[I7] Executables and character creation
Janos
brouhaha was about, and holy hell, I was blasted away. The computational
linguist in me approves :) There are two things I'd like to know before
I switch my first serious game project from TADS3 to I7, though.
1) Is it possible to turn a I7-game into a standalone executable, either
with bundling the interpreter in the same file or compiling it into a
native executable for Windows or Mac platforms?
2) How does the NPC generation compare to TADS3?
--
Janos
Janos
Arg, forgot something fairly essential:
3) Multimedia. Does anybody have practical experience with including
sounds and pictures in I7 projects?
--
Janos
Eric Eve
news:1l1vg.20754$s%.1213@reader1.news.jippii.net...
> Last night I finally took a look at Inform 7 to see what all the
> brouhaha was about, and holy hell, I was blasted away. The
> computational linguist in me approves :) There are two things I'd
> like to know before I switch my first serious game project from
> TADS3 to I7, though.
>
> 1) Is it possible to turn a I7-game into a standalone executable,
> either with bundling the interpreter in the same file or compiling
> it into a native executable for Windows or Mac platforms?
I don't believe this is currently possible, at least not with the
tools built into the I7 IDE. Someone out there may know some
cunnning way of doing it, however.
> 2) How does the NPC generation compare to TADS3?
Compared with TADS 3, in I7 you're very much left to roll your own.
There are several examples showing how this can be done in the I7
docs, but IMHO the results still don't match what's available in
TADS 3, if it's TADS-style NPCs you're after (i.e. ones making use
of ActorStates, ConvNodes, AgendaItems and a robust implementation
of the ASK/TELL paradigm with TopicEntries and AltTopics). Using a
mixture of tables and rules to provide sophisticated ASK/TELL
conversation is no doubt possible in I7, but personally I'd still
rather do it TADS 3. OTOH I7 might be worth a look for implementing
NPCs that fall outside this paradigm, or which might make good use
of I7's relations.
-- Eric
Eric Eve
> Arg, forgot something fairly essential:
>
> 3) Multimedia. Does anybody have practical experience with
> including sounds and pictures in I7 projects?
So far as I'm aware this is not currently possible, apart from
cover-art.
-- Eric
vaporware
I7 can compile to version 6, so it might be possible to write
multimedia V6 games with enough hacking.
vw
Gregory Weir
> Compared with TADS 3, in I7 you're very much left to roll your own.
> There are several examples showing how this can be done in the I7
> docs, but IMHO the results still don't match what's available in
> TADS 3, if it's TADS-style NPCs you're after (i.e. ones making use
> of ActorStates, ConvNodes, AgendaItems and a robust implementation
> of the ASK/TELL paradigm with TopicEntries and AltTopics). Using a
> mixture of tables and rules to provide sophisticated ASK/TELL
> conversation is no doubt possible in I7, but personally I'd still
> rather do it TADS 3. OTOH I7 might be worth a look for implementing
> NPCs that fall outside this paradigm, or which might make good use
> of I7's relations.
For what it's worth, I7's NPCs are better than I6's NPCs; actions work
for NPCs about as well as they work for the player. NPCs can navigate
the game map and interact with things (at least the Documentation says
they do; I haven't played around with it).
And it isn't too hard to implement some of these things. I'll probably
clean up some code I'm working on and make it into an extension that
handles ask/tell nicely without those silly tables.
Not that any of this invalidates your statements. From what I
understand of TADS3, it has a much more complex NPC model
out-of-the-box.
Gregory Weir
Janos
standalones, but the lack of easy to use multimedia is a dealbreaker for
me. So, I think I'll let I7 mature for a while.
Thanks for the info, people.
--
Janos
Michael Martin
Janos wrote:
> So, I think I'll let I7 mature for a while.
The feature you're looking for is "Glulx Support," which I7 doesn't
have yet, but will.