Category Archives: interactive fiction

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:

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 shop next [More...] Read the rest

Also posted in adventure games, text in games | 1 Comment

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.

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 see the film on the big [More...] Read the rest

Also posted in adventure games, indie games, text in games | Leave a comment

End of March Vespers Update (or, How To Drop A Girl)

By Rubes | Published: March 31, 2010

March comes, March goes. Lion, lamb, all the usual stuff.

March is always a busy month, what with GDC and sundry work-related conferences and travels. And this year, of course, there was PAX East. Man, how I wanted to be there for that. It was, by still rare accounts, an amazing show of force by the IF community, and from what I can tell a great time was had by all. It sounds like there was a groundswell of new or renewed interest in IF, which can only be a Good Thing. And, of course, GET LAMP. I can’t help but feel like I missed a significant event in IF and the opportunity to meet some great folks, but at the same time I [More...] Read the rest

Also posted in 3D/if, Vespers | 5 Comments

iPad Games They’d Love To See

By Rubes | Published: March 26, 2010

Spotted on CrunchGear.com:

From the web site:

“Planetfall – One of the original Infocom classics. Listen: the iPad has a usable keyboard and can support external keyboards. Why not slap together an Infocom pack for $2 and sell some imagination to these whippersnappers. Who’s with me?”

Not bad, at least it’s good to see some people interested in seeing classic IF on the new device. Of course, it would have made sense to mention the fact that IF already exists on the iPhone platform (see iPhone Frotz) with an inexhaustable supply of excellent pieces, but I’m okay with that.

Be the first to like.

(Unlike)

Enjoyed this article? Subscribe to The Monk’s Brew RSS feed.

[More...] Read the rest

Posted in interactive fiction | 5 Comments

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 text in games, Vespers | 1 Comment