Shemflection from Belgium: games work!

A bit later shemflection about my XP Day BE experience. In the open space tables for the participants, where people let there their own books in vision for others (this is shared knowledge, guys!) there was a space for games, where I added my own copy of Lupus In Tabula, already mentioned in this blog.

But the best thing I discovered is Fluxx, thanks to Bernard Van Der Beken, who offered me an instant game. It is very funny, andit is very agile: in fact it is a simulation of what does requirement changing mean. Other games I want to check out are Game of 33, Chrononauts and Zendo.

Hoping they will also come in Italian and Esperanto as well...

Lupus in Rails

A friend of mine, Fabio, told me that the English version of Lupus In Fabula, which I translated in Esperanto for the members of this own community (samlingvanoj) and of course for my own pleasure, is getting more and more popular among rubysts. Check this video out!

Hackety Hack: Ruby per dodicenni di tutte le età

Hackety Hack è un'introduzione a Ruby giocosa e intrigante... quasi quanto Inform7!

Lupus in Tabula en Esperanto

Entuziasma trinkeja ludo estas Lupus in Tabula, pri kiu unuela amiko alparolis min. Miaopinie tiu ludo perfektas por (gejunulaj) renkontiĝoj, kaj pro tio mi tiusemajnfine esperantigis ĝin. Alia interesa uzo estas pri distra lingva lernado, pri kiu mi parolis en Parmo ĉe ILEI-kunveno lastjare. Nur mi sendas la tradukon al la eldonejon de la kardaro por publikigo en la oficiala paĝo de la ludo. Mi remesaĝos kiam la ludo estos publika.

P.S. Verdire la kardaron oni ne necesas havi, bezonatas nur la regularo kiu estas libere disponebla.

Final vote for the IF Comp 2006!

It's time to vote for the XYZZY Award 2006!

Monza's Phantom, version 2

In a previous post in Italian I presented my first IF story.

After reading that in IF wiki that there were two major errors, one in English, the other in Inform7, I wrote the second version of the story,that I posted today to IF archive the second version.

Please refer to this version!

Il fantasma di Monza

Qualche settimana fa ero passato a trovare i miei e ho passato un interessante pomeriggio con mio fratello Sebastiano, di tredici anni. Voleva fare qualcosa di interessante e nuovo con il computer, che non fosse clicca-furiosamente-sullo-schermo-per-colpire-tutto-ciò-che-si-muove.

Gli ho proposto di scrivere insieme un videogioco, scrivendo un'avventura in Inform7, l'innovativo linguaggio di storie interattive scritto in un sottoinsieme dell'inglese. La storia l'ha inventata ovviamente lui. Da notare che era la prima avventura interattiva anche per me, e la prima volta che usavo il linguaggio.

In cinque pomodori (due ore) abbiamo lavorato in programmazione a coppie ruotandoci alla tastiera ad ogni pomodoro e abbiamo completato il primo rilascio di Monza's Phantom, che è entrato nell'archivio ufficiale internazionale delle storie interattive -- il mio regalo di Natale per lui: la sua prima pubblicazione su web in un prestigiosissimo sito!

Sebastiano si è divertito moltissimo, il che era il mio obiettivo per quel sabato pomeriggio! Era molto contento di usare l'inglese per qualcosa di divertente (la prima volta, a sentir lui) ed esaltatissimo di aver costruito un videogioco funzionante -- mio padre l'ha testato, cioè giocato, ed era piacevolmente sorpreso dal risultato.

Inoltre, era la prima volta che mio fratello programmava, ovviamente senza che io gli avessi detto che stava programmando o altro, stavamo giocando e punto. E devo dire che le tecniche agili superano benissimo anche questa prova. Intanto, la rotazione della programmazione a coppie mi ha permesso che non si distraesse. Poi, ogni volta che completavamo una frase/clausola subito facevamo il test d'accettazione, cioè facevamo girare il codice e provavamo a giocare. È chiaro che non potevamo fare i test in anticipo in questo caso... Ma tant'è. Mi ha fatto domande interessantissime, del tipo "perché devo scrivere per filo e per segno tutto quanto? Il computer non capisce niente?" Io gli ho spiegato che il computer è preciso da un lato e gnucco dall'altro. Preciso perché vuole le cose scritte chiare per far andare la storia, gnucco perché una virgoletta mancante e lui non capisce più niente. Credo che Sebastiano abbia capito molte cose del funzionamento di un computer quel pomeriggio, e io mi sono divertito almeno quanto lui.

Ecco il sorgente della storia:

"Monza's Phantom" by Sebastiano e Federico Gobbo

When play begins: say "The great phantom of Monza is lost. Would you help to found it?"

Piazza Roma is a room. "You are at Piazza Roma, a small square in an interesting town in the Northen part of Italy, next to Milan. At the center there is a fountain. A middle age building is east of Piazza Roma."

A fountain is here. The fountain is fixed in place. "The fountain is a young woman with a frog in her hand. From the frog's mouth water sprinkles out in the fountain." A silver key is in the fountain. The key is portable. The description of the silver key is "It is a small silver key that can lay in the palm of your hand."

Arengario's Portico is a room. The Arengario's Portico is east of Piazza Roma. "Arengario is a building made of red bricks. Under the main part there is a portico. You are inside the portico. There is a wooden door that leads to the main building."

The wooden door is a door. The wooden door is inside of the Arengario's Portico. The wooden door is scenery. "The door, that stays inside the Arengario's portico is very old and it is locked." The wooden door is lockable and locked. Through it is the Arengario's Main Building. The silver key unlocks the wooden door.

Arengario's Main Building is a room. "You go upstairs and enter the main building. Inside the main building there is a big box." Above the Arengario's Portico is the Arengario's Main Building.

A big box is here. The big box is scenery. The big box is a closed openable container. The description of the big box is "The big box is iron made. It is heavy and closed. It is trembling."

Instead of opening the box, end the game saying "A phantom go out of the iron box and it is now free thanks to you! He says -- good-bye my friend! -- and flies away in the blue sky.".

IF Comp 2006, The End

The Interactive Fiction competition has ended (here the final results), and I casted my votes! My preferred games was Möbius, which I found very interesting, as you can't write such a story in an uninteractive fashion, and Floatpoint, by Her Majesty Emily Short. It contains a great introduction to IF -- I'm an absolute beginner -- and it ahs a very friendly hint mode. However, I found it a bit too difficult for me, and after one hour playing I wanted to read the walkthrough.

I tried to play to Requiem, good atmosphere on start, but how I can restore a saved game?!? This stupid limitation prevented me to play it at all. The worst I tried was Bible Retold: I find very unfunny to play a story that I already know, and a bit unrespectful play in such a way Jesus' life.

An other great game was Moon-Shaped, an interesting mix. It started as a very famous child story, but don't believe it! The more you go along, the more it goes complicated, frightening, and adult... but with (at least one) happy end. With this game I learned that if an object is closed, sometimes it happens it's not closed... the same place may appear very different if you have a higher level of consciousness. I don't like to have a complex map when playing, and in the last part it is a bit difficult but well written. I used the walkthru to know how it might end.

Tentellian was really frustrating. It's unfunny to get prisoned after some moves and the whole thing you seem to do is to rightly move here and there. Terrible. Also bad the web games.

I think it's better to use Inform7 or Inform6, or TADS3 or TADS2, to build your own IF. They are both mature programming languages suitable for IF building. Otherwise, the risk is to have a poor and frustrating parser. An example of bad parsing from The Sisters

> open glovebox
You open the glovebox. Your penknife, your mobile phone and your mobile phone charger are inside the glovebox.

> take all
There is nothing to pick up here.

Frustrating, isn't it? An other example from Enter The Dark, where you type "hit the door with the bar", and you have no answer, even "you can't do that". And you can't examinate anything. Where's the pleasure in reading descriptions? The walkthru also is bad... it's not clear how to do things with it. No hint, poor help for novice players as me.

The Elysium Enigma has a great introduction to IF, in particular about the conventions used about dialogue with NPCs. You feel a bit stupid at the start, as you don't know who you are ad what are you supposed to do. It
is well written and a very good parser, the best one I proved, along with Floatpoint. Also hints are good. It's a bit similar to Emily Short's story, but far less complicated...

This IF may also be used to teach Italian youngsters a bit of English.

Inform 7, the new computer language and API for IF

NBot only Zoom (as in the picture above). IF fans will enjoy this beautiful application Inform 7, based on natural language, i.e. English. Made by Graham Nelson and friends.

Worth a look if you are interested in cool GUIs & applications. Download for Win and Mac -- sorry Linux users, it's open source but no developer was found for the API!

For people interested in NLP, take a look at the white paper.