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I cannot find a clear answer about this: it is possible or it will be possible in the future to "convert" an Inform 6 or 7 game to a stand-alone app for iPhone and iPad?

Yes, using zarf's Open Source iOS Fizmo interpreter: https://github.com/erkyrath/iosfizmo/

It's not a one-click-solution, though.

You'll need an iOS Dev Account and basic knowledge of XCode would be helpful, too, I suppose. If you want to customize the look & feel of your game (maybe add an ingame map), Objective C coding experience is reuqired.

Matt
(de-lurking for once, still thinking about that new nick).

There is a good tutorial for... dummies?

I have not yet had time to write one, I'm afraid. Possibly this weekend.

It would be wonderful and good for the... market! Well, dummies like me just need to convert a game to an app, customizing it only with a map (Dreamhold) and hyperlinks. That would be enough for now. How long would take to make such a conversion from an Inform 7 game source code?

Converting a game to an app won't take more than an hour. Plus the time it takes you to set up Xcode and go through Apple's developer registration. (Which is, well, it's better than it used to be.)

A map, however, is not a trivial addition. The code for that isn't part of the open-source package -- partially because it requires a bunch of Z-code disassembly and tweaking, and partially because I am theoretically a business now and have to think about businessy things like "distinguishing product features". Same goes for hyperlinks. There's nothing in the Z-code engine to display or support them, so you'd have to write new ObjC code to make that work.

Further warning: several features are still missing, most importantly the ability to start up a game in progress with the Glulx engine. (Which is to say, the Glulx interpreter is not yet ready for prime time.) Updating your game file between versions is also a problem, in the usual way, and I have not yet built a clever hack to work around this.

Well, Zarf, I would pay for easy one-click solutions to add maps and hyperlinks!

Those cannot be one-click features, no matter who writes the code.

...I should says, maps cannot be. Hyperlinks depends on what you mean by "hyperlinks".

If that is unsatisfactory, try posting a parchment runner link to your game and load that in the iOS web browser. I noticed Parchment runs on the Android browser satisfactorily, surely the iOS version of Safari runs it. In fact, creating a game with embedded hyperlinks or a menu system might be much better for running on a phone or tablet, seeing as it would be a pain to type commands onscreen all the time.

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David Good
http://david-good.com/portfolio/interactive-fiction/
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