Welcome to the world of interactive fiction!

Introduction

What is interactive fiction? Well, this guide assumes you know nothing about programming, object-oriented or otherwise, but it does assume that you know what interactive fiction (I-F) is, or you wouldn't be interested in Inform. If you'd like to learn, try the interactive fiction archive.

What is Inform? Okay, I'll answer this one. Inform is both a compiler and a programming language. You write your game in a way that the compiler can understand what you want to do (this is called using the proper syntax [footnote 1]). This process is known as writing source code. You then tell the Inform compiler to translate what you've written into a file that can be played [footnote 2]. This process is known as compiling.

So how do you tell the compiler what you want to do? That is the focus of this guide: to teach you the syntax of Inform, so that you may write your own games that you can (hopefully) share with the I-F community.

The Big Picture

Interactive fiction models life. The two major parts of any I-F game are therefore straightforward: the items you can see and the things you can do to/with those items. In Inform, the items are called objects, and the things you do to/with them are called actions. Learn this. Repeat to yourself, "Actions are performed on objects. Objects react to actions." Dream about it.

Just like real life, Inform can be complex. The compiler will handle a lot of actions for you if you don't tell it to do anything different, but these default responses make for a rather bland game. You will normally step in and tell the compiler to do different things in different situations.

Also like real life, you can't be expected to learn everything immediately. We all crawled before we walked. We all learned to speak the language bit by bit. So it is with Inform. Start small and grow. You'll get there. I know I will.

Footnotes

Many people associate the word "syntax" with computers, stemming from the most common error that our TRS-80's and C64's and Apples told us when we typed something wrong: "SYNTAX ERROR." However, the word syntax actually comes from grammar. It simply means using the right words in the right order. If I say to you, "Bird the watch on?" you would have no idea that I want to know what time it is, because I didn't use proper English syntax (both wrong words and wrong order). Likewise, if you tell a computer running BASIC to A + 3 PRINT, it won't understand that you want to print the result of adding 3 to the value stored in variable A (right words, wrong order).
The resulting file is played using a different program called an "interpreter." The Infocom games you may have played were basically just an interpreter and a game file. In fact, any interpreter you use to play Inform games can also play Infocom games.

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