Nov30
The Boston IF meetup for November will be Thursday, November 30, 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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The People's Republic of Interactive Fiction
Boston's IF interest group
Play games from a list of Interactive Fiction titles selected by the People's Republic.
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Nov30
The People’s Republic of Interactive Fiction convened on Friday, Oct 27, 2023 online. Zarf, anjchang, Kirill, Josh, Hugh (StrandGames), Dana, Kathryn, Kaylah (NEU) welcomed newcomer Sara, a sci-fi writer. Warning: What follows is probably not proper English, but just my log of notes from the meeting to jog people’s memories.
What we’re playing: Josh working on an Ink Visual Novel Template tool. Josh did a Twitch interview about it on the HandEyeSociety’s channel. Also working with Geoffrey Golden on minigames from https://adventuresnack.substack.com— sign up for the newsletter to receive text adventures by email. Also mentioned Fix Your Mother’s Printer We’re enjoying these tiny games, quick to play! Sara, a sci-fi writer, is interested in the art of narrative design and interactive narrative. Looking into Porpentine. Played Horse Master recently. Zarf update: playing Gnosia a sci-fi deduction RPG. Reviewing the dystopian game The Archivist and the Revolution by Autumn Chen. Sara noted that how that game uses daily tasks and time passing to provide a commentary or critique of modern life.
If anyone is hiring, please send to the email list and let us know of opportunities for game designers, illustrators, etc.
Ecto Comp underway https://itch.io/jam/ectocomp-2023-english (we did a short play-through; see notes at the end of this meeting).
Zarf also working admin stuff for IFTF. There’s an IFTF grant competition, deadline today! https://iftechfoundation.org/committees/grants/grants-guidelines/
People from Tumblr were inspired by Naked Twine Jam, check out the Bare-Bones Jam https://itch.io/jam/bare-bones-jam
Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision is the buzz. The IF world is hoping for transparency about what is happening with Infocom. Trademarks history. https://xkcd.com/927/
Halloween discussion:
- Know by Heart game released last year.
- Ice-Pick Studio behind pathologic released a new game https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=franz.mystery.horror.interactive.story&hl=en_US Ice Pick was also mentioned for Nicolai Dybovsky,
- Alien Melon’s Everything is Going to Be OK
Zine discussion:
- Josh recommends ChoiceBeat Zine https://willyelektrix.itch.io/choicebeat-issue-9 is out!
- Kirill recommends Natalie Lawhead’s Everything is Going to be OK https://alienmelon.itch.io/everything-is-going-to-be-ok
For those who don’t know, check out the IntFiction forums https://intfiction.org Forums
Narrascope planning is happening, feel free to volunteer for positions. Hopefully will have more news in November. Join the discord and get involved.
Group play-through: Sara has an Ectocomp game entry. A playthrough of Mothman, Sara’s EctoComp game, was enjoyed. The novelty of multiple choice! The pacing was great. Is it an unreliable narrator. We got a 63% as a group, how close we got to figuring out the true narrative. Discussion of explanation from the teacher or ambiguity or expecting multiple playthroughs. Maybe an image of the moom with percentage of how much you got right. Waxing and waning moons… is a full moon possible, is the narrator reliable? Good fun!
Nov29
The People’s Republic of Interactive Fiction convened on Thursday, Sept. 28th Zarf, Doug, Stephen Eric Jablonski, Hugh, Andrew Stephens, and anjchang. Warning: What follows is probably not proper English, but just my log of notes from the meeting to jog people’s memories.
Discussion of saved game format. Storing deltas vs storing the full state game. Advantage of storing deltas. But you need intelligent merge of old save objects with new deltas. Making a system like that reliable is very difficult.
Recap of MIT Museum after Dark. Meeting David and Michael was amazing! Discussion of influence of Adventure, the idea that we need “more like this,” Zork treasure mechanics.
NIck Montfort’s gallery at the Trope Tank The Hops Ahead Exhibit will be running until Friday 6pm. There are 18 works by artists responding to the interactive narrative themes and ideas in Hopscotch by Julio Cortázar
Narratives where you don’t know what the character knows. Dramatic irony.
Hugh talked about his if comp game submission. It was enjoyed as we talked about the challenges on mobile and text input, also the size of images. A lot of games write their own keyboard for better layout and ergonomics. Fun fact, DAZ graphics from came first, and then the story around it. Kit bashing for graphics. Andrew working on his own game with Blender. Extreme stylization. Angela starts with Tinkercad and imports models into Blender later.
Hugh was working on an IFcomp story. it yesterday via weblink. Written in his own language for Strand games. Went on a deep dive of his source code. His story platform is open source.
IF COMP voting coming up! Go Play!
Sep28
The People’s Republic of Interactive Fiction convened on Thursday, August 31, 2023. Kathryn Li, Zarf, Feneric, JPtuttle, Hugh, Flori, Stephen Eric Jablonski, Chris Martens, and anjchang, welcomed newcomer Biyi Wen. Photo credit: Zarf Notes credit: Zarf and Kathryn Li. A special thank you to Kathryn Li and Zarf for the notes and photos from the meeting. The below photo is an edit of the one received from Zarf. Warning: What follows is probably not proper English, but just my log of notes from the meeting to jog people’s memories.
Apple 2c had terrible key rollover. 65C02 processor. 5.25″ floppies.
Angela reports that Baba is You was enjoyed at the Recurse Center. Recently saw the anime film “Humanity has Declined” had a post-apocalyptic story mentioning narratives in comics.
MIT Museum event on 9/13 Everyone needs tickets. If you signed up, Angela will send the list of people to Flori so we all have tickets. Fiori is digitizing and cataloging old snapshots of Infocom, digitizing photos from a large donation of IF history. Their exhibit also includes images and feelies from an Infocom booth.
Boston Festival of Independent Games – old hardware
Zarf working on interpreter bugs.
Someone just republished CityN, 1999 Myst Clone
CM played Mask of the Rose
Elex– Gothic like story
Emily Shorts Choice of Games style Game Platinum Concierge
Biyi is researching media archaeology, working on comparative histories of personal computing, She is studying 80s and 90s computer culture in China. She is visiting MIT from U Colorado Boulder for a Mellon fellowship, and will be in year-long residence at the Trope Tank.
Boston Puzzle Hunt local puzzle hunt. Green Line Extension Theme.
Google Play Developers – TInkerSTories Rerelease due to SDK update. Lack of Space on development environments, recompiling all the time for App Store updates.People trying to update Android apps with the current SDK. (Android and iOS require developers to recompile. Windows doesn’t, which is why Windows has infinite layers of patch built into the OS.). Ruffle —
The state of make tools is horrible today with all the added SDKs.
Books by Steve Jackson Games, a Lovecraftian Choose Your Own Adventure prelaunched on Kickstarter, a set of six games called “Choose Cthulu”
Talk about game books—someone made a multiplayer first person shooter in a book
Ace of Aces – Flight Simulator in 2 Books
Feneric, one week left for introcomp voting
IFcomp is coming up! Submit something.
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