How easy do you find Adrift V5?

[ImpShial]

It's been a long time since I messed around with ADRIFT, but I love version 5.0!

I've been away from IF for years now, but I recently introduced my 11-year old daughter to some of the old Infocom games. After playing through HHGTTG, I found myself wanting to create again.

I think the ribbon-bar is a great addition and the 3D map makes ADRIFT look much more professional.

It just feels smoother and less clunky than 3.9 and 4.0.

I have found a couple bugs, and as a developer myself, I have noticed some things I would change, but those things are mostly my opinion, and do not affect functionality.

The big, in your face icons and tree folders stand out and tell you exactly what you want to know.

Overall, I love it.

[Lazzah]

Welcome back Impshial!

Glad to read that you like ADRIFT 5. I love it too. Let's hope Campbell will be back soon and working on the next upgrade.

[Campbell]

Indeed, welcome back, and thanks for the feedback. I'd be happy to hear of the bugs you find, and any suggestions you have for improving the product.

[Dastardly]

I am working on a game (my first) for a friend at present. It has 18 locations, but only 7 characters including the PC. I am reading learning challenged, but so far I've been able to 'follow along' with the interface.
I am expecting challenges with timings, i.e. time of day, my arrival to her house at a certain time, and her state of dress when I get there.
I told her in advance that she'd better remember to get dressed before going anywhere and answering the door.
I have to figure out how to get Adrift to notice how many clothes she has on when met by others. The easy part was if she had nothing on...lol.

[Seztworks]

Hello

I would like to start out by saying thanks for creating this lovely piece of software.

I have been working on a game for 8 months now and for a beginner it was fun to just jump headfirst into making something.
When I started I had only played a couple of Adrift games and that did come back to haunt me later. I made choices that veteran players did not agree with and made som assumptions based on my personal logic that did not mesh well with Adrift.

Below are some comments regarding use from a first time developer and noob programmer.
1. The biggest roadblock was the assumption that order of tasks would be: check restrictions -> output text -> perform actions
Having actions happen before the text outout really messed with my head until I found the option to reverse this (I had different text outputs based on variables that might increase in actions).
2. Another confusing step was failure checks. Tasks and Conversations do not behave as I expected.
If you have multiple tasks with the same command any failure text stops any checks and prints the text.
if you have multiple conversations with the same command it will ignore the failure text and move on to the next fitting conversation.
The difference between the two almost broke my tiny head.
3. This might be me missing a command or setting. I have many tasks that trigger when a players enters a location at the right time. Is there a way to trigger a "player enters location" check without having the player exit and enter the location. This is because players can wait an hour in game and this might be the right time for a task to trigger but it won't until they reenter the location.
4. General problems with images and Adrift changing aspect ratios and such was tricky as well.

All in all not bad. The wiki did help in some cases but could have used more examples of use when I got started.
Keep up the good work.

/Seztworks

[ralphmerridew]

Related to #3:
- Create a system task "# Player in location". Have it run only in that room and do whatever. Have an event "Wait for player to be in location" that starts whenever, lasts 1 turn, restarts immediately, and runs "# Player in location" on completion.

[JamesTBond]

It has a bit of a learning curve to it, mostly just seeing what exists in the various sections and menus. The more I use it though the more intuitive it begins to feel.