Greg Boettcher's Interactive Fiction Page

My work-in-progress is a game called Nothing but Mazes. The game is unfinished, but I released the introductory part of the game to IntroComp 2006, a competition for unfinished games. It took third place.

As I said, my game is not finished yet, but if you want to play the introductory part of it, there are two different versions you can download:

.t3 version
.exe version (includes other IntroComp 2006 games)

For a few years I've been running the annual Spring Thing competition.

In 2007 I also ran a game-writing event called Scott Adams' Ghost Town Redux.

In addition, I ran the StupidTitleComp back in March 2005.

For a couple of years I ran something called the Non-Comp Review Project.

Non-Comp Review Project 2004
Non-Comp Review Project 2005

In July 2007, I asked people to pledge cash for the creation of "the first full HTML TADS 2 and 3 interpreter for Mac OS X." Many people responded, as follows:

My offer of $100 (or $200 if there's significant collaboration) stands for as long as I live. Other people may be less enthusiastic about offering money if the project is completed, say, twenty years from now, so take the above figures with a grain of salt. And don't ignore the caveats mentioned above. Click on the links for full details.

But even so, if you write a full-multimedia HTML TADS 2 and 3 interpreter for Mac OS X, you can get hundreds of dollars. So, if you're a Mac developer, why not consider it?

Qtalk.t: Qtalk.t is my TADS 3 port of gtalk.h (see below). Like Gtalk.h, it allows for highly flexible conversation menus. You can use it if you're writing a TADS 3 game and prefer the conversation menu style of, e.g., Photopia, to the style of, e.g., City of Secrets. I'm quite proud of the extension, and used it extensively in my game Nothing But Mazes. Download qtalk.zip. (Version 3.)

Msg_custom.t: A file for customizing the TADS 3 library messages. For instance, with msg_custom.t, you can make the library messages less formal and more casual; forcing them to use more contractions; changing all of their instances of "appears" to "seems," etc. Version 1 of this extension had serious bugs, but as of November 2007, Version 2 seems to be working great. Download msg_custom.zip. Or, after November 2007, you can probably download it here. (Version 2.)

Crudeliquid.t: (Deprecated, and I have no plans to update it.) This extension attempts to give a basic handling of liquids, powdery substances, etc. Within those limited bounds, it is only a partial success. It may be worth studying by someone who wants to do a better job than me at handling liquids in TADS 3. For that matter, it may be worth studying even by non-TADS 3 programmers of liquids in IF, as I think I assembled the most exhaustive handling of liquid-related verbs in any amateur IF project. Try using it in your TADS 3 project if you want to, but be aware I have no plans to update it. Download crudeliquid.zip. (Version 3.)

Msg_smart.t: (Deprecated and unnecessary.) A file for taking all the TADS 3 library messages (or at least all of those in msg_neu.t and en_us.t) and converting all their "straight" quotes into "smart" or "curly" quotes. Ever since TADS 3.0.10, this extension has been entirely useless and unnecessary. Download msg_smart.t.

Gtalk.h: Gtalk.h allows for highly flexible conversation menus. It's been used for other types of menus too. And it's been used in such games as The Baron, by Victor Gijsbers, and The Colour Pink, by Robert Street. If you download it, you should also download gtalk.inf, the demo that goes with it. Download gtalk.h. Download gtalk.inf.

(Gtalk turned out to be a bad name for this, because not long after I released it, Google Talk came out, also known as GTalk. But no matter.)

One of the traditions of the IF Comp is to give away a prize, called the Golden Banana of Discord, to the game with the highest standard deviation of scores given by judges. Following the demise of the first banana, Daphne Brinkerhoff and I decided to make a new one. Look at it here.