4 ms·

Every couple of years I drop in to see if there's a simple way to publish IF games on the web yet. There isn't. It's a shame. No one's going to pay for text-ba

Every couple of years I drop in to see if there's a simple way to publish IF games on the web yet. There isn't. It's a shame. No one's going to pay for text-based IF games and no one wants to install software to play them. The web is the ideal delivery channel for the medium, but no one seems interested in making good publishing tools for it. (To be clear, I’m not saying it isn't possible, just that the tools for doing so are fiddly and ugly.)

andrewnc 8y ago
I've actually been bouncing this idea around for a bit. How many people do you know that are interested in an IF publishing platform?
- 4thaccount 8y ago
  There is actually a few companies doing stuff with IF right now. There is one that gives you their tools and publishes your game on their site and takes a cut of the royalties. I played a preview of one some highschool girl wrote about going to a school of magic and it was a blast.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
pja 8y ago
Twine has been remarkably successful in this space. (http://twinery.org/ http://twinery.org/) Parchment seems to work well for Z machine games: http://iplayif.com/?story=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ifarchive.org%2Fif-archive%2Fgames%2Fzcode%2FBronze.zblorb http://iplayif.com/?story=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ifarchive.org%2Fi...
robryk 8y ago
I wonder why speech-based IF games are essentially nonexistent, given the popularity of podcasts and existence of speech-only computers (e.g. Alexa).
- Marazan 8y ago
  Does AWS give you the option to get just a full token stream for voice? Alexa's parser always seemed vastly primatove to me compared to Inform
- Zanni 8y ago
  There's at least one company doing this. Not sure how successful they are. [0] [0] https://www.earplay.com/ https://www.earplay.com/
- jameswilsterman 8y ago
  I'm the founder of Volley (YC W18). We're working on games like this as well for Alexa, check out https://www.amazon.com/Volley-Inc-Infected/dp/B07JBKRRNP https://www.amazon.com/Volley-Inc-Infected/dp/B07JBKRRNP and https://www.amazon.com/Volley-Inc-Angel-of-DOOM/dp/B07Q35LY8K https://www.amazon.com/Volley-Inc-Angel-of-DOOM/dp/B07Q35LY8...
zem 8y ago
I paid for hadean lands and it was worth every penny
Marazan 8y ago
Compile your inform 7 game and ftp it onto your website?
mintplant 8y ago
Huh? Inform 7, the primary authoring tool for interactive fiction, can compile games to a a static webpage out-of-the-box. It's had this capability for years. Andrew Plotkin, featured in this submission, wrote the Quixe interpreter [0] for this purpose, which is bundled into Inform 7. The Interactive Fiction Database [1] has—again, for years—an instant "Play Online" button on the listing of any supported game, powered by Parchment [2], which is even older than Quixe. You must not have checked very thoroughly. [0] https://eblong.com/zarf/glulx/quixe/ https://eblong.com/zarf/glulx/quixe/ [1] https://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=2xyccw3pe0uovfad https://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=2xyccw3pe0uovfad [2] https://iplayif.com/ https://iplayif.com/
Zanni 8y ago
Most current IF authoring tools allow you to create web-playable versions. The SpringThing Festival of Interactive Fiction [0] is running right now, and of the 20 entries, all but 2 are playable without a download. And Choice of Games has been successfully charging for their choice-based IF games for years (successfully enough that they're considered a professional market for writers by the SFWA).[1] Their games are playable on the web, but they also distribute apps for iOS and Android. [0] https://www.springthing.net/2019/play.html https://www.springthing.net/2019/play.html [1] https://www.choiceofgames.com/ https://www.choiceofgames.com/
smacktoward 8y ago
There are people out there doing interesting stuff with IF on the Web. One example is The Onion, whose spinoff site Clickhole has a whole series of parody "Clickventures" that are essentially little Web-based comedy IF games. You can play them all here: https://clickventures.clickhole.com/ https://clickventures.clickhole.com/ And Wired did a piece a few years back about how the Clickhole team originally developed the idea: https://www.wired.com/2016/03/clickhole-adventure-games/ https://www.wired.com/2016/03/clickhole-adventure-games/
ai_ia 8y ago
I have been meaning to develop a twine based library in Elixir/Javascript for quite sometime, that will enable anyone to create Interactive Fictions and also something called Socratic Monographs. I understand clearly that good and easy to use publishing tool is the way forward. Socratic Monographs are basically longform articles and goes deep into a subject but the way they do it through conversations. It may enable people to engage more with a subject deeply rather than skimming. Happy to see there are people who want better IF tools.

andrewnc 8y ago

I've actually been bouncing this idea around for a bit. How many people do you know that are interested in an IF publishing platform?

4thaccount 8y ago
There is actually a few companies doing stuff with IF right now. There is one that gives you their tools and publishes your game on their site and takes a cut of the royalties. I played a preview of one some highschool girl wrote about going to a school of magic and it was a blast.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

pja 8y ago

Twine has been remarkably successful in this space. (http://twinery.org/ http://twinery.org/) Parchment seems to work well for Z machine games: http://iplayif.com/?story=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ifarchive.org%2Fif-archive%2Fgames%2Fzcode%2FBronze.zblorb http://iplayif.com/?story=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ifarchive.org%2Fi...

robryk 8y ago

I wonder why speech-based IF games are essentially nonexistent, given the popularity of podcasts and existence of speech-only computers (e.g. Alexa).

Marazan 8y ago
Does AWS give you the option to get just a full token stream for voice? Alexa's parser always seemed vastly primatove to me compared to Inform
Zanni 8y ago
There's at least one company doing this. Not sure how successful they are. [0] [0] https://www.earplay.com/ https://www.earplay.com/
jameswilsterman 8y ago
I'm the founder of Volley (YC W18). We're working on games like this as well for Alexa, check out https://www.amazon.com/Volley-Inc-Infected/dp/B07JBKRRNP https://www.amazon.com/Volley-Inc-Infected/dp/B07JBKRRNP and https://www.amazon.com/Volley-Inc-Angel-of-DOOM/dp/B07Q35LY8K https://www.amazon.com/Volley-Inc-Angel-of-DOOM/dp/B07Q35LY8...

zem 8y ago

I paid for hadean lands and it was worth every penny

Marazan 8y ago

Compile your inform 7 game and ftp it onto your website?

mintplant 8y ago

Huh? Inform 7, the primary authoring tool for interactive fiction, can compile games to a a static webpage out-of-the-box. It's had this capability for years. Andrew Plotkin, featured in this submission, wrote the Quixe interpreter [0] for this purpose, which is bundled into Inform 7. The Interactive Fiction Database [1] has—again, for years—an instant "Play Online" button on the listing of any supported game, powered by Parchment [2], which is even older than Quixe. You must not have checked very thoroughly. [0] https://eblong.com/zarf/glulx/quixe/ https://eblong.com/zarf/glulx/quixe/ [1] https://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=2xyccw3pe0uovfad https://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=2xyccw3pe0uovfad [2] https://iplayif.com/ https://iplayif.com/

Zanni 8y ago

Most current IF authoring tools allow you to create web-playable versions. The SpringThing Festival of Interactive Fiction [0] is running right now, and of the 20 entries, all but 2 are playable without a download. And Choice of Games has been successfully charging for their choice-based IF games for years (successfully enough that they're considered a professional market for writers by the SFWA).[1] Their games are playable on the web, but they also distribute apps for iOS and Android. [0] https://www.springthing.net/2019/play.html https://www.springthing.net/2019/play.html [1] https://www.choiceofgames.com/ https://www.choiceofgames.com/

smacktoward 8y ago

There are people out there doing interesting stuff with IF on the Web. One example is The Onion, whose spinoff site Clickhole has a whole series of parody "Clickventures" that are essentially little Web-based comedy IF games. You can play them all here: https://clickventures.clickhole.com/ https://clickventures.clickhole.com/ And Wired did a piece a few years back about how the Clickhole team originally developed the idea: https://www.wired.com/2016/03/clickhole-adventure-games/ https://www.wired.com/2016/03/clickhole-adventure-games/

ai_ia 8y ago

I have been meaning to develop a twine based library in Elixir/Javascript for quite sometime, that will enable anyone to create Interactive Fictions and also something called Socratic Monographs. I understand clearly that good and easy to use publishing tool is the way forward. Socratic Monographs are basically longform articles and goes deep into a subject but the way they do it through conversations. It may enable people to engage more with a subject deeply rather than skimming. Happy to see there are people who want better IF tools.