Lumin wrote:I'd happily trade the bells and whistles and all the excess clicking for reliable online play/more attractive web design, (those kind of go hand and hand), and cross platform and backwards compatibility. The first two might not have mattered much to us regulars at the time, but I'm surprised they were considered unnecessary by someone with an eye toward the future of the program.
Online play is one of those things I'll never use myself but I agree it's important. Most of the potential audience these days aren't going to want to download and install software to play a game, and if they're playing on mobile devices that's probably not an option anyway. So as little enthusiasm as I have for online play, it's definitely something ADRIFT needs. A better looking online Runner, too. The current one is just hideous. Cross platform is a must because, for reasons that escape me, lots of the IF crowd seem to be using Macs so outside of online play, they can't even play ADRIFT games. And backwards compatibility is the biggest must of them all. The majority of ADRIFT games – i.e. anything written with v3.9 or v4 – won't work properly with the v5 Runner which gives a very negative impression of ADRIFT to anyone trying to play any of those games, especially as the v5 Runner won't even tell you you're using the wrong version.
ralphmerridew wrote:- competition from systems like Twine and Inform 7
-- I'm not sure how much I7 leached away existing drifters. (davidw and rotter have been using I7, but I think they said that they'd use ADRIFT if it were more actively developed -- is that correct?)
To a degree. I stopped using ADRIFT all those years ago because everything was as lifeless as the grave around here, I didn't like v5 at all and Campbell had effectively abandoned v4. If Campbell returns and injects a bit of life into the ADRIFT scene, I might write some more games but they're going to be with v4. Nothing short of some major changes to v5 will make me try to use it again.