Inside Erin: The AIF Newsletter Volume 3 Number 5 May, 2007 Letter from the Editor I know I mentioned that I planned on revisiting my editorial from last month, in which I took the Justice Department to task for creating an Obscenity Prosecution Task Force. I still do plan on going deeper into that, but I didn’t prepare anything for this month. I will address this more deeply in future months. Suffice it to say that I was pleasantly surprised that the jack-booted thugs didn’t come to confiscate my hard drive this month. I suppose, or at least I hope, they have bigger fish to fry. So this month, while all of you are feverishly finishing up your Mini-comp entries – due May 11, remember (thereby not releasing any new games for us to discuss), I thought I’d try waxing poetic about the power of >. > represents endless possibilities and is what makes IF so compelling. After the > I can type absolutely whatever I command want. Should I e(x)amine the objects in my surroundings first? Should I leave the room? Should I try to pick up or look under or search or open or close or destroy? Anything should be possible, and I should feel like my universe is expansive enough to accommodate me. My own personal preference is to begin a game by examining everything I can, right off the bat. Doing that allows me to ease into the game’s environment and also to let me know how robust the implementation is. If the room is a kitchen and mentions that there is cutlery on the counter, I will always try to >x cutlery. If the game hasn’t provided cutlery for me to examine, I know immediately that the game’s environment won’t be full, which is very disappointing. But when the implementation is robust, I enjoy learning about the atmosphere in a game, interacting with objects, and gaining an appreciation for the author’s style, attitude, etc. Occasionally a game’s introduction will try to create a sense of urgency, attempting to lead me to perform a particular action right away. I’ll be given a message that, for example, a television program that I can’t afford to miss is about to come on. The command the author is looking for is, of course, >turn on television. But what if watching the program changes the game state and makes it impossible for me to return to the pre-‘>turn on television’ state? > gives me that option. I can either get caught up in the game’s pace, moving when the author says move, or I can be leisurely, knowing that there could be consequences to that choice, but also knowing that >save, >undo or, at worst, >restart are available options. One area where > can cause trouble, however, is in a game’s sex scenes. Most games continue to allow me to type anything, making it possible to completely scramble the sex by jumping from act to act and spot to spot, all over a NPC’s body. Others limit specifically what acts can be performed at any given time. Neither option is entirely successful and very few games program in any sort of sex continuity or transitions from sex act to sex act. It’s that continuity and transitions that, for me, create the character in the sex scenes. On the news front, I’m happy to report that I’m getting a very active response to the 2007 AIF mini-comp. If everyone who has expressed interest and/or requested beta-testing help actually enters, this may be the biggest mini-comp ever. Look for the competition games to be released by May 14. * * * This month in AIF by BBBen It’s been a slow month with no game releases, so there’s not much to report here. Most chatter seems to have surrounded the upcoming mini-comp, and it looks like there’s been a fair bit of interest. Hopefully that will result in a good turnout this year, although I’ve also noticed a surprising amount of difficulty from a number of authors in actually reaching the finish line with their mini-comp entry. I hope this doesn’t result in a whole bunch of promising games trickling away and leaving a paltry crop for the actual comp. On a related matter, our editor began a linked erotic short story competition to tie in with the mini- comp. I’m not sure how this has turned out yet, so I can’t really comment much on it. As I told A. Ninny (too late for my advice to be of any use, of course), I think this comp would actually be a good thing to help fill the dry space between the mini-comp and the end of October (when the Erins deadline comes up and we get a flurry of game releases). In an interesting development, Emily Short, a prominent member of the IF community gave a level- headed review of Ron Weasley and the Quest for Hermione (read it here: http://www.joltcountry.com/trottingkrips/ronw.html); interesting because it’s rare to see any notice of AIF by the IF community that isn’t dismissive or done out of an intent to prove AIF’s evils. The review wasn’t actually a ringing endorsement of the game, and also didn’t make any attempt to address the sexual content of the game, but still addressed it on a level that seemed relevant to the intentions of the game. The files section at AIFGames.com should now be browse-able to unregistered users. This means that while you still need to register to download files, if you’re not registered you can at least see what is available, and that might encourage new people. And it seems that new people are being successfully encouraged to check out AIFGames.com - most of the community action was on AIFGames.com this month, which is new because normally the AIF Archive gets the lion’s share. The AIF Archive was quite quiet by comparison, and I wonder if this is a sign that AIFGames.com is starting to gain some momentum. Apparently the membership is pretty high – rivalling the AIF Archive (although not quite there yet). I always assumed that a fair number of members of the AIF Archive were people who’d joined up and not really checked back again, leaving themselves belonging to the group for long periods without being very active; however, joining AIFGames.com suggests that a person is at least reasonably up to date with what’s currently happening in the community, and that means that there actually are thousands who regularly play the games – a comforting thought to someone who wonders sometimes if anyone out there is paying attention. Well, that’s it. Sorry I don’t have more to say but you’ll have to give me more to work with! Next month is the mini-comp, so that will be okay, but after that I want some serious activity or I’m going to have to start issuing detentions! All right, class dismissed. * * * Non-I Comp Entries The following stories were submitted for the 2007 Adult Non-Interactive Fiction Competition, announced in the beginning of April. The criteria for entry in this competition were for stories of any subject matter, of approximate length of 3000 words or less. Upon publication, a poll will be established at the Yahoo! aifarchive group. Everyone is invited to participate in the poll. The entry which receives the most votes will be declared the winner. These are the entries received: “Dr. Who: Ace!” by Christopher Cole “Restraint” by Mondragon “Lament” by Christopher Cole Dr. Who: Ace! by Christopher Cole “Well, I’ll say one thing. It’s really white,” I looked around again and didn’t change my opinion. It was white like opening a new word document on the computer, but before you actually write anything. Put your face right up to the screen; that kind of white. “Yes, it is, isn’t it?” the Doctor agreed. He was juggling a few small high-tech devices in his hands, taking readings and trying to get his bearings. It didn’t change anything; it was still white. For those of you just tuning in, I travel through time and space with a 900-year old alien who calls himself the Doctor. He looks human. To be precise, he looks like a middle-aged little man who wears a cream-coloured jacket and dark pants, a pullover with silly little question marks on it, and a hat. He usually carries around a red-handled umbrella, though he seems to have lost that somewhere on our current adventure, though I wouldn’t be surprised if he somehow fit it into his pockets as, like his time ship, they hold a lot more than they should be able to. I don’t travel alone with the Doctor though. His other companion is twenty-year old Ace. She’s never told me her real name. She’s got a lot of energy, and is quite athletic. She’s a feisty one for sure. She has longish, straight light brown hair and a nice body with a really, really great ass. I would never, ever tell her that though for fear of her right hook. I’ve travelled with the Doctor for a couple of months now. Ace has been with him for closer to two or three years. And that brings us back to our current predicament: stuck in this whiteness. I won’t bore you with the details, partially because it’d be filled with technobabble and goobledegook, but mainly because I really don’t know what happened. The Doctor informed Ace and I that he was meeting an old friend, then the next thing we knew, we were no longer in the TARDIS (the Doctor’s time and space ship), and we found ourselves walking in this whiteness. Ace nudged me in the ribs and the Doctor fumbled with his scanners and devices. “What do you say?” she asked. “Wanna wager how long it’ll take the Professor to figure out what happened?” She was grinning. As I said, she had travelled with the Doctor a lot longer than I had, but I was still amazed how easily she handled all this crazy adventuring through all of time and space. I put on a good face, but I still got the willies whenever this weird stuff started, which usually turned out to be more often than not. I couldn’t help but smile back at her. She really was very pretty. “What’re we betting?” I asked. I didn’t mean anything by the question. I was thinking along the lines of cleaning the other’s room or making a special meal. But I could see by the quick glint in Ace’s eyes that her first thoughts turned to something completely different. It was an unbelievably sexy look. It passed quickly though. “Oh, I don’t know,” she said. “We’ll figure it out later. I say the Professor’ll have us back in the TARDIS within the hour, on our way to face the Daleks like nothing ever happened.” “Hmmmm,” I thought. I really didn’t see how the Doctor could get us out of this, but he had a knack of constantly doing the impossible. “I’ll say twelve hours.” “Ye of little faith.” We both turned to face the Doctor who was now somehow empty handed. He was staring into the whiteness, but was addressing us. We didn’t realize he was listening, or that he had come so close to us. Finally he turned to us, a smile on his face. “It just so happens that I have solved our little dilemma.” “Really?” Ace asked. “What’s going on?” I added. The Doctor looked as if he was going to speak, and then placed a finger to his chin, thinking. “I’ll explain later,” he said. “In the mean time, I’ll need complete silence. We’re in a null void. A place out-of-time. I’m still not sure who created it or why, but I think I should be able to close the void, allowing us to slip back into our time stream where we left it.” “The TARDIS?” I asked. “The TARDIS,” the Doctor agreed. “Will closing the void be safe?” Ace asked, probably already guessing the answer. “No,” the Doctor said and held his hands out into the whiteness, a look of complete concentration on his face. I noticed the whiteness immediately begin to go dull around his hands, as if he was reaching into the white. His expression began to take on a pained look, and Ace and I started to worry about him, but when we started to move closer to see if he needed help, he warned us back with a quick shake of his head. The whole void began to shake. Maintaining equilibrium was difficult enough as it was, but was now ridiculous as the tremors began to fill the space, seemingly coming from every direction at once. The Doctor yelled out in pain and the area where his hands were “inside” the whiteness began to change to a more reddish colour. A wind began to pick up in the space. Ace and I struggled to maintain our balance, but quickly lost the battle. We were flung to the ground, bruising ourselves. Suddenly, a large blackness opened between us and the Doctor. The pit was the cause of the wind; it was a whirlpool of nothingness and it was attempting to suck everything inside. The Doctor’s hat flew off his head and was devoured by the blackness. I was able to get a tenuous grip on the ground, but I noticed that Ace began to slide along the whiteness towards the pit. She was yelling and using all her strength to hold herself back, but she was fighting a losing battle. Her feet were now dangling over the edge of the pit. I let go of my grip and slid along the ground until I was in front of Ace, facing her. I grabbed her wrist and held on. She reached up with her free hand and took hold of my arm as I held her there; for the time being we were immobile, but I knew I wouldn’t be able to hang on forever. Soon, my grip began to slip and I could feel the two of us sliding into the darkness… …and then we were in the console room of the TARDIS. Ace and I were lying on the ground arm in arm. We got up, slightly embarrassed. “Ah, glad you decided to join me,” the Doctor said, calmly checking over the controls of the ship. “You were out for quite a while.” The Doctor explained that he had closed the void and opened a crack for us to slip back to the TARDIS. He used a lot of technobabble which I can’t really remember. I was dead tired and just wanted to go to my room and sleep. A while later, I awoke in my room and made my way to the large bath just down the hall. The TARDIS was an amazing ship. Outside it looked like a 1960’s British police telephone box; basically a 5’ by 5’ telephone booth. The inside however was another matter. It was huge. Even Ace said she hadn’t seen every room. At the end of the hall that contained my room, there was a huge bathroom; all marble and the size of a small house. In it was a large whirlpool that I liked to relax in. I needed relaxation after that little brush with death. I took off my boxers and slipped into the hot, swirling water. I lay back and closed my eyes, enjoying the healing properties of the water. I looked up when I heard a noise and noticed Ace enter the bathroom wearing a towel. She smiled sheepishly at me and approached the whirlpool. Without a word, she entered the pool and removed her towel when she was under the water, tossing the sopping towel onto the floor when she was underwater. “Mind if I join you?” she asked and sighed as the waters rushed all around her. She was sitting just across from me in the large pool. She had a look in her eyes that I hadn’t seen before; playful, hungry, sexy. She just sat there for a long time, looking at me, a slight smile on her face. I relaxed finally and smiled back at her. Without a word, she moved across the water and straddled me as I sat there. She put her arms around my head and leaned in to me, kissing me slowly. I returned her kiss. It started out softly and then she opened her mouth and her tongue was playing with mine. I could feel my cock begin to stiffen under her leg as she sat on me. My hands began to move over her body, sliding down her back and pulling her closer to me. I kissed her neck and she raised her head, sighing as my lips tasted her skin, moving along her neck, cheeks and chin. I cupped her gorgeous ass and shifted her body slightly so that my hard cock pressed against her pussy. She moaned and began grinding against me slightly. She lifted herself a little more out of the water and her small, pert breasts appeared above the surface. She grabbed the back of my head and pulled me to her chest. I took one of her hard nipples into my mouth and sucked on it, teasing it with my tongue. I moved from nipple to nipple, kissing her tits. She moved away from me and giggled, biting her lip. She turned her back to me and stepped up to the rim of the whirlpool and rested her arms on the wet floor. She was standing on the last step of the pool, her legs still under water from the calf down. She bent over, offering her bottom to me. It was the greatest ass I had ever seen, perfectly shaped, her skin lightly tanned. I moved through the water and took her ass into my hands, kneading her cheeks and feeling her warm, wet skin under my touch. I leaned in and began planting kisses on her cheeks, moving to her crack and then down ever so slightly until my lips brushed against her pussy lips. She gasped as I began to tease her there, sliding my tongue into her wetness and eating her from behind. I teased her asshole with my tongue before returning my attention to her sweet pussy. After a few minutes of oral pleasure, Ace turned around and laughed. “Holy shit, you’re good at that,” she said. We laughed and floated in each other’s arms in the pool for a while. She pushed me against the wall of the whirlpool and reached under the water. I felt her hand grip my hard cock and she began to pump it under the water. “Mmmmm,” she said. “You’ve got a nice cock. Sit on the ledge.” I did as she asked, and she spread my legs, moving in between them. She leaned over and took my cock into her mouth. She began to slowly slide her mouth up and down my length, working it with her hand as she did so, pumping and twisting it with her fist. I stared down at Ace as she sucked my cock. She looked up at me and flicked her tongue over the swollen head of my dick. “How does that feel?” she breathed. “Amazing,” I said. “Mmm-hhmmmmm,” she said and then deep-throated me. She kept me deep in her throat and bobbed her head ever so slightly on my shaft, gagging herself a little in the process. She brought me very close to orgasm before pulling off and stepping up to the ledge with me. She straddled me again and lowered herself onto me, sliding my cock into her wet pussy. It felt amazing. She began to move up and down on my cock, using her legs to pump her body. She was moving very slowly and we kissed as she fucked me, staring into each other’s eyes. I grabbed her ass as she fucked me and my finger tips could feel my slick cock sliding in and out of her pussy. She lifted herself off me after a while and re-entered the pool. I joined her as she again leaned against the ledge of the pool, her ass stuck out to me. I moved in behind her and slid my cock into her from behind. I looked down and watched my cock as I thrust in and out of her. I grabbed Ace’s ass and fucked her hard from behind. She was yelling with pleasure and I was grunting as I brought myself to the edge. “I’m gonna cum, Ace,” I said. “Yeah, cum in my mouth,” she said, and pulled off me, turning and leaning down to take me into her mouth. She pumped my cock with her hand, while she held my cock just inside her open mouth. I watched my hot cum spurt onto her tongue and into her mouth. She looked up at me as I came and then swallowed everything I had to offer. When I finished, I pushed Ace onto her back on the ledge and dove into her pussy again with my mouth. I licked and sucked her clit and fucked her with my tongue. She had a handful of my hair and screamed with pleasure when she came hard onto my tongue. I could feel her ass shaking as she came and I continued to eat her through another two orgasms. When we were finally spent, we floated in the whirlpool. “Don’t get all googly-eyed on me,” Ace said after a few minutes. “This was just a tension release, right?” “Oh, okay, right,” I said. A few seconds passed. “Of course,” she added, smiling. “I think we’ll need some tension release pretty often with the adventures we have. C’mon, let’s get out of the water before we shrivel up.” I found I was looking forward to our next dangerous adventure. * * * How NOT To Write AIF by Bitterfrost Hello, wayward reader! You've stumbled into a dark realm of laziness, subversion and self- indulgence. Yes, it's yet another month of How NOT to Write AIF, the ongoing chronicle of my struggle as a first-time (and last-time) AIF author. The game in question is How I Got Syphilix, and it's currently an ADRIFT file so large, so ridiculously monolithic, that it blots out the sun... which explains my pasty skin and stunted growth. I'm Bitterfrost. Take a good, long look. If ever there was someone who shouldn't attempt a project like this, it's me. For one, I have the tiniest allotment of free-time known to man. For two, I do everything the hard way. I mean, why go in a straight line when a parabola will get you there in style? What can I say? It’s the way I’m wired. While I wryly call this column How NOT to Write AIF and fully admit I'm wandering a crooked path, I take a certain pride in my contrary ways. Sure, if I’d been smart about all this, I would’ve done several games over several years instead of pouring everything I've got into one big AIF. It's a bear to manage all of the content, especially in ADRIFT. However, by stuffing it to the rafters, I like to think it's taking on a lot of character and that it will make for a unique AIF experience. Despite another free-time drought, I actually made some progress this month. Most of that progress was philosophical, but I did a good share of writing as well. I'm happy with the first section of the game and excited about the ending. It's the part in between that I'm struggling with. I've never been good with "middle bits" in just about any circumstance. I've been working on dialogue and some schtick that will keep the gameplay fresh in the middle of the story. Not too bad considering the tiny island of free-time this month. I'm pleased with how this is coming together. The benefit of being in the middle is that I can still change my mind about some things. I was winging it at the beginning, but I feel like I know where I'm going with this game now. I made some tough editing decisions this month, but I feel like the game is finally starting to tighten up. For those of you keeping track of such things, HIGS isn't a multimedia thing. At the very beginning of this project, I almost made a game with photos, but I quickly changed my mind. For me, the game had to be about the writing. I didn't want photos to distract the player and blunt the words. I might not blow players away with technical advances and complex constructs, but I’m packing this game with all manner of details and diversions. Even here at the midway point, I've lost track of bits and extras I added ages ago. I did a little testing this month and found myself laughing at things I'd completely forgotten I'd written. And I’m supposed to be in charge of this thing! It’s taking on a life of its own, and I couldn’t be happier about it. It might not be the best AIF ever, but I guarantee you’ll really have to work hard to run out of things to do in it. Besides HIGS, I've had fun this month writing impromptu AIF bits and little asides that I might incorporate into my game. Or not. Yeah, I know I need to focus on my game if it's ever going to see the light of day, but large chunks of time were hard to come by this month. HIGS is like a NASA project: painstaking, demanding, dangerous and ultimately of interest to maybe three people. Live AIF is like setting off rockets in the backyard. Immediate. Uncomplicated. Fun. And there's the added benefit of getting my creative fluids circulating, which ultimately benefits HIGS... you know, in a roundabout way. Also this month, I seriously considered porting my game from ADRIFT to TADS. I mean I really thought long and hard about it. ADRIFT won this round by a hair... well, two hairs. For one, it would mean stopping everything and losing momentum while I spend months copying, pasting and coding. Secondly, there's a language barrier. TADS baffled me way back when I started this project. I see the sense in it, but I just can't wrap my head around the coding. I think it's my determination to do things the hard way that's causing the resistance. If I'd embraced TADS, I'd probably be done by now, sipping pina coladas in the shade on some remote island. Oh well. ADRIFT can be a bear to work with once you've really loaded up on locations, events and tasks. However, it will get you where you want to go if you're patient with it. I've learned its quirks and feel halfway comfortable that I can get it to do what I want, even if that means resorting to trickery or convoluted methods that would stymie Rube Goldberg. It's working, so I'm not going to mess with it. Even though my ADRIFT file is already massive and confusing, it makes a certain amount of sense to me. I know. It's like giving up a nice, tidy organizer for a familiar junk drawer, but that's me in a nutshell. If this ADRIFT file finally reaches critical mass and implodes, then I'll give in and switch over to TADS. And, yes, you'll all be welcome to say, "I told you so!" * * * Seven Seas of Theah—Episode 15 by Christopher Cole OPTIONS: At the end of this story each month, you will be given a number of options. Choose the option that you like and vote in the poll at the Yahoo AIF Archive. The option that gets the most votes will determine how the story continues in next month’s newsletter. NOTE: You can read background information and other tidbits about this story here: http://ccole.aftermath.cx/theah.htm. Magnus yelled out as he came. He held his cock deep inside the mysterious woman and felt it throb as he emptied himself inside her pussy. When he finished, the woman turned and kissed him again. He felt strange and watched with a sort of detachment as she threw her hand over his head, sprinkling some sort of glittering dust in the air. The dust fell onto his face, and he immediately gained clarity. He found himself fully erect again and extremely aroused. The woman smiled at him and he turned as he heard some splashing sounds from the pool. He saw two more of the magically alluring women exit the pool. They too were naked, with beads and tattoos adorning their bodies. One had extremely short blonde hair, slicked back, with small, firm breasts. The other was a long-haired brunette with breasts larger than the woman he was just with. They moved up to him and all three began to slide their hands over him and each other. The first woman he was with began to kiss and caress the brunette, their hands cupping each other’s breasts and sliding down to find the wetness between their legs. The short-haired blonde knelt in front of Magnus and took his stiff cock into her mouth, slowly moving up and down his length as he watched the other two lie onto the warm, wet rocks. The brunette moved between the legs of the first woman and began lightly kissing and teasing her pussy. Her legs opened and the girl lapped away at the other’s wet lips and clit. The blonde stood and led Magnus over to the other two. She guided him down so his head was underneath the brunette as she was on all fours, eating the other’s pussy. She lowered her bottom onto Magnus’ face and he tasted her sweet juices. He felt the blonde lower herself onto his rod and began to ride him as he licked and sucked the brunette’s pussy and ass. She came onto his face, covering his tongue and lips with her sweet tasting juices. Then she rose and changed places with the blonde. The blonde moved over and straddled the curly-haired beauty’s face, spreading her pussy with her fingers, letting the other girl lick and kiss her clit. The brunette lowered herself onto Magnus’ cock and began riding him fast and hard, her large, soft breasts bouncing up and down against her body. Magnus reached up and grasped her large tits, squeezing them and pinching her nipples. The brunette got off Magnus and moved down his body until his slick cock was between her pendulous breasts. She squeezed them together and began to move them up and down his length; a little awkwardly in the position she was in, but still enough to feel amazing. The other two seemed finished with each other for now and the group came together in an orgy of kissing, licking and touching. WHAT SHOULD MAGNUS DO? 1) Fuck the blonde? 2) Fuck the brunette? 3) Fuck the curly haired one? 4) Get them all to suck his cock? 5) Masturbate while the three girls play with each other? 6) Get the brunette and the curly haired one to suck his cock while the blonde masturbates? 7) Fuck all three at once? 8) Eat them all out? 9) Play with all their breasts? 10) Dive into the pool? * * * Great Moments in AIF Each month we will revisit a game we’ve all played before and select a couple of blocks of text that we feel really emphasize what is great about that game. Generally, these will be excerpts from sex scenes, but if we decide that a non-sex moment is particularly funny or vibrant, we will present that as well. This month’s selection is from a genuine classic: Ideal New England Prep School by NewKid. This is a compilation of two scenes featuring Laura, the best athlete in the school. The first part contains the first time we meet her in the woods and the second is the last time we meet her. Enjoy. >n Secret glen You are in a small, quiet glen. It is surrounded by bushes, concealing it from view. There are barely visible gaps to the south and the east. The ground is covered with soft grass. >z Time passes... Laura comes running along from the south, in front of the pack. Laura stops dead when she sees you. You raise an eyebrow, noting that shortcuts are not quite legal. "Shit!" says Laura. "Ok, Ninny, you caught me. What can I say, I'm a sprinter, not a distance runner. Shit...." She looks at you again and says, "So what's it going to take for you to keep quiet about this?" >x laura Laura Farewell is the best looking female jock in school. She is a star cross-country runner, and she also plays basketball and runs track in the winter and spring. She is tall, over six feet, with long, lean legs. She wears her long sun-bleached hair straight, and it reaches well down her back. Laura does not have the biggest breasts around, but they are plenty firm. She wears her uniform shirt much tighter than most, which shows off what she has to the best advantage. She wears a pair of running shorts which are at least two sizes too small. This leaves them drawn tight across her athletic ass, and they ride so high that they expose every inch of her magnificent long legs, and maybe a bit more..... >kiss laura You reach up to Laura's neck, and pull her head down. You place your lips on hers and kiss her gently. She starts to pull away, then relents. As the kiss progresses, her resistance fades away. "OK, so I guess we are even," says Laura. "But I guess I'll hang around until the rest of the racers come along, so I can slip back into the race and sprint for the win." [Later in the game, similar setting:] >z Time passes... Laura comes running along from the south, in front of the pack. Laura actually smiles when she sees you this time. "You know, I was just getting to like this little break in the middle of my races. Too bad this is the last race of the season." She smiles a brilliant smile, her chest heaving from her exertion. "So, how do I 'buy' your silence today?" >Laura, suck me "Mmmmm, the things I do to help us win meets...." murmurs Laura. She pushes you back against a tree, and presses herself against you, her hardened nipples pushing through her shirt and yours to tickle your chest. She slowly slides down your body, until she kneels between your legs. Laura pulls your khakis open and pulls them down to expose your eager cock. "Pretty, pretty," coos Laura, as she strokes and explores your cock with her fingers. Finally, she leans over and kisses the head, then licks it until it drips with saliva. She takes it into her mouth and begins to suck at it hard. She does not take it very deep, due to her still heavy breathing from the race, but she massages the base with her hands in quite delightful fashion. As Laura works, you lean back hard against the tree, and its bark digs into your back. Somewhere off in the distance, you hear the cries of spectators cheering on the racers. Laura is spurred on by the time, and doubles her efforts. Soon you cannot sense anything other than the soft, wet flesh of her lips and tongue, and your impending release. With a groan, you come deep in Laura's mouth. She clamps her lips down and sucks hard, swallowing your jism as it comes. She jacks harder at the base of your shaft with her hands, adding an additional and final spasm to your orgasm. She licks her lips and says, "A yummy protein drink. Just the thing for a mid-race pickmeup!" She tucks your shiny clean dick back into your pants and zips you up very carefully, as if caring for a valuable piece of crystal. Finally, Laura stands and kisses you deeply. "I'll owe you anytime, lover," she breathes. Laura adds, "Look, the season is over, but if you decide I need to continue to buy your silence, come by my dorm room, if you can, and I'll make more payment...." she smiles. * * * CYOA Development Tools: A Review by A. Bomire Just for my own amusement, over the past few weeks I've been playing around with designing a browser-based Choose-Your-Own-Adventure (CYOA) system. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the CYOA concept, it is a story presented to you in sections, with a choice (or multiple choices) at the end of each section. Making a choice will direct you to a new section to relay how the story proceeds. There have been a few AIF games written in this style, the most recent being the four-part series written by David Whyld: Choices, Options, Decisions and Consequences. Of course, there is nothing wrong with using ADRIFT, TADS, Inform, or any of the other usual IF development systems to create a CYOA. But creating one that is browser-friendly will let you host it on a website. After working out a system of my own using CSS and Javascript, I was intrigued by a recent post at the Yahoo! AIF Archive describing two systems already created to help write CYOA without any knowledge of HTML, CSS or Javascript. (If you don't know what those things are, don't worry about it. Suffice it to say, they are used in creating web pages.) As is usual with such things, I had to try them out for myself. The two tools referenced in the post were Tweebox and QuestML. I went to each website and downloaded the latest available versions to try them out. Tweebox First of all, Tweebox originally wasn't a tool for creating CYOA. Tweebox was actually written to develop wiki-pages. (Wiki - a sort of extended FAQ that is becoming very popular. The most famous of these is probably the Wikipedia, http://www.wikipedia.org/.) Tweebox has a couple of built-in templates for different views and styles of wiki's. However, a template was added that can be used to write online stories in the CYOA style - the Jonah template. The other two templates (oddly named TiddlyWiki 1.2 and TiddlyWiki 2.0) are for creating wiki pages and will not work for the CYOA style. In other words, if all you are doing is CYOA - ignore them. Of course, if you are like me, reading something like that means that the first template you try is going to be one of the TiddlyWiki templates. They are nice for building a wiki, but they don't work in online story telling. I played around with them a little, just long enough to realize that I wasn't really interested in them. Using Tweebox is really pretty easy. Everything is done using a web browser. After creating a project by clicking on the "New Project" button (and naming it), you select a file (or files) containing the text of your story, using a familiar "Browse" dialog box. You provide a name for the resulting HTML document, and click on the big "Build" button to create it. Very simple and easy. Of course, there are some special codes you need to put into your story files to cause it to link and jump from section to section, and all of this is explained pretty thoroughly in the Help. I'll go over that in a minute. First, however, one warning: using the browser to write files to your PC is considered a no-no. As such, both Internet Explorer and Firefox will pop up dialogs warning you that letting web pages (even web pages saved to your PC) write to your hard drive is a serious security risk. They let you override this security block, but be careful. Other web pages could also be allowed to make changes, which may not be what you want. The hard part (and it isn't that hard) of using Tweebox comes from creating the files you use to contain your story. These are text files. Note: It has to be TEXT. You can write it using your favorite word processor (like Microsoft Word or OpenOffice Writer), but when you do you have to save it as a text file. This strips out any special formatting you may have used like bold or italic. Don't despair, however, as you can format your text using the usual formatting styles of bold, italic, underscore, etc. using special tags within the text file. What is odd is that you don't use standard HTML tags for this; you use special formatting tags unique to Tweebox. For example, to make your text bold, you put it in double apostrophes: ''this text would be bold''. (Note: those are not double-quotes; those are two single apostrophes next to each other.) To make it italic, you surround it in double backslashes: //this is italic//. There are similar formatting codes for strike through, underscoring, highlighting, etc. It wasn't really clear to me why you use these special tags instead of the usual HTML codes. Since your story is going to be displayed as a web page, I decided to try out using the usual HTML formating codes anyway. Sure enough, they didn't work. You use other special formatting codes to define stuff like the story title, a subtitle, the story's author, and the various sections of the story to be displayed, and the links to display those sections. (Tweebox calls those links "Tiddlers".) The links can actually be used to link to other websites as well, which is pretty nice. So, for example, the author's name could be displayed as a link to your home page if you wanted. Sections of the story are marked by two colons (::), and links are contained within double brackets ([[ ]]). Here is an example of a simple story opening, with the various text formatting codes used by Tweebox: :: SiteTitle Test Story :: SiteSubtitle :: SiteAuthor Me ::Start It was a dark and stormy night. You sat in the library by the crackling fire, a worn copy of your favorite book in your hands. Suddenly, there was a knock at the door. What do you do? [[Open the door]] [[Ignore it]] :: Open the door You open the door. Shivering on your doorstep is a beautiful, yet rain-soaked, woman. "I'm sorry to bother you," she says tentatively. "But my car broke down. Can I use your phone?" :: Ignore it You ignore the knocking, which gets more insistent. Finally, it ceases. You finish your book in peace and go up to bed. You’ll note the bones of the original wiki site construction left over in codes like “SiteTitle” and “SiteAuthor”. When you press the build button, the above text produces a story that looks like this: Test Story by Me Start It was a dark and stormy night. You sat in the library by the crackling fire, a worn copy of your favorite book in your hands. Suddenly, there was a knock at the door. What do you do? Open the door Ignore it When you click on the links "Open the door" or "Ignore it", those sections of the story file are displayed. And, for simple stories, that is all you need to know. But, what about not-so-simple stories? Well, Tweebox comes with a host of advanced features to use as well. These are called "macros", and are contained in double-arrow characters (<< >>). (Perhaps the use of these particular characters is why normal HTML formatting is not allowed.) Suppose, for example, that in our above story clicking on "Ignore it" doesn't end the story but instead prints out something like this: "You ignore the knocking, which only gets more insistent. Finally, grumbling, you put down your book." And from here you wish the story to proceed just as it does if you had clicked "Open the door". Well, Tweebox lets you jump right to that part of the story text directly without having to click on the link. This lets you create different story outputs that still lead you down the same path, without having to retype whole sections of text. Another useful macro is the "choice" macro. In the above example, once you click on "Open the door", the "Ignore it" link remains active. You can go back and click on it to see that story text as well. This usually isn't what you want; you want the two choices to be mutually exclusive. Tweebox has a different tag for those types of links: <>. There is also the "action" macro, which lets you perform a single action without changing the story or linking to a different section. For example, you can examine an item (which prints the description). Along with these macros, you can set variables and use IF-ELSE condition checking. You can also get fairly complicated and write your own macros, or choose from a host of macros pre-written and available from the Tweebox website. Enough features? Well, in the upper corner there is a menu which contains a link to "Restart story". You can also modify this menu to contain any useful menu items you wish. For example, suppose your story spans multiple volumes (such as David Whyld's four-part series). You could put links to other parts of the series in the menu at the top if you wished. This may seem like a lot to remember, but there is a very helpful HELP document that is included, which walks you step by step through creating your first CYOA story, and goes over all of the advanced features. Okay, that's all of the stuff I like about Tweebox. What about the stuff I don't like? Well, for one, it stores all of the information about your project as a cookie in your browser's cookie folder. If you, like me, regularly clean out this folder, then all of the information about your project will be cleaned out as well. It's fairly simple to rebuild it again, especially since all of your story text is contained within external files, but it can be annoying having to re-setup your project again and again every time you edit it. Another thing that some people may not like is that some of the features don't work well in some browsers. What I mean is that periodically in the documentation it mentions that this or that feature doesn't work as described when used in a browser such as Opera (in fact, it specifically mentions Opera). This probably means that those features won't work in other browsers as well. Mostly these are the more advanced features, so simple stories like the one above shouldn't have any problems. As for using it in Internet Explorer and Firefox, I noticed a difference both in the look and action of the system. It was obviously written for use in Firefox, and then retrofitted for Internet Explorer (an odd way of doing things as it is usually the reverse). I first did everything in Firefox, which is my preferred browser. Then I went back and did the same thing in Internet Explorer. Some parts of the help document were missing or blank and the options to allow Internet Explorer to write files to the hard disk were a little harder to track down. This latter part isn't a problem with Tweebox, but I wanted to point it out anyway. If you were going to use this system to develop your CYOA story, I would recommend using Firefox as it seemed to operate more smoothly. How well does it work? Well, after reading over the help and playing around with a few of the macros, I went to one of the online CYOA sites, specifically CHYOO. There I picked a story at random (picking a short story, only going 5 or so levels deep). In just a few minutes, I had duplicated this story in Tweebox. Of course, this is not your usual writing experience, as I was able to cut and paste the text and only had to worry about creating the various links. But it was easy to do. For more information, and to download the Tweebox system, check out the home page at: http://gimcrackd.com/etc/src/#Twee. QuestML After the relative ease-of-use of Tweebox, I then downloaded QuestML. The first thing I noticed is a difference in size. Tweebox is very small: less than 400K. QuestML is much larger, being over 7MB. Tweebox is a set of HTML files that you open within a browser. QuestML is an actual application that you install on your computer. It appears to be for Windows only, but you may be able to get it to run on Linux using WINE. Mac users are probably out of luck. This 7MB includes the QML editor, which is used to create QuestML files. If you want to create your files using a standard text editor, you can download the much smaller QML2 package, which is just under 700K. I decided to go for the full experience, and downloaded the editor. Installing QuestML brought up something that made me take notice. A dialog box pops up saying that the InstallShield program used to create the QuestML setup program was the unregistered evaluation copy. If you, as an individual, want to download evaluation software and use it without paying for it, that is your decision. I’ll let the courts decide what is right and wrong about it. But, you probably don’t want to release something to the world at large advertising that you may be stealing software – which is exactly what this dialog box means. That issue, however, has nothing to do with the quality of the QuestML application, which is really what I am supposed to be discussing. Reading over the QuestML documentation, you find you don’t need to use the included QML-Edit application to create CYOA stories. You can write them using any text editor, just the same as Tweebox. QuestML uses XML (an eXtended HTML set of tags used in application development). You simply write your text file using the QuestML tags, and include the supporting files which you can get in the QML2 package I mentioned earlier. Again, I decided not to do it this way, and use the free QML-Edit application. I opened QML-Edit and was immediately presented with a new project. The interface is very similar to other point-and-click development systems I’ve used such as ADRIFT and RAGS. Down the left side of the page is a list of “stations”, which is QuestML’s name for story sections. The right side of the page has a large window at the top for the story text, with a list of links below it. It even helpfully prompts you by putting “Enter your text here” in the large window. Along the bottom are three tabs labeled: Editor, Source and Preview. Clicking on them in turn reveals that the Editor is the page I am currently on, letting me use the point-and-click interface to enter my story elements. The Source page reveals the actual XML code that is created by the editor. The Preview tab shows me what my text will look like when it is actually opened in a web browser. I like these features – it lets me use the QML-Edit program to point-and-click my way along until I am more familiar with the XML tags, showing me what they are so that later I can skip the editor all together if I wish. And I can immediately see what my results will be. Once I add other stations (i.e., sections) into the editor, I can then create links to them using the drop down lists at the bottom. Unlike Tweebox, I can give a textual description of the link without having it also be the name of the link as well. For example, I can create a station called “Part2” and then the link text can read “Jump to the second part of the story”. The drop down list of stations includes all of the stations I have created thus far, plus two others: start and back. Start takes me back to the start of the story, and back takes me back to the previous “page”. It is nice having these automatically listed. Along with the editor, there are a host of menu options available. These menu options let you set things like the title of the story, the author’s name, the background color, the default font, the link font and color, the background image, etc. Basically, all of the usual things you can set in an HTML document using Cascading Style Sheets (CSS). A couple of the options were unclear from their name and not clearly documented, such as the “References” option for the current station and the “Analyze” option for the project. Clicking on these brought up Internet Explorer with a “Page not found” error, so I still don’t know what they do. Worse, I got the same result when clicking on the “View Help” menu option. There is a separate included Help document, but still this missing link was annoying. When I finished, I closed and saved my project. You have to save your project in the QuestML directory – if you try to save it any place else it will not let you. It saves the file as an HTML document which I then opened in Internet Explorer (more on that later), and it worked just fine. Unlike Tweebox, which displays your story in an ever expanding single window, QuestML clears the “screen” with each change in station. Thus, only the current active station is on screen at a time. It’s a style choice that some will like, and others will not. Okay, that’s for a relatively simple story. What about more complicated stuff? Well, QuestML will let you do the same sort of things that Tweebox will do – such as set variables, test them with IF- ELSE conditions, include other sections, etc. It also has a host of other features not available in Tweebox such as including images and music, getting player input (such as his/her name), and using different choice options like using an image as an image map. For example, you can present an image of a house, and clicking on the bedroom window will bring you to the part of the story describing what you see inside – or a picture of the bedroom if that is what you want. These advanced options aren’t immediately apparent as they don’t become available unless you are on the Source tab. Again, I didn’t find this documented anywhere. It just became apparent as I played around with the interface. After finding out that I had to save my document in a specific place, I decided to copy it to another folder and try opening it. It didn’t work. Or, I should say that it opened and displayed a blank page. I opened the document in a text editor, and saw all kinds of HTML codes linking in scripts and CSS files. These additional files are in folders in the QuestML install directory, and will have to be included when you distribute your finished CYOA story. In order to create a “stand alone” project that can be uploaded to a web page, you need to “Export” your project. This will create the needed HTML document and all supporting files in a folder whose name you provide. Or, I should say, it should create the needed HTML document and all supporting files. When I tried it, I received an ActiveX error and the application shut down. Not very friendly at all! What is also not very friendly is that the QuestML files are only usable in Internet Explorer. When I tried to open my test project in Firefox, all I saw was a blank page. This is probably because of the extensive use of VBscript by QuestML documents, which Firefox doesn’t support. Other browsers (such as Opera) may support VBscript, but I’m not sure. I don’t use those browsers, so I was unable to test it. After my experience in creating the simple test story, I decided to skip trying to implement the CHYOO story as I did in Tweebox. Cutting-and-pasting the text and creating the links would be simple. Exporting and viewing would not. For more information, and to download the QuestML system, check out the home page at http://www.questml.com. What are my final thoughts? Well, despite having a superior application for creating CYOA stories, as well as many more options, QuestML really disappointed me in its actual use. The QML-Edit application is clearly not ready for use yet. The online tutorial goes over manually editing and creating stories by including the XML tags, which I’m sure works just fine given all of the sample stories available on the site. But, that is much too complicated for just a simple CYOA story such as most users will probably want to create. If you want the bells and whistles of including images and sounds in your stories, then go ahead and learn QuestML’s XML tags. Even though Tweebox’s text-editing method isn’t as easy to use as the point-and-click interface of the QML-Edit package, it has the distinct advantage of actually being something that works. If I were going to use a package to create a CYOA story, Tweebox would be it. AIF Wants You If you can write game reviews, articles, opinion pieces, humorous essays, or endless blather, we want you. Contact the Editor for suggested content or just write what you want and send it to us. * * * Staff Editor: A Ninny is an AIF player, author of three AIF games and frequent beta-tester. His Parlour received an Erin for Best “One Night Stand” game in 2004. His most recent game is Malaise. Webmaster: Darc Nite is a newcomer to the AIF scene. He is an avid gamer who heard the call for help with the AIF Newsletter. Staff: A Bomire is the author of several TADS AIF games, including Dexter Dixon: In Search of the Prussian Pussy, Tomorrow Never Comes and The Backlot. His games have won numerous awards and Erin nominations. He was the co-recipient of the Badman Memorial Lifetime Achievement Award in 2006. BBBen is an AIF author. His games have received two Erin awards, numerous nominations and first place in A. Bomire's 2004 mini-comp. Grimm Sharlak is the author of two AIF games: Breakout and Of Masters and Mistresses: Abduction. Christopher Cole has written many popular ADRIFT AIF games, including Camp Windy Lake, Gamma Gals, and Mount Voluptuous. He is the 2005 winner of AIF’s Badman Memorial Lifetime Achievement Award. Bitterfrost is a longtime IF/AIF player working on his first (and last) game, How I Got Syphilix. * * * Submitting Your Work to 'Inside Erin' Please direct all comments, articles, reviews, discussion and art to the Editor, A. Ninny, at aifsubmissions@gmail.com.