Parser Say "Happy New Year!"
12/31/2012
It was a quiet New Year's eve, just before dinner and I managed to get a few hours of programming time on my long neglected IF murder mystery game. As I was working away, I noticed a couple of email notifications on Inform7 suggestions I had voted on. Just as I was busily working away on my game, there were others, perhaps many others, around the world working on their own IF projects.
No doubt there are people working on new games, writing code, creating extensions, writing hints and walkthroughs and feelies. Others, like the Inform7 team, appear to be toiling away on bug fixes and new features for an upcoming release. And hopefully there are newcomers, perhaps intrigued by the iOS Lost Treasures of Infocom or otherwise have stumbled upon IFComp and are taking a look at Inform7, TADS, Quest or other IF tools with the thoughts of creating their own games. To all of you, I say "Happy New Year!"
I don't have many personal connections to the IF community, but if I did, I'd buy everyone a drink as a thank you for all that the IF community does. There are so many people who have put in countless hours in projects that we all benefit from whether it's the Inform7 compiler, the IDEs, library extensions, documentation, historical essays, interpreters, Kindle & iOS ports, classic retro games, fantastic modern games, lively forums, competitions... You could not hope for a better, warmer and more inviting community. (Ok, with the possible exception of mean reviews, but even that seems to be getting better.)
Thank you! I wish everyone a wonderful year and the best of success with your IF projects in 2013.
If there's something you're grateful for in 2012, please feel free to add a comment.