Which engine ?

[fredingue]

I'm interested in writing and publishing similar stories (text + maps).

Can you tell me how you did it ? (engine or game maker) ?

Thanks !

[Sir Garbagetruck]

Yes, yes he could:

http://www.eblong.com/zarf/if.html#howwrote

Over the years he's written quite a bit about it, and part of the reason this game was late (from it's kickstarter estimate) was he was expanding the abilities of the language/interpreter. So his webpages/writings/etc. are a bit more than a simple reply here can suffice; luckily he's got the webpages and so on to cover that.

[Sir Garbagetruck]

(mind you, some of that writing may just be invisible to you as you didn't back it on kickstarter - meaning that what I remember of his expansion writings may be locked in mails that were sent out originally via kickstarter, but kickstarter changed and stopped sending them... so they're POSSIBLY only available on the kickstarter website.

... but that isn't that much of a problem. The Inform and IF community itself, of which he's an active member, is quite helpful and encouraging to folks who want to try their hand at it.)

[zarf_home]

All the posts about game development on the kickstarter blog are public. You can also read through most of them at http://gameshelf.jmac.org/zarfplan/ .

Anyway, the short answer is: I used Inform 7 ( http://inform7.com/ ) as the development language. The interpreter is called Lectrote ( https://github.com/erkyrath/lectrote/releases ).

I modified Lectrote to add the map and journal windows; it's all in Javascript so it's easy to hack. Integrating the map/journal state with the game state is a moderate nuisance; I wrote up some information about it at http://gameshelf.jmac.org/2015/06/customizing-an-interpreter-for-a-glulx-game-release/ , although the sample code there is C rather than JS.

You could also construct a map within the Inform game itself. That wouldn't be a separate window, but it's easier to set up. See Emily Short's _Counterfeit Monkey_ for an example.

[fredingue]

Thanks for answers, alas i think it was more simple (my first contact with renpy was "ouh la la !" and i just bought TyranoBuilder to see if i can manage to produce at least sketchy stories)