IF for Yuletide 2016

[quillori]

I'm posting this since Healy doesn't seem to be around this year to do it. All the good bits are heavily cribbed from their excellent post last year and the year before. Any errors or omissions are mine. The spreadsheet of requests is by raininshadows.

Are you interested in text adventures, CYOA, twine games or other sorts of interactive fiction? Do you want to let your writer know you'd be happy to receive something along those lines? Are you looking for someone to write IF for? This post is for you.

What is IF?

Interactive Fiction (IF) covers everything from text adventures through to visual novels, by way of all sorts of experimental works. It can be mostly a game, or mostly a story; it can be a way to immerse the reader, or to play around with the concepts of storyteller and audience; it can be an exploration of chance, or of fate; it can be a straightforward story, or something else entirely (one year Selden wrote me an IF poem). And here is Healy's summary from last year, which is much clearer and better than I would write:

... a term used for games which are made up primarily of text, like Adventure, Zork, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and other text adventures, or more experimental hypertext works like My Father's Long, Long Legs, or even visual novels. Interactive fiction these days is generally divided into two groups based on how you interact with the game: parser-based IF, and choice-based IF.

Parser-based IF, more commonly known as text adventures, are controlled by typed in commands, like "GET KEY", "OPEN DOOR", "GO NORTH", "LOOK UNDER BED", and stuff like that. Not every command you type in will work, though, so they're hard to get used to if you haven't tried them before. To make things easier, here's a card of most of the common commands. Some good parser-based IF to try first would be Ryan Veeder's So, You've Never Played a Text Adventure Before, Huh?, Admiral Jota's Lost Pig, Andrew Plotkin's The Dreamhold, and Adam Cadre's Photopia.

Choice-based IF is simpler; you just pick from a number of options. This can be done through hyperlinks and other clicky selections, though more rarely you may have to type a number from a list. Good examples of choice-based IF include Anna Anthropy's Star Court, Alan DeNiro's Solarium, the various games hosted by Choice of Games, and most every given visual novel.

Writing IF for Yuletide

• IF is considered opt-in for Yuletide - please don't write it for people who don't want it. If you aren't sure whether it would be welcome or not, ask a mod to check with the intended recipient.


• You are still required to follow the normal rules, such as focusing on requested characters (unless the recipient has said you needn't include them all).


• If you're writing a treat, unless you're sure your recipient would be happy with it as a main gift, either post it to Madness or wait till they have another full-length gift posted.


• It can be hard to figure out what word count an IF story really is - what you've written is full of code that doesn't count, and what your recipient sees may vary in length depending on their choices. If you're posting to the main collection, try to overshoot the minimum requirement a bit, just to be on the safe side. Say a minimum of somewhere between 2,000 and 4,000 words. Or probably about 10 to 15 minutes play through.


• If your post to the main AO3 collection is under 1,000 words (eg you're just linking to an online playable version elsewhere), drop the mods a note so they know it isn't someone posting something under the minimum.


• Your recipient does need to be able to access what you've created! Please link to a suitable IF interpreter if required, or if possible make a web-playable version.

Requesting IF for Yuletide

If you would be happy to receive IF this year, please leave a comment below, following this template:

AO3 username:
Letter link:
Fandoms you would like IF for:
Anything else: (optional - the sort of things you love about IF, specific IF prompts and preferences etc)

Some IF tools
This is Healy's excellent list from last year.

Parser-based
Inform*: One of the biggest development tools for making parser-based IF. Has an English-like code. Available for Windows, Mac, and Linux.
Quest*: Another big IF development tool. Has a click-and-point editor with the option to check out the code. For Windows and web.
TADS*: A long running engine for writing interactive fiction, though generally not as easy to use as Inform. The latest version can make web-based games, although I'm not sure how it works exactly.

Choice-based
Twine*: Very popular tool for making choice-based IF. Has a visual editor, with some code-y bits for variables and the like. Can be extended with some Javascript passages. Available for Mac and Windows, and Twine 2 is web-based.
ChoiceScript*: Used by the fine folks over at Choice of Games. Uses simplified Javascript to make games. It's very stat heavy. Requires a text editor.
Ren'py: Engine for making visual novels. Uses a simple scripting language. Available for Windows, Mac, and Linux, and can make games for all those platforms.
Inklewriter*: A completely web-based engine for making CYOA-style games.

*** See also the Livejournal post for other IF requesters. ***

ETA The very helpful raininshadows has made a spreadsheet with all the requests from both the LJ and DW versions of this post.

Comments

Queries, Corrections and Suggestions

[quillori]

Please reply to this comment with any comments or corrections on the above (out of date details, other IF tools etc).

Re: Queries, Corrections and Suggestions

[weakinteraction]

Thanks for picking up the IF baton!

Re: Queries, Corrections and Suggestions

[quillori]

Thank you! I'm so pleased there's been such a response - I was worried no one was interested this year.

Re: Queries, Corrections and Suggestions

[raininshadows]

Hi! I made a spreadsheet of all the requests so far, so people can easily check both LJ and DW. If you'd like to link it in the main post, that would be great.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ki01pZhsbhrvZaT4dQxawo1UAN2nnQSQZUHlnlYK5tY/edit#gid=393781767

Re: Queries, Corrections and Suggestions

[quillori]

Thank you so much! I've linked it on both posts.

[raininshadows]

AO3 username: raininshadows
Letter link: https://rainbirdsong.tumblr.com/post/143100682885/dear-yuletide-writer
Fandoms you would like IF for: all of them! (Sunless Sea, a bunch of Transformers series)
Anything else: I'm a fan of Inform 7 for seriously complex IF, because I'm on a Mac and can't use Quest, but Twine is great for simpler choose-your-own-adventure-type games, and has the substantial advantage that you don't need to download anything. I like hard games because they're interesting, but often find myself resorting to a walkthrough.

[quillori]

AO3 username: Quillori
Letter link: DW Letter
Fandoms you would like IF for:

Ancient Egyptian Religion
Golden Age 1,001 Nights Illustrations
Liáo zhâi zhì yì | Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio - Pú Sônglíng
VASNETSOV Viktor - Works

Anything else: I find IF fascinating, so I'm pretty much guaranteed to love whatever you do - if you want to do something I don't mention, the very fact I didn't think of it means I'll be interested to read it. So these prompts are only suggestions, not in any way requirements.

One of the Vasnetsov paintings specifically deals with choice - the crossroads with its three directions and the normal fairytale options of death and destruction. Gamayun deals with prophecy - an interesting concept to explore in IF, where the player has choices, but the available outcomes are in the hands of the writer. And Alkonost and Sirin make a matched set of opposite outcomes. The Flying Carpet seems more obviously suited to a straightforward adventure style tale. (But if you see other options, please go ahead!)

The Golden Age Illustrations likewise offer the option of playing around with different ways story elements typical of 1,000 Nights can be fitted together, or of exploring some of the options in specific illustrations (three boxes with unknown contents), or of using IF for exploration and world-building (a journey through the desert, a mysterious flying city).

It might be interesting to do something inspired by the fragmentary nature of the surviving sources for Ancient Egyptian Religian. IF that has to be pieced together, or something oblique and poetic that makes use of gaps, or perhaps IF where any given play through must miss some relevant information, and a different picture emerges depending on which bits you see. Or to take a different approach - several of the nominated characters are (at least in some myths) magicians. The power of the reader to influence the story in IF is a little like the power of a magician to influence events other characters have no control over - perhaps something could be done with that? Or the various versions of some of the myths that have come down to us - maybe an IF story where player choice affects which version plays out?

Very much the same elements appear again and again in Strange Tales - the scholars and the monks and the beautiful women, the ghosts and the foxes and the demons - but the outcomes and the characters of the participants is a whole kaleidoscope of possibilities.

(I haven't included The Reluctant Widow - Georgette Heyer and Kitaab 'alf layla wa-layla | One Thousand and One Nights in the list of fandoms I'd like IF for, because my requests this year (for Francis Cheviot and Ja'far respectively) seem to me more suited for a more conventional, non-IF story, but if I'm wrong about that, and you see the perfect way to write one of those requests as IF, go ahead.)

I have more experience with choice based than parser based games, but I'm open to either. I'm all mac though, so web based or works on a mac, please!

[alexseanchai]

AO3 username: AlexSeanchai
Letter link: http://alexseanchai.dreamwidth.org/1427561.html
Fandoms you would like IF for: Neolithic Sites of Southern England (Anthropomorphic); Tarot (Divination Cards)
Anything else: idk (sorry) this just sounds like fun

[weakinteraction]

AO3 username: weakinteraction
Letter link: here
Fandoms you would like IF for: The Wicked + The Divine, Unbeatable Squirrel Girl, Secret Wars, Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri, Revelation Space Series - Alastair Reynolds, Look Around You
Anything else: I like CYOA, parser-based and everything in between. I do really like the replay value that comes with multiple endings that depend on choices made throughout the game without there being a single unambiguously winning ending and various ones that are obviously losses. And for those who don't know, Squirrel Girl has canon CYOA! (Vol 2 #7, collected in the forthcoming "I kissed a Squirrel and I liked it" trade.)

[ceb]

AO3 username: molybdomantic
Letter link: http://ceb.dreamwidth.org/254581.html
Fandoms you would like IF for: Pandemic (Board Game), Pandemic Legacy: Season 1 (Board Game), Dwarf Fortress, Paranoia (Roleplaying Game)
Anything else: I can run linux and web games. I love pretty much all IF formats - there's a lovely thing in this year's IFcomp which uses an IF engine to do colour changes and alternate text with no real choices, and even that level of simplicity adds quite a lot to the story.

[livrelibre]

AO3 username: livrelibre
Letter link: http://livfic.dreamwidth.org/42048.html
Fandoms you would like IF for: 80 Days (Video Game 2014), Everfair, Black Panther (Comics), How to Get Away With Murder, Jane the Virgin, Minority Report (TV)
Anything else: I mean, 80 Days is already IF (by Meg Jayanth, who has some cool stuff to say about the genre (https://pinboard.in/u:livrelibre/t:80days/t:keep/), and inkle who made inklewriter) so that only makes sense. But feel free for any of my other fandoms. The sprawling steampunk world of Everfair would also lend itself to IF, HTGAWM already chops up its narrative and is murder mystery-ready, Jane the Virgin's telenovelaroots would work too, Minority Report comes in-built with different possible futures, and Black Panther is already a serial.

[fandomonymous]

AO3 username: fandomonymous
Letter: http://fandomonymous.dreamwidth.org/14226.html
Fandoms for IF: Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup, Garden of Forking Paths, FiveThirtyEight
Anything else: I am all about any and every kind of IF, but I'm more familiar with CYOAs, mostly through Twine and visual novels. (I love the works of Christine Love, and I'm hoping to squeeze in a playthrough of Ladykiller in a Bind by Yuletide. I also am a shameless fan of Hatoful Boyfriend and almost requested it this year. I also really love the anime of Steins;Gate and hope to play it by Yuletide too.) I can run Windows, web-based, and Android, and might also have a Linux machine up and running by Yuletide.

"Roguelike fanfiction" already has Caelyn Sandel's excellent Twine guide/fic for Caves of Qud. Something similar for DCSS would be neat, or playing with the branching of the dungeon layout.

Garden of Forking Paths is a short story all about time and choices in the stories one tells, so this is PERFECT. Besides, it's the same author who made The Library of Babel, which inspired this gorgeous procedural madness. And Lottery in Babylon. And Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius. Basically Borges is perfect IF fodder, go goddamn wild.

538 is a silly choice but if anyone would be familiar with weird branching ways reality could go it's a pile of statisticians, right?

I don't know if my other two fandoms (Gundam IBO and Bayern Munich RPF) are really suitable to IF, but feel free to surprise me.

[ghostwings]

AO3 username: Eida

Letter link: http://ghostwings.dreamwidth.org/1940.html

Fandoms you would like IF for: Any of them! My requested fandoms are:

Beauty and the Beast (1991)

Cat Pictures Please - Naomi Kritzer

Dr. Franklin’s Island - Ann Halam

Feral Hearts - Kerli (Music Video)

A Ladies' Guide to Collecting Mermaid Love Songs - Aimee Picchi

She Wolf (Falling to Pieces) - David Guetta ft. Sia (Music Video)

Anything else: I'll pretty much enjoy any sort of IF, be it parser or choice based. Also, my computer is a Mac.

[digitalmeowmix]

AO3 username: DigitalMeowMix
Letter link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/17lBKIeysWq1aIEXhN233GISYfUE8RPUPVltDCAoonZc/edit?usp=sharing
Fandoms you would like IF for: Lifeline (video game 2015)
Anything else: This canon really lends itself to IF as its a CYA adventure game!