I’m playing around with a minimal IF creation language (something small enough to run on resource-constrained hardware). Now, obviously I could start with either advent.inf or advent.zil, but they’re relatively complex examples.
I could also start with some other random IF example in the IFDB (or maybe one of the old inform sample adventures) but it sort of got me thinking… are there any high level descriptions of some non-trivial (but not massive) parser-centric interactive fiction around anywhere?
I imagine it would be a document laying out the map and initial object placement and a description of the puzzles involve (“You need the shovel to dig your way out of the cave but the ogre covets the shovel so you’ll need to talk to him to figure out what he wants in return, which of course will have its own steps to recover…”)
The “Cloak of Darkness” spec was invented for this purpose. (For parser IF games, that is. It’s been used for choice-based systems but that’s less informative, because the spec is basically about how the system lets you customize a world model.)
The description is down at the bottom. It’s very small (three rooms, one object, some scenery). You asked for “non-trivial”, and CoD is pretty trivial. But it lets you compare your approach with that of Inform, TADS, and various other languages.
There’s also the more detailed Craverly Heights, which, while not designed for this purpose, was translated from the original Inform 7 into a bunch of other languages anyway.