Adventure Game News for 03 Dec 07

Zoom 1.1.2

Zoom 1.1.2 adds support for the Interactive Fiction Database. Zoom now will let you find more IF through IFDB and download the games automatically.

SPAG Issue 50

The latest issue of SPAG, the e-zine for IF, marks something of a change for the zine.

As I mentioned, we have plenty of places to go to read and submit reviews now, many of them arguably more satisfying for both readers and writers than an old dinosaur like this. What we don't have, though, are other places for in-depth articles, for interviews, and for careful, detailed analysises of games, all with the editorial supervision missing from the world of Web 2.0. SPAG has kind of been traveling in this direction anyway, with the ongoing series on foreign language IF which should conclude next issue with features on the Italian community. I'd like to formalize this change in emphasis at this point, though.

Oh, yes, there are also interviews with Michael Gentry, David Cornelson, and Graeme Jefferis, as well as a handful of reviews.

IF Dissertation "Command Lines"

For his Ph.D. dissertation, Jeremy Douglass chose interactive fiction as his focus. His completed dissertation, "Command Lines," is now available. He has a new view of how a timeline of IF should be structured, and a lot of thoughts on IF backed up with specific examples, including an excellent dissection of Rematch.

Inform 7 Beta 5J39

Inform 7 Build 5J39 has one big change: now lists of values are first-class values in and of themselves. For example, you can do something like "let L be {2, 3, 5, 7, 11}" to make a list of numbers. In addition there are the usual set of bug fixes; see the change log for details.