A small IF platform survey

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Archived from groups: rec.games.int-fiction (More info?)

PJ wrote:


> I agree with you 100%. All this carping about security is somewhat
> silly. The next great worldwide computer Ebola is not likely to come
> out of the IF community, no matter what language people are developing
> IF in. And as you point out, .NET has the appropriate security
> features built into the framework.

For what it's worth, I agree as well, which is why I never got involved
in that rather silly line of discussion.

> I personally see room for improvement and would like a real visual
> development environment for IF, but if it's not better than the
> existing platforms (and you can define better in many ways, I guess),
> then it seems unlikely that most of the existing crew of IF authors
> will bother with it. If they don't, then the value of downloading the
> .NET framework just for one game is, as many have pointed out, not very
> high.

I'm learning Inform right now, and the language is absolutely screaming
for a good visual environment similar to Borland's Delphi and C++
Builder. (There may be other environments just as good, mind you.
Those are just the products I am familiar with.)

I can envision exactly how it would work, but can also unfortunately
envision the staggering amount of effort developing such a tool would
entail. I want it bad enough, though, that I'm actually thinking about
rolling up my sleeves and giving it a go.

> Be that as it may, I think the OP should give it a whirl, if that's
> what he's looking to do. I don't share the naysayers' problems with a
> "homegrown" IF language. Haven't they all basically been homegrown,
> going back to ZIL and the z-machine? Given that the source is available
> for the major languages now, using them and their libraries as a
> starting point for the minimum requirements of a next-gen language
> would seem to have great potential.

Give me a professional-grade visual environment for Inform that requires
..NET, and I will run not walk to download this framework of yours.
Alternately, give me another language as powerful as Inform, only with
an integrated visual IDE, and I will be all over .NET there too.

Jimmy
 
Archived from groups: rec.games.int-fiction (More info?)

"Icedragon" <icenetREMOVETHIS@icedragon.net> wrote:

> C is a subset of C++.

Ok, now we _know_ you don't know what you're talking about.

Richard
 
Archived from groups: rec.games.int-fiction (More info?)

In article <4251bd55.7512125@news.xs4all.nl>,
Richard Bos <rlb@hoekstra-uitgeverij.nl> wrote:
>"Icedragon" <icenetREMOVETHIS@icedragon.net> wrote:
>
>> C is a subset of C++.
>
>Ok, now we _know_ you don't know what you're talking about.

Last time I looked, Stroustrup claimed as a design goal keeping any C program
as a legal C++ program. So why doesn't that make C a subset?
--
"Yo' ideas need to be thinked befo' they are say'd" - Ian Lamb, age 3.5
http://www.cs.queensu.ca/~dalamb/ qucis->cs to reply (it's a long story...)
 
Archived from groups: rec.games.int-fiction (More info?)

Here, David Alex Lamb <dalamb@qucis.queensu.ca> wrote:
> In article <4251bd55.7512125@news.xs4all.nl>,
> Richard Bos <rlb@hoekstra-uitgeverij.nl> wrote:
> >"Icedragon" <icenetREMOVETHIS@icedragon.net> wrote:
> >
> >> C is a subset of C++.
> >
> >Ok, now we _know_ you don't know what you're talking about.
>
> Last time I looked, Stroustrup claimed as a design goal keeping any C program
> as a legal C++ program. So why doesn't that make C a subset?

Because he didn't achieve the goal. :)

--Z

"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the borogoves..."
*
I'm still thinking about what to put in this space.
 
Archived from groups: rec.games.int-fiction (More info?)

I'm going to step in here and ask that we all knock it off.

Ice - Clearly you need to review your C and C++ history. C and C++
share similarities, but are not the same language and one is not a
subset of the other. You may be able to get some non C programmers to
buy your statements, but the people that frequent this newsgroup have
been using both languages since before CRT's.

Everyone else - this is a newibie. Treat him as such. Take the boxing
gloves off and educate him.

Ice - we want to play nice, but you're not making it easy. Back off.
You're not going to make many friends by attacking the standards of the
IF development community. TADS and Inform are written in C. That may
seem insecure to you and to many on the surface, but this isn't the
right place or way to address the issue. Read through the available
source code and if you find a specific security problem, let the
maintainer know and I'm sure it will be addressed appropriately.

Everyone else - this is a newbie.

David C.
 
Archived from groups: rec.games.int-fiction (More info?)

On Tue, 05 Apr 2005 00:10:41 +0000, David Alex Lamb said to the parser:

> Last time I looked, Stroustrup claimed as a design goal keeping any C
> program as a legal C++ program. So why doesn't that make C a subset?

That doesn't mean he achieved it.

Try this:

char acStringLit[6] = "Inform";

That statement is legal in C and illegal in C++.


Michael
 
Archived from groups: rec.games.int-fiction (More info?)

ChicagoDave wrote:
> I'm going to step in here and ask that we all knock it off.

A good idea. Let's summarize a few salient points, first, however:

-- C and C++ are not the same language. However, C code, if written
carefully not to conflict with the requirements of C++, can compile to
a C++ compiler. Does that make it a subset of C++? Who knows, who
cares?

-- Neither C nor C++ were written "before CRTs". C came out in the
early 70s, became an ANSI standard in the early 80s. C++ came out
circa 1985, and was written to be a "superset" encompassing C, but as
many have noted, didn't fully achieve that. There is also an ANSI
standard now for C++, and many documents demonstrating the
links/compatabilities between the two languages. Nobody is winning
this argument, so we may as well quit on it.

-- Arguing about the security of C, C++ or any of the current set of IF
compilers is kind of ridiculous. Does anyone honestly think the Hong
Kong/Taiwan/Shanghai bug-writing/bug-fixing shops are trying to infect
the world using IF as a vector? In short, "No."

-- Any discussion of this sort invokes the rabid anti-Microsoft bias of
many folks on this news group. I sympathize. But Microsoft and .NET
aren't going away. May as well accept it, particularly as C#.NET is
pretty cool anyway.

-- Icedragon wants to write games in .NET. Applause. But he will get
no kudos from the community unless he writes a full .NET IF development
platform and distributes it broadly enough that somebody else starts
using it. That means it also has to be good -- probably better, in
fact -- than the existing IF languages. Possible, but not necessarily
probable.

-- Do we all have too much time on our hands? Apparently so. 😉

PJ
 
Archived from groups: rec.games.int-fiction (More info?)

PJ wrote:
> -- Arguing about the security of C, C++ or any of the current set of
IF
> compilers is kind of ridiculous. Does anyone honestly think the Hong
> Kong/Taiwan/Shanghai bug-writing/bug-fixing shops are trying to
infect
> the world using IF as a vector? In short, "No."

Replace bug-writing/bug-fixing with virus-writing/virus-fixing.

Too much time on my hands, but not enough to edit my thoughts,
apparently.

PJ
 
Archived from groups: rec.games.int-fiction (More info?)

In article <pan.2005.04.05.14.14.40.31000@mtsDOT.net>,
Michael Coyne <coyneAT@mtsDOT.net> wrote:
>On Tue, 05 Apr 2005 00:10:41 +0000, David Alex Lamb said to the parser:
>
>> Last time I looked, Stroustrup claimed as a design goal keeping any C
>> program as a legal C++ program. So why doesn't that make C a subset?
>
>That doesn't mean he achieved it.
>
>Try this:
>
>char acStringLit[6] = "Inform";
>
>That statement is legal in C and illegal in C++.

It's illegal in C99 as well, I think. And will garner a warning in
many C dialects.
--
There's no such thing as a free lunch, but certain accounting practices can
result in a fully-depreciated one.
 
Archived from groups: rec.games.int-fiction (More info?)

russotto@grace.speakeasy.net (Matthew Russotto) wrote:

> In article <pan.2005.04.05.14.14.40.31000@mtsDOT.net>,
> Michael Coyne <coyneAT@mtsDOT.net> wrote:
> >On Tue, 05 Apr 2005 00:10:41 +0000, David Alex Lamb said to the parser:
> >
> >> Last time I looked, Stroustrup claimed as a design goal keeping any C
> >> program as a legal C++ program. So why doesn't that make C a subset?
> >
> >That doesn't mean he achieved it.
> >
> >Try this:
> >
> >char acStringLit[6] = "Inform";
> >
> >That statement is legal in C and illegal in C++.
>
> It's illegal in C99 as well, I think.

Nope.

C99 6.7.8#14:

# An array of character type may be initialized by a character string
# literal, optionally enclosed in braces. Successive characters of the
# character string literal (including the terminating null character if
# there is room or if the array is of unknown size) initialize the
# elements of the array.

Note: _if_ there is room.

> And will garner a warning in many C dialects.

That means nothing. C compilers may emit anything from

An error was detected - giving up.

(as their only error message) to

This code is phenomenally ugly.

for any code which doesn't include a #pragma beautiful, as long as they
compile all strictly conforming code which fits.

Richard
 
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"PJ" <pete_jasper@hotmail.com> wrote:

> ChicagoDave wrote:
> > I'm going to step in here and ask that we all knock it off.
>
> A good idea. Let's summarize a few salient points, first, however:
>
> -- C and C++ are not the same language. However, C code, if written
> carefully not to conflict with the requirements of C++, can compile to
> a C++ compiler. Does that make it a subset of C++?

If it did, C would be a subset of Pascal, and vice versa, because with
sufficient care, a C program can be written which is also Pascal. See
<http://www.nyx.net/~gthompso/self_mult.htm> (and shudder).
Basically, unless _normal_ C programs are also C++ programs, C is not a
subset of C++. And hardly any of my normal C programs compile as C++...

> -- Any discussion of this sort invokes the rabid anti-Microsoft bias of
> many folks on this news group. I sympathize. But Microsoft and .NET
> aren't going away. May as well accept it, particularly as C#.NET is
> pretty cool anyway.

*Shrug* Please explain how I can install Sheesh-dot-com on my Revo,
then.

Richard
 
Archived from groups: rec.games.int-fiction (More info?)

I'm trying to wrap my brain around...

"NET programs allowed to invoke ActiveX components that are marked
"Safe for Scripting""

....and am having a hard time. But I think I know where this is going.

In order for a .NET program to have the ability to invoke _anything_
(including an ActiveX object), it would need security settings
explicity opened by the user using the .NET Security Client.

Your reply "never" is absolutely correct, but the comment is
misleading. You're trying to drive a wedge into Microsoft .NET
development by making the "Safe for Scripting" architecture sound like
something that makes .NET fundamentally insecure.

There's absolutely no validity to this line of thinking. If you were to
create a program or control that was a facade for an ActiveX control,
you would have to explicitly open up the "AllowPartiallyTrustedCallers"
security setting for the .NET program. This is off by default and even
opening up security in IE won't allow the .NET code to be executed
because it contains an operation that requires
"AllowPartiallyTrustedCallers".

Let me repeat this part:
The .NET code does not execute without permission.

Your comment about "All managed code causes non-managed code to be
executed somewhere" is also true, but this is exactly why Microsoft
implemented Code Access Security. Every operation is tested, including
operations that launch unknown entities, before the program is
executed. If any of these operations haven't been explicity allowed
access to execute, than the VM never even executes the code.

I invite you to read through the documentation on MSDN regarding CAS:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/cpguide/html/cpconcodeaccesssecurity.asp

No system is perfectly secure. If you run a linux box and install
something that requires root access, you're trusting that that
component doesn't have any malicious intent. But because you have the
option not to install it, you are the ultimate barrier for security
breeches. .NET requires the same exact level of interaction but it even
goes further. It gives the user (and developer) the ability to
explicitly design the operations that need to be allowed for a program
to execute.

So using CAS, I could create a program that required no operations
other than "Execute" and "Connect to Internet" and if the user allowed
those two operations, my program would execute perfectly without any
other requirements from the user.

If I created a program that required "Write to Local Disk" operations
and the user has this barred, my program wouldn't execute. It would
fail with a security exception before it even got to the point of
executing.

I know this is way off topic, but feel very strongly about pointing out
the difference between rhetoric and fact. The fact is, .NET is an
extremely safe and efficient development platform. You can say anything
you want about the state of MS development/security 5 years ago and I
will agree on nearly every point. But it's important to realize that MS
has moved way past ActiveX and COM as far as base architectures are
concerned.

David C.
 
Archived from groups: rec.games.int-fiction (More info?)

In article <TISdnZNwi7s_w8zfRVn-sg@speakeasy.net>,
Matthew Russotto <russotto@grace.speakeasy.net> wrote:
>In article <r%N3e.1477$1r6.1219@trnddc02>,
>Icedragon <icenetREMOVETHIS@icedragon.net> wrote:
>>My original contention: "it has already been shown that some of these tools
>>had/have exploitable buffer overruns in them"
>>Compiler == tool. If the tools for the platform have overruns, it's likely
>>the environments do too.
>You'll never find a more wretched hive of specious reasoning.

Actually, I think you'll find that 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue is *even
more wretched*, difficult as that is to believe.

Adam
 
Archived from groups: rec.games.int-fiction (More info?)

In article <51%3e.2297$Q26.1915@trnddc05>,
Icedragon <icenetREMOVETHIS@icedragon.net> wrote:
>I disagree with you that C is somehow more safe or superior to C++,
>considering C++ supports C code. That said, we agree to disagree, let's be
>done with this.

Hey! A C++ compiler will also support my brand new language
"C--noreallyImeanminusminusandthensomemoreminuses" (henceforth
"C--...etc.").

The only legal program in "C--...etc." is:

int main(int argc,char **argv) {
exit(0);
}

This code will do the same thing, when compiled by a conformant
C--...etc. compiler, that the same code, compiled by a
correctly-implemented C or C++ compiler will do, because C--...etc. is a
strict subset of C and C++.

Please explain to me how this is abusable.

Adam
 
Archived from groups: rec.games.int-fiction (More info?)

Hi, Jimmy:

If you haven't seen it yet, check out Plugh!, which is meant to be a
visual development environment for TADS. It's not complete, and in
fact seems to be stalled, but it is along the lines of what you defined
(and I also would like) for Inform.

Link is www.plugh.info.

PJ
 
Archived from groups: rec.games.int-fiction (More info?)

In article <1153ic1sanrt4df@corp.supernews.com>,
Jimmy Maher <maherNO@SPAMgrandecom.net> wrote:
>I'm learning Inform right now, and the language is absolutely screaming
>for a good visual environment similar to Borland's Delphi and C++
>Builder. (There may be other environments just as good, mind you.
>Those are just the products I am familiar with.)
[...]
>
>Give me a professional-grade visual environment for Inform that requires
>.NET, and I will run not walk to download this framework of yours.
>Alternately, give me another language as powerful as Inform, only with
>an integrated visual IDE, and I will be all over .NET there too.

I don't know what you mean by "visual" here.

Seriously.

Writing code of any sort, is, for me, a fundamentally textual process.
Sure, there are visual interface builders I've found helpful (RIP,
VX-Rexx!), but these are useful for, well, deciding the layout of your
product's GUI. I don't see how anything like them is applicable to
something like Inform (presuming you're not proposing a drag-and-drop
adventure builder, where you lay out the map visually and autogenerate
code to build that, which strikes me as both of limited utility and
fundamentally unhelpful for everything about IF that isn't the map.)

So all I can figure you mean is, "something that does syntax
highlighting, has an integrated compiler and maybe some sort of indexed
or structurally-aware source browser, and will let me jump to the source
location that the first compilation error came from." In which case,
uh, Emacs plus speedbar pretty much does all that. That, not
coincidentally, is my favorite Java development environment as well as
my favorite Inform environment (honestly I've never used speedbar for
Inform because I've never written a game big enough to require a source
structure complex enough to make it worth the bother).

But maybe I'm missing something: what do you mean by "visual" here?

Adam
 
Archived from groups: rec.games.int-fiction (More info?)

Adam Thornton wrote:

> I don't know what you mean by "visual" here.
> So all I can figure you mean is, "something that does syntax
> highlighting, has an integrated compiler and maybe some sort of indexed
> or structurally-aware source browser, and will let me jump to the source
> location that the first compilation error came from." In which case,
> uh, Emacs plus speedbar pretty much does all that. That, not
> coincidentally, is my favorite Java development environment as well as
> my favorite Inform environment (honestly I've never used speedbar for
> Inform because I've never written a game big enough to require a source
> structure complex enough to make it worth the bother).

No, that's not what I mean. There are already quite a few tools to do
that with Inform. Personally, I've been using a free editor called
ConTEXT with Inform syntax highlighting. It's wonderful, and I wouldn't
want to be without it, but that's not what I'm talking about here.

> But maybe I'm missing something: what do you mean by "visual" here?

Okay, I'll try to describe my dream environment. Warning: this is
heavily influenced by Borland C++ Builder and Delphi.

When you start working on a new game, you are presented with a blank
window to contain the visual aspects. We'll call this a form. You also
have a blank text window to work with, separate from but linked to the
visual window.

On a menu bar, you have a bunch of commonly used, rather generic Inform
objects represented by little icons. You will have to have a room
object, of course, but many other objects are possible as well... a
light source, a book, a container object (knapsack, etc.). These are
all very generic, though, grouped by their fuction. The same object
might serve as a flashlight and an (American) torch, a knapsack and a
purse, etc. How? Let's hold off on that for just a moment and talk
about rooms first.

For most, the first step in creating an IF game is creating a map. You
can do this visually by clicking the "ROOM" icon on the menu bar to
highlight it, then dragging it to any blank area in the form window.
When you do this, a couple of things happen. A simple icon representing
a room appears in the form window, and all of the code necessary for a
very simple, generic room appears in the text editor.

Anytime a room is highlighted in the form window, something we'll call
the properties window for that room is displayed. This contains a whole
lot of, you guessed it, properties for that room. For instance, there
is a dropdown for "has light," which can be set to true or false. There
are also textual fields for the short and long descriptions, etc.
Basically, all of the common traits relating to a room are here.
Initially they are set to generic defaults -- perhaps the short
description is just set to something like "Room #1," etc. You change
these to suit your game. As you do this, your code is automatically
changed in the editor window.

As you create more rooms and drop them on the map, you can connect them
together. Simply click on a room, then drag the mouse to the room it
should connect to. Again, the code for this is automatically generated
in the editor window.

Other objects are handled similarly to rooms. You drag the generic
object you want from the menu bar and drop it on the room that should
contain it. Double clicking on a room will bring up a list of the
objects it contains. Click on any of these objects to bring up its
properties window, them customize things to your heart's content.
Container objects just function similarly to rooms. Drop objects into
them, then double click them to manipulate those objects.

This little propeties window we've been discussing also has a tab for
"before" and "after" routines. Common verbs are listed here, with text
fields for the functions that should be executed for them. Initially,
these fields will all be blank, meaning said routines do not exist, but
they can be filled in by you with function names from your program.

Let's say you want to create a poisoned apple. You would type a
function name into the "After Eat" field. If this function existed in
your code, the appropriate code to link it to the apple object would be
generated automatically. If not, a the above code is still generated,
but the skeleton of a function with the name you specified is also
generated for you, and you are dropped into the text editor at that
point, ready to code up the function.

Yes, I said code. This is not an "easy adventure creator" and not a way
to avoid learning Inform. It is a shortcut to take care of as many of
the mundane, tedious tasks as possible, and allow you to concentrate on
the gnarly bits that need your attention. Anytime you want to, you can
roll up your sleeves and dive into the code yourself. In creating a
game of any complexity, you will be spending the vast majority of your
time doing just that. That's fine. It's sort of the point, really.
You will NOT be spending a lot of time coding the generic sort of stuff,
worrying about indenting, and the like. That's being taken care of for
you, simply and elegantly. I can see this tool dramatically reducing
development time, reducing frustration as syntax niggles and the like
will be far less common, and generally making IF development a much more
pleasant experience. You still have the ability to code manually
anywhere and everywhere, however, and you will have to in many places if
you expect to create anything more than the most generic shell of a
game. That's a fact of life.

Any changes you make manually in the text editor would be reflected in
the GUI, and vice versa. It should be possible to manually code a room
or other object, and have it appear in the GUI just as if it had been
automatically generated. This would be an absolutely hellacious thing
to code up, though... probably the thorniest problem involved in
creating this app. Even Borland's professional products don't really do
this the way I would like.

I don't know how good a job I've done of explaining the dream app that's
in head, so if you need further clarification just let know and I will
try my best.

An app like this would of course require a huge amount of time, energy,
and considerable technical skill to pull off. I'm not sure I have
sufficent reserves of any of the three, at least right now. I can
dream, though...

Jimmy
 
Archived from groups: rec.games.int-fiction (More info?)

Jimmy,

You might want to do a Google search in rec.arts.int-fiction for visual
IDE. We've discussed this a lot over the years. In fact, I was a
longtime instigator of this sort of discussion. I decided to give it a
shot and created a workable (if not usable and complete) program called
Visual Inform (it's on the archive somewhere).

What I learned from the experience is that creating an IDE is not all
that hard. I didn't implement features as you decribe them, but some of
the ideas are the same.

But as I was doing this work I was also still developing some games
using UltraEdit. Eventually I realized that I personally would never
use my own Visual Inform program to write a game because the
fundamental difference between IF and general programming (like Delphi
or C++) is that you're developing a story. The programming part can be
made more productive with syntax highlighting, auto complete, spell
checker, templates, breaking up your game into multiple files, and
things that nearly any professional text editor can handle.

I think the one thing an IDE (integrated development environment) could
offer would be inline debugging.

But I think the graphical stuff is not in line with what IF essentially
is, which is a story.

Any IDE has to first and foremost cater to the author or writer with an
easy way to track storylines, scenes, endpoints, branches, response
libraries, character development, and more. Then, within the construct
of providing a productive writing environment, enable all these other
gadgets to help the author construct their story effectively, which
would include all of the generic IDE nicities.

A few of us have tried to attack the IF IDE problem from the
generalized programming view and have either succeeded modestly or
failed. I think the only way to succeed completely is to attack it from
the writer's perspective.

This is not to say that a set of visual drag and drop tools wouldn't be
helpful. They might. But I think we still haven't discovered the core
set of tools needed to make an IF author highly productive.

David C.
 
Archived from groups: rec.games.int-fiction (More info?)

Jimmy Maher <maherNO@SPAMgrandecom.net> writes:

> concentrate on the gnarly bits that need your attention. Anytime you
> want to, you can roll up your sleeves and dive into the code yourself.
> In creating a game of any complexity, you will be spending the vast
> majority of your time doing just that. That's fine. It's sort of the
> point, really. You will NOT be spending a lot of time coding the
> generic sort of stuff, worrying about indenting, and the like. That's
> being taken care of for you, simply and elegantly. I can see this
> tool dramatically reducing development time, reducing frustration as
> syntax niggles and the like will be far less common, and generally

But as you say, you'll be spending the majority of your time with your
sleeves rolled up in the code. So what are you saving by having all
the visual stuff and properties editors, that you couldn't save
cutting and pasting from a text file with code templates in it (or
emacs' skeletons for instance)?

> Any changes you make manually in the text editor would be reflected in
> the GUI, and vice versa. It should be possible to manually code a

This is the real hard part. Whats going to happen is that as soon as
you go in and edit your generated code the visual editor will become
much less usefull, and in all probability dangerous because its going
to mess up what you've done when it can't understand it.

None of this is to say that its not a beautiful dream though :)

--
Andrew Cowper

Pick a different user name to email me.
 
Archived from groups: rec.games.int-fiction (More info?)

> >>"Icedragon" <icenetREMOVETHIS@icedragon.net> writes:
> >>>A list of interpreters used in IFComp 2004 and their source
language:
> >>>WinFrotz - C/C++ mix
> >>>Frotz - C/C++ mix

Jeez Louise, so much fuss! If you're worried about programs
implemented in C++, why not create a .net port of glulx? Then you'd
have the safety to be able to sleep at night, AND a productive, proven
development environment.

p
 
Archived from groups: rec.games.int-fiction (More info?)

PJ wrote:

> If you haven't seen it yet, check out Plugh!, which is meant to be a
> visual development environment for TADS. It's not complete, and in
> fact seems to be stalled, but it is along the lines of what you defined
> (and I also would like) for Inform.
>
> Link is www.plugh.info.

Thanks, that is indeed very interesting. Definitely the closest thing
I've seen to what I have in mind, although I'm somewhat crippled by my
completely lack of TADS knowledge.

Jimmy
 
Archived from groups: rec.games.int-fiction (More info?)

ChicagoDave wrote:

> I think the one thing an IDE (integrated development environment) could
> offer would be inline debugging.

I think the logical place for this might actually be in the interpreter.
It wouldn't be that hard to add functionality to an existing
interpreter to allow the user to view the object tree, program counter,
global and local variables, etc., interactively.

>
> But I think the graphical stuff is not in line with what IF essentially
> is, which is a story.

While I don't disagree that some or most IF is story-oriented, I'm not
sure I see the rest of your logic.

> Any IDE has to first and foremost cater to the author or writer with an
> easy way to track storylines, scenes, endpoints, branches, response
> libraries, character development, and more. Then, within the construct
> of providing a productive writing environment, enable all these other
> gadgets to help the author construct their story effectively, which
> would include all of the generic IDE nicities.

This sounds more like a prototyping or flowcharting tool. It would be
very nice to have, especially for complex story-oriented games, but it
strikes me as fufilling a very different role from the app I've
described. The two (imaginary) apps would actually complement each
other rather than rival one another. (Or integrate all of it together
into one app.)

Jimmy
 
Archived from groups: rec.games.int-fiction (More info?)

In article <1158qm6j4hp0543@corp.supernews.com>,
Jimmy Maher <maherNO@SPAMgrandecom.net> wrote:
>Adam Thornton wrote:
>> I don't know what you mean by "visual" here.

[long, cool description snipped]

Yeah, it sure would be nice to have something like that, but....

>An app like this would of course require a huge amount of time, energy,
>and considerable technical skill to pull off. I'm not sure I have
>sufficent reserves of any of the three, at least right now. I can
>dream, though...

And here's the problem: the amount of effort that would go into
developing such an environment would be far, far larger than the amount
of effort using it to write games would save. Borland can get away with
investing the resources in an IDE like this because they can hope that
hundreds of thousands of developers will use their product (and of
course produce a revenue stream to fund the IDE's development).
Whereas, the total worldwide number of Inform programmers is in the few
thousands at largest, I think. Speaking just for myself, I wouldn't pay
for an IF development environment--I don't do it enough that the
investment would make sense, and I can get where I want to be with the
cruder tools available to me. My shelves are lined with cool products
(mostly games) that I paid for, used once or twice, and then never
touched again.

I think to produce this environment would take tens of thousands of
man-hours, and the total amount of time that would be saved by its use
might well be less than that.

I wonder to what degree something like this could be put on top of an
existing framework, though. I think that, for instance, Apple's Xcode
can be extended to support new languages; would it make sense to create
an Inform development environment for Xcode?

Adam
 
Archived from groups: rec.games.int-fiction (More info?)

Here, Jimmy Maher <maherNO@spamgrandecom.net> wrote:
>
> Well, it's a question of total development time, not ratios between
> coding and doing something else. Let me give a simplistic example:
>
> Say you write a small game that takes 100 hours to create with just a
> text editor. However, you only spend 50 of these hours actually
> wrestling with important coding problems.

Or, let's say you spend 90 of those hours wrestling with code (and
prose), and only 10 on repetitive busy work. Then the savings of
automation are very small.

See, it *is* a question of that coding time ratio. You're assuming
it's 50%. I think that's a large overestimate.

--Z

"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the borogoves..."
*
I'm still thinking about what to put in this space.
 
Archived from groups: rec.games.int-fiction (More info?)

On or about 4/8/2005 11:50 AM, Jimmy Maher did proclaim:
> ChicagoDave wrote:
>
>> I think the one thing an IDE (integrated development environment) could
>> offer would be inline debugging.
>
> I think the logical place for this might actually be in the interpreter.
> It wouldn't be that hard to add functionality to an existing
> interpreter to allow the user to view the object tree, program counter,
> global and local variables, etc., interactively.

Nitfol does some, if not all, of this.

http://www.firthworks.com/roger/inflight/nitfol.html