IFDB and Inform 5

General
1

Is there a historical reason why almost every Inform 5 game is listed as Inform 6 on IFDB? A search for all Inform 5 games returns exactly two results, and that is… definitely not true.

2

My guess would be, there used to be only a plain “Inform” tag, used for all versions of Inform. Then I7 came out and was totally different from I6, so the tag was split into “Inform 6” and “Inform 7”. Later, people who made Inform 5 games added an “Inform 5” tag for symmetry. But nobody’s bothered to go back and recategorize all the games that used to be in the plain “Inform” tag.

1 Like
3

Looking at the IF Wiki, IFDB simply doesn’t have most of Inform 5 games.

And some of these can turn out to be Inform 6, like Lists and Lists. So here’s what I think is the list of suspects:

  • Cheater
  • Delusions
  • Fear
  • In the End
  • Lists and Lists
  • Pick Up The Phone Booth And Die
  • Piece of Mind
  • Punkirita Quest One: Liquid
  • Reverberations
  • Rippled Flesh
  • Stargazer: Prologue
  • Vindaloo
  • Wearing the Claw
  • The Wedding

And IFWiki doesn’t have «SPIRITWRAK».

4

I went and added the ones from the first IFComp, except for the MST3K of Detective, whose last release used Inform 6.

EDIT: I added the others I could find from 1995.

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5

All versions of Curses appear to be I5 unless I’m missing something. Similarly Inhumane, Gumshoe, probably some others.

Question about the practice of only listing Inform 6 for Detective. I notice that another game I thought might be a candidate lists multiple systems:

Development System: AdvSys, Inform 6

I take it that’s not considered good practice because it ends up calling that a single system in the “Show all authoring systems used in game listings” list?

6

OK, the search returns 29 results now. If there are others, I don’t know about them.

EDIT: Oh, Inhumane makes 30.

2 Likes
7

I just registered but am not approved to edit, so:

Heist
Enemies
Friday Afternoon
Busted! (it’s I5, not I6 as listed, and raises the question of “how should games with multiple systems like this actually be categorized?” again)

8

I’ve done those, but you raise a great question.

9

So Far (!)
Z-Life
Slacker X

1 Like
10

The adamsinform converted games are also I5. Some Scott Adams games are listed as “Custom.” At least one, Buckaroo Banzai, is listed as Inform 6. Downloads for various and sundry formats and platforms are on each game page so there’s not an obvious answer here.