Hello everybody,
I will be hosting a session on Zinc this Wednesday at 20.00 CET (that's Central European Time to you North Americans)
To make a long story short, Zinc allows players to play an adventure game together over the internet while chatting and exchanging ideas. Should be fun!
Zinc can be downloaded from:
http://zinc-if.sourceforge.net/
It requires JAVA which is available from:
http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.4.2/download.html
[get the J2SE v 1.4.2_07 JRE - it's halfway down the page]
Once you've installed JAVA, run the Zinc setup file. After you've installed it, I suggest you use a few minutes to familiarize yourself with Zinc and how it works. It's not too complicated, it just requires a different way of thinking.
Now for the actual game. Fredrik Ramsberg has suggested a couple of games and in a blinding display of dictatorship I've picked out Dreamhold (http://www.ministryofpeace.com/if-review/) for our first session. Please note that you don't have to download the game, only I need it as my pc will act as server.
To play the game, log on to this server:
80.163.9.14 - port 4999
If you have any problems, I'll be on MSN (gunness@ofir.dk).
Hope to see you on Wednesday!
Zinc session on WEDNESDAY (23rd)
Several people wanted to join in but mailed Jacob to say they couldn't make it. However, Jacob and I played and chatted for a few hours and had a great time. Zinc seems to have a problem running Zcode games, especially version 5 and 8 - it pauses for ten seconds after each input before it draws the status line and allows another input (I don't think it runs version 6 games at all, and version 7 is extremely likely to have the same problems as version 8, but there are no version 7 story files around, so it doesn't matter). We tried Trinity, which is a version 4 game, and it worked pretty well, if not absolutely smooth. We also tried a TADS game, and that did indeed work flawlessly. I'll mail the Zinc team to see if we can get around this problem or if it's a bug that they can fix. Until then, we could probably play almost any non-graphical Infocom title (I have legal copies of them all), or any TADS game. I'm certainly game for another session!
http://IFGuide.ramsberg.net - A Beginner's Guide to Playing Interactive Fiction