…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…
Tag: Inform
Wiki-based IF Design
I’ve been asked to announce, for people who might like to participate or look on, that The Guardian’s gameblog is doing a group IF project. The language of choice is Inform 6, but it looks to me as though it’s possible to participate in a non-coding capacity as well, if I6 is not your thing. I have the impression that they would be glad of participation from some IF veterans.
The project is due to be officially launched tomorrow, but there is already content at http://textadventure.org.uk.
So you want multi-player IF?
Thanks to Jesse McGrew, there is now a system for same! See this announcement, which — despite the date and initial goofy front — is actually true. You can make yourself an account, create your own realm within the larger multiplayer world, and compose a game in Inform 7 that allows multiple players to connect and play simultaneously.
Yeah, really.
Assorted News
There is indeed an IF Art Show again this year; deadline, May 2.
Play This Thing! is reviewing Photopia (not my review, this time, but I thought people might be interested).
Jeff Nyman has another interesting post on his IF classes, this time on why his next class will be using TADS 3 rather than Inform 7.
Grandtextauto points to Hypertextopia, a program especially for the creation of “axial” hypertexts — there’s one main line of narrative to follow, with what might be considered footnotes, expansions, or embellishments. I wasn’t thrilled with the couple of examples I briefly looked at, but it represents a possibly-interesting alternative take on how hypertext design might be done.
A really intriguing post on IF and storytelling
Jeff Nyman has written up some experiences using Inform 7 and TADS 3 with authors new to IF (or at least new to IF programming) and their responses about storytelling this medium and the specific tools involved.
Deluxe Doors extension
Added a new extension:
Allows for doors that are implemented as having independent ‘faces’ — to put a knocker on that can only be seen from on side, for instance, or to allow the player to lock one side with a key but the other with a latch. Also introduces a ‘latched door’ kind.