Here are links to various types of sources of information on Interactive Fiction. Any This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

Alan

• The Alan IF mailing list is hosted by Yahoo groups. You can surf to its site where you can read the posts, examine available files, polls etc.
• Stephen Griffiths has created a guide on Writing Interactive Fiction with ALAN and Windows 95/98.
• ADE/W is a design environment for Alan V2 on Windows created by Stephen Griffiths. You can read about it and download it from his site.
• An very nice integrated development environment for Alan V2 (and TADS) is Imaginate. It is under development but fully working, written by This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it and very, very nice!
• Eric Mayer has written about his impressions on two easy to use IF tools, one is of course Alan. Read the article here!

Writing Interactive Fiction

• An excellent write-up on How to Write a Great Game was recently published by Dan Shiovitz. He gives his view, as a reader/player. He also has an impressive list of reviews of games and other stuff.
• Eric Mayer has put up his Comp '99 Journal (obviously it was a while ago, but I just found it). A very well written (of course) log of an adventure author and his struggles against time and The Real World^TM.
• Stephen van Egmond has also collected a library of information on authoring, design and critisism. Especially the articles on design of specific games are most insightful and educational. There are also links to some interesting articles about Interactive Fiction Design.
• Emily Short has written a collection of very interesting articles on various subjects on IF Design, especially NPC design and implementation.
• A very nice collection of articles about Writing Interactive Fiction is available on the elegant Inform Programming Pages which are maintained by Andrew Clover.
• Dennis G. Jerz has a couple of tips on writing short stories that might be applicable to writing IF.
  

General

• Everything you wanted to know, and more, about the art of writing Interactive Fiction, is, has been, or will be, discussed on the r.a.i.f (rec.arts.int-fiction) newsgroup. One access point (beside your local news server) is Google newsgroups.
• The Interactive Fiction FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) gives you answers to most of your IF questions. It is considered nice manners to read this before you ask any questions on r.a.i-f. Maintained by Steve Griffiths.
• The topics dicussed on rec.arts.int-fiction has been archived and indexed by Stephen van Egmond.
• The Cloak of Darkness is a site created by Roger Firth dedicated to comparing existing authoring tools by showing implementations of the same (simple) game.
• The Interactive Fiction Archive with a search interface by Stephen van Egmond.
• An Annotated Bibliography Of Interactive Fiction Scholarship, a extremely well structured site with most things written about interactive fiction maintained by Dennis G. Jerz.
• A page with Interactive Fiction News is maintained by Stephen Granade on his excellent Brass Lantern adventure game web site.
• BAF's Guide to the games in the archive makes it easy to find the ones to play, although it obviously does not contain descriptions and ratings of all games. All Alan games are here.
• The Annual Interactive Fiction Competition Home Page and rules.
• Elieen Mullins XYZZY News.

Resources

• The PHOAKS rec.arts.int-fiction resources.
• Scott Reilly's Interactive Fiction Page.
• YAHOO Interactive Fiction Index.
• Hans Persson's Adventureland attempts to list all games produced!