I’m looking into how IF libraries work and the trade-offs involved. Does anyone have some examples of effects which are either difficult to produce (or have many gotchas) when working with Inform or TADS?
That’s a very broad question, but one place to start might be the past RAIF topics collected at the IFWIki. There is a section specific to IF libraries but I’d say all of it is worth skimming.
I guess when people say IF libraries they’re usually asking about rules for physical simulation, but it seems to me that the question should be much broader than that – encompassing all the effects of presentation and content that you might want to deal with. Just look at the range of I7 extensions for an example of what people naturally come up with when presented with a (in comparison to TADS, say) ‘lightweight’ IF framework such as Inform 7.
Many thanks. The “Tricky objects” section in the RAIF page looks almost exactly like what I’m looking for.
Conversations between three characters are something I’ve found tricky in TADS 3. It may be simpler than I think, but until recently I’ve just avoided it altogether.