Nested (procedurally generated game of expanding drop-down lists)
A text game that you play by opening folders.
‘I saw the possibility of what could be done – so I did it’: revolutionary video game The Hobbit turns 40
.. Realising that statistics wasn’t for her, Megler answered a newspaper advert for a part-time programming job at a local software company called Melbourne House. It was 1980, and she was halfway through a course that focused on designing operating systems and developing programming languages. “The day I was hired, the first thing my boss…
Perspective | Could ‘Ferris Bueller’s Day Off’ really be done? We found out.
The three of us approach them in our very obvious costumes and ask if I can hop on their float. Not only do they agree, but they tell us they were looking for a Ferris! Everything is going our way — just like in the movie. I jump aboard, and they cue up the Beatles’…
The Enduring Allure of Choose Your Own Adventure Books
I didn’t realize how involved the children of divorced dads Packard and Montgomery were in the creation of the “Choose Your Own Adventure” gamebooks. (The children of divorced dad Will Crowther were one motivation for, and were early playtesters for, Crowther’s original Colossal Cave Adventure; the history of parser text adventure games and branching path…
Chess robot grabs and breaks finger of seven-year-old opponent
Last week, according to Russian media outlets, a chess-playing robot, apparently unsettled by the quick responses of a seven-year-old boy, unceremoniously grabbed and broke his finger during a match at the Moscow Open. “The robot broke the child’s finger,” Sergey Lazarev, president of the Moscow Chess Federation, told the TASS news agency after the incident, adding that…
Computers and Writing workshop on Inform 7. (Happening now. In an asynchronous way.)
Inform 7 Source Code (released under the “CC BY 4.0” license) Your Office Demo (CandW22 Inform 7 Workshop, Video 1) Journalism Game Scenario (CandW22 Inform 7 Workshop, Video 2) Noir Detective Game Scenario (CandW22 Inform 7 Workshop, Video 3)
I just dusted off a #textadventure project I started in Inform6 around 1999.
I just dusted off a #textadventure project I started in Inform6 around 1999. By around 2007 I had rebuilt about 90% of it in #inform7 and expanded it in fits and starts. But I haven’t touched it in 11 years. It took me about 90 minutes to update all the deprecated code, but it runs!
In May, 2002, I was blogging about… typefaces in period movies; poets Paul Dirac and Stewart Conn; web usability; fired for making a satirical game
In May, 2002, I was blogging about Rating historical movies on how accurately they represent period typefaces The average UK reader spends 17 minutes a day reading a newspaper, compared to 11 minutes reading a novel. Paul Dirac, honorary poet laureate of modern physics. Student web project on poet Stewart Conn’s “Luncheon of the Boating…
Daily 10sq cm of control panel eye candy. #blender3d #blender3dart #steampunk
The lighting doesn’t really convey that this is supposed to be a slightly curved scroll of paper under glass, but it’s still a cool look for today’s 10 sq cm of #steampunk control panel. #blender3d #blender3dart
Move Along Home (#StarTrek #DS9 Rewatch, Season 1, Episode 10) Hopscotch Cringe Shenanigans
Rewatching ST:DS9 I was kind of dreading rewatching this “trapped in a board game” episode, but it wasn’t as bad as I remembered. But that’s not saying much, because I remember it as a cringeworthy mess. I liked Sisko’s attempt to bring up “the talk” with Jake by likening a first contact to a first…
Inform 7 is now open source
Inform is a design system for interactive fiction based on natural language, and consists of a core compiler, together with extensions, kits and other resources, a number of outlying tools, and documentation, along with applications presenting the system in a friendly way on MacOS, Windows and Linux. This software had been used extensively since 28…
Q-Less (#StarTrek #DS9 Rewatch, Season 1, Episode 6) Shenanigans with Vash and Q
Rewatching ST:DS9 In the teaser, Bashir is monologuing for an evidently awestruck Bajoran woman, while O’Brien looks on scornfully. A barely functional runabout has just made it back through the wormhole. Dax has picked up a passenger, whom O’Brien recognizes as Vash. I enjoyed Vash’s chemistry with Picard in her first appearance (TNG s3e19 “Captain’s…
Captive Pursuit (#StarTrek #DS9 Rewatch, Season 1, Episode 6) O’Brien Befriends a Nervous, Hunted Alien
Rewatching ST:DS9 Sisko is listening to a sexual harassment complaint from one of Quark’s employees when an unexpected ship arrives through the wormhole — the Alpha Quadrant’s first visitor from the other side. The ship’s pilot is jumpy; O’Brien gets him to relax a bit, but when asked his name, species, and job, the new…
Mobile is a “really punishing format” for indies, says inkle’s Jon Ingold
Mobile is a really punishing format for independent developers. It used to be that the App Stores drove users to find games in viable quantities – 80 Days certainly benefitted enormously from Apple’s Editorial featuring – but that process has largely stopped. To be big – which is to say, to be viable – on…
In April, 2002, I was blogging about an autistic person’s guide to asking a girl on a date; The Inform 6 Beginner’s Guide; broken links;
In April, 2002, I was blogging about Instructions for “Asking a Girl on a Date” (autistics.org) The Inform Beginner’s Guide (I edited this book on programming text adventure games in Inform 6) Broken Links: Just How Rapidly do Science Education Hyperlinks Go Extinct? (yes, the link was broken but I linked to the backup on…
In March, 2002, I was blogging about…
In March, 2002, I was blogging about The coming era of participatory news The “Worst Manual Contest” Ancient “Domesday Book” outlives electronic version (that article is also gone… but here’s contemporary coverage from Slashdot) My own text-adventure game “Fine-Tuned: An Auto-mated Romance“ PBS special “Merchants of Cool” (early observations about the cultural feedback loop as…
Good Twitter thread on how confirmation bias leads to conspiracy theories
So why are so many people convinced that the NYT has ruined Wordle? Because of confirmation bias. They were already mad at the NYT. Then they struggled with a puzzle or two. It’s easy to connect the dots and blame the NYT for making the game harder.
The beauty from some Olympic skaters was not worth seeing a child emotionally broken on live television.
I didn’t watch any of the video, and I have no desire to. This article was painful to read. “I hate it! … I don’t want to do anything in figure skating ever in my life! … Everyone has a gold medal, and I don’t!” One can forgive a teenage girl for having an emotional response…
