
Show HN: Voice-z-machine – Enables playing z-machine games via a webservice - interpfister
https://github.com/interpfister/voice-z-machine
======
Mizza
Nice! Related: One of our crew wrote a Lambda app for playing Zork on your
Alexa:
[https://github.com/mathom/AlexaZork](https://github.com/mathom/AlexaZork)

If somebody could please, please, please figure out a way to have a voice-
interactive AI dungeon master for playing DnD, I would be so happy..

~~~
JoshTriplett
> If somebody could please, please, please figure out a way to have a voice-
> interactive AI dungeon master for playing DnD, I would be so happy..

That's an AGI problem. And if you constrain it enough to be solvable without
AGI, what you end up with is a computer RPG, or a text adventure, both of
which lose the "you can do anything and don't have predetermined choices"
aspect of D&D.

I would go as far as to say that "DM a Dungeons and Dragons game in a manner
indistinguishable from a good human DM" would be an effective Turing test.

~~~
reilly3000
For those of us who grew up playing touch-tone chose your own adventure games,
something even slightly more sophisticated would make for a most enjoyable
extended bath. AGI need not apply.

~~~
sago
There is a whole category for Alexa CYOA games. Amazon even released a tool to
author them [0].

[0]: [https://github.com/alexa/interactive-adventure-game-
tool](https://github.com/alexa/interactive-adventure-game-tool)

------
JoeDaDude
Nice! You beat me to it. This is what I had planned to use the Google AIY [1]
for.

[1] [https://aiyprojects.withgoogle.com/voice#project-
overview](https://aiyprojects.withgoogle.com/voice#project-overview)

------
hguhghuff
Does this use amazon Polly?

Ideally there would have been a demo to listen to.....

I always felt that Stephen Fry narrated Infocom games like The Enchanter would
be something extraordinary to play.

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asciimo
What's the go-to community online for ininteractive fiction writers and tools?

~~~
sago
I'm not aware of any defacto place in the way there was in the usenet days of
rec.arts.int-fiction [0] (although there is still a raif Google group [1])

Try

[http://intfiction.org/forum/](http://intfiction.org/forum/)

[https://www.reddit.com/r/interactivefiction/](https://www.reddit.com/r/interactivefiction/)

[http://ifcomp.org](http://ifcomp.org)

There are local meet-ups and groups in various places (e.g. London [2], Boston
[3], Bay [4] - run by Dan who's a HNer).

Parser-based interactive fiction has been overshadowed a bit in the last few
years by choose your own adventure style. And forums/blogs generally seem to
be a bit of a fading medium. But there are still players and writers out
there. There's a knot of folks on twitter, of course. Lots of energy in the
hobby is focussed on the competition: ifcomp.

If you want to have a go I tend to recommend people start with Inform 7 [5].
If you're a programmer it's also a fascinating language design, though TADS
[6] is more conventional.

\---

[0]: [https://www.ifarchive.org/indexes/if-archiveXrec.arts.int-
fi...](https://www.ifarchive.org/indexes/if-archiveXrec.arts.int-fiction.html)

[1]: [https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/rec.arts.int-
fiction](https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/rec.arts.int-fiction)

[2]: [https://www.meetup.com/Oxford-and-London-Interactive-
Fiction...](https://www.meetup.com/Oxford-and-London-Interactive-Fiction-
Group)

[3]: [http://pr-if.org/](http://pr-if.org/)

[4]: [https://www.meetup.com/sf-bay-area-interactive-
fiction/](https://www.meetup.com/sf-bay-area-interactive-fiction/)

[5]: [http://inform7.com/](http://inform7.com/)

[6]: [http://www.tads.org/](http://www.tads.org/)

(Edit: links)

