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So I just borrowed this 2-disc documentary of early text-IF gaming called Get Lamp. A wonderful peak into the early years of Infocomm and others... A LOT of material on there, but worth checking out if you're so inclined..

cheers,
..dane

Hah! That is great. Do they talk about Sierra on there?

I only watched most of disc 1 (haven't started disc 2 yet).. They focus pretty hard-core on Infocomm since it was the most successful text IF company (Ever). They mention softporn very briefly in the (text) introduction, but the rest seems to be pretty much infocomm based (both pre-infocomm and during its reign).

I enjoyed all that I learned from it, but I admit I wished they talked about the early Sierra as well. But being graphic-- I suppose that will have to wait for another documentary...

..dane

"Second person thinker" is an awesome way to put it!

Best text adventure game I ever played is free and found right here called Final Soul.

Some crazy ass dude named Tawmis wrote it when he first moved back to California and was living with his friends at the time...

AndreaDraco wrote:"Second person thinker" is an awesome way to put it!

I agree!

Tawmis wrote:Best text adventure game I ever played is free and found right here called Final Soul.

Some crazy ass dude named Tawmis wrote it when he first moved back to California and was living with his friends at the time...

hahaha.. no I was not aware of that one. Even in spite of its massive success, it eluded even my eyes.


Have any of you ever heard of the Interactive Fiction Competition (IFComp)? Turns out that the guy who has run it for the last 10 years, and who turns out to be in Get Lamp in several places, is a buddy of ours. It's his disc that I borrowed..

Looks pretty cool..

oh if there was only more time in a day...

..dane

audiodane wrote:

Tawmis wrote: Best text adventure game I ever played is free and found right here called Final Soul.
Some crazy ass dude named Tawmis wrote it when he first moved back to California and was living with his friends at the time...

hahaha.. no I was not aware of that one. Even in spite of its massive success, it eluded even my eyes.

audiodane wrote:
Have any of you ever heard of the Interactive Fiction Competition (IFComp)? Turns out that the guy who has run it for the last 10 years, and who turns out to be in Get Lamp in several places, is a buddy of ours. It's his disc that I borrowed..

Looks pretty cool..

oh if there was only more time in a day...

..dane

That is cool. Like you... wish I had the time... and the brains... to do it.

I was bored and downloaded the Final Soul game on my laptop at work... which is 64Bit Win7... and totally forgot it won't run on it.

For the Got Lamp stuff - do they work on Windows 7 64B?

Tawmis wrote:

I was bored and downloaded the Final Soul game on my laptop at work... which is 64Bit Win7... and totally forgot it won't run on it.

For the Got Lamp stuff - do they work on Windows 7 64B?

You mean for the IF Competition? Probably-- check out their site. I looked briefly earlier.. Each year it looks like they go ahead and specify the interpreter to use (to level the playing field I can only assume), and most likely the interpreter is designed to run on multiple platforms..

cheers,
..dane

No surprises if they do not talk about Sierra when the focus os text adventures/IF. I believe Soft p0rn is about the only text adventure that Sierra published and they didn't even write it, just ported it. Don't forget that it was the old game Adventure or Colossal Cave that inspired Roberta Williams to create Mystery House, the first graphical adventure and birth of Sierra. Graphical adventures are Sierra's legacy from the very start, not text adventures/IF.

Can't wait to get my hands on this documentary. Sounds awesome. I'm actually in the process of porting text adventures (Infocom's specifically - however any z-machine file should work I hope) to SCI, all programatically. My goal is creating a tool that would (re)create all the game logic - the only thing remaining would be to create the graphics portion of the game. Ultimately, I hope it would be a tool that anyone could pick up, decompile an existing text game, and out pops a template game just waiting for the artistic touch. Maybe if I'm lucky it might make programming SCI games a little more approachable.

I'm starting with Zork - it's been a blast so far...

Welcome to SHP, Gumby. Good to see you here.

So, I got 'Get Lamp' for X-mas. Started it tonight, and I love it. I've gotten through the first disc and can't wait to get to the 2nd. The philosophy throughout is *so* inline with my own regarding the genre.

I cannot recommend this enough for those who are into 'text adventures/interactive fiction'.

Hmm... *WARNING WARNING - Grampa Rath rave coming up*

I never got to play Zork. I played Colossal Cave for a bit, back in the day - I think it might have been about 1980 or so when I played it and I was so hooked, I immediately started thinking about creating my own text-based adventures, using BASIC for Commodore 64 (which was cutting-edge in its day).

So I tied an onion to my belt, which was the style at the time...






(BTW - yeah, yeah, I know I'm a dinosaur for remembering how cool the Commodore 64 was, back in the day. So sue me).

I remember the Commodore 64. I never had one (my Dad got us an Apple IIc before moving to a 286), but my brother and I wanted a C64 or an Amiga, because the best games were on them at the time.

The first console I ever played on was an Atari 2600. I was really young and can recall mispronouncing "Grand Prix" (an Atari 2600 game) as "Grand Pricks." Obviously, that'd be a different game entirely.

I think Maia had an Intellivision, but I don't know for sure.

As for Get Lamp itself... I was interested, but the price seems a little steep at $45.