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All that you'll find here is material connected with Interactive Fiction (IF) --
text-based adventure games like Zork and its successors.
(Need some background information?
Try the Ifaq.)
Some items are of potential interest to the whole IF community:
- the Cloak of Darkness Annotated Adventure
("text adventure's version of the Rosetta Stone" -- Wolf),
an exercise in implementing the same example game in all of today's
mainstream IF authoring systems.
- my one-page summary of important IF links, Parsifal.
- information on editors suitable for IF development.
- a selection of licenses spelling out
the terms under which Freeware games -- the mainstay of our community -- may be distributed.
These relate only to Inform 6,
Graham Nelson's impressive Z-machine compilation system:
- two utility programs:
INSTRUCTOR for reformatting
Inform source programs, and
INSPECTOR for poking around
inside recent Inform game files; both are written in Glulx Inform.
- the Inform Beginner's Guide
a 280pp book designed to be used alongside the existing
Inform Designer's Manual by Inform newcomers.
- the Inform FAQ, giving answers
to many Frequently Asked Questions about Inform.
- the Informary,
which summarises Inform-related developments in recent months.
- the Suggestions List, collecting ideas
for possible future changes to the Inform compiler and Library files,
has moved to the Inform site (alongside the
Patch List).
- Inform in four minutes,
a 4pp/75KB summary of the Inform language ("pretty cool" -- Zarf),
and a companion 6pp/90KB guide to the Inform Library,
InfoLib at your fingertips.
These zipped PDF files are intended to be printed rather than used online.
- the InfLight overview
of Inform compilation and debugging.
- another overview, InfAct,
of Inform NPCs.
- and one about Inform objects: InFancy.
- I've withdrawn Just Enough Glulx, because Compiler 6.30 and Library 6/11
now provide virtually equivalent support for both Z-machine and Glulx games.
But you'll probably still find useful information in this guidance on
character sets and
graphic/sound resource files.
- a handful of addon library packages:
BoxClever.h,
CCPL.h,
Daemons.h,
Random.h,
Scenic.h,
Shuffle.h,
SmartCantGo.h,
Stars.h,
StringMaker.h,
WriteList.h,
and debugging modules called Dump.h
and CheckOut.h.
Finally, there's Letters from Home,
a lightweight unpretentious romp (though with some tricky aspects),
and my only significant example of IF authorship.
You can download the game (180KB)
and a walkthrough,
or read some reviews by judges
in the IF Competition of Autumn 2000.
If you've not already got one, you'll also need a
Z-machine interpreter program.
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