What's wrong with this picture? If you're tried
interactive fiction and hated it, you may think you know. Actually, may kids get off to
bad start with IF when someone says, "Look at this great program! All you have
to do is type in what you want to do. It's just like reading a novel!" But when
you try a story yourself, you seem to get nothing but error messages that make very little
sense. In truth, even the best IF programs can deal with only a few kinds of
English sentences. However, if you're working with commercially sold interactive
fiction, there's an easy way around this problem. Just read the instructions that
come with each of the stories, and you'll find communicating with the programs much
easier.
If you are reading shareware or freeware works of IF, however, try these suggestions.
All works of interactive fiction, even the very earliest ones, can recognize sentences
like "take coin," which the story will consider to mean, "I want to take
the coin." The IF stories recommended here can recognize many more kinds of
sentences, but experienced readers often keep the two-word pattern in mind, anyway. For
example, IF stories can now recognize "Take the gold coin," "Take the gold
coin from the fountain," or "Take the gold coin and give it to the
librarian."
In addition, most works of IF can recognize at least some simple questions that begin
with "who," "what," or "where." Most stories
also use a variety of useful abbreviations, including "g" for "again,"
"z" for "wait," "i" for "inventory of what I'm
carrying," "l" for "look," "n" for "go
north," "s" for "go south," and "u" for "go
up."
Conversing with other characters in IF can be lots of fun, but it can be frustrating,
too, unless you keep in mind several patterns that most of the stories can understand.
Directly talking to a character with a command will often work; for example, "Miss
Voss, tell me about the magic stone." Also, a reader can often make progress by
asking or telling a character about something, as in "Ask the bartender about the
vampire." Frequently, a story will interpret a single word to mean that the character
says the word. In other words, "hello" will often mean the same as "say
'hello,'" though it is necessary to type out "say
hello."
