Game announcement (also posted to rec.games.int-fiction)
[ANNOUNCE] Three games in Inform 7
Many small and medium-sized games have been written during the development of the forthcoming Inform 7 design system for IF. Some are used for testing, others were simply experiments, but most are intended as illustrative samples. More than 200 of these will appear in the documentation, but they necessarily show off one trick each: so we wanted also to offer a few larger-scale "worked examples". Though not enormous, these are too long to be included verbatim in any book, and their full source text will instead be published on the Inform website when Inform 7 reaches its public beta. In the mean time, we would like to release three of these example games for the community to play. All have been beta-tested by players, and while they should not be taken too seriously, we hope they may be fun. Each comes with a "feelie" booklet, presented in PDF format, from its own web page: the links are given below.
At present, these story files can probably be played only on Windows, Mac OS X and some Unix-based systems running X-Windows, since they are presented as Blorb 2.0-wrapped Z-machine story files: they include cover art and bibliographic metadata. This will be the standard format generated by Inform 7, so another purpose of the present release is to offer the Z-machine community some samples to experiment with. See below for details.
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Reliques of Tolti-Aph
Graham Nelson (2005)
It used to be said that there are two kinds of magic-user: those who have been to Tolti-Aph, and charlatans. It used to be generally understood that the attempt to prove oneself in the unforgiving society of Tolti-Aph was a bid for rapid level advancement or else romantic, thin-young-mage-in-midnight-black-robes death. The closer you get to the wilderness spot vaguely marked "Tholtaff" on the agate globe in your great-great-grandfather's study, the better the alternative sounds: settling down in some coastal village, perhaps, a little weathermongering, some polymancy, and helping out with the nets after a bad storm. Retire at maybe level 3, with most of your experience points gained from observing rare fish-based poisons carry off those villagers careless about gutting. Publish an awesomely tedious monograph on the correct usage of the "untangle rigging" spell. You know, the good life.
http://plover.net/~emily/ROTA/
-----
Bronze
Emily Short (2006)
When the seventh day comes and it is time for you to return to the castle in the forest, your sisters cling to your sleeves.
"Don't go back," they say, and "When will we ever see you again?" But since they've filled the time by telling you every word spoken to them by every male in the village, you imagine they will find consolation somewhere.
Your father hangs back, silent and moody. He has spent the week as far from you as possible, working until late at night. Now he speaks only to ask whether the Beast treated you "properly." From his tone of voice, he is obviously inquiring after your virtue, not anything so irrelevant as your health, comfort, or peace of mind.
You might not have thought it possible, but you are looking forward to getting back...
Bronze is a puzzle-oriented adaptation of Beauty and the Beast with an expansive geography for the inveterate explorer.
Features help for novice players, a detailed adaptive hint system to assist players who get lost, and a number of features to make navigating a large space more pleasant.
http://plover.net/~emily/Bronze/
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Damnatio Memoriae
Emily Short (2006)
14 AD. Agrippa Postumus, grandson of the recently-deceased Augustus, tries to avoid death at the hands of the next emperor, Tiberius. At his disposal: a couple of old manuscripts, a lamp, and a recalcitrant slave. And a powerful knowledge of the Art of Venus Genetrix, of course -- the magic eventually known as the Lavori d'Aracne.
Damnatio Memoriae belongs to a series with the author's previous game Savoir-Faire; though it can stand alone, the game's mechanics will make most sense to players already familiar with that work.
It is a fast, timed game, taking only a few minutes to play once, but probably requiring multiple attempts to bring to a satisfactory conclusion.
http://plover.net/~emily/DM/
-----
The story files for these three games are standard-compliant Z-machine story files, but each is "blorbed". This means that it is bundled together with a cover picture and some bibliographic information inside a Blorb wrapper. The Blorb standard for gathering IF resources together was set down by Andrew Plotkin in 2001, and was documented in the Inform 6 Designer's Manual. At present relatively few "blorbs", as blorbed files are called, are in circulation. But Inform 7 may change this, since it publishes games as blorbs by default. Blorbing is Inform 7's equivalent of binding a paper publication: it attaches outer covers, adding a cover picture and descriptive matter to help identify the book within.
So these new games are only playable using an interpreter capable of reading blorbed Z-machine story files. We recommend:
Windows Frotz for Windows, maintained by David Kinder
http://www.d.kinder.btinternet.co.uk/frotz.html
The current version reads and plays blorbed story files, but does not yet display cover art.
Zoom for Mac OS X, maintained by Andrew Hunter
http://www.logicalshift.co.uk/unix/zoom/
Version 1.0.5 alpha 1 is required. Zoom behaves like iTunes: it will store any blorb it plays into a library, and displays the bibliographic information in a browser in much the same way that iTunes displays song information. Zoom also tidily stores saved game files associated with each game, and is generally much to be recommended. (Click the double-arrow button at the bottom right of the iFiction library window to see more information about games, including the cover art and detailed description.)
A more basic version of Zoom is also available for Unix-like systems running X-Windows, and we believe this will also be able to play blorbs: here we recommend version 1.0.4a.
-----
The Blorb format has itself been extended to facilitate this new usage, and a new version 2.0 of the specification has just been published by Andrew Plotkin:
http://eblong.com/zarf/blorb/index.html
(Blorb is extensible, so new blorbs do comply with the old standard: but they contain extra data which will be invisible to older blorb-reading programs. The changes to the standard specify this extra data.) Further details are being posted to the Z-machine and Inform maintenance mailing lists.
Graham Nelson
Emily Short
1 March 2006
Many small and medium-sized games have been written during the development of the forthcoming Inform 7 design system for IF. Some are used for testing, others were simply experiments, but most are intended as illustrative samples. More than 200 of these will appear in the documentation, but they necessarily show off one trick each: so we wanted also to offer a few larger-scale "worked examples". Though not enormous, these are too long to be included verbatim in any book, and their full source text will instead be published on the Inform website when Inform 7 reaches its public beta. In the mean time, we would like to release three of these example games for the community to play. All have been beta-tested by players, and while they should not be taken too seriously, we hope they may be fun. Each comes with a "feelie" booklet, presented in PDF format, from its own web page: the links are given below.
At present, these story files can probably be played only on Windows, Mac OS X and some Unix-based systems running X-Windows, since they are presented as Blorb 2.0-wrapped Z-machine story files: they include cover art and bibliographic metadata. This will be the standard format generated by Inform 7, so another purpose of the present release is to offer the Z-machine community some samples to experiment with. See below for details.
-----
Reliques of Tolti-Aph
Graham Nelson (2005)
It used to be said that there are two kinds of magic-user: those who have been to Tolti-Aph, and charlatans. It used to be generally understood that the attempt to prove oneself in the unforgiving society of Tolti-Aph was a bid for rapid level advancement or else romantic, thin-young-mage-in-midnight-black-robes death. The closer you get to the wilderness spot vaguely marked "Tholtaff" on the agate globe in your great-great-grandfather's study, the better the alternative sounds: settling down in some coastal village, perhaps, a little weathermongering, some polymancy, and helping out with the nets after a bad storm. Retire at maybe level 3, with most of your experience points gained from observing rare fish-based poisons carry off those villagers careless about gutting. Publish an awesomely tedious monograph on the correct usage of the "untangle rigging" spell. You know, the good life.
http://plover.net/~emily/ROTA/
-----
Bronze
Emily Short (2006)
When the seventh day comes and it is time for you to return to the castle in the forest, your sisters cling to your sleeves.
"Don't go back," they say, and "When will we ever see you again?" But since they've filled the time by telling you every word spoken to them by every male in the village, you imagine they will find consolation somewhere.
Your father hangs back, silent and moody. He has spent the week as far from you as possible, working until late at night. Now he speaks only to ask whether the Beast treated you "properly." From his tone of voice, he is obviously inquiring after your virtue, not anything so irrelevant as your health, comfort, or peace of mind.
You might not have thought it possible, but you are looking forward to getting back...
Bronze is a puzzle-oriented adaptation of Beauty and the Beast with an expansive geography for the inveterate explorer.
Features help for novice players, a detailed adaptive hint system to assist players who get lost, and a number of features to make navigating a large space more pleasant.
http://plover.net/~emily/Bronze/
-----
Damnatio Memoriae
Emily Short (2006)
14 AD. Agrippa Postumus, grandson of the recently-deceased Augustus, tries to avoid death at the hands of the next emperor, Tiberius. At his disposal: a couple of old manuscripts, a lamp, and a recalcitrant slave. And a powerful knowledge of the Art of Venus Genetrix, of course -- the magic eventually known as the Lavori d'Aracne.
Damnatio Memoriae belongs to a series with the author's previous game Savoir-Faire; though it can stand alone, the game's mechanics will make most sense to players already familiar with that work.
It is a fast, timed game, taking only a few minutes to play once, but probably requiring multiple attempts to bring to a satisfactory conclusion.
http://plover.net/~emily/DM/
-----
The story files for these three games are standard-compliant Z-machine story files, but each is "blorbed". This means that it is bundled together with a cover picture and some bibliographic information inside a Blorb wrapper. The Blorb standard for gathering IF resources together was set down by Andrew Plotkin in 2001, and was documented in the Inform 6 Designer's Manual. At present relatively few "blorbs", as blorbed files are called, are in circulation. But Inform 7 may change this, since it publishes games as blorbs by default. Blorbing is Inform 7's equivalent of binding a paper publication: it attaches outer covers, adding a cover picture and descriptive matter to help identify the book within.
So these new games are only playable using an interpreter capable of reading blorbed Z-machine story files. We recommend:
Windows Frotz for Windows, maintained by David Kinder
http://www.d.kinder.btinternet.co.uk/frotz.html
The current version reads and plays blorbed story files, but does not yet display cover art.
Zoom for Mac OS X, maintained by Andrew Hunter
http://www.logicalshift.co.uk/unix/zoom/
Version 1.0.5 alpha 1 is required. Zoom behaves like iTunes: it will store any blorb it plays into a library, and displays the bibliographic information in a browser in much the same way that iTunes displays song information. Zoom also tidily stores saved game files associated with each game, and is generally much to be recommended. (Click the double-arrow button at the bottom right of the iFiction library window to see more information about games, including the cover art and detailed description.)
A more basic version of Zoom is also available for Unix-like systems running X-Windows, and we believe this will also be able to play blorbs: here we recommend version 1.0.4a.
-----
The Blorb format has itself been extended to facilitate this new usage, and a new version 2.0 of the specification has just been published by Andrew Plotkin:
http://eblong.com/zarf/blorb/index.html
(Blorb is extensible, so new blorbs do comply with the old standard: but they contain extra data which will be invisible to older blorb-reading programs. The changes to the standard specify this extra data.) Further details are being posted to the Z-machine and Inform maintenance mailing lists.
Graham Nelson
Emily Short
1 March 2006