Let's play games to honor devs who passed away

[Bester]

https://www.gamasutra.com/view/news...and_interactive_fiction_author_Stu_Galley.php

Obituary: Game programmer, designer, and interactive fiction author Stu Galley

Celebrated game programmer, designer, and interactive fiction author Stu Galley has passed away.

News of Galley's passing has been circulating on social media, where fans and colleagues have been paying tribute to his life and work.

Galley was perhaps best known for creating some notable interactive fiction titles during his time as a senior game designer at Infocom.

He was the driving force behind popular games like Moonmist, Seastalker, and The Witness, the latter of which won multiple awards including the 'best computer game of the year' accolade from Electronic Games magazine.

When asked whether or not he enjoyed his job in a 1986 interview with Zzap! magazine, Galley responded with a memorable quote that highlights the pioneering work he was doing at the time.

"Yes, yes I do," he replied. "It's funny, it's almost like a dream fulfilled but up until a few years ago, I had no idea that this was what my dream was because I had no examples to go by."

When I've read it, I decided I'm going to play at least one game by this guy. And when this shit happens, from now on I'll play games by whoever passed away to honor their memory, even I didn't know them before and never played anything by them. I don't know why. I just want to do it, and if anyone's interested in doing the same, you're free to join me.

1. Get dosbox

2. Get The Witness (1983)

3. Get the manual

4. Start the game, and optionally play this in the background


All I know is that it's a murder-mystery interactive fiction and it was voted "best computer game of the year" by some magazine, which used to amount to something. I'm going in.

 

[Swampy_Merkin]

Well, I'm not going to play any of that old-ass garbage, but that Stu Galley was one handsome chap.

 

[opium fiend]

I bought Dex since learning that one of the devs passed away very young (early twenties). I had pirated it before and played for about half before giving up due to a stealth aug bug.

 

[Gragt]

Good idea. Infocom is mostly synonymous with Zork these days, but The Witness is a very solid game that showed that they tried to cover a wide range of genres.

While I find your idea good, I just wanted to point out that it isn’t necessary to run ZIP (the original Infocom interpreter) under DOSBox. The beauty of Infocom’s method is that they created a story file (usually with the .DAT extension) that could be run on various systems with a specific interpreter. It’s a future-proof design because there are interpreters for pretty much all of the modern systems todays. A good one for Windows, but not the only one, is Windows Frotz. I recommend you use that one instead of fiddling with DOSBox—which basically comes down to emulating an emulator.

The manual you linked is actually from the Infocom Documentation Project. Although the project wasn’t completed, it yielded some nice version of the manuals, even for those marked as temporary although they miss a fair bit of the original flair. That’s where The Infocom Gallery comes in handy. They have scans and pictures of the manuals and extra material (called feelies) that Infocom loved to throw in the boxes in order to enhance the whole experience of the game (today, you’d need to buy an overpriced so-called “collector’s edition” in order to get something like that). The page for The Witness should give you a good idea on what to expect when you opened the box.

And finally, you’ll probably want to map that stuff. I find Trizbort to be of great help when mapping interactive fiction.

 

[TreeInAForestFire]

I'll join this agenda you magnificent bastard. Gragt do you happen to know any good interpreters for android?

 

[Astral Rag]

http://www.daglowslaws.com/-in-memoriam-games-industry-passed-away.html

 

[Gragt]

I'll join this agenda you magnificent bastard. Gragt do you happen to know any good interpreters for android?

I use Son of Hunky Punk. It has problems with Z-Code 6 games (the graphical ones), but everything else works well. You still need to map though.

 

[lophiaspis]

Well, I'm not going to play any of that old-ass garbage, but that Stu Galley was one handsome chap.

I think it's just that he looks like a normal man, unlike today's game developers which look like some kind of overgrown twerps.

 

[Neanderthal]

Good idea, think i'll have a bash at Lone Wolf books again in honour of late Joe Dever. Pity that Seventh Sense seems to have stopped at Deathlord of Ixia.