Cragne Manor source code (some of it)

Tuesday, May 31, 2022

Tagged: interactive fiction, ryan veeder, jenni polodna, michael gentry, anchorhead, if, too many authors to list, cragne manor

You may remember Cragne Manor, the collaborative exquisite-corpse IF game that launched in 2018. (My post about it at the time.) The project was a tribute to Mike Gentry's Anchorhead, organized by Ryan Veeder and Jenni Polodna. It turned into an absolutely absurd agglomeration-fest of eighty-four IF authors. Each author wrote a separate game in Inform 7, following certain guidelines, and then the editors stitched them together.

Cragne Manor includes contributions from many of the IF authors of the '90s and '00s, as well as more recent years. It's a really interesting snapshot of a variety of styles. However, the original project didn't encompass releasing the source code. We talked about it! But Jenni and Ryan had enough on their plates trying to make the game work. Asking them to create a source release too would have been ingratitude.

As it happened, a couple of weeks ago, Jason Love -- one of the 84 Cragne authors -- up and posted his source code on the forum. Jason's post set off a wave of other people doing the same.

Seize the moment, right? I got permission from each of those people to archive their Cragne source files on my own web site. I include my own, of course.

As of today, my page includes thirteen of the game-files which constitute Cragne Manor. I started the weekend with five. There's a bunch more. Let's put the word out!

If you want your Cragne source on my site, please send me the source file. (The raw code -- that's Source/story.ni in your I7 project folder.) Or, if it's already posted somewhere, pass me a link and let me know I have permission to include it.

Thanks! I doubt this will ever be a complete collection, but it would be nice to gather as much as possible.

(But please don't harass Ryan and Jenni about this. This is my effort, not theirs.)