Andy Chase

Perhaps it’s fate that I’ve been on a coding jag to the exclusion of all meatspace hobbies since DrupalCon SF… I learned yesterday that MetaFilter is having a month-long Interactive Fiction “contest” in the tradition of the RPM Challenge or NaNoWrMo… the goal isn’t so much to winwinwin as it is to just see a project from start to finish.

I’ve been threatening to write something with Inform 7 since it was released four years ago, so I think it’s time to get off my duff and actually do it. My brain seems to be especially receptive to chewing on code right now. It’s been an astonishing five years since my only other attempt at interactive fiction with Inform 6, and that’s just not right. Hopefully the time constraint will be inspirational without causing me so much stress that I bail on the project altogether, as I did three years in a row with the RPM Challenge.

2006-01-22 UPDATE – I’m pleased to announce that this game’s critical bug has been fixed, and Release 2/serial 20060122 is now available. I will be sending the updated file to the IF Archive momentarily. Apologies to anyone who has taken the time to play through this game only to get stymied by the bug.

About

Dastardly is a short, Victorian-era text adventure written in the Inform programming language.

It is my first completed attempt at writing an interactive fiction adventure, and it was written as an entry to the Third 24 Hours of Inform Contest.

As you play, keep in mind that the requirements of the contest were as follows:

• Not more than 24 (non-consecutive) hours be spent in the development of the game
• The theme, provided by Holly Gramazio, was that “The adventure must be set in a theatre. It must involve a petticoat, an advertisement, something which is repainted, and a trapdoor.”

Download

dastardly.z5

How to Play

In order to run Dastardly you need a Z-Machine Interpreter, an extensive selection of which can be found at http://ifarchive.org/indexes/if-archiveXinfocomXinterpreters.html .

FireFox users can install the Gnusto plugin and play by simply clicking the Download link above.

If you are new to interactive fiction, start with A Beginner’s Guide to Playing Interactive Fiction.

License

Dastardly is © 2005 by Andy Chase.

Dastardly is distributed under the Creative Commons “Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0” license, which basically means that you are free:

• to copy, distribute, display, and perform the work

Under the following conditions:

• Attribution. You must give the original author credit.
• Noncommercial. You may not use this work for commercial purposes.
• No Derivative Works. You may not alter, transform, or build upon this work.

• For any reuse or distribution, you must make clear to others the license terms of this work.
• Any of these conditions can be waived if you get permission from the copyright holder.

Your fair use and other rights are in no way affected by the above.

This is a human-readable summary of the Legal Code (see the full license for details).