Inform 7: Setting Up Your World

There are lots of cool things you can do to make your world unique and help your players feel comfortable.

Let’s start with the smallest Inform world you can create. It looks something like this:

"An Extremely Boring and Tiny World"
[[The title of the game]]

The boring place is a room.
[[A single place you can start.]]

An Extremely Boring and Tiny World
An Interactive Fiction
Release 1 / Serial number 230205 / Inform 7 build 6M62 (I6/v6.34 lib 6/12N) SD

boring place

>

Who are you?

One piece of information you can add is your name, or a nom de plume.

"A Fictional World I Created" by The World's Most Interesting Person

This will give you:

A Fictional World I Created
An Interactive Fiction by The World’s Most Interesting Person

Now people will know who you are.

How did I get here?

Sometimes it helps to add a little introduction, to orient the player and let them know why they’re in your world and what to expect right off the bat before you describe your first room.

Just add:

When play begins, say 
"You're in an imaginary world.  You probably shouldn't have pressed that button that said 'Teleport me to an imaginary world.'  Now you've done it.".

Now you get:

You’re in an imaginary world. You probably shouldn’t have pressed that button that said “Teleport me to an imaginary world.” Now you’ve done it.

A Fictional World I Created
An Interactive Fiction by The World’s Most Interesting Person Release 1 / Serial number 230205 / Inform 7 build 6M62 (I6/v6.34 lib 6/12N) SD

nappy dugout

>

An interactive fiction?

By default Inform will introduce your story after the title as:

A Fictional World I Created
An Interactive Fiction by The World’s Most Interesting Person

If you don’t want it to say that, you can come up with your own:

The story headline is "An unreal place you can walk around in"

Now it will say:

A Fictional World I Created
An unreal place you can walk around in by The World’s Most Interesting Person

Improving the defaults

Inform has a lot of good default messages for trying things.

You can make your own messages that give your interactive story your own unique flavor. Some examples:

Looking at yourself

Sometimes the player might try this:

>look self
As good-looking as ever

You can make your own custom response.

The description of the player is "You are a weird alien with tentacles instead of arms.".

And now:

>look self
You are a weird alien with tentacles instead of arms.

Looking at things that don’t have a description

The field is a room.
There is a dry stone in the field.

>look stone
You see nothing special about the dry stone.

We can do better than that, right? Here’s how to say something else:

The description of a thing is usually "You look at [the noun] very closely indeed, and to be completely honest, it looks about how you'd expect. You think for a moment that there might be something slightly special about it but then, upon looking just a little closer, you see that there isn't."

Now we get:

>look stone
You look at the dry stone very closely indeed, and to be completely honest, it looks about how you’d expect. You think for a moment that there might be something slightly special about it but then, upon looking just a little closer, you see that there isn’t.

Looking at your empty inventory

Normally when you check your inventory you get a boring message like this:

>inventory
You are carrying nothing.

Overriding this message requires some special Inform 7 magic with this odd-looking command:

The print empty inventory rule response (A) is "You look everywhere but finally come to realize that you have no possessions."

Now:

>inventory
You look everywhere but finally come to realize that you have no possessions.

Making use useful

By default, the verb use isn’t something Inform understands. You can set up some rules to make life easier for players.

The garage is a room.  

There is a bird cage in the garage. 
The cage is an closed openable container.  

There is a disconnected light switch in the garage.
The switch is a switched off device.

There is a peanut candy in the garage.
The candy is edible.

Let’s see how use works by default:

garage
You can see a bird cage (closed), a disconnected light switch and a peanut candy here.

>use cage
That’s not a verb I recognise.

>use switch
That’s not a verb I recognise.

>use candy
That’s not a verb I recognise.

We can do better by setting up some default rules for using things.

Understand "use [a closed openable thing]" as opening.
Understand "use [a open openable thing]" as closing.
Understand "use [a switched off device]" as switching on.
Understand "use [a switched on device]" as switching off.
Understand "use [an edible thing]" as eating.

Now things work a little better:

>use cage
You open the bird cage.

>use switch
You switch the disconnected light switch on.

>use switch
You switch the disconnected light switch off.

>use candy
(first taking the peanut candy)
You eat the peanut candy. Not bad.