R17: Writing Interactive Fiction

Inform Links to an external site. is design system (including a programming language) for authoring interactive fiction (IF). Originally devised by a mathematician-poet, Inform offers a perspective on programming that is centered on the mindset and needs of an author (a writer) rather than those of a software engineer.

As of 2006, Inform features a new programming language which is a subset of the natural language English. That is, every statement in Inform 7 is also a grammatically valid (and often similarly meaningful) statement in English. Compare this with "int numCats = 5;" -- "int" and "numCats" are not English words and "=" is quite counterintuitive as a verb even when pronounced as "equals." In Inform, "The number of cats is initially 5" is a valid statement with roughly the same meaning as the Java version.

Read through this page introducing the reader to authoring IF using the Inform 7 language: https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Beginner%27s_Guide_to_Interactive_Fiction_with_Inform_7/Getting_Started_with_Inform_7 Links to an external site.