Category Archives: text in games

A Verb Analysis, Redux

By Rubes | Published: June 10, 2013

A long, long time ago—it looks like over five years ago, actually, which makes me wince—I posted a blog article here about an analysis of verb use in some well-known IF games. These were based not on actual player transcripts, but rather on the published walkthroughs of these games. The walkthroughs weren’t necessarily the quickest solutions to the games—they included commands that were technically unnecessary for solving the game, but which provided a more complete experience of the game for players who followed them. Still, they were by no means game transcripts, so they didn’t truly reflect the typical use of verbs that one might expect from players. The idea was to get a sense of the breadth and depth of verb usage in these [More...] Read the rest

Also posted in 3D/if, game design, interactive fiction, Vespers | Leave a comment

JET LAMP SLC: A few thoughts about the event…

By Rubes | Published: September 14, 2010

…in no particular order:

1. Loved it. The event went off without a hitch. Brewvies was a great place to have it, especially with the beer and food to go along with the big screen. I was a little worried at first, since it was a pretty large theater with 160 seats, not intuitively conducive to an informal screening and discussion. But seeing the film up on the large screen was very cool, and the post-movie discussion actually worked quite well.

2. This:

Impressive lineup

was exceptionally cool to see. Not sure why, but this probably made the night. That, and seeing Jason’s reaction to it.

3. Who knew? Taking photographs of a cinema marquee, no big deal. Taking photos of the lingerie and sex [More...] Read the rest

Also posted in adventure games, interactive fiction | 1 Response

JET LAMP tour stopping in Salt Lake City

By Rubes | Published: September 6, 2010

Well, after taking the summer off from the blog, we’re now officially back in business. And what better way to start back in than with an excellent announcement about Jason Scott’s documentary film on the history of text adventure games, GET LAMP.

The Official GET LAMP SLC flier

Jason is making the rounds during the months of September and October to promote the movie, thanks to a special “all-you-can-jet” ticket through JetBlue airlines. Since JetBlue flies into Salt Lake City, I invited him to stop in for a screening, and he accepted.

The screening will take place at Brewvies Cinema Pub, a cool place in downtown SLC that serves beer and food with movies, so it should make for a great place to [More...] Read the rest

Also posted in adventure games, indie games, interactive fiction | Leave a comment

Long Flights Are Good For Something

By Rubes | Published: March 22, 2010

One thing long flights are good for is addressing old issues that you’ve always meant to fix but never really got around to. So when I found myself on a three-and-a-half hour flight yesterday, I decided it was time to tackle an old parser syntax issue that has been nagging at me for some time.

My goal with the parser has always been to make it as robust as possible, even if much of the functionality isn’t necessarily used in Vespers — I’d hate to have to add functionality after the fact, like for a future game. So the idea was to develop the parser to provide at least the typical performance one might expect from a TADS or Inform game. Most of the early [More...] Read the rest

Also posted in interactive fiction, Vespers | 1 Response

“Get Lamp” Discount Deadline Approaches

By Rubes | Published: December 29, 2009

A gentle reminder for those interested enough in text adventures to be eagerly awaiting the arrival of Jason Scott’s sure-to-be-singular documentary on the matter, GET LAMP: the pre-order discount ends on January 1st.

According to Scott, the documentary will be priced at $40 for a 2-DVD set that will reportedly include additonal “wrap-ins” in the package, although no word yet as to what those are. It’s set to be released in March 2010, around the same time as the PAX East convention, where the movie will be premiered alongside (hopefully) a host of other interactive fiction-related panels and presentations, which is pretty neat.

But if you know you’re going to buy the documentary, you can pre-order it now for 25% off, or [More...] Read the rest

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