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 Glulx or 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 Complete 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 6G60 (December 23, 2010) for Mac (other builds to follow).
Builds for Windows, Mac OS X, Linux console, Gnome Linux, and Solaris
Timeline of Builds
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Release notes
- The Change Log records all changes back to build 3K27.
- Build 6G60 change log. See what’s new in the latest build.
Authors of Inform 7
See also: Inform7.com, the 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. Also was the first extensions librarian.
- 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.
- Christopher Armstrong: extensions librarian.
Links
Official links
- Inform7.com, the new homepage as of April 23rd, 2009.
- Inform News. Read the latest news on Inform 7.
- Inform: The Bug Tracker, powered by Mantis.
- Inform's Suggestion Forum, powered by UserVoice.
- Inform Downloads. Download a version for Windows, Mac, or Linux.
General articles about Inform 7
- 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.
Third-party documentation, tips, and examples
See also: Category:Inform 7 tutorials, Category:Examples of Inform 7 code
- The Inform 7 Handbook by Jim Aikin. (Italian translation by Leonardo Boselli.)
- Beginner's Guide to Interactive Fiction with Inform 7 is a wikibook begun by Brandon Felger in October 2006.
- Créer des jeux textuels avec Inform 7 (homepage), French beginners' manual, by Eric Forgeot.
- Write a Text Adventure With Inform 7 by Stephen Granade.
- Inform 7 for Programmers by Ron Newcomb.
- Inform 7: An Unofficial Documentation Index by Andrew Plotkin, building on the earlier I7 index by Sean Barrett.
- Creating Interactive Fiction with Inform 7 (homepage) by Aaron A. Reed.
- Category:Inform 7 at the Rosetta Code wiki.
- Inform 7 Tips by Matt Wigdahl:
Public discussion
Notable newsgroup and forum postings about Inform 7:
- Inform 7: Public Beta, original announcement by Graham Nelson, April 30 2006.
- 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.