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From: svanegmo@undergrad.math.uwaterloo.ca (Stephen van Egmond)
Subject: Re: Next Years Competition.
Sender: news@undergrad.math.uwaterloo.ca (news spool owner)
Message-ID: <DFoCos.3zK@undergrad.math.uwaterloo.ca>
Date: Fri, 29 Sep 1995 16:05:16 GMT
References: <44d29b$9g7@agate.berkeley.edu> <44gar6$imp@mercury.kingston.ac.uk>
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In article <44gar6$imp@mercury.kingston.ac.uk>,
Adrian Preston <te_s343@kingston.ac.uk> wrote:
>I don't understand why fewer people can play the TADS games. As long as
>there is a copy of TR.EXE ( The TADS run-file ) and ZIP.EXE in the competition
>subdirectory of the if-archive, then anyone in the whole wide interactive 
>world can play either. ( Or at least directions of how to get the appropriate
>version of either for the desired OS. )

The simple fact that you speak of .EXE files betrays where you're coming 
from.

TADS is currently up past version 2.2.  Consider the platforms that don't 
have TADS 2.2 interpreters yet:

OS/2 (2.1.1)
Solaris2 (2.1.0)
Amiga (2.1.0)

I was only able to run one of the TADS entries on my Amiga, and it didn't 
accept any commands, complaining about a no VerbAction or something like 
that.

Also, consider the platforms that ZIPs exist for that no TADS interpreter 
exists for:

Amiga, OS/2, Solaris2 (up-to-date)
Atari ST, Windows (?), Apple IIGS, Acorn Archimedes, Psion Series 3....
...pretty well any computer with a standard C compiler.

>To the chap who is actually 'playing' the adventure, the fact that it has
>been written by TADS or INFORM is completely invisible ( Apart from the 
>fact that an INFORM adventure screen is probably blue. ) And as it has
>been extensively pointed out in the appropriate FAQ, as authoring systems,
>TADS and INFORM are both excellent and more or less on a par.

The portability issue comes into judging, because judges don't even have 
remotely similar distributions of computers.

>Again, for home-brewed parsers, as long as the interpreter is included in
>the ZIP file, I can see no reason why they should not be lumped under the
>same heading as everything else. i.e. the heading 'Interactive Fiction'.

Home-brew parsers, unless the author breaks his back to make the code 
portable, will only work on the machine they were written for, hence the 
portability issues apply.

/Steve

