(no subject)

[prog]

NaNoWriMo managed to escape my attention until now. (Lots of people mentioned it in their blogs, and someone even explained it to me once, but only today did someone link to the website, which is apparently the sole valid way to communicate with me, I guess.) I know that I wouldn't have participated this year even had I known about it in advance, coz of Volity. And I don't know if I want to "waste" my one slowly growing (and growing still) fiction idea in a frantic writing process that is meant to joyfully generate a bookful of drivel as quickly as possible. Hmm... I'll keep my brain open for a secondary story seed to use next year.

It reminds me of IFComp, which I just realized has ended, and congrats to the winners. I didn't participate at all this year... haven't even played any of the games! Blah. Well, I will surely download and play the winning games; I am impressed at how many 10s "Slouching Towards Bedlam" earned, according to those cute little bar graphs.

Comments

[mangosteen]

I fucking hate text adventures. Mostly because I was never any good at them. I'd always get stuck in a situation where I knew what I needed/wanted to do, but the parser wouldn't let me do it. After sitting for 15 minutes typing synonyms into the parser, I thought better of it and gave up.

Repeat this a couple of hundred times, and you get the idea. I've never made sufficient progress on any one that I've attempted.

I fucking hate text adventures.

That being said, it goes on an ever-changing list of things that are waiting for me to get just a little bit wiser or more patient. Chess came off the list about a year ago.

[prog.livejournal.com]

I wonder what/when are the last ones you tried... as with any type of media, some examples are better than others. The best are not only written by actual writers, but have been beta-tested by a wide variety of people, with an eye for overcoming the "guess the verb" problem you describe here. (GtV is now considered a cardinal sin of modern text-based IF, and even old hands have little patience for it, since it mostly shows that a game hasn't been thoroughly playtested.)

The games being published today are without doubt much friendlier than anything Infocom ever published, since the craft, while much diminished in popularity, has become much more accessible for creators, and has spawned Internet-based communities for critique and discussion of the unique sort of writing-theory that IF bring with it.

[poetgeek.livejournal.com]

Why not start writing now? With the goal being to be done on the Nov 30th, at 11:59pm, we're only talking ~4560 words / day. :-)

Consider it a chance to write out some fiction idea - perhaps you go down a path that doesn't work - but then you've explored that idea-space.

Or perhaps not.