It is possible to change any of the text in ADRIFT, ie. any of the default text can be changed to anything else.  This is very useful if writing a game in a different language, or just to customise your adventure.

To create an ADRIFT Language Resource (*.ALR) file, simply create a blank text file, and save it with the extension alr.  ADRIFT should have pre-registered this file type, so to edit the file, all you need to do is double-click the file, and it will be opened in Notepad.

The format of the file is very simple.  All you do is write the text you want replaced, add a separator bar (usually the character to the right of the L-Shift key) then write the new text.  Separate each replacement with a newline, and you should be able to import the file by selecting File > Import > Language Resource from the menu.  Comments and blank lines are also allowed.

Example of file format;

# Comments have to start with the hash character

Also here is|You can also see
You are holding|You are carrying
You can only move|Exits are

If an adventure has had a language resource added to it, you can extract this information and create a new Language Resource file by selecting File > Export > Language Resource from the menu.

You can greatly increase the flexibility of descriptions in ADRIFT, using a combination of variables and ALR files, simulating string variables.  If you have a description which you want changed depending on the state of a particular variable, eg. you had a dial which had values "Low", "Medium" and "High", you would want to store this state in a variable and simply replace the text in the description.  You would do this as follows;

Create a variable, say "dial_value" with initial value "1".

In the description for the dial, put something like;

"The dial has a needle, currently pointing to [DIAL=%dial_value%]."

Then, in the ALR file, add the lines;

# Current position of dial
[DIAL=1]|Low
[DIAL=2]|Medium
[DIAL=3]|High

The extra characters "[DIAL= ]" are used only to prevent the ALR file from inadvertently changing other numbers.

What this does, when ADRIFT evaluates the description, it replaces %dial_value% with the current value for that variable.  Initially this is the value "1", ie, the description becomes;

"The dial has a needle, currently pointing to [DIAL=1]."

The ALR will then replace "[DIAL=1]" with "Low", thus giving the final output;

"The dial has a needle, currently pointing to Low."