Inform 7 Examples updated to build 6M62

The Inform 7 complete examples have been made compatible with build 6M62.
The updated versions may be found at shin-sekai-no-kami.webspace.virginmedia.com
Comments and suggestions are welcome, especially if run-time problems are found since I haven’t done any play testing.

Wow, excellent! Many thanks!

EDIT - Hey, I just noticed something. Some games - I noticed only the When In Rome games - actually have feelies, like a manual. These are not listed in IFDB. Are they part of the game? Would it be ok to update IFDB with those feelies?

All of the original materials are on the Inform 7 website. That’s where I found them.

I’ll add them to IFDB some time tomorrow, then. Should be OK.

There are some minor discrepancies - version number aside (it’s obvious that these new builds will have a more recent serial number), the Bronze release version in IFDB is still 11, and so is the actual game file linked to there. Is it ok for me to go ahead and update them all? Replace the current R11 version with this new R12?

I trust that, if all you did was port to be 6M62 compatible, you didn’t increase the release numbers, so the release numbers we see on your ports are actually correct and the ones intended by Emily Short, right?

…in retrospect maybe I should be asking her instead, but, you know, as long as you’re here and everything. :slight_smile:

While it’s good to have the code updated as these serve as good examples of the language, they shouldn’t be seen as releases, and so shouldn’t go on IFDB.

Yes. I should have said that the feelies are already available on the Inform 7 website and don’t need to be on IFDB. I’m not quite sure if Peter was suggesting that the updated story files should be put on IFDB. Of course, that wouldn’t be appropriate since I am not the original author. In any case, there would be no point since the content is unchanged.

Danii, what about the information about the feelies? Those seem to be stuff that are actually meant for the player - see, for instance, “Summary of Alien Characteristics by Habitat” (shin-sekai-no-kami.webspace. … ummary.pdf) or the manual for When in Rome 1. These seem to be geared towards a player, not an author, therefore it would seem sensible to me that they would belong in IFDB…

EDIT - Also, Dannii, another thing is that I’m not seeing them as actual releases - I don’t think Shin updated the release number. “Glass”, for instance, remains R1. This is why I believe that the R11 listed on IFDB is actually outdated - maybe the Bronze example got updated by Emily Short at some point and she didn’t think to compile/release it. Possibly. I’m speculating.

As for the release numbers, I bring this up because IFDB points to R11 of Bronze, and the example says release 12. The game linked to in IFDB is R11. Therefore, IFDB is out of date and needs bringing up to date. If these compiled examples use, in some cases, a more recent release than the one available in IFDB - and if there seems to be no other public link to the proper, most recent release (admittedly, I haven’t looked all that hard yet) - wouldn’t it be sensible to link these specific cases to IFDB?

EDIT - I’m PM’ing Emily. It’s simpler. :slight_smile:

If you want to link to the feelies on IFDB, that’s fine.

Shin’s update of Bronze I haven’t looked at at all, and my guess would be that it actually loses some functionality from older releases: specifically, it is no longer possible to compile Bronze for the z-machine under recent versions of Inform. As a result of being compiled for Glulx, the status line would presumably lose the red lettering that indicates unexplored rooms, because Glulx doesn’t allow letter coloring of the same kind. In consequence, the 6M62 version would be farther from the ideal play experience than an older version, even if it works better as an example of Inform code.

I have no problem with IFDB linking to a currently compiling version of the code as an additional, example link, but would not want that build to replace a more functional build for players.

(Along the same lines, I noticed that the defunct Varytale link for Bee has been replaced with a link to the unfinished and buggy Dendry version – that’s a trickier case because a functional version isn’t currently available anywhere, but I’m not sure that’s ideal either. At some point I will try to find time to upload a working archive of Bee somewhere, but I am still pretty overwhelmed at the moment.)

Thanks for reminding me Emily. I should have stated the caveats. :slight_smile:

All six standard examples now compile using 6M62 with the following reservations.

  1. four of the examples now have to be compiled to glulx (only Damnatio Memoriae and Glass compile to zcode)
  2. the text colour effects (zcode specific) in Bronze had to be removed

If anyone knows how to re-implement the text colour effects in Glulx, please tell. :slight_smile:

Ok, I’ve now taken down the “play online” links to both the Varytale and Dendry versions–do you want the link to the github project taken down also?

I don’t mind there being a link there as long as people understand it’s not the standard/fully operational play experience. (And thanks! I don’t mean to sound ungrateful, and in general I think it’s great that people are interested in helping to curate stuff that I’m no longer able to be on top of.)

Ok, I’ve tried to make that clear. :slight_smile:

Excellent. Thanks for the clarification, Emily, I’ll include the feelies but leave the actual game files untouched. Cheers!

EDIT - Aaaand done!

Thanks Peter. Good job. :slight_smile:

Shin, Bronze only really uses colour in one place doesn’t it, the red in the compass rose? It shouldn’t be hard to set special-style-1 to be red in text grid windows and then use that style instead of the Z-Machine colour formatting. Currently you’d have to manually set those styles in a before starting the virtual machine rule. It will be even easier when I make Glulx Text Effects be able to specify text grid styles without using Flexible Windows.

The following seems to work. :smiley:

Include Flexible Windows by Jon Ingold.

Table of User Styles (continued)
window	style name	background color
all-grid-windows	special-style-1	"#FF0000"

To say red reverse:
	say special-style-1;
	
To say default letters:
	say roman type;

For those who don’t already know, the Inform 7 Examples site is now here.