Issue #12: Play text adventures on printer paper

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Happy birthday ">REMEMBER"! This newsletter has officially been around for a year! I'm very proud of that, and to have written 12 articles on retro text adventures. Thank you for signing up and making the newsletter's readership grow!

And as I mentioned last month, this issue's article took a little while (and some money!) to put together. But I think it's worth it 😉 This month's article is a DIY project, so read on!

Supporting me
A few people have asked if there is a way to support my work like this newsletter - thank you 😀 I haven't formally opened a "tip jar" (like Ko-fi), but I welcome donations if you are so inclined! If you want, you can:

buy my games on itch.io, like Tristam Island, and you can even pay more than the suggested amount if you want to leave a tip;
or you can donate to the Interactive Fiction Technology Foundation! This foundation, of which I am a board member, supports interactive fiction in a broad sense, and provides crucial support to projects like the IFArchive, IFDB.org, and intfiction.org. This is a great mission, and they always welcome donations to further their projects!

My news
This month is fairly busy as I'm getting ready to release the final version of "Tristam Island" - including the French translation! This should be released on November 20th, but there is lots to do!

And in other news, DAADReady version 0.5 is out, which features support for French language - featuring my translation of the messages! A big thank you to Uto for making this happen and taking care of technical details!

Community news
Lots of news this month, but that doesn't mean I haven't forgotten anything, so let me know!

PunyJam 2 is underway! You have until November 21st to submit a game written with PunyInform. Check out the jam's page!
New game! Gareth Pitchford has released Dream Walker, a 3-part Spectrum 48K game made with the PAW! Go download it on his website!
There's a new cool Z-machine interpreter around: m4zvm, a port of ZXZVM by Shaun Sijnstra for the TRS-80 Model 4 with more than 128kb of RAM. I havent tried it, but it looks like there was lots of work on it to make it nice and fast!
A documentary feature by the BBC on Infocom seemingly hadn't been recovered since now! Head over there to watch it.
I didnt know about the KIM-1 computer, with no terminal and 1kb of RAM, but it looks like there is an adventure game for it! With LEDs glowing for output and everything!!
This upcoming text adventure from Sunteam for the Spectrum Next looks absolutely gorgeous!
And it looks like Mark Hardisty's Classic Adventurer will be back soon for another issue! Hooray!

This month's article
A little DIY project for you this month! I will show you how to build a Z-Machine which outputs text onto a thermal printer - the ones that print tickets at the grocery store! This is a modern spin on 1960s-1970s mainframes that printed output on a printer paper; but it's also a very cool effect, especially on younger people, to see a printer that talks to you and reacts to your input! I hope you enjoy it, please send me pictures of your setup!

Read the article

See you soon!
I hope you've enjoyed this issue, and please keep spreading the word as we embark for another year! 😀