Shock your peers, read this book!

[Ghost]

Found this by sheer accident- wanted to redownload Inform and came across:

The IF Theory Reader

It's a huge book (400+ pages) that covers pretty much everything from puzzle design to genre standards, ideas about world design, and then some more. It's entirely written by and for Interactive fiction makers, but since IF is the forerunner of graphic adventures, a lot of the stuff can be applied to our favourite pastime, too. I'm not half through it yet (the forums are up again and that HAS an impact), but it's a pretty great read.

And it's a free PDF!

[Anian]

Thanks. This is going on the kindle.

[Atelier]

Cool find, this will be really useful.

[Stupot]

Cool.  I've poked my head into the world of IF a few times.  Even played with Inform a couple of times, but nothing special came of it.  Still, will definitely give this a look.  Would love a hard copy.

[Ghost]

Would love a hard copy.

These are available at lulu, too, for 9.99 euros (in MY browser- should be something similar in dollerz, though)
http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/if-theory-reader/15325304?productTrackingContext=product_view/more_by_author/right/1

[Eggie]

I had a book on IF design once, it was orange. And there WAS a free online version of it some years later.

Cannot remember the title at all but it had good examples for things. Like an ogre who kicks puppies as an antagonist character. I don't know. What was it called? I am just throwing this out there...

[RickJ]

There is an interesting article on the Invent with Python blog about how to learn programming.  The author talks about using game examples to illustrate programming concepts.  It's a short but interesting read.  He uses the following cartoon to illustrate his points.



Two free to download and read e-books are advertised in the right hand pane of the blog which also seem to be interesting.

Invent Your Own Computer Games with Python
Making Games with Python and PyGame

The blog also mentions and interesting game engine from MIT called Scratch that doesn't require much programming skill.   It looks like it can be exported to HTML5/JS  because the games seem to be playable from the browser.

Scratch

One of the commenters also mentioned something interesting called Processing that can be used to make interactive presentations etc.

Processing