Inform 7

Inform 7 is an interactive fiction authorship system. It’s not the only one out there (see the other resources on Writing IF for how to choose a system), but it’s the one I use; I’ve also been quite closely involved in its development.

Of potential interest to Inform 7 users:

• The Inform home page
• Library extensions that can be used to expand I7’s abilities
• The documentation for Inform 7 online
• Several complete games with sample code in Inform 7
• The bug report form for filing bugs in I7
• An article of mine on writing in I7
• Interim progress post: a post to rec.arts.int-fiction describing what is likely to happen to the language next, as of January 2007
• Draft of syntax reference, updated through December 2007
• “Inform for Fiction Authors”: a post about how elements of interactive fiction, and Inform in particular, correspond to elements of traditional fiction writing
• Chart of rules: a visual presentation of the major rulebooks used by I7 during play.

I’ve also put a few documents, largely for interim use, on this site, about things like room description modification and the relationship between I6 and I7.

There is not an official separate forum or mailing list for Inform 7, but many people discuss coding issues on the intfiction forum. A search of the group will turn up answers to some frequently-asked questions.

Also of possible interest, here are some samples of released source code for complete I7 games by other people:

• Child’s Play, by Stephen Granade
• Fate, by Victor Gijsbers (unlike the other links, this goes to a zip-file download rather than a web page)
• The Beast of Torrack Moor, by Linda Wright
• Accuse, by David A. Wheeler
• A Late Delivery to #avalon, by Michael Martin
• Robopuppy Redux, by J. D. Clemens
• The Amazing Interactive Turing Machine, by J. D. Clemens
• Zork (adapted by Dean Menezes)
• List of games on IFDB with released I7 code (including some already mentioned here).

And tutorials:

• Very introductory samples of I7 usage developed in an I7-using course. (Not by the Inform 7 team, but may still be useful for some.)
• Similar to the foregoing, a couple of tutorials and samples for use by students grades 9-12
• A tutorial on Inform for users of Gnome Linux
• A tutorial on Inform from the very early days (just after I7’s release)
• Inform 7 for Programmers: an overview at the IF wiki that describes the features and behavior of I7 in programming terminology and in a structured, top-down way.

And some odd/esoteric uses of I7:

• Inform 7 version of Dungeon (okay, perhaps not that odd)
• I7 game tied in with real-world temperature sensors that detected and reacted to liquids poured into a cup, among other things.
• Inform 7 code poetry.
• An Inform 7 quine (program that prints its own source code).