IF-resources
A commented guide to good interactive fiction resources in the web

What is 'Interactive Fiction' ?
"Interactive Fiction" (= "IF") is the modern term for what was formerly known as "text-adventures". The concept is simple: the computer prints out a text on the screen that describes a situation and gives you a command prompt. Then you type in a simple imperative sentence (the command), i.e. TAKE SWORD or EAT SANDWICH or ATTACK ALIEN WITH THE LASER-GUN. Then the computer calculates the result of that command, prints it on the screen and gives you a new command prompt. Then you react by typing in another command, and so forth. In this way a "dialogue" between you and the computer unfolds, and step-by-step this dialogue creates a "story" (this is why it's called "Interactive Fiction").

Beginner's Guides:

http://bang.dhs.org/faq/
The FAQ of the rec.games.int-fiction newsgroup for new IF-players

http://brasslantern.org/players/howto/playta1.html
How to Play a Text Adventure (with an introduction, a download-guide and a playing-guide)

http://www.ifarchive.org/if-archive/starters/Beginner.txt
A plain-ascii-text beginners guide

http://www.octagate.com/Fredrik/IFGuide/
A Beginner's Guide to Playing Interactive Fiction (What is IF? How do I play? How do I download and run games? etc. With introduction, instructions and how-tos)

http://adamcadre.ac/content/if.txt
Another beginners guide by Adam Cadre

http://www.geocities.com/athens/forum/6116/ifstart.html
An "Interactive Fiction Starter's Kit": all you need in one: download and start !

OK, I wanna play an 'Interactive Fiction'-game:

If you want to play IF-games, you need two tings:

• a so called "story-file" (which is platform independend an runs on all machines and all operating systems), and
• an appropriate interpreter for your specific machine and operating system to interpret the story-file. The "story-files" come in different formats, but I estimate that 95% of all games are written in the ZCODE- or the TADS-format, so you will need a ZCODE-interpreter and a TADS-interpreter.

1. TADS games and interpreters

2. ZCODE games and interpreters

TIP: There are hundreds of games, but which are good? Well, look here: http://baf.wurb.com/if/ for reviews and here http://www.igs.net/~tril/if/best/ for the "top 50" (you will miss classics like "zork" here).

General

http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs.cmu.edu/user/wsr/Web/IF/homepage.html
The IF-page: many good links to the most important sites

ftp://ftp.ifarchive.org/if-archive
THE great if-archive in the net (this is THE SOURCE): games, interpreters, compilers, articles, hints & walkthroughs....

http://www.ifarchive.org/
A web-based-interface (HTML) to the most important and "official" ftp-if-archive

http://www.corknut.org/ifFinder/
An interactive fiction search engine

http://directory.google.com/Top/Games/Video_Games/Adventure/
The Google-Directory links to many IF-related websites

http://www.wurb.com/if/
A commented guide to the IF-archive (with reviews and game-lists, sorted by title, author, awards and companies)

http://brasslantern.org/
The Brass Lantern Adventure Games Information (news, reviews, links, articles and more)

http://www.uwec.edu/jerzdg/orr/articles/IF/
Many good articles about IF (playing, authoring, theory)

http://www.if-legends.org/
Resources and infos round about the classics

http://www.if-legends.org/~pdd/
Good links and infos

http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&safe=off&group=rec.games.int-fiction
The "official" IF-newsgroup about playing IF (news:rec.games.int-fiction)

Magazines

http://www.xyzzynews.com/
The famous Xyzzy-Magazine (news, reviews, articles...) in HTML, ASCII and PDF

http://www.sparkynet.com/spag/
The SPAG-Magazine (mostly reviews)

http://www.adventurecollective.com
A computer game magazine on adventure series (with reviews, articles, interviews etc.)

Newsgroups:

http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&safe=off&group=rec.games.int-fiction
The "official" IF-newsgroup about playing IF (news:rec.games.int-fiction)

http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&safe=off&group=rec.arts.int-fiction
The "official" newsgroup for IF-authors (news:rec.arts.int-fiction)

Games

http://www.ifarchive.org/indexes/if-archiveXgames.html
All the games (story-files) available at the public if-archive

http://www.ifarchive.org/indexes/if-archiveXgamesXtads.html
TADS-games

http://www.ifarchive.org/indexes/if-archiveXgamesXzcode.html
Z-code (Inform) games

http://ifcomp.org/
Homepage of the annual Interactive Fiction competition

Reviews

http://www.igs.net/~tril/if/best/index.html
The Best of Interactive Fiction (reviews of and links to the 100 best IF-games)

http://baf.wurb.com/if/
Games sorted by category (i.e. by awards)

http://www.sparkynet.com/spag/
The SPAG-Magazine (mostly reviews)

Competitions

http://www.ifcomp.org/
Homepage of the annualy IF-competition for short-text-adventures

http://www.xyzzynews.com/
Hosts the annual Xyzzy-awards-competition

http://members.aol.com/iffyart/
The IF Art Show (for IF without plot and puzzles)

http://emshort.home.mindspring.com/smoochie.htm
SmoochieComp (competition for romantic IF; the "smoochies" are here: http://www.plover.net/~emily/smoochie)

Authoring (general)
There are many (round about 20) authoring systems for interactive fiction (text adventures). "TADS" and "Inform" are generally acknowledged as the best. Which is better? I don't know. TADS is more "modern" (although Inform is also regularly updated), that means it is purely object-orientated and can handle HTML and graphics. Inform is more classical, but also object orientated and very powerfull. The key is: choose one (TADS or Inform), and stick to it. Both systems are very good and are used by many people. I personally choosed Inform because it produces Infocom-Z-code (a cool and classical format which can run on almost every computer system in the world), and I like the taste of the system and the style of its creators and users.

http://www.plover.net/~textfire/raiffaq/FAQ.htm
[rec.arts.int-fiction] Interactive Fiction Authorship FAQ

http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&safe=off&group=rec.arts.int-fiction
The "official" newsgroup for IF-authors (news:rec.arts.int-fiction)

http://www.ifarchive.org/if-archive/programming/general-discussion/authoring-systems.FAQ
Authoring-systems FAQ

http://www.ifarchive.org/if-archive/programming/general-discussion/whichsys.zip
the "Which Authoring System Is Better" FAQ, revision 0.1, 20feb96

http://www.duke.edu/~srg3/IFAuthorship.html
Interactive Fiction Authorship Resource (many links and infos for IF-authors)

http://www.ifarchive.org/if-archive/info/Craft.Of.Adventure.txt
http://www.ifarchive.org/if-archive/info/Craft.Of.Adventure.pdf
The Craft of Adventure: a very good guide for IF-authors (concerning story-telling, not programming)

TADS

http://www.tads.org/
Homepage of the TADS authoring system

INFORM

General information and resources:

http://www.inform-fiction.org/
Homepage of the Inform-IF-authoring-system: compiler, interpreter, manuals, z-machine-document etc.

http://www.firthworks.com/roger/informary/index.html
A semi-official homepage with news, articles and links round about Inform

http://members.aol.com/doepage/doefaq.htm
Doe's Inform Primer, for new authors

http://www.onyxring.com/InformGuide.aspx
A website for Inform-programmers

Downloads:

Interactive Fiction ("text adventures") is written using authoring systems. "Inform" is a popular one. The Inform-Compiler compiles programs written in a C++ style language called "Inform" into Z-machine-code. The Z-code is executable code for a virtual processor called "Z-machine". No real physical Z-machine was ever build, but many interpreters for Z-code are available for almost every computer system in the world (DOS, Windows, Apple Macintosh, Unix/Linux, IBM, Amiga, Acorn, PDA/Palmtops/PocketPC, even C64 and Atari 800XL).

If you want to play games, you need a so called "story-file" (the compiled z-code, that is "the game") and an appropriate interpreter for your system. Games are here: ftp://ftp.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/zcode and interpreters are here: ftp://ftp.ifarchive.org/if-archive/infocom/interpreters (a good interpreter for Windows is Frotz).

If you want to write games by yourself, you need a compiler (and - of course - an interpreter).Here is all you need to create story-files ("games") for the Z-machine:

ftp://ftp.ifarchive.org/if-archive/infocom/compilers/inform6/executables/inform621_win32.zip
The Inform-Compiler for Windows 95/98/ME/NT. Unzip into any directory - thats all! The compiler itself is a MS-Dos-command-line-application, so use the console to launch it. Current path should be the compiler-directory, argument should be the file you want to compile (extension *.inf). But you need the library-files too; they are here:

ftp://ftp.ifarchive.org/if-archive/infocom/compilers/inform6/library/inform_library610.zip
The library-files. Just unzip into the same directory as the compiler, thats all! (The library-files have no extensions in this package; give them the extension ".h", otherwise the system will not work).

ftp://ftp.ifarchive.org/if-archive/infocom/compilers/inform6/manuals/old/designers_manual.pdf
The compiler-manual (267 pages!) as AdobeAcrobat-File (.pdf)

ftp://ftp.ifarchive.org/if-archive/infocom/compilers/inform6/manuals/old/designers_manual_hlp.zip
The compiler-manual, translated into a windows-help-file (very useful; download it!)

ftp://ftp.ifarchive.org/if-archive/programming/general-discussion/Craft.Of.Adventure.pdf
A how-to-write-a-good-adventure (no technical or programming hints, but hints for making a good story)

ftp://ftp.ifarchive.org/if-archive/infocom/interpreters/frotz/WinFrotzR53.zip
A good interpreter for Z-format-story-files (for Windows 95/98/NT); can handle z5- and z8-files. You need it for testing your compiled games.

ftp://ftp.ifarchive.org/if-archive/infocom/interpreters/frotz/DosFrotz232Std10.zip
The same interpreter for MS-DOS console (nix Windowsmüsli und so!)

ftp://ftp.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/zcode/
Several Z-format-story-files ("text-adventures"). For the beginning: "ruins" is simple to start; "curses" is one of the 5-10 best IF-games available.

http://jzip.sourceforge.net/
JZip: a MS-DOS console interpreter for Z-format-story-files (I prefer Frotz, but JZip includes the "compiler" jzexe, that "compiles" z5 and z8 files into stand-alone MS-DOS .exe-files).

http://www.eblong.com/zarf/glulx/
The new glk-interface and the new glulx-machine-standard for Inform - a glimpse of the future of IF. It is based on the Glk standard (about Glk see here: http://www.eblong.com/zarf/glk/index.html). In short: normally the Inform-compiler produces z-code, but the glulxInform-compiler produces glulx-code that is interpreted by a special glulx-interpreter (this interpreter complies with the new Glk-IF-interface-standard). You can use your old inform-sourcecode (no or - very seldom - very little changes are necessary). Glulx is better than z-code because it is 32 bit, so can create HUGE games...

Other & misc:

http://www.igs.net/~tril/if/humor/textfire/index.html
The famous "TextFire-Hoax"

http://www.igs.net/~tril/if/humor/index.html
A list of and links to IF-related humor

http://www.iflibrary.org/
The IF-library (for REAL, printed books about IF)

http://www.8ung.at/magneticscrolls/
The Magnetic Scrolls Chronicles

http://www.if-legends.org/
The history of IF

http://www.retrosite.de/precap/precap.html
Preserving Classic Adventures Project (PreCAP) tries to preserve classic adventure games, for all computer systems from the early home computers like the TRS-80 Model I to the 16-bit ones

http://members.aol.com/LShaw3457/Main.html
A sparkling, colorful page with solutions, some resources and links

Compiled & (c) 2001 Peer Schaefer. Thanks to Graham Nelson for INFORM! Last update: 29.05.2001