Out of curiousity...
Daniel Barkalow
that would expand the TADS audience somewhat, and should be entertaining
for one of us weird people who likes writing random programs.
Alternatively, what about a TADS->glulx compiler?
-Iabervon
*This .sig unintentionally changed*
Adam J. Thornton
Daniel Barkalow <iabe...@iabervon.mit.edu> wrote:
>Has anyone considered writing a TADS->z-machine compiler? It seems like
>that would expand the TADS audience somewhat, and should be entertaining
>for one of us weird people who likes writing random programs.
Except that TADS games, at least large ones, may not fit in even a z8.
>Alternatively, what about a TADS->glulx compiler?
This, on the other hand, should work just fine. Plenty of room in there.
I don't know if mjr has ever documented the GAM file structure, though. I
mean, sure, you could recover it from the source, but do you want to do
that?
Adam
--
ad...@princeton.edu
"My eyes say their prayers to her / Sailors ring her bell / Like a moth
mistakes a light bulb / For the moon and goes to hell." -- Tom Waits
Kevin Forchione
isn't one of the reasons one sticks with it. Once you get beyond the Infocom
nostalgia, it boils down to the language, the manual, and the object
behaviours that are the deciding factors.
As far as object behaviour is concerned, with release 2.5.1 (or, even
earlier 2.4.0) there is little that Inform does that cannot be duplicated by
TADS (i.e. before/after/each_turn reactions, etc)
--Kevin
Daniel Barkalow <iabe...@iabervon.mit.edu> wrote in message
news:Pine.LNX.3.91.99100...@iabervon.mit.edu...
> Has anyone considered writing a TADS->z-machine compiler? It seems like
> that would expand the TADS audience somewhat, and should be entertaining
> for one of us weird people who likes writing random programs.
> Alternatively, what about a TADS->glulx compiler?
>
Stephen Granade
> An important reason why people are drawn to Inform is that the interpreters
> are better. WinFrotz is an excellent pice of software, whereas WinTads is
> not so great. As such, the playing experience is greater for an Inform game
> than a Tads game. Also, is it a coincidence that all the best games of the
> last year are from the Inform fold, and Tads has produced relatively little
> of note?
Good lord, are you deliberately trying to provoke a flame war, or are
you normally this inflammatory?
Stephen
--
Stephen Granade | Interested in adventure games?
sgra...@phy.duke.edu | Visit About.com's IF Page
Duke University, Physics Dept | http://interactfiction.about.com
Andrew Plotkin
> In article <jdyadid...@lepton.phy.duke.edu>,
> Stephen Granade <sgra...@lepton.phy.duke.edu> wrote:
>>Good lord, are you deliberately trying to provoke a flame war, or are
>>you normally this inflammatory?
>
> just trying to live up to the memory of Scott Adams adventures? How can some
> pathetic toy like the z-machine hope to live up to their majesty?
There's a program to translate Scott Adams game files into Z-code, you
know. :-)
--Z
"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the
borogoves..."
Peter Seebach
Stephen Granade <sgra...@lepton.phy.duke.edu> wrote:
>Good lord, are you deliberately trying to provoke a flame war, or are
>you normally this inflammatory?
I don't see anything inflammatory about it. Isn't it obvious that we're all
just trying to live up to the memory of Scott Adams adventures? How can some
pathetic toy like the z-machine hope to live up to their majesty?
-s
--
Copyright 1999, All rights reserved. Peter Seebach / se...@plethora.net
C/Unix wizard, Pro-commerce radical, Spam fighter. Boycott Spamazon!
Will work for interesting hardware. http://www.plethora.net/~seebs/
Visit my new ISP <URL:http://www.plethora.net/> --- More Net, Less Spam!
Adam J. Thornton
>> are better. WinFrotz is an excellent pice of software, whereas WinTads is
>> not so great. As such, the playing experience is greater for an Inform game
>> than a Tads game. Also, is it a coincidence that all the best games of the
>> last year are from the Inform fold, and Tads has produced relatively little
>> of note?
>you normally this inflammatory?
Nah. Deliberately inflammatory would be:
Don't use TADS, because WinTADS blows goats. WinTADS sucks because Stephen
Granade is a big mean old poopyhead!!!1! and I bet he voted for HITLER
HITLER HITLER!
Graham Nelson
<URL:mailto:ad...@princeton.edu> wrote:
> Don't use TADS, because WinTADS blows goats. WinTADS sucks because Stephen
> Granade is a big mean old poopyhead!!!1! and I bet he voted for HITLER
> HITLER HITLER!
Now is the WinTADS of our discontent...
--
Graham Nelson | gra...@gnelson.demon.co.uk | Oxford, United Kingdom
T Raymond
>An important reason why people are drawn to Inform is that the interpreters
>are better. WinFrotz is an excellent pice of software, whereas WinTads is
>not so great. As such, the playing experience is greater for an Inform game
>than a Tads game. Also, is it a coincidence that all the best games of the
>last year are from the Inform fold, and Tads has produced relatively little
>of note?
Personally I rather like WinTADS, it does some thing that the html
tads executable doesn't, it's a bit smaller and faster. Now if it can
get updated to handle TADS 2.5 I'll be even more happy to get back to
using it.
It's kind of funny. IF you replace Inform with PC and TADS with Amiga,
this whole thread sounds like a conversation I've had several times,
which generally bubbles down to the fact that most people aren't fully
aware of what can be done with one or the other. (That applies to both
IF languages and the computers ;)
Tom
Adam J. Thornton
Graham Nelson <gra...@gnelson.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>In article <7tefus$6mu$1...@cnn.Princeton.EDU>, Adam J. Thornton
><URL:mailto:ad...@princeton.edu> wrote:
>> Don't use TADS, because WinTADS blows goats. WinTADS sucks because Stephen
>> Granade is a big mean old poopyhead!!!1! and I bet he voted for HITLER
>> HITLER HITLER!
>Now is the WinTADS of our discontent...
Don't be a Dick.
Stephen Granade
> Personally I rather like WinTADS, it does some thing that the html
> tads executable doesn't, it's a bit smaller and faster. Now if it can
> get updated to handle TADS 2.5 I'll be even more happy to get back to
> using it.
Are people still interested in using WinTADS? With the advent of
Mike's HTML TADS interpreter, I had more-or-less stopped updating
WinTADS and was considering abandoning it.
J.D. Berry
ad...@princeton.edu (Adam J. Thornton) wrote:
> >Now is the WinTADS of our discontent...
>
> Don't be a Dick.
Yorks! That's the third time you've bewitched me, Lancaster.
Jim
Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.
Paul O'Brian
> Are people still interested in using WinTADS?
Yes!
> With the advent of
> Mike's HTML TADS interpreter, I had more-or-less stopped updating
> WinTADS and was considering abandoning it.
The thing I like about WinTADS as opposed to the HTML TADS interpreter is
that WinTADS offers so many options that the other one doesn't -- colors,
fonts, various story window choices, interpreter choices, etc. If WinTADS
was updated to understand the latest TADS code and had the multimedia
capabilities of the HTML TADS interprter, it would be the only TADS
interpreter I'd ever use.
--
Paul O'Brian obr...@colorado.edu http://ucsu.colorado.edu/~obrian
"Sometimes even music cannot substitute for tears."
-- Paul Simon
Stephen Granade
> The thing I like about WinTADS as opposed to the HTML TADS interpreter is
> that WinTADS offers so many options that the other one doesn't -- colors,
> fonts, various story window choices, interpreter choices, etc. If WinTADS
> was updated to understand the latest TADS code and had the multimedia
> capabilities of the HTML TADS interprter, it would be the only TADS
> interpreter I'd ever use.
I doubt I'll be upgrading WinTADS to handle the HTML capabilities of
TADS because of the work involved and the duplication of effort re:
the Windows HTML TADS interp. But I'll go ahead and update it for
2.5.1 as soon as I can. If there are specific features you'd like in
the HTML TADS interp, you should probably ask MJR for them.
Lucian Paul Smith
: On 6 Oct 1999, Stephen Granade wrote:
: > Are people still interested in using WinTADS?
: Yes!
I'll second that emotion.
: > With the advent of
: > Mike's HTML TADS interpreter, I had more-or-less stopped updating
: > WinTADS and was considering abandoning it.
: The thing I like about WinTADS as opposed to the HTML TADS interpreter is
: that WinTADS offers so many options that the other one doesn't -- colors,
: fonts, various story window choices, interpreter choices, etc. If WinTADS
: was updated to understand the latest TADS code and had the multimedia
: capabilities of the HTML TADS interprter, it would be the only TADS
: interpreter I'd ever use.
But I slightly disagree here. I like the way I've customized WinTADS for
generic adventures. But I think that style would probably look horrible
for games with included graphics like Arrival. So I would like to use the
HTML TADS interpreter for games with graphics, and WinTADS for games
without graphics, so I can use my own color scheme.
I'd even associated .gam files with WinTADS and .hgam files with
HTML-TADS. Had to make 'em all H-TADS for the comp, though, since I was
getting the 'which do you mean?' bug with WinTADS.
-Lucian
T Raymond
>ar...@see.the.sig (T Raymond) writes:
>
>> Personally I rather like WinTADS, it does some thing that the html
>> tads executable doesn't, it's a bit smaller and faster. Now if it can
>> get updated to handle TADS 2.5 I'll be even more happy to get back to
>> using it.
>
>Mike's HTML TADS interpreter, I had more-or-less stopped updating
>WinTADS and was considering abandoning it.
Stephen, I don't know about other people, but I would be interested.
One of the things that I most like about it is that it keeps a list of
recently opened game files, this is imensely helpful when testing as I
usually switch back and forth between projects.
It'd probably also be useful for comp games for the same reason, get
stuck in one, go to the next. Switch between them with 2 keystrokes.
If I recall correctly, Mike's interpreteer doesn't store game path,
and it doesn't have an MRU list. And as I mentioned, WinTADS seems to
be a bit smaller and faster which makes it a good idea for portables
if I ever get one.
That's my 5% for nothing.
Tom
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Tom Raymond adk @ usa.net
"The original professional ameteur."
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Jonadab the Unsightly One
> Don't use TADS, because WinTADS blows goats.
Right. Use the DOS port of TADS instead.
Yes, that's a joke. Don't take it seriously.
Really what you should use is the DOS port of glulxe.
"His eye twitches involuntarily." -- Calvin
"Can't we play something else?" -- Hobbes