So I was thinking about two games, both made by the same author, but one’s the first and the other is a sequel, and what if you had the player be able to transfer their game file from one game to the other? Like, all the items and such that the character is carrying within the game be able to transfer along with their save file to the next game? Has this already been done?
I can’t think of any off the top of my head that do it, but it’s definitely possible with Inform 7 and Glulx. It’s talked about in the documentation in chapter 22.10-22.13.
You can read and write data files with Inform, but I think Glulx is required, and I’m not sure if it would work in Parchment. But the data files are your own data, not savegames. You’d need to specify all the necessary state information yourself.
I think this question has come up in the forums before. Maybe try searching for it.
But if all you want is to keep track of items, what about just giving the player a code at the end of the first game and having them type in that code at the beginning of the second game? Assuming the set of items is fixed and not random, you could accomplish what you want without having to worry about files.
-Kevin
Another option is to ask a series of questions from the player at the start of the second part, like “Did you find the gold treasure?” and “Were you carrying the stuffed squirrel?” I seem to recall the Earth & Sky series did this.
You could even implement this idea with random items if you wanted to, but it would be a lot more work, and a lot more codes involved, lol. Maybe you could have a certain length digit…and a number of items…
like say 9 helms, 9 armours, 9 swords, 9 rings…what ever…
if you have sword 1 the first digit is 1
if you have helm 4 the second digit is 4
ring 6 third digit is 6
thus your code is 146…
lol.
I was thinking of doing a code like Jackson suggested; my idea would just be to give every item a unique number and assemble the code by just repeating through inventory and sticking them all together, with or without a separating character. Then you break the string up at the separating characters and add each item back into inventory. This would allow you to have any number of items as long as they’re numbered.
Suggestion: You could use something like Base64 encoding to keep the string shorter. You could just do it “manually” - assign fix-length strings instead of numbers to your “flags” - it doesn’t have to be just objects, it could be other types of choices too. (Did the player damage his knee? Append “xh1” to the string, etc.)
Or here’s another wacky idea: to make up a list of generic codes like that and allow you to transfer characters between games in general!
Such as
pgm: player gender is male
pgf: player gender is female
wr0 - wr9: (player has a) weapon, ranged (wr0 is a rock, wr9 is the “BFG”)
wc0 - wc9: (player has a) weapon, cutting (0 is something reasonably sharp, 9 is some arcane super-sword).
rr0 : romantic relationship: the player has fallen for contestant #0.
ls0: the player has a light source (torch, flashlight, etc)
etc - I’m obviously just winging this.
Then every game would be responsible for importing a character (Jules:pgmwr3rr0) and interpreting the codes as applicable in that particular game (No fighting? Just ignore the weapons).
And when the game ends, export the code: (“To continue the game in another IF Transport-enabled game: enter this code at the beginning of play: ‘Jules:pgmwr3rr0’”.)
hey thanks for the advice guys 
I’ll look throughout the forums and see what I can dig up.
frudster: That could be a totally fun idea for a minicomp. There could be an extension that handles the input and output strings and everyone has to write a compatible game.
Exquisite Corpse: the IF Comp.
Do people like this idea? Because I could try whipping up an extension to handle it if there’s some interest. I think it would be fun.