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- From: djohnson@cs.ucsd.edu (Darin Johnson)
- Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
- Subject: Re: So you want to write a text adventure?
- Message-ID: <41084@sdcc12.ucsd.edu>
- Date: 16 Nov 92 20:11:45 GMT
- References: <1992Nov15.234938.12993@starbase.trincoll.edu> <1992Nov16.021205.16797@starbase.trincoll.edu>
- Sender: news@sdcc12.ucsd.edu
- Organization: =CSE Dept., U.C. San Diego
- Lines: 36
- Nntp-Posting-Host: elvis.ucsd.edu
-
- >Have you ever actually built an application? Have you ever spent years
- >working on the source code for a game? It's not so easy then to just
- >"post the code."
-
- I was kinda tongue in cheek, since I knew TADS was commercial.
- I haven't spent years on any one program, but I suppose I wouldn't
- feel bad about just giving it away. I've done that with other
- programs I've spent lots of time on. But, I understand and
- can respect if people don't want to.
-
- >And since Mike is distributing TADS as shareware, why would he want
- >everyone to see how he implemented the game?
-
- Um, pride, ego? Unless how he implemented it looks really crufty...
-
- >Understand that a lot of
- >people could use his algorithms, adjust his parser just a bit, and make
- >some of their own modifications, thus completely legally creating their
- >own application while doing a third of the work. Does that sound like a
- >very inviting proposition to you?
-
- Yep. Better than spending years on a similar system in order to get
- something people could use. Right now, TADS and any adventures
- people have written in TADS (even adventures people want to give
- away for free) are *useless* to me and many other people.
- (However, it *always* seems to be that case that whenever people
- ask about good adventure writing systems, TADS is always touted,
- even though it won't run on most machines)
-
- This is a religious argument, so alt.religion.computers is probably
- the place for it - and where people can flame to their hearts
- content without having to feel guilty about it.
- --
- Darin Johnson
- djohnson@ucsd.edu
- Macintosh - you can buy better, but you can't pay more!
-