NEPTUN Biography

Interactive fiction is the world of video games, text adventure games, choose-your-own-adventure books, and much more! It brings together computer science and the creative arts in a unique way, and has some fun tools out there ready for total beginners to make their own stories. In this class, I'll give a brief overview of the history of interactive fiction. Then, for the main part of the session, we'll try out cool tools for building and playing IF games. Best of all, I have tons of IF game recommendations to share. Depending on the vibes people want, I can always adjust the lesson plan on the fly and make time for just geeking out about IF :)

Ever wanted to drop an egg and have it NOT explode? Unlock mystical secrets of physics and science--impress your friends, impress your teachers, prove that you are the Egg Master! (But seriously, we're going to be building a chamber to put an egg in, dropping it from a balcony, and seeing if the egg breaks. Very easy, lots of fun, and a good competition.)

Learn to fold cool things with just a square sheet of paper! You can make birds, fish, balloons, flowers, and more! Paper will be provided. This is the "for fun" part--check out part 2 for more advanced applications of origami :)

Learn how a simple set of folds can be used to make solar panels that go to space, materials with interesting properties, life-saving airbags, and more! You'll get to try some of these complex folding patterns yourself, and hear about some of the hardest problems relating to the math of origami (don't worry--you're not expected to solve them). Paper will be provided.

Interactive fiction is the world of video games, text adventure games, choose-your-own-adventure books, and much more! It brings together computer science and the creative arts in a unique way, and has some fun tools out there ready for total beginners to make their own stories. In this class, we'll give a brief overview of the history of interactive fiction. Then, for the main part of the session, we'll play some cool IF games as a group! We'll focus on two styles of interactive fiction, parser games and choose-your-own-adventure games. If you're interested in learning to write IF, you can dive into that with our other session ("Interactive Fiction Workshop"). Best of all, we have tons of IF game recommendations to share. Depending on the vibes people want, we can always adjust the lesson plan on the fly and make time for just geeking out about IF :)

Bring some story ideas, or just show up ready to mess around with cool online platforms! We'll be exploring Inform and Twine, which are two tools for writing interactive fiction (for more about what IF is, check out the description of our main session, "Interactive Fiction"). Regardless of your previous experience, this will be a fun hands-on class that combines storytelling and coding, and you get to choose how much of each you want to do :) We'll present short tutorials on how to use Twine and Inform, and then the rest of the session will be free time to ask questions, experiment, and exchange IF recommendations! Computers will be provided, though you may also bring your own (you will need a laptop that runs MacOS, Windows, or Linux).

Interactive fiction is the world of video games, text adventure games, choose-your-own-adventure books, and much more! It brings together computer science and the creative arts in a unique way, and has some fun tools out there ready for total beginners to make their own stories. In this class, I'll give a brief overview of the history of interactive fiction. Then, for the main part of the session, we'll try out cool ways to build and play IF games. We'll split into two groups--for those who have coding experience (or want a fast-paced challenge), you'll get a crash course in the Inform 7 programming language, and for those who want to do less coding and more writing, you'll be introduced to Twine! Best of all, I have tons of IF game recommendations to share. Depending on the vibes people want, I can always adjust the lesson plan on the fly and make time for just geeking out about IF :)