tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-195755462012-01-30T19:18:06.322+01:00Musings on the theory and practice of roleplaying games and interactive fiction. Feel free to muse along!Victor Gijsbershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12770054233775973753noreply@blogger.comBlogger2091100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19575546.post-65578741989677888702012-01-19T12:11:00.000+01:002012-01-19T12:11:43.912+01:00

Remember when I published the results of the IF Top 50, and said that I would soon post the full results? And then forgot about it? Well, I remembered! You can find the ODS spreadsheet here. The names of those who sent me a list by email or private message have been anonymised. The spreadsheet should be self-explanatory: people are in columns, games in rows, and a "1" is a vote by that person

Victor Gijsbershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12770054233775973753noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19575546.post-8580639525533916592011-11-16T10:57:00.000+01:002011-11-16T10:57:21.809+01:00

The results of the Interactive Fiction competition 2011 are in. Kerkerkruip took a very respectable 8th place out of 38 games, which was almost exactly what I expected. What I didn't expect, at all, was having such a low standard deviation! Either fewer people than I expected hate roguelikes, or people were impressed enough by the technical aspects of the game to ignore their dislike of the genre

Victor Gijsbershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12770054233775973753noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19575546.post-11279667102411688022011-10-20T14:09:00.000+02:002011-10-20T14:09:15.360+02:00

Suppose that your game involves people that can be sleeping or awake; and a huge gong, that, when struck, wakes up everyone in the room and all adjacent rooms. This is the most natural way to implement something like that in Inform 7: Carry out hitting the huge gong:    say "You hit the huge gong!";    repeat with guy running through near people:       now guy is awake.Where I am, of course,

Victor Gijsbershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12770054233775973753noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19575546.post-24268319916593118552011-10-01T11:35:00.001+02:002011-10-01T11:36:51.746+02:00

The results of the Interactive Fiction Top 50 are in! No fewer than 35 participants cast a total of 437 votes on 183 different games. Of those games, 48 got three votes or more, and those are the games that will appear in the Top 50 below -- so it is actually a top 48. Games which have the same number of votes appear in the same spot, and will be listed in alphabetical order (ignoring "the", "a"

Victor Gijsbershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12770054233775973753noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19575546.post-49884884246154115302011-10-01T01:36:00.000+02:002011-10-01T01:36:56.077+02:00

In a couple of hours, the IF Comp 2011 will start. Or at least, the deadline for uploading games will have passed; it might take a little longer before they actually become available. Since I will be participating, I won't be publishing reviews during the competition. In fact, I won't be saying anything at all about the competition, because I don't want to be disqualified. So let me take this

Victor Gijsbershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12770054233775973753noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19575546.post-56637477438178686712011-09-25T22:21:00.001+02:002011-09-25T22:22:09.750+02:00

If you haven't participated in the Interactive Fiction Top 50 yet, and you still mean to do so, stop procrastinating! The deadline is five days from now: September 30. You can post your games in that topic, email them to me, or even post them as a comment to this blog entry.

Victor Gijsbershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12770054233775973753noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19575546.post-75383153663800926322011-09-11T23:51:00.003+02:002011-09-11T23:54:31.553+02:00

Under the influence of Tolkien, fantasy moved towards the creation of secondary worlds. Let me define that term: A secondary world is a fictional world which is neither a geographical nor a temporal part of our world; and is not connected to it as a dream world, a realm of Faerie, a space of Ideas, a land-beyond-a-portal or anything of that sort. Furthermore, the secondary world should be a real

Victor Gijsbershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12770054233775973753noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19575546.post-23916059725136030002011-09-09T10:47:00.000+02:002011-09-09T10:47:12.794+02:00

I don't own a Kindle because, well, closed platform, right? But if you do own a Kindle, have access to the Kindle app store, and have even the smallest interest in interactive fiction, I would like to point you to The King of Shreds and Patches. The King of Shreds and Patches is a very good game; in fact, it appeared in my recent top 10 interactive fiction games ever. It is long, well-written,

Victor Gijsbershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12770054233775973753noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19575546.post-4148978963635429662011-08-31T23:19:00.001+02:002011-09-01T01:25:51.624+02:00

Interactive Fiction Top 50 Link to forum topic. Based on a discussion on the interactive fiction forum, I am organising a interactive fiction top 50 (or a top 100, or a top 20, depending on the number of participants and the distribution of the votes). You send in a list of your favourite IF games, I add those lists together and publish a "best of" list. The aim is not to decide what the best

Victor Gijsbershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12770054233775973753noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19575546.post-33537178020239441932011-08-30T13:06:00.000+02:002011-08-30T13:06:54.519+02:00

A small reminder for people who want to enter the IF Comp: the deadline for intents to enter is in two days. No reason to delay any longer! (Note: I'm not an organiser.)

Victor Gijsbershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12770054233775973753noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19575546.post-3711942300777722442011-08-27T13:24:00.006+02:002011-08-27T17:06:41.164+02:00

Nowadays, many games offer an achievement system: if the player manages to do X, the game recognises this and keeps a record of it in a privately or publicly accessible place. Many of us will have felt a deep suspicion about achievements. Aren't they designed to appeal to the worst part of us, the part that likes to hoard (and sleep, and feed)? Isn't the whole point of achievements to seduce us

Victor Gijsbershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12770054233775973753noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19575546.post-45828099899684868982011-08-04T00:40:00.000+02:002011-08-04T00:40:38.234+02:00

Kerkerkruip has entered beta, and I'm looking for a few testers. If you are interested, please send me an email at victor@cc.lilith -- except that I have cunningly switched "lilith" and "cc" to confuse the spam bots! Even if you don't have time to really test the game, you can still help me out in a few minutes if you have access to (a) OS X, or (b) older hardware. I need to know how the game

Victor Gijsbershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12770054233775973753noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19575546.post-18271158306544405712011-07-31T13:18:00.000+02:002011-07-31T13:18:20.984+02:00

I am happy to announce Version 3 of Inform ATTACK. As always, the latest version can be found here; if you specifically want version 3, click here. Code written for version 2 will generally be compatible with version 3, though you should check out the changelog below to see if any of the changes might interfere with your existing code. Updating to version 3 is recommended because it brings a

Victor Gijsbershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12770054233775973753noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19575546.post-2776802444382019252011-07-15T02:52:00.001+02:002011-07-15T02:53:10.431+02:00

This post has been in the back of my mind for a very long time, but has recently been promoted to the front by reading reviews of The Witcher 2. I guess I should make it now, before a proximity with a competition I intend to enter may make it seem less disinterested than it, of course, is. Here is a typical discussion you'll find on the internet about a review of a game. A: This review sucks,

Victor Gijsbershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12770054233775973753noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19575546.post-64401962461335498802011-07-15T01:57:00.002+02:002011-07-15T02:09:07.834+02:00

You may think my not posting about Kerkerkruip means that I haven't been working on it. Nothing could be further from the truth, however. In fact, I am very rapidly approaching the first beta: a feature-complete game with documentation, cover art, and hundreds of bugs! Talking about documentation, I am planning on recording a short introduction video. You will see me playing the game in gargoyle

Victor Gijsbershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12770054233775973753noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19575546.post-75967912064681437842011-06-24T13:23:00.000+02:002011-06-24T13:23:26.454+02:00

Thinking up cool things and then implementing them is of course a mode of programming that is a lot of fun. In interactive fiction, it is also generally unproductive: you have a story to tell, and "cool things" are often mere side attractions that decrease the time you have to develop the core game. Luckily, for Kerkerkruip this is not the case. The core game is simple, and adding cool things to

Victor Gijsbershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12770054233775973753noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19575546.post-54288534832927439632011-06-19T15:05:00.002+02:002011-06-19T15:12:16.765+02:00

I doubt Kerkerkruip will have an inventory limit. Given that almost all games which feature inventory also feature an inventory limit (the big exception being modern IF), it may be interesting to look at the phenomenon in a bit more detail. Inventory limits come in several forms. You can have a straight-up maximum amount of items which the player can have in his inventory. Common in early IF,

Victor Gijsbershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12770054233775973753noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19575546.post-35809999145118577902011-06-18T19:26:00.002+02:002011-06-18T19:30:45.223+02:00

Yesterday, I finished Half-life 2. Not for the first time; I'm certain I played it when the Orange Box came out in 2007, and I might have played it before that as well. I remember I really loved it. I loved it a lot less this time around, and in fact have major complaints against the design of the game. This is odd, because I'm pretty sure that the things I loved 4 years ago were the same things

Victor Gijsbershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12770054233775973753noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19575546.post-12655763678892742762011-06-17T21:53:00.000+02:002011-06-17T21:53:00.838+02:00

Monsters and the undead In Kerkerkruip, regular monsters are not only the main obstacles, but also the main opportunities: you gain powers by killing them, and absorbing their souls is the only way of healing. (If you kill a regular monster, you immediately regain all your health.) This means that having more low-level monsters in the dungeon actually makes the game easier, because you can

Victor Gijsbershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12770054233775973753noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19575546.post-33600973281692510842011-06-13T13:30:00.001+02:002011-06-13T13:35:20.100+02:00

Kerkerkruip is the new name of my roguelike IF. It is a literal Dutch translation of "dungeon crawl", except that "kruip" translates the verb "crawl" but not the noun "crawl". With all those k's, I think the word looks suitably evil and fantastic for my purposes, and it will be easy to find on Google. (Right now, searching for "kerkerkruip" gives only a handful of results, some of which are

Victor Gijsbershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12770054233775973753noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19575546.post-22460900235907782902011-05-09T13:43:00.001+02:002011-05-09T13:44:09.162+02:00

Bonehead is actually the third Spring Thing game I have played, but I have put off writing about the other two because I may want to write something a bit bigger than a quick review on my blog. (No promises, of course) These two other games were The Promise, a game with a lot of good stuff and an ending I hated, and Mentula Macanus: Apocolocyntosis, which it would be hard to recommend too highly.

Victor Gijsbershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12770054233775973753noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19575546.post-8296380324387319722011-04-28T14:48:00.000+02:002011-04-28T14:48:15.774+02:00

Three pieces of unrelated news concerning me and (in one case very tangentially) interactive fiction: The new SPAG is out, now with a beautiful cover, many interviews, an interesting design document for Hoist Sail for the Heliopause and Home, an overview of the PAX 2011 Demo Fair, and my analysis of Gigantomania. It is not too early to start writing a piece of criticism, an essay on design, or

Victor Gijsbershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12770054233775973753noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19575546.post-69484924476847368732011-04-06T16:34:00.000+02:002011-04-06T16:34:16.807+02:00

I'm happy to announce the release of Inform ATTACK version 2. Apart from adopting a new and saner version numbering system, this release adds a couple of small features, fixes several bugs, and fixes many typographical errors in the manual. Get it from the usual link. Change log: Fixed a bug whereby the going action was counted as acting fast, because it triggered the looking action. The decide

Victor Gijsbershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12770054233775973753noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19575546.post-46698419682679508772011-03-27T16:40:00.002+02:002011-03-27T16:42:34.939+02:00

Introduction If you are using Inform ATTACK, how much code does it take to create a monster? Six words. The boar is a hostile person.I have spent a considerable time coding up three monsters for my dungeon crawling game. The third one took me about 1600 words, which is a little more than 6. Where does the discrepancy come from? One of the main design goals of almost any tactical combat game

Victor Gijsbershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12770054233775973753noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19575546.post-49039789985574921482011-03-24T20:34:00.003+01:002011-03-24T20:37:14.288+01:00

With the basic system in place, the times has now come to think about content. In fact, I have already coded up two rooms -- one of which is the Entrance Hall, which doesn't do an awful lot. But before I dive into content creation, I should spell out my design philosophy, both to make it explicit for myself, and to get some early feedback. Thematic background The thematic background of the

Victor Gijsbershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12770054233775973753noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19575546.post-51578487744306559302011-03-22T19:10:00.000+01:002011-03-22T19:10:07.461+01:00

After getting the basics of randomly generating the dungeon map in place, I spent some time cleaning up the code. This is a necessary step in any larger project: whatever you have written after several hours of obsessed coding may work, but it is almost certainly not pretty. Cleaning up the code can be as easy an rearranging it and adding headings, but more commonly also involves separation (any

Victor Gijsbershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12770054233775973753noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19575546.post-88644823796305162182011-03-21T01:52:00.002+01:002011-03-21T02:17:32.817+01:00

Would it enhance my productivity if I start a public design journal for my projects? That is one question I'm willing to answer by performing an experiment, and the other question is: will anyone be interested in reading these posts, or will they just clutter up Planet IF? The second is the more important one. I am torn between two desires. On the one hand, I want to write a showcase for the

Victor Gijsbershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12770054233775973753noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19575546.post-88615077892586654972011-03-01T15:02:00.004+01:002011-03-01T16:34:42.176+01:00

So, after a decade the IF Theory Reader has finally appeared. Great news, obviously; but, as the editor (Kevin Jackson-Mead) warns us, it may "not necessarily represent the state of the art in interactive fiction theory". IF ten years ago was different from IF today. Which is not to say that we cannot learn anything from these essays, of course, only that we have to approach them with a certain

Victor Gijsbershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12770054233775973753noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19575546.post-27990834495781927422011-02-27T21:40:00.001+01:002011-02-27T21:43:29.173+01:00

Assuming that the Wikipedia editors know their English, the title of this post should be correct idiom, weird though it sounds to me. Anyway, with the XYZZY Awards awarded, it seems as good a time as any to look back on 2010, both for the scene as a whole and for me personally. Interactive fiction itself On the one hand, 2010 was not like 2009 -- nothing came out that I loved as much as Blue

Victor Gijsbershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12770054233775973753noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19575546.post-44642318163393539402011-02-20T18:11:00.000+01:002011-02-20T18:11:59.749+01:00

Those who keep an eye on the IFDB will have seen that for the past few days I have been playing IF like there is no tomorrow -- basically a belated attempt to play everything that has been nominated for a XYZZY award. But I would like to take the time to talk about some of the non-IF I have been playing as well. So without further ado, we start with Braid After the phase of frustration and

Victor Gijsbershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12770054233775973753noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19575546.post-7935987284418759632011-02-16T03:25:00.003+01:002011-02-20T18:13:25.487+01:00

First, there was the phase of frustration and despair. This was the phase of bafflement and anger. Finally, I got to the phase of careful reflection. Special message: There are apparently a lot of people for whom playing Braid was a positive emotional experience. That's great. But if that's the case, you may not want to hear someone venting his Braid-hate, in much the same way that you do not

Victor Gijsbershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12770054233775973753noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19575546.post-43723954313571905952011-02-13T02:31:00.001+01:002011-02-20T18:14:14.203+01:00

This was the phase of frustration and despair. Then there was the phase of bafflement and anger. Finally, I got to the phase of careful reflection. I finally got around to playing Braid, a game that has been talked about a lot. Here is Jay is games: one of the truly astonishing aspects of this game is the deeply involving story, which sweetly lures you in at the beginning, and blows your

Victor Gijsbershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12770054233775973753noreply@blogger.com14tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19575546.post-16836518860578277872011-02-07T20:00:00.000+01:002011-02-07T20:00:30.778+01:00

Unless something weird happens, I am coming to the PAX East IF meeting. I've got a couple of practical questions that soem of you, who know the area better or have been there before, can possible help me with. :) 1. It seems that hotels are pretty expensive in Boston, starting at about 100 dollars a night for a single room. (By contrast, around here I have often booked a room for two people for

Victor Gijsbershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12770054233775973753noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19575546.post-67864776949831172352011-01-19T11:48:00.000+01:002011-01-19T11:48:22.487+01:00

I would have posted this to the newsgroup, but these days, with the forum going strong -- well, I just don't know where to reach people anymore. :) There was an apparently large IF-gathering at PAX East 2010, which really sounded like the place to be for all IF-afficionados. Will something similar be going on this year? If so, I will seriously consider coming (although it would be contingent on

Victor Gijsbershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12770054233775973753noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19575546.post-51899153516622916022011-01-09T14:52:00.000+01:002011-01-09T14:52:54.539+01:00

The Ghent-based literary magazine nY has published an article on interactive fiction by Michel Vuijlsteke: Tussen spel en literatuur. Over interacieve fictie ("Between game and literature. About interactive fiction"). It covers the history from Adventure to The Space under the Window and Galatea, without any nostalgia for the commercial era; and also points out some of the special features of the

Victor Gijsbershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12770054233775973753noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19575546.post-50490046615345480302010-10-17T16:24:00.001+02:002010-10-17T16:33:14.406+02:00

I had a hard time getting into this game, for two reasons. First, it was set in an apparently illogical after- or underworld, and recent experiences made me unenthusiastic about such a setting. But really, are underworlds the new dungeons and mansion, places where you can just put whatever you think of without having to respect any narrative logic? Second, the game gave very little direction,

Victor Gijsbershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12770054233775973753noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19575546.post-50855004984959034162010-10-14T22:19:00.001+02:002010-10-17T16:25:24.143+02:00

If you want to impress me, make sure my first exchange with the game is not: > enter house That’s not something you can enter. you’ve got to use the restroom!My second exchange was me discovering that "about" was not implemented. One then soon finds out that the author didn't bother to describe the directions of exits, and that we are not given any clear goal either. Right. I'm not going to

Victor Gijsbershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12770054233775973753noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19575546.post-52731903245794589572010-10-14T21:55:00.001+02:002010-10-17T16:25:38.440+02:00

Poirot. He may be called differently, but this is in fact Poirot; and I seem to recall that something close to this game's situation was used at one time in a Poirot book or movie... I might be mistaken, though. Perhaps this situation, where you are the detective who doesn't really know anything but just bluffs his way through the case and gets everyone to confess, is just so natural given the

Victor Gijsbershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12770054233775973753noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19575546.post-14249488450280279402010-10-14T00:25:00.001+02:002010-10-14T00:41:20.694+02:00

Oxygen is a compact puzzle game set in a space station that is, even galactically speaking, in the middle of nowhere. The intro talks about the Galactic Empire, which made me think first of Asimov and then of Star Wars -- so it was a relief to find that this was not a piece of fanfic featuring Hari Seldon or Jabba the Hutt. (That Spaceballs joke about Pizza the Hutt was just too easy, wasn't it?)

Victor Gijsbershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12770054233775973753noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19575546.post-87868405571258245852010-10-10T15:39:00.000+02:002010-10-10T15:39:06.518+02:00

Having played eight games, approximately 30 percent of all entries, I am positive about this competition. Five of them were different shades of good, one has the distinct possibility of becoming good in a future release, and the other two, while not good, were far from disastrous. The game I'm going to review now is one of the five good ones. Rogue of the Multiverse -- it sounds like a

Victor Gijsbershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12770054233775973753noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19575546.post-85779094599700948752010-10-08T00:09:00.000+02:002010-10-08T00:09:53.629+02:00

There are three joys in playing the IF Comp. Joy one: playing a game. Joy two: reading a new review of a game you have already played. Joy three: reading all the reviews already published of the game you have just finished playing. Of course, that first joy depends on the quality of the games, and the other two upon either the wit or the wisdom of the reviewers -- but I'm not complaining. I'm

Victor Gijsbershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12770054233775973753noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19575546.post-65955661849133080622010-10-07T11:58:00.003+02:002010-10-07T12:00:50.441+02:00

"The 12:54 to Asgard" -- that could have been a Viking-themed version of Harry Potter, but luckily, it is not. The player character is a grumpy studio technician who is called in the middle of the night to fix a leaking roof before all the expensive equipment short-circuits. Sounds like a bad job? It is a bad job. The first thing I noticed when I started playing this game was the incredible

Victor Gijsbershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12770054233775973753noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19575546.post-59739629472330196122010-10-07T00:34:00.000+02:002010-10-07T00:34:10.921+02:00

After looking at the title of the game and the "handbill" that it comes with, I had a pretty good idea of what Gris et Jaune was going to be about: a fair, probably in London, lots of variety artists with weird names, perhaps a Blavatsky-like medium, and of course the approaching horrors of the Second World War. But when I started playing the game, these expectations were quickly changed. Was I

Victor Gijsbershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12770054233775973753noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19575546.post-40453134461457913582010-10-05T01:23:00.001+02:002010-10-05T01:23:43.894+02:00

A socially awkward male teenager in the company of a somewhat less socially awkward girl he probably secretly likes? Right, let's choose MC Frontalot's Goth Girls as background music... and let's then become aware of the obvious truth that you cannot listen to rap music and play interactive fiction at the same time. "I avail myself of the local cafe, light a clove up, / thumb through Camus (in

Victor Gijsbershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12770054233775973753noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19575546.post-49672029113652419602010-10-04T11:30:00.001+02:002010-10-04T18:30:13.132+02:00

Sons of the Cherry is a multiple-choice game. (Let's all agree that that is a better name than "Choose Your Own Adventure", shall we? It's more descriptive, and less tied to a specific series of game books from already half-forgotten history.) It is set during the U.S. war of independence, and casts the player as a young occultist who quickly gets into trouble with the Christian authorities for

Victor Gijsbershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12770054233775973753noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19575546.post-31363760565698428852010-10-04T00:13:00.002+02:002010-10-04T00:24:29.496+02:00

Okay, this is not a review, it is a call for help. It does contain some spoilers, so only read it if you have played this game. Which means that I do have to put some spoiler space here, I guess. Which means that I do have to put some spoiler space here, I guess. Which means that I do have to put some spoiler space here, I guess. Which means that I do have to put some spoiler space here, I guess

Victor Gijsbershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12770054233775973753noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19575546.post-68477368733938173352010-10-03T21:08:00.000+02:002010-10-03T21:08:16.435+02:00

Flight of the Hummingbird is a super heroes game. Now you should know that I hate superheroes. Not that I've ever read any super hero comics (these seem to be a predominantly American phenomenon), but I have seen some super hero movies. I tried two of those recent Spiderman movies, but stopped both long before the end. A couple of years ago, friends made me watch all of X-men 2, which gets a

Victor Gijsbershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12770054233775973753noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19575546.post-76952868283993671302010-10-03T17:15:00.000+02:002010-10-03T17:15:15.066+02:00

It's that time of the year again: the interactive fiction competition has arrived. Two announcements. First, all my reviews contain as many spoilers as I want to use. Second, no first paragraph contains any spoilers -- it can therefore serve as "spoiler space" for the blog aggregates and so on. The Blind House by Maude Overton is named after a song by Porcupine Tree, the author tells us. Since I

Victor Gijsbershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12770054233775973753noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19575546.post-43534737478409076612010-09-28T21:42:00.001+02:002010-09-28T21:58:50.690+02:00

Get it while it's hot, the new Inform ATTACK (or download the current latest version - it's the same now, but will lead you to any future updates). Changes: 1. The combat states are no longer called "Normal", "Act", "React" and "Reacted", but are now called "at-Normal", "at-Act", "at-React" and "at-Reacted". This was done in order to avoid namespace clashes. (Updating any existing code should be

Victor Gijsbershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12770054233775973753noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19575546.post-15919136969691523252010-09-18T17:52:00.000+02:002010-09-18T17:52:42.350+02:00

'Mid the Sagebrush and the Cactus is a relatively small game based on a combination of Inform ATTACK and several custom conversation commands. In it, the player character will have to interact both verbally and physically with David, the son of the man you have just killed. Will you be able to survive the encounter, and if so, how? (This game is certainly not what I believe a typical game using

Victor Gijsbershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12770054233775973753noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19575546.post-87215600285714948852010-09-11T23:35:00.001+02:002010-09-12T00:09:23.984+02:00

I once wrote a game called Hidden Nazi Mode to make a point about the difference between closed and open software. This was not a success, as discussion with my testers showed me that the game was making lots of points, but not the one I wanted it to make. (I explain this at more length in a short essay that accompanies the current game.) So I decided not to release Hidden Nazi Mode. But there

Victor Gijsbershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12770054233775973753noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19575546.post-35659665219118186612010-09-11T18:43:00.000+02:002010-09-11T18:43:26.226+02:00

A game currently comprising eight puzzles, The Art of Fugue turns a musical form into a logical challenge. Can you get four player characters to do what you wish, given that every command you type will be performed by each of them... but with increasing delays? Find out more at the IFDB.

Victor Gijsbershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12770054233775973753noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19575546.post-85544879500522597052010-09-11T18:16:00.000+02:002010-09-11T18:16:09.117+02:00

In 2007, I released a small example game called Figaro as part of my entry in Innovation Comp. The main aim was to show that even within traditional IF systems, you can give the player a lot of authorial control. (Of course, it doesn't tackle the problem of how to do this in a larger game.) The secondary aim was to create a fun little diversion. But Figaro was plagued with some nasty

Victor Gijsbershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12770054233775973753noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19575546.post-46721471118089749932010-09-11T17:50:00.000+02:002010-09-11T17:50:59.820+02:00

The Inform 7 site now hosts a new extension of mine, Permadeath. This extension implements rogue-like saving. What does that mean? It means that (1) the player can save the game whenever he or she wants, but saving immediately results in quitting the game; (2) every saved game can only be restored once; and (3) when the player dies, his previous save game becomes unusable. In other words, you

Victor Gijsbershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12770054233775973753noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19575546.post-12103576471870577492010-09-07T17:06:00.001+02:002010-09-07T17:06:23.113+02:00

It's not long, but for completeness: http://lilith.cc/~victor/?q=content/nick-montfort-twisty-little-passages-chapters-5-8

Victor Gijsbershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12770054233775973753noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19575546.post-81315154391114960262010-09-01T22:52:00.001+02:002010-09-07T16:32:05.363+02:00

Posted on my regular reading blog: http://lilith.cc/~victor/?q=content/nick-montfort-twisty-little-passages-chapters-1-4 (This is normally in Dutch, but I've made an exception for this IF-related book.)

Victor Gijsbershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12770054233775973753noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19575546.post-19746040905058092182010-08-27T23:06:00.000+02:002010-08-27T23:06:41.136+02:00

If you can read German and somehow missed it, check out the new online IF journal The Parser, which is something of a German-language SPAG. (I recommend the PDF-version, because it has stellar production values for a free internet magazine.) This first issue is mostly focused on GerX, the German translation of Inform 7. It's good to see that the German IF scene is coming back to life!

Victor Gijsbershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12770054233775973753noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19575546.post-86490488239707660902010-08-27T19:27:00.000+02:002010-08-27T19:27:47.534+02:00

In this post, I continue thinking about combat systems. As you can guess, this is part of the design phase of a larger game using Inform ATTACK. Today those staples of the RPG genre: poison, diseases, curses, fire damage, and so on. This topic really falls into two: on the one hand there are attacks that deal something else than damage; on the other hand, there are attacks that deal special

Victor Gijsbershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12770054233775973753noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19575546.post-13003913278283848912010-08-26T01:13:00.001+02:002010-08-27T10:01:41.854+02:00

My post on rec.games.int-fiction didn't exactly lead to a huge number of responses, so let's try again here. I'm looking for a few testers for a small game called 'Mid the sagebrush and the cactus that explores the possibilities of combining combat and conversation. (It is also a test game for ATTACK.) If you would be interested in testing, please send an email to [my first name]@lilith.cc. (

Victor Gijsbershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12770054233775973753noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19575546.post-20614114517800914792010-08-25T20:53:00.000+02:002010-08-25T20:53:32.072+02:00

I stated in my previous post on NetHack that the game mechanic in Rogue-likes where dying is final, and loses you your character, is a great mechanic to make combat tense. I also stated that part of the fun of the game is to explore the game, learn how everything works, slowly identify all items, and so on. These two things are partly opposed. The greater the tension, the greater the temptation

Victor Gijsbershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12770054233775973753noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19575546.post-42932844147385686462010-08-25T13:05:00.000+02:002010-08-25T13:05:03.651+02:00

In an interesting series of columns on rogue-likes (such as NetHack and, in this particular case, Crawl), John Harris talks about "engines": A character with no skill in anything would be quite hard to play. The numbers are stacked against such a character; starting stats and skills tend to be just enough that most players will need to rely on class-specific abilities to get a leg-up on the

Victor Gijsbershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12770054233775973753noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19575546.post-13285149643750425442010-08-25T01:27:00.000+02:002010-08-25T01:27:01.140+02:00

I once again made the mistake of installing NetHack. This is a mistake because the game is incredibly addictive, easily rivalling, perhaps even surpassing, current big budget RPGs. Not bad for a bunch of ASCII-characters, is it? (Let me immediately admit that I play the graphical version.) So, what is the secret of this game? What are the design principles that make it such a success? I suspect

Victor Gijsbershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12770054233775973753noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19575546.post-33253280422770833132010-08-21T21:16:00.001+02:002010-08-26T01:15:09.864+02:00

I'm pleased to finally publish my Inform 7 combat extension, "Inform ATTACK". * What is Inform ATTACK? Inform Advanced TActical Combat Kit is a large (10.000+ word) extension for Inform 7 that allows authors to implement tactical combat in their interactive fiction. The system is powerful out-of-the-box, and very easily extendible. But please read the introductory section of the manual

Victor Gijsbershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12770054233775973753noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19575546.post-32720821170794506872010-02-28T22:07:00.000+01:002010-02-28T22:07:40.722+01:00

Did I miss this? Or is this news? PC Gamer's top 100 PC Games of all times contains an interactive fiction game at spot 97. And the good news is: it's not Zork. It's not even Trinity or A Mind Forever Voyaging or anything else by Infocom. It's Anchorhead. And so it should be. Congratulations, Michael Gentry! My own favourite PC game of all time is at number 8, which shows that the people at PC

Victor Gijsbershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12770054233775973753noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19575546.post-47702149578776351482010-02-25T13:38:00.000+01:002010-02-25T13:38:24.563+01:00

Don't forget to vote for the first round XYZZY Awards, people! Here is the link. The two categories I found hardest were "Best individual PC", because there was no one PC which really grabbed me; and "Best individual puzzle", because there were too many individual puzzles which did. I decided to go for an underdog in the latter case (Tower of Hanoi in The Bryant Collection), but even that meant

Victor Gijsbershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12770054233775973753noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19575546.post-91519888770792098592009-11-16T10:01:00.000+01:002009-11-16T10:01:45.207+01:00

Well, here they are, the results of the 15th annual interactive fiction competition. Congratulations to anyone who considers himself or herself a winner! No really big surprises here, I think, but a couple of things stand out: Rover's Day Out has won, which does not surprise me, but its score is 0.6 points higher than that of the number two, which does. Apparently a lot of people were willing to

Victor Gijsbershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12770054233775973753noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19575546.post-2229335744150731322009-10-24T13:18:00.000+02:002009-10-24T13:18:38.145+02:00

I have decided to create a new personal website. It was more than time for that: my current website was created in 2000, and only slightly changed afterwards. It uses frames. That's right, frames. I wrote it in plain html, there is no CMS, and it was so annoying to keep up to date that I more or less stopped updating it years ago. So now I'm building a new site using the Drupal CMS. I have it

Victor Gijsbershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12770054233775973753noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19575546.post-49593353798964178212009-10-23T00:53:00.000+02:002009-10-23T00:53:59.706+02:00

Okay, I am going to give you my provisional scores (provisional because I might still change my mind) and write a short recommendation for all the ones I liked. So this post will contain quasi-spoilers for many of the games, but real spoilers for none. But first some overal remarks. I think the average quality of entries was quite high this year: some games were deeply flawed, of course, but

Victor Gijsbershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12770054233775973753noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19575546.post-3774691396780185082009-10-22T23:02:00.001+02:002009-10-22T23:02:56.489+02:00

Before any spoiler space, let me say that if you play Rover's Day Out and you see longs strings of blue question marks... don't play on. Get another interpreter. In my case, the Debian package of Gargoyle did not work, and I had to use Windows Gargoyle through WINE. (Ironical, given the game's evident pro-UNIX attitude! This was not a spoiler.) Perhaps this was an issue with non-free fonts? Who

Victor Gijsbershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12770054233775973753noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19575546.post-50915594019160974642009-10-22T18:23:00.000+02:002009-10-22T18:23:01.694+02:00

I'm all out of spoiler space. I'll google "spoiler space" and paste in whatever comes up at the first hit. Hm. Google tells me about the first hit: "Deze site kan schade toebrengen aan uw computer.", which means "This site can damage your computer." MaybeI won't click the link, then. Tralalala. Did you people know that this is my last IF comp game this year? I've played them all. That's my very

Victor Gijsbershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12770054233775973753noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19575546.post-43387767170516362622009-10-22T13:25:00.000+02:002009-10-22T13:25:12.442+02:00

Spoiler space. Spoiler space. Here is a transcript of the brilliant new game A Day in Boot Camp: "Get up, you worthless maggots!", the drill instructor shouts. > stand "Forty push ups! Quick!" > do push up You do a push up. "Faster!" > do push up You do a push up. "Hey, private Weakling, am I going to see some action or what?" > do 38 push ups You cannot use multiple objects with that verb.

Victor Gijsbershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12770054233775973753noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19575546.post-43703229600040037132009-10-21T23:29:00.000+02:002009-10-21T23:29:08.777+02:00

Today's spoiler space is a quote from Isaiah Berlin's The Roots of Romanticism, in which he talks about how romanticism severed--really for the first time in Western thought--the ideas of truth and moral goodness. Suppose you had a conversation in the sixteenth century with somebody fighting in the great religious wars which tore Europe apart at that period, and suppose you said to a Catholic of

Victor Gijsbershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12770054233775973753noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19575546.post-43512008077386853032009-10-20T23:51:00.000+02:002009-10-20T23:51:10.921+02:00

I made another recipe with pumpkin yesterday. It is apparently of Cuban origins, but enough has been changed in order to meet ingredient availability that its probably no longer recognisable as such. I got it from Madhur Jaffrey's incredible vegetarian cookbook. Cook pumpkin with white beans (I get my beans pre-cooked from a jar; if you have raw beans, cook them first, because they'll take much

Victor Gijsbershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12770054233775973753noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19575546.post-77055032518679673122009-10-20T21:01:00.000+02:002009-10-20T21:01:50.950+02:00

Today's spoiler space: I've begun getting pages together over at IFWiki about individual blogs. I started with Renga in Blue and Illuminated Lantern, and I'll probably be doing my own next. If you want to help keeping all that great information in all these great blogs accessible (in the sense that people will be able to find it), why don't you join in the fun? My basic plan is to do the

Victor Gijsbershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12770054233775973753noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19575546.post-51836428731927078052009-10-18T23:45:00.002+02:002009-10-18T23:49:02.823+02:00

Here is spoiler space for the spoiler space. I'm going to answer a trivia question that I asked in the last spoiler space, so if you don't to know it, read that entry first! You know, I'll write the name in reverse, so your eyes won't betray you. Right. The music of rerheL moT was among the first English-language music I listened to and loved--I suppose that my parents must have told me the

Victor Gijsbershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12770054233775973753noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19575546.post-83868926939530156152009-10-18T22:08:00.000+02:002009-10-18T22:08:22.117+02:00

Only six more games to go! I have seen very good things about some of them, and I am secretly saving the ones that are probably best for last. Hm, was that a spoiler about Eruption? No, of course not. Spoiler space, spoiler space, la la la. Did I already tell you that there are at least two games in this competition that mention a platypus? One of them has the platypus marry you to someone. (I

Victor Gijsbershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12770054233775973753noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19575546.post-75540783203727075832009-10-18T16:25:00.000+02:002009-10-18T16:25:44.210+02:00

I have never been to the Everglades. In fact, the greater part of the time I spent within the borders of the United States of America was on the O'Hare International Airport near Chicago, waiting for a flight to Vancouver, so I haven't really been anywhere in the USA. I will probably never go to the Everglades. Of course I could, if I wanted to, but why fly across the Atlantic for a vacation

Victor Gijsbershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12770054233775973753noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19575546.post-85455578593857962162009-10-18T00:49:00.001+02:002009-10-18T00:58:13.710+02:00

I'm looking for beta-testers for a small game I have written. It is not, perhaps, a "real" game--more a proof on concept, a piece of conceptual art, or a move in a discussion. Think Figaro or +=3, though this piece is more extensive than either of those, and also less about design than about a socio-political issue. (Hm, IFDB has no Figaro page.) Also, when I say "small", I mean small: I coded

Victor Gijsbershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12770054233775973753noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19575546.post-89333889135839856612009-10-17T14:15:00.001+02:002009-10-17T14:16:36.951+02:00

Writing up a recipe in English is very difficult for me. What on earth do you call the water in which something has been cooked? Is "brown rice" what I would call "zilvervliesrijst"? Anyway, here is an attempt at pumpkin, rice and black-eyed beans (and I leave the amounts up to you, because it doesn't much matter whether its more "beany" or more "pumpkiny" or whatever): Ingredients: pumpkin,

Victor Gijsbershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12770054233775973753noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19575546.post-66174826365445763582009-10-15T17:26:00.002+02:002009-10-15T17:31:09.755+02:00

This time, I'd like to use the spoiler space to present the "most insightful remark I've seen so far in an IFComp 2009 review". The award goes to Jenni of Pissy Little Sausages for the following observation: Y’know, every time I read “Violence isn’t the answer to this one,” I am skeptical, because very often this default message is left as a failure notification in places where you’re simply

Victor Gijsbershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12770054233775973753noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19575546.post-23625769531370767972009-10-15T12:44:00.000+02:002009-10-15T12:44:02.797+02:00

Emily tells us that pumpkin pie is delicious. I don't know about that--I'm not even quite sure what "pie" means in the US--but I do know that the pumpkin is one of the great vegetables. And I should know about vegetables, because I'm a vegetarian. The only problem with pumpkins is that cutting them up and cleaning them is so much work. It makes me wonder why they don't sell pre-sliced pumpkin in

Victor Gijsbershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12770054233775973753noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19575546.post-71574014940273998262009-10-15T10:46:00.001+02:002009-10-15T10:47:40.186+02:00

I am now officially past the half-way mark, since this is the 13th game I review out of 24. I don't think I ever managed to review that many comp games during the comp... and let me tell you, this does have something to do with the fact that we are now allowed to publish reviews during the comp. It makes me want to play everything so I can read what all of you guys are talking about and talk

Victor Gijsbershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12770054233775973753noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19575546.post-90353147372028441932009-10-14T00:17:00.000+02:002009-10-14T00:17:37.988+02:00

This time, I will fill the spoiler space with an announcement. I have received a bunch of code that solves basically all of the disambiguation and multiple actions/objects problems of The Art of Fugue! Expect to find it in the next alpha. The reason I'm telling you now is to ensure that nobody else is going to spend a sleepless night trying to figure out how to do this. :) Which brings us right

Victor Gijsbershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12770054233775973753noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19575546.post-67314496271535623802009-10-13T00:48:00.001+02:002009-10-13T11:27:49.911+02:00

This time, the spoiler space is a quote from an essay by Michael Moorcock. There are still a few things which bring a naive sense of shocked astonishment to me whenever I experience them -- a church service in which the rituals of Dark Age superstition are performed without any apparent sense of incongruity in the participants -- a fat Soviet bureaucrat pontificating about bourgeois decadence --

Victor Gijsbershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12770054233775973753noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19575546.post-34327009299953522022009-10-12T12:44:00.001+02:002009-10-12T12:50:07.959+02:00

The development of my/our puzzle game The Art of Fugue (see my earlier posts here and here) is going well, and today I would like to present the second open alpha to you. You can find the game file here, and the source here. What is new? The fourth puzzle has been removed, as has the functionality that made it possible to solve this puzzle. However, four new puzzles have been added. The new

Victor Gijsbershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12770054233775973753noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19575546.post-17580492528094682092009-10-11T15:50:00.001+02:002009-10-11T15:51:23.463+02:00

Þis time, þe spoiler space is a short Inform 7 program. "Thorns" by Victor Gijsbers Include Unicode Character Names by Graham Nelson. London Bridge is a room. "You have eyes for only one [unicode 254]ing: '[unicode 222]e Olde English Pubbe', right across [unicode 254]e street." But Adrift may not have unicode support, so on to þe review of Yon Astounding Castle! of some sort. I expected to

Victor Gijsbershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12770054233775973753noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19575546.post-81473707036935350502009-10-10T13:12:00.000+02:002009-10-10T13:12:37.961+02:00

This time, the spoiler space is an important announcement concerning the game Byzantine Perspective. It is not a spoiler. It is an anti-spoiler. This game has not abandoned you. It is not an untested bugfest. Play on and you will understand. Right. I mean, without that, people might pull out the hints and spoil the whole thing for themselves Some people already have. As for a review itself, well

Victor Gijsbershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12770054233775973753noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19575546.post-86265066109365603832009-10-09T23:33:00.000+02:002009-10-09T23:33:42.961+02:00

This time, the spoiler space is a riddle. QUESTION: What is wrong with a game that is called "Earl Grey", that is about a tea party and a monarchy, and that contains phrases like this one: "a riot of color with dozens of varieties you have never seen before."? ANSWER: It combines the essence of Britain with American spelling! REMEDY: > cast u into color Anyway, on to the game. Earl Grey by Rob

Victor Gijsbershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12770054233775973753noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19575546.post-1512637339820951902009-10-09T00:52:00.000+02:002009-10-09T00:52:57.083+02:00

Another review, another spoiler space. Why fill it with nonsense text if I can actually tell you something interesting? Such as... There are a lot of processes in our world that happen one way, but not the other. Mirrors break, but shards do not assemble themselves into unbroken mirrors; two colours of paint mix, but they don't unmix. Why? You may believe the answer is the second of law of

Victor Gijsbershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12770054233775973753noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19575546.post-17414424666654479652009-10-08T23:24:00.000+02:002009-10-08T23:24:18.595+02:00

This time, I will review Gleaming the Verb. Spoiler space? Hm... I'm running out of ideas. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum

Victor Gijsbershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12770054233775973753noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19575546.post-18006242501072793602009-10-08T18:03:00.001+02:002009-10-08T18:10:07.884+02:00

I used ZTools to reverse engineer the story file of The Duel in the Snow, because I wanted to know whether I had missed anything important to the story. Findings below, after some spoiler space. Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. Everything was in confusion in the Oblonskys’ house. The wife had discovered that the husband was carrying on an intrigue

Victor Gijsbershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12770054233775973753noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19575546.post-20639412934065717722009-10-08T12:31:00.001+02:002009-10-08T23:05:38.123+02:00

My review of Owen Parish's The Grand Quest contained an analysis of its playing card puzzle. I couldn't stop myself from doing some more calculations, which I present here. (This post also contains a walkthrough for the card puzzle that is shorter than that in the official walkthrough. It's right at the end.) You won't understand this discussion if you haven't read the previous post. Which also

Victor Gijsbershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12770054233775973753noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19575546.post-33869686620654006432009-10-08T00:13:00.003+02:002009-10-08T00:35:57.584+02:00

As in the previous post, I'll simply begin my game with saying some non-spoilery things about this game. That should keep the people on Planet IF happy. The Grand Quest is a game by Owen Parish, whose Cacophony I recently reviewed on the IFDB. That game was radically non-linear, and gave the player very little guidance; The Grand Quest is almost its exact opposite. Here we simply have a linear

Victor Gijsbershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12770054233775973753noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19575546.post-42701897384020297122009-10-07T23:42:00.000+02:002009-10-07T23:42:51.517+02:00

Another review in the Interactive Fiction Competition. This time, let's just fill the spoiler space with some non-spoilery comments about the game--yet another idea I simply copy from Emily Short. The Duel in the Snow takes place in aristocratic Russia. Unsurprisingly, given its title, it is about a duel, and almost as unsurprising is the fact that you are one of the two parties in the duel.

Victor Gijsbershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12770054233775973753noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19575546.post-46709998138186083862009-10-07T00:19:00.000+02:002009-10-07T00:19:43.704+02:00

Another IF Comp review, another spoiler space... with the final part of this Thomas Hardy poem: The Ruined Maid (3/3) "You used to call home-life a hag-ridden dream, And you'd sigh, and you'd sock; but at present you seem To know not of megrims or melancho-ly!" "True. One's pretty lively when ruined," said she. "I wish I had feathers, a fine sweeping gown, And a delicate face, and could strut

Victor Gijsbershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12770054233775973753noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19575546.post-58947211688312573192009-10-04T12:51:00.000+02:002009-10-04T12:51:37.983+02:00

More IF Comp reviews, more spoiler space. As promised, the second part of Thomas Hardy's: The Ruined Maid (2/3) -"At home in the barton you said 'thee' and 'thou,' And 'thik oon,' and 'theäs oon,' and 't'other'; but now Your talking quite fits 'ee for high compa-ny!" "Some polish is gained with one's ruin," said she. "Your hands were like paws then, your face blue and bleak But now I'm

Victor Gijsbershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12770054233775973753noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19575546.post-45763992671265209512009-10-03T12:49:00.004+02:002009-10-04T12:03:48.594+02:00

Instead of writing nonsensical stuff in order to fill the obligatory spoiler space, I'll just post some lines by Thomas Hardy. Here is: The Ruined Maid (1/3) "O 'Melia, my dear, this does everything crown! Who could have supposed I should meet you in Town? And whence such fair garments, such prosperi-ty?" "O didn't you know I'd been ruined?" said she. "You left us in tatters, without shoes or

Victor Gijsbershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12770054233775973753noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19575546.post-74096101882859157112009-10-02T14:13:00.003+02:002009-10-02T14:33:47.905+02:00

The Interactive Fiction Competition has started again. The last time that the winner of the Best Game XYZZY Award was not an entry in the IF Comp was 2002, when Emily Short's Savoir-Faire won. One is justified to suppose, then, that the best game of 2009 is among this bunch.Or is one? In fact, 2009 is an extremely successful year already. We have seen Blue Lacuna, Alabaster, The King of Shreds

Victor Gijsbershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12770054233775973753noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19575546.post-69516000248110645182009-09-21T22:14:00.004+02:002009-09-21T23:02:18.641+02:00

The Dutch popular philosophical journal Wijsgerig Perspectief (in the person of guest-editor Olga Crapels) asked me to write an article for an issue on survival, namely, an article about survival in roleplaying games. I was happy to oblige, and wrote an article called Een spel met de dood, which would translate as A game with death.Normally, you would have to pay a stiff 13 euros to obtain a copy

Victor Gijsbershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12770054233775973753noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19575546.post-7451030936634154502009-09-20T22:48:00.003+02:002009-09-20T23:01:07.321+02:00

This is the second part of an interview with Jimmy Maher, the first part of which can be found here. This part will contain several spoilers for The King of Shreds and Patches, so proceed carefully.Let us talk about some specific changes you made to the original scenario by Justin Tynes. One important change has to do with the representation and implementation of insanity. In Call of Cthulhu, the

Victor Gijsbershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12770054233775973753noreply@blogger.com1