Telegram Interactive Fiction Bot

A telegram bot that allows playing interactive fiction.

Requirements

• A TCL distribution with the http, tsl and json packages.

• An command line interactive fiction interpreter that works with stdin/stdout (no ncurses) and which signals that it's done with output and awaiting input by printing the ETX byte (0x03) on a line by itself. This can be any GLK enabled interpreter compiled with my patched fork of CheapGLK. Judging by the formats Gargoyle supports, pretty much every IF format should have a GLK enabled interpreter.

• A telegram bot token. See here for how to create one. Make sure to disable privacy mode for your bot -- this just means the bot has access to all messages posted in a group chat it is a member of.

Usage

tclsh telegram-if-bot.tcl YOUR-BOT-TOKEN INTERPRETER-COMMAND-LINE

For example:

tclsh telegram-if-bot.tcl 110201543:AAHdqTcvCH1vGWJxfSeofSAs0K5PALDsaw bocfel LostPig.z8

The first chat the bot receives a message from since starting the script will be the chat that provides input to the IF interpreter. So create a group chat for all your players, add your bot and send any message to start the session. Messages prefixed with > will be understood by the bot as commands for the interpreter.

Example (private info censored):

tclsh telegram-if-bot/telegram-if-bot.tcl ___ bocfel-1.3.2/bocfel bocfel-1.3.2/LostPig.z8 
Telegram bot token: ___
Interpreter command line: "bocfel-1.3.2/bocfel" "bocfel-1.3.2/LostPig.z8" 
Starting session
Command:  l
Command:  inventory
Command:  take off pants
Command:  scream