The world is in need of an interactive fiction interpreter for the DS.
There is one interpreter available right now that I know of, papafuji's DSFrotz (Google it). It plays Inform games, but it's a buggy mess and quite incompatible. Try the game break-in.z5, if it behaves for you like it did for me it won't start at all. Some games require 77 characters per line or something or the words scroll off the edge of the screen, unable to be read. It's also a pain to use in general, there's something wrong with every input method available.
Now, I think we all agree that the DS is a perfect handheld for this type of game. Words on top, nice big keyboard on the bottom. Right? So I'm offering on behalf of the IF-playing community a very small commission, for the completion of an Inform interpreter, of $50 US.
Obviously there hasn't been enough demand for this YET, but I'm hopeful that on the biggest DS community an experienced coder will pick it up for this price to be a nice guy. I tried getting together all the tools for programming in ARM or whatever, but I'm a visual basic guy. I'm not gonna waste my time, I'll never be able to learn it.
DETAILS:
- $50 will be sent via Paypal, so they'll probably take a chunk out of it if you don't have a premium account or whatever. I think this is fair since we already have an open-source interpreter (papafuji's) that really only needs to be cleaned up by someone who knows how. Others can add to the pot if they want to see this get done.
- There should be DLDI compatibility with any cart that usually offers it, obviously, to get the .z# files on there.
- Should be compatible with like 99% of existing Inform games, excluding badly coded ones or ones that use oddball features.
- Can have JUST querty/azerty touch-keyboard as long as it's effective, I don't care about character recognition entry at all.
- Must be open-source freeware so it can be put over on the official Inform site when it's done. http://www.inform-fiction.org/zmachine/interpreters.html
If you need more information just ask.
The IF community is a huge one and this would be a truly useful homebrew. I'm shocked that all the 40-year-olds who played Zork when it came out haven't gotten this right yet.
EDIT: ADDITIONAL DETAILS:
- No graphics support required, at all, even for the later official Zork games. I think other interpreters can play such games without the graphics with just the text.
- No sound support required, at all.
- Save/load of x number of save files available from a clean menu, by typing save or restore, as in most interpreters.
- Several font sizes / font faces must be available to use (including the smallest pixel font feasible)
- Background color and text color must be changeable using a preset palette or RGB entry.
- Command-line text font and color CAN be interchangeable independently from the story text, but I'm not sure this is possible in an Inform interpreter (I've only seen it done in TADS.)
- The keyboard is the only thing I will be very anal about. It must be optimized for the small screen, meaning every pixel counts. It must not have any extraneous keys or keys not used in interactive fiction gameplay. I will probably put up a sample of what I think is appropriate once someone makes a go at the project.
- Must have a plain, text menu where the z-code files are listed on startup and the user can scroll through and select them with either the D-pad and A button, or with the touch screen.
- The D-pad and ABXYLR buttons may have some functions redundant to the ones that can be typed; Off the top of my head, the most useful thing for players would be: D-pad=select through letters on keyboard. A=type letter. B=backspace one. X=enter command (Enter key). Y=undo last move (undo command). L=open save menu (save command). R=open load menu (restore command).
There is one interpreter available right now that I know of, papafuji's DSFrotz (Google it). It plays Inform games, but it's a buggy mess and quite incompatible. Try the game break-in.z5, if it behaves for you like it did for me it won't start at all. Some games require 77 characters per line or something or the words scroll off the edge of the screen, unable to be read. It's also a pain to use in general, there's something wrong with every input method available.
Now, I think we all agree that the DS is a perfect handheld for this type of game. Words on top, nice big keyboard on the bottom. Right? So I'm offering on behalf of the IF-playing community a very small commission, for the completion of an Inform interpreter, of $50 US.
Obviously there hasn't been enough demand for this YET, but I'm hopeful that on the biggest DS community an experienced coder will pick it up for this price to be a nice guy. I tried getting together all the tools for programming in ARM or whatever, but I'm a visual basic guy. I'm not gonna waste my time, I'll never be able to learn it.
DETAILS:
- $50 will be sent via Paypal, so they'll probably take a chunk out of it if you don't have a premium account or whatever. I think this is fair since we already have an open-source interpreter (papafuji's) that really only needs to be cleaned up by someone who knows how. Others can add to the pot if they want to see this get done.
- There should be DLDI compatibility with any cart that usually offers it, obviously, to get the .z# files on there.
- Should be compatible with like 99% of existing Inform games, excluding badly coded ones or ones that use oddball features.
- Can have JUST querty/azerty touch-keyboard as long as it's effective, I don't care about character recognition entry at all.
- Must be open-source freeware so it can be put over on the official Inform site when it's done. http://www.inform-fiction.org/zmachine/interpreters.html
If you need more information just ask.
The IF community is a huge one and this would be a truly useful homebrew. I'm shocked that all the 40-year-olds who played Zork when it came out haven't gotten this right yet.
EDIT: ADDITIONAL DETAILS:
- No graphics support required, at all, even for the later official Zork games. I think other interpreters can play such games without the graphics with just the text.
- No sound support required, at all.
- Save/load of x number of save files available from a clean menu, by typing save or restore, as in most interpreters.
- Several font sizes / font faces must be available to use (including the smallest pixel font feasible)
- Background color and text color must be changeable using a preset palette or RGB entry.
- Command-line text font and color CAN be interchangeable independently from the story text, but I'm not sure this is possible in an Inform interpreter (I've only seen it done in TADS.)
- The keyboard is the only thing I will be very anal about. It must be optimized for the small screen, meaning every pixel counts. It must not have any extraneous keys or keys not used in interactive fiction gameplay. I will probably put up a sample of what I think is appropriate once someone makes a go at the project.
- Must have a plain, text menu where the z-code files are listed on startup and the user can scroll through and select them with either the D-pad and A button, or with the touch screen.
- The D-pad and ABXYLR buttons may have some functions redundant to the ones that can be typed; Off the top of my head, the most useful thing for players would be: D-pad=select through letters on keyboard. A=type letter. B=backspace one. X=enter command (Enter key). Y=undo last move (undo command). L=open save menu (save command). R=open load menu (restore command).