#inform 7

[prokopetz]

By contrast, the putting it on, inserting it into, and eating actions are not specified to apply to a carried thing: they perform an implicit taking attempt during their check rules, or may perform one in the eating action's case. [...] [T]he primacy of the carrying requirements rule [means] that numerous actions for which a better response would be an error regarding absurdity instead [attempt] an implicit take, e.g., if the moon is a backdrop, put moon in me would attempt to take the moon and dryly reply: "That's hardly portable."

—Proposals for the evolution of Inform E-0015: World model enforcement, subsection "Implicit taking"

While a discussion of the particulars and motivations of this proposed set of bug fixes is beyond the scope of a Tumblr post, I thought this blog's followership might appreciate the fact that, in Inform's present implementation, attempting to stick the Moon up your butt fails solely because the "inserting it into" action generates an implicit "take" action during its setup, and scenery objects are not valid targets for "take".

[golmac]

let's make IF returns <3

[thiskobold]

Here is an example of what kind of black magic syntax you have to use in Inform 7:

Now the currentstop of the bus is the number corresponding to the destination of the location on the table of stops

If anyone wants me to explain what the fuck this is, what it does, or why I made it, let me know because I am happy to supply answers

[randomarceus]

You know what? Fuck you. [silently randomises your perception stat and changes the 'look' dialogue depending on what you got]

[playpurpur]

learning inform 7 and taking advantage of kissing being a built-in action

[manonamora-if]

Neo-Twiny Jam lil' entries

Because of course I made some. Filled up the max like last years.

The Lady with the Camellias

This is a short prototype parser, inspired by the titular book from Dumas fils. I thought 500 words would be enough to adapt one of the scenes from the book. It obviously wasn't. But hey, I learned how to make a simple Inform 7 game. If yall are lucky, maybe a longer version drop one day.

machina caerulea

A short sci-fi Twine game inspired by the tale of Bluebeard. Similar in style to last year's Collision. There are 3 endings to this one.

Bon Dieu ! Et une lessive aussi ?

Only available in French. A short surreal Moiki game, inspired by an IRL moment. It's really stupid, and it just took me a few hours to make. Make Moiki games, it's simple and fun!

[definitelynotplanetfall]

Annoyances from dealing with backdrops in I7. Backdrops suck and you shouldn't use them.

Backdrops are objects that can be seen and interacted with from multiple locations, as opposed to most objects which have exactly one location at a time - except this is faked. They are regular objects that Inform moves around to follow the player and the player specifically. If you have a "sky" backdrop that is in every outdoor room, checking "if paul can see the sky" when Paul is not in the same room as the player, it will fail even if he is in a room that the sky would be in if the player was there. If you want NPCs to do stuff independently while the player isn't watching, and need them to do these things programatically/simulationistically rather than teleporting and hardcoded-state-setting between setpieces, then you had better hope they don't need to interact with any backdrops to do this.

When you create a backdrop you can set its location in 3 ways:

as an arbitrary set of rooms.

as everywhere in a given region. (functionally the same, as regions cannot change during play.)

as a description of rooms - it will show up in every room matching some description.

Let's say I want to make a door that can be moved around, because I7's built in doors cannot (I gather because they are shackled to the specification of I6). Consider this code. (>'s are because tumblr handles indentation poorly.)

When play begins (this is the initialize pseudoor locations rule): >repeat with D running through pseudoors: >>move the D backdrop to all rooms connected by D.

This does not compile. The reason this does not compile is it assumes the stupidest possible intention: to store "rooms connected by D" as the condition for rooms the pseudoor is in. The compiler wags its finger at you because at the time the condition will be checked, the variable D will not exist. There is no way to bake the description so it becomes "all rooms connected by <whatever the current value of D is when the code runs, and then keeping that value when D changes or goes away>". This makes descriptions great for enabling sweeping rule conditions and the like, but makes them basically useless to store as a value.

Well, you could get the list of rooms connected by D, and that's a static list of objects you could store somewhere if you liked. Except there is no way to move a backdrop to an arbitrary set of rooms during play, only when it's initially created. This limitation exists, as far as I can tell, for literally no reason.

Okay, so you can make your own backdrop-ish kind and handle the movement yourself, right? Well that's complicated.

Visibility checks are easy. There is an activity, "deciding the scope of something," which is run exactly once when anything's visibility is checked. So you can move all your backdrops in a "before deciding the scope" rule. A little computationally expensive but not that bad.

There is no place to hook in to run code once per touchability check. There are "reaching inside" and "reaching outside" rulebooks, but these are run potentially mutliple times per touchability check and if you add your code to them, will still fail if you move your pseudo-backdrop to the right location, because all the reaching-inside and reaching-outside checks are already lined up based on where the object was. From within the reaching inside/outside rulebooks you cannot decide overall touchability, only the outcome for that particular layer.

This means that, for rigorously correct behavior, you must update positions before every touchability check that might run for a custom backdrop, everywhere in your code, including rewriting rules and phrases added by extensions, because you cannot add to or override the overall touchability checking logic in the necessary way.

[bleedchan]

in inform 7, i’d like if it was easier to quickly pare parser verbs and overwrite the default responses, as well as enable things like lowercase only. i know how to do these things, but as a writer with i guess you could say a modern sense of prose it’d be nice to have it tied to like a ui option rather than having to write the same chunk of text yet again

this would involve a bunch of work that would all be similar i’d imagine. like the parser paring would probably be best as some kind of like, scrollable vertical list of entries and fields you can quickly change, or maybe tabs of categories, or something…

in a world where people could probably see i7’s syntax and mistake it for an llm, i think the best path forward is to embrace the totality of control creators have over responses, and the lack of embarrassing unintentional hallucinations that break character or immersion. exposing things like this in ui when it’s simpler and easier to do so is ideal, i think… it all compiles down to i6 in the end anyway, right..?

[manonamora-if-reviews]

Chinese Family Dinner Moment by Kastel

A Single Choice Jam entry.

Entry - IFDB - More by Kastel - @kastelpls CW: Sexual harassment, transphobia, racism.

Family Dinners, am I right? We've all been stuck in one of those dinners, the one you don't want to be at but have to, the one where the host mainly organised it to show off, the one where guests came there to make themselves look better than the rest, the one where snide comments are thrown left and right... and the food? well... usually not worth it... You really want to leave but can't really, not for a while. You could participate more, but it would mean pretending to be someone you are not (like a man or a meat eater), and that's exhausting. So you quietly sit through and maybe mumble a few words, or clench your jaw when an aunt tells you your degree is probably useless, or an uncle reminds you never to trust [insert minority/other ethnic group]. Or maybe you just listen, drifting your thoughts somewhere else, or finding refuge on your phone for a while. Even through this very linear parser, and the short prose, this game manages to encapsulate all these murky feelings of uncomfortableness, stress, and exhaustion. The error messages when trying to engage with others or yourself or the meal is humourous, even if at time self-deprecating (I saw the influence of the Pageantverse in there too). There is not much to do, mainly because you don't want to do much as the character either... And this worked quite well as the author's first try in parser and Inform!

One day... one day I'll get inform....

[prokopetz]

For all the development issues it sometimes causes, I appreciate Inform's absurdly detailed world model for the unhinged debugging output it produces. Like, what do you mean you're checking whether the "must remove worn clothing before eating it" rule is applicable? Exactly how often did this come up that it needed to be part of the standard world model enforcement rulebook?

[golmac]

woke up to find a lovely review for Portrait with Wolf this morning!

[thiskobold]

Now that I've made another stupidly short game, I think it's time to start working on The Manik again.

Originally I was going to end this post with "NAAAAHH that's nerd shit" but I actually think I need to keep working on it now and if I don't I'll lose interest. I'll get chapter two in Inform and then think about procrastinating by making another stupid short project.

The stupid short projects are really helping me figure out Inform 7, though. Gneiss and Return to Cinder may not be actual games, but they are a valuable step in the process of learning Inform.

So I'm going to exercise a really healthy habit of setting achievable goals and reaching them before moving on. One chapter of The Manik. Then I can spend a week writing Laptop Larcenist before releasing it on Itch!

I will be talking about these games a lot.

[kastelpls]

Closure

played *Closure* by Sarah Willson and i thought this was a really cute parser game about helping a friend overcome a breakup by infiltrating into this dude's room and finding objects to help her move on.

there's a lot of personality in the writing and i quite enjoyed the interactivity in the game. also, was surprised to see how the online version used instant messaging client-styled visuals.

that was adorable lol.

[taranascending]

Meet the Heroes of Outpost 157: Characters Overview

Hey All, here is my first most regarding my Inform 7 interactive fiction project, called Outpost 157. Well in reality it’s going to be more than an Inform project. I’ve decided to tie it into Journeys of Tara creative writing project. Although, I’m not exactly sure yet, of how the story will unfold. The Inform project is combination of a creative writing piece, as well as a survival text based…

[bunninegamedev]

Meet the dev!

It's me, I'm the dev. I'm the only dev, actually. I'm making «Why Am I Here» by myself, learning Inform 7 from scratch using only the documentation and online resources.

Feel free to ask me questions about anything!

[definitelynotplanetfall]

me when i'm good at code