Creating Interactive Fiction with Inform 7 1st Edition

by Aaron Reed (Author)

28 ratings

ISBN-13: 978-1435455061

ISBN-10: 1435455061

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CREATING INTERACTIVE FICTION WITH INFORM 7 is a jargon-free, step-by-step guide to mastering the basics of creating dynamic, text-based story worlds. Inform 7 is a free multiplatform interactive fiction authoring environment that uses an intuitive natural language syntax. A tool focused on writers, not programmers, Inform allows users construct complex, rich storytelling worlds by writing sentences as simple as "Tom is a person," or as complicated as "Instead of attacking Tom when something lethal is held, now every nearby watchdog owned by Tom hates the player." No prior programming experience is required. Throughout the book, readers develop a full-length, release-quality example game, exploring the real-world issues involved in authoring participatory narratives and gaining skills that can be applied to the creation of future games and stories.

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Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Aaron A. Reed has worked as a travel writer, web monkey, offensive t-shirt designer, graphic artist, filmmaker, and murder mystery producer. His fiction has appeared in "Fantasy & Science Fiction" magazine, and his interactive fiction has won acclaim from indie gaming, electronic literature, and new media circles. His 2009 project Blue Lacuna has been called "the most ambitious interactive story of the decade," and is the longest work yet produced in the Inform 7 language. Reed is currently working with the Expressive Intelligence Studio at UC Santa Cruz developing new forms of participatory storytelling.

Product details

Publisher : Cengage Learning PTR; 1st edition (August 19, 2010)
Language : English
Paperback : 448 pages
ISBN-10 : 1435455061
ISBN-13 : 978-1435455061
Item Weight : 2.15 pounds
Dimensions : 7.25 x 1 x 8.75 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #1,592,244 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #1,065 in Computer Graphics
- #1,176 in Game Programming
- #2,437 in Creative Writing & Composition

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28 ratings

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Top reviews from the United States

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@GroupOfFour

The Defacto Standard for Inform 7

Reviewed in the United States on December 4, 2020

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Interactive fiction (Zork, Adventureland, Mind Forever Voyaging) is alive on the indie scene with several development systems (including Inform 7) to allow you to create everything from word parsed games to point and click menu-driven ones. This book builds on the documentation available for Inform 7, and explains things in enough detail (with examples) that it REALLY helps you understand how the "mostly natural" language of Inform 7 needs to be structured for the parser to understand and accept it. Obscure concepts like fluids in bottles, one-way doors and handling multi-drawer containers are explained among others. The book follows an example IF story, which can be a little confusing (rather than a straight lost-adventurer-with-items type), but there is much to learn if you just follow along. Definitely the book to get if you're interested in learning Inform 7!

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ZUrlocker

Great resource for Inform7 programmers

Reviewed in the United States on March 30, 2014

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This is an excellent book for those interested in creating Interactive Fiction games. Reed starts out with an introduction to the Inform 7 IDE and then leads into the development of a full-blown story. You begin by constructing rooms, linking them together, adding objects, properties, relations, then rules and actions. He also focuses the reader on understanding how the game will be played, dealing with synonyms, disambiguation and parser errors. At every stage you have a playable game, though it may be quite simple. Later on, Reed introduces conditional logic and non-player characters. Finally, Reed covers topics that will improve the overall playability including testing & debugging, scoring etc. The book clocks in at 400 pages and is well worth the asking price. There will be tons of things you learn to put into practice with this book. No Inform7 programmer should be without it. Heck, I own both the print version and the digital edition.

2 people found this helpful

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Chase Dahl

Great tutorial for Inform 7

Reviewed in the United States on August 19, 2013

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This books has you work through the creation of a significant work of IF using Inform 7. It's best if you run through I7's own tutorials first, though. I enjoyed the initial, straightforward creation phases of the adventure, but later on the book runs through some fairly convoluted concepts that had me scratching my head -- although I7 uses "natural English" in scripting, one can do some really clever/kludgy/advanced work that's definitely not straightforward. At any rate, if you're interested in programming your own IF in I7 and need a place to start, you can't get much better than this. My suggestions: make sure you manually type in all of the included code, practice the included exercises, and simply play with the code provided (making your own changes, adding your own items, etc). Self-made tweaks and changes -- mistakes and all -- are really how you learn. Xyzzy and out!

2 people found this helpful

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Kirk T. Morger

Excellent tutorials on Inform

Reviewed in the United States on April 10, 2014

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While the documentation included with Inform 7 is superb, there are a number of concepts that are merely glossed over. Aaron Reed's book delves into great detail on the Start-to-Finish issues of taking your creation from premise to completed project.

That's not to say there aren't issues with the book, and every author will have their own style, but the mechanics described are sound and do lend them selves to writing styles other than the authors.

If you create in Inform, this is an excellent addition to the included documentation. It's not a replacement. But, the concepts given in this book will save you quite a bit of trouble, and is definitely worth the money.

4 people found this helpful

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J. Hall

This book was key.

Reviewed in the United States on December 24, 2017

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This book was the key for me to learn Inform 7. This book is not magical - I spent a lot of time doing the tutorials, and writing stuff on my own. If you want to use Inform 7, this book is a must. Many parts of Inform 7 absolutely require more than you get in the help menu.

One person found this helpful

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Kindle Customer

I highly recommend it to anyone trying to get the hang of ...

Reviewed in the United States on September 28, 2014

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No book could be the end all and be all on Inform 7, but this one is utterly solid. I leaned heavily on it in creating my first game. There's far more that can be done in Inform 7 but this one hits on most of the basics. I highly recommend it to anyone trying to get the hang of Inform 7.

3 people found this helpful

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Matthew R. Abts

One of the best available starting points.

Reviewed in the United States on September 20, 2012

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There aren't that many places to start on your IF (interactive fiction -- text adventure) journey. Inform 7 and this book is one of the best starting points, particularly for somebody not very familiar with computer programming.

If you're looking to start IF as a new hobby, start here!

4 people found this helpful

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Jason Lautzenheiser

Great way to learn Inform 7

Reviewed in the United States on August 22, 2013

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I'm a software developer that was looking to Inform 7 as a little diversion from my day job. The documentation that is supplied with Inform is really quite good and there a ton of examples, however, sometimes I've found it hard to find exactly what I was looking for. Also, I had trouble on the "Where to start?" question....how do I begin my piece of IF?

Aaron Reed does a great job of teaching you the language, but also guides you through developing a basic game....not just little snippets, but a game where as you learn new Inform skills, you apply them to the game and watch how it progresses. He also guides you and encourages you to make your own changes, allowing you to exercise what you just learned and explore the language and your story creation a bit further.

I worked through the book in about a week with a few hours each evening and now I feel confident enough in my skills to start my own IF. The book isn't comprehensive, but it gives you a strong foundation to build upon. Highly recommend to any contemplating learning Inform 7.

7 people found this helpful

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Top reviews from other countries

Mr. R. E. Crow

Five Stars

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 4, 2016

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Very readable with practical worked through examples

Glinbog

Five Stars

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 9, 2014

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Great buy for anybody wanting to learn inform.

Clever Spud

Not a great beginners guide.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 15, 2012

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This is described as a step by step guide to mastering the basics of writing interactive fiction, but I don't think it does a very good job.

It is undeniably comprehensive, but personally I hit a wall by around page 100. That's about a quarter of the way in, and it wasn't that I didn't understand what was being expected of me, I was just worn out typing code that would only make sense later.

The meat of the book is the step by step creation of a fairly complex IF - one that deals in some pretty deep concepts. I've no doubt that if I was to persevere through it I would have learned everything I needed to put together my own IF, but I would have much preferred a far simpler introduction, with more complexity added later on. By the 100th page or so I had been typing and re-typing the author's sample code for some time but I was still unable to hop off the track and create anything but a basic network of rooms and containers. All of the code used in each chapter is available on the author's website but I didn't see the point in simply cutting and pasting. Perhaps if I had just downloaded his code and examined it I would have had an easier time, but that rather seemed against the spirit of the thing.

Sad to say but two minutes turned up a single page on the internet (look for: inform 7 toadstool) that taught me more about the nuts and bolts of building a simple game/story than 100 pages of the book.

Now to be fair, the author does say that the book is not intended to be your first introduction to Inform 7, which makes the product description rather misleading. Nor have I tossed it in a cupboard. At some point in the future I'll go back to it, after I've successfully made a small, simple game of my own. The simplicity and ease of use that Inform 7 gives us is utterly beguiling.

2 people found this helpful

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