I’m learning Inform 7, a programming language designed to create interactive works of fiction for the same Z-Machine used for many text classics such and Zork and Planetfall. My inspiration comes from Adam Parrish‘s >frotzophone, “an interface for making music with interactive fiction”.
So far, I’ve put in about three hours. Within this time frame, I’ve already been successful at creating some very rudimentary, yet interactive environments. The syntax of Inform is by far the highest level language I’ve personally ever encountered; Coding requires the use of real english language. That fascinates me, and at the same time, hard for me to wrap my brain around.
Below is the in-game action of a demo I wrote to learn the language, followed by the actual code used to create the work.
The Hack-o-torium
An Interactive Fiction by Jacob Joaquin
Release 1 / Serial number 080815 / Inform 7 build 5T18 (I6/v6.31 lib 6/12N) SD
Hack-o-torium
This room looks like an astromech spewed its guts all over place, as each nook and cranny is filled with odd electrical devices, wires, resistors, etc. You hear the busy street traffic below.
A simple but well crafted wooden staircase is here.
A large wooden table resides near the giant windows.
On The large wooden table is a bottle (closed) (in which is a clear brown liquid).
>climb stairs
Continue reading
