Interactive Fiction and Project Hacking

Remember Zork from the 80s? Choose-your-own-adventure books? Interested in writing story-like games that your friends can play?

Learn how to combine your story ideas with programming with our introduction to programming interactive fiction. Melissa Ford will show everyone how to get started with Twine, a very simple program that grows with the programmer's abilities.

The introduction will be about fifteen minutes long, and then we'll break as normal into groups for further work/play with interactive fiction, Scratch, HTML, Arduino and Minecraft hacking. A heads up, we're looking for projects to show off at Maker Faire Silver Spring on September 14th, so if you've been working on something cool over the summer, bring it in for a test run on Sunday.

Important: Before the meeting, please download and install Twine 1.4.2 from http://twinery.org/ . Twine runs on Mac and Windows. If you're running Linux, you can run Twine under Wine. Help will be available before the meeting for Linux users. If you don't have a laptop, don't worry. We'll pair you up with someone else, and that often turns out to be a lot of fun for both people.

Children 12 and under must be accompanied by an adult.

Getting there by car

The Elks Lodge is at 5 Taft Ct. in Rockville. It's right off Gude Dr. near the intersection with Route 28. They have plenty of parking around their building, and we'll be meeting in the lower level. The best entrance is around the side as shown in the photo below:

http://photos4.meetupstatic.com/photos/event/1/7/4/0/600_363785952.jpeg

Getting there by public transit

Depending on where you are coming from, it is best to check Google Maps for planning your trip. Google Maps can check both the WMATA and Montgomery County Ride On schedules. If you're at Rockville metro, the 59 and 48 buses take a near direct route (less than 10 minutes) to Gude Dr. and Taft St. From there, it's a short walk east to 5 Taft Ct. The 48 bus should leave Rockville Station at 2:50 PM. For the return trip, the 59 bus leaves Taft St. and Gude Dr. at 5:15 pm and the 48 bus leaves from the same place at 5:25 pm.