Inform 7 gets a makeover, formulas abound and users get more open

Inform 7 has undergone some rather interesting changes. The site has now changed to Inform7.com, the systems language has been updated to include equations and many more niceties, but more importantly, Aaron Reed’s screencast introduces new users to the system.

Finally, there is a section on the site for educators. This will bring Inform 7 users a lot of flexibility. Things learnt in the classroom can aid in future design, giving educators chance to give input to the system by proxy at least.

The website is a superb improvement and well worth a look.

General Inform 7 updates

A few extensions have now been updated to work under 5U92. They can of course be downloaded from the official I7 extensions page.

Finally, the syntax document has also been updated and it can be directly downloaded from here.

Inform Build 5U92 Is now available

The latest build of Inform 7 is now up. The main changes are technical in nature, mostly to do with internal reforms related to the compiler. some improvements have been made to how definitions are created, “rather than” is now possible so it is much easier to code them. For instance (taken from the change log):
Definition: a number is even rather than odd if the remainder after dividing it by 2 is 0.

Finally, scenes can be given properties and they can be tested for. As a release, it’s not hugely improved, but many bugs have been fixed pertaining to rule-book management and compiler optimisation. For those people who experienced speed issues compiling under 5T18, these have been fixed.

As usual, it can be downloaded from the usual site.

Significant Inform 7 extension updates

A note to let people know that many of the Inform 7 extensions have been updated to run under 5T18. As usual, they can be downloaded at the official extensions page.

Inform build 5T18 is now available

The latest build of Inform is now up. The main changes are related to understanding plurals and defining grammar in general, but many more things have altered and been reworked. The python style use of tab stops for IF/then/else conditionals is now implemented, but the older syntax for these conditions will continue to be supported indefinitely.

It is available from The official site.

Happy Birthday to Inform 7

Who would have believed that 2 years ago this very day, Inform 7 was released? I was away when the actual announcement was made regarding the new system but I have never looked back since downloading one of the early builds in July of that year. It is a remarkable effort of community input and Doctors Nelson and Short really are luminaries in our community and want applauding for there efforts.

“Deluxe Doors” extension

Emily short has posted a rather useful I7 extension on the official site. It is meant to aid in designing doors with latches. One useful ability of this extension is to allow you to have say a knocker on one side and a latch on the other.

You can of course get it from the Inform 7 Extensions page.

I7 Extensions updated

Emily short has now fixed the bugs in her “Property Checking” extension and updated her “locksmith” one. The reason for the update to “locksmith” is because of her latest offering, “Approaches”. This extension is superb. It allows you to do custom text generation for moving between rooms, not to mention adding in a handy go to location option for visited rooms. The rules included in the extension are easy to hook into as well. Highly recommended.

As usual, these extensions can be downloaded from the I7 extensions page.

Inform 7 Build 5j39 is now available

The latest build of Inform, Build 5J39 is now up on the official site. It adds the ability to declare lists and use constructs for searching, moving entries around, adding them, removing them, etc….., etc. Some new examples demonstrate using lists to simulate arrays, stacks, logs and queues. Two of the most notable examples in this build, Robo 1 and Robo 2 respectively, demonstrate using lists to crate a robot that learns behaviours and plays them back on demand. There is plenty to get your teeth into in this build, plus all the known bugs from 5G67 are now fixed.

Inform 7 build 4G67 is now available

A new release of inform 7 is now available from The official site. It includes many new examples and some rather interesting features, one of witch is expression matching. Well worth looking at.