The People’s Republic of Interactive Fiction convened on  Tuesday, August 31, 6:30 pm. Zarf,  Hugh (StrandGames),  Dana, Carrington (Eaten By A Grue), NickM, Stephen Eric Jablonski,  Josh Grams,  anjchang, and Dan Boris welcomed newcomer Kathryn Li.
IFComp submissions open. Now you can vote on the games Real problem is voting against others.
publicity for ifcomp?
taper#7 submissions deadline moved sept. 15th
In-person meeting update– covid protocols are stringent and lab space issues at the moment
kay reading monsters!
zork zero!
Inquiring minds want to know “What will be next” for Eaten By A Grue?
Maybe–Works that happened by the authors after they left infocom?
Zork_the_undiscovered_underground
infocom.xyz is still up–it’s not the original infocom
Retron77 machine
Activision/Infocom discussion history
Inspired by Adventure
When Atari came up with Atari VCS, they didn’t expect it to be such a huge hit for decades. No concept of DRM back then. No 3rd party games for the system- it was all inhouse.
David Crane and “Chess for atari maker” -no royalities, no salaries
Four people just left and founded Activision, solved the problem of how to program ATARI VCS.
Rob Fulop did that with iMagic. After that people started doimg stuff without having the insider background, by reverse engineering the chip!
ET was the worst video game ever but then others fixed the bugs.
Check out GrueScript:a tool for creating point-n-click parser-like text adventures/interactive fiction. See the announcement here https://intfiction.org/t/announce-gruescript/52104
Twining: Critical and Creative Approaches to Hypertext Narratives Book is out
https://www.fulcrum.org/concern/monographs/ms35tb924
A History of Adventure Games Book is out
https://bookshop.org/books/adventure-games-playing-the-outsider/9781501385827
EmilyShort game jam in seitani on September 19th
https://www.meetup.com/Oxford-and-London-Interactive-Fiction-Group/events/280273311/
Cyan released a VR game called Myst, reimagining Myst in 1993. It’s very very pretty
Josh grams reports that Stacey Mason just finished her PhD. It’s called “Exquisite Corpse” He’s been attending the #fortnightfictionjam she hosted. Josh and others made the Exquisite Poem Generator — Check it out!
Staceys new game about narrative things was mentioned, but might not be available yet
Carrington workimg on a game in PunyInform. A bug if you create a verb and an object with a life routine, verbishness disappears somehow. Zarf says verbs should take precedence. Could be a scope or version problem (debug vs release)? V3 compiler.