[hlship]

So close to describing the Dialog IF language it’s almost prescient.

https://linusakesson.net/dialog/index.php

Dialog is a Prolog dialect: it’s like Markdown and Prolog had a baby.

[tannhaeuser]

It's neither Prolog nor a "dialect". From the intro:

> Dialog is a domain-specific language for creating interactive fiction. It is heavily inspired by Inform 7 (Graham Nelson et al. 2006) and Prolog (Alain Colmerauer et al. 1972), and substantially different from both.

[hlship]

It's based on unification, like a Prolog. It does backtracking, like a Prolog. It has something akin to Prolog "cuts". It's equally not Markdown. What it is, is the sensibilities of Prolog (for parsing words into player intent - actions) and for implementing a world model, and for inferring facts from other facts ... and also the text-foremost sensibility of Markdown.

I love it. I've put considerable effort into building tools around it, and to building up a library of extensions.

[tunesmith]

First I've heard of this one. I never got into Inform7 because I didn't find the language very discoverable; it felt like writing AppleScript. Do you know of any links to larger examples of Dialog code, like a full open source game written in the language?

[hlship]

That was my frustration as well; and it comes up in discussions. Simple to medium complex things are easy in Inform7, but when you start hitting the edges, you find out that its expressive English-like syntax is in the uncanny valley and exactly how you phrase things becomes vitally important and difficult to discern, even from the mounds of documentation it generates from your story file and from the standard library and extensions.

[hlship]

https://github.com/hlship/sanddancer-dialog

[2mlWQbCK]

The creator of Dialog, Linus Åkesson, went ahead and used it to create the winning entry for the IF Comp 2019. Does not look as if the source code was published, but I think winning that contest is the best indicator that a language for I-F is good enough to use in practice that I can imagine.

https://www.linusakesson.net/games/the-impossible-bottle/ind... https://ifcomp.org/comp/2020?compact=0

[Avshalom]

I feel like I knew about this at some point but thank you for reminding me especially now that I've got more prolog under my belt.