Forums » Writing Workshop » Read Thread

To avoid derailing my own thread, I thought I'd ask what IF platforms people know of, or even better, have tried and can report on. Here's my list:

CYS: We all know this one, of course. Text followed by choices, with limited variables and a reasonable amount of scriptability. Notable features include a web-based UI, the ability to collaborate with other users, and a built-in inventory system.

Twine: Text with links wherever you want. Variables can be text, including user-entered text. Highly scriptable. Notable features include a node-based GUI that lets you visually map your work, and full customizability of the look of your final piece -- if you know CSS.

ChoiceScript: Text followed by choices. Variables can be text, including user-entered text. Scriptable -- I'm not yet sure to what degree. Notable features include the ability to be commercially published by Choice of Games, with distribution to a variety of platforms.

Three more in the 'text followed by choices' vein, albeit with prettified interfaces, none of which I can really comment on in depth: inklewriter, Varytale, and Undum. Anyone here used any of these?

And then some options that are a bit further afield:

StoryNexus, based on virtual cards.

Ren'Py, for visual novels.

Inform 7, for parser-based IF.

Again, I've never used any of these to any real extent, but I'd be curious to hear from anyone who has! And, of course, anything I've missed entirely.

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/InteractiveFiction

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ChooseYourOwnAdventure

These pages have a pretty neat list. You'll have to do some looking, though.

That seems like a really indirect way of finding authoring platforms, rather than games. But thanks for the thought. ^_^

There is one site that is wiki-based. That is dramatically different from the other platforms, I assume. It is called CreateYourOwnStory. You also failed to mention Infinite Story.

True. I'm not really a fan of the distributed-authorship model, but that's no reason to leave it out. Seems like CreateYourOwnStory is run on a similar 'add your own choices' premise.

Actually, IS allows you to make your games so that others can't add to them. Distributed authorship is entirely optional.

Good to know! Are there any other particular features that it has that you like?

Hmm...really, it isn't much different from our basic editor here. In fact, our basic editor is much easier to manipulate in my opinion. Still, it allows me to take a break from here, every once in a while.

Really? I find the editor at Infinite Story a lot easier to use than the basic editor here which doesn't even update your page list most of the time and you have to log out and then back in again to do so.

Also here, I have to turn off the pop up blocker, turn off the rich text editor and keep track of all the various windows that often hide behind one another. At Infinite Story, I don't need to do all that, it's a simple copy/pasta my text from Word and typing in the links.

I listed these in an older thread.

The Interaction Fiction Database - Is basically a database containing a lot of gamebooks, which in turn, links to some of there websites where you can play them.

Zarf’s Interactive Fiction has a few books but I haven't played them.

Emily Short's Interactive Storytelling is Emily shorts website. I'm pretty sure she has links to her stories there.

The Border House has some games on it.

Multiple Choice Adventures - I haven't ever tried using this but I believe you can create and play IF there.

I appreciate the links, but I'm really looking for various ways of making IF, not more IF to play. XD

The last link is the kind of thing I'm looking for... but it looks like it's working off of the distributed authorship model, and is smaller than the other options in that area.

ADRIFT (http://www.adrift.co) is another good one for parser based fiction. The community appears to be going through kind of an unfortunate comatose period right now, but I've always liked it because unlike other IF platforms ADRIFT is aimed at writers with no programming knowledge. (If you know what you're doing there's supposedly a lot of complex stuff possible with the latest version but I never did get past the 'clicking and typing descriptions in a box' stage and never saw any need to.)

Also I would argue that stuff like Inform should hardly be classified as 'further afield' I mean parser-based IF has basically been the definition of IF since 1980 or so, CYOAs are kind of their own separate thing.

Well, sure, but it's 'further afield' from us here at CYS. ^_^

Good to know about another parser option, though!

Quest, a downloadable editor isn't CYOA, but rather traditional text based games. While it is a small community, the editor is great and easy to use. http://textadventures.co.uk