Mute Cornett

I don't have as much experience with the creation end as I do with the playing end of interactive fiction, but I really like what I can see of the language Inform 7. I'm mostly really impressed by how easy it is to read and how intuitive it is to understand:

Colour is a kind of value. The colours are red, blue and green. A block is a kind of thing. A block has a colour. A block is usually blue. Before printing the name of a block: say "[colour] ". Before printing the plural name of a block: say "[colour] ". Understand the colour property as describing a block.

This is code. This is what the source code looks like.

I mean, sure, Adrift is probably more newbie-friendly, but I'm just really impressed by how smooth the language is and how powerful it is reputed to be. It even handles stuff like American/British spelling differences and serial commas. How awesome is that?

People interested in seeing more of the source code can go to the Inform 7 site and play the worked examples, then look at the source code for those.

I am so impressed by this. It's clean and helpful. It would be pretty neat to see fic as interactive fic, but if anyone in fandom were to get into this type of programming-writing and write anything at all, original, adaptation, fanfic--or even just try it out--I'd be ecstatic. If you still think the example code is too hard, give Adrift a try--it's considerably simpler and it's not like your first IF has to be complex and sprawling and huge.

Note to paper_tzipporah: you especially would probably like this game created with the Inform 7 language, Bronze, a reworking of Beauty and the Beast that is lovely both in gameplay and narrative (as Em Short's games always are). You can get the interpreter here.

Incidentally, Bronze also has a novice mode, so it's another excellent beginner game.

(EEE, I LOVE THIS LANGUAGE AND THIS PROGRAM AND EEEE IT'S SO COOL!)