[I6] Why not a Verb-Noun only Inform 6 library?

Let’s choose a language that neither you nor I speak, and let’s practice the Socratic Dialogue.

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Then go ahead and do it. I’m not stopping you. You can write pretty good games. Think of this as an extra challenge to prove that it can be done.

You are quite right. Inform 6 is a very powerful language, but the syntax is a bit unconventional for those of us that were brought up with more traditional languages such as C or Java. Inform 6 has a very steep learning curve. The basics are pretty easy to pick up. It’s the Inform 6 library that is complex. You have to be prepared to devote a lot of time trying to make sense of it. (Mind you, if you’re a programmer, it’s a hell of a lot easier than Inform 7. I’ll be buggered if I can get my head around that animal.)

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http://www.plover.net/~pscion/inform7.html

Programming is my day job, and I prefer I7 over I6. :slight_smile: It’s easier to customise just about everything, and for the few exceptions, I can put some I6 code in an extension. (Having said that, I tend to enjoy messing with the language more than the actual creative side, which is probably why I’ve released more extensions than stories.)

Inform 6 is brilliant. Inform 7 is for brilliant people.

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Adventuron is brilliant, and is for brilliant people.

Isn’t it a problem for you that some interpreters display, after a cls(), the text at the top of the window and others at the bottom? Especially in ‘redescription mode = auto_beta’, if after each update of the display, the text is always at the bottom of the window, it’s a bit annoying (Frotz displays the text at the top of the window for .z5 and at the bottom for .z3).

I’ve never cared particularly about the difference.

Scrolling up from the bottom is the more “traditional” effect, mimicking a teletype.

If the page is updated after each get/drop action, in order to refresh the description, you are constantly at the bottom of the page, which is not very intuitive, nor very pleasant, compared to the reading sense of western culture.
But let’s forget about it.

OT

This post triggered a memory. In the early 70s while working my way through UNF, I was a Tech Rep for Xerox. One of my accounts was Western Union on the west side of downtown Jacksonville. It was a brick building with a yellow “Western Union” sign across the facade. I remember that all of the windows had bars in them. I guess it was a secure communications resource. In the main room, there were 50+ teletype machines, all running at the same time. The Xerox machines were installed in several locations around that room. I had to wear ear plugs and couldn’t hear my self think. I had to get the repair problem for whichever Xerox machine was broken from a secretary in a rear insulated room. In the back parking lot, they had a system of vehicles (including bicycles) to deliver the telegrams.

Back in those days, Xerox machines were console size and cost a fortune. In general companies only leased them from Xerox. One of the small machines I worked on, the 4000, was the first hybrid mechanical/electronic. It cost $45000.00 to purchase in 1970 dollars.

Telegrams were the email of the day and you paid by the word to send a message…

Sorry for the diversion.

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