Potential new IF author needs advice
Chris
(putting on flame-retardent jumpsuit) I have a fairly decent idea for an
IF game and have it more or less mapped out in my head. Only problem is,
I have NO idea how to program, and quite honestly, little desire to
learn. I've browsed the manuals for TADS and Inform and have become
disheartened by the idea of all painfully menial code-learning and
scripting I'd have to go through to design my game. I've even dismissed
ALAN (from what I've heard, the easiest authoring program) as too complex
for my patience. My question is, what can I do? Is there an easier
program out there somewhere? I don't wan't to have someone else write the
code for me, I'd really like to do it myself. Does this mean that I'll
just have to buckle down and learn the stuff? Btw, I have a Mac.
the reluctant programmer,
Chris
Greg Alt
>My question is, what can I do? Is there an easier
>program out there somewhere? I don't wan't to have someone else write the
>code for me, I'd really like to do it myself. Does this mean that I'll
>just have to buckle down and learn the stuff? Btw, I have a Mac.
I'm just getting started with writing Inform code, so I may be wrong, but
my bet is that it doesn't get much easier than that, at least if you want
to be able to do interesting things. So, the answer would be find a
programmer or become one.
That said, I thought I would comment that after reading through much of the
Inform manual, I think this is gonna be lots of fun. Since I'm coming from
a Computer Science background with 7 years of school and 17 years of
programming, Inform looks refreshingly easy... Especially compared to the
cheasy text-adventures I wrote in Basic on my TRS-80 Model I, way back when.
Just the thought that the parser is built-in and requires few modifications
for simple games is amazing. I also like how modular the code can be. It's
neat that you can add interesting objects and rooms by writing less than a
page of code in one place. Neat. And I love the idea that I can write
code on my Linux box (with a 90x60 editor window, and a large interpreter
window to the side) and have the resulting game work without modification on
all sorts of machines, down to the cheapo 8-bits.
Fun. fun. fun.
Greg
--
Videogames, Unicycling, and Anarchism: http://www.cs.utah.edu/~galt/
Gareth Rees
> I have a fairly decent idea for an IF game and have it more or less
> mapped out in my head. Only problem is, I have NO idea how to
> program, and quite honestly, little desire to learn.
Have you thought about writing a novel instead?
--
Gareth Rees
Bruce Barnett
> Is there an easier
>program out there somewhere? I don't wan't to have someone else write the
>code for me, I'd really like to do it myself. Does this mean that I'll
>just have to buckle down and learn the stuff? Btw, I have a Mac.
My experience was that AGT is quite a bit easier, although somewhat
more limited. The authors don't support this compiler any more, but I
wrote a little game with it once and it worked fine.
Andrew C. Plotkin
> Is there an easier
> program out there somewhere? I don't wan't to have someone else write the
> code for me, I'd really like to do it myself. Does this mean that I'll
> just have to buckle down and learn the stuff?
Yes.
--Z
"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the borogoves..."
Jacob Solomon Weinstein
you'll probably have a hard time getting it to run on your mac.
You may want to take another look at TADS. You can cut-and-paste a lot of
the code from Ditch Day Drifter and other games into your own, with some
modifications (and, of course, permission from the appropriate authors.)
There's also a hypercard stack that will do some of the basic stuff for
you--creating rooms and assigning descriptions. You can find it at
ftp.gmd.de; I think it's
/if-archive/programming/tads/utils/tads-template-0.9.sit.hqx
One other possiblity is to make a graphical adventure game with World
Builder, now in the public domain. I gather it's pretty easy to use--but
I've seen very, very, very few good games created with it, which makes me
think it has some serious limitations.
-Jacob
Magnus Olsson
Chris <boog...@ucla.edu> wrote:
>Hi there. Now, I know I'm gonna get scolded for this, but here goes...
>IF game and have it more or less mapped out in my head. Only problem is,
>I have NO idea how to program, and quite honestly, little desire to
>learn.
This is going to sound harsh, but it is no flame, just some honest advice:
if you truly have no desire to learn to program, then IMNSHO you'd be better
off writing a novel.
This is based on my experience with my own and other people's games.
Sure, there are authoring systems that are hyped as being for the
non-programmer, such as AGT. My experience is that games produced with
these systems are decidedly inferior to games produced with TADS or
Inform. Usually, this is attributed to an inferior parser; however, I think
the reason is much deeper than that.
In any reasonably capable authoring system, including TADS and Inform, you
can get along fine for quite some time without any real programming, but
just "filling in forms". In the Inform case, for example, you can just
copy rooms and objects from the example games and substitute your own
names and descriptions, and it will work just fine: the library will
handle everything for you.
This works fine up to a point. The problem is that when letting the
library do all the work, you're relying on somebody else - the library
author - having anticipated all the possible things that can happen in
your game. No library author, not even Graham Nelson, can think of
everything.
When you reach that point - you want an object that behaves in just a
wee bit too complex a manner for the "fill in forms" method to work -
you can either give up, and try to get away with simpler behaviour
(which is a pity, but will often work. FOr example, if it's the parser
that's too limited, you could get away with "drop cushion. drop vase"
rather than "put the vase on the cushion." However, sometimes this
doesn't work, and it almost always detracts from the playability of the
game).
Alternatively, you could program the system to behave as you like.
What makes some systems better than others is that you can easily
program them to do what you want. These systems (i.e. TADS and Inform)
seem more complex to the beginner, but the complexity is there for a
reason.
> I've browsed the manuals for TADS and Inform and have become
>disheartened by the idea of all painfully menial code-learning and
>scripting I'd have to go through to design my game.
It's not that bad. Really, it's not that bad at all. You can write
maybe 90% of a simple TADS game with hardly any programming at all.
By the time you reach the last 10%, you'll probably have become so
immersed in TADS that you'll find that learning to program it isn't
nearly as difficult or boring as you thought.
>I've even dismissed
>ALAN (from what I've heard, the easiest authoring program) as too complex
>for my patience.
Again, sorry if I'm sounding harsh, but if you're that impatient, you
really should try some other genre. Writing IF requires *loads* of
patience, no matter how you do it. To paraphrase Euclid, there is no
royal road to IF.
>Does this mean that I'll
>just have to buckle down and learn the stuff?
To put it frankly: yes.
But take heart: programming is _fun_. Immensely fun. You may not think
so now, but once you get started on your game you'll have a lot more
motivation than you have now.
>Btw, I have a Mac.
An excellent choice, as long as it's decently fast and you have a good
text editor. Writing IF in MacWrite or TeachText isn't very fun at
all. I can recommend a shareware editor called Alpha.
>
>the reluctant programmer,
>
>Chris
Magnus (an enthusiastic programmer)
Greg Ewing
|> I've even dismissed
|> ALAN (from what I've heard, the easiest authoring program) as too complex
|> for my patience.
Are you *sure* that Alan is too difficult for you?
Don't be put off by reading the manual and trying
to absorb it all at once - just start with something
simple.
Used in the simplest way, Alan can be very, very
straightforward. I don't think an IF language
could be any simpler and still be an IF language.
Producing IF is going to require some effort on
your part. But you don't have to learn everything
before you begin. Give Alan another go, and
actually try doing something simple with it.
I suspect you'll find it's easier than you think.
|> Is there an easier
|> program out there somewhere?
No, Alan is as simple as it gets while still
being useful. It's much more user-friendly
than TADS or Inform. Give it a go!
|> Chris
Greg
Odonnell
I`ve decided to give you a piece of advice.
From your posting:
>
Neil Demause
: I have NO idea how to program, and quite honestly, little desire to
: learn. I've browsed the manuals for TADS and Inform and have become
: disheartened by the idea of all painfully menial code-learning and
: scripting I'd have to go through to design my game.
It's not as bad as it looks. Really.
With TADS (for example -- it's what I'm familiar with) you can figure out
most of the basics by looking at the sample files included with it, the
TADSVER file, ADV.T, etc. Also, if you register, TADS has an *excellent*
manual. And you can always ask questions in this newsgroup if you get stuck.
I had *no* programming experience (except for some BASIC 15 years ago)
before I decided to learn TADS, and I had a pretty decent working
knowledge of it within a couple of weeks.
Oh, and I've tried WorldBuilder, and Jacob is absolutely right: Stay far
away from it. It may be easy to program, but it's impossible to play.
(Most commands earn the response "Huh?")
Neil
Gareth Rees
> I have NO idea how to program, and quite honestly, little desire to
> learn. I've browsed the manuals for TADS and Inform and have become
> disheartened by the idea of all painfully menial code-learning and
> scripting I'd have to go through to design my game.
A serious answer for you:
Learn to program. It may be hard work, but it is also enormous fun.
Hard work is not something that you can get away from: if you want to
produce something worthwhile, then you will have to put it a lot of
effort in any genre, be it interactive fiction, novels, music or
whatever. There is nothing "menial" about learning to program, any more
than there is anything menial about learning to play the violin.
I write interactive fiction because I can combine my passions for
writing and programming. I am an average writer, and only a half-decent
programmer, but IF allows me to combine the two disciplines and create
something different from either. In IF, writing and programming are not
independent, but interact in complex ways and result in something quite
different from the result of a collaboration between a writer who did
not program and a programmer who did not write.
--
Gareth Rees
Chris
this message. Ok, you've all convinced me. I guess I'll give Inform a
shot. It sounds like the best one for me at the moment. ALAN sounds too
restricting, and TADS, well, let's just say I'm a lazy, good-for-nothing
louse with very little money. I recently visited the Infrom tutorial site
and it looks very helpful. I just may be able to get through this whole
programming thing after all. I guess one of the reasons why I was so
leery about learning to program is that once I dive into a complex
left-brained exercise like that, my creative side completely shuts off. I
don't know why that happens, but needless to say, I can pretty much give
up the idea of "making it up as I go along," which is what I had hoped to
do originally. I have most of the basic ideas mapped out in my head, but
I haven't even begun to work on the actual prose involved in creating my
IF story. I'm not the greatest writer in the world and I'm definitely not
a programmer. I'm sure I'm not even 1/16th as literate as the authors of
Christminster and Jigsaw appear to be (my 2 fave games so far, btw). You
won't find many literary or historical allusions in my game. Mine will be
very "pop-culture" oriented (that is, if I ever even get the darn thing
started). Wow, I bet you're all drooling to play this thing already! <g>
Hey, I'm an American tv baby, ok, I admit it. I do, however, love playing
IF games and I know what kind of elements make me obsessed with solving
them. Anyway, now that I've decided to take the plunge, let me ask you
guys the big question. Would you recommend actually writing out my whole
adventure before I begin learning how to program? I've always preferred
spontaneity over premeditation in writing. I guess I'll have to give this
up for IF authoring, eh?
Chris
Christopher E. Forman
: There's a difference between *co-creating* a game with a programmer
: and saying "Hey, write this thing up for me." Coding is a hell of
: a lot of work.
Yes, it's a lot of work, but if you're close friends with the author and
are allowed plenty of creative input on your own, it's not so bad.
--
C.E. Forman cef...@rs6000.cmp.ilstu.edu
Read the I-F e-zine XYZZYnews, at ftp.gmd.de:/if-archive/magazines/xyzzynews!
* Interactive Fiction * Beavis and Butt-Head * The X-Files * MST3K * C/C++ *
ler...@classic41.rz.uni-duesseldorf.de
Bruce Barnett (bbar...@tfb.com) wrote:
: boog...@ucla.edu (Chris) wrote:
: > Is there an easier
: >program out there somewhere? I don't wan't to have someone else write the
: >code for me, I'd really like to do it myself. Does this mean that I'll
: >just have to buckle down and learn the stuff? Btw, I have a Mac.
: My experience was that AGT is quite a bit easier, although somewhat
: more limited. The authors don't support this compiler any more, but I
: wrote a little game with it once and it worked fine.
You could also try ALan, which is free, but the compiler has to be requested
by email from the swedish(?) authors. The interpreter and docs are at GMD,
with email-address included.
Ad Astra!
JuL
ler...@sunserver1.rz.uni-duesseldorf.de / Ich bin ein Drache - Und ich wache
J"urgen ''JuL'' Lerch / Da"s niemand lache - Wenn ich was mache
ler...@classic46.rz.uni-duesseldorf.de
ler...@classic41.rz.uni-duesseldorf.de wrote:
: Bruce Barnett (bbar...@tfb.com) wrote:
: : boog...@ucla.edu (Chris) wrote:
: : > Is there an easier
: : >program out there somewhere? I don't wan't to have someone else write the
: : >code for me, I'd really like to do it myself. Does this mean that I'll
: : >just have to buckle down and learn the stuff? Btw, I have a Mac.
: You could also try ALan, which is free, but the compiler has to be requested
^^^^
Oops, didn't get the original posting, only Bruce's until now. But I
consider ALan simpler than AGT, in a way, because you don't have to
juggle with all those numbers - AGT uses them instead of names to
refer to things, locations and so on (what the heck *was* MESSAGE 42?
- ok, the 'master edition' allows names, but there aren't as many
ports of it; as an aside: AGT reminds me of The Quill, a commercial
adventure designer program for the ZX-Spectrum, only with a
half-decent parser).