“IF”

or

A little something we call Interactive Fiction!

 “Interactive Fiction (IF)”
Computer-mediated narrative, resembling a
very finely-grained "Choose Your Own
Adventure" story in which the “interactor”
reads a short textual description and types
instructions to the computer.

Also called:
“Text Game” or “Text Adventure”

Source: http://jerz.setonhill.edu/if/#Playing
Interactor
 player, adventurer, gamer, or user.
 In interactive fiction it’s the live human
being (you),
 who advances the plot by issuing
instructions (generally through typing into a
keyboard),
 to the player-character.
“…a short textual description…”

West of House
You are standing in an open field west
of a white house, with a boarded front
door.
There is a small mailbox here.
“…types instructions to the computer.”
 "enter building“
 “open mailbox”
 “take all”
 “walk north”
 “knock on door”
 “help”
Playing an IF…
 Read a few lines or paragraphs describing a
simulated world.
 Type a command.
 The computer first tries to figure out what you
want to do, and then checks to see whether you
can do it.
 The computer prints out some more text,
describing whether or to what extent your action
has affected the simulated world.
 Love & Hate
“Interactive fiction requires the text-analysis
skills of a literary scholar and the relentless
puzzle-solving drive of a computer hacker.
People tend to love it or hate it. Those who
hate it sometimes say it makes them ‘think
too much.’”

http://jerz.setonhill.edu/if/#Playing
Why? What’s the point?
The purpose of these games, is so that the
plot can change based on what the
interactor types. It has the potential to be
more truly interactive than hypertext and
more immersive than other forms.
(imagine you are a tree)
Imagine this…
 Our Imagination will often be better than the
image we see.
 The book is often “better” than the movie.
 The “interactive” is often more engaging
than the passive… or even the merely
“active!”
History of IF
"In the mid 1970's Will Crowther, a programmer and an
amateur caver, having just gone through a divorce, was
looking for a way to connect with his two young children.
Over the course of a few weekends he slapped together a
text based cave exploration game that featured a sort of
guide/narrator who talked in full sentences and who
understood simple two word commands that came really
close to natural English.... Some time later Stanford graduate
student Don Woods came along, and he came across an
unfinished copy of this game on a mainframe computer. He
expanded it and released it on the Internet."

“Colossal Cave Adventure” was born.

Writing Interactive Fiction
 Designing interactive fiction involves both
computer programming and storytelling skill.
 Designers with any ambition must spend
considerable time fiddling with the mundane
technical details of coding objects and behaviors,
 …while also creating characters, dialogue, and
narrative elements that can be pieced together in
multiple different ways.
 Tools
 “A particularly exciting development in interactive
fiction is the release of Inform 7, a complete package
for writing, debugging, mapping, and publishing
interactive fiction games playable on a wide range of
platforms, including PCs, Macs, and handhelds.
Inform 7 code is designed to resemble ordinary
English, and is thus an excellent choice for verbal
thinkers who are not trained as programmers.”

http://jerz.setonhill.edu/if/#Playing
Tools
MAINSTREAM MINOR CURIOSITIES
 Inform 7  A-code  AGI
 ADRIFT  AAS
 AGT
 AIFT
 ALAN
 Hugo  Aiee!
 AWK
 Inform
 IAGE  CAT
 JACL
 Quest  LADS
 PAWS
 TADS  Scott Adams
 SUDS
Let’s Play…

 FINE TUNED  ZORK