Easiest Adventure Creator?
Darren Sparrow
helpful as far as learning them goes. Is there an even easier creator/s out
there? Or will I have to muddle through on one of these two creators? Tads
had more appeal but the manual sucked big time! An inform gave the
impression I was learning C++! Not reccomended!
Daz.
Lelah Conrad
A few of us have opted for ALAN, which is pretty easy to learn, and
elegant to look at. However, it has some limitations compared to the
others -- the runtime is rudimentary, and there are not like a zillion
libraries and stuff to use. There's a great tutorial by Steve
Griffiths though that you can download and use.
Lelah
Fraser Wilson
>I have read the FAQ and downloaded tads and inform, neither were very
>helpful as far as learning them goes. Is there an even easier creator/s out
>there? Or will I have to muddle through on one of these two creators? Tads
>had more appeal but the manual sucked big time! An inform gave the
>impression I was learning C++! Not reccomended!
Here's an idea: how about you spend your free time for the next few
years writing a development system, libraries, and a 250 page manual
with cross-referencing and grammar that works. Then give it away for
anybody to use free of charge. After that it might be reasonable for
you to complain about sucky manuals.
If you like neither TADS nor Inform, try ALAN, which is intended to be
usable by non-programmers (although my personal take is that you can't
really get away without being a programmer -- which is not as bad as it
sounds, because writing IF is a good way to become one). Apparently
Hugo is nice, but I haven't looked deeply into it.
Fraser.
(news articles should be proofread like any other textual creation)
(and I like the Inform manual. Clear, readable, and cool quotes)
Adam J. Thornton
Darren Sparrow <tali...@ukonline.co.uk> wrote:
>I have read the FAQ and downloaded tads and inform, neither were very
>helpful as far as learning them goes. Is there an even easier creator/s out
>there? Or will I have to muddle through on one of these two creators? Tads
>had more appeal but the manual sucked big time! An inform gave the
>impression I was learning C++! Not reccomended!
AGT makes it very easy to write crappy adventures. If what you want to
write are crappy adventures, go to it.
Alan might be a little easier than Inform or Tads, but I didn't think so,
and the current interpreters aren't as good. Nor is the parser, IMHO.
Hugo is just as hard as Inform.
Writing IF is both writing and programming. There's no way around that.
If you're not willing to put in the time to learn a fairly easy computer
language, then you're *not* willing to put in the time to write a decent
adventure.
Adam
--
ad...@princeton.edu
"There's a border to somewhere waiting, and a tank full of time." - J. Steinman
Kevin Forchione
Engelberg. He takes you step by step through the development of a TADS game,
going through the various classes and even showing you the nitty-gritty of
the syntax.
The email address is:
The advantage to sticking with TADS far outweighs the learning curve
involved. You can code professional-feeling Interactive Fiction and the
system is both flexible and powerful enough to accomodate nearly any
requirement your game might have.
Plus there are quite a number of gurus available on this newsgroup to help
with any questions you might have.
Give Mark's tutorial a shot. It'll make things easy.
Kevin
----------------
Darren Sparrow wrote in message <7d8urn$31c$1...@apple.news.easynet.net>...
Darren Sparrow
Daz.
Joe Merical
languages around.
Have you tried the INFORM Designer's Manual? You can find it at
www.gnelson.demon.co.uk/dman/index.html. This is the best source for INFORM
information even though there probably are others. I'm not sure about TADS
since I don't program in TADS.
By the way, they're not creators, they're compilers. If they were creators,
you wouldn't have to mess with source code. If you want, wait about six or
seven months, and there should be a GUI Inform or TADS that would allow you
to create text games with a few simple clicks of the mouse, thus eliminating
the frustration you're having.
That's the only advice I can give you. If you're real serious about IF
programming, you better just read through the manuals and try to understand
it.
- Joe Merical
Jim Aikin
>
> I have read the FAQ and downloaded tads and inform, neither were very
> helpful as far as learning them goes. Is there an even easier creator/s out
> there? Or will I have to muddle through on one of these two creators? Tads
> had more appeal but the manual sucked big time! An inform gave the
> impression I was learning C++! Not reccomended!
> Daz.
I totally sympathize. I taught myself C++ a couple of years ago (yes,
for fun) and at times Inform drives _me_ crazy. I can just imagine how
much "fun" it would be for somebody who feels intimidated by C++. Graham
Nelson's manual is WONDERFUL -- supremely readable, superbly organized,
and very, very thorough -- so I'm not complaining. If I were feeling
really ungrateful I _might_ be able to think up one or two teensy
remarks (not complaints, certainly) about topics that are kind of
glossed over a little, but he did the whole bloody thing for free, and
I'm not nearly that ungrateful, so I'll change the subject now. The
point is, C++ is huge, so you can go down to the bookstore and buy all
the 600-page, $75 books you want, some of which are much worse written
and less thorough, and you can bet their authors took it to the bank.
I think the other folks who have commented on this topic are pretty much
right on. Writing IF is not a stroll in the park. If you're satisfied to
write a run-of-the-mill "take dagger, stab troll with dagger" game, I'm
sure any of the available tools will get you there without _too_ many
headaches. Read through Graham's step-by-step tutorial on constructing
"Ruins" in the Inform Designer's Manual; by customizing that code, you
can get 90% of the way to a very respectable little game. The moment you
want to do anything fancy, though (and many of the puzzles that I
envision turn out to be a _lot_ fancier to implement than I had
originally thought they would be), you'll be debugging 'til the cows
come home. It goes with the territory.
This newsgroup would be a dandy place to solicit some general advice on
the development process, by the way. It's not a topic I've seen
discussed, but I've only been hanging out here for a couple of months.
How to develop small chunks, how to think through a problem so as to
avoid spaghetti code, that kind of thing.
I was a little surprised to read Joe Merical's comment about an upcoming
GUI Inform development system. "With a few simple clicks of the mouse,"
hmm? I'm a cynical sort, so I hope it won't be taken as an insult to
whoever is developing this system when I say, "I'll believe it when I
see it." The problems I stub my toe on in developing a game are
_precisely_ those that wouldn't seem to lend themselves to
point-and-click, one-size-fits-all solutions.
And there's a real value, if you're going to have to code the fancy
stuff line by line in any case, in doing the coding for the simple stuff
too. I find I learn more that way, and I see more ways to refine my
ideas. So when I do hit a stumbling block, I have the tools I need
already rattling around in my brain. For me, a point-and-click interface
would be a step backward, not forward.
At least at the level we're working on. Okay, if I'm going to write C++
for Windows, give me some dialog boxes and create the skeleton of the
app for me. Not a problem. But even there, my impression is that there
are a lot of assumptions built into the skeleton. The SDI/MDI
document/view paradigm, for instance. If those assumptions aren't right
for a particular project, you're thrown back on your own resources, so
you'd better _have_ some resources.
Have fun!
--Jim Aikin
::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
People do not like to think. If one
thinks, one must reach conclusions.
Conclusions are not always pleasant.
--Helen Keller
::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
Knight37
Darren Sparrow <tali...@ukonline.co.uk> wrote in message
news:7d98cu$epa$1...@apple.news.easynet.net...
>Okay I'll give it a go. Tads it is then.
>Daz.
Given Kevin's kind words for TADS, and Adam's not-so-kind words for AGT, I
must also point out you can also write sucky adventures in TADS, Inform,
HUGO, ALAN, or any other language. A sucky adventure is a sucky adventure.
It's not any easier to write one in AGT than it is in TADS or Inform. In
fact, since those two are harder to learn, I would submit that it's probably
even easier to write a sucky game in those two languages. :)
Of course, it's pretty darn hard to write a good adventure in AGT, let alone
a GREAT adventure, which is why you have the steeper learning curves in the
more powerful, more feature-rich languages.
I am no expert at any of these languages, but I've looked at all of the ones
I've mentioned and a few more I haven't. I've coded some sample
"adventures"
(more like simple experiments) in all of them.
I consider ALAN to be the easiest language to learn. It's also powerful
enough to generate some fairly sophisticated adventures without being too
complicated to figure out. Not as powerful as TADS, Inform, or Hugo, but
the language is evolving along nicely. And the code is MUCH easier to read,
IMHO. If I were trying to learn a language AND get an adventure done by the
IF comp, that's the one I'd pick.
Now about the manuals... pretty much the only one that "doesn't suck" is the
Inform Designer's Manual. It's almost on-par with a book you might buy for
something like C++. The rest are somewhat below that standard. Not saying
they aren't good docs compared to most PROGRAMS (since they are), but a book
about a programming LANGUAGE is a special thing, and so far no one in the IF
community has managed to write anything in this department that just
impresses the hell out of me. Now all you compiler authors, friends,
relatives, and fans don't form into a lynch mob just yet. I will temper my
rather blunt comments with this - the manuals are getting better, and they
generally tend to provide enough assistance for a newbie to get started.
Now, of course, without the RAIF newsgroup and all the fine folks here to
support them, heh heh... lets just say I'm sure we wouldn't have quite as
much cool IF out there as we do now.
Of course, this entire post is, FWIW, MNSHO, and YMMV.
knight37
Adam J. Thornton
Knight37 <knig...@flash.SPAMBLOCKA.net> wrote:
>Given Kevin's kind words for TADS, and Adam's not-so-kind words for AGT, I
>must also point out you can also write sucky adventures in TADS, Inform,
>HUGO, ALAN, or any other language. A sucky adventure is a sucky adventure.
>It's not any easier to write one in AGT than it is in TADS or Inform. In
>fact, since those two are harder to learn, I would submit that it's probably
>even easier to write a sucky game in those two languages. :)
Nope. Harder. Because you have to do more work before it even compiles.
Which is not to say that there are not some awfully sucky Inform and Tads
games.
But I've never met an AGT game that rose above "good", and most of the ones
I've seen hovered between "sucky" and "bad".
Bob Reeves
> elegant to look at. However, it has some limitations compared to the
> others -- the runtime is rudimentary, and there are not like a zillion
> libraries and stuff to use. There's a great tutorial by Steve
> Griffiths though that you can download and use.
>
> Lelah
The challenge is to make ALAN do odd things its creators didn't design it
to do, because you can--though you run the risk of producing games only IF
authors will appreciate, & therefore only they will enjoy. But the other
extreme is to judge ALAN by the standards of languages like Inform & TADS,
which try to provide insurance against idiotic "things players try," & wind
up forcing the author to worry about two levels of bugs: the player trying
something the game can't handle, & the library returning a senseless
message to a legitimate input. (Anyone remember my travails last month with
"turn on the water" in the Inform game I've been writing?)
Andrew Plotkin
> By the way, they're not creators, they're compilers. If they were creators,
> you wouldn't have to mess with source code. If you want, wait about six or
> seven months, and there should be a GUI Inform or TADS that would allow you
> to create text games with a few simple clicks of the mouse, thus eliminating
> the frustration you're having.
Not to knock any project you may be working on... but you do realize,
don't you, that someone has said this very thing every six or seven months
for the past five years?
It's always a different someone.
--Z
--
"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the
borogoves..."
stup...@my-dejanews.com
Assuming you should still find it a little frustrating, how about AGX? AGX is
an enhanced AGT format, which runs with a very good interpreter called
AGiliTy, and it can produce games much better than normal AGT. My first game,
"A Bloody Life" (written with standard AGT) was - let's be frank - buggy. But
my second game, "Myopia", was written with AGX, and (in my opinion, at least)
is far better. With reference to "crappy" AGT games - that's being a _little_
too harsh in my opinion. The kind of games Adam was talking about are
actually GAGS games compiled using AGT :). And don't feel dumb about finding
IF programming tough. Volker Blasius once said: "An author may use a word
processor to write his books, but that doesn't mean he has to learn C++." (or
something to that effect.) Alternately, you could try HUGO, which is like
Inform but with no semi-colons. It's got a lovely manual (as far as I've
got), and far too few games have been written on it. - Bye,
Quentin.D.Thompson.
-----------== Posted via Deja News, The Discussion Network ==----------
http://www.dejanews.com/ Search, Read, Discuss, or Start Your Own
Stacy the Procrastinating
> Darren Sparrow wrote:
> >
> > I have read the FAQ and downloaded tads and inform, neither were very
> > helpful as far as learning them goes. Is there an even easier creator/s out
> > there? Or will I have to muddle through on one of these two creators? Tads
> > had more appeal but the manual sucked big time! An inform gave the
> > impression I was learning C++! Not reccomended!
> > Daz.
>
> I totally sympathize. I taught myself C++ a couple of years ago (yes,
> for fun) and at times Inform drives _me_ crazy. I can just imagine how
> much "fun" it would be for somebody who feels intimidated by C++. Graham
> Nelson's manual is WONDERFUL -- supremely readable, superbly organized,
> and very, very thorough -- so I'm not complaining. If I were feeling
> really ungrateful I _might_ be able to think up one or two teensy
> remarks (not complaints, certainly) about topics that are kind of
> glossed over a little, but he did the whole bloody thing for free, and
> I'm not nearly that ungrateful, so I'll change the subject now. The
> point is, C++ is huge, so you can go down to the bookstore and buy all
> the 600-page, $75 books you want, some of which are much worse written
> and less thorough, and you can bet their authors took it to the bank.
As another non-programmer attempting to pick up Inform, I *highly*
recommend the Inform for Beginners guide at
http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Heights/8200/author.htm. It's a
good jumping off point for learning about both programming and Inform at
the same time, and it's very, very well written.
-stacy
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
bookbug of the browser's bookweb
http://bookweb.simplenet.com
* to reply to this message, cut the animal out of the address *
Dark Fiber
>I have read the FAQ and downloaded tads and inform, neither were very
>helpful as far as learning them goes. Is there an even easier creator/s out
>there? Or will I have to muddle through on one of these two creators? Tads
>had more appeal but the manual sucked big time! An inform gave the
>impression I was learning C++! Not reccomended!
>Daz.
all the adventure "creation" programs _require_ programming at a
certain level, some higher than others re inform v agt. and the final
output is more to do with programming skill than storytelling skill
more often than not, that is as soon as you deviate from the standard
built into the game and want "something fancy".
if you can't program _at all_ your gonna have a ROUGH time of it.
if you can program (ie, know some OO design methodologies or top down
procedural methods etc) then your well on your way. once you have a
language down (first being hardest), you can pick up other languages
very easily.
if you want something easy, to sharpen yourself up on, go with AGT.
write a game in it so you get the fell as to the different things
required and so on. then plot and plan out and normalise to the firth
normal form your game design and move into playing with inform or
tads....
ja ne!
-df
Dark Fiber <ent...@ihug.com.au>
http://homepages.ihug.com.au/~entropy
Sazan Aisu Fanfiction Archive co-ordinator
http://www.geocities.com/Tokyo/Ginza/7478/
Write ya own OS FAQ
http://homepages.ihug.com.au/~entropy/os/
Lelah Conrad
<knig...@flash.SPAMBLOCKA.net> wrote:
>I consider ALAN to be the easiest language to learn. It's also powerful
>enough to generate some fairly sophisticated adventures without being too
>complicated to figure out. Not as powerful as TADS, Inform, or Hugo, but
>the language is evolving along nicely. And the code is MUCH easier to read,
>IMHO. If I were trying to learn a language AND get an adventure done by the
>IF comp, that's the one I'd pick.
Yes, and another thing
-- once you work with simple little ALAN, which is a powerful
language though limited in current features, you get a good sense of
what kind of capabilities you'd *like* to see or that you need in a
language in order to progress further in the art. Using ALAN as it is
now has been very helpful for me to learn programming in general,
since there are not a lot of 'plug in' pieces for it. In handling the
problems that have come up I've learned to sort out which are problems
inherent in the language and which are just code routines that no one
has written yet. At some point I may get to the point where I need a
more powerful language -- but I think then I'll have a better idea
exactly why.
Lelah
who is thinking about IF languages as vehicles -- I'm driving a little
electric towncar while other people are scaling mountains in 4X4's. :)
Darren Sparrow
My intention was not to belittle the amount of work put in by all those
people who actually write these compilers etc,
I actually wrote a very small game in C++ a few years ago, and so I should
be able to follow Inform and Tads easily enough. Heck, maybe my brain was a
little numbed that day by hours of playing Rainbow Six on the zone?
Anyhoo, I'm very happy that everyone has taken the time to give me their
advice on the systems to use and reasons for using them. All I can say is
this, after reading a self help book on positive thinking, and having read
the encouraging postings, I'll download Tads and Inform, and then decide
between the two, stick with it, and hopefully have a game up and running in
a few months.
Once again thanks everyone for your input into this topic. And yep, I expect
that when we get a posting six months down the line from some other person
on this subject, I'll be enthusing about one particular system, same as
everyone else.
Daz
Alex Warren
> I have read the FAQ and downloaded tads and inform, neither were very
> helpful as far as learning them goes. Is there an even easier creator/s out
> there? Or will I have to muddle through on one of these two creators? Tads
> had more appeal but the manual sucked big time! An inform gave the
> impression I was learning C++! Not reccomended!
There is a really easy way to make adventure games, and that's with Quest - the
easy IF system for Windows 95/98/NT4. You can download it and/or get more
information from the website at:
http://welcome.to/easy-interactive-fiction
Coming soon - QDK: the entirely visual way of creating games, which practically
eliminates programming...
--
Alex Warren · ICQ: 4043750 · http://come.to/axe · http://come.to/perdition
email: 1. take my name, remove the spaces, and "at", writeme, a dot, and a com
2. AOL and HOTMAIL users add "AW" to the subject line please
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
(please reply to the newsgroup - if you must reply by email, change the anti-
spam rubbish in the header to the email address prescribed above)
Alex Warren
> > By the way, they're not creators, they're compilers. If they were creators,
> > you wouldn't have to mess with source code. If you want, wait about six or
> > seven months, and there should be a GUI Inform or TADS that would allow you
> > to create text games with a few simple clicks of the mouse, thus eliminating
> > the frustration you're having.
>
> Not to knock any project you may be working on... but you do realize,
> don't you, that someone has said this very thing every six or seven months
> for the past five years?
This kind of thing sounds very similar to QDK (which I'm working on) and QTAC
(which Chris Wilson is working on). QDK is very near to alpha release now - just
a month or so away. It will create .ASL for my "Quest" IF system, which is
currently at the beta of v2.0. So, visual IF creation is not as far away as some
may think...
http://welcome.to/easy-interactive-fiction
sg...@my-dejanews.com
stup...@my-dejanews.com wrote:
> Assuming you should still find it a little frustrating, how about AGX? AGX is
> an enhanced AGT format, which runs with a very good interpreter called
> AGiliTy, and it can produce games much better than normal AGT. My first game,
> "A Bloody Life" (written with standard AGT) was - let's be frank - buggy. But
> my second game, "Myopia", was written with AGX, and (in my opinion, at least)
> is far better.
In case anyone's looking for "AGX" you'll find its called MAGX.
The MAGX directory at the I.F. Archive is
ftp://ftp.gmd.de/if-archive/programming/agt/magx/.
MAGX is an independently written adventure game compiler for AGT-style source
code. It should be more stable and its available for more types of computers
than AGT. To use MAGX you should also download the AGT Master's Edition to
obtain the AGT coding documentation.
I haven't used AGT for a very long time or MAGX at all so I don't have an
opinion on how good it is. (I use Alan which I can recommend to potential I.F.
authors.) Sometime, out of curiosity, I intend to try out MAGX.
Regards,
SteveG.
s...@xtra.co.removethisword.nz
Chris Wilson
Go QTAC...
It will be finished soon and will (hopefully) be very easy to use and
understand. In the meantime, go get Quest from Alex Warren's site
(http://come.to/axe). You will like it.
Chris
Alex Warren <S...@THE.SIG.COM> wrote in message
news:36fa3073...@alpha.news.global.net.uk...
Robert Byrd
I suspect that any person who has enough ability to code in HUGO would also
be able to do it in TADS or INFORM (and vice-versa).
I think though, that once you get past the differences, however major or
minor they may be, you will find that they are all similar under the skin.
As far as actually writing a work of interactive fiction, I think that you
will eventually find that after you have sat down and started to actually
code, the differences between them is not going to be the limiting factor in
what code you can write. Instead, you are going to find that the limiting
factor is, suprise... yourself.
Although you may find that there are certain objects you wish to code that
present you with difficulties, the difficulties often do not hinge on the
compiler you are using, but rather, on your ability to envision what you
want, and how to proceed to write the code to get it.
As has been demonstrated time and time again by the coding of "Adventure"
(type) games in every compiler going, the compiler can do the job, given the
correct code.
And no matter which one you go with, there is going to be a learning curve.
Once that curve has been conquered, you're ready to go.
The best way to learn? Read the manual, and read every bit of source code
you can get your hands on. You will learn techniques and procedures that you
may have never thought of on your own. You can see how someone else has
*already* figured out how to do something you have been thinking about.
Usually, with slight modifications, you can "borrow" the same routines for
incorporation into your own code, or even better, your own code library.
Just my two cent worth...
.rob.
Nostrum
time to learn an entirely new language (as many people don't), BUT you
consider yourself a pretty good writer with good ideas, you may want to try
to hook up with someone well versed in TADS or Inform (I prefer TADS, mainly
because of the HTML & multimedia capabilities, and IMO it is really easy to
get into), and collaborate with them on an IF project. Hopefully, as IF
gains more popularity, perhaps we'll see this practice occur more often, as
many great writers out there probably do not have the time to learn
languages, and would rather spend that time writing a better story.
- Vincent