This post is for those of you that see my incessant updates over "NIFE" over the past year and wonder wtf I'm talking about.
What is NIFE?
NIFE is a platform for creating multiplayer interactive fiction.
What can you make with it?
Text-based MMORPG's
Interactive roleplaying worlds
MUD's to some extent
Interactive fiction without memorizing large amounts of commands like /go east
Choose-your-own-adventure games to some extent
Text adventure games
Interactive storytelling
This kind of unique thing where someone creates a game world and then the players tell the Host what they want to interact with and the Host creates new content accordingly.
Right now all games are persistent and multiplayer. In the future I'd like to make games optionally become single-player experiences.
What do I download to make or play stuff with it
Nothing. NIFE is entirely web-based for both making games and playing them.
What kind of programming do I need to learn to make a game?
Nothing. Everything is point-and-click with a lot of select boxes. Same deal with some procedural generation functions I'm working on.
If you want some advanced functionality, you can learn how to work with Conditions and Events which are very straightfoward and again it's a point-and-click thing, you never have to actually program anything.
Things that are maybe complicated to do with existing systems and would require programming otherwise can instead be given as requests to me, and I'll program some easy-to-use solution for whatever you're trying to achieve.
What kind of commands do I have to learn in order to play the game?
Again, nothing. Interacting with things is a point-and-click experience. You have a big list of things you can interact with and a bunch of select boxes for them.. you select what you want to do and click submit.
How is NIFE related to GTX0?
The account you use for making or playing games is a GTX0 account.
NIFE will send you alerts through GTX0's alerts system so you can browse the site while you're waiting on game updates.
Announcement posts, NIFE discussions, requests/help, and discussions about NIFE game worlds are all forums on GTX0.
NIFE is its own thing and doesn't need GTX0 in order to run but it's integrated into GTX0 so that people who use NIFE will also be using GTX0 some of the time.
What does NIFE stand for?
N.I.F.E. = 'Net Interaction Fiction Engine.
It's also a reference to a knife, which is a pretty common item in text adventure games.
Why are you spending so much time on it?
I've made text adventure type games in various formats for many many years (going back to when I was 12). Having an engine where I can make various things very easily is awesome.
Having it integrated with GTX0 means that as I get people to join or make NIFE games, they'll also be interacting with GTX0 some of the time, and this will slowly turn into more GTers. These people will also very definitely be gamers, either because they're playing a game or because they make games.
