ADRIFT
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- For the episode of Lost, see Adrift (Lost), for the film see Open Water 2
ADRIFT is a graphical user interface used to create and play text adventures. The name is an acronym for "Adventure Development & Runner - Interactive Fiction Toolkit". The project is active, though is solely developed by Campbell Wild.
The toolkit consists of two programs; a generator (used to write games), and a runner (used to play them), though the runner is available to download separately. Currently, both programs only run on Microsoft Windows platforms. Since the release of version 4, in 2002, the generator is shareware (adventures over a certain size cannot be saved until a registration fee of 12 GBP is paid), though the runner is available free to everyone. Older (freeware) versions of ADRIFT are still available.
Unlike many text adventure creation tools (such as TADS), you need no knowledge of how to program to use the ADRIFT generator. Instead, the author is presented with a simple yet powerful graphical interface with which to write his/her game. This allows for text adventures to be written much more quickly and by people who are primarily authors rather than programmers.
jAsea is an open-source Java application that runs Adrift games. It allows anyone with a Java-enabled web browser regardless of platform to play ADRIFT games. Development of jAsea was discontinued in 2004.
SCARE is an ANSI/ISO C secondary clone of jAsea and the project has resulted in the ability to play ADRIFT games on several platforms including Linux, Windows, DOS, Macintosh, Amiga.
Many believe that ADRIFT has been snubbed by the IF community, but this relationship has since improved considerably with The PK Girl, an ADRIFT game, achieving 6th place in the Interactive Fiction Competition in 2002.
An updated version of ADRIFT is to be expected some time in late 2006.
[edit] ADRIFT File Types
- .taf - ADRIFT Text Adventure File
- .tas - Text Adventure Save file
- .amf - ADRIFT Module File
- .alr - ADRIFT Language Resource
