ART COM magazine Number 43 (Volume 10 Number 9, November 1990); the first one of two issues on Interactive Fiction
ART COM magazine Number 44 (Volume 10 Number 10, December 1990); the second one of two issues on Interactive Fiction
Information about development systems for Interactive Fiction, by Nathan Torkington. Last update: 23nov94.
Whizzard's Guide to Text Adventure Authorship base document version 2.0 by Gerry Kevin Wilson.
Whizzard's Guide to Text Adventure Authorship supplement #1 (25may95) to version 2.0 by Gerry Kevin Wilson.
Whizzard's Guide to Text Adventure Authorship supplement #2 (25jun95) to version 2.0 by Gerry Kevin Wilson.
The Craft of Adventure, Second Edition, Five Articles on the Design of Adventure Games, by Graham Nelson. Plain text version. (for versions of this document in different formats, look in info/)
Second Generation Adventure Games, by David Graves, reprinted from The Journal of Computer Game Design, Volume 1, Number 2, August 1987
Bringing Characters to Life, by David Graves, reprinted from The Journal of Computer Game Design, Volume 2, Number 2, December 1988
Plot Automation, by David Graves, reprinted from The Journal of Computer Game Design, Volume 5, Number 1, October 1991
Text Based Interactive Fiction and Computational Linguistics, by Toni Arnold. A paper presented at the University of Tartu, Estonia, in September 1996 (PostScript)
How to Make a Good Design for an IF Game -and- How to Write Good Textual Adventures (in C, with code examples), by Vladimir Krstulja. Revised version July 1997
A large collection of quotes from IF reviews, assembled with the authors' permission by David Fisher. HTML format.
A large collection of quotes from IF reviews, assembled with the authors' permission by David Fisher. PDF format.
A large collection of quotes from IF reviews, assembled with the authors' permission by David Fisher. Plain text format.
PICKLE Development Kit, by Andrew C. Plotkin - a suggestion how to encapsulate different types of data into one game file. Contains the PICKLE specifications version 1 (25dec95), source code of samples and utilities, and documentation.
Same as above plus Macintosh executables
Project paper "The Application of Directed Acyclic Graphs to First Generation Interactive Fiction" (WordPerfect document and plain ASCII text) and a TADS implementation of plot DAGs, by Paul Munn.
A thread from rec.arts.int-fiction discussing the pros and cons of scoring in interactive fiction
An update to the ALAN information in whichsys.zip.
An update to the TADS information in whichsys.zip, by Neil K. Guy, 15oct98.
The "Which Authoring System Is Better" FAQ, revision 0.1, 20feb96, initial publication, a detailed discussion and comparison of 10 IF authoring systems (TADS, Inform, ALAN, Hugo, AGT, Archetype, GINAS, LADS, Gamescape, and Aventuro) by Bob Newell. This file contains the document in four formats: PostScript, TeX, DVI, and plain ASCII text.