Thanks for this! I admit I’m a bit intimidated by the ADRIFT games, after all these years. I should not be. So implementation stuff that may seem small to pros is easy to me. I was wondering if we should have a general technical help thread if people were confused.
Incidentally, I’ve been through all the Freestyle parser games, and all of them seem intuitive to type commands in, when you need to.
If you often find Adrift games too long, I can tell you that “Bug Hunt on Menelaus” is a lot shorter.
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We could make a separate thread if anyone is interested. However, I guess the most important topics of Adrift are:
1. Font size
At least on Windows (both Frankendrift and Adrift Runner) you can adjust the font size by holding down CTRL and turning the mouse wheel.
2. Windows:
. . Use the NEWEST version of Adrift Runner OR use Frankendrift
. . Mac and Linux: Use Frankendrift
. . Android: Fabularium plays many games well but is not based on Adrift source code so compatibility issues exist.
. .Play online: Very clunky compared to downloading an interpreter but possible. From feedback it seems that the official WebRunner on the Adrift site runs faster when accessing it from Europe. Also, it helps to refresh the browser sometimes.
3. False positives:
some anti-virus programs tend to think (incorrectly) there are a virus in the Adrift software (both Runner and Developer). We sometimes send the file to a big anti-virus vendor and it might help for some time but then it becomes a problem again. You might have to allow a certain “threat” temporarily or in a specific folder etc to get it running. In addition, some browsers have introduced “reputation based” warnings so the program simply has to be well known in order to download it. This can be fixed in the browser settings too.
4. Parser quality
When used correctly, Adrift 5 has a pretty good parser. However, as Adrift is often used by people with little programming experience, they may sometimes underestimate the importance of following the recommended approach and so they do what they find easiest instead, which will often reduce the quality of the parser in that game. NB: You can’t put multiple commands in one line so that is a limitation of Adrift 5. However, you can quickly create a macro (a list of commands) if you want to carry out many commands at once.
5. Untraditional verbs
This is simply the choice of the author. Of course, if someone regards the standard verb set of Inform as the one and only correct verb set, they will be disappointed. But it is definitely possible to implement it. But the best games should make it obvious what is not necessary, e.g. if the player needs to search everything in addition to examining everything.
6. Old school?
It just happens that many Adrift authors have been used to many old school elements, such as the need to examine stuff to find objects. Some also require the verb SEARCH and in e.g. Larry Horsfield’s games you often need to LOOK UNDER or even BEHIND to find important stuff. But this is not always the case with all Adrift games. You can practically have any verbs you like, it all depends on the author.
I don’t know if this is specific to Adrift, but I notice a lot of verb responses of “I don’t know what you want to do with .” Noticed it testing Larry Horsfield’s game.
(I didn’t need to put that in spoilers…)
Yeah, but the height of the text entry bar doesn’t change, so if you turn up the font size much it’ll cut off part of the text for the commands that you’re entering. That’s my second-biggest annoyance with Adrift games, the biggest (by far) being that because the text-entry bar is separate you can’t use PageUp/PageDown to scroll the transcript (and I haven’t found any keys that do it?) so I’m reaching for the mouse constantly. And then if you accidentally click, it takes the focus away from the command entry bar and you have to click back. Oh, and also the Adrift Runner blocks the ability to select and copy text which really sucks. Frankendrift fixes that last one, but its text size settings are kinda broken, so I mostly just live with the Adrift runner.
The interpreters being irritating to use is the main reason I often avoid Adrift games: otherwise I’ve found them about the same as any other authoring system…
I think that comes about when you enter a verb that doesn’t have a response programed into Adrift. It understands a fair few commands, but there are always a decent amount that aren’t included. Fortunately they can always be added later on.
The big difference between Adrift/Quest/Adventuron and Inform/TADS/Dialog is that the first group focuses on individual interactions between verbs and nouns while the second group focuses on systematic interactions between verbs and nouns.
So in the first group, including Adrift, if we think of ‘verbs’ as the vertical axis and ‘nouns’ as the horizontal axis, then the code would look like this:
So this means that the author might program ‘eat chicken’ which works in one room, but typing ‘eat rock’ might not have a response and ‘cook chicken’ might not have a response, even if ‘cook’ works for other things.
The second group of authoring languages is designed systematically, so if you create a verb, you get a response for every noun, and if you have a noun, it gets responses to all verbs:
It’s still hard to program, because many of those responses are wrong (like ‘That is clearly inedible’ for a banana), and have to be changed individually.
So a bad Adrift programmer will end up with a lot of responses that the parser doesn’t understand at all, while a bad Inform programmer will end up with a lot of responses that the parser recognizes but gives the wrong message for.
Adrift/Quest/Adventuron are all capable of programming whole systems of things, it’s just not the ‘default’. And Inform/TADS/Quest are capable of doing single-item-single-verb interactions, but it’s also not the default.
Being able to copy text used to be possible in Adrift 4 but the feature was dropped in Adrift 5. I wish I knew why. Unfortunately with work on Adrift pretty much over, it’s probably never going to be included.
It will normally happen if you on a known object apply a verb the game does not understand in this context, e.g. if the game understand CRAWL %direction% (e.g. CRAWL EAST) but the player tries to CRAWL UNDER BUSH while CRAWL UNDER %object% is not implemented, then you can get such a message. If the game did not know “crawl” at all, it would tell you that it does not know “crawl”.
However, if the author does not always follows good practice, you can get these types of messages more often.
Definitely a limitation. A work around is to start a transcript, where all text will be copied to.
For Adrift 5, I disagree that it is not default to work on whole systems of things. The problem is often that new authors start working without reading anything at all and they guess what to do and makes something that works but not very well. Often, they end up accepting the limitations in their game and continue with that approach.
Instead they should read a tutorial, e.g. this one:
Tutorial link
To quote: " We need to create the general case for the plant verb. So we need to create a General task."
and subsequently:
" Now we need to create the special case of planting the bean. To do this, either click Task from the main toolbar, or even better, we can select the bean in the Objects list, right-click on it, then select Add Specific Task > plant a magic bean from the the menu."
Those that are capable of handling complex Inform games (in contrast to many simple ones) would probably find it easy to follow best practice but as Adrift seems to attract people with limited programming skills, they tend to deviate from best practice when creating new verbs etc.
In the Windows Adrift Runner, you can change the height of the text entry field by clicking and dragging the small grey separator bar above it.
Oh, huh. I could have sworn I tried that, thanks!
Ah, I see why I missed it. It’s super flickery for me. Mostly it switches the mouse cursor from the I-beam text cursor to the pointer arrow, and there only seems to be a single pixel line where it turns into the resize cursor so you can actually drag it. Tricky.
In the time of writing, Windows Security does not like the standalone Adrift Runner but if you download the file package with both Developer and Runner (“files only” not “full install”) then Windows Security does not seem to have a problem. That package contains several files but just unzip it and run the file run500.exe
.,.
EDIT: For simplicity, I put the “acceptable” file with only the Adrift Runner (v5.0.36.6) on Github here:
Github download link
.,.
You can download it here: Adrift downloads
The 3 downloads from the top are:
.1. ADRIFT 5.0 - Full Install (17.5Mb)
.2. ADRIFT 5.0 - Files only (11.4MB) - THIS ONE IS NOT REJECTED BY WINDOWS SECURITY
.3. ADRIFT 5.0 Runner - File only (5.03MB)
Hope it works for all of you too.
Dear Friends
Either I’m getting old (improbable), or there is a flaw in the space-time continuum (rather more likely), but time seems to have flown by at an alarming rate and, impossibly, there are now only 10 9 8 7
6 5 4 days left before ParserComp voting ends!
Having taken a sneak peek at the figures, I can see that we’ve had a respectable number of votes in already – huge appreciation to all those who have already taken the time to play and vote on the games – but we could certainly do with getting some more in before the time comes to prostrate ourselves before the awesome digital loom that is @fos1’s supercomputer (you wouldn’t believe the quantity of paper tape and punched cards involved) and humbly beseech it to calculate the winners of this year’s competition!
The fate of two solid gold-ish lamp trophies is in your hands, good players and voters of the IF-verse, so please do play and vote on any or all of this year’s fabulous collection of games - and they really are fabulous - before the deadline of Wednesday 2 August, to ensure that cosmic justice is satisfied and universal harmony is maintained (yes, it really is that big a deal).
With humble thanks and very best wishes
Fos1 & Christopher
Been working my way through them. Looking at the 7 days left, I should be able to finish them all before then, fwiw. Good luck with the supercomputer.
I think I will too!
Fair warning that Murder Most Foul is a big 'un – quite fun, but a big 'un.
Thanks for the heads-up! I hadn’t started that one yet!
Just 1 day (and a bit) before voting closes on ParserComp 2023!
The number of votes cast has leapt up in the past week or so, so thanks to everyone who has taken the time to play and vote on this year’s fantastic crop of entries.
For anyone else who has been so careless and self-absorbed over the past few weeks as to not put the entirety of their lives on hold to devote all their time to playing and rating ParserComp entries (it seems scarcely credible that such people exist, but perhaps if you’re reading this then you are one of them), now is your final chance to show these games some love and scatter your star ratings as fancy takes you.
See you all after the deadline!
Yeah, I noticed the voting jump too just now!
I should have 4 or 5 more coming within the next day. I have an alarm set so I can sort of think about my ratings and see if I missed anything.
A few more procrastinators like me and we can/should get to 10 votes per game. That’d be a good goal!
And we’re at 158. But I’m almost out.
Except … is Bug Hunt on Menelaus short enough to try to sneak in?