What's New on the Interactive Fiction Page

August 20, 2003

New section for game interpreters in the Playing IF section and the first entries, interpreters for Magnetic Scrolss games (misc platforms) and a Palm interpreter for Magnetic Scrolls games

June 11, 2003

Added a link to Fiction Script by Gabor de Mooij, an IF scripting language. I have not tried it myself and it seems to be PC only.

August 20, 2002

OttoAndIris.com is no longer a pay site. I also added links to two new Zoesis Studios demos, called Mr. Bubb in Space and Pearl Demon. The former is similar to OttoAndIris.com in feel but includes a richer character (more speech, has arms and legs, richer mind and emotions). The latter is similar to Mr. Bubb in terms of character quality, but has a more traditional game-like feel with a monster (the Pearl Demon) that you are competing against.

March 29,2002

The LSD game and the three mini Java adventure games have been taken down and I cannot find them anywhere. If anyone knows where these are, let me know and I'll add the links again.

January 18,2002

The Zoesis web-based interactive world has been renamed OttoAndIris.com. It is also now, unfortunately, a pay site -- but worth every penny!

November 29, 2001

Updated the link for JACL.

November 5, 2001

Updated the link for Stephen Granade's site. It is no longer at the Mining Company, but he has relocated to brasslantern.org.

January 11, 2001

After an extended absence, I am back doing what little I can to keep this page current. I am no longer a student, making regular maintenance of this page difficult. I am currently working for Zoesis Studios, a spin-off from the Oz Project I was involved in at CMU. We are working to create believable, interactive characters in realtime, animated, 3D environments. A bit removed from traditional IF, but still sharing many of the same interactivity, character, and storytelling goals. If you'd like to check out our first publicly viewable system, check out OttoAndIris.com, a family-oriented site that shows the kinds of characters we are currently working on. (Sorry, it only runs under Windows for now.)

Now to this site. I have added a links to The RedBlue Games Webcrafters Guild (a list of resources for creating web-based games from design to building traffic), the JACL Adventure Creation Language and the Creative Adventure Toolkit (CAT) for Windows from the list if IF Authoring Tools.

I removed some dead links and fixed some broken ones.

And, of course, I added links to Zoesis Studios and OttoAndIris.com.

June 5, 1997

I have added a link to the Interactive Fiction page at The Mining Company This excellent page is run by Stephen Granade and should be of interest to IF players and developers alike. It covers both graphical and text-based IF.

A new section for graphical interactive fiction has been added to the page. However, as I cannot do justice to both text-based IF and graphical IF, I am limiting this section to links to other sites about graphical IF that are also likely to be of interest to people interested in text-based IF. The first three links are to Activision, Steve Meretzky's Boffo Games, and the Mining Company page listed in the previous entry.

April 15, 1997

The IF Starter Kit Page has moved to http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Forum/6116/ifstart.html.

March 14, 1997

A new java- and frame-based IF game, LSD, has been added.

The interactive crime investigation has moved to http://www.crimescene.com/.

March 13, 1997

The Maze of twisty web pages, all alike, is now at http://www.truespectra.com/~svanegmo/.

BAF's hypertext guide to the games on ftp.gmd.de has moved to http://www.escape.com/~baf/if/.

January 13, 1997

A page providing starter kits for IF players has been added to the page.

November 7, 1996

After a leave from maintining this page, I am now back. I cannot promise to be as diligent as I might like at keeping this page up to date, but I will do my best.

I have added a link to a new TADS Page. TADS was recently released as freeware (it had previously been shareware) so there is no longer any cost to check it out as an IF programming language. The TADS Programming Manual is also available at this new site.

Stephen Grenade's IF Authoring Resource has been added to the IF Programming section of the page.

The IF Theory and Practice Page (including an archive of rec.arts.int-fiction) has been added to the General and IF Programming sections of the page. It probably only belongs in the first, but it contains enough specific information of interest to IF developers that I thought it should be included in the programming section as well.

July 1, 1996

The TADS page has moved to file://ftp.netcom.com/pub/cm/cmlee/tads/www/welcome.html.

I have added a new BBS section to the Interactive Fiction page. I have never tried any of these systems and they are (supposedly) more like on-line role-playing games than IF. Nonetheless, if this is the kind of thing you are looking for, try them out. Note: They are most likely long-distance calls.

Ahendah: 707-585-0475
Dimensional Vortex: 707-837-8607

June 21, 1996

Tricky, An Interactive Novel has been added to the list of games on the web.

June 5, 1996

Solve the "Jack the Ripper" mystery, a new choose-your-own-adventure style game.

April 8, 1996

You can download Zork for PCs and Macs.

April 5, 1996

WebZork has been added to the section on playing IF.

Java-based interactive fiction is beginning to arrive. Two new sites, Three Mini Java Adventures and Java IF Games have been added to the section on playing IF.

March 20, 1996

I have just completed a major overhaul of the page. If you have comments about the changes or suggestions for other ways to make the page more useful, please let me know.

SPAG Issue #8 has been added to the SPAG Page.

March 19, 1996

The Interactive Fiction page is undergoing major restructuring. Instead of organizing by medium (news group, ftp site, web site), I will be organizing by content area (developing IF, playing IF). I hope this will make the page much easier to use. Thank you for your patience while this work is being done.

The competition section of the page has been moved to its own page. The rules for this year's competition have been added.

A gzipped text version of Phil Goetz's "Notes on Using SNePS for Interactive Fiction" has been added to the already existing postscript version.

March 12, 1996

Zork, The Cavern of Doom, a web-based choose-your-own-adventure game has been added to the Web Sites Section.

February 6, 1996

The Storybook Kingdon of IF, a new web page devoted to IF has been added to the list of IF sites on the web.

February 6, 1996

The Zork Page has been added to the Infocom part of the papers section (I know it's a little out of place since it isn't a paper) and the web sites section.

December 18, 1995

Adventure Web, a webified Colossal Cave has been added to the list of IF-related web sites.

December 18, 1995

Root (the world's oldest and snottiest artificial life form) is a new interactive game on the web. It has been added to the list of IF-related web sites.

December 14, 1995