The People's Republic of Interactive Fiction

Boston's IF interest group
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Jan31

January Post Mortem

by Angela Chang on January 31st, 2023 at 12:59 am
Posted In: Events, Meetings, Post Mortem
PR IF January 2023 meetup

The People’s Republic of Interactive Fiction convened on Monday, Jan. 30th on Zoom. Zarf, anjchang,  Josh Grams,  Stephen Eric Jablonski, Hugh,  Kirill Azernyi, Dana, Kyler HE, Michael Hilborn, , and Mike Stage welcomed newcomer Andrew Stephens.  Warning: What follows is probably not proper English, but just my log of notes from the meeting to jog people’s memories.

Hugh participated in SeedComp. The idea was to develop someone else’s idea into a game (read more about it here). SeedComp is currently in part 2, with the game deadline for Feb.

Colossal Cave released their 3D version of the original Colossal Cave Adventure. Zarf wrote a blog post about it here. Zarf shared some screenshots. Discussion about what people liked and didn’t like. Pictures are not of the original cave, and the 3D adaptation has additional story elements.Could expose a new generation to the old Colossal Cave (which you just die a lot in). Currently PC only, Steam says MacOS Catalina (10.15) or higher and console release is Q1 2023. Josh shared the podcast with Roberta Williams.

Modern games are more user friendly than the original Colossal Cave. What is the fun of dying a lot? Although nowadays, Angela reports that in elementary school, kids are loving the impossible game, where you continue completely based on memory. Also reminds us of Nethack. Will there be a sequel or expansion to Colossal Cave Adventure? What would that look like– there caves, seeing existing variants would be cool. Family tree of Adventure variants: https://mipmip.org/IFrescue/ajf/

Andrew asks do people feel about randomness to add to repeatability? Full randomization as a basis for different game play is not all that common. Hugh uses randomness to bury the text description, not for state of game play to support repeat-reading. The state machine isn’t randomized. For randomizing NPC or object positions as “background color” it’s often not very interesting.

Kyrill playing NORCO. Visceral meta games that might not make much sense. Loved the monkey thing. Zarf recommends as “one of my top games of the year.” High praise is also mentioned for Roadwarden, Citizen Sleeper, Betrayal from Club Low by Cosmo Dee, Case of the Golden Idol,ButterflySoup 2 (visual novel), Space Wreck game (French) about surviving a wreck. Hugh planning to play Syberia 3, having played Syberia some time ago. Angela’s played a bit of Carrington’s beta for the Dorm game. Didn’t finish yet but it was fun and interesting. Learned a lot about retro computing and Kansas Fest sounds fun.

Angela’s latest project is trying to figure out why some Commodore 64s are not working after being in storage. Got some pointers to check out the RAM chips and salvage the C64 audio chips (since they’re a commodity).

Kyrill asks “Where to publish a small IF piece” SubQ Magazine used to be a venue. We talked about ELO, the Electronic Literature Organization. Their fourth collection is out, https://collection.eliterature.org/4/ and the prior collections are available here https://collection.eliterature.org. Some people “publish” at media events and museums. For example, Brucker-Cohen’s Wordplay exhibit at the NY Hall of Science, now running until March.

Kyrill talked about visceral games, and the sensations we get through text adventures. In FPS games, it is hard to pause and reflect on the emotion, mentality, and perceptions in the moment of the action. Games like Saints Row, when you’re robbing a bank can be thrilling, but there’s not a lot of reflection or space to pause when the action is going down. But Angela would find it useful to understand those moments more. Recommendation to check out PayDay and other RPGs. There’s another aspect of viscerality when we are all in a room together experiencing the joy of solving a game together. An intellectual darshan or elation from being in a crowd.

Hugh brought up graphical stealth based games like Spider and Web. We talked about how the story is told through the narrative of a capture spy. The recollections build up to the downfall of the spy. Highly recommended as an investigation into visceral description of tense moments.

FYI how to turn on Inform debugging:
Verb "xdeterm" * -> Xdeterm;

 Comment 
Jan25

January meeting (online)

by zarf on January 25th, 2023 at 1:50 pm
Posted In: Meetings

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

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

└ Tags: meetings
 Comment 
Dec20

November Post Mortem

by Angela Chang on December 20th, 2022 at 6:12 pm
Posted In: Meetings, Post Mortem
PR IF November 2022 meetup

The People’s Republic of Interactive Fiction convened on Wednesday, Nov. 16, 2022 in hybrid format. Zarf, Mike Stage, Michael Hilborn, Hugh, Dana, Rourke, Kyrill, and (at the Trope Tank) anjchang joined Kyler HE to welcome newcomer Emilie Z (in Uber) from Wellesley. Warning: What follows is probably not proper English, but just my log of notes from the meeting to jog people’s memories.

Zarf and Jason Shiga’s Imagined Leviathan is out on Steam. You can also find it on Itch. Book 2 of the adventure game comics is planned.

Twitter dumpster fire/ maybe IF will have a server to Mastodon Zarf is now at mastodon.gamedev.place/@zarfeblong

What we’ve been playing.

  • Angela played Adri Mill’s Hippo On Elm Street game in celebration of Halloween.
  • Kyler asked about People’s top tens games. Shade and Dreamhold were discussed
  • Mike played and recommends Psychic Powers at Applebee’s.
  • And Then You Come to A House Unlike the Previous One. This won 1st place last year’s IF Comp

InfoComp voting is over, results will be announced soon. People’s top-tens: https://intfiction.org/t/top-ten-list-s-median-scores/58716
Parchment is stil up.

Kirill Imagined Leviathan, Letters and Words. Pentiment

Asteroids space realism

“Aporia”: http://aporiathegame.com/

How cartoons work

“Shivering Truth”. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Shivering_Truth

Mystery Hunt in 2023 happens this January.

Potential IF meetup in January IAP playthrough, maybe use 2017 as a template of having a meeting on afternoons where people play a game. Angela can be present.

Discussion about protocol for playing IF, try to avoid people shouting out spoilers. Whoever is moderating should try to establish ground rules so that the fun of puzzling out happens.

└ Tags: events, meetings, post mortem
 Comment 
Dec13

December meeting (online)

by zarf on December 13th, 2022 at 10:35 pm
Posted In: Meetings

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

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

└ Tags: meetings
 Comment 
Nov10

November meeting – hybrid!

by zarf on November 10th, 2022 at 6:18 pm
Posted In: Meetings

The Boston IF meetup for November will be Wednesday, November 16, 6:30 pm Eastern time.

This meeting will be both-ways: Zoom and in person at the Trope Tank.

For those who plan on visiting us the Trope Tank for the meeting, please contact Angela in advance, either by email or through the mailing list. (So, okay, by email.) She will be setting up a mobile ticket to get into the building. Please provide an email address and phone number to send your ticket to.

For the online crowd, we will post the Zoom link to the mailing list on the day of the meeting.

└ Tags: meetings
Comments Off on November meeting – hybrid!
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Next PR-IF Meeting

Monday, January 30

6:30 pm Eastern, online

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

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  • January Post Mortem
  • January meeting (online)
  • November Post Mortem
  • December meeting (online)
  • November meeting – hybrid!

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