Category Archives: Interactive Fiction

Badly Informed

Posted on December 9, 2020 by midiguru

Rather to my surprise, I was awarded a bit of non-trivial prize money for placing well in this year’s IF Comp. This is the Interactive Fiction Competition; it’s for text-based games of one sort and another. There were a hundred … Continue reading →

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Desktop Publishing Does a Reboot

Posted on November 4, 2020 by midiguru

Long-time readers of this space (both of you) will be aware of my ongoing fascination with interactive fiction. This is partly because hobbyist-level computer programming is fun, partly because designing an interactive fictional world is fun, and partly because, back … Continue reading →

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Never the Twine Shall Mete

Posted on April 16, 2020 by midiguru

This post is about 2D vs. 3D world modeling, but I’ll start with a preamble for those who arrived after the newsreel. Preamble. I’m a writer. I do text; I don’t do graphics. If I feel like creating an interactive … Continue reading →

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Informed or Reformed?

Posted on April 14, 2020 by midiguru

Pardon me; I’m going to kvetch. This is sort of about computer programming, but it’s also about writing stories, so I’ll try to provide a few relevant bits of technical information along the way. What with being stuck at home … Continue reading →

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Mayhap the Twine Shall Meet

Posted on May 27, 2019 by midiguru

This morning I tested a few features of the Frotz text adventure delivery system for iPad. I was curious whether an author can make unreleased beta versions of new games available to Frotz users for testing. Answer: Yes. I was … Continue reading →

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New Maps of Hell

Posted on May 26, 2019 by midiguru

Once upon a time, I wrote and released several text adventure games. There’s a small but enthusiastic underground cult of people who write and play these games. Sooner or later it will die out, but for now it’s still a … Continue reading →

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it something noun

Posted on January 20, 2018 by midiguru

Maybe because I’m in need of an intellectually stimulating diversion, or maybe just because a guy emailed me and said he has enjoyed the text adventure games I’ve written in the past, I thought I’d get out my half-finished magnum … Continue reading →

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Way Too Twisty

Posted on October 16, 2015 by midiguru

Q: What do a remote-controlled spider, an Ikea stepladder, a cigar-store wooden Indian, a hyperactive mummy, and a big bag of Purina Pterodactyl Chow have in common? A: They’re all featured in my next text adventure game, “The Only Possible … Continue reading →

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The Sorcerer’s Apprentice

Posted on April 20, 2015 by midiguru

Six years ago I wrote an unauthorized book-length manual called The Inform 7 Handbook. There were (and still are) some things I liked about Inform 7, an authoring system for text adventures, but I didn’t feel its built-in suite of … Continue reading →

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Extensions & Contractions

Posted on February 20, 2015 by midiguru

This week I’ve been working on updating my Inform 7 Handbook. It’s rather discouraging process. Central to my discouragement is the chaotic state of the Inform extensions arsenal. In chapter 3 of my Handbook (which is a full-length book that … Continue reading →

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