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

[Sean Hammond]

Zork might actually be an interesting idea. It isn't FLOSS ofcourse,
but it's accessible. And it's so 'minimalist' in interface style,
which would remove a lot of potentially interfering factors. I might
be quite limited in what I could do with it though. I don't think I
can modify it, for example. Also I'm a little concerned that it's such
a parser puzzle, people might get too bogged down in that aspect.

Anyway, I'll take this to rec.arts.int-fiction as suggested.


On 5/25/06, Loïc Martin <lomartin3 at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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)
>
> --
> ubuntu-users mailing list
> ubuntu-users at lists.ubuntu.com
> https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-users
>


-- 
Sean's mailing list bin