Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: ceforma@rs6000.cmp.ilstu.edu (Christopher E. Forman)
Subject: Re: Is there anyone who does NOT use IF-tools...
Message-ID: <1995Apr28.181556.32170@rs6000.cmp.ilstu.edu>
Date: Fri, 28 Apr 1995 18:15:56 GMT
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Organization: Illinois State University
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Marcus-Christopher Ludl (e9226344@stud1.tuwien.ac.at) wrote:
: 1) Not only does almost everybody here USE Inform and TADS, but these two
: tools represent the main discussion-topic on this group. Now, it's not
: that I don't like either of them (I hardly know them)...it's just that
: I'd be interested if there are others who, like me, prefer to stick to
: Pascal, Prolog, LISP or whatever to program adventure- (IF-)games. Isn't
: anybody out there interested in the things BEHIND the game? The
: algorithms for parsing, compressing string data, general coding...
: To all who use Inform and TADS (and similar tools): Please don't feel
: personally offended, I'm just looking for others who could be interested
: in such things...

For some time (and this was before I got on Internet), I was working on an
I-F game and writing my own parser in C.  When I learned of the existence
of TADS and Inform, though, I abandoned the parser and am now in the
process of trying to master the two text-adventure languages.  Writing a
parser is, as I discovered, a difficult undertaking, and it's really an
inconvenience when what you really want is to be able to focus entirely
on the story and puzzles of your game.  That, I suspect, is the primary
reason for the appeal of both TADS and Inform -- they save you the
drudgery of creating an entire parser to go along with the game.

