Inform 6 install

Hello!

Could someone please provide me with links and instructions to install the Inform 6 compiler and all the necessary library files and extensions. I’ve visited the inform-fiction.org/ site, but it wasn’t very educational.

What OS are you using?

Windows 10 on a stationary PC.

You can grab the elements of an I6 development environment from the IF Archive:

I’m not aware of a nicer all-in-one package for Windows.

I6 is a console application, so you’ll want to open up the command prompt to run it.

You’ll also want a proper text editor (not Notepad) to write I6 source code.

You might find the old FAQ to still contain useful information.

Thank you.

On reflection, perhaps we should place Vince’s excellent links on a sticker? I’ve noticed there are already two Inform 7 stickers here. Of course, if the consensus is that Inform 6 is Inform 7’s poor cousin from the countryside, unfit to have its own sticker, then I’ll withdraw my reflection.

Au contraire. I6 has a nice advantage if you’re hoping to see your game played on a phone. Last time I looked (someone will jump in and correct me if I’m wrong), the only interpreter software for phones won’t run glulx games, only .z5 and .z8. The advantage of I6 in this situation is that you can write a much larger, more immersive game before you run up against the memory limit imposed by a .z8 compiled game file.

Also, note that I6 supports multiple inheritance. I7 doesn’t.

The advantages of I7 (other than the sweet IDE and the English-like syntax) include support for things like relations and pathfinding. You can do any of that in I6 – but you’ll quite likely have to do it yourself from scratch.

On the other hand (sort of maybe possibly contradicting what I just said), there is a large body of I6 extensions available on the if-archive, some of which add nifty capabilities.

Frotz for iOS can deal with Glulx, but there’s currently no Glulx terp for Android.

Twisty (bitbucket.org/sussman/twisty/downloads) is a partially complete interpreter for Android.

Was Hadean Lands written in Inform 7?

Is there anyone who would like to step up and make this? I’m a Unix person and only keep Windows around to run weird old hardware.

There was an IDE I used called IMAGINATE that could do most of it. It could handle Alan, TADS2 & TADS3 files too.
The website is at http://www.imaginate.free-online.co.uk/ Syntax highlighting was great as was the property explorer.

The file is available from the IF archive imaginate1500.zip

Updates stopped in 2004 about the time I7 came out I think. As far as I know it still works.

1 Like

Thanks, R2T1! I was going to ask about an IDE for Inform 6, but you pre-empted my question!

I didn’t know about this IDE, R2T1 - thanks!

@emlon: there was also one called Wide, and one called Informatic. I’ve never used any of them, to be honest - I use Textpad, a simple but powerful text editor which has I6 syntax highlighting once you fiddle with it, and someone I know has a Notepad++ syntax highlighting definition file.

And welcome to I6! :slight_smile:

If all this isn’t linked on the website, it probably should be.

inform-fiction.org/

I would guess it was part of the process, but I’m sure Zarf is capable of modding it so that it does things that aren’t listed on the box. And I’m pretty sure he created his own custom interpreter/wrapper for the mobile versions. (In fact, I think he explained exactly how on these forums somewhere.)

HL was written in I7, yes. I did not customize the language, but I did some serious large-game optimizations which involved hacking deep into the I6 layer of the library.

There are 3 sort-of-working Glulx interpreters for Android. Incant has been sitting on Github for 2 years with barely a mention. It is the most feature complete and pure Java app. I’ve been able to run 90% of the 50 or so random games I tried with it: github.com/qpliu/incant - I worked with the source code for a couple weeks and it’s nice but could benefit from optimization. I found it was slower than using Android’s Chrome browser and running Quixe - so I kind of abandoned my efforts on it. Twisty is out there too (with the Linux Git interpreter) but it can’t do windowing or graphics. And Son of Hunkypunk also has integrated the Linux Git interpreter (c code) - but it can’t do graphics or windows either.

Twisty and Son of Hunkypunk have kind of stalled out, neither project seems to be working to finish off the workings of Git. I’m doing a terrible job of learning as I go, it’s slow as I really don’t know Glk or C programming. Help is appreciated! Son of Hunkypunk is where my current focus is on - because it has several interpreters integrated and for running Z-Machine it’s been the best received of the 3 mentioned. Help is appreciated, I’m working on it this week!

1 Like