> I've been looking into interactive fiction lately, and I think there's
> a lot to be learned from that.  There's a few mature developement
> environments that exist for IF, and there's a lot of similarities
> between IF and Rogue-ish games.  I've only started learning Inform
> (and I haven't looked at TADS or ALAN), but it's definately based
> heavily on a prototype-like system (nearly every object in IF is
> unique, so inheretence isn't a large concept).  The more
> simulation-based Rogue-like games would certainly include greater
> numbers of similar objects, and would demand a better formed class
> hiarchy, but the prototype model would still probably be central.

In the Roguelike games I've seen (Nethack, Diablo, Angband), there are
very few unique objects, at least not enough to warrant using a
prototype-based system over a class-based system[1].  The general idea
behind IF is puzzle solving, while in a Roguelike, the general idea is
to make your character strong enough to finish the main quest.  Thus,
IF players spend most of their time trying to get past the current
situation, while Roguelike players are busy killing things, eating
them and taking their stuff.

The Roguelike model lends itself quite nicely to a class heirarchy.  I
suspect that the IF development environments are distantly derived
from MUDs and MUSHes, where simplicity and easy object creation are
vital and there are also lots of uniques.

> I agree that some syntactic sugar is necessary if Squeak is to be
> used.  I don't know if it's really necessary to make it too C-like,
> though, except perhaps for political reasons.  Some of the sugar in
> Python is nice, though.

Perhaps ORCS would benefit from just using Python, Lua or Tcl with all
of the major libraries written in C.  Smalltalk doesn't come across as
a scripting language to me.

BTW, since the topic's come up, I should mention that I'm currently in
the process of writing a Roguelike game in Squeak.  I'll post more
details when I have something that actually _does_ something.



				--Chris

[1] Not that I'm opposed to using a Prototype-based language if there
are other good reasons for it.