The Gaming Philosopher

Introduction I'm planning to start a series of posts on interactive fiction and Linux. The idea is to find out how easy it is to play and make interactive fiction on a modern Linux distribution. This should be a help both to Linux users who wonder what software to use, and to writers of IF-software who can see where the lacunae are. Linux is an interesting platform for the IF community. It is by now a desktop OS that rivals Windows and OS X for features and ease of use. Though its market share (on the desktop, the server is another story) is still far below those two*, we can assume that its market share among people (potentially) interested in playing or writing IF is significantly higher: the average Linux user has more interest in programming and more willingness to use text interfaces than the average Windows user. Criteria When I'm looking at certain software, or a certain task, I will be asking three things: Can this be made to work? If so, does it work well? How easily c...

Quite a while ago, I released something called Idols of War , which was a test case for tactical combat in Inform 7. The core of that game was a system I call Inform ATTACK , for "Inform Advanced Turn-based TActical Combat Kit"; and it kind of worked, but not all that well yet. (In retrospect, I spent far too much of the development time for Idols of War on thinking op cool powers, combat moves, monster abilities, and so on--all of which can be easily recycled, so it might still turn out to be useful.) I didn't spent much time programming, the past months; but I've been busy the past few days, and I now have a completely redesigned Inform ATTACK . What features does it have? Completely locally customisable The original ATTACK was written using procedures ("To strike a blow: ..."), which then contained clauses for all the special things that could happen. The new ATTACK uses rulebooks throughout. This means that you can extend and change the core system with...