I’ve loved computer programming for quite a while now. I don’t know exactly how old I was when I first started programming in QBASIC, but I know there was a book on BASIC programming I checked out from my school library over and over again sometime in elementary school. I didn’t have a way to write the programs in it at the time, but I loved reading it. A couple of years later I started on QBASIC. (You don’t need line numbers? The line numbers don’t have to be in order?) Then I got a computer that wasn’t hopelessly out of date and went off to ASMSA, where I learned Java, my language of choice since (though Python is pretty neat). Most of my class notes for the next couple of years included snippets of Java code.
So programming’s been part of my life for a while now. Sadly, I’m kind of out of date. Since I started serious work on my writing last year, a lot of my other hobbies have fallen by the wayside (notably not including gaming). Programming’s one of these, and it kind of makes me sad sometimes.
I don’t know where I’m going with this. (Am I allowed to admit that?) But I have to wrap it up somehow, right? Oh, hey, I remember now! I’ve been being attacked by programming ideas again lately. Mostly I’ve just been jotting them down for later reference, but a couple have stuck with me. One of these has to do with Inform.
Inform is this lovely little programming language I discovered . . . four or five years ago at ASMSA. (Whoah. That long?) In short, it’s a programming language designed for writing text adventures, and if you don’t know what those are I’m not going to spend a lot of time explaining them in this post. It’s been a while since I played with Inform, and apparently there’s been a major upgrade to the language since I last did (as in, apparently the coding is intended to be in natural language now — whoah — but I’ve not yet toyed with the new version.) Nonetheless, if I write a text adventure any time soon, it’ll be in Inform. And I just might, because I have a nifty idea.
I love indie games. I love books. I’m a writer. I’m a programmer. Why not smash these together a bit? I have an idea for a text adventure prequel to a duology that’s been kicking around the back of my head for a while now. I think it’d be neat — the text adventure available free on this site, with some references back and forth between it and the duology so that neither is necessary to enjoy the other, but they enhance each other.
That’s about it for tonight. I bid you all well.
Current Music: Creedence Clearwater Revival, Bad Moon Rising. I’m listening to a Pandora station seeded on Johnny Cash right now. I love Johnny Cash.