zlacker

MDL looks really interesting. Is there any similar modern-day language for more advanced (graphically and input wise) adventure games? Because if not I might build one...

>>traes+(OP)
In the ‘90s (?), LucasArts and Sierra both developed VMs for graphical adventure games (SCUMM and AGI); you can look into languages targetting those.

Inform is a more modern language for text adventures.

Ink is an open-source embeddable language for dialog trees and story puzzles. You’ll need to bring your own game engine, but there’s a Unity3d plugin to help.

>>kd5bjo+y2
Inform is the most direct descendant of Zork. It was inspired by the work of Infocom, a company founded by most of the authors of the MIT Zork. Folks especially enamored of Zork should start there. Inform has some support for displaying images.

>>traes+(OP)
MDL is a lisp descendent so you might find lisp an avenue worth investigating. I'd never seen MDL (or heard of it) before looking at this, but even before I googled to make sure, I could tell that it was heavily based on lisp.

>>traes+(OP)
Inform6 can compile to the Z machine and it's really easy to use.

>>traes+(OP)
MDL was a language that was good for creating these mini DSLs in. Lisps today can do that too.

If you want a modern language that is purpose-built for creating games like this, there are a ton of visual novel engines. Those engines are optimized for trees/paths of dialogue and text, and for displaying media (images + audio) with the text.

renpy [0] is probably the most popular of those, but there's a long history of them if you do some digging with those keywords.

[0]: https://www.renpy.org/

>>traes+(OP)
I'm not an expert in this, but I think Twine is one well-supported option. In general the genre is called "Interactive Fiction" these days, and there's a bunch of engines for it, both graphical and non-. There's a broad overview here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interactive_fiction#Software

>>kevinm+b3
Inform is not a descendant of Zork, it has no connection to it besides producing output files in ZMachine / Z-Code format, which is well-specified so that anyone can write a generator.

As far as programming the actual story goes, it's an independent implementation based on entirely different principles (Zork was written in MDL which was a Lisp).