Twisty Little Passages: an Approach to Interactive Fiction Free Ebook

FREETWISTY LITTLE PASSAGES: AN APPROACH TO INTERACTIVE FICTION EBOOK

Become a fan of Slashdot on Facebook. Eight chapters, arranged in roughly-chronological order, detail the lineage of interactive fiction from its origins in Delphic riddles to its newest and most intriguing forms. Passion and precision Among Montfort's first statements is one that demonstrates a commitment to careful scholarship that recurs throughout the book: " Text adventure and interactive fiction do not mean exactly the same thing. These titles, among others, demonstrate that IF isn't just a delivery vehicle for the stereotyped themes of juvenile fiction with which it's often associated. Montfort proceeds to explain why he found it necessary to write Twisty Little Passages :. Naming the game Assuming the art of interactive fiction began with the riddle, what constitutes a work of IF today? After a brief excerpt from LookingGlass Technologies veteran Dan Schmidt 's For A Change gives us an example of description, interaction and puzzle-solving, Montfort goes on to establish four requisite aspects of IF:. A text-accepting, text-generating computer program ; A potential narrative a system that produces narrative during interaction ; A simulation of an environment or world ; and A structure of rules within which an outcome is sought, also known as a game. Works which do not include each of these elements are deliberately excluded, among them "hypertext fiction," most graphical computer games, and numerous experimental titles. In this respect, Montfort perhaps misses an opportunity to reflect upon the true extent of IF's influence over the rest of Twisty Little Passages: An Approach to Interactive Fiction entertainment software world. With a reported 30, lines of text in Deus Ex 2 - more than any Infocom game ever boasted - I'd argue that the historical text-only criterion is becoming more questionable all the time. The rise of the smart machines Much more than a theoretical treatise on IF, Twisty Little Passages is also the most complete chronicle of important IF titles, authors, and publishers assembled to date. Its middle four chapters focus largely on academic and commercial efforts at crafting and publishing interactive fiction. Chapter 3 begins with an introduction of the concept of generative literary machines "ergodic literature". Montfort cites the Turing machine-like nature of the I Chingfollowed by a mention of Jonathan Swift's satirical machine from Gulliver's Travels, "made of equal parts of irony, sarcasm, and mockery, that would automatically write books on all the arts and sciences. The mother of all computer games, in Montfort's view, was Spanish engineer Leonardo Quevedo's chess-playing robot. Devised to attack a particular endgame problem on a vertically-oriented chessboard, Quevedo's machine was unique in that it represented the first so-called "chess automaton" that operated by legitimate electromechanical means rather than by fraudulently-concealed midgets. A subsequent refinement of Quevedo's machine would later catch the eye of famed computer scientist and AI researcher Norbert Wiener, achieving recognition as the first genuine attempt at artificial intelligence. Mechanical curiosities aside, no discussion of human-computer interaction would be complete without inviting Joseph Weizenbaum's ELIZA to the party. As the first convincing conversation "bot", ELIZA accepted plain-English input from a human interlocutor, transforming it albeit with no semantic understanding into a sympathetic textual murmur geared to Twisty Little Passages: An Approach to Interactive Fiction further input:. Crowther is a contemporary of Zork co-author Dave Leblingwho, coincidentally, was a member of the same Dungeons and Dragons group in Cambridge, Massachusetts. In one of Montfort's many personal communications with IF luminaries, Lebling says:. Zork 's innovations over the state of the art established by Adventure are too numerous to count, although Montfort explicitly avoids the common mistake of canonizing Zork and Infocom games in general while giving short shrift to other important IF efforts. Alas, poor Infocom. In Montfort's words, Infocomwhich was founded June 22, by Lebling, Blank, Anderson, and seven other MIT alumni, "began work on the foundation of IF while the plot of ground that it was to be built upon had not been completely surveyed. Chapter 6 "Different Visions Worldwide" opens with a quick drive-by tour of Roberta Williams 's Mystery Houserecognized as the first graphical adventure game. Brief histories of British IF publishers Level 9 and Magnetic Scrolls round out the chapter, along with an even-briefer mention of Legend Entertainmentwritten before Legend's shutdown in early The latter constitutes one of the few weak spots in Twisty Little Passages 's coverage of the classics. Legend's integration of music, artwork, graphical navigation, and other interface enhancements in the Spellcasting series went far beyond Infocom's efforts to modernize their own IF engines, and the company deserves more than a single paragraph. At the end of Chapter 6, Montfort recounts the failure of former Infocom author Mike Berlyn 's Cascade Mountain Publishingone of the last commercial publishers of pure text-based IF. He proceeds to draw a sheet over the commercial market for interactive fiction in general, pronouncing it Twisty Little Passages: An Approach to Interactive Fiction dead as Graham Chapman's parrot:. Fortunately, as the last two chapters reveal, a healthy independent IF community has sprung up to take the place of the commercial publishers Twisty Little Passages: An Approach to Interactive Fiction are no longer with us. IF's independent authors: the once and future scene In Aprilat the culmination Twisty Little Passages: An Approach to Interactive Fiction a long reverse-engineering effort by "a group of programmers called Twisty Little Passages: An Approach to Interactive Fiction InfoTaskForce" pageGraham Nelson released an object-oriented programming language capable of creating story files for the Infocom Z-machine interpreter. Two tentacles up I can wholeheartedly recommend Twisty Little Passages not only to IF fans and amateur historians, but to anyone serious about the foundations and culture of computer gaming. Infocom and Legend Entertainment auteur Steve Meretzky's back-cover blurb says it all: " Twisty Little Passages is a thoroughly-researched history of interactive fiction, as well as a Twisty Little Passages: An Approach to Interactive Fiction analysis of the genre. Reading it makes me itch to fire up that old DEC and start writing interactive fiction again! As a fan of the IF art form as a whole, I'm indeed lucky to Twisty Little Passages: An Approach to Interactive Fiction run across Nick Montfort's excellent book. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelinesthen visit the submission page. It's a damn good thing I wasn't drinking anything right then, or I would be demanding compensation for my keyboard. To answer your very amusing question, though - yes. In fact, it's one of the best book reviews I've ever seen on slashdot. Perhaps a tad lengthy, but you can't have everything. There is also a command that can be used to make Zippy mode converse with doctor mode, but I can't find it after a few moments of searching. It is really more interesting to think about than to see it run All of the reviews I've seen, including my own [brasslantern. You can see some of those reviews listed on the author's page about the books [nickm. It's an extremely accessible book, which isn't easy to do, and the highest praise I can give it is that I wish I'd written it. Obviously, some of these games are better than others But, trying to rank them alongside legitimate literature seems mighty presumptuous. Legitimate authors struggle to perfect their reader's experience, and would never deliberately abandon it to dice-throws. If it happens that some interactive game is found to harbor a deep and worthwhile intellectual point, then a "real" author, rather than writing that game, will tell the story of a character who plays it. And frankly, I think the elitist insistence that the reader is not the author mirrors the chestnut that a bad reader is worse than no reader at all. The question is not, "who is a legitimate author? Instead, Twisty Little Passages: An Approach to Interactive Fiction questions are, "who is a legitimate reader? If you boil down all our readings to your ideas about literary forms and formats and ignore us, it'. It's been many years since I played Sorcerer, though -- I could be mis-remembering it entirely. You post a long-winded rant that calls interactive fiction the 'worst episode evar! You feel the might of thousands of negative comments weighing you down and the heat of flames licking your feet. You have fallen prey to the vicious Homonym! It's too late. The bloodthirsty Slashdotters have beaten you to -1 Troll, and the vicious Homonym has picked your bones clean! You're banned Twisty Little Passages: An Approach to Interactive Fiction the day! I discovered this game inand it took me until to get by the snake. I'm still not done. I load it up every few years and play actively for a month or two. What better technology than that between your ears? Alas, I tried showing some of my old text adventure games to some young cousins of mine, and of course, they just did NOT "get it. To continue your saved game, choose your game and type 'restore' after it starts. Wow, really? Good point! It's a shame no one seems to have noticed that error, except the reviewer and the author and most everyone else:. At least four of these six statements are clearly false, and the remaining two are misleading. Donald E. It won't stop you from winning the game, since that's not an essential object. Time went by about 8 years and I changed jobs a couple of times. One day, I was talking with a daughter site in Boston, and somehow the subject of Adventure came up. He was trying to do something with it, and happened to mention the name of the userid that created it. Modern AI is pretty much based on Winograd's work. They were the basis of the great commercial AI scare of the s, into which many zillions of venture capital was poured, and from which sprang, well, not much. The game was unmistakably written for an old-fashioned CRT: Most of the room descriptions were two or three lines long, but when you first came to the "Volcano View" the screen flooded with text, a description exactly 80 chars wide by 23 lines long, leaving just one line at the bottom of t. A more absurd account can hardly be imagined. The universe, it seems, was created by "Implementers" who directed the running of great engines. These engines produced this world and others, strange and wondrous, as a test or puzzle for others of their kind. It goes on to sta. One particularly funny story I would like to relate was my mastering of the adventure game included with GNU emacs yes, there is one among other things. I managed to make. There may be more comments in this discussion. Without JavaScript enabled, you might want to turn on Classic Discussion System in your preferences instead. Time is nature's way of making sure that everything doesn't happen at once. Space is nature's way of making sure that everything doesn't happen to you. Slashdot Apparel is back! Do you develop on GitHub? You can keep using GitHub but automatically sync your GitHub releases to SourceForge quickly and easily with this tool and take advantage of SourceForge's massive reach. Follow Slashdot on LinkedIn. John Miles writes "It's been almost thirty years since young Laura and Sandy Crowther sat down at a Teletype and took Twisty Little Passages: An Approach to Interactive Fiction first steps into the mysterious subterranean world their father, Will, created for them. Now, if Nick Montfort's Twisty Little Passages: An Approach to Interactive Fiction Twisty Little Passages: An Approach to Interactive Fiction any indication, Crowther and Woods's pioneering computer game Adventure and its descendants are finally beginning to garner the critical recognition they deserve. At only pages, Twisty Little Passages is a small, accessible book that addresses a deep and complex subject. The author's stated intention is to bring us the first book-length consideration of interactive fiction IF as a legitimate literary field, and he has certainly succeeded. To see why a solid treatment of IF needs to be written, one need only consider this selection from the single page that mentions IF in Ilana Snyder's. Twisty Little Passages | The MIT Press

Goodreads helps you keep track of books you want to read. Want to Read saving…. Want to Read Currently Reading Read. Other editions. Enlarge cover. Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Open Preview See a Problem? Details if other :. Thanks for telling us about the problem. Return to Book Page. A critical approach to interactive fiction, as literature and game. Interactive fiction--the best-known form of which is the text game or text adventure--has not received as much critical attention as have such other forms of electronic literature as hypertext fiction and the conversational programs known as chatterbots. Twisty Little Passages the title refers to a maze in A critical approach to interactive fiction, as literature and game. Twisty Little Passages the title refers to a maze in Adventurethe first interactive fiction is the first book-length consideration of this form, examining it from gaming and literary perspectives. Nick Montfort, an interactive fiction author himself, offers both aficionados and first-time users a way to approach interactive fiction that will lead to a more pleasurable and meaningful experience of it. Twisty Little Passages looks at interactive fiction beginning with its most important literary ancestor, the riddle. Montfort then discusses Adventure and its precursors including the I Ching and Dungeons and Dragonsand follows this with an examination of mainframe text games developed in response, focusing on the most influential work of that era, Zork. He then considers the introduction of commercial interactive fiction for home computers, particularly that produced by Infocom. Commercial works inspired an independent reaction, and Montfort describes the emergence of independent creators and the development of an online interactive fiction community in the s. Finally, he considers the influence of interactive fiction on other literary and gaming forms. With Twisty Little PassagesNick Montfort places interactive fiction in its computational and literary contexts, opening up this still-developing form to new consideration. Get A Copy. Paperbackpages. More Details Original Title. Other Editions 2. Friend Reviews. To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up. To ask other readers questions about Twisty Little Passagesplease sign up. Be the first to ask a question about Twisty Little Passages. Lists with This Book. Community Reviews. Showing Average rating 3. Rating details. More filters. Sort order. Feb 15, Aneel rated it did not like it. Sadly, I found this rather dull. It's literary criticism about Infocom-style text adventure games. Because this is a pretty new field Twisty Little Passages: An Approach to Interactive Fiction games have been around for decades, but apparently nobody has given them a serious critical readingthe author spends a good deal of time just defining terms and providing a history of the genre. Montfort spends an early chapter arguing that Twisty Little Passages: An Approach to Interactive Fiction adventure games are descendants of riddles, a more established literary form. This seems to be the meaty idea in Sadly, I found this rather dull. This seems to be the meaty idea in the book, but I felt it wasn't very well-developed. Perhaps I'm just Twisty Little Passages: An Approach to Interactive Fiction used to reading criticism, but it seemed like he was constantly telling the reader about the point he was about to make, rather than making the point. I'm tempted to play a bunch of the recent works he describes. I didn't get much more out of the book than that, though. May 06, Paul Bond rated it liked it Shelves: reviewed. A well-researched book on a fascinating topic, "Twisty Little Passages" is still surprisingly leaden. I suspect the issue is organization. Telling the history of interactive gaming mainly as a historical development, with some academic overlay, obscures the reasons this form should be of more general interest. Aug 19, Phil rated it it was ok. The subtitle to this book is "An approach to interactive fiction. Maybe some suggestions as to how best navigate a work. Or maybe some suggestion on how to approach interactive fiction from the point of writing a work best practices, common pitfalls, etc. Either way, I would have been interested and appreciative. Instead, what this book really is is a very comprehensive histor The subtitle to this book is "An approach to interactive fiction. Instead, what this book really is is a very comprehensive history of the form. As a historical lesson, this book is spot on. But I didn't need to read page after page after page of the author proving that interactive fiction is actually a new form of the riddle. While learning the history was nice, it's not what I was looking for, and the book read at times like a dry history book. For those looking for the history of interactive fiction, this book is for you. For those looking for some insight on how to actually use interactive fiction, as either a player or a designer, this one misses the mark. Mar 17, Steve Losh rated it did not like it. I got about a quarter of the way into this and had to stop. It's just awful. I tried to give this one a fair shot. I really did. One of this author's other Twisty Little Passages: An Approach to Interactive Fiction, Racing the Beam, has enough technical content to make it worth wading through all the countless "I am smart so let me Twisty Little Passages: An Approach to Interactive Fiction lots of big-sounding words" pages. But this book never seems to evolve past the "let' I got about a quarter of the way into this and had to stop. But this book never seems to evolve past the "let's define lots of impressive soundings words by referring to other impressive sounding words" stage. I had to stop. I couldn't take it. I'm sorry. Feb 27, Ken rated it Twisty Little Passages: An Approach to Interactive Fiction was ok Shelves: nonfic- topic. A well-researched history of interactive fiction, but with problems holding my interest. There's little investigation into the substantive technical details of the IF platforms, and the insight into IF stories and their various elements is only skin-deep and that bit vastly over-analyzed. The one redeeming part is the chapter on Infocom's history and games. Twisty Little Passages: An Approach to Interactive Fiction that strikes your interest then skim it, otherwise skip it and try Jimmy Twisty Little Passages: An Approach to Interactive Fiction book about the Amiga instead: The Future Was Here: The C A well-researched history of interactive fiction, but with problems holding my interest. Dec 20, Olivia Dunlap rated it liked it Shelves: owned. There is some really good information here, but I feel like it gets a bit lost in its own twisty passages. The sections seem to ramble, and a larger portion of the book simply presented history of the form than I expected. Overall, I do recommend it to anyone interested in interactive fiction at all, but to those who are already familiar with the format and its history, only a few chapters will be of much interest. Personally, I learned a lot and have many of pages bookmarked for future referenc There is some really good information here, but I feel like it gets a bit lost in its own twisty passages. Oct 15, DeadWeight rated it it was ok. Jul 17, S G-W rated it liked it. A good resource, but the writing structure just totally breaks down in the final third. Aug 30, Patrick Kennedy rated it really liked it Shelves: dungeons-and-dragons. Great book about interactive fiction and text-based adventure games as an outgrowth of early rpgs. A little dry, yeah, but honestly for anyone who grew up with an Atari or a TRS 80 this stuff is catnip. Great bit of pop culture history. Nothing else really like it. IF worlds are reflected in, but not equivalent to, maps, object trees, and descriptive texts. The IF world is no less than the content plane of interactive fiction, just as the story is the content plane of a narrative. The arrangement of challenges and the way in which the IF world can be experienced can be discussed with reference to the riddle. An art such as architecture, which considers that people may take different courses through a space, also has advantages in considering this aspect. To understand how language functions in interactive fiction and what the literary aspects of interactive fiction are, the best comparison seems to be not to the novel but to the form of poetry considered here, the riddle. The riddle, like an IF work, must express itself clearly enough to be solved, obliquely enough to be challenging, and beautifully enough to be compelling. Twisty Little Passages: An Approach to Interactive Fiction by Nick Montfort

Interactive fiction—the best-known Twisty Little Passages: An Approach to Interactive Fiction of which is the text game or text adventure—has not received as much critical attention as have such other forms of electronic literature as hypertext fiction and the conversational programs known as chatterbots. Twisty Little Passages the title refers to a maze in Adventurethe first interactive fiction is the first book-length consideration of this form, examining it from gaming and literary perspectives. Nick Montfort, an interactive fiction author himself, offers both aficionados and first-time users a way to approach interactive fiction that will lead to a more pleasurable and meaningful experience of it. Twisty Little Passages looks at interactive fiction beginning with its most important literary ancestor, the riddle. Montfort then discusses Adventure and its precursors including the I Ching and Dungeons and Dragonsand follows this with an examination of mainframe text games developed in response, focusing on the most influential work of that era, Zork. He then considers the introduction of commercial interactive fiction for home computers, particularly that produced by Infocom. Commercial works inspired an independent reaction, and Montfort describes the emergence of independent creators and the development of an online interactive fiction community in the s. Finally, he considers the influence of interactive fiction Twisty Little Passages: An Approach to Interactive Fiction other literary and gaming forms. With Twisty Little PassagesNick Montfort places interactive fiction in its computational and literary contexts, opening up this still-developing form to new consideration. Anyone interested in the use of technology for artistic and cultural purposes should crack open Twisty Little Passages. Twisty Little Passages is, Twisty Little Passages: An Approach to Interactive Fiction simply, one of the best books on hypermedia, period. This book not only made me reconsider the importance of interactive fiction as a genre within hypermedia, it also made me devote a hefty portion of my graduate courses to IF—and Twisty Little Passages. Hell, after reading it, I even went out and bought every Infocom title I could lay my hands on. It's that good. This is a thoroughly researched history of interactive fiction, as well as a brilliant analysis of the genre. Reading it makes me itch to fire up that old DEC and start writing interactive fiction again! Nick Montfort's excellent book puts interactive fiction into its literary context for the first time. Just as groundbreaking studies of romance and the gothic novel have broadened our idea of literary fiction, so Montfort makes a powerful case for recognition of this extraordinary new form of art: of the poetry that must live within the machine. Newcomers will find all that they need here, while those who are already aficionados will be constantly informed and surprised. Nick Montfort. Search Search. Search Advanced Search close Close. Add to Cart Buying Options. Request Permissions Exam copy. Overview Author s Praise. Summary A critical approach to interactive fiction, as literature and game. November February Share Share Share email. Reviews Anyone interested in the use of technology for artistic and cultural purposes should crack open Twisty Little Passages. Book Bytes. Endorsements Twisty Little Passages is, quite simply, one of the best books on hypermedia, period. Graham Nelson St. Anne's College, Oxford University, author and critic of interactive fiction. https://cdn.sqhk.co/shannonbrownkt/gfQXsC1/successful-school-leadership-international-perspectives-21.pdf https://static.s123-cdn-static.com/uploads/4574196/normal_5fc7064a98961.pdf https://cdn.sqhk.co/alyssadavisgi/JLiajb5/insight-guides-explore-melbourne-27.pdf https://static.s123-cdn-static.com/uploads/4569791/normal_5fc49c11b81c8.pdf https://static.s123-cdn-static.com/uploads/4574381/normal_5fc699079af36.pdf https://static.s123-cdn-static.com/uploads/4569807/normal_5fc5cd481a411.pdf