Quest 5

Quest 5, commonly just called Quest, is an authoring system published in 2012 for Interactive Fiction. It creates XML files with the extension .aslx, which can be edited either in an official, GUI-based editor (written in a combination of C# and Visual Basic. NET), or as plaintext. The editor contains a feature to "publish" these as .quest files, which are ZIP files containing the original .aslx as well as supplemental files. The .aslx or the .quest files can be played either in the editor or in a "web player" (which uses the same backend as the editor).

Quest 5 should be confused with neither Quest versions 1-4, which it superseded but is incompatible with (although the Quest 5 editor contains a feature to play them), nor QuestMaker, which is entirely unrelated aside from being another interactive fiction format.

Extensions
Quest games are all based on .aslx files, which are XML-based files described here. To distribute games, the .aslx files, as well as any accompanying media, gets packaged into a ZIP archive with the extension .quest. Saved games (see below) are apparently in the same format as .quest files and have the extension .quest-save.

Saved Games
Quest 5 saved games, which have the extension .quest-save, are in the same format as the game files themselves, and in fact are altered versions of the original game files.

Identification
The first line of a .aslx file will look like "" (minor version numbers varying), unless it has been created by hand. In either case, the root node of the tree (the next line, if automatically generated) will look like " " (for Quest 5.8.x). It is unclear whether the 5 will be incremented to 6, what will happen once the minor version exceeds 9, etc., so it is probably best to identify by the version-independent parts of these, as Quest versions 1-4 use a completely different format.

Software

 * A GitHub repository containing the source code of the editor, web player, etc.

Samples

 * The official website, containing a repository of created games
 * A Quest game taken from the public repository

Links

 * Interactive Fiction Wiki entry for Quest 5
 * Overview of the software internals
 * A "reference", the closest thing that exists to a complete specification
 * "Upgrade Notes" between versions