Designing for mobile

What are the options for developing IF for mobile devices - specifically something for the iphone or android app stores - and which do you recommend?

A friend and I have been play testing my WIP (made using TADS 3) using Fabularium. The creator updates it frequently, and I love it.

For choice based games, you can use ink together with Unity.

OR there’s ChoiceScript, but you have to release through their channels.

For parser games, Marnix van den Bos and myself are working on a new interface called IFI, that connects his XVAN system (and others) to our mobile GUI at Strand Games. When this works, we’ll be open sourcing everything.

I have a framework for releasing Inform games on iOS:

github.com/erkyrath/iosfizmo
github.com/erkyrath/iosglulxe

You have to be fairly well up on iOS programming to use it, though.

Well, you don’t have to release through their channels; if you’re distributing a game for free you don’t need to pay CoG anything. If you want to sell a product yourself, you have to work out a revenue-sharing license with them, which will probably depend on exactly what you’re going to do with it.

I Hadn’t realised CoG make the mobile (eg Android & iOS) CS runtimes available. is this the case?

I believe if you want to use Choice Script, you write for Choice of Games, or you write an independent game with CS that they host and handle publishing to various platforms. choiceofgames.com/looking-f … sted-game/

If you want to self-publish a game with CS, I’m pretty sure they will negotiate with you to license CS. Or you can use it noncommercially as stated previously.

You can convert a Twine game to a mobile app using PhoneGap.
sammisquest.wordpress.com/writi … -tutorial/

github.com/SimonChris/AndroidIF

There is this for Inform games on Android.

I’m not sure if it counts as IF here, but you could try Ren’Py. It’s a visual novel engine. What that means is it’s kind of like a choose your own adventure story with scenes, backgrounds, character art (which changes expressions and such, and moves to different parts of the screen), transitions (think PowerPoint), music, and stuff. Usually, it’s point and click, but you can have a command-bar to type stuff in, too. You can use Python code in games you develop, too. I used it as an interface to my Python text adventure library that I wrote one time.

Supposedly, you can make games for Android with it, but I’ve never tried it.