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From: svanegmo@undergrad.math.uwaterloo.ca (Stephen van Egmond)
Subject: Re: Menu System Using Inform?
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Message-ID: <Dy91K5.GA8@undergrad.math.uwaterloo.ca>
Date: Tue, 24 Sep 1996 18:19:17 GMT
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>Hi,  Does anyone know if there is some sort of menu system out there that
>will help in the creation of inform games?  I have just started to learn
>the language, but it is going very slow.  So if there is one menu system
>out there or if somebody would be willing to make one I know of at least
>one other who would love to use such a program.

The big difficulty in designing such a system is that it has to become 
scalable.  For many things in Inform, you simply must produce code.  I've 
seen an Inform "shell" for the Amiga which currently just launches the 
compiler; the author claimed he was going to work on an extension that 
would write code.

But this would be form-filling and would not generate a terribly 
interesting game.  Allowing the creation of your own properties, 
attributes, aliases for same, etc. would cause the complexity to increase 
quickly, not to mention what would happen if you started writing code in 
this tool.

Somewhere between form-filling and writing your own code is an unhappy 
grey area that nobody has been able to produce a gentle learning curve 
for. (much less design one)
 
/Steve
