PyramidIF

I have not posted a lot, but I wanted to spread the word regarding assistance for an IF community member. Pinkunz is a huge part of the intfiction.org community forums, and he was involved in an accident with a snowplow several days ago. He's laid up in the hospital undergoing multiple surgeries and he and his wife would benefit from any support you can give. If you can't help monetarily, even boosting their GoFundMe in your social community is a big help! Forum GoFundMe Announcement: https://intfiction.org/t/gofundme-link-to-help-pinkunz-and-family-after-traffic-accident/66653?u=hanono Initial post with news, updates, and well-wishes: https://intfiction.org/t/urgent-help-needed-from-pinkunz-serious-car-accident-phone-borrowed-for-op/66606?u=hanono Direct Link to GoFundMe https://gofund.me/64031744

Welcome to the all-new Interactive Fiction Community Forum! We exist to support the IF community in all its shapes and forms. This is the place to discuss IF games and stories, to get help writing your own, to announce a story you’ve published, and to review competition entries. If you’re an IF author, a player, a fan, or just want to find out more, this is the place for you! New look Updated, modern design Better community-assisted moderation Powerful search Markdown for posting New categories Optimization for mobile displays Over 10 years of archived discussion and conversations by fans, players, creators, and curators of IF https://intfiction.org Supported by the Interactive Fiction Technology Foundation.

Fhtagn!: Tales of the Creeping Madness is a roguelike boardgame-style interactive fiction adventure for 1-4 players drawing on Lovecraftian mythos with all the expected summoning of cosmic-horrors and depraved human sacrifice, but taking a slightly zanier turn at going gleefully full-evil than Weather Factory's stellar Cultist Simulator and Failbetter's Fallen London trilogy. There's a fart joke that goes on for a good number of clicks. That aside, the mechanics of the game give the player(s) six rounds to bring about universal pain and destruction by exploring locations where events occur that toggle seven character traits up and down. Ideally, a player will build two traits high enough to fulfill a role in the climactic lunar-eclipse ritual and not fail their assumed task. Problem is, there are hints about which traits will grant success in any of eight roles, but nothing is explicitly spelled out. Each round, every player visits a location on the map and choos...

The Vault is an "escape room" with some interesting mechanics. The Twine styling is perfect, and subtle use of sound effects contribute to the atmosphere and mystery. Sacrifices Must Be Made is a simple lane-based card battle elevated by a short and very creepy story which felt very much like Interactive Fiction. I beat it in about twenty-five minutes and was disturbed in a good way . Check out all the Ludum Dare 43 games !

ULTRAMARINE: A SEAPUNK ADVENTURE (Seven Submarines) - This appears to be the only full-on Ren'Py Visual Novel in Spring Thing. Seven individuals (submarines?) are credited and a lot of obvious work went into this presentation. The art skews more toward superhero comic than anime, and I got a very He-Man/She-Ra after school cartoon vibe from this. Sexy Mer-People! Look at the hair ! I like the visual design a lot but had to turn the music way down  - not because it was  bad , but because the music is performed with very synthetic instrument patches that I (personally) couldn't take much of. That could be easily fixed in software by remixing the tracks. The mer-hunks are described as "giants"...but nothing seems specifically out of proportion beyond a comic book or professional wrestling scale here... I'm a newcomer to VN, so I'm interested in how the presentation varies from text parser and choice IF. One thing about VN is that there's a lot of ...

  Really, If / Really Always, Dawn Sueoka ( The Orange Juice Public Library )  - A conversation with a simple AI based on Eliza, one of the earliest chatbots who could hold somewhat natural-seeming conversations by reframing the querent's input as another question in almost psychotherapy fashion. Since this is Twine, the player chooses from a list of responses which sometimes feel random. It seems procedurally generated, but there are only so many ways I can answer...I'm navigating a syntactical maze - am I interviewing it or... Am I still playing this? It's not long. It doesn't force itself on you, so don't be put off by the warnings if horror is not your thing - it's not exactly - but  Really, If / Really, Always got into my head in a way that most games don't. I know its still back there. It's trying to be quiet, but I can feel it.

Spring is here! Warm sun! Flowering trees! Green grass and--I just went out to move my car and there are snow flurries . I know other regions are getting actual piling snow still, so while it might not feel like a Spring Thing , a new crop of games is here! I often get wrapped up creating my own IF bidness and don't play new releases as much as I should, but since we can't really mow and plant yet, let's take shelter in the gazebo where a bumper crop of 20 entries  are festivalling. I don't guarantee I will be able to chip the frost off of all of these hopeful, budding shrubs, but here's a first foray into what will hopefully soon yield thriving IF greenery: Best Gopher Ever , Arthur DiBianca (Parser Inform/Z) - I had to resist adding an exclamation point at the end of this title. "Help the unfortunate residents of Fairview! (Who are all animals, by the way.)" This is billed as a light puzzle game for all ages and delivers on that. DiBianca has a knack...

Not like this game needs more praise piled on it, but I wrote up a short ramble worshipping Team Salvato and linking to my favorite playthroughs. I'm not syndicating this on Planet IF due to spoilers, but you can read it on my blog.

...fifteen hours... ...before EctoComp comes for you... As if there aren't enough new games with the overladen buffet of IFComp testing the table legs, the submissions for EctoComp 2017 are due in less than half a day.  You can play the games that are already submitted on itch.io, and voting will open after the deadline. Ectocomp is a festival of seasonal Halloween and horror entries that are out to scare you (or at least inspire some chills) including speed-IF entries created in three hours or less, as well as longer works.  There is usually a good range each year of both well-crafted brick and mortar haunted mansions oozing subtle gothic dread as well as tunnels of black plastic and 2x4s quick-slapped together with fake chainsaws and rubber masks; both can be a great time depending on your taste and mood for the holiday. La petite Mort  (English) Le Grand Guignol  (English) La Petite Mort  (Español) Le Grand Guignol  (Espa...

ECTOCOMP , a yearly horror and autumn-seasonal competition that is often a welcome palate-cleanser following the smorgasbord of IFComp, is on again this year and is under new management. This year marks the return of both size categories, and the first time Ectocomp is actively bilingual, soliciting entries in Spanish. La Petit Mort is for speed IF created in three hours or less. Le Grand Guignol is for more elaborate games programmed in more than three hours. Check out the rules, schedule, and more details on itch.io at these links:  Petit Mort English:  https://itch.io/jam/ectocomp17lpm Petit Mort Spanish:  https://itch.io/jam/ectocomp17lpm-sp Grand Guignol English:  https://itch.io/jam/ectocomp17lgg Grand Guignol Spanish:  https://itch.io/jam/ectocomp17lgg-sp Sign up and show us your nightmares! As of this writing, you have just over 26 days to get scary!

Direct from their website : We would like to express our very sincere gratitude to everyone who took the time to download, play, rate, and leave feedback for this year's introductions. We would also like to say thank you and congratulations to all the authors! Here are the results: 1st Place Sherlock Indomitable, by mathbrush 2nd Place Onna Kabuki, by Victor Ojuel 3rd Place The Adam and Eve Project, by Brian Kwak Honorable Mentions*: Duckman by Wade Yukon Yelena by Wing Prizon by Wes Lesley Playing with the White Dog by Elizabeth Bernhardt Good for Nothing by Katalina The Wishing Wood by Elizabeth Bernhardt The Sentence Editor by fishandbeer You Just Might Feel Something by Devin Raposo *listed in random order

Quick take: Starting almost immediately on itch.io is a "Summer Novel Festival" ( SUNOFES ) jam running to September 1st. This may be of interest to new IF authors not quite ready to jump into IFComp. A "jam" usually has lower stakes than a Comp; this one is no pressure, no judging, no prizes, just a sense of community focused more on the creation phase than the end product: An online game jam focused on adventure, interactive fiction, role-playing game, and visual novels. Starts July 1st, ends August 31st, annually. Feel free to start working before the festival begins. No one is required to start their work from scratch unless they want to. If you have any unfinished projects in mind, you're invited to use this festival for completing it. SuNoFES has no judging or prizes - the only rewards are those that come from the challenge and camaraderie with others. Takes place during July and August. Project must be a new game and have not been published before...

ChoiceScript is a very easy language to write in. It is how all Choice of Games narratives are created. It is simple, powerful, and lets an author do more writing than coding to create an extensive choice narrative that can hinge on the powerful accumulation of stats that bend and alter the story and an individual player's game experience. Right now, CoG publication is probably one of the most accessible and visible ways for choice-IF authors to actually get a game out to the public and get paid for it. Choice of Games commissions talented authors for their featured stories that fit within their specific inclusive "house style" framework they are known for and their audience expects, but anyone can submit an "indie" spec game to be hosted by CoG as long as it complies with a certain number of minimally sensible parameters with regard to length and content. That said, writing a CS narrative that fans will want to play and shell out a few dollars for is an e...

IntroComp is one of the coolest low-key events on the IF calendar that hopefully will get a lot more attention this year with a snazzy new website and new management. This is the one ongoing competition that actively solicits unfinished IF works. It's a great way for new IF authors to get their feet wet if they've never finished a game and attempted a comp, or want some support and motivation to do so. One major change this year is IntroComp is accepting any slice of an unfinished game as opposed to just the beginning; the website makes clear the "Intro" part of IntroComp now means you are " Intro ducing your game" as opposed to providing just the actual "intro" as required in years past. The website rules state authors may submit the middle or end of a game as well. There are also cash prizes with a catch: the author has to actually  finish the game within one year and notify the Comp organizers to claim a prize. Even if a submitted game does...

If you attempted to post on the intfiction.org forum Tuesday (in US time zones), you may have been mistakenly informed that you were "banned" and not allowed to post your message. Upon clicking the "submit" button, users were subject to a long wait, and then red text rejecting the message. This was an unexpected server misconfiguration that affected all or most users. We apologize for the error and any inconvenience it may have caused. I'm happy to report the forums should now be operating correctly. As always, please don't hesitate to let me (HanonO) or any of the other moderators (our names show up in green on the forum) personally know if you have any questions or need assistance. I'm on Gmail as hanon.ondricek if you are unable to access forum PM.  Here's a link to CVE's announcement on the forum.

I've long been a fan of AXMA Story Maker , a Russian-developed hypertext choice narrative engine that is very similar to Twine. I used an early version to write Devil's Food , a speed-Ectocomp entry in three hours. AXMA is now up to version 5, and despite its relative obscurity with English-speaking IF authors, there's a whole lot here to like. AXMA offers an easy alternative for those who want to write a choice-narrative, but, like me, may find Twine's nearly unlimited modifiable adaptability a little bewildering. First off, AXMA is technically a free app with a "professional version" that lists for €29.90 via PayPal (but as of this writing is marked down to €19.90, approximately $22 USD) which is not a bad deal. The free version is unlimited to use, disabling only direct HTML export (all games can be uploaded to and are hosted by AXMA's public library for online play or download). Upgrading for the one-time fee doesn't change the software, but unlo...

Someone on the forums with the handle "lister" decided to industriously tag all the IFComp games on IFDB, so of course, I vainly searched to see where mine had placed over time. Finally on about page seven of hundreds of games, Transparent showed up. I gave it a play-through since I hadn't looked at it in a while, amazed at how packed with stuff it is. Who knows how I got it done; it was way too large for IFComp, and despite starting out moderately-scoped in my head, it blew up out of proportion and I didn't have time to test it as thoroughly as one would want. As I explored Thorne Manor again, enjoying how well the random sound generation actually worked out, I couldn't remember what clever refusal message I had implemented if someone tries to pick up the bathtub: >TAKE TUB Taken. Dammit. With all the poorly-conceived inventory limits I had initially put in that game, my photographer was now walking around a haunted house carrying an entire claw-foot ...

I was exceedingly thrilled for my IFComp entry Fair to place 7th this year (woo! top 10!). I have finally written a postmortem which is posted on my blog. Since it's exceedingly long and spoilery, I chose not to push the entirety of it to Planet IF. You can read it here . Please leave comments if there are any other questions you have or elements of the game you'd like to hear about in more detail. Thanks to everyone who played the game and voted!

I wrote last week about getting over the fear of rulebooks in Inform 7, specifically by not using the all-powerful INSTEAD to accomplish everything.  After I read over the post, I remembered one of my specific hangups using rulebooks occurred because I was over-thinking the process: how does Inform know how my additional rules work in order?  How does Inform know what order the rules should go in? Don't I need to write them very specifically so Inform and the compiler don't get confused? The short answer is not really.  Beyond a few minor sequencing points when polishing the text output, Inform does not care where in the source text we write our rules. And the rulebooks consider every rule in them unless a rule explicitly tells it to stop (with an INSTEAD or "stop the action.") Imagine creating a shopping list. Unless we're extremely familiar with the grocery store layout, we'll write a list as items occur to us, possibly over a period of time or several ...