Simple question

Total and utter customisation options are absolutely paramount for me. If I can’t get my game looking exactly as I wish, this software will be a non-starter for me.

Does Inform offer this?

Depends. By default a lot of options are left up to the interpreter. You can set text to be “emphasized” (italic), and most people will see it that way. But if someone is playing with a screen reader, say, it’ll be emphasized some other way. This increases portability and gives users more control.

However, if you distribute with an interpreter (Quixe, Vorple, custom Gargoyle, etc) you can customize the options at the expense of damaging portability.

“Total and utter customization” means “your game is not accessible to anybody with impaired vision or a cell-phone”.

However, the more practical answer to your question is “Write a game with Inform, put it on your web site with Quixe, and then customize the stylesheet”. Assuming that the customization facilities of CSS are good enough for you.

Thanks for the replies.

Zarf, yes, I’m referring primarily to customisation using CSS.

Could someone please link me to a game made with Inform, that uses the default layout and style, so I can better see my starting point.

The layout of Robin and Orchid looks pretty typical for Quixe. As far as I can tell, they just customized the colors:
rcveeder.net/if/robinorchid/play.html

The default stylesheet is here: eblong.com/zarf/glk/glkote/glkote.css

(What zarf said).

The default stylesheet when you “Release along with playable…” in I7 is actually this one:

github.com/erkyrath/quixe/blob/ … glkote.css

Almost the same, not quite.

Good to know, thanks.

Thanks, all.