> Is anyone a possibility of Escape From St. Mary's to be a real text-adventure game? Real text-adventure game (that you have to type in) is better, in my opinion.

First, as I'm not the author, I should say that I can't answer this question definitely for him. However, this would be rather laborious on two levels. First, the programming languages involved are very different, so a parser-based game would have to be coded from scratch in a new language. Personally, I would be somewhat hesitant to restart a completed project from the beginning in a new language.

Second, the puzzle design tends to be different in parser-based text games from a menu-based AGL. For this point, I will defer to a previous post by Sam, linked below. (Read from the paragraph beginning, "Possible ...") This would probably require a redesign of the puzzle mechanics independent of the programming itself; there are certain choices you can throw in an AGL ("Be weird") that you just can't expect someone to come up with at the prompt. (Smoothly getting the player to try unconventional things at the prompt is one of the joys of parser IF, and often one of the key puzzles, but the in-game hints have to point to those commands in a way AGL doesn't have to. I'll cite "Spider and Web" and "Rematch" as excellent examples.)

Parser IF and AGL are related, but distinct, media, and porting a game from one to the other could very easily require game redesign with a total reprogramming job -- both of which seem unnecessary for a completed project. For the programmer, it'd probably be more profitable to start from scratch with a new game. For the player, there are good games in both forms; besides, there are way more parser-based games than menu-based games out there, so why not add to the latter form also?

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