Category: Interactive Fiction

Winner of the Cyberganked Contest!

And the winner of the Cyberganked contest is… …announced in the following video! Here are the Twitter accounts mentioned at the end of the video: @Commodork (Mine) @icecreamjonsey (Robb Sherwin’s) @Cyberganked (Updates about the game) Here is a link to Robb’s online photo gallery, where he is posting some of the pictures as he prepares them for the game: http://imgur.com/a/dxAZv/all Again, thanks to everyone who mailed in pictures and entered the contest. Although the contest is over, if you would still like to submit pictures for Robb’s game, you can continue to e-mail them to me and I will make… (read more)

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Last chance to e-mail me your photo, appear in a video game, and win some cash.

On Monday of this week I announced a contest in which all you had to do to enter was take a picture of yourself from either the waist up or the shoulders up and mail it to me for a chance to win fifty bucks. On Monday I had six people enter. On Tuesday I had three people enter. On Wednesday and Thursday I had 0 people enter. Ah, the short attention spans we have all SQUIRREL! Seriously though, today is the last day to submit your photo to me. Your photo will be used as a character’s photo in… (read more)

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Appear in a video game and possibly win $50 by e-mailing me your picture!

My very good friend Robb Sherwin is working on a new computer game, titled Cyberganked. It’s a text adventure (er, Interactive Fiction) game that takes place a few years in the future. In his game, Robb wants to include pictures of random people, and that’s where we come in. Anyone who e-mails me a usable picture by midnight this coming Friday will be entered into a drawing to win a $50 Amazon Gift Card. Are you interested in having your picture appear in a computer game and possibly winning $50? If so, keep reading for details! I’ve talked about Interactive… (read more)

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OVGE 2012: The Recap

This weekend marked the 9th annual Oklahoma Video Game Expo (OVGE) in Tulsa, Oklahoma. I attended the first show in 2003 as a spectator, but have participated as a presenter (almost) every year since then. Along for the ride this year were my friends Robb and Steve, who I previously mentioned flew in from Colorado and New York (respectively) to attend the show. Robb Sherwin is, among other things, the author of the award winning interactive fiction game Cryptozookeeper. Steve and Robb have known each other since the BBS days. Photo by Brandon Staggs Since our local NBA team (the… (read more)

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You Don’t Know Flack Episode 115: Text Adventures

Episode 115 of my podcast You Don’t Know Flack went online earlier today for some strange reason. I had actually scheduled the post to go live this Saturday, but something went wonky with WordPress and the post decided to go live on its own today. So, there you go. Episode 115 is all about text adventures. This episode is unique in multiple ways. Not only does it feature the infamous Interactive Fiction author Robb Sherwin via Skype … but it features him for approximately two hours. What can I say? Robb and I got carried away talking about text adventures!… (read more)

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Interactive Fiction: Random Nuggets

At last year’s Oklahoma Video Game Expo (OVGE), I officially debuted my first full-length text adventure. Hangar 22, written in Inform 6, was a light-hearted text-based work of interactive fiction that involved aliens, tacos, and a talking GPS that sounded like Sir Mix-A-Lot. Over the past 30 years lots of people have written lots of great (and lots of not-so-great) text adventures and works of interactive fiction, so completing one does not make me an expert or authority on the matter. I did, however, jot down a few notes about writing text adventures as I was working on the game.… (read more)

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Arcade Games and Saber Tooth Tigers

This is going to sound stupid, but nothing makes me feel cooler than hauling arcade games around on the back of my truck. So many collectors never get to show off their collections to outsiders — and when they do, typically it’s done online. Seeing pictures of someone’s collection can be kind of neat, seeing an item in real life is much cooler, in my opinion. I’ve never been hunting so I don’t really know what it’s like to take down a big animal or anything, but … I don’t know, I have this visual image of a caveman returning… (read more)

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Hugo Open House Competition

Back in December of 2011, Ice Cream Jonesy and Roody Yogurt (yes, those are their real names) suggested holding a “Hugo Speed IF” competition. The “IF” stands for Interactive Fiction (aka “Text Adventures” for you/us old timers); “Hugo” is the language the games were to be programmed in, and “Speed” part refers to works created in a very short amount of time. The “Hugo Speed IF” morphed into the “Hugo Open House Competition”. Originally I declined to participate for a number of reasons — the top three being I didn’t have the time to work on a game, I didn’t… (read more)

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The Commodore 64 Moves In

My parents bought my Uncle Kenny’s Commodore 64 for me back in 1985. If I remember correctly the sound chip had blown out, so the first thing we they did was have it fixed. Sixteen years later, I still own (and use) that same Commodore computer. I’ve owned dozens of other Commodore computers over the years (many of which are sitting out in my garage, acting as “donor machines”) but I can always tell my main one apart from the others for a couple of reasons. One being, many years ago one of my friends modified mine for me by… (read more)

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Review: Cryptozookeeper

Disclaimer: I passed on the opportunity to have dinner with Robb Sherwin back in 2007 when the two of us were (separately) attending the Classic Gaming Expo in Las Vegas. “He’s funny, you’re funny, come have dinner with us,” said a mutual friend of ours. Unfortunately I already had plans to visit the Pinball Hall of Fame with other friends of mine that evening, so I had to decline the offer. Their pack of nerds went one way, my pack of nerds went another, and fate was postponed for a couple of years. Since then, Sherwin and I became mutual… (read more)

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