ADRIFT

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Revision as of 22:22, 7 December 2007 by Dswxyz (talk | contribs) (→‎Links: removed the links to Drift On)

ADRIFT is an IF development system for Microsoft Windows, designed by Campbell Wild and written in Visual Basic. ADRIFT is intended for people who do not like programming; it sacrifices some power and flexibility for easy usability, but it is still a respected tool with a loyal user base. There are two third party ADRIFT runner clones, jAsea and SCARE, that have allowed people to play ADRIFT games on non-Windows platforms, although the do not give the same playing experience as the official runner.

The main place to get help and assistance with ADRIFT is from the ADRIFT Forum. A number of experienced users hang out there and are normally willing to give advice. InsideADRIFT is a bi-monthly PDF format newsletter filled with news, announcements, competitions and articles.

Downloading ADRIFT

While ADRIFT games can be played for free, the latest version of the game generator, version 4.0 is shareware and costs $17 to register. (If you do not register ADRIFT 4.0 it is limited to: 10 rooms; 25 objects; 25 tasks; 5 events; 3 characters; 2 roomgroups; 10 synonyms; 5 variables).

The previous version 3.90 is still available for free, but the later version has many improvements. While you can convert version 3.90 games to run under version 4.0, it is generally advised to use the 3.90 runner as the execution may not be the same after conversion.

Downloads are available from a number of sites including:

Tips and Tutorials

See also: Category:ADRIFT tutorials.

History

(Edited from the ADRIFT v4.0 Manual created by Campbell Wild, 25 Oct 2003)

Background

  • Wrote Adventure Generator which had a command line interface that asked a series of questions, then allowed you to play the game that it output. Although this made it quicker to create a game, it was not a very nice interface, and wasn’t particularly easy. I believe I wrote this in Pascal.
  • Re-wrote the Adventure Generator, this time making it easy to edit information that had previously been added. Again, choosing Pascal to do this. This was menu driven, and allowed 20 locations, 20 objects and 40 tasks. You can download TAG from ftp://ftp.adrift.org.uk/adrift/tag.zip.
  • Started work on ADRIFT in December 1997 to rewrite a lot of the limitations of TAG 2, and to create it for the Windows environment. Initially, I just called it “Adventure Generator”, but renamed it later. A breakdown of the development of ADRIFT is as follows.

Adrift development

  • Dec-1997: Started work on “Adventure Generator v3.00”
  • 16-Dec-1998: Released Adventure Generator 3.10.
  • 10-Jun-1999: Released Adventure Generator 3.22.
    This was the first version to support backwards compatibility with previous versions of Adventure Generator. Deleting of objects, tasks and events was also introduced.
  • 13-Jun-1999: Released Adventure Generator 3.23.
    Up until this point, all TAF files had been plain text – 3.23 was the first version to encrypt the files with password protection.
  • 19-Jul-1999: Released Adventure Generator 3.24.
    The lists for Rooms, objects etc in the main window were separated into individual windows. The option to hide objects was also introduced. Event sub descriptions also came in this version.
  • 03-Aug-1999: Released Adventure Generator 3.30.
    Version 3.30 saw the introduction of characters. Up until this point, objects had to be used instead. Object aliases were introduced, as was an additional room description based on task completion.
  • 28-Nov-1999: Released Adventure Generator 3.31.
    This was the first version to incorporate a dynamic map, based on the layout created by the user. Basic synonyms were also introduced for common commands.
  • 06-Dec-1999: Released Adventure Generator 3.32.
    This version had mostly small updates such as printing out the map, and improved tasks.
  • 21-Dec-1999: Released Adventure Generator 3.40.
    The task dependency viewer was introduced in this version. There were a number of improvements to events and tasks also.
  • 28-Dec-1999: Released Adventure Generator 3.50.
    First/Second person, wildcards in task commands, unlimited character walks, characters running tasks, toolbar, search facility and hints are amongst the improvements in this version.
  • 07-Feb-2000: Released Adventure Generator 3.60.
    Splash screen, individual high-score tables, controllable wait, room groups, word clicks, and better room descriptions were improvements in version 3.60. This is the first version which was used by any number of people, and when Adventure Generator started to become known in the Interactive Fiction community.
  • 08-Jun-2000: Released ADRIFT 3.70.
    Because of the generic name, and to raise the profile of the program, I decided to rename “Adventure Generator” to “ADRIFT” which is an acronym of Adventure Development & Runner – Interactive Fiction Toolkit. Version 3.70 also had simple TADS output, openable edible readable objects and objects with surfaces, enhanced player, improved tasks and simple ambiguity handling amongst minor changes.
  • Version 3.80 was the first version of ADRIFT to be published in a magazine, and became downloadable from many places on the Internet. Most of the improvements in this version were bug fixes and fine tuning to the whole program, making it a lot more reliable. Tasks were improved significantly.
  • 01-Jan-2001: Released ADRIFT 3.90.
    Version 3.90 was a big improvement over 3.80. It had an improved layout, graphics and sound, a battle system, Language Resource (ALR) files, feature disabling, system variables, undo facility, score overriding, much improved Player, 8 directional compass, room hiding, size and weight for objects, unlimited actions and restrictions per task, more powerful characters, integer variables, improved map, transcript, pausing and many more small changes.
  • 27-May-2001: Released Final release (20) of ADRIFT 3.90
    Version 3.90 was continually improved over nearly six months, during which time it became a lot more reliable, and also introduced extra features such as looping sound, dictionary amongst many others.
  • 13-Feb-2002: Released Beta release 0 of ADRIFT 4.00.
    Version 4.00 again was a big improvement over 3.90. This was the first version to become Shareware – previous versions had been Freeware. The main improvements were the ability to play MP3s, much better TAF file compression, images and sounds embedded into TAF files, tasks setting and unsetting other tasks, text variables, referenced text, lockable objects, adventure browser, graphics in main window, advanced command construction, multiple object and character aliases, initial object descriptions, and/or for task restrictions, unlimited room descriptions, text editing window, faster execution, improved battle system, random character movement, object states, and modules.
  • 09-May-2002: Released ADRIFT 4.00 release 18.
    Again, as with 3.90, ADRIFT 4.00 is continually being improved with many releases. Currently, improvements are much greater stability, user definable runner layout, and many bug fixes. Release 18 was the first non-beta version.
  • 05-Oct-2004: Released ADRIFT 4.00 release 45.
    Enhancements to the Modules feature and several bug fixes.
  • 14-Apr-2005: Released ADRIFT 4.00 release 46.
    As at writing, this is the latest release of ADRIFT.
  • 25-Dec-2005: Announced that ADRIFT 5.0 is now under development. No target release date at present.

Links

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