Creating Interactive Fiction With Inform 7

Getting Started With Inform 7

Inform 7 is an extremely powerful tool for writing interactive stories. Unlike similar tools, Inform 7 uses a form of “natural language.” In other words, it allows a writer to create a work of interactive fiction by writing somewhat normal English sentences. However, the writer must follow a rather strict set of rules in creating sentences that will really lead to an interactive story.

Some of these rules require precise use of tabs for indenting. It’s difficult to show such formatting in a typical Web page, and so we offer this Inform 7 tutorial as a .pdf document, which you can access, using this link. These days, almost all desktop and laptop computers can open a file like this one without difficulty. Unfortunately, tablets and phones may not be able to do so.

At present, there are two ways to access the Inform 7 authoring system. To get all of Inform, you have to download it from the Inform 7 Website and install it on your local computer.  Inform 7 is free of charge, and it runs on Windows, Linux, and MacOS.

There’s also a website that offers a useful portion of Inform 7 in a convenient online form. It’s called Playfic. Playfic uses spaces, rather than tabs, for indenting.

 

 

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