Today, there was a screening of the documentary GET LAMP at Google Chicago, which happens to be a very short distance away from where I work.

We watched the main feature for an hour and a half, with thirty minutes of questions afterwards. The movie was just great. I was worried I ate too much pizza and drank too much pop (it's free at Google) and would miss part of the show by going to the bathroom, but I didn't.

It's occurred to me that though I knew a lot of names, I'd never seen the people behind the Infocom text adventures and so on. The movie has nearly everyone except Mark Crowther, who created the original Adventure. There's Scott Adams, who had the two-word parser games, and yes, he mentions how he and the Dilbert creator STILL get each other's mail. Many of the Infocom big-shots were there, and Jason Scott mentioned people said he couldn't get them for interviews. But he did.

During the Q&A Jason Scott also mentioned a lot of the extra DVD features, and there are a ton of them. He had a lot of extra footage which couldn't fit into the main bits, and it seemed really tempting to buy. I also enjoyed the glimpses of notes from files (especially Steve Meretzky's files for Zork Zero) where I recognized what puzzle they were for. The chessboard, Double Fanucci, and the 24 Flathead treasures. Made me want to reevaluate the game, which I was originally lukewarm on.

Being able to put faces to the names in the IF community--Stephen Granade, Aaron Reed, Dan Shiovitz, Nick Montfort, Andrew Plotkin--was awesome, but a lot of their views on what was new and what shouldn't be done ("NO MAZES! NO PUZZLE WITH THE 5 LITER BEAKER AND THE 3 LITER BEAKER!") were interesting as were their acknowledgement that there was a core of people who kept the IF flame going, but in doing so, they may've gotten a bit resistant to new people who think that the already-tried stuff is REALLY, REALLY neat (e.g. setting an IF in your home or your high school.)

I brought along a notebook just in case I wanted to take notes and walked away with about 3 pages of stuff to research Google or search on wikipedia/ifwiki.org, whether it was names, games or terminology.

I was pleasantly surprised when they expressed thoughts I had, though it was at least as common that they had new takes on IF and how to make a good text adventure that seemed immediately sensible. And given I want to write my own text adventure, the discussions in the movie and afterwards immediately helped me focus on the stuff I wanted to try. There've been a lot of exercises I've done for myself that aren't publishable, but I think they're important.

Jason Scott also mentioned some other projects he had and how he put them on kickstarter and also donated to other artists there. It seems like an interesting idea for his specific projects and also in general. I could see myself donating--and I definitely want to see his BBS documentary, which is apparently a lot longer. It'll be neat, that time around, to watch a subject I'm not that well acquainted with.

Google Chicago was awesome. I sort of got lost accidentally on purpose going to the bathroom just so I could look inside the Ferris Bueller and Risky Business meeting rooms. The host, no mean IF writer himself (won IFComp2009 as cowriter) said one visitor described it as "day care for 20 year olds."
Oh yeah. I got two boxes of pizza to take home, too, because the hosts ordered too many.

Most recent blog posts from Andrew Schultz...
Revisiting Bard's Tale Childhood dream: achieved! I'm on Itch.Io, yay. Is anyone else?

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	zippdementia - October 21, 2010 (10:13 PM) Wow. You must be huge from all that pizza. That's a really cool experience, Aschultz! I'm glad you reported on it. Why don't you submit this to Gameroni, no changes needed, and we'll get it posted as a chatter about the con!
	aschultz - October 21, 2010 (11:49 PM) Wow, sure, thanks! Let me know if I need to make an account or anything. Also, let me know if you'd like further notes. I tried to write down a lot of stuff from memory, but I wish I'd paid more attention to the questions afterwards. PS if anyone's in Maryland or New Hampshire, Jet Lamp tracks where Jason Scott will be. He views promotion of Get Lamp as a full time job now, so he may return to somewhere near you. It's worth it.
	zippdementia - October 22, 2010 (12:46 AM) Yeah, head over to http://www.gameroni.com/ and apply as a guest contributor. Let me know if there are any problems.
	zigfried - October 22, 2010 (05:39 AM) Please keep recruiting restricted to HG mails, thanks. Schultz, you're supposed to tell me when stuff like this is happening! Definitely sounds like a cool event. I normally don't realize how much I miss those days until someone else talks about them, and then I get all nostalgic and crap. //Zig
	Leroux - October 22, 2010 (02:23 PM) You know what I think of recruiting away from us? It's a real fucking dick move. ~Leroux
	zippdementia - October 22, 2010 (02:38 PM) Leroux, chill. Sorry man, but you're totally off mark here. I completely understand if recruitment shouldn't go on the forums (though I actually posted this on the blog unaware that it was posting on the forums). But two things: First of all, I wasn't saying that Ashcultz should remove this Blog post from HG. I was suggesting that he submit it to Gameroni, because it would be a great article. We don't really do articles at HG: we do reviews. I'm not taking away HG's business. Secondly, I continue to write for HG and be active here, as active or more than most members can boast. So please think about what you're saying and who you are saying it to before you go launching accusations about people's intentions all over the forum/blogs. You know what else is a dick move? Attacking people publicly when you easily could have discussed this with me in private. Thanks for that. That said, no hard feelings. I just wanted to clear this up straight away. I don't like being misrepresented.
	EmP - October 22, 2010 (03:11 PM) Please keep in future mind that if someone had shown up and said "Hey, you should totally go post this on GenericreviewSite.com!", even you would probably raise an eyebrow at least or post a "get lost" retort at most. Gameroni might share some of the same people stretched across it, but spamming is never acceptable. Especially since this isn't the first time the subject has been bought up and it's not the first time people have taken offense. Other users have complained about it in the past; I don't blame them. No one wants to see this kind of thing splashed all over the forums. Blogs are a different matter (hence why the posts are removed from the forms but should remain on the blog) but, really, this is the kind of thing you should be using HGmail or direct contact for. I hope this is the last time we need to go though this. From here on out, I'll be treating these kinds of posts in the same way I do the ones pimping out cheap drugs and porn. Even if, technically, those spams would lead me to a much more interesting site. It's a shame that this has de-railed a very interesting read. As such, Schultz will receive an official EmP ::Thumbs Up:: there are only a reported four in existence.
	Leroux - October 22, 2010 (03:25 PM) The worry among the HG user base with this Gameroni venture was HG becoming second fiddle. Seeing ideas originating here ending up over there promotes that thinking, no matter what, and the inverse isn't happening with your reviews even though you peg us as "for reviews." My initial thought, before I went to work this morning, was that this would be a neat feature for HG (given the IF posts of late here), but before those wheels were in motion you were making editorial decisions for another site regarding it. I was not expecting that to happen. And I don't think it should happen. And I don't think staff should be misrepresented as passive about it. Keep the sites separate to avoid issue.
	zippdementia - October 22, 2010 (03:29 PM) It's a real fucking shame, in fact.
	overdrive - October 23, 2010 (12:03 AM) Leroux, EmP...while I understand and agree with much of your collective point(s), considering I'm not a big fan of using one site to spam another...exactly how big of a gulf are we supposed to have between what supposedly are "sister sites" which have multiple people focusing on one, but still contributing to the other? I'm pretty sure Zipp had no "dick move" motives when making his request of Schultz, but I can understand the negative sentiment towards using the public boards of Site A to plug submitting something to Site B. As well as using the public boards of one to promote what one's doing on the other. I think I've done that twice, once when I first started and once in conjunction with what I was doing here. I have no issues with restraining my self-pimping to Twitter and Facebook (ADD ME!!!!...shit...didn't cross the line with that, did I?). But on the other hand, I'm not so down with the opinion that a separate site containing people who do still contribute some things here (and vice versa) is on the level of a generic gaming spammer or a pill/porn spammer. I'd be more cool with figuring out a way to have one hand wash the other than having one look for a sharp knife to chop the other off at first chance.
	zippdementia - October 23, 2010 (12:52 AM) What are your thoughts, A-man, on puzzles in IF? I know you've talked about being highly interested in more puzzle based IF games, but I think you also suggest a sentiment here towards more story based IF...?
	aschultz - October 24, 2010 (08:45 AM) Well, that's a tough question. I like puzzles. I am heavily biased towards puzzle games, and they don't need much in the way of graphics. Yet at the same time, there are some abstract puzzles that don't belong. That's part of what made Zork Zero less than the previous three. Yes, I mentioned it was cool to see Meretzky's notes, but that was partially nostalgic/wow value. Z0 had logic puzzles which are just neat to look at, even if you don't get them. Like the guy who asks if you want to die by hanging or beheading--but gives you one last wish. For the hard-core puzzle types, there's a game of Nim and Towers of Hanoi, which is super-great if you enjoy the more detailed stuff and want to say "how would I program that" or "how would I make a solution to that." Most IF'ers just don't care. I can't blame them. This was all impressive, but I didn't enjoy it as much as simpler puzzles. Because Infocom's games were at a certain level, I guess I never noticed bad mistakes that text adventures could make. But looking back, I remember that one command to skip the annoying sewer maze in Leather Goddesses of Phobos (the part in the in-game hints, so I think they knew--Inever worked it out the REAL way through) and on the other hand, mazes-that-weren't-mazes like the part in Zork 2 with the glowing squares. The second is an example of the really cool puzzles that point and laugh at brute force. I mean, mazes can be cool in RPGs. I really like them there. I wrote a pseudo-RPG in Inform 7 because I could. Great programming exercise. Lousy game. I also know that RPGs with nothing but a cool maze suck. But I think one reason mazes work in RPGs is that they give you a you-versus-the-world feel, and in text adventures, you don't need it. It's more, (for simple games anyway) you have 10 items to interact with and 10 critical verbs, so trial and error is possible, and yet you can still be blinded what to do, which can be very good or very bad. Of course, you don't want to get into Guess-the-Verb. I think the way is to catch someone in the narrative so they can plausibly miss something obvious or that was obvious once they look back. This is not a science. Yet I've been pleasantly surprised by having relatively simple puzzles result in an entertaining storyline, or better, alternate ones if you solve puzzles in a different order. For instance, in this year's IFComp, The People's Glorious Revolutionary Text Adventure Game does this pretty well, even though you should be able to guess at all the solutions. Paradoxically, it does nothing revolutionary in IF, but it's good fun. Same with a game called Toonesia from a way back. It employs cartoon logic and it's fun to watch the character die and then solve the puzzle the right way. I guess there are only so many good, canonical puzzles, but there is always some joke that can be rehashed, or better yet, combined with another joke so that it's really funny. That would make a good puzzle, to combine two things you know. So I don't think it's puzzles that don't belong as much as the really abstract ones. They take away from the original stuff IF can do, and they've probably been done a lot better--and with more excitement--in a non-IF game. Besides, one Zork or another probably covered it. Zork 3 has block-pushing and hiding items with time travel--so does Beyond Zork. Zork 1 has an annoying maze where you need to drop items in each room. Zork 2 has another annoying maze based on how you entered the room. All other mazes just change the directions and add/subtract rooms. Zork Zero has a whole pile of logic puzzles. All these are worth knowing how to do, and you feel smart for doing them. But they're one-time deals. Once you've done them, you don't want to revisit your scratchwork--because it's not the scratchwork you'd remember or enthuse to someone else about. And I've read a lot of books featuring mazes. The map itself isn't what interests me, or people using the "follow the left wall" algorithm, or even people working through teleports etc. (stuff useful in RPGs)--it's if the maze forces the people in it to try something different. I have a lot of catching up to do with all the freeware text adventures but I've gauged what I might find really interesting, and I think there are a lot of opportunities for moral choices that you don't have in more graphically detailed games. Once graphics come into the mix there's a strong possibility it gets melodramatic. (Side note: Ultima IV and Ultima V are very good for moral choice stuff. The graphics are good but don't overtake the plot.) I've seen examples where it's worked in IF and where it hasn't, and even the bad moral choice puzzles are better than the cleverest maze. You can't argue with a maze, or think of another story it would give. You can, with pure abstract puzzles.
	sashanan - October 26, 2010 (03:26 AM) Like the guy who asks if you want to die by hanging or beheading--but gives you one last wish. Actually you asking ot be beheaded is what ruins the system in the first place :P I knew this puzzle from Zork Zero long before I learned it's a much older riddle.