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In article <39514@vax1.tcd.ie>, trolfs@vax1.tcd.ie (Tommy) writes:
>   I'm in the initial stages of considering writting an *Interactive
> Adventure Writting [sic] Language*.

Electronic Arts' "Adventure Construction Set" was written in Forth by,
umm, Glen Tenney I think.  It's been a long time since I spoke with him
(almost three years).  I always thought it would be interesting to write
something like that.  The thought of writing a parser makes my skin
crawl, though.  :)

From article <39514@vax1.tcd.ie>, by trolfs@vax1.tcd.ie (Tommy):
> ( This is also being posted in comp.lang.forth, as well as in
> rec.games.programmer, for Forth progammers who might be interested )
> 
>   I'm in the initial stages of considering writting an *Interactive
> Adventure Writting Language*. My motivation for doing this is the
> language FORTH and my love of text adventures.
> 

I tried to tackle this problem once, from a higher level.  I got as far as
a functional specification, a formal description of the grammar, etc., but
no actual code.  Unfortunately, I tried to tackle too much.

The name of the language was "Adventure System Specifying Hierarchical
Objects, Locations, and Events."

Infocom has had one of these for years.  I think they call it "Zork
Adventure Language" or something.  Runs on a VAX and generates code for
any microcomputer they have a cross-assembler/compiler for.

It's a tough one.  Good luck!
-- 
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In article <39514@vax1.tcd.ie> trolfs@vax1.tcd.ie (Tommy) writes:
>  I'm in the initial stages of considering writting an *Interactive
>Adventure Writting Language*. My motivation for doing this is the
>language FORTH and my love of text adventures.

I've been working on just such a project for quite a while.  My latest
attempt, which has been running for about a year now, has demonstrated to
me that the ideas the author of this note presented are right on target:
make it a language for maximum flexibility; produce an interactive environment
for maximum productivity.  I would add one other thing:  make the language
object-oriented.  A friend of mine who also likes writing adventure systems
came up with this idea, and it's worked out fantastically well in my system.
OOP was originally invented for programming simulations; an adventure is
essentially a simulation.

Good luck--it's an ambitious project!

The idea of making a specific meta language is one I have been
working with for awhile.  I did a MIDI program where the function
modules resembled the old analog synthesizer modules.  For my money,
the best place to work from is the grea area between language and
generalized tool.  I am currently working on a generalized art package
that starts at the outer level looking like a simple system on the order
of "PC-Paint", and ends up as a meta language.
...I, too am leaning toward FORTH.  I particularly like LMI's UR/FORTH
for the 386 Protected Mode.  It has the room to do some serious FORTH
programming.  What I don't like is that FORTH code is hard to maintain, 
no one likes other peoples FORTH code.
...Also, the arguments for Object Oriented languages are making a lot
of sense to me.  I have worked with Lisp and Flavors, am now looking
at Actor and Smalltalk-80.  
...In the FORTH world there is HMSL, and the object language it is 
built upon.  It is lean and mean.  I am in the process (although 
slowly) of porting HMSL from the Mac to the 386.
...Best of luck with your project.  It sounds like a neat one
to be working on.

In article <39514@vax1.tcd.ie>, trolfs@vax1.tcd.ie (Tommy) writes:
>   I'm in the initial stages of considering writting an *Interactive
> Adventure Writting Language*. My motivation for doing this is the
> language FORTH and my love of text adventures.

If you are a serious programmer and competent to do what you are proposing
(i.e., design and follow through with the coding of a new language) then I
would be very interested in participating in this project.

I agree with you that interactive languages beat the pants off of compiled
languages (unless you have one of Borland's "Turbo" products in which case
the distinction becomes moot).  Although I'm not a FORTH expert I've used
it enough to know that it would be a good choice.  But I don't know
of a decent public domain FORTH for UNIX--do you?  Does anyone?  cforth
isn't even worth considering--it's incomplete and too low quality.  I'm
assuming, of course, that you'd be developing this adventure language on
and for UNIX?  There are enough adventure languages which do NOT support
concurrent multiple users; if you want to make this language really something
special then multiuser should be #1 in the specification.

By the way, someone mentioned AdvSys--I believe AdvSys is written by the
same guy who wrote XLISP.  Don't these prolific programmers turn you green?
Unfortunately AdvSys doesn't appear to be anywhere near as powerful as,
say, ADL.  Or am I mistaken??

Have you (or anyone) seen a language called Adventure Authoring Language
(AAL) by Jonathan Amsterdam at MIT?  The author describes this language in
"Creating an Adventurous Language" in the April 1988 issue of Dr. Dobb's
Journal.  AAL is written in and resides atop a Common LISP kernel just as
your proposed language would reside atop FORTH.  The author comments on how
this enables him to always fall back to LISP code if doing someting in AAL
is too difficult.  I've been thinking for some time that it might be
possible to implement AAL in XLISP in which case the entire package
would be pretty portable and freely distributable (at least I *think*
AAL is public domain).  However, I don't know LISP and have been using that
as a convenient excuse for postponing investigating AAL.  Perhaps, though,
it would make more sense to enhance AAL then to start from scratch?

Then again, if it is the excitement of writing the adventurous language
which primarily interests you then investigating AAL is probably the last
thing you want to do. :-)

P.S.  As long as I've got the floor, does anyone know of a good concurrent
multiuser adventure game for System V UNIX?  The closest I've seen is
phantasia but its player interaction is minimal. Surely there is something
better available?  Especially with System V "shared memory" interplayer
communications can't be that difficult to implement. (Yeah, I know--then 
why don't I shut up and implement it myself.  Yeah!  Guess I will!  I've
got a couple hours until bedtime! :-)
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