davidw wrote:I don't use Inform 7 myself, but I'm curious in what way you find it, and the other systems, non-customisable.
I was hoping someone would ask that
In Quest, you have the option to create things extremely easily. Just click a few buttons and you can control the world.
That doesn't happen in Inform. You have to manually type everything by hand (although it's in a version of 'plain English')
For example, in Quest, you could click the 'New Object' button and make an object (let's say, a box), then go to a tab and make it run all kinds of scripts (like what it does when it opens/closes, what it does when you take/drop it)
In Inform 7, this would look something like this:
A box is in the room. It is an openable closed container.
After opening the box:
say "You open the box."
After closing the box:
say "You close the box."
You can also use things like
move the box to another room
Now don't get me wrong -- I can see why some people could like this. But creating commands is a bit tricky.
First, you have to do something like this
Understand "fall" as falling.
Then
Falling is an action applying to nothing.
And finally...
After falling:
say "You hit your face on the ground.";
Now, again, I understand how people could like this method. But imagine if you want something more complicated. In Quest, you could create a command with a pattern like 'throw #object1# and #object2# at #object3#'. Then you could just add a script, so you can throw 2 things at a time.
In Inform 7, you're actually not allowed to do anything with more than two objects. It refuses to let you.
As for ADRIFT, I actually kind of like the way it sets up the locations. However, creating objects is a pain, as I couldn't find anything telling me how to put them in an actual location. I refused to go any further after that, so I don't know how the commands work there.
There's so much more things that you can do in Quest that you can't do in other systems (or at least, other programs make them more difficult) such as setting variables and functions that you can call later, editing the style of the text, or the style in general. As far as I've seen, Quest has been the only one that has had side-panels in the game.
(I had to think about this for a half a minute earlier today in another thread, so this is my opportunity to answer that question!)
Sora's fine. The numbers aren't really part of the name -- They're just there to be there.
