ZIL, Inform6, Glulx ... Linux?

[MrBelvedere]

Hi!

First usenet post, ever.

I'm listening to the Jason Scott video on his release of the ZIL source.
Ever since watching Get Lamp I've been looking to get into the IF scene.
I come from a strong programming background (CS major, masters student,
C, python are favs) and I'd love to write my own. I'm having trouble
finding a nice all-in-one tutorial for linux based development. I'm
exploring inform-fiction.org at the moment, but if any fine folks have
suggestions and maybe some war stories about their beginnings in IF
development (specifically Linux perhaps) I'd love to hear about it.
Also, I feel like a PPA for some of these resources would be a great
idea. Thanks!

Mr Belvedere

[Adam Thornton]

Post by MrBelvedere
Hi!
First usenet post, ever.

...

Post by MrBelvedere
exploring inform-fiction.org at the moment, but if any fine folks have
suggestions and maybe some war stories about their beginnings in IF
development (specifically Linux perhaps) I'd love to hear about it.
Also, I feel like a PPA for some of these resources would be a great
idea. Thanks!

Prior to Inform 7 it was never much of a challenge. Fundamentally the
IF languages were compilers with CLIs. Write your code in a text
editor, compile it with a CLI, there have been good z-code/TADS/glulx
Linux 'terps forever, there's your edit-build-test loop.

There's a functional Inform (6) mode for Emacs, so you get syntax
highlighting and all that good stuff, if you want. That, plus good old
make, was all I used for my pre-I7 work.

Inform 7 is only a challenge because it's not Open Source. I've been
providing a Linux CLI port of it for a number of years, and there's a
GNOME port of the UI that, I believe, provides feature-parity with the
MacOS and Windows UIs. At times, since I7 often goes a long time
between releases, we have ended up with releases that no longer function
on modern Linuxes. In general, I have responded with updated releases
when that has presented a problem.

I have access to many fewer architectures than I used to, but the world
is pretty much x86_64 and ARM these days.

I haven't used Twine or any of the newer CYOA frameworks so I can't
speak to those.

Every work of IF I released from _Sins Against Mimesis_ to _Stiffy
Makane: The Undiscovered Country_ was written in a Linux
environment. _Mentula Macanus: Apocolocyntosis_ was mostly written on a
Mac, but I also used it to test Linux I7 functionality, since it's a
rather large program and exercises a lot of I7.

Adam

[Happy MAC XL]

So, you won't be surprised to hear (considering my numerous other posts) that I'd recommend you give ZIL and ZILF a go.

In an earlier post, around May 20th from memory, I listed as many useful ZIL links as I could - check them out.

Adam

[MrBelvedere]

So, you won't be surprised to hear (considering my numerous other posts) that I'd recommend you give ZIL and ZILF a go.In an earlier post, around May 20th from memory, I listed as many useful ZIL links as I could - check them out.Adam

Thanks Adam, I'll do that. This semester I'm taking another
compiler course and I think I might be able to convince the
professor to let me go down an exploratory path in interpreters.
She's a big fan of interactive fiction, so I'll definitely be
bringing up ZIL.