Dark mode looks sooo good on this
Loreline – Tools for writing interactive fiction
51–56 of 56 posts
Re: Loreline – Tools for writing interactive fiction
#52Inform 7 will forever be the best language, not because it's a good language, but because of the way programmers react when you present them a page of Inform 7 code. https://github.com/I7-Examples/Bronze/blob/main/Bronze.infor...
I've spent time with various versions of Inform, and bounced off of Inform 7 fairly hard, for the same reasons that I bounced off of AppleScript years ago: it's a read-only language. Which is to say, the English phrases you use read well...but are hard to remember and hard to look up.
I'm sure it's possible to become highly fluent if you use it a lot, but I'd much prefer something that didn't use English prose for logic and control.
Re: Loreline – Tools for writing interactive fiction
#53Inform 7 will forever be the best language, not because it's a good language, but because of the way programmers react when you present them a page of Inform 7 code. https://github.com/I7-Examples/Bronze/blob/main/Bronze.infor...
To paraphrase a description of inform 7 I once heard in a podcast - Inform 7 awkwardly pretends to be regular English, similar to how text adventures awkwardly pretend that the player has meaningful freedom to act in the game.
Yes. It brings the experience of playing a text adventure to writing a text adventure.
Re: Loreline – Tools for writing interactive fiction
#54Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wrote a few games using Inform 7 and ran a couple of workshops for it too. It's not just the technical idiosyncrasies of the language. I've noticed that if you use it for the few hours and get into "the zone", you start to inhabit the world that you're creating and "see" it. The overall attitude is that of a world creator rather than a programmer fixing technical issues. Breaking the flow is trying to figure out ho…
I don't know Inform 7 much, but I'm trying my best to make Loreline language syntax never get in the way of the writing and thinking process. Kept refining it since 2024 and this is still an ongoing process. I'm hoping that it will resonate to other writers too!
I don't do much IF these days and I'm not sure if I will but if I do ever have time to sit down with something new, I will definitely give Loreline a try.
Re: Loreline – Tools for writing interactive fiction
#55Inform 7 will forever be the best language, not because it's a good language, but because of the way programmers react when you present them a page of Inform 7 code. https://github.com/I7-Examples/Bronze/blob/main/Bronze.infor...
It's in the uncanny valley, that's for sure. I never had much luck with it because you have to memorize a ton of specific English phrase templates and remember how they are injected into the game logic, and you often have to escape into regular old procedural logic. But it's an ambitious experiment, and the docs are worth reading through. Every now and again I give it another try :^P
You're reminding me of trying this out as a teenager; I only got a few connected rooms and basic objects and I distinctly remember always trying to write "a foo is a type of bar" instead of "a foo is a kind of bar" which is what compiles.
Also I tried to show my brother how to use Inform by typing Inform 6 into the fancy new Inform 7 IDE... nope.
Re: Loreline – Tools for writing interactive fiction
#56so cool! how does this compare to ChoiceScript? https://www.choiceofgames.com/make-your-own-games/choicescri...
Choice script is a terrible proprietary language-- I dont recommend anyone use it. Ink or Twine are much better tools. While Ink is built by a company the actual tool is free and open source
eh, they're a publishing business. choicescript is part of their business model - there's nothing inherently wrong with that.