Re: FAQ?


09 Jul 1995 15:52:11 GMT

Gabe White <gwhite@freenet.columbus.oh.us> wrote:
> I found 15 different systems. Could someone tell me which one is the
> best? Keep in mind, I'm not a programmer, so I need something fairly
> easy to use.

The best two systems are TADS and Inform. TADS is shareware
(registration $40), has been around for a few years, and there are about
a dozen games written with it (Unnkuulia 0, 1 and 2; The Legend Lives,
Rylvania, Enhanced, etc). Inform is free, and is more recent, with only
a handful of games written in it (Curses, Busted, Theatre, Balances).

I program with Inform; I have a Web page with bits of sample code and
other information:

http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/users/gdr11/inform/

If you don't program already, you'll find that both Inform and TADS are
quite difficult to learn. I'm told that ALAN is a good system for
beginners, and AGT another (many, many games have been written in AGT,
so it's probably true that it's easy to use).

However, if you use AGT or ALAN, you'll find two problems: (1) people
won't play your games unless they have IBM PCs (for example, I can play
TADS and Inform games on this SPARCstation, but I can't play AGT games).
(2) The simpler systems aren't sophisticated enough to produce games of
as high a quality as TADS or Inform. If you hanker after writing
another "Trinity", or even another "Zork", then AGT won't quite let you
do it.

Why not try all four (you can try out TADS for a bit without
registering) and see what you think?

--
Gareth Res

--
Gareth Rees