IF in 1996: The Year in Review

You liked it so much last year that it's back again!

The first thing you'll notice is that this year's column is significantly longer than 1995's. This is due to both a more meticulous recording of details on my part, and a substantial increase in the number of details to meticulously record.

By the way, happy anniversary to everyone! Our favorite hobby turned 20 years old last year!

I can't help but comment on how much the IF community has grown in just a couple of years. When I first discovered r.*.i-f, TADS was the hands-down preferred language, Inform 5.2 had just been released, Curses was the hottest game on the archive, Busted was the only other major Inform release out there, and I seem to recall an inordinate number of posts about "phone calls from the future" (what was that thread about anyway?). Was all this really only two years ago?

At any rate, I now give you... 1996, the year in IF.

January

The Broken String, a punk-rock TADS adventure, becomes the first IF release of the new year.

This year's IF competition is announced. The final deadline is set for September 31. Vote counters and beta-testers are selected, with the first beta session in May.

February

Four new TADS adventures (Frustration, Golden Fleece, The Holy Grail, and The Mission) are uploaded to GMD by Jim MacBrayne.

Acorn User magazine announces that Graham Nelson will be writing a monthly column on adventure games and Inform.

March

To celebrate Graham Nelson's new column, Acorn User magazine announces an Inform competition. The deadline is set for the end of summer, and Graham is appointed as judge.

SpiritWrak, Dan Yu's Enchanter-esque adventure set in the Zork Universe, becomes the first new Inform title of 1996.

Neil deMause's time-travel/history adventure Lost New York is released.

Bob Newell uploads the IF Authorship System FAQ.

Activision unveils Zork Nemesis for both DOS and Windows 95 platforms. The Macintosh version is due out later this year, as is a port of Return to Zork for the Sega Saturn. Planetfall 2, announced early last year, still floats in software limbo.

April

Gumshoe, an Inform detective story by Mike Oliphant, reaches the IF archive.

Version 2.1 of Kent Tessman's Hugo compiler is released.

Gerry Kevin "Whizzard" Wilson announces that voting for the IF competition will begin October 15 and end October 31.

On the third anniversary of the Inform language (April 30th), Graham Nelson unveils the source code and manuals for Inform 6. Executable versions for various platforms follow shortly afterwards.

May

IFers discover rumors of "Zork: The Movie" on a film studio's Web site detailing planned projects. The film, if made, has an expected release date of 1998.

June

Andrew C. Plotkin releases the Bergman-esque Inform game So Far.

Version 2.0 of the Frotz Z-Machine interpreter (which supports sound and graphics) is uploaded to GMD.

Activision announces its new IF compilation, Infocom Masterpieces. This new package includes all the games in Lost Treasures of Infocom (LTOI) 1 and 2 except Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and Shogun; Activision no longer holds the rights to publish these adaptations of Douglas Adams' and James Clavell's work. This collection includes the elusive Leather Goddesses of Phobos, which was left out of the LTOI collections. Most noteworthy is the inclusion of the top three 1995 competition games in both the TADS and Inform categories, plus a manual penned by Gerry Kevin Wilson.

July

David Kinder joins Volker Blasius as co-maintainer of the IF archive at GMD.

High-Energy Software -- the distributor of TADS -- is closed down. Mike Roberts announces that TADS will be released as freeware, with the manual.

Hugo version 2.2 is completed and released.

August

Super AGT, an expanded version of David Malmberg's and Mark Welch's adventure language, is announced as a work-in-progress.

One year after the release of MST3K1, the MST3K1 Silver Screen Edition is uploaded to GMD.

Andrew Plotkin spearheads production of an IF CD-ROM containing all the major IF releases, shareware and freeware.

September

An interpreter to play Level 9 ("The Other Infocom") text adventure games is uploaded to the archive, and receives very favorable attention.

Inform 6.04 and 6.05 are completed.

Graham Nelson announces the winners in Acorn User's I-F competition. The top three entries were BSE, by Chris Smith (1st place); The Wedding, by Neil Brown (2nd place); and Leopold the Minstrel, by Jamie Murphy (3rd place). Runners-up included Transporter, by Andrew Laker; Wearing the Claw, by Paul O'Brian; and Black'n'White Rag, by Jonathan Nowell.

Activision announces that the long-delayed Planetfall 2: The Search for Floyd will in fact be completed. Steve Meretzky, author of Planetfall and Stationfall, is off the project, and the plot and design have undergone complete revisions.

Due to problems with the beta-testers' FTP site, the IF competition deadline is pushed back from September 31st to October 10th.

October

The IF competition deadline is again moved back, this time to October 15th.

Time: All Things Come to an End, a time-travel Inform game by Andrew Phillips, is unveiled.

AGiliTy, the first interpreter allowing AGT games to run under non- DOS platforms, is released.

The original TADS C source code is uploaded to the IF archive at GMD, along with the full manual.

The 1996 IF competition entries are uploaded. Voting begins on October 20th, with the deadline for votes set for November 30th, and winners and prizes to be announced the first week of December.

The Wedding, the second-place winner in Graham Nelson's Inform contest, arrives at the GMD archive. The first-place winner, BSE, follows not far behind.

November

TADS creator Michael Roberts releases Perdition's Flames, originally a commercial game, as freeware.

MaxTADS becomes the first independent TADS run-time interpreter.

Computer Gaming World names Zork as the all-time best adventure game, and 13th on its all-time best games list.

Return to Karn, an Inform-based sequel to a Dr. Who episode, by Patrick Wigfull, appears on the IF archive.

Night at the Computer Center, an Inform game by Bonnie Mierzejewska, is released.

Gareth Rees uploads the source code for Christminster, along with Release 4 of the game.

December

Votes are tallied, and Kevin Wilson posts the results of the 1996 IF Competition. The top three places are claimed by The Meteor, the Stone and a Long Glass of Sherbet, by Graham Nelson; Tapestry, by Dan Ravipinto; and Delusions, by C.E. Forman (that's me, that's me!). Filling fourth through sixth place are Small World, by Andrew Pontious; Kissing the Buddha's Feet, by Leon Lin; and Fear by Chuan- Tze Teo.

Sierra Online's newsletter praises TADS as a design system, suggesting that writing a text adventure is a good step toward a job as a professional game designer.

Inform 6.1 and the 6/3 library are published, making Inform multilingual. According to r.a.i-f posts, work has begun on translations to Italian, Russian and German.

XYZZYnews announces the first annual XYZZY awards. Voting is in effect until February 1, 1997.

General Trends

Interest in IF has grown substantially over the past 12 months. There was a far more active competition this year, with 26 entries compared with 12 in 1995. As Magnus Olsson put it, "I have a feeling that it's changed character a bit, being no longer an underground movement but rather something on the fringe of the mainstream. I also have a -- rather vague -- feeling that we've reached some sort of break-even; that we don't need to be so concerned about the survival of the genre at the moment."

Almost no one would argue this, and it does lend some degree of validity to Graham Nelson's criticism of the acronym "SPAG." During the second quarter of the year, there was even some discussion about the possibility of having too much IF, after a large number releases -- Broken String, the four Jim MacBrayne games, Lost New York, SpiritWrak and Gumshoe -- all within a four-month period. 1996 saw the release of 46 I-F games, far surpassing 1995's 21 entries. Increased traffic on r.*.i-f has also furthered the growth of open commentary and criticism, and in fact a number of full-length reviews were posted to r.g.i-f earlier in the year. Baf's Guide, the web's largest collection of I-F reviews, has seen updates on a more- or-less regular basis.

On the language front, Kent Tessman's Hugo compiler is starting to get the recognition it deserves. More than once the benefits of this easy-to-use language have cropped up in the perpetual "TADS versus Inform" debate. The SoftWorks AGT compiler also made quite a comeback this year, with a couple of AGT competition entries and numerous whispered works-in-progress, not to mention the AGiliTy tools that finally allow AGT games to break free of the confines of a PC-exclusive environment. Use of David Baggett's WorldClass library for TADS is also up from last year.

Though 1996 was a slower year for Z-machine developments than 1995, it wouldn't do to ignore Frotz as the generally-accepted new standard for Z-machine interpreters, nor should we overlook MaxTADS as a significant bridge to new platforms. Where Infocom excavations hit a dry spell, Level 9 has sprung forward with two major releases of the first L9 interpreter.

Variety of discussions peaked out this year, with long-running, dominant threads including:

• Puzzle-less interactive fiction The topic was brought up throughout the year, but Joe Mason's In the End was the primary target of post-competition commentary on this issue. It didn't place high, and whether it was actually "puzzle- less" was also debated (as many players had to guess at the author's intentions), leaving the question of the feasibility of full-length puzzle-less I-F unanswered.
• The nature of IF Threads concerning the identity of an IF game also dominated the groups, with topics ranging from which type of IF is the most "real"; to whether IF, by definition, is a game; to what IF has the potential to be. The contrast of the player as himself/herself versus the player as a generic character filled bandwidth in droves.
• "Preachiness," or messages in games Two competition entries, Tapestry and, to a lesser extent Delusions, brought this thread out full-throttle during the year's fourth quarter.
• Linearity With its multifaceted story, complex situations and pure entertainment value, Andrew Phillips' Time: All Things Come to an End breathed new life into an I-F style thought long-dead: the single- path, linear-plot adventure.
• IF collectibles It's hard to call something less than 20 years old an antique, but IF's 20th anniversary seemed to spark a renewed interest in collecting the original Infocom game packages. Perhaps rec.collecting.int-fiction is just around the corner?

On the Horizon

Now comes the fun part: what the future holds. Rather than attempt to speculate further on where IF in general is going, I thought I'd provide a sneak peek at some titles that may or may not be just around the corner. Keep your eyes open for (at least some) of the following in 1997:

Akorny
Avalon
Bast
Djinn!
Logomancer
Losing Your Grip
Moondials
Sangsarawardha
Scimitar
Shelton
Sphere
Stuck Mid-Game
Wanderer

Once again, thanks to all the IFers who provided details and offered suggestions for this article!

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