ADRIFT

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For other uses, see Adrift.

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 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 as they are written in Visual Basic. 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 the program can also be downloaded on the website.

The next major version, version 5, projected to be released in 2007 will be written in Visual Basic.net.

Unlike many text adventure creation tools (such as TADS), the author needs little knowledge of how to program to use the ADRIFT generator. Instead, the author is presented with a simple graphical interface with which to write their game. This allows for text adventures to be written more quickly by people who are primarily authors rather than programmers.^{[citation needed]}

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 and Amiga.

The most critically acclaimed ADRIFT game to date is The PK Girl, which achieved 6th place in the Interactive Fiction Competition in 2002.^[1]