News about Inform 7

Matt Arnold is considering running an Inform workshop at Penguicon. He writes:

It seems like a perfect fit to run an Inform workshop during Penguicon, a science fiction and open source software convention that I run in Michigan. The good thing about that arrangement is that the convention covers the overhead, like facility rental, computer lab, and audio-visual equipment.

One of the keys of creating this event would be to collect the locations of those who would be interested in attending, and how far they would be willing to travel to it.

People who might be interested in such an event should write to Matt at matt.mattarn@gmail.com.

Jim Aikin has announced a documentation project now in progress — a book-length guide to Inform written for readers in the 11-to-15 age group, and also for adults who are new to IF and programming. Though not yet complete, the project already contains quite a lot of information.

Jim has invited feedback and comments from readers.

Iain Merrick has released version 1.2.4 of Git, his direct threaded interpreter for the Glulx virtual machine. Glulx is one of the two VMs on which Inform-written works of IF can be played - the other is the more traditional Z-machine, which can only handle smaller works; authors can choose which they want to use with the Settings panel in Inform. Git is generally faster than the reference implementation for Glulx, called Glulxe, and version 1.2.4 adds support for the new “Inform veneer acceleration” opcodes recently added to the Glulx specification, which makes it *much* faster still.

The speed gains are only realised when a story file is played back on v1.2.4 or later of git, so we’d ask all interpreter writers using git to upgrade as soon as possible. The speed gains also only show for a story file produced by Inform release 5Z71 or later, so authors of existing IF works which feel a little slow at present might want to re-release them using the new 5Z71.

There are details posted on RAIF.

Dr. Jeremiah McCall uses Inform, IF, and other types of computer game in his history classes at the Cincinnati Country Day School. His work was recently written up in the Cincinnati Enquirer. The article doesn’t mention IF, but it does have some interesting comments from students and from Dr. McCall about the use of gaming in education.

The latest issue of IF magazine SPAG is now out, including a piece by Aaron Reed on the making of Blue Lacuna and his experiences using Inform 7.

Jim Aikin has been working with homeschooled students aged 11-14 who were learning to write IF with Inform 7 — he writes up the experience here.

Nels Bergquist’s eighth-grade English class uses Inform in a creative writing exercise: students work together to produce complete, winnable games.

Mr. Bergquist’s assignment includes detailed instructions on how to prepare a game design document, including both story and game elements. To develop story, students write paragraphs describing the setting and at least three characters to be incorporated in the narrative, as well as a synopsis of the major challenge the player character will face. To develop the game structure, students create detailed maps, listing the characters and objects to be found in each place. Each game must feature at least three game endings, of which at least one must be a victory condition.

Programming begins only after this preliminary work. Mr. Bergquist provides in-class guidance on coding development, introducing new code concepts at regular intervals. The sample code is collected into an example code sheet, available as a resource for everyone. Some students delve further into the manual, and contribute their own solutions to the example sheet.

Results of the assignment are evaluated in terms of their ideas and content, organization, and prose style.

Mr. Bergquist has kindly shared with us a video of his students at work.

Aaron Reed’s recently-released Blue Lacuna is the largest Inform game yet created. Aaron writes:

Blue Lacuna is among the largest text-based interactive stories ever produced, a full-length novel/adventure game that explores the themes and characters introduced in blueful. As a wayfarer, you will find new worlds to explore, complex characters to befriend or anger, choices to make that affect the fate of worlds, and a story whose ultimate meaning and resolution is defined by you.

You may have played interactive fiction or text adventures before… but you’ve never played one like this.

Update: In a substantial feat of literate programming, the entire massive source code of Blue Lacuna is now available — as a bound text.

First, a bit about myself. I used to be a professional adventure game programmer and designer at Sierra On-line. Ten years ago, when my first child was born, I decided to stop working and become a stay-at-home dad. To keep busy, I signed up to teach classes about things I was passionate about (mainly games, puzzles, math, and programming) at a public school resource center for homeschoolers. I enjoyed working with homeschoolers so much, that several years later when my own kids turned school age, I decided to homeschool my own children.

One of the first classes I taught was an interactive fiction class using TADS 2. Really, the goal was to teach an introduction to object-oriented programming — the “interactive fiction” component was a secondary goal. I merely chose interactive fiction because I thought it would give the kids something fun to program, and excite kids who wouldn’t ordinarily be interested in programming.

Continue reading →

I’m using Inform as a tool to help my advanced undergraduate students in Medieval Studies to develop alternative teaching tools for lower-level college and upper-level high school students; the secret benefit of this process, of course, is that any student who composes such a game learns a WHOLE lot about the material he or she is trying to impart to the players of that game. You can find a nice, concise, and helpful press release of the whole shebang here.

Continue reading →