Top all-time · #989
E BLONG
Personal blog · eblong.comgamesprogramming
E BLONG is a personal blog at eblong.com about games and programming. Since 2007, 70 different Hacker News readers have linked it 92 times, most often “The Obsessively Complete Infocom Catalog”. No feed was found, so read it on the site itself.
Most-linked posts?
- The Obsessively Complete Infocom Catalog5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2019-06-15
- PlotEx: a Python tool for exploring adventure games' puzzle plot constraints3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2011-11-01
- Rule-Based Programming in Interactive Fiction3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2009-07-27
- The Visible Zorker3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2025-01-14
- /zarf/zweb/tangle/3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2022-09-12
- Rule-Based Programming in Interactive Fiction3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2009-05-05
- The Zarfian Cruelty Scale, Revisited2 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2019-09-03
- Lists and Lists (1996)2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2010-04-25
- /zarf/glulx/quixe/2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2019-03-20
- Seltani: An online, shared, text-based, open-source fan project based on Myst2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2026-02-06
What Hacker News says?
You can see a much fancier text-generator of this sort at http://eblong.com/zarf/mutagen/about.html (I once ported it to Python and wrote a parser for a more-convenient syntax like the OP's, then never released it partly because I'd hate to see spammers using it.)
Comment linking /zarf/mutagen/about.html
on ““A spambot barfed its post recipe on my blog””Submitted Touching Your Junk: An Ontological Complaint as a story · 225 points
HN discussionAnd let us not forget about Lighan Ses Lion, a transcript of a fictitious game in a made-up language that just happens to overlap with English. https://www.eblong.com/zarf/zplet/lighan.html
Comment linking /zarf/zplet/lighan.html
on “What's the minimum number of words you'd need to define all other words? (2012)”Submitted Zarf’s Interactive Fiction (2017) as a story · 171 points
HN discussionEmily Short, Zarf, Adam Cadre. All masters breaking the boundaries of the IF genre. Adam Cadre's Photopia [1] made me choke some tears. His 9:05 [2] is darkly comical, and is fun to explore again once you know what it is about. Zarf's Spider and Web [3] is both a thrilling spy tale and a subversion of text adventure mechanics. For those who are never going to play this game, a minor spoiler. The setting is a fiction…
Comment linking /zarf/zweb/tangle/
on “Twine is an open-source tool for telling interactive, nonlinear stories”Submitted Rule-Based Programming in Interactive Fiction as a story · 127 points
HN discussionhttp://eblong.com/zarf/zweb/matter/index.html a choose-your-own-adventure kind of like this, released a week or two ago by Andrew Plotkin.
Comment linking /zarf/zweb/matter/index.html
on “Telescopictext”Submitted The Obsessively Complete Infocom Catalog as a story · 126 points
HN discussionAndrew Plotkin (aka Zarf) wrote and published PlotEx[1] while working on Hadean Lands. [1] http://eblong.com/zarf/plotex/
Comment linking /zarf/plotex/
on “Teeny Tiny Mansion: text adventure game formally proven to have no dead ends”Submitted Lists and Lists: Basics of Lisp through interactive fiction (1996) as a story · 82 points
HN discussionSpider and Web is a work of genius. But I'll warn you: if you have any interest at all in playing it, stop reading about it. Go in knowing as little as possible, and just work your way through. You'll do fine. You can even play it for free online, so you have no excuse: http://eblong.com/zarf/zweb/tangle/ I just impulsively picked up the Hadean Lands bundle after reading this article too. I look forward to playing i…
Comment linking /zarf/zweb/tangle/
on “Text-only video game shows how genre can be beautiful, innovative and complex”Submitted The Obsessively Complete Infocom Catalog as a story · 82 points
HN discussionOne nifty thing you can do with snapshots in games is use it for save/restore/undo. See for example the Z-machine used for interactive fiction, and its younger cousin Glulx: https://www.eblong.com/zarf/glulx/Glulx-Spec.html#saveformat (Apart from that, I’d note that Glulx and the Z-machine are both terrific examples of detailed VM specifications. Glulx is impressive because it was built by one person, the Z-machine…
Comment linking /zarf/glulx/Glulx-Spec.html
on “MiniVM: A zero-dependency cross-language runtime on par with LuaJIT and C”Submitted Lists and Lists (1996) as a story · 52 points
HN discussionHow could you run a TextWorld game in a web browser? Use a Glulx file interpreter like Quixe? https://eblong.com/zarf/glulx/quixe/
Comment linking /zarf/glulx/quixe/
on “MS TextWorld: open-source engine that both generates and simulates text games”Submitted Rule-Based Programming in Interactive Fiction as a story · 47 points
HN discussionA colleague, Thilo Planz, is working on an Interactive Fiction VM based on the Glulx specification (1) called glulx-wasm (2). If completed, this will be integrated with fyrevm-web, a web platform for glulx+channel IO stories. (1) http://www.eblong.com/zarf/glulx/ (2) https://github.com/thiloplanz/glulx-wasm/
Comment linking /zarf/glulx/
on “Why WebAssembly Is Faster Than Asm.js”Submitted Quixe: A VM for Interactive Fiction Written in JavaScript as a story · 46 points
HN discussionI agree with similar level of immersion, I actually think a lot of parser IF would translate to VR well (at a much greater cost). I thought that Andrew Plotkin's dual transform might make for a good VR game, for example https://eblong.com/zarf/if.html
Comment linking /zarf/if.html
on “The Further Text Adventures of Scott Adams”Submitted Thoughts on Rule-Based Programming as a story · 43 points
HN discussionI think you're right, the whole "problem" he's addressing stems from the fact that someone called the original graphics a Venn diagram when they shouldn't have. However, I do think that one of his alternatives is actually quite good, and does convey the same information as the original diagram: http://eblong.com/zarf/pic/thod/venn-inside.png
Comment linking /zarf/pic/thod/venn-inside.png
on “Touching Your Junk: An Ontological Complaint”Submitted Rule-Based Programming in Interactive Fiction as a story · 29 points
HN discussionI accidentally up-voted the GP, but I agree - it's well written, and makes a fair point which I think isn't too pedantic. Although he mislabels http://eblong.com/zarf/pic/thod/venn-wtf.png 'Strumpet MDs' and 'Medical Security Guards', should be reversed.
Comment linking /zarf/pic/thod/venn-wtf.png
on “Touching Your Junk: An Ontological Complaint”Submitted “EA IFF 85” Standard for Interchange Format Files (1985) as a story · 24 points
HN discussionAlso, lists and lists, in terms of learning something via a text game. (cant check the actual link atm because work firewall) http://eblong.com/zarf/ftp/lists.tar.Z
Comment linking /zarf/ftp/lists.tar.Z
on “GameShell: A game to learn or teach the Unix shell”Submitted The Obsessively Complete Infocom Catalog as a story · 21 points
HN discussionIf anyone's interested, here's a pretty good overview of Infocom's internal development tooling (how they got from the ZIL source code to a compiled story file). https://github.com/ZoBoRf/ZILCH-How-to Additionally, this site is a really cool visualization that lets you play Zork while being able to see its internal game state and the corresponding source code to where you currently are. https://eblong.com/infocom/vi…
Comment linking /infocom/visi-zork1/
on “Zork: The Great Inner Workings (2020)”Submitted Werewolf as a story · 18 points
HN discussionHere you go: http://www.eblong.com/zarf/glulx/
Comment linking /zarf/glulx/
on “Betty – English-like interface for the command line”Submitted Rule-Based Programming in Interactive Fiction (2009) as a story · 12 points
HN discussion
