What is Inform 7?

Inform 7 is a language for writing interactive fiction (IF). It is designed to be as powerful and easy to use as possible. It can be used to write the whole of an IF game, from start to finish, without the need for any other language. It is especially suitable for writing text adventures with richly developed worlds and complex storylines. Inform 7 took over from an earlier language called Inform 6, which Graham Nelson created in the 1980s.

Interactive fiction explained

An "interactive fiction" game is one in which the player's actions influence the story and the game's world. The interactive fiction genre is distinct from a "text adventure," a game where the player's activities are limited to navigating through a game world through a text-based menu, entering commands into a text-based console, or pressing buttons on a console controller.

What does Inform 7 allow its users to do?

• Inform 7 is designed with human-computer interaction in mind. It allows you to think of your game as a conversation between the player and the application, making it extremely easy to implement things like menus, progress indicators, and help messages.

• With Inform 7's unified syntax, you only need to write one parser for both player and non-player conversation. In contrast, in other languages, you'd need two completely different parsers to understand the difference between "said" and "addicted."

• Its language constructs are straightforward and elegant - yet powerful enough to allow you to express anything you need without relying on messy workarounds or low-level programming.

Guides to the system

The app offers two helpful built-in tools showing you the practical use of Inform 7: Writing With Inform (Basic Book) and the Inform Recipe Book:

• The Writing With Inform (Basic Book) is designed to help you begin using the Inform language by guiding you through the basics of program definition and syntax. You'll learn how to create, edit, and compile an Inform application, write basic syntax, and use basic variables.

• The Inform Recipe Book contains recipes written by various authors that detail techniques for writing text adventure games using the Inform language system.

Conclusions

Inform 7 is a powerful and easy-to-use tool for writing IF games from scratch. It makes it easy to implement things like menus, progress indicators, and help messages in your game.