You probably know already, but there are no new accounts left on http://infinitroid.com/.

If that's a marketing strategy — you got me, sir. 

I did this a while ago but never posted here. It's not really a game, of course, but some people enjoyed it quite a lot, so I thought I'd share it here.



http://egamebook.com/font/

Saying anything more before you try it out would kind of ruin it.

That's why I'm always asking to any people who consider some type of game: do you know Emily Short's works? https://emshort.wordpress.com/

I just want to say I applaud that. No irony here. What Emily Short does is amazing, and the more people know about it the better.

[EDIT]

SO something like Versu? Are you familiar with teh work of Emily Short?

Versu is focused on characters and social interactions, afaik. Which is amazing and I love that. Chris Crawford (who has been doing something similar since the 90s) is one of my heroes. I'm personally striving for something that's maybe a little bit more general-purpose, in which you could do something like Versu, but also something like a boxing simulator (to give a really stupid example).

EDIT: But to be clear, I never had the chance to actually play a Versu game, so all I know about that game system is 2nd hand knowledge. Maybe it's more similar to what I try to build than I think?

Hi, I'm Filip.

My most recent face below. (One of these days I'll find out how to actually upload an avatar. The profile page on this forum just shows an empty <select> whatever I do.)



I currently work at Google but making games has been my passion since the nineties. More recently, I'm extremely interested in bringing what I call "open-world books" to life.



Imagine something like Fallout, Skyrim, or Mass Effect, but in prose. I'll share more in a separate post but basically,

• Instead of low level visualization by polygons in 3d, you have higher level prose.
• Instead of low level choices like left right forward backward shoot, you have higher level, more strategic choices.
• But it's still a simulation (not a predefined tree/onion path)

So you can have freedom, creative play, unique player experiences, exploration, emergent gameplay, all that. But it's a book.



How? AI. I'm letting AI do the low level work for the players, so it can only offer them the higher level choices, and then execute the chosen ones for them in a simulated world. (But of course it's not as easy as it sounds, and 90% of what you see in screenshots above is hand-written. But still. Pretty cool if I do say so myself. ) There's some more info on the official page I set up. And I made a prototype for Ludum Dare a year ago.

I've been frequenting interactive fiction forums but I realized egamebook has much more in common with indie gamedev than with IF.

Anyway, glad to be part of your community! I've posted before (sharing my resource for space games - a realistic 2d map of space) but never properly introduced myself. How rude of me! 

[but at least the stars are at the proper distances from each other]

If you're creating a sci-fi game, you might find this useful. For a game project I made a self-organizing 2D map of the 5000 closest stars. It took some effort, so I thought I'd make it available for everyone out there:

http://starmap2d.appspot.com

I go to great lengths to explain what this is, but the best explanation comes from a public post by Winchell Chung below. He's talking about pen&paper RPGs/wargames, but the same idea applies to computer games as well (99% of games set in space present their galaxy maps in 2D or 2.5D):

Stars are of course in three dimensions, but unfortunately a printed paper map makes a lousy hologram. If you just make a 2D map out of a 3D map by removing one of the dimensions, the map is almost worthless. Stars that are actually far apart can appear right next to each other.

Filip is using a mathematical technique called self-organizing Kohonen maps to address the problem. The resulting map may not have the stars in exactly the proper place, but at least the stars are at the proper distances from each other in the 2D plane.

So if you want strict accuracy you'll have to use a dynamic 3D computer display. But if you are making a science fiction game and just want a little accuracy on your printed map, this solution is good enough.

(From: https://plus.google.com/u/0/+WinchellChung/posts/JnH4uUGVwzu)

There's a CSV file with all the data, but even before you use that, you can print out hex maps that look like this:


The data are all public domain and the maps are Creative Commons. Feel free to use and abuse (but I'd be thrilled if you let me know when you do).