[Poll] Recent Activity
Jason
RAIF is a-buzzing, and I couldn't be happier to see IF alive and well.
Anyway, sorry if this has been asked, but it's hard to keep up with all the
activity lately.
So, how many of you are writing games, right now? And if so, is it I7 that
made you want to?
I've even seen some old faces come back (actually, I'm not too sure if they
ever left): so a big shout out to Mike Gentry and Nate Cull. I'd love to
see some stuff from you guys this year (sorry if I left anyone out, but like
I said, it's hard to keep up).
If everyone who's asking questions about I7 programming right now releases a
game, this will be one hell of a year!
Bye for now,
Jason
na...@natecull.org
>ever left): so a big shout out to Mike Gentry and Nate Cull. I'd love to
>see some stuff from you guys this year (sorry if I left anyone out, but like
>I said, it's hard to keep up).
Aww, thanks.
Yes, it's I7 (and Google Groups) that made me start posting on r*if. I
am hoping it will succeed in making me write a game. I too would like
to see something from me this year. :)
Adam Thornton
>So, how many of you are writing games, right now? And if so, is it I7 that
>made you want to?
Me. Yep.
Adam
Michael Martin
time, I don't think, but I fully intend to finish it.
And since I don't think I'll keep the deadline, this also means I'm
free to ruthlessly drop aspects of the old intro that people didn't
like, which has been duly done.
I7 got me motivated to start seriously writing stuff up again, yes.
I've written an I7 extension for the conversation system (which was
pretty well received in IntroComp) and it's much easier to use than the
I6 edition.
--Michael
Andrew Plotkin
I am not writing a game right now, but I'm implementing an IF example.
(The Spider&Web toolcase, which I've gotten back to now that build
3L95 is out.)
I am considering writing a small game after this. If I do, I may make
it a mini-comp (with the intent of inspiring people to write small I7
games, but not limited to I7). Watch this space. :)
--Z
--
"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the borogoves..."
*
Making a saint out of Reagan is sad. Making an idol out of Nixon ("If the
President does it then it's legal") is contemptible.
Arnel Legaspi
This may be too far out of the question, but any thoughts on the sequel
to "Glowgrass"? ;-)
--Arnel
Arnel Legaspi
> I am considering writing a small game after this. If I do, I may make
> it a mini-comp (with the intent of inspiring people to write small I7
> games, but not limited to I7). Watch this space. :)
A Zarf mini-comp? Sure will. :)
na...@natecull.org
port it to I7 as an exercise. If you've got some ideas for what you'd
like to see in a possible sequel, drop me a line. I'd like to flesh out
the universe a bit, but it was never built with a long-term plotline in
mind and I made some design decisions I now regret. It might be
salvageable if I had some inspiration.
Joshua Houk
> So, how many of you are writing games, right now? And if so, is it I7
> that made you want to?
Yep, and yep. With I6, I always felt like I was a wrestling an elephant. In
I7, I've put together the basic elements of an IntroComp-sized game in half
an evening. (And if I get enough of a handle on the language, maybe I'll
even enter it. However, with all the conversation I want, it's probably
doubtful. Good target to reach for, though.)
- joshua h
Brian Campbell
learning I6, but other things distracted me and I never got beyond a
room or two. Then I7 showed up in an RSS feed, and it fascinated me so
much that I came back, read the whole manual, and have been trying it
out. So far, all I'm working on is a basic "my apartment" type thing
for testing I7 features, but once I've learned I7 I'd definitely like
to write some real games.
-- Brian
rgrassi
> So, how many of you are writing games, right now?
Mondi Confinanti is up and running:
http://www.terradif.net/mc/6-days/6days-gamepage/
> And if so, is it I7 that made you want to?
Absolutely not. :)
Rob
Bob
Yes, I'm writing a game. Perhaps I'll have the intro finished before
the end of the deadline for intro-comp (then I would have a year to
finish the game...)
And, yes, it's I7 that gives me confidence I actually could do this.
Bob
David Whyld
And that's all I can say about it.
Aaron A. Reed
few more months, so I've mostly been watching all the I7 discussions
wistfully from the sidelines. However, the new "Inform" application has
been handy to use as an IDE, at least until this thing bloats past .z8
size and I need to go to Glulx...
Michael D. Hilborn
game, but I was so busy with developing "Ultima V: Lazarus" that I
never had time to learn I6. As soon as we finished Lazarus (March 30),
I went to study I6 and lo and behold, the old I6 website that I knew
had completely changed... Introducing I7!
Perfect timing.
So, I've been experimenting with I7. I started writing the new game,
but, unfortunately, quickly ran into beta bugs that will prevent me
from moving onward. That's fine. I'll wait until the bugs get fixed. In
the meantime, I'll do what I can to report anything else that I find
wrong, and suggest some (IMHO) improvements. I'm very impressed with
I7--especially the IDE and the fact that it is making me shift my
programming mentality. Quite the learning curve for me. So my apologies
if the bugs I am reporting are actually the result of my own
misunderstanding.
Mike Snyder
> Hey everyone.
>
> So, how many of you are writing games, right now? And if so, is it I7
> that
> made you want to?
I was... or am.... or sort of am. I took what started as an unfinished Hugo
game and turned it into a browser-based CYOA, but I haven't worked on it
seriously in weeks. It was intended for the LoTech comp, but it's a safe bet
I won't be entering after all. I've been kicking around some ideas for the
annual IFComp, but my motivation is about gone. More likely, I'm going to
end up disappearing for a couple more years while working on a different
project entirely (may be forming or joining a development team and working
on some non-IF projects). So, I guess I'm one of the few who hasn't really
been renewed and excited by all the ongoing authoring chatter. Part of
that's probably because I didn't use Inform to begin with, but a bigger part
is just my lack of motivation. Too many other things demanding attention,
not the least of which is my little girl (she's almost to crawl, now).
Anyway, that's mine.
---- Mike.
Bob
birthday last week, hooray!), but I'm very sorry you won't work on
another IF game for a while. I liked Distress very much and was looking
forward to the sequel to Trading Punches (of which I very much enjoyed
the athmosphere and the universe). It would have been wonderful to see
the rich world of Trading Punches combined with the puzzle structure
and design of Distress. But I guess I can wait some years :)
Bob
Mike Snyder
news:1147804838.5...@j33g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
Right now, I'm admittedly wishy-washy. :) A month from now I might be
totally gung-ho again and get *two* games done. You just never know.
I've been looking at TV3D (an API for Windows-based 3D development -- more a
toolkit than an engine). I've thought about writing a graphic adventure game
or some other video game, possibly to get back into shareware sales.
--- Mike.
Andrew Wooldridge
close to being publishable. I've been renewing my interest in IF for a
while now, and IF7 seems to be the watershed for me. Finally, after
years of poking about with incomprehensible languages, I believe this
is the tool that I can create a great work of IF. (Perhaps not great,
but at least playable).
When I downloaded IF7 I was completely suprised. I kinda felt like like
the first villager that Promethus handed the fire to from the heavens
:)
Seriously, however, it seems like IF7 is a tool I can use to bring to
life some waky ideas I've been kicking around for a while. And IF7 is
also why I subscribed to this newsgroup to see what things other folks
are doing.
Urbatain
I'm trying something too in I7, but, it will be my very very bad
english, I hope all you give pretty good betatesting, not like the
Dracula's one, grrrrrrrrr.
See you!
Urbatain.
Johnny Awesome
because a) although I had started to learn I6, I was also in two C
programming courses in the same time and that's just too much
programming to handle and b) it's kinda neat.
sus...@gmail.com
z-machine emulator in Python: http://www.red-bean.com/trac/zvm
I think we're doing something rather new; our interpreter will be the
first to separate the virtual machine mechanics from the user
interface. (And it's proving tricky to do!) The interpreter itself is
loadable as a python module, and third-party applications are required
to write a user interface that 'plugs in' to the virtual machine. So
one could use the python module to write a curses-like text interface,
but could also write a GUI interface. Our ultimate goal is to embed
the python module into an IRC robot, so that users can collaboratively
play IF within an IRC channel.
I only just learned of I7 last week, and now I'm also excited about
that too. I find my attention being torn in two directions now! :-)
(If anyone wants to help us with zvm, please send us mail! It's an
opensource project, always looking for new contributors.)
David Fletcher
> I'm not writing a game, but have been working with a friend on a new
> z-machine emulator in Python: http://www.red-bean.com/trac/zvm
>
> I think we're doing something rather new; our interpreter will be the
> first to separate the virtual machine mechanics from the user
> interface. (And it's proving tricky to do!) The interpreter itself is
> loadable as a python module, and third-party applications are required
> to write a user interface that 'plugs in' to the virtual machine. So
> one could use the python module to write a curses-like text interface,
> but could also write a GUI interface. Our ultimate goal is to embed
> the python module into an IRC robot, so that users can collaboratively
> play IF within an IRC channel.
>
Separating the virtual machine from the UI sounds a lot like what Glk
is for. There seems to be some sort Python Glk binding in the archive
under:
http://www.ifarchive.org/if-archive/programming/glk/implementations/
You might want to look into whether you could use that.
--
David.
Joe Mason
> I'm not writing a game, but have been working with a friend on a new
> z-machine emulator in Python: http://www.red-bean.com/trac/zvm
>
> I think we're doing something rather new; our interpreter will be the
> first to separate the virtual machine mechanics from the user
> interface. (And it's proving tricky to do!) The interpreter itself is
So you've not heard of Glk, then?
Joe
Ben
years ago, before it was even finished. Then I forgot all about it.
My goodness! My apologies, Mr. Plotkin.
I'm trying to understand the idea here: if my python z-machine sends
UI calls to the glk-python bindings, then presumably it will be able to
drive any user-interface that has been written to the GLK
specification?
Furthermore, it looks like Michael Phillips has already written an
IF-playing IRC robot called 'Meldrew', last touched in late 2001. Has
anyone used it? It seems to do I/O with external interpreters, rather
than interpreting the z-code itself.
Apparently I didn't do enough research before starting work on a new
z-machine interpreter. Perhaps I should just abandon it, and get back
to learning Inform7. :-) Tis a pity, because it's been really
educational. We've written at least 70% of the code already.
Andrew Plotkin
> Actually, now that I think about it, I *have* heard of it, about oh, 6
> years ago, before it was even finished. Then I forgot all about it.
> My goodness! My apologies, Mr. Plotkin.
No problem.
> I'm trying to understand the idea here: if my python z-machine sends
> UI calls to the glk-python bindings, then presumably it will be able to
> drive any user-interface that has been written to the GLK
> specification?
Yes. However, the way Glk fits into an application is kind of... well,
people have used all sorts of words... :) and making a Glk-Python
binding is not immediately trivial.
> Furthermore, it looks like Michael Phillips has already written an
> IF-playing IRC robot called 'Meldrew', last touched in late 2001. Has
> anyone used it? It seems to do I/O with external interpreters, rather
> than interpreting the z-code itself.
There are several approaches to this idea. I/O with an external
intepreter is the most common, and there are interpreters (e.g.
dumbfrotz) which support it.
--Z
--
"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the borogoves..."
*
It's a nice distinction to tell American soldiers (and Iraqis) to die in
Iraq for the sake of democracy (ignoring the question of whether it's
*working*) and then whine that "The Constitution is not a suicide pact."
Joe Mason
> Here, Ben <sus...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> I'm trying to understand the idea here: if my python z-machine sends
>> UI calls to the glk-python bindings, then presumably it will be able to
>> drive any user-interface that has been written to the GLK
>> specification?
>
> Yes. However, the way Glk fits into an application is kind of... well,
> people have used all sorts of words... :) and making a Glk-Python
> binding is not immediately trivial.
Fortunately, one exists.
http://ifarchive.flavorplex.com/if-archive/programming/glk/implementations/pyglk-0.1.1.tar.gz
ISTR it only works with glkloader
(http://ifarchive.flavorplex.com/if-archive/programming/glk/implementations/glkloader-0.3.2.tar.gz),
since I had to create a GlkMain entry point in the Glk library instead
of just implementing main. The only other bit that needed much work was
the string buffers, which could probably be done in a more Python-ish
way, but it works.
I haven't really looked at this for a few years, but I'm available to
give tech support and bug fixing help.
Joe
carolyn...@yahoo.com
> So, how many of you are writing games, right now? And if so, is it I7 that
> made you want to?
Guilty as charged, officer!
Carolyn
andy...@gmail.com
of the game idea I've had for a couple of years now have been occupying
my thoughts quite a bit lately. I need to come up with a smaller
project to learn the ropes of I7 before tackling my first idea, though.
Before I do *that* I think I'm going to write a command-line tool for
managing Inform 7 project packages with Subversion. (Saving in Inform 7
on OSX clobbers all the .svn metadata directories in a working copy!)
-Andy
Ben
> Before I do *that* I think I'm going to write a command-line tool for
> managing Inform 7 project packages with Subversion. (Saving in Inform 7
> on OSX clobbers all the .svn metadata directories in a working copy!)
God bless you! I'm having the same pain, and have resorted just to
storing the game text itself in subversion.
-Ben (one of subversion's original designers :-) )
andy...@gmail.com
haven't gotten around to it yet, too many irons in the fire. :)
-A