick Montfort has passed along some info on the status of returning to in-person meetups at MIT. The upshot is that it is still not possible for the fall semester.

The Trope Tank has not yet been moved back out of storage. There are a couple of possible spaces where it might move to, but neither will be ready until October, and it will not be fully moved in for a few weeks after that.

On top of that, MIT policy now requires that visitors be escorted by campus members when entering buildings. They are working on an event system which will allow visitors to register for events (see “Tim Tickets” in the FAQ) but this is not yet available.

The upshot is that in-person meetups are still too much hassle and risk for the rest of this year. We’ll check back in early 2022 and see whether the situation has improved. Until then, Zoom meetings will continue!

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Aug24

July Meeting Post Mortem

by Angela Chang on August 24th, 2021 at 2:24 pm
Posted In: Meetings, Post Mortem
July 2021 PR-IF meeting: Zarf, anjchang, Dana, Carrington, Hugh, and Kay.

The People’s Republic of Interactive Fiction convened on Wednesday, July 28, 2021. Zarf,  Hugh,  Dana, KaySavetz and Carrington (Eaten By A Grue), anjchang. attended. Warning: What follows is probably not proper English, but just my log of notes from the meeting to jog people’s memories:

We’re in summer!
Zarf’s playing Blaseball https://www.blaseball.com

Blernsball in Futurama (multiball)

Mooksball the running joke in Gene Wolf novels

Europa Universalis Four

Lethis Path of Progress

Have you heard of a PunyInform game called “duck! me?”

https://neurocracy.site Dana shared about this murder mystery set in 2049 on wikipedia. Another wikipedia game to play, “Press random and always hit first article, you’ll always hit philosophy“

Closer to IF comp time

Parsercomp voting runs into july

Another mysterium fan convention, the working Myst port to Apple 2 is finished!

Kay & Carrington KansasFest happened! This year’s buzz- an Apple 2 game in unity with virtualized Apple 2, Next year July 19th-24th mark your calendars.

Kay read Meanwhile, and bought the App. Looking for disparities between print and digital version.
Zarf shared his story of working on it with Jason Shiga. On the digital version, the giant squid has to be reached by selecting squid panel manually.

Kay and Carrington — Zork Zero being played on Eaten By A Grue “It’s kicking my butt” says Carrington!

Should interactive fiction support note taking or map making?
Hugh exploring map making- what’s the ideal map? What about running to the edge of the paper?
Carrington puts forth helping the reader with a “hypothetical map orientation suggestion”
Hugh what about up of down, how do you know where you start on that next paper.
Rooms help you keep examining every object all at once. Hadean lands, room count function of number of items in the room description.

Zarf on his drag & drop IF project, redid the interface based on tabs rather than fake, tiny windows in the web browser. He submitted a proposal talk about it to Rogue Like Celebration in September.

Working on 1933-era C memory management compiler project

Angela working on coloring duck story for parents to read to their kids.
Chicory, cartoon puppy with paint brush. It’s a children’s story talking about deep topics.
Baba Is You is technically a parser based text adventure. A block pushing parser, zarf & anj enjoyed it.

Cool Gear: Steam Deck
Kay’s excited about getting a PlayDate

Kay messing with ffmpeg

Carrington likes that PunyInform Game Development is simple

Narrascope call for volunteers will be going out sometime in November

Zarf shared a home decoration poster— is it filled with clues to zarfs next game! Love it!

Hugh used Inkscape, recommends Affinity Designer as a graphics package.

We imagine a game “Get back to Normal, the COVID game” Lolz all around!

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Aug12

August meetup (online)

by zarf on August 12th, 2021 at 6:41 pm
Posted In: Meetings

The Boston IF meetup for August will be Tuesday, August 31, 6:30 pm Eastern time.

We will post the Zoom link to the mailing list on the day of the meeting.

(We are still checking into the possibility and desirability of returning to MIT campus for in-person meetings this fall.)

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Jul20

June Meeting Post Mortem

by Angela Chang on July 20th, 2021 at 12:28 pm
Posted In: Meetings, Post Mortem
June 2021 Pr-IF Meeting Zarf, Team Anjchang, Carrington, Dana, Stephen, NickM, Hugh, and Kay.

The People’s Republic of Interactive Fiction convened on Monday, June 21, 2021. Zarf, ,KaySavetz and Carrington (Eaten By A Grue), NickM, Stephen Eric Jablonski, Hugh Steers, and anjchang welcomed newcomer Dana Freitas. Warning: What follows is probably not proper English, but just my log of notes from the meeting to jog people’s memories:

Check out Dana’s Spring Thing entry, Hand of God, made in Twine!

Parser comp deadlines soon

IFcomp kicking off in July, there will be rule changes, previews of things.

Dana is working on a summer project called Salvation.

Hugh reported on a work in progress.

Zarf working on Inform6 compiler, better notifications.

Carrington working on KansasFest work in PunyInform.

A build tool to produce output for PunyInform

Angela and Nick reported that Taper #6 is out at http://taper.badquar.to/6 The call to the next issue is also out, due in August.

Plans for rogue-like celebration, Zarf working on something

In the fall, looking forward to planning Narrascope

IFTF has 9 people on it now! Check out the blog post.

Hugh put forward a proposal about publishing knowledge related to Interactive Fiction. Nick talked about publishing in academia, adventure games, narrative design. Dana talked about codifying knowledge by not having competing standards, Kay sent a link https://xkcd.com/927/

Joseph Weizenbaum’s source code for Eliza is now public:)

Twining, a New book on Twine by Stuart Moulthrop. Open access book free download https://www.fulcrum.org/concern/monographs/ms35tb924?locale=en

http://archive.org/details/Twining

Stuart wrote an essay about it https://electronicbookreview.com/essay/why-twining/

https://astronomy.com/-/media/Images/News%20and%20Observing/News/2021/04/Eclipsepath2024.jpg?mw=1000&mh=800

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