Inform 7: Interactive Fiction from Natural Language

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http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts.int-fiction/browse_thread/thread/f5919cf1b49badac/17791dfefeec46e0

holy shit, i gotta try this out. i've been out of the IF loop for too long, i knew nothing of this.

― a.b. (alanbanana), Monday, 1 May 2006 06:43 (eighteen years ago) link

!!!!!!

― Gravel Puzzleworth (Gregory Henry), Monday, 1 May 2006 14:41 (eighteen years ago) link

so what's actually new in 7 - to save me skimming :-)

― Britain's Obtusest Shepherd (Alan), Monday, 1 May 2006 16:10 (eighteen years ago) link

http://www.inform-fiction.org/I7/Inform%207.html

holy shit! is this 4 realz??

― Britain's Obtusest Shepherd (Alan), Monday, 1 May 2006 16:11 (eighteen years ago) link

i mean FUCKING hell, have they TOTALLY changed the entire syntax and structure of inform programmes?

― Britain's Obtusest Shepherd (Alan), Monday, 1 May 2006 16:13 (eighteen years ago) link

ah, 6 is still the "engine" but this is a radical rebuild nonetheless

― Britain's Obtusest Shepherd (Alan), Monday, 1 May 2006 16:26 (eighteen years ago) link

very cool

― sleep (sleep), Monday, 1 May 2006 16:28 (eighteen years ago) link

bah, the app isn't running ok on my mac :-(

― Britain's Obtusest Shepherd (Alan), Monday, 1 May 2006 16:30 (eighteen years ago) link

bah they screwed up the 10.3.9 compatibility at the last minute (trying to make it a universal binary)

― Britain's Obtusest Shepherd (Alan), Monday, 1 May 2006 16:32 (eighteen years ago) link

Yeah, this just came out yesterday. It looks effing hottt. Although apparently the natural language stuff breaks down often enough... Stephen Granade has a good overview at the Brass Lantern, which I can't link to right now but you can google it or guess the URL easily enough.

This does make me think maybe I will try my hand at it again, if for no other reason than to play with the programming language.

― Casuistry (Chris P), Monday, 1 May 2006 18:15 (eighteen years ago) link

that would be http://brasslantern.org/writers/howto/i7intro.html

― Britain's Obtusest Shepherd (Alan), Monday, 1 May 2006 18:50 (eighteen years ago) link

wow, i have to recommend the "white paper" PDF in the downloads section http://www.inform-fiction.org/I7/Download%20-%20Documents.html for those really intrigued by this new approach.

― Britain's Obtusest Shepherd (Alan), Monday, 1 May 2006 22:00 (eighteen years ago) link

Really, really, really exciting?

― Gravel Puzzleworth (Gregory Henry), Tuesday, 2 May 2006 13:51 (eighteen years ago) link

YES. i am picking through the "online" documentation and have had a look at the "Standard Rules" (which appears to be a large chunk of the "new library"), and on top of all this amazing stuff, i'm stunned at the usefulness of the IDE. the index! the world/map woo!

― Britain's Obtusest Shepherd (Alan), Tuesday, 2 May 2006 14:43 (eighteen years ago) link

i like the way the "standard rules" reads:

A room is a kind.
A thing is a kind.
A direction is a kind.
A door is a kind of thing.
A container is a kind of thing.
A supporter is a kind of thing.
A backdrop is a kind of thing.
The plural of person is people.
A person is a kind of thing.
...
A thing can be lit or unlit. A thing is usually unlit.
A thing can be edible or inedible. A thing is usually inedible.
[etc]

― Britain's Obtusest Shepherd (Alan), Tuesday, 2 May 2006 14:49 (eighteen years ago) link

they've built in "best route from A to B"! which makes my old library contribution redundant. i'd love to think it was my code ingested in there, but i had a look and "I7_RouteTo" bears little resemblance to my old code

― Britain's Obtusest Shepherd (Alan), Tuesday, 2 May 2006 15:22 (eighteen years ago) link

As if there weren't enough exciting things in the world, now this!

― Casuistry (Chris P), Tuesday, 2 May 2006 20:21 (eighteen years ago) link

i cannot tell if you are being serious :-(

i CANNOT stop thinking about this, i have to leave ilx and set up shop in usenet for a while

― Britain's Obtusest Shepherd (Alan), Wednesday, 3 May 2006 08:22 (eighteen years ago) link

Someone should write an IF molecular genetics tutorial. I imagine most mechanics could be roughly translated into a series of "take" and "use" style commands. The player wouldn't necessarily even have to represent anything specific, just a sort of focal point for a chain of causal activity.
You could do one for a lot of stuff in biology!

― Dan I. (Dan I.), Wednesday, 3 May 2006 09:41 (eighteen years ago) link

I got up to Chapter 4 in the documentation and was like "I should totally do this!" and then thought "Not only do I not have time or energy to devote to this right now but also I have no ideas and no point in doing such a thing and it would mostly be to mess around with the nifty language" and then thought "yeah, exactly, I should totally do this!"

― Casuistry (Chris P), Wednesday, 3 May 2006 10:19 (eighteen years ago) link

I'd like to say I'm mostly excited about the giant puddles of New Blood this will surely set in motion? All the great new ideas people will have the spark and ability to put into motion? But no, actually I'm mainly excited because a direction is a kind. A door is a kind of thing. OMG OMG

― Gravel Puzzleworth (Gregory Henry), Wednesday, 3 May 2006 10:53 (eighteen years ago) link

i've hacked together a 2MB pdf of the documentation if anyone is interested

― Britain's Obtusest Shepherd (Alan), Wednesday, 3 May 2006 14:14 (eighteen years ago) link

This is awesome.... If only it could be used to generate MUD environs.

― JW (ex machina), Wednesday, 3 May 2006 15:23 (eighteen years ago) link

I would like to see that pdf alan!

― Dan I. (Dan I.), Wednesday, 3 May 2006 21:24 (eighteen years ago) link

just noticed that some sections near the end aren't showing. i'll fix and do a YSI

― Britain's Obtusest Shepherd (Alan), Thursday, 4 May 2006 10:10 (eighteen years ago) link

ha ha, turns out there's nothing missing, but there are some left over "chapter 22" html files hidden away in the application that have been tacked on the end.

here's my YSI of it as 2up on landscape A4 http://s63.yousendit.com/d.aspx?id=28P3V33OS4FJO1DXZYQPEYNW53

and regular portrait A4 http://s63.yousendit.com/d.aspx?id=1DXMRIXWHMWX41VCR85QFUGX71

― Britain's Obtusest Shepherd (Alan), Thursday, 4 May 2006 10:40 (eighteen years ago) link

It has "real adventurers do not use such language" implemented as standard.

― tom west (thomp), Friday, 5 May 2006 15:01 (eighteen years ago) link

Yes, it is still Inform.

― Casuistry (Chris P), Friday, 5 May 2006 15:32 (eighteen years ago) link

two years pass...

5T18 for Gnome supports the skein, but not in Gutsy! Therefore my eeeXubuntu installation won't 'ave it. I reeeeeally don't want to be compiling this thing from source.

― Autumn Almanac, Friday, 9 May 2008 23:58 (sixteen years ago) link

Wait, the generic deb (sourceforge) works, so far. Duh me.

― Autumn Almanac, Saturday, 10 May 2008 02:22 (sixteen years ago) link

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