I was wondering if anyone here likes to play interactive fiction/text adventure games. If anyone does, then discuss them here. In particular, I'm going to try my hand at writing one, but I'm stuck for ideas.

If you don't know, interactive fiction means that the game world is presented as text (not rougelike-style text, but actual prose like you might see in a book) rather than images, and you control your character with commands like ">take key", "go north" (which can usually be abbreviated to ">n") or "frozt grue". After one of these commands, the game either updates the text to reflect the new state of the world (eg. if you typed ">drop book", the game would append "You can see a book here." or something like that to the display.) or an error message if you made a typo or tried to do something that you can't (like opening a locked door when you don't have the key for it.)

Myself, I've played Zork 1, HitchHiker's Guide to the Galaxy (yes, there is a text adventure version of HH) and am currently looking for a copy of Enchanter. I have written a few games in the Inform language, but they were crap and I deleted them.

Sounsd cool, what program did you use to right these "adventures"?

I'd recommend Inform 7. There are some other ones out there, but Inform is the easiest to use IMO (I7 code looks almost like normal English, actually) and it is very powerful. Keep in mind that it is a full-fledged programming language, and the manual is pretty big. (On a side note, the manual is actually part of the programing environment, so you can open it as you are righting with one mouse click, which is nice. You can also run games right in the same window that you write code in and look at your code and the game at the same time, which is also very useful.)

I'd recommend you play a few games before you try to write one, though, so you understand how the games work. The Interactive Fiction Archive is a good place to look.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Dec 28 2008, 11:30 pm by TassadarZeratul. Reason: The device has been modified

Ah, what you are talking about it basically the single-player version of a MUD.

I played a few games like this about a phone that kept trying to kill you.

Those are more fun if the game is improvised and narrated by another person.

And you don't call him a Dungeon Master.

(lol) I actually wanted to make a SC movie map that made fun of Interactive Fiction called Interactive Science Fiction.
I never got deep into it.

Basically, but I think IF came first. (Speaking of MUDs, does anyone know a good MUD authoring system?

You can't author them, they're programmed with C++ I believe.

I prefer to play "Choose Your Own Adventure"-styled games. Like, instead of ">go north" you pick an action from the given choices. Do they count as text adventure games?

Sort of... But you can't make any real puzzles with those sort of games...

The labyrinth inside an old MUD called Land of Legends greatly disagrees with the previous statement. Sadly the old LoL doesn't exist but the name lives on through a completely different MUD.

...What? What does a MUD having a maze have to do with there not being any real puzzles in Choose-Your-Own-Adventure style stuff?

It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.

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