Compiling Games from Source Code?

I can’t find any discussion on compiling games from source code, e.g. for debugging them. There’s a lot for authors, but not for players in this position.


I downloaded a game I’m unable to run in Gargoyle or Lectrote on MacOS Sierra. I now downloaded the inform source code, and I’m trying to figure out how to compile it.

Do I need to manually install each of the extensions included with the source code? Or transfer all of them to a certain library folder? Or is it enough that they came with the source code?

I got an error that Inform couldn’t find one of the extensions. But only one. I doubt all the extensions’ll be useful if I try my own projects.

There are several problems here…

  1. you’ll need the correct version of Inform 7. The source code may be only suitable in an older version.
  2. you’ll need any third-party extensions used and
  3. these extensions have to be compatible with the version of Inform 7 you need

I believe there’s an issue with the current build of Inform 7 and interpreters under MacOS Sierra that might be your actual problem.

See posts:
[url]https://intfiction.org/t/i7-not-working-on-macos-10-12-sierra/10472/1]

https://github.com/garglk/garglk/issues/232

I believe that there are recently new updates of Lectrote also.

This is primarily why I haven’t updated to Sierra yet!

If I recall from the other thread, MacOS support was the first problem but there were also “invalid Glk stream” bugs in the game itself. Thus the need for debugging.