Well, I was basically using my ignorance of the new-fangled technologies to see about motivation. I always thought money would be quite a motivation.
I suppose, then, that the terp situation is unlikely to improve unless a programmer makes a killer app of a game and decides that the terp situation isn’t good enough and wishes to improve it? That’s a bit unlikely, we’re lucky enough to have Zarf doing that for I7 and Glulx but still leaves all the other systems and devices.
I mean, combining a killer-app-designer and a programmer who can do the terps is hard. Easier, I thought, to motivate a programmer. If money’s not the best motivation, well, I’m stumped. What about the motivation of playing Future Boy (Hugo), Wonderland (Magnetic Scrolls), Knight Orc (Level 9), 1893/Babel/Worlds Apart (TADS) in more devices?
Is it that there isn’t a demand? I mean, in this place, if enough people want something they just get together and do it, which is pretty much what you’d expect from an active community centered around something they all love. Yet, we have plenty of Mac users (not me, personally) and a lack of properly-working interpreters for the most common system currently in use.
I’m all for terps! Terps, terps, terps, the more the merrier! I just want to know who I have to motivate and how I have to motivate them. If Kickstarter/Patreon is out, then what’s in?
(There’s always the issue of whether it’s worth investing on specific terps or whether the generalised Gargoyle is the model of the future. I like Gargoyle, but I won’t even consider using it until it’s exactly as good as the official interpreters. If Gargoyle could possibly be brought to the level of the official terps - for instance, multimedia in TADS is nonexistent in Gargoyle I believe, or as close as not to make a difference, and I doubt .z6 is fully supported - would it be worth stopping work on all other terps, discarding Zoom and Spatterlight, and making the Gargoyle libraries the new hub of the terpiverse?)