I have a Twine game (formatted in Harlowe) in the works and I would like to convert it to an Inform format so that I can compile it to Z-machine format or Glulx (either one works): I can’t figure out if there exists a way of doing this automatically? I am familiar with programming, so any apprehension about installing binaries or libraries is not an issue.
I have tried Googling this in a few different permutations but I guess I’m not using the correct keywords. Any help at all would be appreciated.
Background
I’m basically hoping to use Jericho and/or Textworld to automatically explore parts of the Twine game that I’ve generated. Both of those require either a Glulx game or a Z-machine game to work.
While I could restart and create the games in Inform, I find the process of editing and creating through Twine much easier. So if there is a way to get from Twine -> Inform -> Glulx / Z-machine, I’d love to hear about it. Thanks!
It’s possible to write choice-based, hyperlink-style games in I7. You can use Unified Glulx Input. I think there are other, higher-level choice-based I7 extensions as well, but I don’t know all the extensions out there.
Once you have your I7 game framework set up, you “just” need to convert all the Twine linked passages into I7 declarations. If your Twine game is built with tweego, this might be fairly simple – I think it would be the kind of thing that could be done with a Perl/Python script.
(Tweego is a compiler-style Twine tool; it takes a text source file and generates Twine output.)
I’m particularly fond of Hybrid Choices by AW Freyr - you can alternate between parser and choice mode, or do the game entirely with choices if you prefer. I used it in Fair and Steph Cherrywell has used it in several I7 games, including this year’s Zozzled.