Based on what was written before, I ended up calling one page https://www.ifwiki.org/Cloak_of_Darkness_(Scott_Adams) and the authoring system “Scott Adams”. But I wonder whether that’s correct. It’s also annoying that it links to the person page rather than a software page. I could equally have called it the “Scott Adams system”, again based on the pre-existing text.
Elsewhere on the wiki games are listed as having the format “ScottFree” or having the authoring system “Scott Adams database” or “SAGA” (see this database query). “Scottkit: the Scott Adams Adventure Toolkit” is also mentioned on the Mike Taylor - IFWiki page.
Thanks. I’m still not sure what to do on IFWiki. Relevant to this topic, we’ve got fields for authoring system (e.g. Inform 7) and file format (e.g. Z-code, Glulx). We also have a field for system (e.g. Amstrad CPC, Windows).
What authoring system and/or file formats should the games listed in the database query above have, specifically the Cloak of Darkness port?
The authoring system is a bit tricky, because there have been a lot of different programs that produce SACA data files over the years, and people generally didn’t document which ones they used. Anything modern in this format was probably made with ScottKit, but back in their heyday there were several different (mostly unlicensed) programs to make these—possibly the most common type of IF authoring system in the microcomputer era!
But I think SACA for text and SAGA for graphics is a fine name for the file format.
When I wrote my unofficial specifications, I found there was no universally agreed name for this format.
Seems most people call it the “Scott Adams” format, which is not ideal.
In the specs I called it the “SAGA” format, it’s probably the second most common name for it, though not super common, but it was used by Scott Adams, and a later enhancement (with a better parser) was called “SAGA+”.
The term “SACA” is also out there, but is even less common than “SAGA”. As Daniel said, there was a distinction between the text games (C = Classic) and the graphical games (G = Graphics), but I don’t think that distinction is really meaningful anymore.
The blorb identifier is “SAAI” (Scott Adams Adventure International) which nobody uses, but a possibility I guess.
I think it would be great to settle on an acronym, either “SAGA” or “SACA” (but not both), however I presume we would need a broad consensus from people who have made interpreters and tools dealing with the format, etc.
You need both, as the file formats are incompatible. These are the terms that Scott Adams himself used in Adventure International advertising, although the term “SACA” was not introduced until “SAGA” was invented and he needed to distinguish between the two. “SAGA+” came later. If I remember rightly, this had a multi-word parser.
ScottFree is not a format, but an interpreter that interprets the SACA format, but not the SAGA or SAGA+ formats.
ScottKit has its own format (sck), but this is used more as an intermediary to compile to or decompile from the SACA format, but not SAGA format.
The TI-99/4A format (fiad) is a binary format created by the Adventure Module. Scott Adams himself used this format for his games on the TI-99/4A. Games in this format can be played on non-TI-99/4A platforms using the Bunyon interpreter.
The good thing about calling it “Scott Adams” is that most people with an interest in adventure games will know what you are talking about, and it would be confusing to drop the label altogether. One idea is to only use it when talking about all of them, as in “the Scott Adams formats” with a plural s, and try to agree on other names for the individual variants.
All are available as ScottFree (the plain-text DAT database format), so I’d say it is fine to use that as file format for all of them, unless you really want it to be the format they were first released in. If you feel ambitious you might add a column for “Original format”, or perhaps change “File format” to (a list of) “Available formats”, if you’re feeling really ambitious.
It’s possible to have a comma-separated list in these fields (for example Glulx, Z-code for some games’ formats). Would that do for now? What would the values be?
Also, when two versions are sufficiently different (eg the different Adventure or Cloak of Darkness ports) we’d like to have separate wiki pages. Are any of the Scott Adams releases like this? Or at the other extreme, for instance, are the SAGA versions exactly the same SACA games plus graphics?
You have opened a can of worms here, as the situation is not the least bit straight forward.
As I said above, it is wrong to refer to ScottFree as a file format, as it’s an interpreter. The readme file refers to it as a “Scott Adams game player”. It didn’t even exist until 20 years or so after Scott Adams wrote his games.
All the games in your table are commercial games from Adventure International, Adventure International (UK), Molimerx, Channel 8, Digital Fantasia, Tynesoft and Adventuresoft UK.
For the file format, all used SACA, SAGA or both, depending on the platform. Not all games were available on all platforms and not all platforms used the same file formats. Like I said, it’s complicated. The TRS-80 format tends to be used as the baseline for the earlier games, but even these games had different versions of the interpreter and different versions of the data files. Different versions of the data files were sometimes released on different platforms to correct bugs and what have you.
For the authoring system, these were proprietary. Scott Adams used his own authoring system that went through many incarnations. Brian Howarth used his own.
Many of the games were co-authored, but the table splits these into separate rows and some of the co-authors are missing. For example, Alexis Adams (Scott’s wife at the time) is credited on Pirate Adventure and Voodoo Castle, but she’s not mentioned here at all.
I should also point out that there were dozens of games using the SACA, FIAC and SCK formats that aren’t in this table. These used a number of different authoring systems, some commercial and some public domain or freeware.
I don’t really have a preference. I called it ScottFree because it is the format the original ScottFree interpreter understands. A bit like calling Z-code “Frotz format”.
It is worth noting that the SACA, and SAGA, and Brian Howarth’s binary format(s) used in Adventure International UK’s cassette releases, all can be “losslessly” converted to each other (if we ignore the graphics.) The underlying database format is the same. (EDIT: Or perhaps I should say the information contained in the different databases is the same.) In that respect the TI-99/4A and SAGA+ formats are different.
That is the “underlying database format” I mentioned. All Brian Howarth’s games use this (well, at least the ones we are talking about here.)
It seems a little strange to call machine code an authoring system, but I don’t know how he actually wrote them. I think it would be better to call it “custom” or “proprietary”.
Before the explanations above I’d have read that as stating that a file format called “ScottFree” exists, but now I know it refers to the file format playable by the ScottFree interpreter. I will get there in the end!
The Hobbit did not use a portable database format in the same way. Brian Howarth’s interpreters were written in 6502 and Z80 assembly, and the tools he used to create the database (or port Scott Adams’ database) were most likely written in assembly or BASIC.
I don’t know about you, but it seems wrong to me to call the authoring system “assembly language”. It does not seem entirely correct to call it “Scott Adams database” either.
