Inform 6: A Design System for Interactive Fiction
By John Evans
Inform is a computer language for creating interactive fiction games,
like the
famous Zork and other Infocom games. All the tools needed to design
and play
games using Inform are free.
West of House
You are standing in an open field west of a white house, with a boarded
front
door. There is a small mailbox here.
If you know these words, if they gave you a nostalgic feeling, if
the idea of
creating your own white house for others to explore appeals to you...you
need
to know about Inform.
Inform was designed by Graham Nelson, in 1993. Since then it has
undergone
many revisions, but it remains both an easy and elaborate system for
creating
interactive fiction games. Interactive fiction games, also known as
"text
adventures" or "Infocom-style games", are games based
purely on text. The
player types commands to the game, which responds by displaying small
bits of
prose describing the effects of the player's actions. Very often these
games
focus on exploration and puzzle-solving, and often feature an intricate
story
which is slowly revealed. Nonlinear and experimental storytelling
is common,
and in fact Inform is flexible enough that the "game" produced
doesn't have to
be a "game" at all. (The Interactive Encyclopedia Frobozzica
springs to mind;
an encyclopedia of creatures, objects and history found in the Zork
games.)
The Inform web page explains, in clear yet comprehensive detail,
how to create
and play interactive fiction games. To learn about Inform, you may
browse or
download the Inform Designer's Manual from the Inform website. To
compile
Inform code, you may download the Inform compiler and manual. Compiled
code results in a Z-machine file, which requires a Z-machine interpreter
to play.
Links to interpreters for many different platforms are available (everything
from Windows to Macintosh to Amiga and on back to old Atari machines).
This
is an important advantage of Z-machine files; once the file is created,
it can
be played by anyone who has the appropriate interpreter. Also, there
are many
Z-machine games created by amateur authors already available for free
download
and play. A link to the Interactive Fiction Archive can be found on
the
Inform site.
I found Inform remarkably easy to use. Within minutes after installing
the
software, you can create a game that you can actually play. Even though
it
may not have much point, it's still a great feeling to see something
you wrote
work so quickly. (A hint: To really jumpstart your game writing, skip
to
Chapter III, Section 7 of the Designer's Manual.) Creating a truly
interesting game takes time, of course, but with Inform Graham Nelson
has
taken much of the routine work out of programming an interactive fiction
game.
Finally, there is a small but active community of interactive fiction
authors
on the web, which you can get involved in. Every autumn an amateur
Interactive Fiction Competition is held, with smaller mini-comps happening
through the year. So mark your calendars.