Tads Completed Meteor [Goblinboy]

5.00 star(s) 2 Votes
Jul 7, 2017
162
482
Too bad Goblinboy didn't give the password for his AIF games. If I recall correctly, most tads type game code is protected by a password. I want to say the tads file can be looked at with the password.
I believe you're thinking of ADRIFT. TADS games are compiled into a type of bytecode, which you can decompile using scads2 (for TADS2) or scads3 (for TADS3).

But as far as I know, there's ultimately no way to really get the original source code from the game file, even with a decompiler. And if it turns out there is a way then I'm gonna feel like a real idiot for the amount of effort I put into being able to mod this game to add cheats, lol.
 

chipsiup

Active Member
Aug 12, 2016
502
963
From what I remember on the old AIF sites GoblinBoy had something happen to him that caused him to delete everything and cease making games. People guessed either his wife found out about his games or his workplace did that made him go scorched earth. This was like 6 or so years ago, too, so I don't think any further GoblinBoy games, remakes or remasters are ever coming.

I remember some guy named "Blue" I think tried to "remake" Summer Dreams in RPG Maker years ago but English wasn't his first language and his art wasn't as good as GoblinBoy's so it just came off as really shoddy and cheap.
I don't think that's correct, I think that was someone else, and it was at least ten years ago. I remember back on the AIF groups GoblinBoy did come back very briefly, he made a few comments about a year or two after his last game release, and mused about making a new game but ultimately he didn't seem motivated to do that.

The AIF game makers back in the old days were active mostly on Yahoo Groups, and would do things like have annual mini-comp game jams and there would be new game releases every couple of months. Slowly though things started to die down, the community got less and less posts. Yahoo Groups itself shut down in 2020, but the AIF group went defunct long before that.

Some of the old AIF author transitioned over to making non-IF based porn games. People like Palmer who did Daughter for Desert or BBBen who is making Pervert Action Timelapse. But there were a LOT of other AIF authors who didn't stick around, and it's been over a decade now since those days. It's highly unlikely we'll see GoblinBoy back, he probably just has other priorities in his life.
 

VonRaschke

Member
Aug 11, 2016
220
276
I don't think that's correct, I think that was someone else, and it was at least ten years ago. I remember back on the AIF groups GoblinBoy did come back very briefly, he made a few comments about a year or two after his last game release, and mused about making a new game but ultimately he didn't seem motivated to do that.

The AIF game makers back in the old days were active mostly on Yahoo Groups, and would do things like have annual mini-comp game jams and there would be new game releases every couple of months. Slowly though things started to die down, the community got less and less posts. Yahoo Groups itself shut down in 2020, but the AIF group went defunct long before that.

Some of the old AIF author transitioned over to making non-IF based porn games. People like Palmer who did Daughter for Desert or BBBen who is making Pervert Action Timelapse. But there were a LOT of other AIF authors who didn't stick around, and it's been over a decade now since those days. It's highly unlikely we'll see GoblinBoy back, he probably just has other priorities in his life.
I think the old Yahoo AIF group transitioned to Reddit, but it was never the same. The Yahoo group was very, very collaborative. I might have mixed up the story with someone else, but I could have sworn Goblinboy disappeared very shortly after releasing the Tesliss Equation, made a reply on the AIF Wordpress (I think, might have been on an AIF creator's own Wordpress) a year or two later saying he was gone, deleted everything and wasn't coming back, and that was it. I recall him being unhappy with how TADS3 never caught on, and I think he was also vocal about not liking ADRIFT, which was at the time overtaking TADS as the AIF engine of choice before Renpy came along.

I guess it's possible that he just went cold turkey and gave up on developing out of the blue, but I thought at the time there were a lot of signs that some sort of personal event caused him to stop so suddenly.

TADS and ADRIFT games are so quaint these days compared to the games people make in Renpy, but I think they have a retro charm to them similar to how old 8-bit and 16-bit mainstream games still have charm today with Unreal Engine 4 and RTX graphics cards helping developers run laps around those old games in terms of fidelity and content. Good writing and gameplay is timeless, though.
 

Ramirez™

Member
Aug 29, 2016
453
439
TADS and ADRIFT games are so quaint these days compared to the games people make in Renpy, but I think they have a retro charm to them similar to how old 8-bit and 16-bit mainstream games still have charm today with Unreal Engine 4 and RTX graphics cards helping developers run laps around those old games in terms of fidelity and content. Good writing and gameplay is timeless, though.
It's also counts in what moment in life you were living.
I recently came across a book serie, The Phoenix Legacy. I read it when I was 17-18. 35 years long I remembered it as great.
Now I think. Mwah.
The same with a movie. The Long Hot Summer with Don Johnson. I had fond memories of it back in the 80s.
Last year, I barely made it to the end.

There are still sparks in the darkness.
A few weeks ago I was playing Civilization 6. Nothing had changed since early 1990.
I was drinking beer, having a snack and playing Civ.
Just one more turn.
And before I knew it, it was 2 am and I stumbled to bed.
 

VonRaschke

Member
Aug 11, 2016
220
276
How long is this game
Basically depends on what you do in the game with the time limits it gives you for each day along with what ending you get. Can easily get a few hours worth out of it at minimum if you replay the game or use different saves to try out different things each day.
 
5.00 star(s) 2 Votes