Friday, December 2, 2016

Should I switch to Inform 7?

I like Adrift for it's ease of use and visual representation of the game but I'm finding it limiting and it seems like it's one of the least popular formats for AIF these days. I've been looking at Inform 7 and it looks full featured and relatively easy to learn but I have ZERO programming experience. Am I biting off more than I can chew? With work/life stuff etc I don't have a ton of time to work on AIF stuff anyways and I worry that learning a new programming language will make it even harder to get stuff done.

That being said though, Inform is probably my 2nd favorite format to play AIF in and I'd be much more satisfied with my work if it was in Inform than Adrift so maybe it'd be worth it? There's also the work being done by Fictitious Frode (https://informedaif.wordpress.com) and Green Double Aught (http://doubleaughtgames.blogspot.com) which looks promising even though I don't quite understand what I'd do with it yet.

4 comments:

  1. You should evaluate game engines and game libraries based on the games written with them. It's far too easy for programmers to go off into la-la-land making a game engine that's completely divorced from the reality of actually making games. I believe that's what is killing TADS 3 and Twine 2. Finished games show you what's possible and what's difficult to do.

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  2. I haven't worked in Adrift so I can't give you a comparison. I can say that if you need help, just ask. I was also not an expert programmer when I took up Inform.

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    1. Ok awesome, one thing I haven't been able to find is he source files for a complete AIF game in Inform. I've found plenty of tutorials for regular games and those are helpful but I'd really like to find an AIF game so I can dig into how it works.

      I've found creating rooms & objects to be really straightforward & even easier than Adrift but I feel like characters, conversations, sex acts etc will get pretty complicated. I'm not savvy enough yet to know how to use the AIF libraries that exist but maybe those will make it easy. Thanks!

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    2. Check the Inform section of the yahoo aif group:

      https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/aifarchive/files/Inform%20Games/

      You can download the source for two Inform 7 games from there: A Dog's Life and The Magician's Nephew.

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