Interactive fiction in Python ?
I’ve just been researching Interactive Fiction (aka text adventure) systems written in Python. I’ve always wanted to make an interactive fiction, but never quite got around to it. I even started learning the Inform language a few years back, which can be compiled to run on the Infocom Z-machine interpreters (like Frotz, among many others). Of course, I’d rather write it in Python since there’s more chance I could add some custom features to the game.
As tempting as is it to reinvent the wheel and write my own IF interpretor in Python, I figured it was likely that others had already done this grunt work for me. After a bit of Googling, so far Python Universe Builder (PUB) looks like the best option. Hopefully this will save me from the grue.
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April 14th, 2008 at 1:34 pm
Actually after writing this, I’ve started playing with Inform again. Inform 7 seems pretty slick … it now comes with it’s own clean and simple IDE, including great online documentation. I’m going to give Inform a “red hot go” before fiddling with other IF systems at the moment.
September 23rd, 2008 at 10:08 pm
I actually think that PAWS (http://home.fuse.net/wolfonenet/PAWS.htm) is much better written, if you choose to go with a Python system.
I always found with both Inform and TADS that things went fine until I wanted to really do something complicated, at which point, I was out of luck, but maybe that’s just me.
September 28th, 2008 at 3:10 am
I took a quick look at the PAWS documentation … it certainly does look well documented, and being written in Python means it shouldn’t be too tough to integrate a PAWS interactive fiction game as a component of some other larger graphical Pygame creation. The downside is that it appears much more verbose when compared with Inform to do simple things … but I get your point … doing very tricky things in Inform would turn out really painful, if not impossible. I think I’ll check it out PAWS properly before embarking on any serious IF project. Cheers !