Interactive Fiction resources

• The Frotz interpreter we are using can be found here.
• The Inform compiler we are using can be found here.  Please look carefully at the tutorials on this page, including the Inform Beginner's Guide (beta locally mirrored here); they will be helpful.  There are also links to many other interactive fiction resources from here.  
• The Inform Designer's manual is required reading to use it effectively, and contains a wealth of insights into the design of interactive fiction that should be read by anyone who wants to write interactive fiction.  The Acrobat version of the 4th edition is locally mirrored here.  While we strongly recommend using the 4th edition, for historical purposes an on-line hypertext of the 3rd edition starts here.
• Quite a lot of valuable material on Inform can be found at Roger Firth's site.  Of particular interest for homework assignments are Inform in Four Minutes (local mirror), and InfoLib at your fingertips (local mirror) which provide quick references that complement the more comprehensive Designer's Manual.  The InfLight, InFancy, and InfAct overviews are also useful. 
• There's also a very interesting, community-based Inform Developer's Guide. It archives many IF/Inform tips and tricks, including an extensive tutorial on NPC development.
• Studying the source code for sample Inform games written in it is highly recommended.  Probably the simplest way to run Inform is from a shell under gnuemacs.  There is even an inform-mode for various versions of Emacs.
• The Twonky Island story bible, source code, and .Z5 file are on-line.

Last edited 3/30/04 by KDF
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