Re: Limitations of Inform and TADS?


Sun, 5 Nov 1995 22:19:29 -0500

This argument is coming down to "Text IF has always run on small
machines, so it should do so in the future" vs "Text IF has always run
on small machines, so it should not do so in the future."

I bet if someone wrote a game on a high-performance engine, say
Prolog-like, and distributed it as portable C source code (as portable
as ZIP), people would play it. A few courageous souls would build
Mac and IBM binaries, and it would be played and discussed to the same
extent that TADS and Inform games have been. And that would be cool.

(Not as cool as a portable game engine plus a game file, though. I
really think that absolute portability has been a much bigger factor
in the predominance of TADS and Inform than the ability to play on an
Amiga.)

(But you've heard my prejudices before.)

The point is: IF is not starving for CPU cycles because the players
refuse to play CPU-hungry games. It's because nobody has written games
heftier than Legend. *Write* the game of your dreams, and talk about
it later.

--Z

"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the borogoves..."