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Sep28

August PR-IF Post Mortem

by Angela Chang on September 28th, 2023 at 7:49 pm
Posted In: Events, Meetings, Post Mortem

The People’s Republic of Interactive Fiction convened on DATE. 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.

 Comment 
Sep21

September meeting (online)

by zarf on September 21st, 2023 at 11:46 am
Posted In: Meetings

The Boston IF meetup for September will be Thursday, September 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 
Partygoers with Dave Lehbling, creator of Zork
Sep15

Night at the MIT Museum: After Dark Trip Report

by Angela Chang on September 15th, 2023 at 6:19 pm
Posted In: Events, Meetings, Post Mortem

You find yourself outside the MIT Museum on a gorgeous afternoon. It’s September 14, 2023, breezy but sunny. The After Dark party starts at 5pm, and you’re right on time. You enter through the glass doors, not knowing what to expect. You recognize a PR-IF friend, Chris Martens, as you look for the desk person to check you in. You two chat– it’s your first face to face meeting. You could:

  1. stay and mingle at the front desk
  2. go up to 3R, where the PR-IF event will be.

Although it’s still a bit early, you choose 2) because you’re supposed to be an event volunteer. It’s the first time you’ve met the MIT Museum team in person. Fiori and Kate say hello. They’ve been setting up tables and monitors. You meet Deb, the director of collections. Zarf soon joins, lugging a small collection of IF books from his private stash. You ogle the museum’s displays of Zork, IF, and old technology exhibits around the room. You get the computers setup. You take a picture to celebrate.

Biyi, Flori, Chris, and Zarf

You get a text from Jules, asking about parking. You recall what an amazing IF writer Zarf as your browse his collection, reminiscing about Shade, Dreamhold, Hadean Lands. Biyi and Alberto arrive to help. You haven’t eaten all day because of traffic and errands. You’re hungry so you:

  1. leave briefly to find some food
  2. stay and try to get the exhibits loaded up with IF games

You can’t ignore your hunger any longer, it’s going to be a long night. You choose 1) and head to the 2nd floor. The place is filling up. There is a rad DJ pumping sonic vibes into the crowd. It’s a sold out crowd tonight. You wander around and find some pizza in a volunteer room. You know the DJ, and you exchange pleasantries. It’s a good scene and you just want to chill.

DJ Phillip Tan

You can decide to:

  1. Stay and chat with the DJs, and you are into EDM
  2. Head back to the Play IF room

You feel slightly guilty enjoying the fun while knowing that others are up there ready for guests. You say bye to the DJs and choose 2). You head up back to 3R in the museum’s giant elevator. You put together the zoom names to the new faces.

It’s delightful to meet in person finally, and they’ve brought stuff to share. Chad strolls in flashing a physical copy of Suspect!

Chad

Jules has good parking karma and has brought flyers for Tempus Fugit.

Angela and Jules

The room starts to fill with animated party goers. The museum team has set up 3 tables for people to gather around 80s, 2000s, and more recent IF. Zork is at being played at one prominent table. Time passes. Much IF was consumed that night including Photopia, 9:05, and Use Your Psychic Powers at Applebee’s.

The special guests of the evening, Dave Liebling and Michael Dornbrook make an appearance. The room is awed by the presence of the creators of the Zork Empire. Michael had donated a treasure trove of Zork materials that are now on display. Dave talked about the origins of Zork, and the fun they had. They were charming and you got to experience some gameplay and feelies. You shook their hand. You were able to jot down some nuggets of wisdom about making IF experiences magical. At the end of the night, you were happy to share this celebrated favorite pastime with others, including these amazing people.

Partygoers playing Zork and listening to Dave Lebling
Partygoers playing Zork and listening to Dave Lebling
Chad, Zarf, and Michael Dornbrook
Chad, Zarf, and Michael Dornbrook
Dave, Chad, and Zarf
Dave Lebling, Chad, and Zarf

You play 9:05 a total of 6 times with 3 different groups. It was amusing to sit down with newcomers and play together. Many people wanted to experience multiple narrative branches and replayed the game. Funny how people wanted to figure out the flavor of the pop tart. And when they seem to need satisfaction from “eating” the pop tart, rather than rushing to “work” in the game. Everyone seemed happy and they took a card. You hope they come to a pr-if meeting someday, or at least sign up for the mailing list. Whoops, you had forgotten to mention the social media. Ah well!

Happy Partygoers
Happy Partygoers
Happy Partygoers playing Zork with Dave behind them
Happy Partygoers playing 9:05

You realize after the event that you didn’t take as many pictures as you would have liked. You can

  1. keep the memories to yourself because you are not a great photographer
  2. share your photo album anyway because people might want to see them. Maybe they’ll even add their own photos…

You choose 2) to share the photos, and you wake up smiling the next day with memories of the great night. You are inspired to continue writing your IF story that’s been on hold for the past n years….

└ Tags: afterdark, events, mitmuseum, post mortem, zork
 Comment 
Aug31

July 2023 PR-IF Post Morten

by Angela Chang on August 31st, 2023 at 6:14 pm
Posted In: Events, Meetings, Post Mortem

The People’s Republic of Interactive Fiction convened on Monday, July 24. Zarf, Stephen Eric Jablonski, Doug Orleans, Josh Grams, hugh, Andrew Stephens, Kathryn, Dana, and anjchang welcomed Florencia Pierri (_fl0ri_) and Kate from the MIT Museum, and returning friend Chad Elliot. Warning: What follows is probably not proper English, but just my log of notes from the meeting to jog people’s memories.

Stephen finished the Wand and Temple of Shorthill

https://ifdb.org/viewgame?id=sgas14we0jk2fgse

https://ifdb.org/viewgame?id=2jil5vbxmbv8riv1

Doug and Jmac streamed little match girl https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCS-ib1CPuL7zgHKEG0WGjFQ

Flori and Kate in the MIT Museum, visit to discuss the September meeting. They have 2 big donations of materials from InfoCom. Thursday Sept 14th, 6-9pm, MIT Museum After Dark – There’ll be a DJ – Zarf has a lot of resources. Please mark your availability for: MIT Museum After Dark IF https://whenavailable.com/event/oMMi8w7SCoaTREwp7

People talked about their project in progress:

Hugh working on systems

Andrew Stephens working on a project

Josh made a discord style game for Bez, and working on Jeffrey Gordon piece.

Narrascope happened and was great. Should have videos online soon.

Chad Elliot worked on Scott Adams Game site https://adventure4a.com

Talked about the structure of Scott Adams games.

IFDB issue with InfoCom and Microsoft acquiring InfoCom. Activision gave explicit permission to put things on line.

Doug reading a thread about Hadean Lands.

Discussion that Quite a lot of people play IF on Mobile.

Kathryn playing The Outsider, diagram triangle adventure game descendants of interactive fiction as having puzzle, exploration, story.

Biran Moriarty’s Trinity & Wishbringer

Planet Fall Infocom series story. Novels of games.

Zork book (Cavern of Doom, CYOA)

Nowadays its hard for crossovers (e.g. Heroics in Zork world) Maureen Birbaum, Traction Paradox

Superhero movies vs. Ordinary Heroes. — Invisible Man Adventures. New Futurama episodes.

Dr. Who (Sylvester McCoy)

https://clp.bbcrewind.co.uk

 Comment 
Aug20

August meeting (online)

by zarf on August 20th, 2023 at 11:11 am
Posted In: Meetings

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

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

Also note that PRIF people will be helping with “After Dark” at the MIT Museum on September 14th! Come see classic and modern IF as part of an evening about MIT’s legacy of game design.

└ Tags: meetings
 Comment 
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Next PR-IF Meeting

Thursday, Sept 28

6:30 pm Eastern, online

(The Republic gathers monthly. Note our Event Policy.)

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Recent Posts

  • August PR-IF Post Mortem
  • September meeting (online)
  • Night at the MIT Museum: After Dark Trip Report
  • July 2023 PR-IF Post Morten
  • August meeting (online)

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