I’m sorry, but that statement is wrong in every possible way.
Look. Last year some people got upset that there were fewer parser games in IFComp. So Carolyn organized ParserComp. Lots of parser games appeared! Success! …And now someone (else) is upset: look how few parser games there are if you ignore IFComp and ParserComp.
The answer to that statement is, okay, you’re not looking at the context. No fault to the original poster for asking. But if you start by ruling out most of the parser games of 2014-5, of course you’re going to find that parser game are scarce.
What’s wearisome is for people to use the question as an excuse to drag up the same complaints they aired last year, and the year before, and forever. Well, forever since Twine happened. (In the larger scale, forever since Myst happened.)
The other thing to point out about that graph is that 2000 and 2001 were the glory days of Speed-IF, so there were lots and lots and LOTS of parser games written in two hours.
Well, the obvious solution is always “make parser games”. If you’re concerned the parser is dying - and by all accounts it isn’t, even if it may look that way to some of the people some of the time - then get cracking! You want to make it; we want to play it; what are you waiting for?
[rant=If you read my first mini-rant, well, this is a different one]I would be sad if people couldn’t post their opinions here. Zarf’s opinion is as valid as Juana’s as MTW’s as mine as mattgoh as Whyld’s as everyone else. “Stay out” isn’t really something we want to do - if someone has something to say, and if it’s not against the CoC (sigh), they should say it, and I don’t think they should make an effort to honeycoat it if they don’t want to. My two cents.[/rant]
EDIT - MTW mentioned a tweet by Juana re this thread. I’m curious, what is this tweet? I didn’t know this thread was tweet-worthy until mid page 2.
I typed a sticky out tongue emoticon after that statement, but when I previewed it, it just looked like a big smile. So I came back to the editor to look for a picture of a sticky out tongue, and I realised that the graphic I’d seen is MEANT to be a face with a sticky out tongue, but doesn’t look like it. And so I accuse it of just being a bad picture.
And that’s why in my dreams, all I do is stab Myst right in the heart again and again.
And with the presence of Parsercomp, we have a tons of parser games to play, which made everyone happy! I’m really sure everyone certainly appreciates the fact that the comp existed. I wouldn’t say that I’m upset that there aren’t much parser games without the comps, just curious that Twine is used so much by authors when there are 3 other simple IF authoring tools that can be used (Inform, Adrift 4, Quest). Still, if we take a look at the past, around 2005, there are some parser releases, maybe around 6, for every 3 months without the presence of a comp (Information taken from SPAG). This is counted as extremely scarce compared to the past.
I made this thread not to belittle Twine or complaint about CYOA games, but to see whether the community has changed their opinions on the topic and to start a fresh discussion about the standing point of IF today.
Let’s hope that a new Myst game gets released soon.
Still, one can get the sheer satisfaction of successfully understanding a complex system that they have no idea of how to use at first. We push for more, and unsettle for less. And learning traditional coding might help a person do other coding-related stuff in the future!
Not sure what happening to Adrift though. Only seen 1 game made with that system this year, although Adrift 4 is still available.
If you want to encourage people to write parser games, then it’s far more effective to offer rewards and recognition for writing parser games than it is to complain about the lack of parser games.
When ADRIFT 5 was announced, everyone put their works in progress on hold in the belief that everything would be so much better and easier when V5 came out - even though at the time no one had any idea what V5 would be like. Then V5 got delayed, and again and again and again… and by the time it finally got released, most people had given up waiting and decided to use other systems instead. A few people stuck with it, but V5 was a whole different beast from V4 - harder to use, more time consuming, with a much steeper learning curve (V4 didn’t really have a learning curve). More powerful certainly but I think for most people that power was wasted. I haven’t played every game written with V5 but those that I have could have been written much more easily with V4, and with much less hassle besides.
People still use V5 today, but the steeper learning curve puts people off. V4 is much easier, and still the one I prefer, but it’s essentially been abandoned and isn’t likely to receive any further updates. There was also an issue at one time - it might still be around actually - where if you tried to play a V4 game via the Webrunner it would automatically convert it to V5 without warning you and you could run into problems with the game as a result which were through no fault of the author.
When I made the switch from ADRIFT to Inform 7, I found the natural language approach of Inform 7 so much easier to get my head around than the coding in ADRIFT 5.
In that case, the creator of ADRIFT should consider releasing a sixth version of the system that will bring back the simplicity of creating IF games. But so far, there isn’t really any news about anything related to ADRIFT. (Not much good games released for the past few years - most of the popular games were released around 2006-2011)
If a new version gets released, it can breathe some fresh air into parser-based games and allow a whole new dimension of creating great games. Hope it changes the darkish interface of ADRIFT Runner too!
Not quite true. A new update to v5 came out very recently. Much to the disappointment of a number of people - chief amongst them, I’m sure, Campbell, its dev - it also broke a number of things. Campbell is probably working on those as we speak.
It’s quite easy to be flippant about “what we really need is Adrift 6”, but that’s a bit removed from reality… the reality being the existence of the various IF communities, the history behind each engine, the amount of work being maintained by a variable number of individuals (in the case of ADRIFT, just the one guy), the number of people who actually USE it…
The ADRIFT forum is active, so “no news” may not be really true. It’s just a slower place, moving at a slower pace.
I get the impression you want the IF scene to be as active as the Twine scene, with ten new parser games every day. That’s not going to happen due to a miracle new developing tool, and it’s probably never going to happen at all. The kind of work and dedication that a parser game makes precludes that constant churning out. Unless you want to lower your standards, in which case people won’t like your games.
Also, Quest does exist, it is also a gentler-mode tool than Inform, and it appears to get used to write new parser games on a regular basis, not all of which get advertised on this board or IFDB. Even where they did get advertised on IFDB, Sequitur’s Inform-specific search wouldn’t have turned them up.
Yes, it’s come up on the discussion before. I stuck to ADRIFT in my points because I keep hearing that Quest is great for really basic stuff - very easy to use - but when you want to get more complex it gets disproportionately difficult. This is hearsay, so I didn’t want to mention it, and stuck to what I knew of ADRIFT.
Tellingly, though, when Quest started supporting gamebooks (i.e. CYOA, or choice games, or what have you), I noticed a definite downward trend of Quest parser games. I noticed it more strongly at the time - nowadays there’s a fair amount of both.
Er, and all of this means… er… something to someone, I’m sure.
Oh, BTW - in Quest you might find the “10 parser games a day” you’re looking for. IFrom my understanding, the Quest community encourages its members to get SOMETHING done. Doesn’t have to be great, just has to be something. Then it gives feedback. I think a fair number of Quest games aren’t really meant for wide release, but instead for feedback, on the grounds that the important thing is to get started writing games.
This does hurt the overall quality of the Quest games, if you’re inclined to take a cynical view (like I am), but in no way negates the good Quest games out there, and the validity of Quest as an engine.
Hi, I’m a newcomer and I can tell you it’s not those people who strike me as elitist.
I have never finished a game and I feel a lot more confident about doing so with Twine than I ever did with Inform. I guess I just have nothing to offer.
BTW, prompted by the Roodylib update I’ve taken a look at the Hugo manual, and the following section seems quite relevant here:
[rant]The truth about writing interactive fiction games is that yes, it is programming, and no, there’s really no way around it. It’s impossible for a game
design system to provide a cookie-cutter means of picking and choosing all the various facets of any relatively complex game so that by clicking on a few buttons a fully formed and entirely original game world and story will be produced. It doesn’t work that way. The attempt to determine at the outset all of the various game elements that will ever be needed by any game author in any type of game necessarily limits what authors are able to include in their games, as well as their ability to tailor gameplay, presentation, character interaction, geography, and other important aspects of a game to the needs of the particular work of interactive fiction they’re writing. So, in order to write the best interactive fiction games you’re capable of, you’ll need to do a at least a little programming. But that’s not reason to fret.
The word “programming” seems to hold a sort of mystique that, to the non-programmer, conjures up some unfathomable combination of knowledge
and skills that shall remain forever inaccessible to outsiders. In fact, that’s pretty far from the truth. Programming is indeed a creative pursuit, but it is pretty much unique among creative pursuits in that it’s the only one that can be overcome by enough banging of keys: eventually you can make almost anything work.[/rant]
Hey, of course, not all newcomers feel this way, but it’s a concern that’s known by a large part of those who have been in the scene since before Matt Goh was born .
Anyway, re: my thoughts on Twine. Twine is fine. Dumping a buttload of really bad games that OBVIOUSLY are trollish or just plain lazy is NOT fine to some of us in the community. But, of course, we’re outnumbered by fanboys and girls so, seeing an uphill battle, I’m just gonna concentrate on my various projects and avoid the confrontation. Yes, I already hear your collective sighs of relief.
“Obvious” is a loaded word. I know some attention has come to DachsundTechno’s games, for instance… I don’t think they’re good games, but they’re not lazy or trollish to my view. They’re very short jokes. I don’t much care for the jokes, but I see that someone’s trying to say something. Maybe some day he’ll say something I’m interested in, maybe not, but the point is, it’s not as “obvious” as you cut it.
Also, many people come to Twine as their first serious game design tool. “Lazyness” may be a factor, yes. Then again, “lack of experience” and “excess enthusiasm to get something out there” is probably more like it.
Historically, I’ve done more harm by assuming that something was created in bad faith (lazy, trolling, trying to be trendy) than by assuming it was in good faith and that I just didn’t fully understand the backstory. So I try to assume good faith these days,* while looking for ways to identify the kind of content that I will like.
(* Yes, obviously I don’t wire money to any of the Nigerian princes who appear in my email inbox. But trying a game that turns out not to be to my taste? That’s a much better outcome than hurting or discouraging someone who is honestly trying to communicate something they care about, and I’m happy to assume the risk.)
If you’re concerned the parser is dying - and by all accounts it isn’t, even if it may look that way to some of the people some of the time - then get cracking! You want to make it; we want to play it; what are you waiting for?
It’s great that we have a healthy amount of them every year.