jdyer
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I don't know if any of you are interested in that form known as "Interactive Fiction", but the beta of Inform 7 (a system for developing IF) just came out, and it is jaw-dropping.

http://www.inform-fiction.org/I7/Inform%207.html

Sample features:

* In place of traditional computer programming, the design is built by writing natural English-language sentences:

Martha is a woman in the Vineyard.
The cask is either customs sealed, liable to tax or stolen goods.
The prevailing wind is a direction that varies.

* Should you play for a while, say, getting 20 turns into the story, and then find a finicky mistake - or something that could be improved - simply amend the source text back on the left and click Replay: then watch as your steps are retraced back to where you left them, and resume.

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[Last edited by jdyer at 04-30-2006 07:32 PM]

Hikari
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OSX has more features than Windows? Wow, that's..... unintuitive

I've been searching not-too-successfully for a non-programmer's IF creation pack for Mac for a while, though, and this looks like a winner. Wooo, finally I don't have to have a whole Windows install for VPC sitting on my computer just so I can run ADRIFT anymore...

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Znirk
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Another good overview is at http://brasslantern.org/writers/howto/i7intro.html

LordKinbote
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That's really pretty neat, though it does remind me why you don't see that many non-programmer programming languages out there. The amount you have to write to do something simple looks to be, well, quite a bit.

Of course, the code is its own comments, which might be nice.

silver
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LordKinbote wrote:
Of course, the code is its own comments, which might be nice.

you mean it isn't normally?



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Znirk
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LordKinbote wrote:
The amount you have to write to do something simple looks to be, well, quite a bit.

True, but in my situation (touch-typist on a non-murkian keyboard) being able to type a word or three instead of things like []{}\\ (which all involve taking at least one hand off the normal typing position) might actually be faster, not to mention easier and less error prone.

Disclaimer -- I don't program, but I do use lilypond for music typesetting. Its input language uses {}\\ (and <>, but those are touch-typable).