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


Sun, 30 Apr 1995 01:22:24 GMT

Marcus-Christopher Ludl (e9226344@stud1.tuwien.ac.at) wrote:
: 1) Not only does almost everybody here USE Inform and TADS, but these two
: tools represent the main discussion-topic on this group. Now, it's not
: that I don't like either of them (I hardly know them)...it's just that
: 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. Isn't
: anybody out there interested in the things BEHIND the game? The
: algorithms for parsing, compressing string data, general coding...
: To all who use Inform and TADS (and similar tools): Please don't feel
: personally offended, I'm just looking for others who could be interested
: in such things...

Well, if you look at the inform library files, I think that certainly
exposes you to all you need. I used to write my IF from scratch...now I
find it would be crazy to do so. All it serves to do is make the job
4 times longer, and Inform is flexible enough to allow any modification
conceivable using text.
Plus, using TADS or Inform you are assured compatability with pc, mac,
unix, etc, and considering the size of the user base, this in important.

: 2) It seems to me that there are FAR more games that "will be finished
: soon" than there are games that "are finished". Now, I've not yet completed
: my first game, either, but I would never daresay "Hold your breath, my
: game is going to be finished soon", simply because I believed my game to
: be "nearly finished" much too often in the past (and another bug, and
: another, and...). So why is it that there are maybe a dozen games out
: there (that I know of) that I would consider REALLY GOOD (not speaking of
: professional games), even though so many out there seem to be working on
: another great game? :-)

I'm not sure I get the question. Programming jobs are left unfinished
all the time. I've got an unfinished game over here actually, and it
certainly is possible I will never finish it. (I should, though...)

--
Jason Dyer - jdyer@indirect.com