Authoring systems which can only create parser, or choice, or hybrid games

General IF Community Resources
41

But this isn’t about re-classifying any development systems under JavaScript, and not about classifying anything using this system on an ongoing basis, unless I’m severely misreading.

I’m pretty sure Jonathan’s only question here is whether the currently existing 312 TADS 2 and 89 TADS 3 games on IFWiki are likely enough to be parser games that their pages can be one-time bulk tagged as such, and any exceptions fixed up later, to save the labor of checking each one.

And similarly for other development systems.

Though 89 TADS 3 games seems like a small enough number that probably a few of us could go through and hand check them, if it’s that important. Edit: I could probably check all of them myself in a reasonable timeframe, if it comes down to that…

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42

Unfortunately I’m not knowledgeable there.

with emphasis on:

Yes, I would feel comfortable putting money down on the assumption that these are all parser games, on September 2nd, 2025.

In that case, I have severely misread everything. I apologize to @Jonathan. I genuinely thought we were reclassifying whole development systems here.

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43

I mean, that is what the thread title says :face_with_tongue:

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44

That’s perfectly all right. I’ve been quite unclear at times in this topic, and have changed the goalposts with the “Probably Parser” idea.

This sort of thing would be perfect. The “Probably Parser” field value would help you keep track of progress until it has been whittled down to zero.

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45

Thank you again to everybody who has commented and edited the wiki post above. I’ve gone through and filled in the gaps for every authoring system with 3 games or more (with one exception). I followed the law of diminishing returns in relation to the others.

I ended up with these lists. They are probably not accurate in general, but I believe they’re accurate in relation to the games currently on IFWiki.

Parser: ZIL, The Quill, AAS, PAW, Scott Adams database, JACL, Graphic Adventure Creator, T.A.G., Robico Engine, AdvSys, Magnetic Scrolls, Assembly language, Eamon, PunyInform, A-code (Level 9), Adventuron

Probably Parser: Inform 7, Inform 6, ADRIFT 4, TADS 2, ADRIFT 3.9, TADS 3, ADRIFT 5, Hugo, AGT, Inform 5, Alan 2.8, Inform, Alan 3, InformATE, ADRIFT 3.8, ADRIFT, Alan, TADS, Alan 2.5

Choice: Twine, ChoiceScript, Undum, Ink, inklewriter, Ren’Py, Adventure Book, Adventure Book for Inform 7, Squiffy, Qiaobooks, StoryNexus, Seltani, Varytale, Moiki

Hybrid: Texture, Versificator, Gruescript

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46

You can create choice games very easily for 8-bit machines using “parser”-based systems like the Quill, PAW, etc. I’m fairly sure there were some back in the day; both choice and hybrid. Here’s one in the Quill that was unofficially adapted from a choice-based game written in BASIC - :: CASA :: Amazing Adventure and here’s a choice game written in GAC - :: CASA :: Isle of Death

I see Adventuron is on your “parser” list. Iirc, it does also have a specific choice-based mode.

It’s really easy to use any parser-based system to make choice-based or hybrid games. N, S, E, W can be 1. 2. 3. 4.

(Not been on the forums much recently so I need to put aside some time to scroll up and work out what this thread is actually about)

(Edit: After checking the purpose of the thread… you could probably safely generalise any PAW, Quill, GAC and DAAD games as “parser” yes, if the intention is then to manually fix any outliers.)

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47

By that logic, nine years ago I wrote an article demonstrating it’s easy and natural to make gamebooks in Alan 3, but never got around to trying with a demo, let alone a complete game. Does it even count then?

48

Thank you both. This is all useful information.

I chose “Parser” for the 8-bit authoring systems because there were few enough games listed on the wiki for me to check them individually, and those were all parser. I chose “Probably Parser” for Alan because it would have taken longer to check and I didn’t have time for perfection!

The purpose of the topic is just to help us make a one-off decision on classification of some games on IFWiki which can’t be classified using existing wiki templates or IFDB tags. We can manually fix “Probably Parser” ones later.

The new numbers, thanks to everybody’s help here, are now:

Parser (957) · Probably Parser (1987) · Choice (529) · Parser-choice hybrid (17) · Other (6) · Unknown (288)

49

I would classify ZIL the same as Inform6, ie Probably Parser.

SD Separa have converted quite a few CYOA books using ZIL - Search for Games

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50

In general, yes, but all the ZIL games on IFWiki are Parser, so for our purposes it’s “Parser”.

It might be the same for Inform 6 but I’m not going to check them all today, so it’s “Probably Parser” :slight_smile:

I should probably clarify the first post, as I began by asking one question but really I needed answers to other questions.

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51

Thanks again to everybody who has helped :slight_smile:

I’ve added a summary of the topic to the first post.

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