Comments on: I Wanna Hold Your Hand

By: Rubes

Rubes — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 15:01:00 +0000

I agree, it’s a fascinating language, but I would probably prefer to use a more traditional language for creating a game. That said, I think the Inform 7 development environment is a real work of art, and has an incredible number of built-in features and tools to make game development easier.

What I would love to see is a development environment with features like Inform 7 but which allows straight coding in, say, Inform 6.

By: WorldMaker

WorldMaker — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 07:11:00 +0000

I also played around with Inform 7, but mostly as with my hobby linguist hat because the NLP-like DSL is quite fascinating. I’m not sure that I would enjoy actually writing a game with it.

By: Rubes

Rubes — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 21:45:00 +0000

Hehe…yeah, I remember that. In fact, I don’t know if I’m any farther along than I was back when we said that.

I remember mentioning here about Blue Lacuna, and I was really looking forward to trying it. Never did get to it, as I’m sure you know. I definitely need to check it out now, though…

By: Aaron A. Reed

Aaron A. Reed — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 19:52:00 +0000

I’m glad to know you’re still working on Vespers. Weren’t we going to have a race at some point to see who would be done with his massive project first? Like, two years ago?

Blue Lacuna is entirely about relationships with other characters. The relationship with the main character, who can develop into any number of archetypes (enemy, love interest, father, friend) occupies about 160,000 words of prose and Inform 7 code.

(Of course, only a small part of this was evident in the Spring Thing preview release, which nobody played anyway. But the final version will, I hope, set a new bar for NPCs in interactive stories.)

By: Rubes

Rubes — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 14:20:00 +0000

I've also started playing a bit with Inform 7, as I have an interest in exploring character development and conversations. It's tough, though -- even though it's a language based on natural expressions, it's still a bit difficult to get used to when you're more comfortable with other programming languages.

I wish I had more time to play around with it. If you have the chance, you might also look into IntroComp 2008, an IF competition where you submit only the beginning of a new, never before seen work of IF. It can be as short or as long as you like, so long as it is playable. Cash prizes, too. Deadline is August 1st.

By: Corvus

Corvus — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 10:00:00 +0000

Parment is awesome, thanks for the link! I’ll be sure to check out some of the titles you referenced.

I’ve done a little playing with Inform 7, with an eye toward expressing relationships between the character and the environment in a new way. If I had more time, I’d like to commit to pursuing a releasable IF project. Probably going to continue my idle poking between other projects, though.