See also my resources on interactive fiction (text adventure games), programming in Inform 7, making games in Scratch, and coding hypertext stories in Twine.
Another good place to start for people new to the text adventure format would be Galatea, Emily Short‘sfree-form piece based around conversation rather than puzzle-solving. It‘snot as no-nonsense as 9:05, but it‘spotentially more rewarding, and there are plenty of conversational paths and trees to explore, which lends itself to multiple replays. The online version of…
After 145 years, Western Union has quietly stopped sending telegrams. —Era Ends: Western Union Stops Sending Telegrams (Live Science)
Michael Kinsley made me laugh a decade ago when he argued against Web populists replacing professional writers, saying that when he goes to a restaurant, he wants the chef to cook his entree, not the guy sitting at the next table. I’m not laughing anymore: When there are millions of aspiring chefs in the room…
Expiry Date for Courses (Jerz’s Literacy Weblog) In my in box today, a question to ponder. What courses from your program should not be accepted for transfer credit after 10 years have passed? If you started a science major 10 years ago, and took some foundational courses, and then dropped the major, how much of what…
It has been one year since the “Great Video Game Experiment” was started at the public library where I work. And in those twelve months I’d have to say it has gone as good as anyone could have hoped. In the end, the numbers don’t lie, and a success is all this experiment can be…
Meaning Usually refers to one’s family. Sometimes used (as in Shakespeare’s original) to denote all living creatures. Origin From Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Clown: I have been, madam, a wicked creature, as you and all flesh and blood are; and, indeed, I do marry that I may repent. —Flesh and Blood (The Prhase Finder) Er, no, that’s not…
If there is any general lesson about Bayosphere, it’s that citizen journalism at the community level needs less high-flown rhetoric and more street-smart testing. The model for what works in content remains to be finished. Citizen journalism is not a failure. But there needs to be a more engaged relationship between the proprietors and impresarios…
So The Movies — set in an unnamed city where they make movies, decorate with palm trees and assign sycophants to celebrities — is a fictionalized simulation of a real place that simulates fiction while fictionalizing the real world. […] Activision and its partner Lionhead Films encourages the uploading and sharing of your creations, so…
Like any red-blooded hacker, Mozart adored mathematics as a child (and gambling as an adult), found word-play irresistible (email would have been perfect for him) and loved setting himself puzzles. His Musical dice game uses dice throws and pre-composed short fragments of music to form compositions created by random numbers; the challenge was writing fragments…
The first thing that occurred to me was the similarity between the bridge on the Enterprise and a small theater. The view screen made an obvious film screen and the seating centered around the command chairs and behind would fit well in the small space I had. I therefore decided to make my theater into…
Though there is a rich history of pseudonymity in American journalism, there is none of anonymity. It has long been understood that if the publisher of a reputable periodical grants a writer use of a pseudonym, then that publisher knows the writer’s true identity and takes responsibility — legal and otherwise — for that writer’s…
In 1985, Buckles wrote “Interactive Fiction: The Computer Storygame ‘Adventure,’ ” a scholarly look at the early text-based game Adventure and the people who played it. Buckles was hardly a devotee of the game herself, and the topic didn’t have a lot to do with her main area of study at UCSD, which was German…
“We often hear the assertion that rising faculty salaries drive the cost of tuition,” he says, but data over 25 years show that is not the case. “One of the several sources behind rising tuition rates is investment in technology.” Facebook is not the sole source for those woes. However, it is a Janus-faced symbol…
Whether you consider IF to be retro, minimalist, or a throwback, you introduce the genre to a general audience as a historical lesson – one which answers the anticipated first question ?why does IF looks so old?? But history is only a stone-throw away from nostalgia, and so it is easy for even staunch advocates…
Without deliberately planned, consciously modeled classroom use, it is understandable that students might fall back on their understanding of the blogs as an electronic version of the print-journal, a genre without interactive or collaborative potential. However, we contend blogs can impact the writing classroom effectively, if their integration and function are clearly structured and articulated.…
The board of Pixar Animation Studios, the digital animations company, is set to meet tomorrow to approve the company’s $7bn (£3.9bn) takeover by Disney. The all-share deal will make Steve Jobs, the chief executive of Apple, around $3.5bn and the single largest shareholder in Disney. Jobs created Pixar in 1986 when he paid $10m for…
Google has refused to comply with a White House subpoena first issued last summer, prompting U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales this week to ask a federal judge in San Jose, California for an order to hand over the requested records. —Google Won’t Hand Over Files (Wired | AP)
But there are things that we said we would not allow, including personal attacks, the use of profanity and hate speech. Because a significant number of folks who have posted in this blog have refused to follow any of those relatively simple rules, we’ve decided not to allow comments for the time being. It’s a…
The result is a display that looks far more like ordinary paper than a liquid crystal display, because the pixels reflect ambient light rather than transmit light from behind. There’s no flicker, because the pixels are completely static (in an LCD or a cathode-ray tube display, by contrast, pixels need to be “refreshed” 60 times…
Participants should bring a sketchbook, journal or artist’s book created or in progress, to share online with a larger audience. Participants will learn a range of techniques for creating online books and walk through the process of setting up a free, online illustrated journal, using a digital camera, scanner and free online software. Participants will…