Kim Possible, the Interactive Fiction?

[Imipk]

I don't know how many on this site remember the old text-based adventure games (Zork, Colossal Cave, Red Moon, and so on) but there's software out there for writing such games using plain English (ie: no real programming is needed). There's also contests for the best such game and a fairly decent following for the genre.

My thought is that we could work together to develop such an adventure game and Turn the Interactive Fiction fans to the Kim side of the Force. Besides, it might be a fun thing to do.

(Underlying this idea is that the fans who endure the best are the fans who are actively producing material of their own. They're also the fans that tend to be the most influential with the studios.)

[Imipk]

I should add that there are also systems for developing graphical adventures - including multi-user games, but three Kim Possibles in one game might be a bit much!

Here are the URLs to some of the systems I'm looking at:

Inform 7 - a mostly text-based system that can have graphics in it. The games can also be run as web pages.

JACL - does much the same as Inform. Don't think much of their website, though.

WorldForge - 3D MMORG designer for those who think EverQuest and WoW aren't up to the Kim Possibilities.

Thoughts on these, or other suggestions, would be great.

[smithers]

Years ago I played around with Inform, mostly from a programmer point of view. I was able to hack the Java application to function as a Java applet, including the ability to save and restore the run state. Had a small website where I had the original Dungeon/Zork and Adventure games available, too.

Also tried my hand at writing a game, but it's hard work, and working only for myself caused me to lose interest at some point. I see that they've updated things since I last looked, so I just might have to look into it again, in my copious free time.

(May have to see if those pages are still usable, too.)

[Beaglebub]

Back in the dark ages, I remember writing programs like that with BASIC language on an Apple II. There wasn't much else in the line of PC entertainment back then.

[Imipk]

(snip)Also tried my hand at writing a game, but it's hard work, and working only for myself caused me to lose interest at some point. I see that they've updated things since I last looked, so I just might have to look into it again, in my copious free time.(snip)

It is hard work. I used to write adventures using a development kit for the BBC Micro. (Two friends I knew actually wrote games to sell - and made a decent amount of beer money.)

The idea of writing a game together is that it should be a lot easier than one person trying to write a game on their own. It would also mean we could develop a core map of Middleton that is common to any further games written, rather than have everyone re-invent Middleton each time.

To me, the real question is whether to go with a text adventure or plunge into the graphical 3D MMORG world. The latter would obviously have more appeal, but it would also be many orders of magnitude tougher.