Android Interpreters: State of the Art in 2013?

I promise, I meant mercenary :slight_smile: In this context ā€¦ ā€œmercenaryā€ describes an attitude rather than a profession. Itā€™s decidedly non-formal ā€¦ it just means the kind of person whoā€™ll try to exploit any situation for monetary gain (used for contrast: the context usually presumes that most folk would be charitable under the circumstances described). Often, it carries faint connotations of pragmatism or cynicism.

Calling a person ā€œmercantileā€ would pretty much always be a literal description of the way they make their living. It isnā€™t used (at least in my experience) to describe a personality.

Hope that helps?

Yes!

Just to finish my part in this thread, I have capitulated and bought an iPod Touch. It is the best thing I could have done, and after a chat with the maintainer of iFrotz Iā€™m reporting every issue I can find to make it even better.

My only regret is that, in buying the gadget, I am supporting Apple and its policies, some of which I abhor - especially the one that goes ā€œwe control every aspect of everything that goes into our products, and you, the user, who has shelled out money for us and now have ownership of said gadget, have zero say in the matterā€.

Good choice. You can also avail yourself of these: textadventures.co.uk/apps/ - should be a couple more coming in the next few weeks.

Oh, I take it you didnā€™t get my PM? I basically suggested that instead of the stand-alone apps, you made Quest itself an interpreter-app like Frotz. :slight_smile:

I didnā€™t spot the PM until you prompted me to look! I usually get an email notification.

I agree it would be nice for there to be a Quest interpreter app, but thatā€™s unlikely to happen soon, for a number of reasons.

First is the question of how this would be done technically. I could re-write two Quest interpreters in Obj-C (one for Quest 1-4, one for Quest 5). Or I could shell out for a copy of MonoTouch and hope to convert the existing C# code. This would probably not be straightforward, as Quest 5 depends on FLEE to compile and run expressions, and I donā€™t think this works under MonoTouch due to restrictions on emitting code at run-time.

Secondly, there is the App Store restriction that disallows apps from downloading code. I think Frotz gets around this by including a lot of games with it, and perhaps you can use iTunes to transfer Z-code files across? Either way, not a great user experience.

I think the ā€œone game at a timeā€ approach works reasonably well. It means that each game can be individually converted and submitted as an app, which means when you go to the App Store you know youā€™re getting a game that has been tested to work well on a mobile device. You only need to download the games you want, and you donā€™t need to worry about transferring game files.

Correct.

Not with itunes, but you can put Frotz into a ā€œserverā€ mode and then upload files from another machine on the same network.

Itā€™s certainly not ideal, but it allows people to play games and a bunch of the Inform canon is pre-installed. So it works well. Naturally I think that single-game apps are an excellent supplement to this strategy. :slight_smile:

Much more convenient is the fact that iOS Frotz can open up z and glulx files from pretty much any other app, including Safari, Chrome, and DropBox.

ā€“Erik

It can? Good. Iā€™ve just barely tried using dropbox on my devices.

Hey, look at that.

Anyhow. This is a tangent to the Android question, which doesnā€™t have the download restriction in the first place.

Including the file manager app I use, which is brilliant. :smiley: Itā€™s also a way to get around Appleā€™s silly restrictions. If Quest - or indeed, any app - could do this, the whole problem would be solved. I just have my entire ZCode/Glulx collection in folders in my iPod, use FileApp to browse, and open the filed in iFrotz, which then conveniently adds them to its internal playlist. It is a DREAM of a setup, and I heartily reccomend it to any designer.

I am curious, however, as to why a separate Quest 4 interpreter would be necessary, if Quest 5 (on Windows at least) also plays Quest 4 games.

That is true, and it means only the best games - or the ones that are worth it - will see light of day as an app. But thatā€™s about the only advantage I see over a system that will automatically play a Quest game created by others (or me!) on a mobile environment without the hassle of contacting you. Especially if I then update my game - how much easier it is to just run it, as opposed to having you APP-ify it again?

Because Quest 5 has two interpreters - one is called LegacyASL and handles games written for Quest 1-4, and the other is called WorldModel and handles games written for Quest 5. So all Iā€™m saying is that to write a Quest interpreter for iOS would require writing two lots of code (presuming one wanted it to handle all games) as there are really two different systems to handle.

This may become more streamlined - I can imagine a self-service option, which would convert games and maybe send the result to Phonegap Build, then send you the finished app. This is probably less work for me than creating a new intepreter app - Phonegap Build has an API, so all it requires will be a bit more testing of the Quest-to-JS converter (usually something breaks and I have to fix the converter, which is why this isnā€™t automated yet).

This little sentence has been bothering me since it was written, and I can now refute: I certainly can get places in Counterfeit Monkey, the game Iā€™m playing right now, in five-minute segments (combined with longer segments, naturally). I can now speak from experience. Iā€™m in early stages still, I know, but I have no difficulty turning the necessary concentration on/off when I play the game. Plus, I actually solved a puzzle while I wasnā€™t playing the game, which has always been one of the most exciting features of adventure games, textual and graphical.