May 19, 2006
The 10 O’Clock IF News
Today’s Gamester column, written by Tom Leupold and appearing in Inside Bay Area, is about IF: “Games with no pictures? Yes, they really did exist.” The focus is on Scott Adams of Adventure International, Adventureland, and Pirate Adventure fame. He’s still writing IF, and is now at work on The Inheritance, a game based on the Old Testament.
David Welbourn is the force behind the content and upkeep of ifwiki, the increasingly useful wiki about IF founded by Dave Cornelson. David W. offers another useful index into interactive fiction at the Key & Compass IF Games index. Thanks to Dennis Jerz for pointing this one out.
The nearly-universal IF interpreter for the Mac, Spatterlight, is available, in beta, in a universal binary. The similar program for Windows is called Gargoyle.
Finally, metadata fans may wish to note The Treaty of Babel, a standard for interactive fiction bibliographic information that provides a system for generating and encapsulating ISBN-like numbers, including cover art, and marking other information, along with software to accomplish this. The current revision 7 treaty text explains all.