No, not yet. I was just meaning in general for the other IF Comp games. The Linux Runner should also run on the Mac under Mono, altho I haven’t been able to test this to see how well (if at all) this works.
At a later date I intend on looking at MonoTouch, as this may well make it possible to create native apps for iOS and Android. But I guess I have a few things to concentrate on first… 
I play on a Mac laptop – no phone/pad/pod/reader and no interest in one. I tend to play online if I can; otherwise I use Zoom for everything but ADRIFT, for which I use Spatterlight.
I guess my wishes are for Quixe to get faster so it’s a more practical option, and also for my computer/browser performance to improve so I don’t ever run into annoying delays. 
That’s not really something the community can do anything about. Also not to worry about messing around with different interpreters so much (for instance, I just tried to download an old ALAN game and it system errored in Spatterlight; Zoom doesn’t even acknowledge it).
[I’d also like the wider general indie gaming community to remember that Macs exist a little more often so I could play Knytt and Space Funeral and lots of other indie games, and for the Braid port for Macs to run on my computer. Does anyone have a sense as to whether I’ll have better luck if I switch to LINUX and run Wine?]
You will presumably have better luck, but it really depends on the game. Some work perfectly, some not at all. For instance, Knytt Stories seems to work well if you follow a short How-to.
If you have an NVidia graphics card, running games in Wine will be pretty much like running them on Windows. If it’s not NVidia, prepare for a lot of glitches and bugs.
I play them on my Windows. Here, let me show you my setup.
imageshack.us/photo/my-images/521/mysetup.png/
“Pending Games” is where I keep all uncathegorized games. “SimonSetup” is just a shortcut - I’m currently playing Simon the Sorcerer 3D. Normally, this is where I’d put shortcuts of any game I’m currently playing.
Cathegorizing means checking the game’s name and engine, sorting it accordingly, adding it to Grotesque and then playing.
“Tools and Interpreters” is where I’ve installed all my interpreters, plus some niceties such as Babel and the Eamon CD and iXu and Inform 7.
Usually I do it all alphabetically. But as regards ZCode, I’ve adopted a different system, because I’m playing those on my mobile phone via ZaxMidlet. After cathegorizing, I don’t play them - I add them to my mobile phone. I’ve got games there I’m still playing, but I give priority to the newest-cathegorized games.
If the game crashes with ZaxMidlet, I inform the maintainer and wait 'till I’m home to play it on my desktop.
You asked for it. 
EDIT - My dream machine would be able to play most IF. Surprisingly, Android may be the way to go - there seem to be emulators for Spectrum, Amiga, Commodore, even DOS. Not TADS or ALAN or HUGO or INFORM, but there are two WIPs for Inform and I know of at least 1 WIP for TADS. Anyway, if the Android could play Parchment and/or Quixe…
EDIT 2 - Oh, and incidently, here’s my preferred display.
imageshack.us/photo/my-images/82 … aypng.png/
Since it’s a WideScreen monitor, I often shorten the game to about 4:3 and use the remaining space for Trizbort. A dream setup.
How well does Android handle Parchment and Quixe? I guess it must depend a great deal on version and device, but what’s been people’s experience?
My impression is that it is more common now. All the Humble Bundles have been available for Mac, for example.
Sure, but it seems to me that windows-only is still the default, to the extent that a lot of games don’t even bother saying “Windows only.” I mean, I’m basically thinking of one-person-in-their-basement kind of games, so it’s not surprising that they don’t port it to the Mac if it takes any work, but I’m talking about “things I wish” here. (And as I intimated, Braid didn’t run on my Mac, and the eventual response I got from the Bundle organizers was basically a shrug. Penumbra: Whatever didn’t work for me either, though that may have to do with my graphics card, which is way below interpreters on the list of things I don’t want to have to worry about.)
(For the record, I agree with you. I’m optimistic about the future, though.)
1. What specific platform do you use to play IF – for example, Windows, iOS, Kindle, Android, Nintendo DS, and which phone, tablet, and laptop?
I have a slightly aging desktop gaming PC which runs Windows 7 and Ubuntu Linux. I mostly play IF on Ubuntu, but occasionally boot into Windows for a particularly troublesome game that just won’t run under Linux or Wine. I also have an Asus eeePC netbook running Ubuntu Netbook Edition and an HTC Desire Z smartphone running Android 2.3.
2. How do you rate your experience on those devices, and how would you like to see it improved if at all?
Playing IF on Linux is excellent and only getting better. The netbook is particularly good. It’s great for curling up in an easy chair with a game or playing IF in bed - it even doubles as a hot water bottle! My phone ought to be good for playing IF, with that lovely QWERTY keyboard, but to be honest, IF support on Android is really poor at the moment.
3. What kind of IF are you playing on a particular device? Only CYOA on Kindle? Big Inform games only on PC?
I’ll play anything on the desktop and netbook, although I prefer to play games with multimedia on the desktop. The netbook’s screen isn’t really large enough for fancy graphical IF, and the speakers are far too tinny for anything with sound. My phone is by necessity restricted to Z-code and Choice Of games, but I’d love to play more IF on it if the interpreters were in a more usable (or even existent) state.
4. What is missing from your platform of choice that you’d like to see?
Android needs interpreters. Glulx and TADS at least, and some improvements to the existing Z-code terps. (I know people are working on Twisty. Thanks, guys!) As for Linux… I guess it’d be nice to have an all-in-one interpreter with an integrated game browser, like Zoom or Spatterlight. A pony would also be lovely.
Parchment: Runs in the Android browser, but is too wide for my phone’s screen even in landscape orientation. The browser won’t let me zoom any further out, either.
Quixe: In the Android browser, it loads and looks good. I can enter commands and the game responds (slowly, of course, but what do you expect.) Unfortunately, it doesn’t pause when it prints more than a screenful of text, and I can’t find a way to scroll back up to see what I missed.
Given the mild complaint I made about Quixe upthread – which is anyway specific to my aging laptop and browser abuse – I should maybe mention that I played Patanoir through on Quixe with only occasional short delays. (Calm hung up at what I suspect was the random map generation phase; I suspect my Quixe issues are very game-dependent.)
I play most of my IF on my computer (that is, the same computer I do pretty much all of my computer-y tasks on), which is a MacBook Pro running OSX. I use whichever of Zoom or Spatterlight I happen to think of, and only switch to the other if there seems to be a compatibility issue with a non-zcode/glulx game. I never use Parchment/Quixe, though I do sometimes refer less IF-savvy friends to them. I don’t play full-screen, but I also don’t have an elaborate gameplaying setup, because I don’t play the kinds of games that are going to require me to take extensive notes or map; on the rare occasion that I am playing such a game, I’ll use pen and paper for that.
I also occasionally play IF on my OLPC XO, because the screen is perfect for sitting outside on a nice day and toying with some light IF. However, the only interpreter I have on it is a command-line zcode interpreter (without even support for blorb, if I recall correctly) that crashes sometimes, so that sort of limits the games I play on it.
OSX; Zoom plus Omnigraffle for mapping. Have had ugly crashes from Spatterlight but only minor crashes from Zoom. Pretty much an ideal setup, IMHO.
iOS with iPhone; Frotz. Main limitation is lack of TADS terp in Frotz; with TADS capability, Frotz would be excellent, not merely very good.
It’s too bad IF can’t find a way to “appify” itself. If titles could be packaged as $1 self-contained apps, I think that IF authors could probably make serious livings from the craft. But given the everything-is-free ecosystem as it’s currently evolved, this would appear to be an opportunity missed. It’s great short-term for players/readers, but long-term this starves the pipeline that lays the golden goose.
The commodification of art isn’t necessarily a good thing, you know.
If an IF revenue model somehow causes authors to produce hackneyed crap, you’re absolutely right.
If on the other hand it allows those with real talent to write as their primary job and produce works of sophistication and interest, then how is that not a good thing? Zarf appears to see the value in finding some sort of monetization for his IF. It’s too bad when someone of Emily Short’s stature has to attribute a lack of recent IF production to the intrusion of “real life.” Regular output from Zarf, Emily, and the many other luminaries because IF is their day job, not their hobby, could only be a huge advance for IF. IMHO.
Anyway, I didn’t mean to highjack this thread, though this sub-theme is relevant thus: if IF were packaged into easily and cheaply purchased apps running on the current crop of devices, I think IF would immediately and hugely expand its audience. And surely we’d all agree that would be a good thing.
I’m not sure that that would really make the difference in the commercial viability of the medium – if it did, somebody would undoubtedly have already done it.
Having said that, and commercialization issues aside, just as a matter of convenience I would love to see an easier way to package IF games as self-contained executable programs. There was some discussion of this a few weeks back; I believe the point was made that some systems do provide this capability.
Robert Rothman
I have also been distracted from the mobile/appifying problem by “real life”. Like Emily, my “real life” still consists of game-design work – just not IF specifically.
My plans for the winter involve getting at least Dreamhold out as a standalone iOS app. (Hadean Lands is unlikely to be done as quickly as the remaining interpreter technical work.)
I do interactive narrative design and writing for a living. Some of those projects are text-based, some aren’t, but I pretty much am doing what I want with my time, and being paid to do it, and that’s awesome.
The thing I was talking about was the conversation library, and it’s simply taken a back burner to other projects. That’s always a risk with hobbyist development, but then, even if I were making money from selling IF apps, it’s not clear to me that that would actually be an encouragement to finish and release the library. It’s in a state where it’s perfectly usable by me; the remaining work that needs to go into it is beta-testing, refinement and documentation to make it more accessible to other people. If this were a competitive money-making environment, I’d actually have a negative incentive to do that work.
If adding the line “Release as an Android app” worked in I7, I’d certainly do it because that’s one more outlet and outlets are nice … but it really wouldn’t change which games I charged for and which ones I didn’t, nor would it change my approach to design at all, or to my workday. I already make my living as a game designer in my home gaming turf (pen-and-paper RPGs) … IF will always be someplace I go 'cause I enjoy luxuriating in the process (even when “luxuriating” means “banging my head against the same coding challenge for weeks at a time”) and because it affords me greater freedom to be snide to the audience [not to be read aloud].
Honestly, I’d be much more excited to personally pay $20 for a rock-solid 'terp for Android than I would be to sell my own games as $1 apps. Much-much-muchly-much.
“Appification” is what I’m currently working on for Quest games: textadventures.co.uk/blog/20 … d-android/
