Uploaded to the Inform extensions site a small extension that adds some tutorial advice to any game: specifically, it introduces LOOK, EXAMINE, TAKE, DROP, INVENTORY, and compass directions, as well as the meta-commands, in an order that depends on the opening layout of the game.
The tutorial mode can be turned off (of course), and its specific advice may be replaced with alternative instructional rules.
Some small bugs that were preventing the Inform 7 extensions RSS feed from appearing quite right under Firefox and Safari (two different bugs) have now, we think, been resolved.
I knew you’d be thrilled.
For those who are interested, the introductory article and blog post for the Guardian’s text adventure project:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/apr/30/textadventure
…is up. This is a milestone in a number of ways: it’s the 15th Birthday edition of Inform, and it finishes a number of things that have been in progress since January of last year. The Mac IDE comes with a simply awesome table of contents, which lets you view just a small section of your code at a time, or zip back up to the top level; this will filter through to Windows as well. I already find this so essential that during the testing phase I hated those occasions when I had to go back to using the last official build to test user problems…
There are an increasing number of IF-related blogs, and now they have their own Planet, so you can find and follow all the news at once. Check it out — and if you also have a blog you think should be included, notice that the right-hand column includes contact information for Christopher Armstrong, who put this together.
What do you know? I was wrong: we did pass 100 cover art images. And there are still several days remaining (and several items on the requested-covers list).
Emily Short's Interactive Storytelling 