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If you do make your own, please share a link to it below so everyone here at Steampunk R&D can play. There doesn't seem to really be a market for games like this, but it's a fun and rewarding thing to make! Additionally, there are forums and even competitions that you can enter.
However, there's a full Interactive Fiction Database where you can have your game listed. If you just want to share the game with your friends, you can host it somewhere and then use Parchment to let people play it online. What to Do with Your GamesĪs I mentioned earlier, there's a thriving interactive fiction community out there. Of course, as I said, things can get much, much more complicated, but this quick tutorial should have you hit the ground running. This simple mechanic of 'if' will allow you to create incredibly complicated situations and relationships. If not, it will rebuff them by saying that they need to take an article with them. If so, it will go ahead and move them to the room. When the player types 'go east', the program will check to see whether they're carrying the article.
The compiler is divided into a split screen so that you can see the code at the same time as the game, or the documentation, or whatever else you'd like. Getting Started with the Inform 7 Compilerįirst, let me introduce you to the interface. The code in each one is different, so these are all specific to Inform 7. And for the sake of this article, I'm going to assume you're using Inform 7. It was very helpful, providing both explanations and examples.Įven so, I still had trouble doing exactly what I wanted from time to time.
I used nothing but the in-program documentation to learn how to use it. One of the benefits of Inform 7 is that it has an extensive tutorial section that fully explains the various usages and functions of the compiler. My understanding is that it's used widely throughout the interactive fiction community. In that way, Inform is the easiest for non-coders to understand, so that's why I picked it. You'll note that almost all of them except for Inform 7 use odd symbols and weird coding things. As I haven't used them, I can't give you a full rundown on their usage, but here's an article that compares all the compilers side-by-side. The other contenders are Alan, Hugo, and TADS. In many ways, learning Inform 7 was like playing a text game, in that you have to figure out what words it wants you to say to accomplish different tasks. There's no crazy code that you have to learn, just a new type of syntax. The one that I used is called Inform 7, and it's the easiest one to learn because it's all written in plain English. They're free on the internet, like most interactive fiction resources. The very first thing you need to do is get your hands on a compiler. So while it's not the hardest thing in the world, don't expect it to be a walk in the park! Choosing the Right Compiler
However, it is very difficult, and there were certainly times when I wanted to bang my head against a wall. That's not so bad, all things considered. I started from having absolutely no knowledge and went to being somewhat proficient in only five days.
I learned enough about interactive fiction coding in five days to write the game that I linked to in the last post. So if you like video games but don't have the ability to bring a fully-realized 2D or 3D game to life, you should consider text games! My experience with them has been pretty fun and fulfilling, and I can only hope that others find the same! How Hard Is It Really?īefore I get into the specifics, let me give you an idea of the difficulty. Likewise, I can code in HTML and BASIC, but when it comes to real code, my eyes glaze over and I suddenly find something else to do. I can make 3D art with some mild degree of proficiency, but when it comes to 2D art, I suddenly become all thumbs. The great part about text games is that you don't need to be an artist or a hardcore computer programmer to make them. Text Adventures Are Fairly Simple to Make As I pointed out before, this is one of the most famous pieces of text in video game history, from Zork 1.