Inform 7 Handbook by Jim Aikin version 2.0 (May 2015) valid for 6L38 1 The Inform 7 Handbook is copyright (c) 2015 by Jim Aikin. The Inform 7 Handbook has been released under and is subject to the terms of the Creative Commons Public License, the terms of which are hereby incorporated by reference. Please see Appendix C of this book and read it before using this material. Your use of this material signifies your agreement to the terms of the License. You are free to copy, distribute, and transmit this work, and you are free to excerpt and adapt it, in whole or in part, subject to the following conditions: 1) You must attribute the work by prominently displaying the words “Inform 7 Handbook, by Jim Aikin.” 2) You may not in any way suggest that Jim Aikin endorses you or your use of the Inform 7 Handbook. 3) You may not receive any monetary or other compensation for your copying, distribution, or transmission of this work, nor for any derivative work that incorporates it, in whole or in part. 4) If you alter, transform, or build upon this work, you may distribute the resulting work only under the same or similar license to this one. 5) For any reuse or distribution, you must make clear to others the license terms of this work by incorporating the text of the license (see Appendix C), or by including a link to a Web page wherein the license resides. 2 Table of Contents Foreword................................................................................................................................................8 Acknowledgments............................................................................................................................11 About the Author..............................................................................................................................11 Chapter 1: Getting Started.................................................................................................................12 Downloading & Installing................................................................................................................14 The Inform 7 Program......................................................................................................................14 The Page Headers........................................................................................................................16 The Go! Button............................................................................................................................20 The Release Button......................................................................................................................22 Other Features..............................................................................................................................23 Using the Built-In Documentation...................................................................................................23 What Happens in a Game.................................................................................................................24 Entering Commands....................................................................................................................25 Downloading & Playing Games.......................................................................................................29 What’s This .z8 Stuff All About, Anyway?.................................................................................29 Writing Your First Game..................................................................................................................31 From the Top................................................................................................................................32 The Detail Trap............................................................................................................................33 Title Trickery...............................................................................................................................33 Telling a Story..............................................................................................................................35 Managing Your Project(s)............................................................................................................35 About Inform Source Code..........................................................................................................36 All About Bugs.................................................................................................................................36 Testing Your Game...........................................................................................................................38 Using the Debugging Commands.....................................................................................................39 Another Way to Debug................................................................................................................41 Puzzles..............................................................................................................................................43 Extensions for Inform.......................................................................................................................44 Where to Learn More.......................................................................................................................46 Chapter 2: Rooms & Scenery.............................................................................................................47 Creating Your First Room................................................................................................................48 Scenery.............................................................................................................................................51 The Names of Things...................................................................................................................52 How Much Scenery Is Enough?..................................................................................................55 Distant Scenery.................................................................................................................................56 Adding More Rooms to the Map......................................................................................................58 The Great Outdoors..........................................................................................................................61 Enterable Scenery.............................................................................................................................64 Doors................................................................................................................................................65 Locked Doors...............................................................................................................................67 Secret Doors.................................................................................................................................69 3 Dangerous Doors.........................................................................................................................70 Travel by Fiat...................................................................................................................................71 Windows...........................................................................................................................................71 “You can’t go that way.”...................................................................................................................72 Duplicate Exits & Twisty Connections............................................................................................73 Hallways with Lots of Doors.......................................................................................................75 Changing the Map During the Game...............................................................................................76 Regions.............................................................................................................................................78 Backdrops.........................................................................................................................................80 Removing a Backdrop.................................................................................................................80 Dark Rooms......................................................................................................................................81 Backdrops in Dark Rooms...........................................................................................................84 Seemingly Identical Rooms..............................................................................................................84 Floorless Rooms...............................................................................................................................85 When Is a Room “visited”?..............................................................................................................85 More About Room Descriptions.......................................................................................................87 Chapter 3: Things................................................................................................................................90 Creating Things................................................................................................................................90