GameScroll FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions)

[GameScroll Home Page]

Really, what *is* this?

It's a system for writing interactive fiction. It's not technically a "game" by itself, and the technology test "crawl" is much too simple to be any fun. But later adventures will be real games, I'm going to finish the GUI editor before writing the 100+ page adventure I have planned.

It's also more than that, though. Any kind of choice-response interaction can be written in this: Courseware for schools. Quiz games. Lifepath systems for RPGs. In some ways, it's like the old PILOT programming language, but not bad.

Is GameScroll open source?

No. It's shareware, though I will not now or ever be crippling it to force you to contribute. If you like it, I'd appreciate it if you put a few dollars in the tip jar on the GameScroll home page. Until it gets the map editor, I'm not even going to include in-game request for that.

Additionally, I prefer to work closed-source, so bug reports will be requests in English, rather than demands to install patches which may not match my vision for the system. If, years down the line, I end-of-life GameScroll, I will release it under a BSD-like license, as I do with all of my old software.

And, really, how does the source help you? Adventures made with it are more useful. If you think it's missing something, please let me know.

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