5 ms·

I've been playing with this for a while and, while I don't have any games released, I continue to be in love with this genre. I'm one of those people that has

by smoyer 12y ago

I've been playing with this for a while and, while I don't have any games released, I continue to be in love with this genre. I'm one of those people that has a real mental picture of what I read (frequently better than what movies portray). There's a huge community of IF fans and producers which really runs more out of love than profit. There's also an archive where you can download a lot of games (or even play them on-line). Check out http://www.ifarchive.org/ http://www.ifarchive.org/.

brudgers 12y ago
To me, the language is interesting because it could be used for other things...or to put it a different way interactive fiction seems a useful design abstraction for other real world tasks. What would it mean to wire inform up to arbitrary hardware as a primary user interface?
- Jedd 12y ago
  Infocom themselves tried such a thing many years ago - IIRC it was a db interface language called Cornerstone. Somewhat obviously, not a great success.
  - Solarsail 12y ago
    Wouldn't that have been with a different language? Inform 7 is a vastly different language from Inform 1-6 (which were relatively Algol-like), and only came out in 2006.
  - pdw 12y ago
    Cornerstone was a menu-driven database application, it wasn't programmable. It would probably have sold better if it was.
defen 12y ago
> I'm one of those people that has a real mental picture of what I read It's always interesting to me when I hear people say this, because I can't understand it at all. If you ask me to close my eyes and visualize a car, I don't actually see anything. I can recall what a car or a specific car looks like, but I don't actually "see" it in any sense. Same with reading - I don't (can't) actually visualize the characters, settings, etc. I'm always momentarily confused when someone complains about a film/TV adaptation with "such and such actor is really good, but that character is supposed to have GREEN eyes!". To me it's an incidental fact, whereas to some people it's central to their conception of the character (as if a real-life person had suddenly changed eye color for no apparent reason). I've always wondered whether my condition is the norm, or if most people are capable of visual recall.
- angrow 12y ago
  You're not at all alone, many people describe the same experience.
- gwillen 12y ago
  You'll probably get a chuckle out of the first five-or-so paragraphs of: http://lesswrong.com/lw/dr/generalizing_from_one_example/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/dr/generalizing_from_one_example/ The referenced paper can be found here: http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Galton/imagery.htm http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Galton/imagery.htm
  - defen 12y ago
    That is fascinating, thanks.
  - Al-Khwarizmi 12y ago
    Wow, the Galton paper is amazing, thank you. To be honest I'm like the scientists that he questioned first... until I read this today, I always thought that the whole "mental imagery" concept was mainly a figure of speech, as when people say they feel butterflies in their stomach, and things like that. I can picture my breakfast table, but it's more of a conceptual sketch than an actual image. I can only focus my thoughts on one thing at a time, and e.g. I know what the colors are but I'm not really "seeing" them in my mind - the fact that people can report a "brightness" value in relation to reality makes me think that my mind really works different from that of those people, for me the brightness question doesn't even make sense. Now I feel handicapped, although I suppose that maybe if I could conjure up these mental images, I wouldn't be so good at symbolic processing. I guess this is why I have always preferred text to diagrams and such... By the way, what I can do is hear music in my mind - and yes, this comes with pitch, volume, timbre, polyphony and everything. In fact if I'm at a place with a constant background noise - as in a plane, or near an air conditioning machine - I sometimes think I'm actually hearing it in reality (although I have learned that I'm not). I wonder if other people also experience this.
    - kaoD 12y ago
zarfeblong 12y ago
The searchable (and generally nicer) view of the Archive: http://ifdb.tads.org/ http://ifdb.tads.org/

by smoyer 12y ago

brudgers 12y ago

To me, the language is interesting because it could be used for other things...or to put it a different way interactive fiction seems a useful design abstraction for other real world tasks. What would it mean to wire inform up to arbitrary hardware as a primary user interface?

Jedd 12y ago
Infocom themselves tried such a thing many years ago - IIRC it was a db interface language called Cornerstone. Somewhat obviously, not a great success.
- Solarsail 12y ago
  Wouldn't that have been with a different language? Inform 7 is a vastly different language from Inform 1-6 (which were relatively Algol-like), and only came out in 2006.
- pdw 12y ago
  Cornerstone was a menu-driven database application, it wasn't programmable. It would probably have sold better if it was.

defen 12y ago

> I'm one of those people that has a real mental picture of what I read It's always interesting to me when I hear people say this, because I can't understand it at all. If you ask me to close my eyes and visualize a car, I don't actually see anything. I can recall what a car or a specific car looks like, but I don't actually "see" it in any sense. Same with reading - I don't (can't) actually visualize the characters, settings, etc. I'm always momentarily confused when someone complains about a film/TV adaptation with "such and such actor is really good, but that character is supposed to have GREEN eyes!". To me it's an incidental fact, whereas to some people it's central to their conception of the character (as if a real-life person had suddenly changed eye color for no apparent reason). I've always wondered whether my condition is the norm, or if most people are capable of visual recall.

angrow 12y ago
You're not at all alone, many people describe the same experience.
gwillen 12y ago
You'll probably get a chuckle out of the first five-or-so paragraphs of: http://lesswrong.com/lw/dr/generalizing_from_one_example/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/dr/generalizing_from_one_example/ The referenced paper can be found here: http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Galton/imagery.htm http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Galton/imagery.htm
- defen 12y ago
  That is fascinating, thanks.
- Al-Khwarizmi 12y ago
  Wow, the Galton paper is amazing, thank you. To be honest I'm like the scientists that he questioned first... until I read this today, I always thought that the whole "mental imagery" concept was mainly a figure of speech, as when people say they feel butterflies in their stomach, and things like that. I can picture my breakfast table, but it's more of a conceptual sketch than an actual image. I can only focus my thoughts on one thing at a time, and e.g. I know what the colors are but I'm not really "seeing" them in my mind - the fact that people can report a "brightness" value in relation to reality makes me think that my mind really works different from that of those people, for me the brightness question doesn't even make sense. Now I feel handicapped, although I suppose that maybe if I could conjure up these mental images, I wouldn't be so good at symbolic processing. I guess this is why I have always preferred text to diagrams and such... By the way, what I can do is hear music in my mind - and yes, this comes with pitch, volume, timbre, polyphony and everything. In fact if I'm at a place with a constant background noise - as in a plane, or near an air conditioning machine - I sometimes think I'm actually hearing it in reality (although I have learned that I'm not). I wonder if other people also experience this.
  - kaoD 12y ago

zarfeblong 12y ago

The searchable (and generally nicer) view of the Archive: http://ifdb.tads.org/ http://ifdb.tads.org/