Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: erkyrath@netcom.com (Andrew Plotkin)
Subject: Re: Languages vs. Design Tools?
Message-ID: <erkyrathE3o6pM.31y@netcom.com>
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Date: Wed, 8 Jan 1997 03:22:34 GMT
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Bill Lash (lash@welash.xnet.com) wrote:
> >   The map-maker is one of the few things that almost everyone wants.

And, it sometimes seems, one of the things that almost everyone has 
started to write.

Somehow, though, nobody ever finishes them, or uses them to write games 
if one is finished.

> Have you guys looked at the program "ifmap"?  It was written by Matthew
> Crosby, and has a web page at:

> 	http://ugrad-www.cs.colorado.edu/~crosby/ifmap/IFMap.html

> It is also available on ftp.gmd.de at:
> 	
> 	ftp://ftp.gmd.de/if-archive/programming/editors/ifmap.tar.gz

> I use it to map out games that I am playing, but it was really
> intended more for writing IF. An excerpt from the web page states:

> 	"Eventually, I want to expand this to create a graphical IF
> 	 creation tool. A sort of 'Visual inform and
> 	 tads'. As it stands, it is actually pretty far along; it 
> 	 should be relatively trivial to write a converter
> 	 from the save format for this program to any language. 
> 	 (The format is pretty self explanatory if
> 	 anyone wants to go for it)."

I find that creating the rooms and exits and objects -- the things whose
Inform code can be generated automatically -- is just a tiny fraction of
my programming time. That's why I have never wanted one of these tools.
Making 1% of my job easier is simply not worth it, no matter how much 
easier that part gets.

--Z

-- 

"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the
borogoves..."
