Inform 7

Inform 7 is an interactive fiction authoring system. It is notable for its use of a subset of natural language and for being rule based, rather than object based.

Although it is (in name) the successor to Inform 6, the syntax of the language is entirely different to its predecessor. The link to Inform 6 lies under the hood: an Inform story is translated first to Inform 6, which is then compiled into Z-Code by the Inform 6 compiler. This means that works produced using Inform 7 can be played on Z-Code interpreters (although there are some modifications required, as, for example, Inform 7 games tend to use a larger stack than Inform 6).

Inform 7 was first released as a public beta on April 30th, 2006.

Early Inform 7 games

The earliest Inform 7 game released to the public may have been Mystery House Possessed (Emily Short; 2005) for the Mystery House Taken Over project.

On March 1st, 2006, three example games were released (see the rgif announcement: Three Games in Inform 7). These games were:

Bronze (Emily Short). Example of pathfinding and room adjacency. This is an updated version of the same game from Speed-IF Gruff.
Damnatio Memoriae (Emily Short). Example of link-based magic as first seen in Savoir-Faire.
The Reliques of Tolti-Aph (Graham Nelson). Example of RPG-style combat and magic systems.

Inform 7 was released as a public beta on April 30th, 2006. Three more example games were released at the same time:

Glass (Emily Short). Example of managing conversation flow.
When in Rome 1: Accounting for Taste (Emily Short). Example of directable NPC and an NPC with random characteristics.
When in Rome 2: Far from Home (Emily Short). Example of NPC with random characteristics and behaviors.

All six example games are available from the Worked Examples page.

Code Snippets

I started this section before speaking to Graham Nelson about how we might share code examples. He said he had thought about the idea, but wanted to ponder it some more. If and when he decides to do something, I will likely alter this section. In the meantime, examples are welcome. --David Cornelson 21:27, 13 May 2006 (EST)

Scenery Tables - defining scenery using tables by David Cornelson.

Public Beta Releases

The latest is build 5U92 (it dates back to September 13, 2008).

Builds for Windows, Mac OS X, Linux console, Gnome Linux, and Solaris

Timeline of Builds

3K27 - (30 April 2006)
3K56 - (4 May 2006)
3L95 - (14 May 2006)
3M43 - (21 May 2006)
3P53 - (9 June 2006)
3R85 - (26 June 2006)
3T38 - (10 July 2006)
3V01 - (2 August 2006)
3Z95 - (14 September 2006)
4B91 - (10 November 2006)
4F59 - (21 December 2006)
4K40 - (23 January 2007)
4K41 - (23 January 2007)
4S08 - (25 March 2007)
4U65 - (27 April 2007)
4U67 - (7 May 2007)
4W37 - (27 July 2007)
4X60 - (24 August 2007)
5G67 - (10 November 2007)
5J39 - (1 December 2007)
5T18 - (30 April 2008)
5U92 - (13 September 2008)

Release notes

The Change Log records all changes back to build 3K27.
The Release Notes note only what’s new in build 5T18.

Authors of Inform 7

See also: official website.

Graham Nelson: creator of Inform 7. Also wrote the documentation.
Emily Short: wrote the examples and the Test Suite used for regression testing.
Andrew Hunter: author of the Mac OS X user interface and of the overall visual design.
David Kinder: author of the Windows user interface.
P. F. Chimento: author of the GNOME user interface for Fedora, Ubuntu and other Linux distributions.
Adam Thornton: ported the underlying tools for Linux.
Peter Seebach and Cedric Knight: hosted the official website.
Emily Short, Andrew Plotkin and Jesse McGrew: theoretical guidance and advice.
Sonja Kesserich: was a notable tester.

Links

Inform 7 Homepage.
SPAG #44 - Interviews with Graham Nelson and Emily Short about Inform 7.
Inform 7 at IFiction-FR, the French IF wiki. "Inform 7 and the future of IF games in foreign languages".
Inform 7 in Wikipedia.
The SourceForge page of Gnome Inform 7 for Linux.
A Comparison of TADS 3 and Inform 7 by Eric Eve.

Documentation, Tips, and Examples by Individuals

Beginner's Guide to Interactive Fiction with Inform 7 is a wikibook begun by Brandon Felger in October 2006.
Write a Text Adventure With Inform 7 by Stephen Granade.
Inform 7 for Programmers by Ron Newcomb.

Public discussion

Notable newsgroup and forum postings about Inform 7:

Inform 7: Possible future developments, raif post by Emily Short and Graham Nelson, January 2007.
"Inform 7" is the wrong name, raif thread begun March 29, 2007. "Natural Inform" was the working name for Inform 7, and is what the compiler binary ".ni" stands for. However, Graham Nelson states: "Natural Inform is not officially the name of anything."

Reviews

Introducing Inform 7 - a semi-brief overview of I7 at Stephen Granade of Brass Lantern.
Some Observations on Using Inform 7 - article by Emily Short.
Natural Language Game Programming with Inform 7 - article by Liza Daly, June 2006, for O'Reilly's ONLamp.com.
"Informless" - Shamus Young reviews Inform 7 for Twenty Sided, December 2006.
- "Phantom of the Arcade" - Follow-up: Shamus Young asks Susan Arendt of "The Escapist" about her experience using Inform 7 to write Phantom of the Arcade. October 2008.