August 9, 2007
Would-Be IF Stuff
I was fascinated to find that this talk, “Dungeons and Hyperlinks: Electronic Literature and Digital Narratives from Text Adventures to Hypertext,” was given recently at the hackerfest called Chaos Communication Camp 2007. It covers the development of a MUD, text adventure, and finally a Shockwave game based on Nika Bertram’s novel Der Kahuna Modus (Kahuna Mode). The Shockwave game is available, although it doesn’t run on Intel Macs, which makes it not available to me. I can’t find the Inform interactive fiction on the IF Archive or the author’s site. Even a trip to the Kahuna Mode MUD didn’t help me locate the warez. If anyone finds this, please comment about where it is.
And, the MC Frontalot video It Is Pitch Dark, shot by Jason Scott for his Get Lamp documentary on interactive fiction, has been semi-released. (Update: fully released; third from the top.) If you choke up to be a member of Frontalot’s Valued Sucker program, you can watch the video now in DivX or Quicktime format. Otherwise, like a differently-broken, more recent version of NeoOffice, you will eventually be able to find it online for zero dollars.
August 9th, 2007 at 9:48 pm
You may already know, but there is a way of running the Shockwave version on Intel Macs. Shut down your browser, find its application icon, right-click it and select get info. Then choose “Open with Rosetta” and reopen the browser.
It’s hardly a fix, since it’s running under pointless emulation, but it’s a temporary workaround… I’ve tried this successfully in Camino.
Thanks for the interesting info!
Best
J
August 10th, 2007 at 12:50 pm
Thanks, John, since I was busy searching for the Inform game, I forgot about the Rosetta trick that would let me run the Shockwave one.
August 11th, 2007 at 9:28 am
hi Nick, hi John!
thanks for mentioning our talk at the CCCamp07.. and thanks for updating me on the technical workarounds needed meanwhile to play the game on Intel Macs. Phew, when we created the game (in 2001), we didn’t expect future Mac OS versions/Macs to have so few compatibility to “older” programme files. Anyway, thanks a lot for reminding me of this workaround for Intel Macs. I just checked in on my husbands Macbook and will include this info on the download-website for this game asap (the camp net is a bit wobbly right now).
I’m sorry that you had been searching for the Inform game version for so long. Unfortunately, i had just started this game but never finished, because we decided to do the Shockwave version instead. I mentioned this in my talk, but will also update my slides with this info. Maybe – with Inform 7 – i will have another go at it, some time, some place.. but not very soon. I also got inspired by Jens’ talk again to maybe write some more, new text adventures, but, also, i gotta finish my second novel ;)
anyway, thx again & best!
nika
September 18th, 2007 at 10:25 pm
Full Frontalot is now being displayed. Third video from the top is It is Pitch Dark.