Re: Portability


31 May 1995 20:51:05 GMT

In article <3qiaj1$srj@news.rz.uni-duesseldorf.de>,
<lerchj@sunserver1.rz.uni-duesseldorf.de> wrote:
>: AdvSys: Compiler and interpreter C source available.
>: Binaries available for MS-DOS, Macintosh.
>: I've seen ports for other machines, but they are not available
>: from GMD, it seems.
>
>For AMIGA it's on an older Fish-disc and, I think, on AmiNet. (I got it to
>try out a small package first, and it still seems interesting and without
>the monstrous language of the better writing systems, but the
>documentation I got is, uh, short).

For some more information about AdvSys, there's a well-written article
by the authorthat was published in BYTE sometime in 1986, I think.

The language is quite nice (if you like Lisp) and has a much "cleaner"
syntax than TADS, not to speak of Inform, but it's also pretty limited
compared to the newer systems. In particular, the parser is quite
limited. IMHO it's not quite up to the standard expected by today's IF
players. If you're serious about writing IF, there's really no serious
alternative to TADS and Inform (IMHO).

Erica Sadun's "One Hand Clapping" (available from GMD) was written in
AdvSys, BTW. It's a very nice game, but it suffers quite a lot from
the lousy parser. See my review in SPAG 5 for details.

Magnus Olsson (mol@df.lth.se) / yacc computer club, Lund, Sweden
Work: Innovativ Vision AB, Linkoping (magnus.olsson@ivab.se)
Old adresses (may still work): magnus@thep.lu.se, thepmo@selund.bitnet
PGP key available via finger (to df.lth.se) or on request.