Well, I’m back in Waterloo. I imagine no one missed me, but all the same it’s time to start the GDCIE back up again. We’re going to try this on a new date, because there were some of you for whom Thursday was no good. If the new day of the week is also no good for you, please (please, please) yell at us, so that we are aware. The next GDCIE will be Monday July 4, 2011 at 6:00pm in MC2017MC4045. Hopefully Monday is good for most everyone; we will be discussing:

Pathos, by Bit Battalion
http://bitbattalion.com/games/pathos/

We haven’t been discussing nearly enough non-fun artsy games this term, so I’m looking to this to remedy that. It takes about 10 minutes to play through.

Remember that our Half-Life 2 discussing will be the GDCIE after this. If we stay with Monday, then it will be on July 11 (instead of the 7th). If you haven’t yet, find some time to give it a play (or replay).

Nothing left to say,
Jonathan Semple

ps. Seriously. Yell at one of us (probably me), in person or in the comments or whatever, if you still do not like the day of the GDCIE.

Jonathan is still in beautiful Nova Scotia, comforted by the warm taste of his own blood (he got his wisdom teeth out, he isn’t some sort of suicidal vampire or anything… though someone should make a game about that).

This week, we’ll be discussing Brook’s suggestion, the Extra Credits video, Learning from Other M. Watch it, think on it, then join us for some discussion, on Friday June 24th at 6:00pm in MC 2017. Yes, it’s on Friday again. Why? ‘Cause last week we found out that one of our members couldn’t come to Thursday meetings, but loved discussing on Fridays.

On that note: This semester we have fewer members — it’s summer, it makes sense. So, if that means someone has conflicts with an event, COMMENT ON THE POST! Let us know! With the number of members we have this term, I’m sure we can come up with a time and day that suits everyone!

Anyway, see y’all Friday!

IF Jam Round-Up

Greetings! Stephen here, from somewhere deep in the uncharted bowels of the MC building. This may very well be my first post here, but I assure I have been lurking for a goodly long while.

With last weekend Interactive Fiction Jam having come and gone, I can very happily say that all members in attendance had an absolute BLAST and no fewer than three solid games saw serious headway made. None of us had ever used Inform 7 before, and were absolutely blown away by the expressiveness and power of the language and platform. I heartily recommend spending a bit of time experimenting with it if you have not already. The three authors of these in-progress works are still feeling pretty shy about their games, and so none of them have elected to put them up for public consumption just yet. I can, however, share a tiny snippet from my own interactive fiction:

*** YOU HAVE DIED ***

There. Pretty fantastic isn’t it? I kid you not, it is as easy as writing “End the game in death” whenever that hapless player wanders into a pit of hungry vipers or otherwise.

Game-Related Discussion (GRD)

With the usual weekly GDCIE (Game Discussions Concerning Interactive Entertainment) hogging most of the club’s acronyms, it seemed high-time for myself and Sherban to saddle-up and run an acronym-laden event of our own: the fabled Game Related Discussion (GRD).

The purpose of this event is simple: for the next two weeks, let’s all get together, choose a prevalent issue or topic in today’s game industry, and get a good solid discussion rolling.

This week we have chosen a video from Extra Credits (a fantastic site in its own right): “The Myth of the Gun“. If you have five minutes: go, watch it. It’s short, the animations are highly entertaining, and the content is very thought-provoking. Watching it ahead of time is not a prerequisite for attending the event (we’ll play it again anyways), but is highly recommended in order to get some good opinions stewing in that head of yours.

This week’s GRD will occur this Friday June 17th at 6:00pm. We will be assembing for the discussion in MC 2017. Note that this week we will be meeting on Friday, not Thursday.

Thanks for reading folks — see you all soon!

It’s time to get this IF Jam started. If you don’t know what’s going on with this IF Jam thing, then I shall take the lazy route and direct you at my previous post.

At any rate, it’s time to roll out the theme, and it looks like it’s up to me to choose. And so, the theme will be (give me a second here to decide)

Theme: Decay

You can start thinking on ideas now, or even get started writing your interactive fiction.

We have MC2035 booked for the day tomorrow, Saturday June 11, 2011. Anyone participating in the IF Jam can meet up there tomorrow morning. I personally will try to be there around 10am, but it’s up to you when you show up. The IF Jam will officially end sometime around 9pm, so there’s roughly 24 hours to go on this thing.

So, if you’re someone who’s interested in practicing your interactive writing and story telling skills, show up tomorrow, bring your laptop and you can spend the day hanging out and writing interactive fiction.

Nothing left to say,
Jonathan Semple

ps. Sorry if you’re sick of MC. We tried to book a room and AL, but apparently they don’t do that in the spring term.

Woah, (censored; how unprofessional – ed). I almost completely missed the mark on this one. Here’s your rather short notice reminder that the next GDCIE will be today, Thursday June 9, 2011 at 6:00pm in MC2017. We will be discussing

Towlr, by various
http://www.towlr.com/

I assumed everyone remembered the GDCIE anyway.

Nothing left to say,
Jonathan Semple

ps. I will be away for the next two discussions after this, so the GDCIE will temporarily be under new management. For those not satisfied with my game picks, now is your chance to rejoice.

Oh bugger, I’ve procrastinated a bit long on this, haven’t I?

We have an event upcoming. I’ve mentioned it at the last couple GDCIE, but this is the first proper announcement, I suppose.

This coming weekend we will be holding our first Interactive Fiction Jam (IF Jam). The idea behind this jam is similar to that of the paper jam we held last term. Where the paper jam focused more on pure game design, the hope is the the IF jam will allow a greater focus on, simply, story and writing.

I figure we’ll run things like we did with the paper jam. This Friday, that’s Friday June 10, 2011 in the evening, around 9pm or so I’ll announce a theme, via a post here.

The IF jam proper will be Saturday June 11, 2011, after everyone has had some time to have a good think on the theme and come up with some ideas (and maybe even gotten started). We’ll book a room for the day, where everyone will meet up in the morning and hang out and write their IF. We’ll go until the evening, about 24 hours from when I make the theme announcement.

We’re going to go pretty relaxed with the rules here. This is just a chance to hang out, practice writing an interactive story, hopefully get something done, and have some fun.

As far as tools go, Inform 7 seems like a good one to recommend. It’s free and looks fairly simple to learn. It’s designed to be accessible to non-programmers, with code taking the form of  actual English sentences, so anyone who wants to join in and write something should, hopefully, have a chance.

Your IF will typically run in an interpreter, and I’ve linked Gargoyle and Spatterlight before. Stephen also points to Parchment, a tool which allows any z-code based IF (which is what Inform 7 compiles to) to be read in your browser.

Feel free to use other tools if you want, or write your own if you’re a programmer and feeling really hardcore. And if you and some other member(s) want to collaborate with each other on a piece, that’s fine too if you can get things coordinated.

This is what all those IF games we’ve been discussing has been building to. Hopefully you’ve got a bit of inspiration going. If you want to try out something a bit more traditional, in terms of IF, than what we’ve been discussing, here‘s a few that are recommended for getting started.

Nothing left to say,
Jonathan Semple

ps. If anyone has any theme suggestions, then go ahead and leave a comment or send an email to the club. Otherwise I’ll just pick one off the top of my head (I’ll make it a good one though, I promise).

What better way to spend your time not spent on midterms, or whatever you may be doing at this time of year, than with another GDCIE? The next will be Thursday June 9, 2011 at 6:00pm in MC2017. We will be discussing

Towlr, by various
http://www.towlr.com/

Towlr are puzzle games. That’s all I will tell you about them; I would hate to spoil anything. Most of them can be played online and, individually, they shouldn’t take very long (a few minutes maybe, depending on how long it takes you to figure them out). But there’s multiple Towlr. We’ll be discussing Towlr in general, not just the original game. So, if you can, give a bunch (if not all) of them a play.

Also, remember that we’ll be discussing Half-Life 2 on July 7, so if you want in on that remember to try and set aside some time to play (or replay) that (and possibly the episodes too).

Nothing left to say,
Jonathan Semple

The next GDCIE is coming soon. Tomorrow in fact. It will be Thursday June 2, 2011 at 6:00pm in MC2034. Note the room change; this is not the room I said it was going to be in my last post. That means, yes, I lied to you. I am sorry and admit that I am a terrible, terrible person. However, if you bear with my failure to get the room correct, you can join in when we discuss

Photopia, by Adam Cadre
http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=ju778uv5xaswnlpl

Hopefully anyone interested has had a play (or will have a play) and is ready to talk about it.

Nothing left to say,
Jonathan Semple