Other dev systems?

I wonder if we can have a third pinned thread with other, lesser-known development systems? I’m thinking specifically of adventurecow (which is twine-based) and ramus. I’m sure there are relatively unknown dev systems, too.

Conrad.

Not a bad idea; why not start a list with links in the OP?

Ok. Since it’s not time critical, I’ll put together a reasonable first post. – Besides ChoiceScript, Ren’Py and the two already mentioned, what others should be included?

Conrad.

Why would a pinned thread be useful? Isn’t this whole sub-forum about other development systems? Or do you mean one pinned thread for EACH system? That would make more sense, I think, than one pinned thread for ALL other systems … but again, what would be the real advantage? If someone wants to ask a question about some aspect of Ren’Py, why should they be expected to dump it into a single pinned thread with all of the other Ren’Py questions?

Or am I just misunderstanding what you have in mind???

If someone is looking around for systems to try, they can just look at one post rather than searching the whole sub-forum, forum, or Google.

Yeah, we’re just talking about a Yellow Pages thread, Jim.

C.

It’s not hard to search the entire Other Development Systems sub-forum for keywords. The search engine in the forum is set up to do precisely that.

Let’s suppose someone wants to search for info on ChoiceScript, for instance. And let’s suppose there is discussion in this sub-forum of a DOZEN different topics having to do with the details of ChoiceScript authoring. Why would it be an advantage to have those dozen topics all mushed together in one long thread, rather than having them neatly divided into individual threads by topic?

But this entire sub-forum IS the Yellow Pages for the systems you’re talking about. I still don’t understand exactly what you have in mind, or what advantage you’re alleging it would have. Sorry.

Say a person, like me, wants to experiment with various dev systems and desires to know what, besides the populars, are available. Is there something set up for that?

If, for example, ChoiceScript was a good solution for the kind of game I wanted to write, but I didn’t know it existed.

C.

Pinned topics have quite a tradition in forums. They help newcomers who aren’t sure what is what yet.

Sounds to me like the very raison d’etre of the Cloak of Darkness project.

Twine itself also, plus perhaps Undum? Or is it dangerous to be so forthrightly including CYOA-authoring software among IF engines?

If all you’re talking about is a pinned list of other systems, and perhaps discussions of their pros and cons, that makes perfect sense to me. I didn’t get that from your initial post, but possibly I was reading too quickly. [Edit: No, I wasn’t reading too quickly. I just checked – you definitely didn’t say that.]

I thought you were talking about piling all of the how-to discussion of all of the other systems into a single thread.

Actually, that’s exactly what I thought Conrad meant in his OP since he refers to “a third pinned thread” and the first two are merely locked, pinned threads with links to the Quest and ADRIFT forums. (Although you’re right – he doesn’t actually say that.) Also, in the second post of this thread:

For the record, I agree that having a pinned thread with links to info on the other dev systems is a good idea. I’m not sure about opening it up to a discussion of pros and cons; that would obviously be fine for a separate, unpinned thread though.

There’s NScripter (Visual Novel) and variants. Less powerful than Ren’py, but has produced games like Narcissu, Tsukihime, Higurashi, and Umineko.

I think that the IF wiki is probably a better source for general information than a pinned thread. ifwiki.org/index.php/Category:Authoring_system

Though it might be nice to have a pinned thread linking to that page.

Dan,

I agree in theory, but in practical terms that page isn’t well-organized for someone who has a project idea to figure out what dev system to learn.

Conrad.

I agree that the Cloak of Darkness project is intended to answer this sort of question, though 1) it doesn’t cover the lesser-known or newer systems, and 2) it doesn’t (and may not intend to) cover systems further away from parser IF. It seems to me that Conrad is trying to compile a list to point people at when they come to the forum and ask “so, I want to do [such and such]; what’s the right system for me?” Such a list should include hypertext/CYOA/visual novel engines and such, since a lot of those visitors are actually looking for those, and haven’t necessarily thought out the distinctions in advance. I’d love to see a list that includes: name of system, brief synopsis of capabilities, a link to the main development site, a link to the Cloak of Darkness implementation where applicable, links to support sites, and links to some completed games.

I could easily be convinced to host such a list, if this thread generates suggestions (and especially if the suggestions are in the above format). Now I’m even daydreaming about doing it as blog posts, with tagged categories for things like “can publish to web,” “has an IDE,” “has a visual editor,” and such.

…and I’ve started a new thread about this: Help me make a "What system should I use?" resource

Thanks, Tove! I was nervous I’d somehow volunteered to do that – bad thing, since I don’t know enough.

Conrad.