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What are the most popular languages for writing IF? Why would I choose one over another?

• morelisp 4y ago
  Your primary decision is parser vs. hypertext, with Inform being the default choice for parser and (I think still) Twine for hypertext with Undum also being a popular choice. Most companies producing commercial IF have in-house tooling focused on their "house style", e.g. ChoiceScript for CYOA with "chunky" dynamic content versus StoryNexus (or whatever its modern iteration is) for a more fine-grained RPG-like approach. How (or whether) you simulate time passing also differentiates many engines.
  • anthk 4y ago
    CYOA is boring, it's just hypertext before the hypertext. Even the easiest if6/ZMachine adventure such as 9:05 has more choices and interactivity.
    • morelisp 4y ago
      "More choices is better" is bullshit.
      • anthk 4y ago
        Sure? Go play Anchorhead, I-0 or, under the roguelike domain, compare the now combat-linearized DCSS against Nethack/Slashem. Text adventures are not CYOA games, a lot of emergent gaming can arise. For instance, All Thing Devours has several methods to win by exploiting the time travelling puzzles.
• woolion 4y ago
  If you're a beginner, I can definitely recommend Adventuron to get started very fast. It has a browser-based IDE and compiler, and gives you a simple portable html file for your game. Last IF jam we took part in, even veterans in Inform did not have the same level of polish that Adventuron has as default. Some even struggled to get a portable executable at all. Why would you choose why over another? It's like general programming languages, the design makes trade-offs between expressiveness and simplicity, makes one approach more canonical than the others (e.g. in state management, choice between focusing on transition or locus, etc).