2008-11-27 15:46:00

i have one question. whats are gamebooks? how it works? i seen it, but i dont understand to it! i must download some software to run through or what? thx for info!

Admin: topic title edited

f.a.t.h.e.r

2008-11-27 15:53:01

to go through this books you need to solve some puzzles. in this books you decide what will happen.

“Get busy living or get busy dying.”
Stephen King

2008-11-27 16:24:02

Yep, right Nin. Buclee, gamebooks are stories where you turn pages to make choices to decide what happens, and usually also have statistics and combat where you roll dice just like in a rpg game such as dungeons and Dragons.

Of course, being online, you mostly don't have to turn pages. Some of the nicer sites even have programed versions where you don't have to roll dice.

If you've not done things before, I suggest you begin with fighting fantasy project (look it up on the games list), or age of fable, both of which will let you use standard internet explorer pages to play through the story, and handle all your dice and stats.

Some game books do require a litle more work than this though, ---- for instance those on the chronicles of Arborell or Project.aon let you click through links to go through the story, but require you to write out your own stats sheet and roll your own dice (easy with the Gma dice program).

others, ---- unfortunately counting those mentioned in the recent news post, are just text files of the story. use ctrl F to find the esection you want, and manage your own stats and dice.

All directions are in the books themselves so it's fairly streight forward, though as I said if you've not tried this sort of thing before you should probably go for fighting fantasy project first.

hth.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2008-11-27 16:29:09

and winfrotz tts?

f.a.t.h.e.r

2008-11-27 17:01:59

That is interactive fiction, which is a different thing entirely.

Interactive fiction games (also known as text adventures), are stories that progress via you typing commands rather than turning to different sections of text. They tend to have a more exploration/puzle focus than combat and stats, and usually concentrate more on the writing.

Interactive fiction games have been produced for literally almost 30 years. Like music files you need an interpreter program to run them, and also like music files, they come in different formats.

Winfrotz Tts is (as it says on the page), a self-voicing interpreter for playing Zcode format games, where as html tads plays tads format games.

If your starting out on Interactive fiction I suggest you try winfrotz tts for ease of use, and check out this beginners guide to If which has links to some tutorial games (I can particularly recommend dreamhold), http://www.microheaven.com/IFGuide/IFGu … =6&c=0

There will eventually be an interactive fiction tutorial on the site when I get around to writing one, which is why7 the game pages for the interpreters don't have much information yet.

Hth.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2008-11-28 15:10:24

and how i must run the games of if over the frottz?

f.a.t.h.e.r

2008-11-28 15:35:54

Mmmm, the same way you play music files. once you've installed winfrotz tts, just open them in the program the way you open any standard file, ----- or you can just press enter on them in windows explorer.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2008-11-30 16:12:16

i found some sites with games. but i am wanting some this, that i would like to load a big collection of text games, not one eacch! i think one big pack is this possible?

f.a.t.h.e.r

2008-11-30 17:57:22

Hmmmm, which do you mean, gamebooks in text format? or text adventure games that you play with Winfrotz Tts or the like.

If you mean text gamebooks, well there aren't that many to start with. If you mean a big collection of text adventure games, ---- -that's like asking for a big collection of library books.

Remember there are literally thousands of text adventure games to play, it all depends on your taste, and what the author does.

Just check the site mentioned in the Winfrotz entry, read the reviews and see what looks fun to play.

Personally, I recommend Dreamhold by Andrew Plotkin, the games by Paul Obrian, emily short (particularly Pytho's mask), and some of the Malinche games are proving fun , --- but then again I like slightly surreal weerd fantasy, so this is my opinion, and there are as many types of interactive fiction games as of fiction.

Also, if your using Html tads to play tads games, I can highly recommend Babel and Worlds apart, but once again, this is my own opinion.

Really, with interactive fiction this is a case of hunt around and see what appeals to you.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2008-11-30 22:14:51

thx! i meaned ifarchive.

f.a.t.h.e.r

2008-11-30 23:08:33

Well as I said, I provided links to the baf's guide on the entry page, which has descriptions, reviews, walkthroughs etc for each game. There is the highly frequently updated file hosting service www.Ifarchive.org but that's just a file host really with many indexes and no information, hence my recommendation of Baf's.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)