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May22

April 2023 PR-IF Post Mortem

by Angela Chang on May 22nd, 2023 at 6:18 pm
Posted In: Meetings, Post Mortem
People on the April 2023 PR-IF zoom meeting.

TThe People’s Republic of Interactive Fiction convened on Friday, April 29th on Zoom. Zarf, anjchang,   Kyrill,  Brendan Desilets ,Hugh, Mike Stage,andStephen Eric Jablonski attended.  Warning: What follows is probably not proper English, but just my log of notes from the meeting to jog people’s memories.

Group play-through of Beam Me Up Scotty

We enjoyed playing Strand Games’ Beam Me Up Scotty for Spring Thing. It’s a catch phrase game where you type in the answer to what you want Scotty to do in different situations. All the phrases are start with B and we had fun! Has anyone seen a catch phrase game like this before?

Could do another game based on Casablanca. “Play it again” phrases that start with ‘P”?

Mike asked about the language platform (Strand). Hugh explained that it is custom flow-based code. ( We also talked about “vi” and vi commands, since that’s Hugh google name for his Spring Thing entry. ) Hugh gave us a walkthrough of the source code to the Beam Me Up Scotty game. He showed us the token language that he’s designed, which was quite interesting in the way many objects and dialogues were configured. Check out the blog describing how he builds the games for Strand Games.

Discussion on how he authored the character dialogs to scale for larger games. At the bottom of his latest post, youu can download the work in progress game for Roger The Pirate. The post also goes into detail on the story code and flow of RogerThePirate. Thank you Hugh for sharing your game!

What else we’re playing

Kirill played “Imagine Lifetimes” a satirical simulation game about the meaning of life. Also mentioned Storyteller puzzle game released last month on Steam.

Are there other spring thing games. Mike played a hog farming by Adventure Snack called Your Post-Apocalyptic To-Do List. Mysterygame (hugh) space pirate. Galaxy Jones talked abbout. There’s still time to nominate games for Spring Thing Ribbons, deadline May 12th. Go Play!

 Comment 
Apr28

Feb 2023 PR-IF Post Mortem

by Angela Chang on April 28th, 2023 at 6:24 pm
Posted In: Meetings, Post Mortem

 The People’s Republic of Interactive Fiction convened on Tues, Feb. 28th on Zoom. Zarf, anjchang,  Stephen Eric Jablonski,  Andrew Stephens, Dana Freitas , Daniel Gaskelll, Hugh, and Kyrill attended. Warning: What follows is probably not proper English, but just my log of notes from the meeting to jog people’s memories.

Depression Quest – Dana told us the backstory and gave it a chance. The author was at FIG. It’s a story about depression.

Discussion about database-like games, wandering a memory.

Serial Experience Lain, the anime game. Game is very strange. Game released after the series. Memories and fading memories.

Then https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_Experiments_Lain_(video_game)

Gadget game by the same author (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haruhiko_Shono) were the precursors to Myst. Experimental and weird.

HerStory, Mike S mentioned about a database. A digital love story. Immortality.

Analogue: a hate story arguably much more database like than digital

Dana asks what are the challenges of a database-type game.

One of the challenges is access, you usually only have only one piece to work with at a time

https://neurocracy.site/ is another database-style narrative game, modeled on editing wikipedia.

Making these games compelling is tricky. Sam Bardo uses video actors. 1986 Portal game was pretty linear. Portal’s story was not ideal to slog through.

Did Emily Short wrote a post about this type of game but either I’m fabricating the memory or can’t remember well enough the phrase she used to describe them

Immortality, and whether or not you need to encounter the memories in the right order is a concern. Is it coherent when pieces are encountered in random order.

Does it skew away from adventure toward world building? Is there an incentive to explore, if you’re walking around IF game…you have a list of things to get. In a game like HerStory, putting the pieces together requires a different motivation, as it is more open ended. Ideally you would still progress in a linear fashion. How to balance the linear progression and exploration?

Will readers do a breadth first search, clicking on every link?

Becketts plots where you arrive after something happens, or Apocalyptic plots where you don’t bother with NPCs.

What if memories and nodes are unstable? Video game version of unreliable narrator?

Is there an agenda for retelling a story based on manipulating the character’s perspective. Like Disco Elysium, restructuring memory from scratch?

https://ifdb.org/viewgame?id=p0gpa2mt0f6xvsj0

True Detective

Anj has been watching Murdoch Mysteries the story of modern technologies retold. Hugh has been doing research into the 1890s Sherlock

Jeremy Haight a game where hippies go back in time and try to imitate the sounds of their era with existing musical instruments.

Can you be a punk with a flute before you’ve become a punk?

CS Lewis, using narration of space to open up what was there. We think about the world in such a limited space of our present day needs. For example Dan Mantions the maze puzzle in Photopia. Anagramming gun from Counterfeit Monkey. Baba Is You.

Kyrill playing Atomic Heart https://mundfish.com

Christ Played a bit of Roberta William’s Colossal Cave remake.Exploring the unconventional way of playing. Text pretty close to the original game.

Mention of linking an Ink story file to Javascript to add a UI. https://github.com/y-lohse/inkjs is the ink-in-javascript package

Mike Stage idea of educational review product

http://textadventures.co.uk/

Kathryn has been playing Root a Game of Woodland Might and Night. Virtual game and board game. +1 Recommendation

Kathryn looking at more physical products. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/causacreations/sefirot A Tarot-based game for 1-2 players, featuring lavish art and three modes of playing and divination to explore.

itch.io

Daniel working on an intense project of parsers for limited systems. Showed a demo!

 Comment 
Apr24

April meeting (online)

by zarf on April 24th, 2023 at 1:34 pm
Posted In: Meetings

The Boston IF meetup for April will be Friday, April 28, 6:30 pm Eastern time.

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

└ Tags: meetings
 Comment 
Mar20

March meeting (online)

by zarf on March 20th, 2023 at 7:14 pm
Posted In: Meetings

The Boston IF meetup for March will be Wednesday, March 22, 6:30 pm Eastern time.

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

└ Tags: meetings
Comments Off on March meeting (online)
Feb28

December PR IF Post Mortem

by Angela Chang on February 28th, 2023 at 4:40 pm
Posted In: Events, Meetings, Post Mortem
Dec 2022 PR IF meetup

The People’s Republic of Interactive Fiction convened on Tuesday, Dec. 20,. 2022 over zoom.   Zarf, anjchang, Carrington (Eaten By A Grue), Hugh, Kyrill, Michael Hilborn, Emilie Z,  Josh Grams,  Kathryn,  Stephen Eric Jablonski, and Dana Freitas attended.  Warning: What follows is perhaps not proper English, but just my log of notes from the meeting to jog people’s memories.

Carrington is reviewing Hadean Lands on Eaten By A Grue. Discussion about reset command in Hadean Lands. Hugh found a bug in EBAG show dates.

In the podcast they mentioned, Jason Shiga’s Leviathan which is now on Steam!

What we’re playing:

  • Mad God
  • Then You Come to A House Unlike the Previous One.
  • Use Your Psychic Powers at Applebees

The author has been running a mailing list game “Inbox Adventure: Interactive Fiction via Email”
Check out this author, Geoffrey Golden giving his talk at Narrascope video. Also check out misadventure snack, a form that collects ideas for guiding an interactive IF game.

Call for talks on Narrrascope is up https://narrascope.org/pages/call.html

Zarf has been judging for indie game festival (IGF) this year. Mention of some of the games he’s judging:

  • Betrayal at Club Low (Alt Geek City environment)
  • Midnight Girl
  • Butterfly soup 2 (asian teenagers growing up in america)
  • Beacon Pines (point and click adventure)

Emilie and Angela attended Nick’s Interactive Narratives final project class:

  • Ginseng Soup
  • Lost in the Woods
  • Rubber Ducky

Zarf did a tiny game in November https://confoundingcalendar.itch.io
Advent mirror short IFpuzzlegame https://zarf.itch.io/advent-mirror

Next year is the 9th anniversary of Hadean Lands , plan to release
Trope tank has a copy of physical book of Hadean Lands.

Life and Suffering of Sir Brante– medieval narrative
https://www.gog.com/en/game/the_life_and_suffering_of_sir_brante

Kyrill found it interesting they games they deal with slow time. These games explore the “dead time” as something productive to get you involveed deeper into the world of the game. Exploring what happens when nothing is happening.For example in Pentiment, referring to the slow time in medieval age. Everything is thoughtful and meaningful. Heidegger’s theories about a broken tool eliciting out what people think. “A perfect tool is a broken tool. ” Invites the thought that humans are in constant repair.

Beyond the Chiron Gate bay John Ayliff deals with exploring alien technology. Also mentioned Voyageurs by Bruno Dias, Out there by Ayliff . Concept of procedurally generated planet description with more of a plot line.

Gods will be watching– a semi strategy game.

Kyrill is working with Jim Andrews on a bigger version of Sea of Power, a larger version of “Sea of 9” from Taper. Idea of control over text.

Kathryn has been reading Adventure Games: Playing the Outsider

Carrington working with Kay on beta testing his PunyInform adventure. Check out DORM Adventure!

Emilie is finishing up her dating simulator! Sunflowers and god reference. Sunflowers are invasive and alien-looking! Carrington just went to a sunflower maze in the fall.

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