IF for Yuletide 2016
I'm posting this since Healy doesn't seem to be around this year to do it. All the good bits are heavily cribbed from their excellent post last year and the year before. Any errors or omissions are mine. The spreadsheet of requests is by 
raininshadows.
Are you interested in text adventures, CYOA, twine games or other sorts of interactive fiction? Do you want to let your writer know you'd be happy to receive something along those lines? Are you looking for someone to write IF for? This post is for you.
What is IF?
Interactive Fiction (IF) covers everything from text adventures through to visual novels, by way of all sorts of experimental works. It can be mostly a game, or mostly a story; it can be a way to immerse the reader, or to play around with the concepts of storyteller and audience; it can be an exploration of chance, or of fate; it can be a straightforward story, or something else entirely (one year Selden wrote me an IF poem). And here is Healy's summary from last year, which is much clearer and better than I would write:... a term used for games which are made up primarily of text, like Adventure, Zork, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and other text adventures, or more experimental hypertext works like My Father's Long, Long Legs, or even visual novels. Interactive fiction these days is generally divided into two groups based on how you interact with the game: parser-based IF, and choice-based IF.
Parser-based IF, more commonly known as text adventures, are controlled by typed in commands, like "GET KEY", "OPEN DOOR", "GO NORTH", "LOOK UNDER BED", and stuff like that. Not every command you type in will work, though, so they're hard to get used to if you haven't tried them before. To make things easier, here's a card of most of the common commands. Some good parser-based IF to try first would be Ryan Veeder's So, You've Never Played a Text Adventure Before, Huh?, Admiral Jota's Lost Pig, Andrew Plotkin's The Dreamhold, and Adam Cadre's Photopia.
Choice-based IF is simpler; you just pick from a number of options. This can be done through hyperlinks and other clicky selections, though more rarely you may have to type a number from a list. Good examples of choice-based IF include Anna Anthropy's Star Court, Alan DeNiro's Solarium, the various games hosted by Choice of Games, and most every given visual novel.
Writing IF for Yuletide
If you would be happy to receive IF this year, please leave a comment below, following this template:
AO3 username:
Letter link:
Fandoms you would like IF for:
Anything else: (optional - the sort of things you love about IF, specific IF prompts and preferences etc)
Some IF tools
This is Healy's excellent list from last year.
Parser-based
Inform*: One of the biggest development tools for making parser-based IF. Has an English-like code. Available for Windows, Mac, and Linux.
Quest*: Another big IF development tool. Has a click-and-point editor with the option to check out the code. For Windows and web.
TADS*: A long running engine for writing interactive fiction, though generally not as easy to use as Inform. The latest version can make web-based games, although I'm not sure how it works exactly.
Choice-based
Twine*: Very popular tool for making choice-based IF. Has a visual editor, with some code-y bits for variables and the like. Can be extended with some Javascript passages. Available for Mac and Windows, and Twine 2 is web-based.
ChoiceScript*: Used by the fine folks over at Choice of Games. Uses simplified Javascript to make games. It's very stat heavy. Requires a text editor.
Ren'py: Engine for making visual novels. Uses a simple scripting language. Available for Windows, Mac, and Linux, and can make games for all those platforms.
Inklewriter*: A completely web-based engine for making CYOA-style games.
*** See also the Dreamwidth post for other IF requesters. ***
ETA The very helpful
raininshadows has made a spreadsheet with all the requests from both the LJ and DW versions of this post.
raininshadows.
Are you interested in text adventures, CYOA, twine games or other sorts of interactive fiction? Do you want to let your writer know you'd be happy to receive something along those lines? Are you looking for someone to write IF for? This post is for you.
What is IF?
Interactive Fiction (IF) covers everything from text adventures through to visual novels, by way of all sorts of experimental works. It can be mostly a game, or mostly a story; it can be a way to immerse the reader, or to play around with the concepts of storyteller and audience; it can be an exploration of chance, or of fate; it can be a straightforward story, or something else entirely (one year Selden wrote me an IF poem). And here is Healy's summary from last year, which is much clearer and better than I would write:... a term used for games which are made up primarily of text, like Adventure, Zork, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and other text adventures, or more experimental hypertext works like My Father's Long, Long Legs, or even visual novels. Interactive fiction these days is generally divided into two groups based on how you interact with the game: parser-based IF, and choice-based IF.
Parser-based IF, more commonly known as text adventures, are controlled by typed in commands, like "GET KEY", "OPEN DOOR", "GO NORTH", "LOOK UNDER BED", and stuff like that. Not every command you type in will work, though, so they're hard to get used to if you haven't tried them before. To make things easier, here's a card of most of the common commands. Some good parser-based IF to try first would be Ryan Veeder's So, You've Never Played a Text Adventure Before, Huh?, Admiral Jota's Lost Pig, Andrew Plotkin's The Dreamhold, and Adam Cadre's Photopia.
Choice-based IF is simpler; you just pick from a number of options. This can be done through hyperlinks and other clicky selections, though more rarely you may have to type a number from a list. Good examples of choice-based IF include Anna Anthropy's Star Court, Alan DeNiro's Solarium, the various games hosted by Choice of Games, and most every given visual novel.
Writing IF for Yuletide
- IF is considered opt-in for Yuletide - please don't write it for people who don't want it. If you aren't sure whether it would be welcome or not, ask a mod to check with the intended recipient.
- You are still required to follow the normal rules, such as focusing on requested characters (unless the recipient has said you needn't include them all).
- If you're writing a treat, unless you're sure your recipient would be happy with it as a main gift, either post it to Madness or wait till they have another full-length gift posted.
- It can be hard to figure out what word count an IF story really is - what you've written is full of code that doesn't count, and what your recipient sees may vary in length depending on their choices. If you're posting to the main collection, try to overshoot the minimum requirement a bit, just to be on the safe side. Say a minimum of somewhere between 2,000 and 4,000 words. Or probably about 10 to 15 minutes play through.
- If your post to the main AO3 collection is under 1,000 words (eg you're just linking to an online playable version elsewhere), drop the mods a note so they know it isn't someone posting something under the minimum.
- Your recipient does need to be able to access what you've created! Please link to a suitable IF interpreter if required, or if possible make a web-playable version.
If you would be happy to receive IF this year, please leave a comment below, following this template:
AO3 username:
Letter link:
Fandoms you would like IF for:
Anything else: (optional - the sort of things you love about IF, specific IF prompts and preferences etc)
Some IF tools
This is Healy's excellent list from last year.
Parser-based
Inform*: One of the biggest development tools for making parser-based IF. Has an English-like code. Available for Windows, Mac, and Linux.
Quest*: Another big IF development tool. Has a click-and-point editor with the option to check out the code. For Windows and web.
TADS*: A long running engine for writing interactive fiction, though generally not as easy to use as Inform. The latest version can make web-based games, although I'm not sure how it works exactly.
Choice-based
Twine*: Very popular tool for making choice-based IF. Has a visual editor, with some code-y bits for variables and the like. Can be extended with some Javascript passages. Available for Mac and Windows, and Twine 2 is web-based.
ChoiceScript*: Used by the fine folks over at Choice of Games. Uses simplified Javascript to make games. It's very stat heavy. Requires a text editor.
Ren'py: Engine for making visual novels. Uses a simple scripting language. Available for Windows, Mac, and Linux, and can make games for all those platforms.
Inklewriter*: A completely web-based engine for making CYOA-style games.
*** See also the Dreamwidth post for other IF requesters. ***
ETA The very helpful
raininshadows has made a spreadsheet with all the requests from both the LJ and DW versions of this post.