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Date: Tue, 24 Apr 2001 09:18:03 -0400
From: John Colagioia <JColagioia@csi.com>
Organization: No Conspiracy Here...
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Subject: Re: Sycamora Tree: "Inform is outdated"
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Magnus Stromgren wrote:

> According to "international publisher, developer and distributor of
> interactive fiction" Sycamora Tree, several major IF languages of
> today are "outdated":
> | Inform , Hugo and a lot
> | more engines are outdated. We now have several MHZ in the computer.
> | Why not use them to adventure games too ?
> <http://www.sycamoratree.com/about.html>
> Is this a fair comment?

I have never been able to buy this argument.  If Zork and other Infocom games
(and similar) could run on a Vic-20, that shows a far higher level of
technical sophistication, in my opinion, than filling up 24MB and untold
amounts of disk space and processing cycles for a game of similar
complexity.  Oh, and a graphic or two.

Consider, instead, the amazing things that could be created using the "old"
disciplines (trying to squeeze in as much as possible in the most efficient
manner) and "modern" resources.

I believe (and this is my own, personal, semi-biased opinion, having looked
at both the JVM and the Z-Machine in some detail) that the Z-Machine (and, by
association, Inform) is far more flexible and extensible than the JVM (and,
by association, Java--and by further association, anything WRITTEN in Java),
simply because the Z-Machine has a smaller amount of overhead, meaning that
it has an advantage from the start.

Hmmm...A Z-Machine browser plug-in...


> Does anyone have information about the
> development of their "new adventure engine in Java"?

Having read their pages, no.

Note, by the way, that my comments above have no bearing on whether or not
this is a viable thing.  The fact that the JVM is bulky and awkward does not
necessarily mean a poor product.


