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People's Republic of Interactive Fiction

2010 Apr 1, 2:42Its like a better version of what I was doing with my Web Frotz Interpreter. Its all client side javascript, HTML, & CSS to play Z-machine based interactive fiction games. They even do the saved game in a URL piece.PermalinkCommentsif interactive-fiction game web browser webapp

Post Position » A Note on the Word “Zork”

2010 Jan 15, 6:03The derivation of the word Zork.PermalinkCommentshistory language english game if interactive-fiction zork mit

GameSetWatch - 15th Annual Interactive Fiction Competition Winners Announced

2009 Dec 11, 9:00"Organizers for the 15th Annual Interactive Fiction Competition (IFComp 2009), a contest centered around short text adventures lasting under two hours, recently announced this year's winners: Rover's Day Out, Broken Legs, and Snowquest."PermalinkCommentsif interactive-fiction game fiction text

Zork rock anthem - Boing Boing

2009 Sep 29, 10:26Zork walkthrough as song works pretty well actually.PermalinkCommentsmusic mp3 free zork if interactive-fiction game videogame

Eat Pants - Interactive Fiction Sessions from my Server Logs

2009 Jun 29, 4:19

I've looked at my web server logs previously to see if anyone had used my Web Frotz Interpreter and until recently didn't realize that awstats (the web server log report generator) was truncating the query from my URL, so I couldn't tell that anyone was actually using it. But after grepping the logs manually I've pulled out the URLs of visitor's text adventure sessions. If you'll recall, my Web Frotz Interpreter stores the game state in the URL so its easy to see user's game states in the web server logs.

I've put some of the links up on the Web Frotz Interpreter page. Some of the interesting ones:

PermalinkCommentsserver-logs technical zork frotz pants interactive-fiction uri if

Milliways: Infocom's Unreleased Sequel to Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Waxy.org

2008 Apr 18, 12:58"I found myself in possession of the "Infocom Drive" - a complete backup of Infocom's shared network drive from 1989." He posts emails from that backup w/o consulting those involved who show up for luke warm debate in the comments.PermalinkCommentsif interactive-fiction infocom hhgttg history scifi videogame article

URI Addressable Text Adventure Games

2008 Mar 2, 9:18

This post is about creating a server side z-code interpreter that represents game progress in the URI. Try it with the game Lost Pig.

I enjoy working on URIs and have the mug to prove it. Along those lines I've combined thoughts on URIs with interactive fiction. I have a limited amount of experience with Inform which generates Z-Code so I'll focus on pieces written in that. Of course we can already have URIs identifying the Z-Code files themselves, but I want URIs to identify my place in a piece of interactive fiction. The proper way to do this would be to give Z-Code its own mimetype and associate with that mimetype the format of a fragment that would contain the save state of user's interactive fiction session. A user would install a browser plugin that would generate URIs containing the appropriate fragment while you play the IF piece and be able to load URIs identifying Z-Code files and load the save state that appears in the fragment.

But all of that would be a lot of work, so I made a server side version that approximates this. On the Web Frotz Interpreter page, enter the URI of a Z-Code file to start a game. Enter your commands into the input text box at the bottom and you get a new URI after every command. For example, here's the beginning of Zork. I'm running a slightly modified version of the Unix version of Frotz. Baf's Guide to the IF Archive has lists of IF games to try out.

There are two issues with this thought, the first being the security issues with running arbitrary z-code and the second is the practical URI length limit of about 2K in IE. From the Z-Code standard and the Frotz source it looks like 'save' and 'restore' are the only commands that could do anything interesting outside of the Z-Code virtual machine. As for the length-limit on URIs I'm not sure that much can be done about that. I'm using a base64 encoded copy of the compressed input stream in the URI now. Switching to the actual save state might be smaller after enough user input.

PermalinkCommentszork frotz interactive-fiction zcode if technical uri fragment

SourceForge.net: ZPlet: A Z-Machine for Java

2008 Feb 25, 2:09PermalinkCommentsdevelopment if interactive-fiction java opensource

XYZZYnews Issue #11 A Conversation With Cosmoserve's Judith Pintar

2008 Feb 25, 1:18An interview with Judith Pintar famed I.F. game writer. FTA: "While I was writing CosmoServe, I worked as a children's theatre director, and for the ten years before that I was a actress, storyteller and concert musician." She worked with my third gradePermalinkCommentsjudith-pintar if interactive-fiction interview cosmoserve game games

Lost Pig | The A.V. Club

2008 Feb 15, 2:47AV Club reviews Lost Pig, the 2007 Interactive Fiction Competition winner.PermalinkCommentsgame games if interactive-fiction humor

Interactive Fiction by Christopher Shelton

2007 Jul 26, 12:27My friend Chris' interactive fiction games.PermalinkCommentsfriend chris-shelton if interactive-fiction
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