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Inform: A Language for Interactive Fiction

inform7.com

11–20 of 51 posts

Re: Inform: A Language for Interactive Fiction

#11
post #3

I've been playing with this for a while and, while I don't have any games released, I continue to be in love with this genre. I'm one of those people that has a real mental picture of what I read (frequently better than what movies portray). There's a huge community of IF fans and producers which really runs more out of love than profit. There's also an archive where you can download a lot of games (or even play them…

> I'm one of those people that has a real mental picture of what I read

It's always interesting to me when I hear people say this, because I can't understand it at all. If you ask me to close my eyes and visualize a car, I don't actually see anything. I can recall what a car or a specific car looks like, but I don't actually "see" it in any sense. Same with reading - I don't (can't) actually visualize the characters, settings, etc. I'm always momentarily confused when someone complains about a film/TV adaptation with "such and such actor is really good, but that character is supposed to have GREEN eyes!". To me it's an incidental fact, whereas to some people it's central to their conception of the character (as if a real-life person had suddenly changed eye color for no apparent reason).

I've always wondered whether my condition is the norm, or if most people are capable of visual recall.

Re: Inform: A Language for Interactive Fiction

#13
Has anyone used something like this for non-fictional contexts? I'm really enthusiastic about the future of interactive journalism, particularly in terms of tailoring journalist narratives to each reader.

For example, I think coverage around the announcement of a new tax plan should adjust to the given user (ex. "Under Clinton's plan, your taxes will increase by 5%, to $14,000 annually."). Unfortunately, there just don't seem to be many good tools for allowing non-programmers to encode manipulable facts into their narratives.

Re: Inform: A Language for Interactive Fiction

#14
post #11
post #3

I've been playing with this for a while and, while I don't have any games released, I continue to be in love with this genre. I'm one of those people that has a real mental picture of what I read (frequently better than what movies portray). There's a huge community of IF fans and producers which really runs more out of love than profit. There's also an archive where you can download a lot of games (or even play them…

> I'm one of those people that has a real mental picture of what I read It's always interesting to me when I hear people say this, because I can't understand it at all. If you ask me to close my eyes and visualize a car, I don't actually see anything. I can recall what a car or a specific car looks like, but I don't actually "see" it in any sense. Same with reading - I don't (can't) actually visualize the characters,…

You're not at all alone, many people describe the same experience.

Re: Inform: A Language for Interactive Fiction

#15
post #11
post #3

I've been playing with this for a while and, while I don't have any games released, I continue to be in love with this genre. I'm one of those people that has a real mental picture of what I read (frequently better than what movies portray). There's a huge community of IF fans and producers which really runs more out of love than profit. There's also an archive where you can download a lot of games (or even play them…

> I'm one of those people that has a real mental picture of what I read It's always interesting to me when I hear people say this, because I can't understand it at all. If you ask me to close my eyes and visualize a car, I don't actually see anything. I can recall what a car or a specific car looks like, but I don't actually "see" it in any sense. Same with reading - I don't (can't) actually visualize the characters,…

You'll probably get a chuckle out of the first five-or-so paragraphs of:

http://lesswrong.com/lw/dr/generalizing_from_one_example/

The referenced paper can be found here: http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Galton/imagery.htm

Re: Inform: A Language for Interactive Fiction

#16
post #4
post #3

I've been playing with this for a while and, while I don't have any games released, I continue to be in love with this genre. I'm one of those people that has a real mental picture of what I read (frequently better than what movies portray). There's a huge community of IF fans and producers which really runs more out of love than profit. There's also an archive where you can download a lot of games (or even play them…

To me, the language is interesting because it could be used for other things...or to put it a different way interactive fiction seems a useful design abstraction for other real world tasks. What would it mean to wire inform up to arbitrary hardware as a primary user interface?

Infocom themselves tried such a thing many years ago - IIRC it was a db interface language called Cornerstone. Somewhat obviously, not a great success.

Re: Inform: A Language for Interactive Fiction

#17
post #11
post #3

I've been playing with this for a while and, while I don't have any games released, I continue to be in love with this genre. I'm one of those people that has a real mental picture of what I read (frequently better than what movies portray). There's a huge community of IF fans and producers which really runs more out of love than profit. There's also an archive where you can download a lot of games (or even play them…

> I'm one of those people that has a real mental picture of what I read It's always interesting to me when I hear people say this, because I can't understand it at all. If you ask me to close my eyes and visualize a car, I don't actually see anything. I can recall what a car or a specific car looks like, but I don't actually "see" it in any sense. Same with reading - I don't (can't) actually visualize the characters,…

Yeah ... I'm not sure whether it's a good trait or not! When I was young, I could entirely live in my mind if I was bored (or being bullied) and if I hadn't got a job that required me to "play the extrovert", I'd probably be writing fiction. At a minimum I'd be the introverted engineer that looked at his own shoes when I talked to you.

I still have a fondness for books that I might not otherwise have. Some movies seem to be plucked right out of my mental images (The Hobbit and LoTR movies) but others are really disappointing (Ender's Game was way better as visualized in my head).

Re: Inform: A Language for Interactive Fiction

#18
if you want to read a nice example of inform7 code, emily short's "computers" is wonderfully readable. also as a self-contained piece of code implementing a single object, it's easier to grasp than a full game would be.

http://inform7.com/extensions/Emily%20Short/Computers/index....

Re: Inform: A Language for Interactive Fiction

#19
If this piques your interest and you're interested in programming history, you will very likely enjoy reading about the Zork Implementation Language and the Z-machine, on which Inform is based: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z-machine And the original spec for game authors from Infocom is quite entertaining: http://xlisp.org/zil.pdf

Good stuff. More generally, if you want a short (http://pr-if.org/play/violet/

Re: Inform: A Language for Interactive Fiction

#20
post #15
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm one of those people that has a real mental picture of what I read It's always interesting to me when I hear people say this, because I can't understand it at all. If you ask me to close my eyes and visualize a car, I don't actually see anything. I can recall what a car or a specific car looks like, but I don't actually "see" it in any sense. Same with reading - I don't (can't) actually visualize the characters,…

You'll probably get a chuckle out of the first five-or-so paragraphs of: http://lesswrong.com/lw/dr/generalizing_from_one_example/ The referenced paper can be found here: http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Galton/imagery.htm

That is fascinating, thanks.
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