programming/RAIF-POOL.announce

From: jweinste@castor.usc.edu (Jacob Solomon Weinstein)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Announcing a new IF language!
Date: 2 Apr 1996 08:49:56 -0800

I'm really proud of myself. I've managed to finish an entirely new 
text-adventure programming language without even mentioning to anybody here 
that I've been working on it. Now that it's finally almost ready to go, I 
thought I'd let you all know about it.

First, I should tell you that it's shareware. I thought long and hard 
about making it free, but I finally decided that I've just put too much 
work into it. But the registration fee is only $15, and, considering all 
the features you get, I don't think too many people will mind paying.

I've been paying careful attention to all the things people on r.a.if have 
said they want from a language, and I've pooled them all together. (In fact, 
the working title of the language is "raif POOL"). Here's some of the 
things it has:

*Backwards-and-forwards compiler compatability.
I figure that the biggest obstacle for a lot of people in adapting 
a new language is un-learning the old one. To make things easier, 
POOL can read TADS, Inform, ALAN, AGT, and Hugo files. (Actually, 
it seems to be having some problems with Hugo and ALAN, but I'm hoping to 
work those bugs out by the next release.) 

Furthermore, POOL can output TADS and Inform game files. But I recommend 
against compiling a POOL game into another format game file--it'll 
probably be too big for the TADS and Inform run-time systems.

*Optional graphic interface for programming or for games. 
Fully supports GITO (graphics in, text out--lets you create a text adventure 
game without typing a single word); TIGO (text in, graphics out--lets you 
create a fully rendered immersive world without drawing a single pixel); 
and, of course, GIGO and TITO. Note that GITO and TIGO require at least 
32 megs of free RAM. I know it's a lot, and I'm hoping to make my code a 
little more elegant to reduce the requirements--but, for now, that's 
where it stands. (TITO, on the other hand, can run on a 386 or Mac SE 
with only 1 meg of RAM, although compiling will be a bit slow.)

*Vast programming library. 
My standard include file--analogous to TADS' ADV.T-- is thirty-six meg, and 
contains accurate models for virtually all physical laws. (An update to 
include quantum mechanics should be available within a few months.)

*Sophisticated parser.
It includes, among other things, complete adverb support. 
"Walk north slowly" is treated differently from "walk north quickly." (Or, 
for the matter, "walk n in a slightly paranoid fashion.")

*AI-complete character interaction. 
Honestly, I have to admit that I 
don't understand what all the fuss over artificial intelligence is. In a 
number of double-blind tests that I've run, all of the NPC's I've created with 
RAIF POOL have passed the Turing test easily. And I'm not exactly a 
programming genius--I just included various laws of human behavior in my 
programming library. (Why those folks at the MIT AI lab didn't think of 
this on their own, I'll never know.)

Anyway, here's the complete code for one NPC who had a number of my 
testers convinced they were talking to Ross Perot:

ross: human
traits = short bigears crazy billionaire
;

Note that I didn't actually have to describe how he'd react to any 
situations; the RAIF POOL character extrapolator does that automatically 
from the traits I've defined. (If you want an NPC to act out of 
character, though, it's quite easy to program.)

*Re-fribulating gigometer.
It's a feature so powerful, even I have no idea what it does.

*Optional puzzle filter.
If you've written a vast, puzzle-filled game, only to be intimidated by 
recent threads here on r.a.if, the puzzle filter will automatically 
remove all puzzles from your game and replace them with slice-of-life 
vignettes. Note that this is only available to registered users.

*Complete sample game.
"Achilles," is  a complete game, roughly four times the size of Jigsaw, is 
based on certain books of the Upinashad. Note that solving several of the 
puzzles requires a knowledge of various untranslated texts in ancient 
Cyrillic, Sanskrit, and Pig Latin.

RAIF POOL will run on a variety of computers, including most Macs and 
IBMs. Note that a game of Achilles' size requires a cray supercomputer; 
running it on a Mac or PC will will result in prohibitive delays (3+ 
hours between moves.) 

RAIF POOL should be ready for release any day now. I wanted to release it 
yesterday, on the first of the month, but I'm having some problems with 
the AI code. Every time I compile it, it tries to access something called 
"SkyNet." Perhaps somebody who's a better BASIC programmer than I could 
review my code for me?

-Jacob Weinstein