I took a short look at Adrift and I like the way they organize the editor
interface, but it is only available under Windows.... (I also saw on the
website you mentioned a java-applet for running Inform-games)

Your remark about Inform is correct. 
Therefor: Wouldn't it be nice to have an editor (or even more: something
like an adventure-game-objects-organizer for children, running on top of
Z-machine)

In 1986 I saw a program called Tombs of Arkenstone, demonstrated by a very
enthousiatic Bob Hart, who told us about an avarage primary school classroom
with lots of children who hate reading, history, etc... 
Then he introduced a very simple adventure-game-editor (running on a
BBC-computer form Acorn) 
It was simple to create rooms/caverns connected through corridors. 
You could add the descriptions of the rooms and corridors. 
You could place persons and objects inside these rooms, again: adding the
descriptions...

Children decided to design an medieval castle with Knights, so they started
to read books about knights, castles... wrote down their thoughts and design
ideas, created paper dmo-castles...

I forgot if the game ever was finished, I remember Bob and I am still
wondering how much the enthusiasm of Bob - and not the game - infected the
children...

Now seeing Squeak and Swiki: wouldn't it be nice to create a swiki where you
could work on a adventure-project with many others:

- choose an adventure theme
- start an adventure swiki for that theme 
- let all 'children' add documentation about persons on person-pages
- let them create rooms and corridors and fill these with descriptions on
description-pages
- let them create (thematic) puzzles on puzzle-pages (is more then solving
puzzles ot others)
- have a masterpage where you place puzzles and persons in the rooms and
(this is the more difficult part to design)
- go to the play-page an go.. (here you need a history-list you could read
from and write on from the internet... and that for every player: ..)
- realize it will never become so complex as the professional games, but
connections to music, pctures on the pages and even Alice in Wonderland pass
my fantasy..

   
-----Original Message-----
From: Roger Kenyon [mailto:edutec at idirect.com]
Sent: zondag 29 juli 2001 23:38
To: squeak-dev at lists.squeakfoundation.org
Subject: Re: Developing RPG


>> Wouldn't it be nice to combine the power of Squeak with this virtual
>> Z-machine?
> 
> Yes it would! Any volunteers to do the port? Should be "pretty easy" .....
> 
> P.S. My friend Douglas Adams did perhaps the tour de force Infocom
> game. It would be nice to bring this back to life in his memory.

This is related to an area of special interest to me: digiTALES. A digital
text adventure learning experience, or digiTALE for short, is a form of
interactive fiction in the spirit of the old Infocom text adventures (e.g.,
Zork, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy). It differs in two significant
regards:

1) The puzzles are based on a unit of study in the extended science
curriculum (e.g., including geography and health just as much as biology or
physics). Students must apply principles of science to situations to achieve
a goal and move further along in the adventure.

2) The text adventures can be played inside a web browser or on their own.

I have an HTML/JavaScript sample in action maze format if anybody is
interested. 

Picture a school web page that contains background information about
electrical circuits, spatial volume, or some other unit of study. At the
bottom of the page would be a digiTALE to reinforce concepts. Right now,
however, it seems that the only way to play a text adventure within a
browser is via ZPlet. (Examples: http://games.igateway.net/adventure/.)
 
ZPlet is a Java interpreter allowing games created with Inform to be played
in a web browser (see http://www.pond.com/~russotto/zplet/ifol.html).
Unfortunately, that means writing interactive fiction with Inform, which is
pretty intimidating (see http://www.gnelson.demon.co.uk/inform/DM4.pdf).
Moreover, the result is a Java-based text adventure with mixed and many
limitations (e.g., slow, no save/restore). ZPlet adds its own limitations
(e.g., font, color scheme), but Matt Russotto has opened the ZPlet source
code in hopes of improvements
(http://www.uwec.edu/jerzdg/orr/articles/IF/Zplet.htm).

The Cloak of Darkness site (http://homepages.tesco.net/~roger.firth/cloak/)
is a good place to compare the various text adventure languages. Inform is
the most powerful, but not very friendly. ALAN is the most friendly, but not
very visual. Adrift is easy and visual, but Windows only. A digiTALE
implemented in Squeak might be a better way of going about browser-based
text adventures. 

--

R. Kenyon

|T|h|i|n|k|L|i|n|k: http://www.riverwoodpub.com/educatio.htm
Not everything is black & white: some things have to be read.