Re: Is there anyone who does NOT use IF-tools...


29 Apr 1995 21:32:45 -0400

e9226344@stud1.tuwien.ac.at (Marcus-Christopher Ludl) justifiably notices:
>1) Not only does almost everybody here USE Inform and TADS, but
>these two tools represent the main discussion-topic on this group.
>I'd be interested if there are others who, like me, prefer to stick
>to Pascal, Prolog, LISP or whatever to program adventure- (IF-)games.

I think if you checked out Inform or TADS, you'd see why hardly anyone
programs "from scratch" for text adventures. The parsers and other
routines are excellent in both languages, and there's little need to
reinvent the wheel (especially when they made their wheels so much better
than I could!). However, if you wanted to deviate from the standard
Infocom-style text adventure, you would indeed need to code in something
else.

Personally, I would like to see some discussion on "true" interactive
fiction. This would probably mean using something like Prolog, which I
don't know much about, but would like to be exposed to. And, although I
would still use TADS, I would not be adverse to parser discussion. Even if
I don't use it, I could still learn coding techniques from it.

>2) It seems to me that there are FAR more games that "will be
>finished soon" than there are games that "are finished".

Well, if it's a good enough technique for Bill Gates... ;-)
Actually, I've noticed the same thing with most art forms. Here in
Nashville, everyone you run into is supposedly a songwriter. But very few
actually do write and finish songs. And even fewer write ones that are any
good. But the fact that they're out there doing something even remotely
creative these days is commendable.

I have megs of half-finished software. I'd like to think I know better
than to promise anyone I'll finish one of them. (Although I *am* working
on this one thing, you're gonna love it, you see... oh, nevermind)

- Jeff