Looking for a FLOSS interactive game/story/fiction project for research (Help!)

[Loïc Martin]

Sean Hammond a écrit :
> I'm doing research that involves computer games, specifically games
> which involve the player in a narrative of some form - story games,
> adventure games, interactive drama, interactive fiction, ideally I'm
> interested in childrens games and fairy tale games with simple
> stories.
>
> I know that's a vague definition of a type of game, but I intended it
> to be vague. I need a game, or some games, which I can design
> experiments around and which maybe I can build research tools on top
> of.
>
> Can anyone recommend any game(s) like this which are FLOSS, or which
> are at least freely available and easy to get working on Linux?
>
> Most academic research in this sort of area uses commercial games like
> Unreal Tournament, Neverwinter Nights or Half Life 2. They either use
> these games directly in studies, or they make their research tools as
> 'mods' to these games (usually removing the combat-oriented elements
> in favour of more character and story stuff). There are some projects
> which develop their own games, such as the Facade project
> (http://www.interactivestory.net/), but, as with the facade project,
> the code developed always seems to be proprietary and will only run on
> Windows XP.
>
> I believe in doing research using free software. Particularly, I want
> any software I develop as part of my research to be free software, and
> to not depend on any proprietary software. Ideally I'd like to have
> some code at the end of my research which, after some finishing up
> work, I could attempt to package for Debian or Ubuntu, or I'd like to
> have contributed to some FLOSS project. Additionnally, I can't get
> Windows to run on my PC, at least not without going to extreme
> lengths. And lastly, I find having to work with and depend on and
> generally come into contact with Windows and proprietary commercial
> products from the games industry very depressing. It causes my
> motivation to drop very steeply, and I need to be motivated if I'm
> going to succeed at this research.
>
> I just wasted a few hours (once again) trying to get Unreal Tournament
> to install on Linux, which is probably pointless anyway because the
> research 'mod' I want to test with it was written in Java and there
> are no instructions to get it working. It probably has other
> proprietary dependencies that aren't documented.
>
> So, this is a call for help. I don't want to get sucked into this
> commercial hell. I need some sort of FLOSS project which I can design
> my research around.
>
> Any suggestions would be appreciated.
>
Zork? (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zork)