Sometimes an upgrade is a mirage. Sometimes cool new features remain tantalizingly out of reach. [Note: This piece has been edited on Jan. 26 to reflect new information.]
I’m getting ready to enlist testers for my almost-completed interactive fiction game, “The White Bull.” I’m hitting what I hope is only a speed bump. At the moment the picture is rather murky. And the speed bump (if that’s what it is) has nothing to do with my work. It’s packaged in the development system. It’s … a feature.
One of the main reasons I decided to go ahead and finish this project, which had been languishing on my hard drive for a couple of years, was the release of TADS 3.1. TADS is a very slick system for writing text adventure games, and the 3.1 release enhances its power in some cool ways. Games compiled using 3.1 will be playable in a web browser, for instance, without the need to download anything. This is a huge step forward, as it makes TADS more competitive with Inform.
But wait — there’s less.
If I understand the documentation correctly, there are two ways to deploy a game for web play. You can upload it to the IF Archive and create a page for it on IFDB. The IFDB server, which is operated by TADS developer Mike Roberts, will make your game publicly available for online play. Alternatively, you can set up your own server.
I so thoroughly do not want to learn how to set up my own server.
The tricky bit is, how am I to test the web features of a game before it’s released? The word “test” Read the rest of this entry »