The Packbats' Weblog

Okay, so you know how your hobbies expand to fill your free time? It has occurred to me that this is something that needs forestalling if I am to survive the coming fall semester. Thus, I have an idea: what if I took up a major, but short-term, project - one where I can easily give myself permisssion to axe when the semester starts?

Thus, my plan: I'm going to pull open Inform 7 again.

The plot is relatively simple - it's yet another amnesia story - but I hope to make up for the unoriginality in execution. I'm planning to have friends-locked posts for blogging about the dev work and blegging for beta-testing - active_apathy, alun_clewe, chanlemur, fadethecat, majoru, and zwol were on the old list, but any of that can change. If anyone would like to be added or removed, please comment!

After a certain point, you simply have to admit that you're hooked. Well, here it is.

Inform 7 is cool. I'm writing a text adventure.

Will I enter something in IFComp 2007? Dunno. Will I get involved with the IF community? Dunno. Will I give it up after a week? Probably Dunno. But if you feel like offering encouragement, commentary, or critique (or just listening to me talk), I'm setting up a filter for IF stuff now – just drop in a comment, and I'll put you in.

(It's either bad or good that all my ideas seem to involve writing new 'rules' for the game – I don't know which.)

Still adventuring – I have completed "Distress" and "Internal Vigilance", each in under two hours. I could spend some more time on either, especially "Internal Vigilance" with its claimed multiple endings, but I see no need.

( Distress - Rating: 10/10 )


( Internal Vigilance - Rating: 8/10 )


Anyway, that's two more decent adventures, and 10 out of 28 rated, if you include "Mix Tape" that didn't work. Next is still "Waldo's Pie", then "The Sword of Malice".

I played more of the interactive fiction from the 11th Annual Interactive Fiction Competition, finishing "Chancellor" and starting "Beyond". That makes "Dreary Lands", "History Repeating", and "Chancellor" played.

Both "Dreary Lands" and "History Repeating" failed to impress me. No, that is prevarication – I disliked them both. In both cases, gameplay issues were the key factor: the former suffered from typos and errors (one of which which caused an entire roomful of objects to display themselves in my inventory and on screen as "currently burning)" or something like that) and from poorly made puzzles, and the latter was caught in the "figure out what question you are supposed to ask" hole from nearly the beginning. Speech interactions with characters in text adventures are always fraught with peril for a game designer.

"Chancellor", on the other hand, was very good. At first I had been skeptical of its qualities (especially after having to resort to the hint guide to escape the introduction), but it didn't take long for the game to show its real worth. It does have speech interactions, as it happens, but they fortunately take the form of "ask about [keyword]", and I was able to deduce the proper keywords before too long. The story is surreal in a good way (and looks to have many cute fortune-cookies for the repeat player).

Right now I'm in the middle of "Beyond". I'll see how that goes.

Oh, and nanakikun took the train to Anthrocon this afternoon, so I'll be keeping his GameCube company for the duration. (Sorry I didn't catch you in the window with the camera, nanakikun! Have fun at the con!)


P.S. Oh, where I said I wouldn't go through and try all of them? I was wrong.

Hey, there's only 28....