I just want to share something I’m happy about; I’m developing a quick game, just a little bit of Dr. Who pastiche, to test out the tutorial mode I’m developing.
I have the Skein open in a browser window on half my display, Visual Studio Code on the other half.
And my cycle … change code, click “Replay All”, examine changes and bless the change or modify the code (often, a little of each) … and repeat, repeat, repeat.
The speed is amazing, even on my older Intel Mac.
There’s something so reassuring that on each change, I can quickly run dozens or more commands as several complete games with different paths through the world, and know instantly if anything at all has changed anywhere.
There’s still rough edges (it’s alpha yet), but I never could work this quickly in Inform 7 … I usually spent huge amounts of time fighting with the language to find just the right phrasing for whatever rule I was working with.
Instead, I spend moments reading the Dialog manual or quickly searching the standard library (oh! it’s not (enterable *) it’s (actor container *), for example) and I’m back at it before I’ve lost my focus.
Now, if it all works out that I’ve spent all this time to develop these tools just for me, that’s fine - but I’d still love to get some feedback from others. Give it a try if you haven’t.