Interactive Fiction
I wasn’t sure what to think when I opened the suggestion box and found this message from Joel Sanda: “I don’t see much representation from text adventures — interactive fiction.” The explanation is simple: I’ve never heard of such a thing — or at least I didn’t think I had.
Actually, what is known as interactive fiction has been around since the late 1970s when people would write text adventures. Basically, they involved descriptions of scenes or characters with options for how to interact with them. Depending on your choice, the journey continues in certain directions.
I can remember trying out a couple of these games, although never seriously. And I have to admit I assumed they had long ago transformed into graphical games such as Myst. How wrong I was.
Joel provided links to three programs that prove interactive fiction in its original text form is not only alive and thriving, but is making interesting uses of modern technology.
Inform 7: “A radical reinvention of the way interactive fiction is designed, guided both by contemporary work in semantics and by the practical experience of some of the world’s best-known writers of IF.”
Spatterlight: “Plays most kinds of interactive fiction game files.”
Zoom: “Plays text adventure games written in ZCode.”
You can lean more about the amazing world of interactive fiction at Wikipedia.
Posted Monday, March 24, 2008 in Suggestions
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