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I hope you're doing well! Here's the fifth
installment of this newsletter, with once again a massive article! I
can't help it sometimes: the topic seems interesting, so I'll spend way
more time than I thought on it! Lucky you 😀
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My news
I am done translating the text of Tristam Island into French! And... it
doesn't fit the memory requirements, of course 😀 But no worries! Not by
much, and I noticed while translating that parts of the code could be a
little more efficient. It should work! After that, I have to translate
the PunyInform libraries... I hope that translation will be done by
summer!
Oh, and I just learned this morning that "Tristam Island" has ZZAP!64's
"Sizzler" award in its latest edition! The whole review was really nice,
calling the game "one of the best modern text adventures in recent
years" - I'm very happy and proud 😊
I also had a client this month for whom I did some consulting on making a
game for retro platforms! He wanted to try out a few tools and is
currently working on making a kinetic novel (the Japanese term for "a
computer novel with no branching and with pictures") for C64 (his
platform of choice) and other platforms. I set him up with Trizbort,
DAAD and Multipaint, and showed him how everything worked and what the
workflow is like; next is Inform 6, because he wants to expand to other
platforms! Very fun 😀
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Community news
The retro text adventure community has been busy again this month!
- Mathbrush,
author of many great Inform 7 games, wrote a game called Swigian a few
years ago, and hacked the software to be able to display the great
pictures drawn by Marco Innocenti. Now he's redone his game using
Adventuron, which is a much more natural fit. Give it a try here!
- I
had missed this adventure game, "The Darkness of Raven Wood", but it
popped on my radar today. Looks like BBC Micro and Acorn Electron users can order their physical copy now! It looks beautiful, and the box seems packed with goodies!
- The makers of the awesome Inform 6 library PunyInform have started a game jam, PunyJam #1, which is now underway. For anyone wanting to know this tool, there are great tutorials written by Fredrik Ramsberg!
- ParserComp 2021 is also starting soon,
and running until the end of June! Any platform can be used, it's a
great comp to join if you have any ideas you've been playing with!
- The Text Adventure Literacy Jam
has just closed with 10 submissions in English and 7 in Spanish! You
can now play the games and vote for them; you have a little over three
weeks to do so.
- CAAD,
the magazine on interactive fiction in Spanish, has released their
issue #53 - over 120 pages! It includes a primer on French interactive
fiction written by yours truly, a discussion on the origin of the term
"aventuras conversacionales", and an article by Chris Ainsley on
Adventuron! (And more! DAAD charset editing, a new Spectrum game inspired by Edgar Allan Poe, a note that The Curse of Rabinstein is currently being translated into Spanish, etc! It's a really good read!)
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This month's article
This month, I took a deep dive into the world of Z-Machine interpreters -
that is, software that can run most Infocom story files, Tristam Island,
and sometimes larger games such as "z5", "z6", and "z8" formats. And
when I say "a deep dive", I mean it: I have compiled a list of 72
platforms, old and new, that can run a Z-Machine interpreter! I have
tried to include details when I knew more about the interpreters (which
is better, how do you use them, etc), and up-to-date links (including
some from the Wayback Machine!). This should be the most comprehensive
resource on the Internet on this particular topic! So, enjoy! And I'll
see you next month 🙂
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