NaNoWriMo Text Adventures

[squirmelia]

NaNoWriMo starts soon, and as I've been reading Twisty Little Passages, I'm vaguely contemplating writing some kind of interactive fiction/text adventure type thing for it.

[Poll #1474777]

Comments

[squirmelia.livejournal.com]

Oh, there is Interactive Fiction Writing Month in February:
http://www.instamatique.com/if/

Maybe I should stick to writing a normal novel in November.

[robinbloke.livejournal.com]

Hunt the wumpus, colossal cave, the hobbit, HHGTG, Terrormolinos, Sphinx Adventure, Twin Kingdom Valley, Wychwood, Leather goddesses of phobos, Wheel of Fortune and a load more I can't even remember. I used to write them as well.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_text-based_computer_games

Damn you!

[karohemd.livejournal.com]

While looking up Magnetic Scrolls games, I found them all online (http://msmemorial.if-legends.org/magnetic.htm). *shakes fist*

[tonight-we-fly.livejournal.com]

Er, sorry to be old, but what's a text adventure?

[kiss-me-quick.livejournal.com]

Do you mean like Choose Your Own Adventure?

[nickmurdoch.livejournal.com]

I haven't got enough room in the form to reply properly, and it looks like it didn't save my submission anyway, so here's my answers:

* I can't remember any specifically, apart from L (see below), although I've half-written a few in the past :)

* L - A Mathemagical Adventure (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L_-_A_Mathemagical_Adventure) - I first played this at school in Year 6 on the classroom's BBC Micro with classmates, and that inspired me to learn my first programming language the next year (BASIC). Unfortunately I only ever knew the game as simply 'L' until recently, when I grabbed a copy of it and a BBC Micro emulator and played it all the way through. They've re-released it as a Windows application now, still text based I believe, for this generation of schoolchildren. :)

[fridgemagnet.livejournal.com]

I thought about this last year, as I toy with writing IF a lot, mostly in Inform. I still think it would be an interesting idea but I'm not sure I would use the standard text adventure format, just because it makes it very hard to get the word count; you're having to think all the time about the relationship between all of your descriptions and the objects that they represent, and code them too. Unless it's a very boring piece of IF.

One thing I *might* suggest, though, is a more choose-your-own-adventure style of IF, along the lines of Japanese "dating sim" style RPGs - I did some research on the systems for those recently. Technically known as "visual novels". There is a package called Ren'Py (http://www.renpy.org/wiki/renpy/Home_Page) which is very straightforward to write in, and while it assumes you'll want to have graphics involved, you don't have to.

I think this would make it a lot easier to get the word count down as you can effectively write a standard novel and put a bit of plot branching in it. Some people write "kinetic novels" in the format which aren't interactive at all.

[kludge.livejournal.com]

If you have not played violet, do. It is motherfucking awesome.

[lokicarbis.livejournal.com]

Oh, if we're including more choose your own adventure stuff, I should also have included Kim Newman's "Life's Lottery" from a few years back. And of course, there's that one I wrote a couple of months ago.

[notlosers.livejournal.com]

This is genius. I've been following Emily Short (http://emshort.wordpress.com/) lately, quietly getting inspired to do something similar, but I hadn't considered doing it for NaNo.

What would you write it in? I don't think I've got the patience to write my own parser; there seem to be a couple of choices out there, but none look wholly satisfactory. I'd want the end result to be fully playable in a browser.

dumb question time JOdi

[bickichick.livejournal.com]

what is a text adventure?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interactive_fiction
like LInk & Zelda for Nintendo in teh late 80's early 90's and I think 20'000 leagues under the sea for a TRS 80 in the late 70's/ way early 80's
I have read choose your own adventures those were grand! and back I picked up 2 Doctor WHo choose your own adventures @ gift shop when I went to the Doctor HWo exhibit @ Earl's court I am very sure I told you and very sure that I showed you look what I found weee

[wintrmute.livejournal.com]

How did your interactive fiction work out in the end? Is it something we can play now?