Monday 25 January 2016

AIF Game List update

Just to let everyone know, AIF Community Newsletter Games List has been updated from 354 games on July 3, 2013 to 394 games as of January 24, 2016. 41 games were added, one was deleted. Also, with the loss of the aifgames site, many of the links had to be rehabilitated, so hopefully links will be good for a while.

I took the liberty of changing the default sort to descending date so that the most recent games are near the top. Assuming you have javascript turned on, you can still click on the headers and re-sort by title, author, or even the various content classifications. If I inadvertently left an important AIF game off the list, let me know. I plan to do a touch-up to the list around Valentine's Day. Also, if any data point on this list needs addition or correction, you can email garyplume on standard yahoo domain with the title of the game and the updated info.

Things already on my to-do list for the Valentine's update:
Another Friday Part 2 link is broken http://www.aifcommunity.org/games/adrift/Version_5.0/AFP2_GAME.zip
Briar version 2 link is broken http://www.aifcommunity.org/games/inform/Briar.v2.zip
In Darkness pictorial version link is broken http://www.aifcommunity.org/games/tads/tads_2/In_Darkness1.1.zip
Leather Goddesses of Phobos link is broken http://www.aifcommunity.org/games/inform/Leather_Goddesses_of_Phobos.zip
Maybe disaggregate the minicomp games into discrete downloads

Gary Plume

Sunday 24 January 2016

2015 Erins - Now Live!

Voting for the 2015 Erins is now live!

The voting form can be found at http://goo.gl/forms/1zDx5K7tVC

You have until the close of 7 February 2016 (GMT) to cast your vote.

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This year there are five categories (although you don't have to vote in all of them if you don't want to).

Game of the Year

This is for the 'best' (however you choose to define that) game of 2015.

The winner will be determined by the instant-runoff voting system. You can vote for up to three games, in order of preference.

Best Character

This is for the 'best' (again, however you choose to define that) character to appear in an eligible game in 2015. In this case, 'character' includes both player characters and non-player characters.

Because of the number of possible choices, write-in voting is being used. Please identify your choice as clearly as possible, and only vote for one character.

Best Sex Scene

This is for the 'best' (again, however you choose to define that) sex scene to appear in an eligible game in 2015.

Because of the number of possible choices, write-in voting is being used. Please identify your choice as clearly as possible, and only vote for one sex scene.

Best New Author

This is for the 'best' (again, however you choose to define that) new author to appear in 2015. A new author is anyone who released their first game in 2015.

The winner will be determined by the instant-runoff voting system. You can vote for up to three authors, in order of preference.

The Badman Memorial Award (aka the Hall of Fame)

This is awarded to the person who has made the greatest contribution to AIF over the whole of their involvement with the AIF community, not just in 2015.

You can only be inducted into the Hall of Fame once, so votes for previous winners will be discounted. If more than one person receives a significant proportion of the vote, they will all be inducted.

Because of the number of possible choices, write-in voting is being used. Please identify your choice as clearly as possible, and only vote for one person.

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This year's nominees are:

Coffee Date by Lamont Sanford
Condomocium by Octarine Flash
Enticing Ella by BeanBean
Hail to the King by Minterlint
Let Me In by BBBen
Teacher's Pet by Dr Realgood
The Heir by Efon
The Lost Hound by Palaverous
Working Man by Ice
You've Got Mail by Brokenknight

The new authors are:

BeanBean
Efon
Ice
Octarine Flash
Palaverous
Dr Realgood

Note that during the pre-voting discussion there was some disagreement as to whether all the nominees should be considered AIF. If there is a game on the list that you personally don't think is AIF, don't vote for it.

Friday 22 January 2016

What I've been doing lately (Pervert Action: Legacy progress)

I haven't been posting as much publicly as I used to about my game development progress for a couple of reasons, but mostly because I write a full blog post every week for my Patreon backers and so doing smaller updates elsewhere feels a little distracting. Also I couldn't think of a way to do it that didn't just take the form of shameless self-promotion. Anyway, in case you're interested in the larger changes that have been taking place and the general level of development of my current WIP, Pervert Action: Legacy, here's an update.


Tuesday 19 January 2016

Random News - 19 January Edition

The first in a (hopefully) regular series

This week's piece of random news is that House Party by Eek Games entered beta a few days ago.

I found House Party to be notable for a couple of reasons. The first is that it's built with the Unity engine, so it actually looks like you'd imagine a 21st-century adult game to look (ie. a 3D environment with a first-person view). Secondly, unlike all the other graphical games I've seen on Patreon recently, the writing is actually halfway decent.

Of course, having only just entered beta, House Party is still pretty rough around the edges. The plot feels a bit random, and is completely linear (each problem can only be solved one way, even though other plausible solutions exist). The gameplay is mostly limited to finding objects and delivering them to other people. And, probably most importantly, there's very little content as of yet.

And that was the news for today.

If you have a piece of random AIF-related news that you'd like to share, please send it to editor.aifblog@gmail.com.

Wednesday 13 January 2016

The Erins! - Discussion

In case you didn't already know, the Erins are annual fan-voted awards that honour the year's best AIF games and authors. They started in 2002, but went on hiatus after 2009 due to the downturn in the number of games being produced. They were brought back in slimmed down form last year. That experiment was successful, so here we go again!

In order to establish the Erins 2.0 as a going concern I thought it might be a good idea to establish some rules going forward (especially as the original rules seem to be missing in action). Note that the following is all provisional. Suggestions for improvements would be welcome.

Eligibility


For the purposes of this year's iteration of the Erins, entries must fulfil the following criteria:

1. They must be adult games where the player uses text-based gameplay to advance the narrative.

2. They must have been originally released as a full game during 2015.

3. They must have been published (ie. posting a link to the game) on the aifarchive Yahoo! group or AIF Central blog by the author, or with the author's permission.

Authors can choose to remove their game from consideration.

Where there is some uncertainty as to whether or not a game is eligible, a decision shall be made by the person(s) organising the Erins.

Categories

The categories are:

Game of the Year - for the 'best' (however you choose to define that) game released in 2015; open to all entries

Best Character - for the 'best' (however you choose to define that) character to appear in an AIF game in 2015

Best Sex Scene - for the 'best' (however you choose to define that) sex scene to appear in an AIF game in 2015

Best New Author - for the 'best' (however you choose to define that) new author to release a game in 2015; open to any author who hasn't released a game previously

The Badman Memorial Award (aka Hall of Fame) - for the person (or persons) who have made the 'greatest' (however you choose to define that) contribution to AIF; open to anyone not already inducted in previous years

[As suggested last time, if more than one person gets a significant proportion of the Hall of Fame votes they will all be inducted.]

Nominees

On that basis, the nominees are:

Game of the Year

Coffee Date by Lamont Sanford
Condomocium by Octarine Flash
Enticing Ella by BeanBean
Hail to the King by Minterlint
Let Me In by BBBen
Teacher's Pet by Dr Realgood
The Heir by Efon
The Lost Hound by Palaverous
Working Man by Ice
You've Got Mail by Brokenknight

Best Character

Any character appearing in a game nominated for Game of the Year

Best Sex Scene

Any sex scene appearing in a game nominated for Game of the Year

Best New Author

BeanBean
Dr Realgood
Efon
Ice
Octarine Flash
Palaverous

Hall of Fame

Anyone, except the previous inductees: Badman, Choices, NewKid, Christopher Cole, Scarlet Herring, A.Bomire, BBBen, GoblinBoy, or Purple Dragon.

[If there are any eligible games I've missed, please let me know. Conversely, if you don't want your game to be included (for whatever reason) please let me know.]

Voting

The voting period provisionally starts on 24 January 2016 and finishes on the close of 7 February 2016 (all times GMT).

Voting for the Game of the Year and Best New Author awards will use the instant-runoff voting system. Voting for Best Character, Best Sex Scene and the Badman Memorial Award will be a write-in vote.

[In future I'd like to start the voting earlier so as to make sure the Erins don't distract from any games released in January or February.

Google Forms looks like it can handle preference voting, which several people asked for last time. However, it's kind of clunky and the votes will still have to be totalled manually (which is why you'll be restricted to three preferences), so if anyone has a more elegant alternative it would be eagerly accepted.]

Winning

The winner gets... to win!

[It would be nice if winners got some sort of customised award graphic, as in days of yore, but I simply don't have the artistic ability for that. If anyone with more talent could provide something suitable it would be very much appreciated.]

Saturday 2 January 2016

January Open Thread: Game Plans for 2016

After a great beginning to 2015 with a lot of entries this blog became very quiet. My open thread topics died off as I became very busy. There was actually a few times I signed on to start a monthly open thread, but then would get derailed by surprise events like Goblinboy's return (I actually went to post an open thread the same day Goblinboy made his first post in April and I chuckled about how it would look if I bumped his thread down the page).

Hopefully this blog can keep the momentum going through the year and I thought a good topic to get 2016 going would be for the authors/potential authors out there: what are your plans/hopes for releases for this year? Even if you just have an idea brewing and you hope this is the year, here's the opportunity to let us know what you're thinking. Give us as much or as little about the game as you want.

Feel free to err on the optimistic side for how much can be done: it's a new year, let's have high hopes.